microsoft word editorial.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) i editorial it brings us great pleasure to welcome you to this second in our guest-edited double issue of transmotion on indigeneity and the anthropocene. and with no apology for brevity, it once again brings me great pleasure to usher you straight on to martin premoli’s second wonderful introduction to this issue… congratulations to martin and david for a deeply absorbing double issue. as ever, our team of review editors have put together a fantastic selection of reviews, and we are grateful as always to all those who work with us behind the scenes to put the journal together and make it a valuable contribution to the field. on this occasion, we particularly welcome our new creative editor, steven sexton of the university of nevada, las vegas, and reviews assistant bethany webster-parmentier of europa-universität flensburg. -- as a reminder to our readers, transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ”about” section). david stirrup june 2022 david carlson steve sexton james mackay bryn skibo-birney microsoft word editorial transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) i editorial season’s greetings! it brings us great pleasure to welcome you to this guest-edited issue of transmotion on indigeneity and the anthropocene. and with no apology for brevity, it also brings me great pleasure to usher you straight on to martin premoli’s wonderful editorial/introduction to this issue… congratulations to martin and david for a deeply absorbing issue—the first of two, with the second to come in the spring of 2022. as ever, our team of review editors have put together a fantastic selection of reviews, and we are grateful as ever to all those who work with us behind the scenes to put the journal together and make it a valuable contribution to the field. -- as a reminder to our readers, transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ”about” section). david stirrup december 2021 david carlson theodore c. van alst james mackay bryn skibo-birney microsoft word contributors_1-1.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)       129   author biographies joseph bauerkemper is an assistant professor in the department of american indian studies at the university of minnesota duluth where his scholarship, outreach, and teaching emphasize politics, literature, governance, and law. before joining the umd faculty joseph earned his phd in american studies from the university of minnesota twin cities, enjoyed one year at the university of illinois as a chancellor's postdoctoral fellow in american indian studies, and enjoyed two years at ucla with concurrent appointments as an andrew w. mellon postdoctoral fellow in the program for the study of cultures in transnational perspective and as a visiting assistant professor in the department of english. diane glancy is professor emerita at macalester college. her 2014-15 books are fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education, creative nonfiction, university of nebraska press, report to the department of the interior, poetry, university of new mexico press, and three novels, one of us, uprising of goats, and ironic witness, wipf & stock. deborah madsen is professor of american studies and director of the department of english language and literature at the university of geneva. her research focuses on issues of settler-nationalism, indigeneity, and migration, exemplified by her work on american exceptionalism and the white supremacist ideology of manifest destiny. she has written extensively on the work of gerald vizenor, including the monograph understanding gerald vizenor (2009) and the edited books gerald vizenor: texts and contexts (co-edited with a. robert lee, 2010) and the poetry and poetics of gerald vizenor (2012). she is currently editing the routledge companion to native american literature (scheduled for publication in 2015). paul stewart is professor of literature at the university of nicosia, cyprus. he is the author of two books on beckett: sex and aesthetics in samuel beckett’s works (palgrave 2011) and zone of evaporation: samuel beckett’s disjunctions (rodopi 2006). he is a regular contributor to the journal of beckett studies and samuel beckett today / aujourd’hui. he is currently working on questions of narrative and ethics in beckett and coetzee, as well as the radio and stage adaptations of lessness. he is also a creative writer; his first novel now then was published by armida press in 2014 and his first volume of poetry, and other elsewheres, appeared in 2009. gerald vizenor is professor emeritus of american studies at the university of california, berkeley. he has published more than thirty books including blue ravens, a historical novel about native americans in the first world war. he was the principal writer of the constitution of the white earth nation in minnesota. microsoft word johnson.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   118   baca, jimmy santiago. singing at the gates: selected poems. new york: grove press, 2014. 249 pp. http://www.groveatlantic.com/#page=isbn9780802122100%20 jimmy santiago baca’s long career is well-represented in the collection singing at the gates (grove press 2014). from his early prison poetry to longer lyric poems to accompany art exhibitions, the collection solidifies the major themes in baca’s poetic oeuvre. the poems chart a move from self to other that embraces a hybrid identity seeking to understand the ways of injustice that act on men and women of color. the collection opens with “excerpts from the mariposa letters” as a way of grounding baca’s poetic journey in its earliest incarnation. the young speaker fairly jumps off the page with passion—for love, desire, fear. the letters expose the pleasure and pain of being able to express emotion and thought through the written word. the work is raw and makes a nice introduction to the more familiar poems of baca’s early collections. the individual in captivity appears to remind readers of baca’s early start, and his continued interest in the ways that individuals fare in prisons. readers familiar with baca’s early work will welcome the return of some of the vivid images pervading his poems: the young prisoners who “gnaw their hearts off / caught in the steel jaws of prison” (“just before dawn” 20-21) take on a new resonance when one considers baca’s active engagement with writing workshops in prisons and juvenile detention centers. the collection offers retrospective look at the ways in which poetry can heal wounds both selfand society-inflicted. chicano scholars have focused on baca’s relationship to the land through forging a native/chicano identity. poems such as “a handful of earth, that is all i am” offer a poignant return to the land politics that pervade northern new mexico history. the lines “my blood runs through this land, / like water thrashing out of mountain walls / bursting, sending the eagle from its nest” (8-10) highlight mestizo claims to the land and culture of the us southwest. however, these themes of land, ancestors, and home find new significance when read with newer works. ranging from mexico to kansas, “rita falling from the sky,” examines the life of a chihuahuan woman found in kansas and locked in a mental institution. later, a doctor discovered that she was speaking a native language of the rarámuri indians, and she was released to return to her village. the long, lyric poem gives voice to rita as it imagines her journey through the desert walking north. the folk images of chile, peyote, maize, clay, and more underscore that the land she traverses is actually aztlan (baca 189). as a new poem in the collection, “rita falling from the sky” makes visible the move from self to other in baca’s quest for a universal exploration of hybridity and identity, yet the effect is less haunting than the earlier poems. newly-collected, recent poems are also noteworthy for their desire to speak in different voices. the poetic focus on a transvestite prostitute in “smoking mirrors” and a young woman in “julia” offers a speaker that initially seems jarringly different from the speaker in the early sections of the collection. the poems are an attempt to negotiate a “psychic split” that baca felt evident in his earlier work; the leap from bicultural to transvestite is not so far, after all, he argues (xxii). while the subject matter is worthy and challenging, there seems to be something missing from the context of the poems. baca notes in the preface that some of these new poems were written leigh c. johnson review of singing at the gates   119   to accompany photography exhibits about the juarez border and northern new mexico. it would be interesting to view the photos alongside the poems. while the collection relies heavily on early work, the title poem provides an apt theme for the assemblage’s ambition. “singing at the gates” reads as a welcome update to corky gonzales’s “i am joaquín,” anthem of the chicano movement. this poem’s images include women of la raza and myriad reimagining of ways chicanas/os endure, from men carrying babies, to chicanos with backpacks, to abuelas on harleys. this poem is a testament to the strength of baca’s vision. in attempting to move beyond the stereotypes of culture, class, and gender, baca has presented the possibility of a thought-provoking reinterpretation of his early work. leigh c. johnson, marymount university microsoft word madsen.doc transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 130 jill doerfler. those who belong: identity, family, blood and citizenship among the white earth anishinaabeg. east lansing, michigan state university press, 2015. isbn: 978-1-61186-169-3. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-33e3#.vfcrsm78tmo tribal membership remains a fraught question in indian country, cutting to the very heart of relations between tribal nations and the federal government, as well as deeply intimate issues of individual and family identity formation. jill doerfler's analysis of the impacts of blood-quantum requirements on the white earth nation is a timely and highly informative intervention in these conversations. the work is a finely researched study that brings into relation the historical and legal contexts for debates concerning the regulation of citizenship at white earth, though this close focus on one tribal group has valuable implications for the broader issue of tribal citizenship. some of these implications are sensitively drawn out in the very informative introduction to the book. the introductory chapter also considers such relevant topics as tribal nation sovereignty and the contexts of american “indian” identity. through these discussions, doerfler intelligently and clearly places her own intervention in terms of prominent contemporary scholarly approaches. methodologically, the study draws on a number of paradigms, most clearly legal and constitutional studies, history and literature, to define an analytical method that is grounded in anishinaabe tribal values. as she makes clear from the outset, doerfler defines her approach in terms of the importance of storying as a means to convey tribal values and beliefs, philosophy, law, custom, history, and the like. drawing her inspiration primarily from her own life-long commitment to the white earth anishinaabeg and from the writings of gerald vizenor, doerfler argues powerfully for blood quantum as an strategic imposition by the colonizing us federal government, designed to reduce the numbers of enrolled or federally recognized indigenous people with a view to the eventual demographic elimination of native tribes and, in advance of that, to perpetuate the deracination, displacement, and dispossession of anishinaabe people. according to robert gillespie's 2012 report to the minnesota chippewa tribe, at current projections by 2090 there will be no individual who qualifies for citizenship of the tribe and so the minnesota chippewa tribe will cease to exist; his projection for the white earth nation was that elimination of all qualified citizens (and so the nation itself) will occur by 2080 (doerfler xxii). such demographic disappearance would serve the interests of the us by eliminating federal trust responsibilities and making native resources available to the federal government. as doerfler argues, blood quantum works to abolish the distinctive indigenous status of native people by reducing them to one of many american “ethnic” groups with no specific entitlements such as those that are historically guaranteed to tribes by treaty. blood quantum then is an insidious means to perpetuate historic efforts to assimilate indigenous people into the us “melting pot” and, at the same time, to undermine native nations by removing their sovereign right to determine their own tribal citizenship. the pseudoscience of biological race, upon which blood quantum regulations are based, is undermined by doerfler's observation of the religious, political, geographical, phenotypical diversity of the anishinaabeg. in this context, she highlights the sinister deborah madsen review of those who belong 131 origins of racial identity theory in the work of nineteenth-century eugenicists like francis galton and works to show how eugenics offers the framework for the colonizing category of the american “indian”: an impossible racial identity construction that can never be realized by any tribal individual. the racialization of tribal citizenship through the bioracial criteria of blood quantum is opposed to the anishinaabe practices of adoption, naturalization, kinship, and intermarriage, all of which tie people to their lands and governments through systems of community relationships and responsibilities. these traditional practices form the core of doerfler's argument that the rejection of blood quantum in favor of tribal citizenship by lineal descent is a powerful act of survivance, which she defines as “a reimagining of sovereignty that brings control to tribal nations and encompasses political status, resistance, cultural values, and traditions” (xxxii). she is refreshingly honest about her own personal investment in these determinants of tribal citizenship: although born and raised on the white earth reservation, she lacks the onequarter blood quantum required for tribal enrolment. this personal investment in her project adds significantly to the motivation of her analyses, not least when she turns to the recent changes to tribal enrolment at white earth, in which she has been intensely involved. her scholarship is as impeccable as her arguments are powerful. the three substantive chapters cover the historical period from the early twentieth century to the present. starting in 1913, with the federal investigation into land sales at white earth (a consequence of the devastating allotment process during the previous years), doerfler interviewed hundreds of individuals to learn their attitudes towards tribal belonging and in particular blood quantum. the second chapter centers on the formation of the minnesota chippewa tribe in 1936 and the move to a one-quarter blood-quantum requirement for citizenship in 1961 (the policy that excluded doerfler from tribal citizenship). here, she has researched exhaustively the holdings of the national archives records administration to determine precisely the pressures to which tribal leaders were subject as they decided in favor of this key change in citizenship requirements. the final analytical chapter is structured around the events beginning in 2007 as the white earth nation began the process of drafting a new constitution and reforming citizenship requirements to bring them into line with traditional anishinaabe values. in this chapter, doerfler draws on her personal experience of disseminating information about the process (through articles published in the tribal newspaper, anishinaabeg today, and presentations at constitutional conventions) and her participation in the drafting of the new constitution, which was approved in november 2013 with a majority of nearly 80% in favor of the reforms. the story that doerfler tells, with elegance and precision, is deeply engaging as well as highly informative. the substantive portion of the book is relatively brief and, as a consequence, those who belong represents not only a major contribution to scholarship but also promises to be a very useful teaching resource. the book is completed by a series of very helpful appendices: the revised constitution and bylaws of the minnesota chippewa tribe and the constitution of the white earth nation. these documents enhance the value of this outstanding book for scholars and students alike. deborah madsen, university of geneva microsoft word lee.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 120 revard, carter. from the extinct volcano, a bird of paradise. norman, oklahoma: mongrel empire press, 2014. 100pp. http://mongrelempire.org/catalog/poetry/from-extinct-volcano.html one thing you can be sure of with the authorship of carter revard: it never fails to offer a full menu, what the french call une bonne bouche. how else to designate this new and selected with its span of osage and other tribal creation stories, the community role of song, evolutionary biology (especially dinosaurs), astrophysics and the cosmos, hummingbirds, oklahoma dust and history, wall street, the iraq war, and not least a run of haiku? drawing upon the early collections ponca war dancers (1980) and cowboys and indians, christmas shopping (1992) and the composite how the sings come down (2005) in salt’s earthworks series, together with new work, revard lays it on you: intertextual milton and shelley, troves of learning from bible and latin sources through to entomology. if all this sounds a touch professorial it no doubt is. but the upshot is engagingly redeemed by the writing’s slivers of vernacular wit, the ready intervention of speaking voice. the thirty-plus contributions include a number of pieces now standard in the revard repertoire. “what the eagle fan says,” from an eagle nation (1992), reflects his longtime university work in old and middle english, a poem structured as kenning with due use of caesura and parallel phrasing. but far from any anglo saxon or norse landscape the world at hand is native american, one of powwow dance, south dakota’s wakonda, ceremonial bead and rattle, and above all, the poet’s obligation to honor and remake legacy. “dancing with dinosaurs,” originally to be found in his collagist and hugely engaging winning the dust bowl (2001), exploits a fine seam of avian imagery, dinosaur into bird, the transition from the poet’s own tribal naming as thunder person into verse maker and songster. “in chigger heaven,” from cowboys and indians, links the mites being referenced to the poet’s itch to articulate creation’s infinitudes large and small. “dreaming in oxford,” first issued in yellow medicine review (2010), remembers a 4am college wakening to a lyric-oneiric landscape that spans lewis carroll, robert frost and swans patrolling the river isis. “parading with the veterans of foreign wars,” from an eagle nation (1992) has understandably become one of revard’s signature compositions (“almost a found poem” says the accompanying note). opening with the lines “apache, omaha, osage, choctaw,/comanche, cherokee, oglala, micmac: our place was ninety-fifth,” it plays allusions to custer and the seventh cavalry and jefferson barracks park (“where the dragoons were quartered for the indian wars”) into a savvy riff on what the parade now signifies, to include cleaning up horse poop and heading to kfc in its aftermath “given the temporary/absence of buffalo here in the/gateway to the west, st. louis.” allusion is made to the judging stand, a tacit invitation to history’s necessarily far larger judgment, that of how america might or should assess its treatment of the tribes and their plies and skeins of cultural life. whose “foreign war,” runs the sub-text, most applies? there can be no want of further choice. “songs of the wine-throated hummingbird” turns as much on the “language” of humpback whales and dolphins as of hummingbirds. the poem celebrates the natural world’s different musics—whales “ in the sapphire ocean,” the “arias” of the dolphins, the “varied outpourings” albeit for a minute only of the hummingbirds. each, nonhumanly, and in revard’s envisioning , contributes “the smaller ripples that we call meaning,” the concluding lines bespeak a near whitmanesque note, the earth’s land and sea as yielding symphony, an ecological chorus. the grasp of global span is typical: a. robert lee review of from the extinct volcano 121 deep in the blue antarctic seas, high in the green guatemala jungle, here in these cracked english words, can you hear the sing, the hummingbirds, the humpback whales, a neutron star, a human soul? “living in the holy land,” which made its appearance in stand magazine, ostensibly memorializes the lewis and clark bicentennial in 2006. but its evidently more inclusive purpose is to remember “our diaspora,” the history that predates frontierism, runs through empire and the civil war, and continues into the oil regimes (“and then the oil men came,/their rivers of black liquid gold washed away/too many of our people, to many of our ways.”). the poem nicely begins from osage creation story as though an anticipation of the declaration of independence (“our osage forebears brought forth,/ on this continent, a new nation,/ conceived in liberty and dedicated to/the proposition that all beings are created equal.”). it closes with homage to song and drum “that we may live, that we may yet remain/a sovereign nation in this holy land” (italics in original). revard’s keen sense of heritage, tribal past-into-present as never to be forgotten, can hardly be doubted. along with a number of wry prose pieces (try his buck creek picture of winter moths in “meadows, moths, slatebeds, dictionaries” or his dylan thomas whippoorwill and booze story set in osage county, oklahoma, “he should have drunk goat’s milk maybe” ), not to mention the often assiduous notes and glosses, from the extinct volcano, a bird of paradise supplies a due and timely reminder of the revard oeuvre. he brings an expansive mind to bear, a beckoning appetite across science and the arts, across geographies from oklahoma and the other southwest to bethlehem. the menu’s poetry indeed comes over full, a degustation. a. robert lee microsoft word kai pyle.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 245 margaret noodin. gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan / what the chickadee knows. wayne state university press, 2020. 96 pp. isbn: 9780814347508. https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/what-chickadee-knows gii-naanogonagizi gashkadino-giizis 2020 mii gii-onaabanjigaadeg gaa-ozhibii’iged giiwedinoodin (margaret noodin zhayaaganaashiiwinikaazod) imaa new york times jiwaabanda’iwemagak. ogii-onaabandaan naomi shihab nye iw ozhibii’igan “landing here,” mii wenzikaamagak iw oshki-mazina’igan what the chickadee knows. geget miikawaadad, mii ekidod nye. “note the movements of snow, cold and wind and the flapping of wings,” ikido. mayaginaagwad dash gegoo, indinendam. zhaaganaashiimong eta ozhibii’igaade imaa babaamaajimo-mazina’iganing. nitam dash gii-aano-ozhibii’ige giiwedinoodin anishinaabemong. aandi gaa-izhaamagak iw anishinaabemowin? naasaab initaagwadoon niw ikidowinan menwendang nye: biboon, boonipoon, booniiwag. apii noondamang gaa-ozhibii’igaadeg zhaaganaashiimong eta, gaawiin ginoondanziimin iniw naasaab-ikidowinan (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/magazine/poem-landing-here.html). aapiji niminwendam aginjigaadeg o’ow mazina’igan. aapiji niminwendam apiitendamowaad egindaasojig. zhaaganaashiimong dash eta aginjigaade, gaawiin gakina maakawaadadinig daa-waabanjigaadesinoon. mii wenji-ozhibii’amaan o’ow ozhibii’igan niin. niwii-tazhindaan ezhi-miikawaadak ezhi-apiitendaagwak o’ow mazina’igan anishinaabemong. aaniin keyaa ge-dazhindamaan iniw “poetry” ezhinikaadeg anishinaabemong? gaawiin ayaamagasinoon i’iw ikidowin. gii-gikinoo’amawid giiwedinoodin ji-gagwe-nitaaanishinaabemoyaan, ogii-wiindaanan “dibaajimowinensan.” niwii-wiindaanan niin “nagamonensan” omaa. moozhag onagamonan giiwedinoodin onow “poems.” mii wenji-izhinikaadamaan onow ozhibii’iganan “nagamonensan.” ji-ozhibii’ang onow nagamonensan anishinaabemong, booch ji-michi-giizhitood giiwedinoodin oshki-ikidowinan. chi-mewinzha ogii-ozhibii’aan nagamonensan anishinaabemong a’aw anishinaabekwe bemwewegiizhigookwe (jane johnston schoolcraft), gaawiin dash baatayiinosiiwag bakaan anishinabeg enishinaabewibii’angwaa nagamonensan. dibishkoo a’aw chi-anishinaabekwe gaaozhibii’iged bemwewegiizhigookwe, giiwedinoodin gidadibaajimotaagonaan anishinaabewakiing. nitam gaa-ozhibii’ang mazina’iganing weweni gaye ogiikai minosh pyle review of gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan / what the chickadee knows 246 tibaadodaan anishinaabewakiing, anooj dash bakaan akiing gaye ogii-tibaadodaanan. gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan dash geget ojiibikaawan omaa gidakiiminaang. aapiji odibaadodaanan aki, nibi, miinawaa giizhig, ezhi-miikawaadakin, ezhi-wiidookaagoyang giinawind anishinaabeg. jibwaa-maajitaayaan dibaadodamaan iniw nagamonensan, booch ji-wiindamooneg awenen aawiyaan, ezhi-gikenimag aw giiwedinoodin. mekadebinesiikwe indizhinikaaz. migizi indoodem, wezhaawashkwiikwegamaag indoonjibaa, gakaabikaang dash indaa noongom. baawiting izhinikaade ishkonigan wenjibaawaad indinawemaaganag. ingiinakweshkawaa giiwedinoodin imaa minowakiing gii-maajii-nandagikendamaan jianishinaabemoyaan. miish nitam gaa-gikinoo’amawid aw gikinoo’amaagewikwe. apiitendaagwad ji-wiindamooneg o’ow onzaam apane ikidowag anishinaabeg ezhiinawendiyang. nitami-waawiindamaagewining ikido giiwedinoodin, “the first section of the book illustrates the way anishinaabemowin blends philosophy, science, and psychology while the second half traces less commonly known histories or provides a less common view of well-known events” (ix). o’ow nitam gaa-ozhibii’iang geget naasaab izhinaagwad omazina’iganing weweni. onow nagamonensan dibaajimoomagadoon ezhi-anishinaabewaadiziyang, ezhi-anishinaabeyendamang. izhibii’ige ow keyaa giiwedinoodin waabanda’inang ezhi-nametwaajigaadenig gakina onow gegoon omaa gidakiiminaang. odoozhibii’aan: apii manidoo-giizisoons basangwaabid gaye gaawiin bazhiba’ansiimaan ge-bimaadagendamaan dwaa’ibaaning mii mikwendamaan ode’imini-giizis miskwiiwid miskwaawaasiged giizhigong. (32) giizis basangwaabi, inendamowinan bimaadagaamagadoon. mii ow keyaa ezhiwaabanda’iwed giiwedinoodin ezhi-aanikoobijigaadegin aki miinawaa inendamowin. miish gaye aabajitood ezhi-anokiimagak anishinaabemowin ji-waabanda’inang o’ow: “ge-bimaadagendamaan” ikido, ezhi-aabajitood “bimaadagaa” miinawaa iw ojiibikens “-end” ji-idang “inendamowin.” baatayiinadoon onow dinowa ikidowinan mazina’iganing. omichi-giizhitoon imaa nagamonensing “agoziimakakiig idiwag” ow ikidowin transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 247 “nibwaakaamashkawajisiiwaad”—nibwaakaawin miinawaa mashkawajiwin—ji-michigiizhitood oshki-mazinibii’igan naanaagadawendamowining. aapiji minwaabadad anishinaabemowin ji-doodaming o’ow. gaawiin gigashkitoosiin ji-doodaman o’ow zhaganaashiimong. booch ji-aanike-atooyan ikidowinan, ezhi-izhichiged giiwedinoodin, ekidod “frozen by design” zhaaganaashiimong apii ekidod “nibwaakaamashkawajisiiwaad” anishinaabemong. moozhag gaye odayaabajitoon giiwedinoodin “inwewinensan,” naasaab inwewinens aabajitoong ji-maajiibii’iged. nitaa-waabanda’iwemagad o’ow “bi boniig.” “boon” maajitaamagad endaso-beshibii’iganing, bakaan dash edaming: “boonipon apii biboong / boonitamaang… / boonigidetaadiwag… / booniiwag… / boonam…” (“bi boniig” gaye ezhinikaadeg gegaa naasaab initaagwad iw ikidowin “biboong”). aapiji nitaawichige apii naasaab ojiibikensan aawanzinog, dibishkoo igo iw nagamonens “nizhosagoons gemaa nisosagoons daso-biboonagadoon”: “ziibiins ani-ziibi ziibiskaaj / ziigibiig ziigwanindagwag.” gakina onow ziib/ziiginwewinensan odoojiibikensiman bakaanadoon. ishkwaaj waawiindamoonang giiwedinoodin gaa-bi-izhiwebak mewinzha, mayaginaagozi’inang dash. iwedi mazina’iganing nitam gaa-ozhibii’ang, weweni, miziwe akiing ogii-tazhindaan. gii-waabanda’iwe ezhi-aabajichigaadenig anishinaabemowin ji-dazhinjichigaadenig miziwe aki. o’ow dash mazina’iganing ogichiwaabandaan anishinaabewaki, mii maajitaamagak chi-mewinzha—jibwaa-ayaawaad gosha anishinaabeg omaa akiing. “gaabiboonoke” mii iw apii maajitaamagad ow dibaajimowin (gemaa ge ow aadizookaan?). mii o’ow gegoo aaningodinong ezhichiged giiwedinoodin: zhaaganaashiimod, ikido “glaciers;” anishinaabemod dash, ikido “gaabiboonoke,” dazhimaad a’aw aadizookaanan. nagamonensing “nimanaajitoomin nibi” gaye dazhinjigaazo “nookomis nibi-giizis” anishinaabemong, “her silver brilliance” eta ikidoomagad zhaaganaashiimong. mii onow “doorways between eras and worldviews” ezhi-wiindang imaa nitami-waawiindamaageng. omaa niizho-ozhibii’iganing, nitaa-waabanjigaade gaa-izhichigewaad zhaaganaashag, gaawiin dash ekwaanig odibaajimowin giiwedinoodin. gaa wiikaa ikidosiin iw ikidowin “colonization,” maagizhaa onzaam gaawiin aawanzinoon iw ikidowin anishinaabemong. aaningodinong niwaabamaag ingiw chi-ayaa’aag ezhidazhindamowaad gaa-bi-izhiwebadinig, gaa-dagoshininid zhaaganaashan. gegiinawaa, gaawiin ikidosiiwag iw ikidowin dibaajimowaad. waabanda’iwe dash giiwedinoodin ezhi-inakamigadinig. iw nagamonensing “wanaanimizimigad” giwaabandaamin gaa-izhiwebiziwaad awesiinyag gaa-meshkwadoonamaageng kai minosh pyle review of gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan / what the chickadee knows 248 noopiming. maagizhaa omaa maamawi-nitaa-ikido giiwedinoodin: “biniskwaabiiginamigad / gaa-maajitamigag.” mii o’ow gaa-inakamigak: gaabiniskwaabiiginamigak gakina gegoo. zoongi-dazhinjichigaade gaa-biniskwaabiginamigak imaa nagamonensing “bingwinanaandawi’iwe-nagamowin.” geget nagamowin izhinaagwad, niiwing maajitaamagadoon beshibii’iganan naasaab: “anaambiig, anaamaabik / mikwendamang giizhigoon mikwenimangwa.” zanagad gaa-izhiwebak imaa gaamitaawangaagamaag miinawaa mitaawangaa-ziibiins. gaawiin dash naasaab aawanzinoon. mii enenjigaadeg: “noondawangwa, nagamotamangwa / … / ganawenindizowaad ezhi-bakaaniziwaad / giiwe-gizhibaabizowaad apane.” gashkenjigaade iw nagamowinens “bingwi-nanaandawi’iwe-nagamowin,” bakaan dash nagamowinens, “mazinaazod oshki-miin-gamigong” geget nishkaazitaagoziimagad. “…aanawi” maajitaamagadoon ishkwaaj-beshibii’iganan, giimoojigidaazoomagak. ishkwaabii’ige dash “aanawi gonemaa indaawaaj waa-mikaadiyang.” ganabaj, inendang, geyaabi gigashkitoomin ji-maamawi-mino-ayaayang. aanind nagamonensing waabanjichigaade o’ow, dibishkoo “maori manaia,” endazhimaaminonenjigaadeg ezhi-anami’aanid maori-anishinaaben. aapiji dash niminwendaan ezhi-dibaajimotang giiwedinoodin ow nagamonens-mazinibii’igan “getemazinaagochigaans.” maagizhaa onaanaagadawendaan iw inendamowin, “land back” ezhinikaadeg zhaaganaashiimong. ikido: robben island azhenamawaawaad aaskigwan bedloe’s island azhenamawaawaad esan mii waa-minisiinoowiyang azhegiiweyang mayagitaagoziyang. (72) aaniin waa-inakamigak giniigaaniiminaang giishpin azhenamaageng? gaawiin anishinaabe odakiim azhenamaageng eta. aaniin waa-inakamigak jiaazhenamawaawaad aaskigwan miinawaa esan? aaniin waa-izhiwebiziyang jiazhegiiweyang mayagitaagoziyang—gaawiin mayagitaagozi’igoosiwang, mayagitaagoziyang ji-nisidotaadiyang, onzaam ginandawendaamin nisidotaadiwin. mii o’ow aki ezhi-dazhindang giiwedinoodin omaa nagamonensing gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan. mii ow anishinaabe-akiiwang, endazhi-gashkichiged anishinaabe miziwe bakaan awiyan, bakaan bemaadizijin ji-manaajitood enaadizinid. mii o’ow dinowa aki nando-abiitamaan. university of illinois, urbana-champaign microsoft word bryant.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   124   senier, siobhan, ed. dawnland voices: an anthology of indigenous writing from new england. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2014. 716pp. http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/dawnland-voices,675948.aspx in what is surely among the most self-consciously edited anthologies ever published, siobhan senier enlists the help of eleven indigenous community members—from ten tribal nations—to generate a snapshot of “native people’s continuous presence” in northeastern north america. the result of this editorial collaboration is more than just an exciting new collection of indigenous voices—though it is certainly that. this is a volume that grapples earnestly and productively with prevalent notions of what literary anthologies—and their editors—are capable of. as a non-native scholar of indigenous literatures, senier’s editorial self-consciousness is both refreshing and, one could easily argue, vital to her task. in fact, the scholarly values outlined in her introduction—the enthusiastic spirit of collaboration, the relative lack of academic ego, the unconditional willingness to learn, and the steadfast commitment to a model of editorial control that listens more that it speaks—reflect precisely what has made senier such a trusted and respected figure in northeastern native studies today. it would be misguided, she compellingly argues here, for a non-native editor to act as an intellectual invader of indigenous cultural territory—to perpetuate an academic doctrine of discovery in which indigenous writers, however well known among native peoples or within tribal communities, are supposedly “found” by outside scholars and then counted for “credit” within western institutional value structures. from senier’s perspective, this conventional model of editorial practice would threaten to sever native writers from their distinct community contexts, disrupting and distracting from the important ways in which “tribal literature connects people to homeland, kin, and neighbors, to tribal language, histories, and traditions.” instead of acting as a compiler seeking to capture and contain her subject, then, senier acts as a conduit—or as a facilitator alongside whom eleven impassioned community editors speak and exhibit the works of their nations on their own terms. these community editors provide brief but dynamic introductions before each of the volume’s ten sections, which senier organizes first by tribal nation and then from north to south. jaime battiste invokes the late rita joe in his introduction, appropriately stressing the importance that mi’kmaq peoples actively “create writing, instead of just being written about.” juana perley reflects on the frustrations that maliseet peoples on both sides of what is now the canada/u.s. border have faced when dealing with powerful settler governments who are simultaneously meddlesome and unresponsive. and after describing the natural beauty and power of traditional passamaquoddy territory, donald soctomah pays homage to an equally mighty people who “bravely have been battling against assimilation into the european civilization” for centuries—a nation in which youth leaders of late have been working hard to revive the old ways. carol dana describes a thriving penobscot literary tradition that “has been passed down to us by our elders mostly, but also in written records”—through stories, petroglyphs, etchings, birch bark maps, rock markings, and mnemonic devices. and lisa brooks eloquently explains how kwinitekw, or the connecticut river, functions as the “central character” throughout the selected abenaki writings, connecting “the people and places of the abenaki ‘home country’” across time and distance. rachel bryant review of dawnland voices   125   next, cheryl watching crow stedtler describes and justifies her “addiction” to nipmuc country, inviting the readers of these selections to “journey with us and walk our path.” joan tavares avant (granny squannit) introduces writings by the mashpee wampanoag and the wampanoag of gay head, providing brief histories for each tribe before emphasizing the crucial role that writing can play in communicating the oft-neglected perspectives of tribal peoples. introducing the narragansett writings, dawn dove urges readers to “hear the historical grief in our voice”— and she speaks powerfully of the challenges her people have always faced when attempting to communicate with euroamerican populations who would rather believe their own lies than listen. stephanie m. fielding introduces writings connected by “a love for mohegan” and “a compassionate eye for the land and its inhabitants.” and finally, trudie lamb richmond and ruth garby torres introduce key writings from the three major families of the schaghticoke tribe—harris, cogswell, and kilson. each of the ten sections ends with a list of recommendations for further reading, and while the selections that are presented here span centuries—from shortly after the arrival of europeans in the northeast to the present day—each chapter inevitably contains “large historical gaps” that senier hopes readers will take as invitations to dig deeper. she also notes that a number of northeastern nations are absent from the volume entirely. hopefully, these invitations will lead readers to the anthology’s sister website, writing of indigenous new england (indigenousnewengland.com), an initiative that grew out of the editors’ understandably difficult decisions about what to include in the pages of dawnland voices and what to set aside. this exciting ongoing process of what senier calls “web-based anthologizing” involves many of the same editors mentioned above, along with other northeastern native writers, historians, and community members, who together are working to upload, annotate, and share cultural materials for public view. this online initiative represents what is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of senier’s approach as editor, and in her introduction, she urges her “colleagues at other universities” to likewise “partner with tribal historians, authors, museums, and other entities to produce new knowledge about regional indigenous literary traditions.” she asks the readers of dawnland voices to imagine the volume as a hub, out from which come multiple “spokes”—the collaborative bibliography at the end of each chapter, the online exhibit space, and the associative activity taking place on various social networking sites. again, senier reminds us that this is not a book that tries to contain its topic; rather, it makes connections outwards into the universe. it speaks to its readers, and it invites those readers to speak back—to engage, to invest, to fill in the silences, to actively contribute. it is curious that senier uses the term “new england” in her title to refer to the northeast in its entirety—an area that includes territory that has never been part of what is usually referred to as new england. as an inhabitant of what is now known as atlantic canada, i would be interested to hear senier’s explanation for this usage. in the end, this is a very minor criticism. dawnland voices is the product the many years senier has spent working tirelessly to build partnerships between native communities and the classroom, and the significance of her efforts in this regard is reflected by the beauty of her achievement. whether she would accept such “credit” for this volume is immaterial: we will give it to her anyway. rachel bryant, university of new brunswick microsoft word lalonde.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)       89   zamir, shamoon. the gift of the face: portraiture and time in edward s. curtis’s the north american indian. university of north carolina press, 2014. 1-282, notes, bibliography, and index 283-316, 319-334. http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=3515 weaver, jace. the red atlantic: american indigenes and the making of the modern world, 1000-1927. university of north carolina press, 2014. vii-xiv, 1-278, notes and index 279340, no works cited. http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=3499 in this era of ever-shrinking library budgets, not to mention individual purchasing power, both the gift of the face and the red atlantic deserve to find a home in an institution’s library shelves, albeit for different reasons. the former asks that the reader take another, fuller, look at the images and words that make up edward s. curtis’ multi-volume the north american indian. the latter that the reader sees, perhaps for the first time, the role the natives of the americas played in the making of the modern world. zamir’s text asks that, contra those scholars who see in curtis’s images instances of the “imposition of colonialist stereotypes” (179), we read the photographs as rich in, again to quote zamir, “the activity of a knowing self-fashioning” (179) on the part of curtis’s native subjects. zamir is quick to note that he does not want to dismiss as incorrect the claims already made by earlier readings of curtis and his work; rather, he wants to “insist on curtis’s insensitivity” as part of the study’s effort to reveal edward curtis as a “man inextricably entangled within the reigning beliefs and attitudes toward race and culture of his own time and yet a man simultaneously capable of remarkable artistic and scholarly achievement. this contradiction runs through the whole of the north american indian” (188 emphasis added). zamir asks that we take particular note of curtis’s decision to use copperplate photogravures in the north american indian, arguing the decision indicates that curtis was situating his work in the tradition of pictorialism rather than “realist or straight photography” (24). for zamir, this serves as ground for curtis’s artistic composition of shots and manipulation of image in the developing and printing process. an attention to composition, manipulation, and “the language of pictorialist discourse” (35) in turn help the reader see the artistic achievement of curtis’ work. portraits, which zamir notes early on account for roughly forty-four percent of the nearly quarter million images in the north american indian, are read as instances of co-authorship between curtis and the native subject and moments of native agency and intentionality. zamir would have us read the images as moments of native self-expression and self-representation. zamir offers close readings of a number of curtis’s images. he would, as have others before him, have the reader think of the clock that is removed from “in a piegan lodge.” he asks that we pay attention to safety pins in “new chest—piegan” and “tsawatenok girl” and to the machine manufactured blanket in “the blanket maker—navaho.” he would have us think hard about the composition of many curtis images. these close readings call to us, demanding our attention and engagement, as do, zamir argues, the images themselves. for me, the close chris lalonde review of the red atlantic and the gift of the face   90   readings are at once the strength and the weakness of the gift of the face. all too often i find myself not seeing what zamir both is seeing and asking us to see when it comes to the body language and faces in the portraits. where he sees in “a medicine pipe” the “self-possession and confidence of the face” (51) of philip flat tail, for instance, i see weariness and resignation; i do not see the “evident, if theatrical, sense of dignity and pride” (180) in “upshaw—apsaroke” that he sees. these two examples are not meant to undo the work being done by the gift of the face and its close readings, mind you, but to sound a note of caution. it bears noting that recent studies by lisa barrett and others have called into question the universality of facial expression and thus underscored the difficulty in reading the face. with very nearly its last word the gift of the face sounds this difficulty and, i think, lights on the necessary limits of its readings: “it is only if we work through curtis’s images as argument-making pictures that they bring us to the enigma that is the gift of the face” (280). the red atlantic: american indigenes and the making of the modern world, 1000-1927 is devoted, jace weaver writes, to restoring “indians and inuit to the atlantic world and [to] demonstrat[ing] their centrality to that world, a position equally important to, if not more than, the africans of [paul] gilroy’s black atlantic” (x-xi). early and late weaver stresses that the red atlantic is, in part, the story of how natives “contend[ed] with modernity” (xii), their “encounter and struggle with, and adaptation to,” it (205). to cite one example, it offers the life and work of mohawk performer and poet e. pauline johnson not merely as “pandering to white expectations” (210) but of articulating a “commitment . . . to a growing sense of unity among all north american native nations as they struggled with the colonialist modernity of the turn of the twentieth century” (212). in short, and here there is a connection with the gift of the face, the red atlantic wants us to look again at atlantic studies in order to see the role played by indigenes, all too often either erased or marginalized and without agency by works in the field. on the one hand, the red atlantic is nothing new: weaver notes in his preface that “it is not my intent in defining the red atlantic to catalog and discuss every known native from the americas who traveled to one or another colonial metropole—sometimes multiple metropoles. this work has been done by various other scholars” (x). in it scope and emphasis, however, in its richness, the text serves as a valuable resource for students new to native studies and both to those teaching surveys of atlantic history, introduction to american studies, or introduction to native american studies. on the other hand, in addition to introducing the reader to voices and figures familiar to native studies scholars, the red atlantic asks us to look again at figures such as johnson, anishinaabe writer and clergyman peter jones, and mohegan minister samson occom and the texts they produced. what weaver notes is the case with paula gunn allen’s biography of pocahontas, or rather matoaka, is equally the case with his the red atlantic: they are labors devoted to recovering indigenous identity. these labors are necessary. these labors bear fruit. the structural fluidity of the work, as figures appear in multiple sections, should not put off the reader as it tacitly remarks the presence of natives in multiple arenas and at multiple times across the course of the red atlantic. nor should the text’s conversational tone, which i take it serves to invite the reader into the necessary discussion of the role natives played in the shaping of the modern world. chris lalonde, suny oswego microsoft word glancy.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     148 catharine brown. cherokee sister: the collected writings of catharine brown, 18181823. ed. and intr. theresa strouth gaul. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 2014. pp. 289. http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/cherokee-sister,675763.aspx catharine brown, letter writer, diarist, earliest native woman author, lived c1800-1823. while still in her teens, catharine enrolled in brainerd mission school near the present day chattanooga, tennessee. it was sponsored by the american board of commissioners of foreign missions. she quickly “got with the program” and exceled in speaking and writing english. she saw education as a way to help her people into the new world that had come. she spoke of it and worked toward it with enthusiasm until her untimely death from tuberculosis. in some, christian conversion takes over with exuberance. in others, it remains more subtle. in some, it does not take at all. catharine was exuberance. brainerd, oct. 25, 1819 a few moments of this day shall be spent in writing to my dear brother. it seems a long time since you left us. i long to see you. i long to hear from you. i hope the lord is with you this day, that you enjoy the presence of our dear redeemer. my sincere desire and earnest prayer to the throne of grace, is, that your labours may be blessed, and that god would make you the instrument of saving many souls from eternal destruction. o how i feel for my poor cherokee brethren and sisters, who do not know the blessed jesus, that died for us, and do not enjoy the blessings that i do. how thankful i ought to be to god, that i have ever been brought to the light of the gospel, and was not left to wander in darkness. o i hope that time is at hand, when all the heathen shall know god, whom to know is life everlasting. my dear brother, may we be faithful to our master, knowing that in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. our pilgrimage will shortly be ended, and all our trials will be over. do not forget me in your daily prayers, for i need very much the prayers of god’s children. my heart is prone to leave my god, whom i love. from your unworthy sister in christ, catharine brown. (195) much of the christian walk is getting self out of the way, which she does in her letters. there are not many details of the individual person. the trials and dilemmas while maneuvering the new and foreign realm of christianity are not as important as words from god’s missive on how to live before him. the book contains a 57-page introduction as gaul looks at how to look at catharine’s writings through her own words, as well as those of other scholars. the 32 letters are pages 91-114. catharine’s diary, pages 115-123, followed by 19th century representation of her including poems, a play and other information. diane glancy review of cherokee sister       149 at one point in the introduction, gaul includes a passage recorded by a missionary. it is not addressed by catharine in her letters or diary. it gives insight into the syncretism it must have taken to walk in the two worlds of christianity and the cherokee culture with its stories of little people. in my sleep i tho’t i was travelling, & came to a hill that was almost perpendicular. i was much troubled about it, for i had to go to its top, & knew not how to get up. she said she saw the steps where others had gone & tried to put her feet in their steps; but found she could not ascend in this way, because her feet slipped—having made several unsuccessful attempts to ascend, she became very weary, but although she succeeded in getting near the top, but felt in great danger of falling. while in this distress, in doubt, whether to try to go forward, or return, she saw a bush above her, of which she tho’t, if she could get hold of she could get up, & as she reached out her hand to the bush, she saw a little boy standing at the top, who reached out his hand; she grasped his thumb, & at this moment she was on top and someone told her it was the savior—she had never had such happiness before. (17) the religious historian, joel martin, remarks of the dream: “a traditional cherokee spirit protector had convinced a young cherokee woman that she could make a safe approach to christ” (66). this reader wishes catharine had not always ignored the temporal for the eternal. at the time catharine was writing, sequoyah was inventing the cherokee syllabary, which he called “talking leaves.” it consisted of 86 signs for syllables in the cherokee language. but catharine apparently was unaware of it, or ignored it, though sequoyah also was born in tennessee and lived in alabama, as did catharine. whatever the reason for the slant of her writings, there are several insights into the reality of her life. this is from catharine’s 1820 diary: “have arrived at my fathers—but am yet very unwell.—have a very bad cold. am sometimes afraid i shall not be able to teach school at creek-path. we slept two nights on the ground with our wet blankets before we got home. blessed be god he has again restored me to health. this day two weeks since, i commenced teaching the girls school. o how much i need wisdom from god. i am a child. i can do nothing—but in god will i trust, for i know there is none else to whom i can look for help” (116). i am glad to have the book in my library. it is a sample of gratefulness for education, which includes my own gratefulness for education and christianity, and maybe a longing to be more dutiful to christ. on the other hand, i think not only of the difficulty of learning a new language, but of the rough transformation of orality into written text. catharine brown lived in that upheaval of tectonic plates, so to speak. whenever i pass the arbuckle anticline in southern transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     150 oklahoma on my travels between kansas and texas, i think of the force of rock layers jutted upward into curving, vertical masses. as i read cherokee sister, i longed for what didn’t exist— a narrative in cherokee of the collision. “it wasn’t just the words that were different. but the meaning of language ”— the way it subsumed old ways and charged the way one looked at the world. i struggled with some of that in “i, tatamy,” in a 2013 chapbook, oscimal at first light, about tatamy, the munsee delaware (1690-1760) who translated for the missionary, david brainerd. how could tatamy explain the christian message to a people who had no words for it in their language? who had to change their mind-set before the message could enter? who had to be to see it? but who could see it without first hearing it? it was a tremendous undoing. but for catharine and other converts, the message sufficed. only the vehemence of christ mattered, and sometimes, in the trough of a night, maybe it was not enough. but into that break, for the believer, christ deposited a sparkling piece of his own broken light. diane glancy, macalester college works cited glancy, diane. oscimal at first light. myrtlewood press, 2013. martin, joel, ““visions of revitalization in the eastern woodlands: can a middle-aged theory stretch to embrace the first cherokee converts?,” in reassessing revitalization movements: perspectives from north america and the pacific islands, ed. michael e. harkin, (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2004), pp. 61-87. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 188 matthew l.m. fletcher. the ghost road: anishinaabe responses to indian hating. fulcrum press, 2020. 201pp. isbn: 9781682752333. https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/the-ghost-road-products-9781682752333.php the title of matthew fletcher’s newest book is dark and a bit scary, as is the cover image. it tackles “ancient” and “modern” forms of indian hate in the united states, aptly creating a distinction from past and present. situating indian-hating in the past would lead a reader to think that past forms of hate aren’t still informing the daily lives of indigenous peoples (they are) and that in contemporary times there are “simple repetitions of the older examples of indian-hating” (170). this is central to the message this book conveys: indian-hating is past and present, but it need not be future. the ghost road: anishinaabe responses to indian hating is profoundly different than fletcher’s previous publications, both in style and content. while much of fletcher’s work could be classified as being of service to the discipline of law, namely in bringing clarity to federal indian law and to tribal courts and legal systems, this new work infuses storytelling, historical recounting, and anishinaabe philosophy into topics of indian policy and law, crafting for us a very readable text. in many ways, this is a significant departure for fletcher, but also a return home to anishinaabe storytelling and its ultimate purpose—to get us to think! the narrative form he uses is accessible, straightforward, and also witty, whilst avoiding the citational crutch. fletcher carefully chooses spaces in which to take “judicial notice” (which some might call social commentary) about the state of affairs leading to indian hating in the us, both in the past and present. the anishinaabe stories that bookend concisely written chapters are thoughtfully chosen to reflect the issues engaged in each chapter, and they provide such memorable imagery that many of those stories stayed with me long past the chapter, allowing me to engage more deeply with the content. fletcher starts the book with this statement: “indianhating is a murdering giant that must be defeated” (xi). his main characters include judges, nanaboozhoo, snapping turtle, an ambassador to france, congressmen and presidents, andahaunahquodishkung, jeebiwaag, betosegay, nokoqua, authors, indian agents, manidowaag, abenoojiaag, journalists, property owners, tribal citizens, scholars, mashos, windigo, and the old toad-woman to name a few—with a brief shout out to homer simpson on page 50. i quickly understood and fell in love with fletcher’s approach – tell an anishinaabe story at the front of your chapter. make it interesting and compelling. offer different versions and nuances without confusing the reader or prescribing what they are to understand or https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/the-ghost-road-products-9781682752333.php aimée craft review of the ghost road 189 how they are to understand it. give them agency, but help them. respect that anishinaabe stories have levels of complexity. do not force an interpretive lens on your reader. circle back at the end of your chapter and hint to the reader why you think the story is relevant to this particular subject (note that he does this with the book’s overall structure as well). it’s brilliant. it’s also inherently anishinaabe. for example, when an issue arises and you seek the advice of an elder or a knowledge keeper, they will often respond with a story. there may be moments in time when you’re listening to the story where you wonder to yourself, “what could this possibly have to do with the issue at hand?” so, while you are listening (reading), you are also thinking about why this story was introduced. this activates your brain, your spirit, your cultural knowledge, your humility. so often, when i read, i forget to engage. i read passively, and i need to remind myself to analyse. i really appreciate how fletcher wove this story methodology into his new book in a way that draws in the reader and gives them a responsibility to be thinking while reading. he is applying what many anishinaabe scholars have written about and practiced in their work, in a variety of disciplines. he also frames the stories in the pillars of the seven grandfather and grandmother teachings and the mino-bimaadiziwin as the foundation of anishinaabe inaakonigewin (law), and he reminds of their importance throughout. being a scholar of canadian constitutional law relating to the “aboriginal peoples of canada,” reconciliation, and of indigenous laws and legal orders (especially relating to lands and waters), i initially wondered if a book about anishinaabe responses in the us context would be relevant. let me tell you that it is: fletcher paints a compelling picture about historic hate as being largely based in theories of superiority, with an underlying objective of acquiring land, displacing indian people from their territories (this is the kinder version of what might be called genocide), and exploiting the land, water, and everything on, in, and over it. when i finished the book, i looked back at the cover. i felt unsatisfied at the promise that anishinaabe “responses” would be central. i didn’t come away from it thinking that i now had the answers or solutions to the modern problems that were perpetuating the indian hate fletcher had detailed throughout the book. i was disappointed. and then i thought to the stories fletcher told, and to the fact that anishinaabe people have continued to thrive and survive according to law and practices, despite these attempts at dispossession and eradication. the traditional stories and how they are told reflect a deep anishinaabe philosophical approach to problem “understanding” rather than problem “solving” as the single objective. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 190 it also occurred to me that the need to stop indian hating is not the responsibility of anishinaabe people. it’s up to settlers and their institutions, states, and all who benefit from the results of indian hate (what fletcher refers to as “paper entities”). i think this book is for them. in the absence of sitting them down with an anishinaabe elder who would school them and provide them with guidance through story, listen, and help, this book starts to open the door for thinking about indian hating not as an indian problem, but as a non-indian problem which requires responses. it’s a challenge of sorts. and i think that if we are to take reconciliation seriously, and also to think about how to come out of the climate change crisis that is upon us all, we need to repair relationships. understandings from this book are a good place to start. while i was reading the book, i thought about emailing fletcher to ask why or how he chose the title of ghost road. is it a link to the story that he tells in the conclusion? about the need to keep moving forward despite the ghosts of indian hating that follow indian people everywhere, and the tools we can pick up along the way? maybe it’s that the chibay-mikinaa is about the importance of spirit—the journey we make when we leave our bodies—maybe it’s a statement against anthropocentrism? maybe he is encouraging us to return to spirit? maybe he sees that the end of capitalist societies as we know them are on the brink of collapse? maybe it’s a reflection of a journey we need to take, and the choices that will be before us, some of which are irreversible? it might also be that regardless of which version of the story we take up, the moral is that the anishinaabe carry forward; maybe looking back, maybe only forward. maybe. i’m not sure about my interpretations. i’ll keep thinking about it. so should you. aimée craft, university of ottawa microsoft word gross.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 145 margaret noodin. bawaajimo: a dialect of dreams in anishinaabe language and literature. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2014. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-3434 this book is a very important analysis of some of the better known modern-day anishinaabe creative writers. the strongest point is the manner in which margaret noodin closely examines the use of anishinaabemowin, the anishinaabe language, by the authors under consideration. as such, this review will primarily focus on that aspect of the book. the authors noodin studies are, in order: louise erdrich, jim northrup, basil johnston, and gerald vizenor. since the use of anishinaabemowin by the given authors is the central theme of the work, noodin begins with a discussion of the anishinaabe language. this chapter was especially significant for the approach utilized by noodin. generally speaking, when scholars discuss anishinaabemowin in attempting to explain the importance of the language, they usually take a linguistic approach. so, for example, they will include such basic aspects of the language as the division between animate and inanimate word classes and the variety of verb forms. in the latter case, the four types of verbs in anishinaabemowin will be explained in detail, that is, the transitive, animate verbs (vta); transitive, inanimate verbs (vti); intransitive animate verbs (vai); and intransitive, inanimate verbs (vii). for her part, instead of taking the linguistic approach, noodin follows the path of the poet. so, even though she mentions there are four types of verbs, she does not delineate them, but instead discusses broader concepts associated with certain specific verbs (10-11). the same is very much true for the other aspects of the language she discusses. but, that is fine because noodin does something that is very rarely accomplished by scholars in discussing anishinaabemowin: she provides more of an emotional feel for the worldview generated by the language. language has many aspects, and certainly the grammar structure and other linguistic considerations are important. however, the emotional affect of a language cannot and should not be ignored, especially in the case of anishinaabemowin since that emotional aspect has an impact on the real-world attitudes and actions of the anishinaabeg. there is one aspect of noodin’s explanation that i found particularly important: the idea of centering (11, 16-17). as noodin discusses, the structure of anishinaabemowin provides a fascinating dynamic to the language. in some ways, words in anishinaabemowin are not bounded. instead, the language is highly agglutinative, meaning prefixes and suffixes can be added to words to greatly add subtleties and shifts in meaning (10). pronunciation changes due to the syntax of the language, such as the initial vowel change to indicate the conjunct form of a verb, further complicate the picture. as such, it might be said the words in anishinaabemowin dance with their high variability. as noodin argues, this effects concepts involving the notion of centering. it really cannot be said there is one, static center at the heart of any given word in anishinaabemowin. instead, the center is dynamic in that it seeks to capture the flow and flux of the world, the dance alluded to above. this notion of a dynamic center has an impact on anishinaabe concepts of the self as well, then, such that no one is ever seen as lawrence w. gross review of bawaajimo 146 forever being fixed in terms of both their actions and attributes. instead, the dynamic center reaches out in many directions, constantly engaged in the dance of life. in fact, it is that dance that defines the anishinaabe self. this is why it is so important that noodin brought the insight of the poet to her analysis. it is one thing to explain the linguistic structure of anishinaabemowin in great detail. it is quite another to capture the essence of the language and explain it in a way that is approachable for non-anishinaabe people. in some ways, though, therein lies the dangers, and dare we say subversive nature, of noodin’s writing. although i would highly recommend the book be assigned for any variety of college courses dealing with anishinaabe culture and literature, it needs to be acknowledged that the clear spotlight noodin shines on anishinaabe language, culture, thought, and worldview is so radically different from western approaches, it might be extremely difficult for individuals not versed in the culture to fully understand and appreciate the gift noodin is offering to the world. for example, in western thinking, the concept of the soul involves a fixed entity. from the christian point of view, there are really only two states for the soul, one of damnation due to original sin, and one of salvation through baptism. in catholic theology, once an individual goes through baptism, that act can never be undone and one becomes forever a member of the body of christ. the anishinaabe approach is not better. it is simply different. but it takes a very open mind to fully appreciate the implications of the anishinaabe worldview and how it is reflected in their worldview. for example, in my article from 2002, “the comic vision of anishinaabe culture and religion,” i discussed a. irving hallowell, who wrote about anishinaabe sacred stories. hallowell stated despite the fact they are sacred stories, they are often humorous. i countered by writing they are humorous not despite the fact they are sacred stories. they are humorous because they are sacred stories (449). one important aspect of noodin’s book is that, while not explicitly citing my work, it takes the sentiment informing that observation and demonstrates how it functions in the writings of anishinaabe authors, most especially in terms of the often sexual nature of the their works. this is most clearly seen with vizenor (172-73), but the phenomenon can be found in the works of erdrich (67-68) and johnston (127) as well. one of the realizations i had in reading noodin’s book, then, was to take my earlier thoughts about the comic vision of the anishinaabeg and apply them to sex. thus, my comments above about the humorous nature of anishinaabe sacred stories could just as easily be changed to say: they have a lot of sex in them not despite the fact they are sacred stories. they have a lot of sex in them because they are sacred stories. now we can start to see the truly revolutionary nature of noodin’s writing. she presents us with a double whammy, in a matter of speaking. first, she presents a worldview that is radically different from the west, especially in terms of conceptions of the self. she uses the connection between language and worldview to explicate the writings of various anishinaabe authors, often referring to the dynamic nature of the centering process. that alone is enough to challenge western ideas and ideologies, and so is revolutionary in its own way. then she goes beyond that by exploring all the ways anishinaabe notions of centering result in completely different attitudes and actions by the anishinaabeg, as expressed in the writings of these authors. in this review i have concentrated on issues related to sexuality as that topic represents perhaps the most extreme difference between transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 147 anishinaabe and western ways of thinking. taken as a whole, though, what noodin is saying is that the anishinaabeg are different, and non-anishinaabeg need to accept and deal with the anishinaabeg just as they are. i admire her for standing up so strongly to assert the value of anishinaabe culture. to finish this review, i would like to say two things. the first involves her overview of anishinaabe literature. in certain respects, noodin is dealing with what might be called the “usual suspects” when it comes to scholarly criticism of anishinaabe writers. but, in chapter two she goes into detail about all the wonderful anishinaabe authors from across the years. this is a nice addition to the book and provides a good entrée for those wishing to further explore anishinaabe literature. second, it may seem odd i did not go into great detail about noodin’s actual explication of the anishinaabe authors in question. in that regard, i decided to borrow from the approach of the oral tradition in which what is left unsaid is just as important as what is said. there is no need to go much beyond what i discussed above. noodin has written an extremely insightful critique of some of the most important anishinaabe writers of our time. her approach is unique and challenges the reader on many levels. to find out how her insights pertain to the individual authors she examines, the reader will have to read the book for him or herself. lawrence w. gross, university of redlands transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 198 deborah a. miranda. altar for broken things: poems. bkmk press, 2020. 110 pp. isbn: 9781943491261. https://bookshop.org/books/altar-for-broken-things/9781943491261 we’re looking for a river. we’re looking for an incredulous current, sand soft as a kiss, a hover of trout circling the kettle. “looking for a river” alter for broken things is a lyrical pilgrimage for devotion and integrity in which the land itself is the site of worship. miranda’s poetry takes an encompassing view of the ways that perception and intent intersect with faith. an altar, the reader is reminded, takes its name from elevation. as these poems guide the reader, it is made clear that altars abound. the currents of these poems move in the territory of the sublime, but the abiding faith and beauty of the speaker’s telling is an unimpeachable guide. in “questions about lightning,” the speaker ponders: “what if / this land and her body / bear the same jagged scripture?” (36). the connection between land and self underpins the deep empathy of these poems. alter, one comes to understand in this collection, is both noun and verb. high places of faith and dignity abound as do the vicissitudes of violent alteration and the necessity of rumination. keen attention is paid to the way experience imposes itself on the skin of the land and its people. scars call out from the lines, but the use of the imagery of scarring vaults over the expected metaphors of trauma and healing and become something much more compelling—small alters on the skin itself. impositions of violence, colonialism, and the traumas of a life lived show up on the skin in these poems and allow each being’s lived experience to become a place of worship and an invitation to beatitude. places of faith with all their complications, harms, and comforts show themselves in astonishing ways in these poems. in “scar,” the perspective moves from creature to creature: a red fox tucks himself into a cedar hollow, watches me flash past. bullets of yearning, red-tailed hawks scout from the tops of pines, https://bookshop.org/books/altar-for-broken-things/9781943491261 laura da’ review of altar for broken things 199 feathers groomed to a sharp crease. (26) healing becomes an iteration of cleansing and thus an office of faith. like the body healing around trauma, these poems envelop to contain and protect. disunity and wholeness turn and turn in this collection. the titular broken things are given due honor as the poems show that the oak within the acorn requires rupture. repeated images of cradling and embracing—earth, water, cocoons, acorns—show the way the world makes space for a cycle of creation and rupture. in “corazon espinado,” the spare lines hint at the toll: “here, god / is a seed / sewn by chance. / here, rock is womb” (35). birth and generational joy seem to flourish in these tender envelopments. the moments of delicacy and protection carry deeper power for their juxtaposition within the ruptures of colonialism and interpersonal violence. in “ursa major,” on the star-cast prairie, the tone is one of tender imploring to the land for the safe delivery of a grandchild. the delights of wonder and love come with unexpected guides. in “my crow,” the speaker frankly states, “i know i’ll travel to heaven in the guts of a crow—" (24). land is the steady grounding, but it is every bit as wily and powerful as the humans walking its skin. it is in these moments of delightful current and unexpected juxtaposition that the reader can feel miranda’s deep well of perspective and poetic skill. this collection examines language and colonization with ranging interrogations of history. there is a sureness that makes it feel as if the poet is speaking late into the night with the past and the present, ready to tell the future about it come morning. this authorial voice is one of clarity and empathy—it allows the reader to move through the rapids of the poems reckoning with the legacies of imperialist violence with a sense of clear-eyed imperative. in “26 ways to reinvent the alphabet,” language is a snare: “alphabet, you came for me / with a colonizer’s awful generosity” (81). the violence of a past is rendered academic to the colonizing mind in “when my body is the archive”: when my body is the archive, strangers track ink all over my grandmothers’ language, blot out the footprints of a million souls from the edge of the continent; transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 200 stolen land stays stolen even when thieves pluck our ancestors’ names from mission records, sell tutuan and malaxet online to those who want all the blessings, none of the genocide. (99) journeying and transfiguration lend a beatific and epic tone to these poems. the power of the divine rests in alters inside of oysters. in “god’s house,” the arresting imagery of the alter in a sand dollar pierces the eye: imagine the inside of a sand dollar: arches rising to a peaked roof, light streaming in through tiny holes / turtle woman looks for that cathedral everywhere. (57) the figure of turtle woman is a point worth noticing. in “all one,” the iterations of turtle woman show what it is to love a wounding and wounded world. the cascade of images creates a gentle fortitude. endurance and devotion are palpable in the poems. the long dedication to loving a difficult thing is thoughtfully rendered in “when you forget me”: the past is a poor broken basket, woven by hands that had no muscle, no song. when you forget me, every word we spoke together just before or after slow first light, lips still wet, —doe, heron, stone, prayer—erases itself from every language, as if never spoken. extinct. (63) because the book’s tone of intense desire to recognize beauty and connection is so honestly earned, moments of violent disruption are all the more profound. violent ruptures of destruction and weaponry, american shootings and mass murders fueled by hatred appear with the stunning frank pain that they do in life. one moves from a poem of the land’s delicate web of comforts to a recounting of a hate-fueled shooting in the laura da’ review of altar for broken things 201 manuscript much as a person lives the experience. in “almost midnight,” the reader is confronted with these juxtapositions: we’re all walking on bones some of us are walking on more bones than others. breathe. back to the body little one. the human word is broken, but so beautifully. (78) the poems in this collection create a riparian mosaic meandering through the land of faith, love, degradation, and healing. fragmentation is a form of breaking, but it also facilitates perspective. it takes a worthy guide to facilitate the movement from shock to engagement. miranda manages to balance urgent and searing images with gentle imperatives, allowing the reader to hold what is dear, even when it is ruptured. as miranda writes in “how to love the burning world”: “you aren’t required to love the flames. / but love the burning world. / you owe her that.” laura da’ microsoft word anderson.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 218 molly mcglennen. our bearings. university of arizona press, 2020. 72 pp. isbn: 9780816540174. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/our-bearings “it’s not difficult / to draw a line between each mile marker: / city lake, / manifest destiny, / a southern ame church,” writes molly mcglennen in “footbridge iii” (9). our bearings, mcglennen’s second full-length poetry collection, undertakes as its project “a poetic mapping of indigenous urban space,” a reconfiguration of “western knowledge systems that rely on progressivist tellings of history and amnestic cartographies of disengagement and partition” (xiii, xiv). moving through skyways and waterways, forests and archives, our bearings covers an impressive amount of ground. evoking guy debord’s “technique of rapid passage though varied ambiences,” mcglennen’s poems enact a psychogeographical drift through minneapolis, offering alternative modes of poetic and physical circulation (debord, 62). through its attention to the overlapping strata of time and human presence beneath the surface of the city’s grids, our bearings seeks to expose the ideologies inscribed in the concept of public space, since “[g]eography only illuminates for some” (25). in a series of poems centered around fort snelling, headquarters for government troops during the dakota war of 1862, mcglennen’s speaker interrogates the rhetorics of authenticity and accuracy around the national historic landmark. with its terse imperative phrases, “visitor’s guide” emphasizes the abrasive experience of fort snelling’s slick simulacra: locate map or not: it’s never drawn to scale. how could it be. look up: actors greet you and reenact the times. dressed appropriately. salute each flag. revel in accuracy. (24) poems like “visitor’s guide” challenge the implied universality of public space with its “metaphors of meeting-place” and narrowing of experience to “the times,” particularly in these places dedicated to the public performance of memory (24). zachary anderson review of our bearings 219 the fort snelling poems create an interesting juxtaposition with the “forewarning” sequence, which shifts the scene to minikahda, the “oldest country club west of the mississippi,” on land appropriated from oglala lakota chief swift dog (33). the golf course here is the ultimate wasted space: “imagine walking these manicured fairways that stretch for hundreds of yards. designed to avoid the / rough” (32). “forewarning ii” troubles the stability of the club’s narrative of originality and authenticity, symbolized by swift dog’s shield which “hangs in the clubhouse / now posing as an original artifact” (33). the speaker imagines swift dog reclaiming his shield, which has been annexed as the country club’s logo, and this counternarrative haunts the “manicured fairways”: “swift dog, beyond the fringe, eludes / the ghosts. shadows the water, / the center—a shield, for stories. for protection” (34). our bearings conceptualizes circulation as resistance, whether in terms of stories, letters from parents to a child forcibly removed to a state school, or bodies in motion along the skyway system and the snake river. this idea of circulation makes its mark on mcglennen’s poetic forms as well. in the “snake river” sequence, for instance, the concluding line of each poem is taken up in a slightly altered form as the opening line of the next poem in the series: “the sweet ache of long days / that a body fragilely stores” becomes “[o]ur bodies store / river stories” (43-44). through formal choices like these, mcglennen offers a vision of circulation as cyclical and drifting, “[a]lways moving toward home” in opposition to manifest destiny’s and late capitalism’s linear and expansionist motion (40). while the city’s public spaces in our bearings often conceal histories of erasure and violence, mcglennen also demarcates more utopian zones of circulation, like the commons described in “ode to first ave.” here, the iconic music venue functions as a point of confluence, carrying “the heat of gathering-places across years of resilience, / across generations of people folding the luminary of hope / into their purses or pockets and walking out into the night” (66). throughout the collection, mcglennen emphasizes sociality as key for shared space’s utopian possibilities. she draws sharp contrasts between solitary moments like the speaker’s experience at fort snelling, mediated through visitor’s guides and actors performing scripted reenactments, and other moments where social relations are reciprocal and communal. one such moment appears in the “bonfire” sequence which opens the “fire” section. in “bonfire i,” the speaker invokes the echo as a figure for a shared body of cultural and poetic knowledge across time: “cast these lines out / on the water— / wait for echoes” (57). later in the poem, these echoes sound in the form of poetic citations: transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 220 recall all the story carriers before us when we tend to these lines: the fish just all jumped and broke the surface at once, one shinob poet says, if you’re quiet enough, you see things like that. (57) here, “bonfire i” calls for quiet attention to the echoes, a living model of poetic circulation where, by “tend[ing] to these lines,” the speaker enters an ongoing discourse below the surface of the city’s map. this vision of circulation creates a sense of simultaneity and copresence across time in the same way that, in an earlier poem, pollen samples from the bed of “a city lake named / for one audacious secretary of war” can “detail a dakota settlement of century past” (8). in “formulary for a new urbanism,” one of the founding documents of the situationist international, ivan chtcheglov claims that “cities are geological. you can’t take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. we move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past” (2). our bearings’ critical and capacious gaze drifts across the cityscape, attending to “traces / of cupmarks, tools, messages” from the past, but equally attuned to living presence (60). mcglennen’s counter-cartography of minneapolis offers a compelling model for engaging with urban space where the mnemonic pegs are how to recall the medicine of story encircle the node which is to say mode of learning observation (36) zachary anderson, university of georgia works cited zachary anderson review of our bearings 221 chtcheglov, ivan. “formulary for a new urbanism.” 1953. situationist international anthology, edited and translated by ken knabb, bureau of public secrets, 2006, pp. 1-8. debord, guy. “theory of the dérive.” 1959. situationist international anthology, edited and translated by ken knabb, bureau of public secrets, 2006, pp. 62-66. microsoft word andrews.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     91   rifkin, mark. settler common sense: queerness and everyday colonialism in the american renaissance. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2014. xxii, 293 pp. http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/settler-common-sense as i read mark rifkin’s settler common sense: queerness and everyday colonialism in the american renaissance, i was reminded of british literary critic frank kermode’s description of his relationship to the advent of deconstruction in the 1980s: a good part of the pleasure i derived from my profession had come from finding out what texts seemed to be saying as it were voluntarily, and in conveying this information to others; and i should have felt uneasy to join a party whose sole business it was to elicit what they were saying in spite of themselves. (5) rifkin’s project may be labeled queer (perhaps even decolonization) rather than deconstruction, but in reading works by nathaniel hawthorne, henry david thoreau, and herman melville, he attempts to do the latter of the projects kermode describes rather than the former. settler common sense explores ways that these canonical american writers expressed their rebellion against conformist pressures within their nation and communities while being dependent upon those power structures to have cleared space (figuratively and literally) for their rebellion by dominating native nations. settler in the title of course refers to settler colonialism; common sense refers to the “quotidian” ways the mechanics of settler colonialism operate, many times doing so in ways the settler/author does not recognize. in the texts rifkin examines, the past and ongoing domination of the native nations has been naturalized or disappeared from view, and so he looks for traces of those acts of domination in the language of hawthorne, thoreau, and melville. he also historicizes the moments of composition for key texts, describing the many ways the authors would have or could have been fully aware of native presence in new england, despite their texts’ refusal or reluctance to acknowledge it. the readers of this journal may be surprised that rifkin mentions gerald vizenor just once, in an endnote. there he states that his project is different from vizenor’s in manifest manners: narratives in postindian survivance, but that his “discussion of tropes of indianness owe a debt to [vizenor’s] theorization of the ways figuration of indianness substitute for (rather than point to) engagements with native peoples and ‘the tribal real’” (198). rifkin’s notion of “settler common sense” could be understood as a version of (or at least akin to) vizenor’s “manifest manners.” vizenor states, “manifest manners are the simulations of dominance” (5); those simulations are the narrative representations of native conquest that produce and reinforce the dominant ideology (made most clear in manifest destiny). the ideological work of those simulations is more important than their veracity, and so they misrepresent actual native people. vizenor has in mind texts (including films) that take “indians” as their explicit topic, while rifkin considers texts that may refer to indians only in passing, but still he explores ways that hawthorne, thoreau, and melville enable the continued dominance of native communities by the united states of america, even in the process of critiquing it; in this sense, rifkin’s readings, although informed by critical theories that have come to the forefront since vizenor’s book was published in 1999, seem to outline these texts as examples of “manifest manners.” scott andrews review of settler common sense     92   for hawthorne, rifkin analyzes the house of the seven gables. the novel represents the tensions among various ways of owning land on the “maine frontier”: inheriting it, speculatively buying and selling titles to it, and taking possession of it through one’s labor. hawthorne represents the last of these as the most democratic, as a method for escaping the normative pressures of society and the state. however, all of these methods of ownership require the mitigation of native claims to the land. the novel suggests working the land is a means of ownership beyond the authority of the state, but, ironically, this requires the state to have cleared the land of tribal people and their claims of ownership. the novel presents inherited fortunes (built upon an obligatory heterosexuality) as suspect because they limit democratic access to property and because they descend from treaties and purchases from the region’s tribes, and it suggests those original native claims of ownership (by the penobscot, in this case) were illegitimate, since native people did not labor on the land in ways john locke would have recognized. for thoreau, rifkin examines walden and its binary oppositions of city and nature. the city is a space for the corrupting and conforming pressures of civilization, especially “expanding and intensifying capitalist networks” (92), while nature is a space for the individual to enjoy unrestrained personal exploration with no regard for productivity—or reproductivity, as rifkin emphasizes thoreau’s escape from heterosexual conformity. despite associations of the indian with nature, in thoreau’s formulation the regenerative qualities of nature require the absence of indians—“living like an indian, not among them” (92). rifkin cites thoreau’s famous example of the indian who made baskets no one wished to purchase; for thoreau, this indian represented a misunderstanding of commercial endeavors and a desire to escape a system built upon such exchanges. but rifkin cites examples of the mashpee (quoting william apess) and the penobscot in thoreau’s time and region who were engaged in commercial exchanges and who understood how to make that system work for their benefit (or at least their survival). in this case, thoreau projects his fantasies onto the indian, disregarding the very real indians around him. for melville, rifkin examines pierre, which represents the city rather than nature as the site for escaping social, economic, and sexual pressures to conform. rural land is held by the wealthy, so people must go to city to compete for wages, and there they can escape the “institutionalized regulation” of their desires (167). however, rifkin describes the ways new york city in the 19th century “depends upon the continued displacement of native peoples” (172) and is dependent upon the continued domination of the region’s native people, making this “queer urban liberation… a form of settler fantasy” (172). melville’s novel is historicized with seneca and oneida resistance to dispossession. rifkin’s project of finding a text’s internal contradictions, its unspoken ideologies, or its unconscious desires has much in common with the style of criticism that made kermode uncomfortable but which became the dominant methods of literary criticism in the 1990s; and those methods have much in common with the project of decolonization, which reveals to the dominant culture the contradictions and disavowed consequences of its own ideologies. however, rifkin may strike some readers as stretching a bit too far with a few points. he perhaps makes too much of hawthorne’s single use of the word “tribe” in the house of seven transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     93   gables, and he perhaps too eagerly finds veiled references to masturbation wherever he looks in thoreau’s discussion of life alone in the woods. if i may paraphrase kermode in reference to rifkin’s writing style: sometimes his sentences can challenge a reader to find what they are trying to say voluntarily, as it were, in spite of themselves. kermode was famous for his eloquence; rifkin’s book, meantime, can be tough sledding; they are dense with references (a fourth of the book is devoted to notes and bibliography), and sometimes the sentences are constructed like russian nesting dolls or are simply too long scan easily. the references are much appreciated and will be useful to other researchers and students, though the style will limit its audience and usefulness in classrooms. scott andrews, california state university, northridge works cited kermode, frank. the art of telling: essays on fiction. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1983. print. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln, neb.: bison books, 1999. print. microsoft word kylie gemmell.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 257 jas m. morgan. nîtisânak. metonymy press, 2018. 200 pp. isbn: 9780994047175. https://metonymypress.com/shop/print-books/nitisanak/ the centering of two-spirit critiques and narratives is essential to decolonial and anticolonial work. one piece of importance in two-spirit critiques is jas m. morgan’s nîtisânak. in their memoir, morgan tells their childhood narrative and the development of their sense of identity. they address issues of gender, sexuality, whiteness, and adoption. their narrative begins by talking about who their parents are and how they know the stories about them that they know, as they were adopted by a nonindigenous family at a young age. morgan continues their narrative by addressing the complex relationship they have to their tribal community, as well as the impact that settler colonialism has had on their relationship with their tribe and culture. morgan discusses the ways that they have navigated white queer spaces, that often ask bipoc folx to leave their racial identities at the door. their memoir concludes with a message to the youth today and their imagining of a different future. when writing from an indigenous perspective, we are taught to think not only about our own identities and our survival but also the survival of future generations. morgan writes directly towards two-spirit youth when they state unequivocally, “dear 2s youth: i witness you. i witness you. i witness you. i witness you. one time for each direction” (159). at a time when indigenous youth face high rates of suicide and death, the acknowledgement and witnessing of them and their identities is essential for two-spirit youth who do not see themselves represented in mainstream queer movements. just as our work is not solely for us, but for future generations and their survival, our knowledges are not solely ours but community knowledges and stories. in this way, morgan has “been a reluctant academic because [they] don’t believe in individual claiming of knowledge” (171). while we, as indigenous scholars, vocalize, write, and analyze our lives and our knowledges, these knowledges are not solely ours but are influenced by the community we are raised in, the people who raised us (and not solely those in our household), and our larger kinship networks. these understandings of knowledge and ownership do not translate into the world of academia, where individuality and self-promotion are essential to making progress in our perspective fields. this is demonstrated in morgan’s feelings towards academics and the critique of the individuality of the academic space. kylie nicole gemmell review of nîtisânak 258 while mainstream movements concerning queer genders and sexualities are focused around identity labels, morgan argues that indigenous gender can never be defined under a colonial lens: “when people ask me why my pronouns (correction, when yt people ask me why my pronouns) aren’t the most important to me now, i can explain that my gender—something i associate very closely with my indigeneity, and lineages of diverse gender in my community—could never be affirmed through the use of colonial language, through one word” (39). morgan furthers this conversation with their appreciation for the use of “they,” although it is hard for morgan to disconnect from the trauma associated with the sexualization of their feminized body at a young age. their discussion around pronouns also challenges the notion that “trans bodies have always been here,” an idea often presented by mainstream movements as an appropriation of the two-spirit identity. while indigenous communities historically did not have binary understandings of gender, they did not necessarily have what we know as trans bodies today. two-spirit people thus are confronted with gatekeeping politics around queerness and indigeneity. it is not uncommon for two-spirit and queer indigenous people to hear, “if you are indigenous, why must you appeal to these white constructs of gender and sexuality?” from members of their indigenous communities. when violence occurs within the queer community, a common response is dismissal due to the fact that people have not healed from their own trauma and that reproducing violence is a coping method. however, trauma should not be used to justify the violence towards others, as many who have faced trauma do not repeat the violence onto others. morgan argues that “i won’t tell you it’s okay when your girlfriend gets violent when she’s drunk—mainly because i know that intimate partner violence somehow gets normalized within queer communities” (158). society normalizes ideas of who can and cannot be violent, as well as who can and cannot be victims. in the eyes of mainstream (patriarchal, heteronormative) society, women are not violent, and men are not victims, which makes it difficult in queer relationships for intimate partner violence to be recognized. the queer community is also not absolved from its reproduction of patriarchal norms, particularly when it comes to toxic masculinities. in the section of their book titled “skyler,” morgan says that they “have been subject to the pitfalls of fem binarization to trans masculinities, [their] whole queer life, and the cycles that can emerge from the reification of masculinities that are misogynist, and therefore toxic, even in queer communities. a toxic trans bro is still a toxic bro” (30). trans men are still capable of recreating violence and positioning themselves in roles of authority over others. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 259 another topic of importance that morgan asks us to think about is who receives love and who deserves love: “is there really such thing as ndn love, as trauma bb love as love for the unloved?” (1). inundated by the media we watch, particular bodies are deemed lovable, and others are deemed disposable or even “rapable” (smith). both queer and indigenous communities have been marked as undesirable and unlovable. this categorization creates systems in which we see ourselves and even reproduce these ideals within our communities (i.e. transphobia and queerphobia in indigenous communities and anti-indigeneity in queer communities). morgan adds that “if love seems unattainable, for us prairie ndns, it’s only because we’ve lost our sacred connection to the land, and to all creation” (1). for indigenous people and communities, connections to land and revitalization of their land-based practices are imperative to their healing and survival. two-spirit and queer indigenous people have complex relationships between love and violence. what does love mean when it is not modeled to you? how can you love yourself and allow others to love you when you have faced violence and trauma? due to our understanding of trauma and how trauma is reproduced, it can be hard to create boundaries. morgan argues, “the only people who get angry when you set boundaries are those who benefit from you having none to begin with” (159). when behaviors are excused by the violence and trauma someone faces, those who wish to create boundaries are ostracized by those who do not wish to confront the realities and change the learned behaviors that have become acceptable. throughout their memoir, morgan explores the complexity of boundaries and trauma through their experiences and stories. they navigate how their life is a set of complex relationships, and ultimately, they find that navigating a mainstream white queer community – one which does not center issues of indigeneity – reproduces violence towards two-spirit and queer indigenous members. jas m. morgan’s nîtisânak presents their personal memoir in conjunction with critiques of the settler-state policies of elimination and violence. morgan’s writing style presents these topics in short, easily consumed, autobiographical pieces that are accessible to those within and outside of academia. their language choice and references are particularly relatable to millennial and gen z age groups, presented through short pieces that capture moments of their lives and particular issues. their references to myspace, limewire, and dial tones are especially relatable to millennials who grew up with the beginnings of home internet access, music downloads, and early social media. their references to #whitefeminism, yt, and tl:dr, among other online slang, are relevant to the youth growing up in an age where social media is a part of daily life. kylie nicole gemmell review of nîtisânak 260 while their memoir is easily relatable and understandable to non-experts and a younger audience, morgan’s critiques of mainstream queer movements and settler colonialism nevertheless make their story of particular interest for scholars in these academic fields. oregon state university works cited smith, andrea. conquest: sexual violence and american indian genocide, duke university press, 2015. microsoft word chabitnoy.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 192 dallas hunt. creeland. nightwood editions, 2021. 127 pp. isbn: 9780889713925. https://nightwoodeditions.com/products/9780889713925 i recently heard a poet pose the question, what is the justification for a life devoted to poetry? what i appreciate most about poetry is how tools of craft—a carefully placed line break for example—can raise multiple angles of proposition. or, to expand the term, preposition. that is, the relationships called and made manifest in poems. for example, if i were to put that line into a poem, i might break it so: what is the justification for a life / devoted to poetry? what is the justification for a life? a question of the utmost relevance to the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the colonized, even as the answer is obviously to insist there isn’t and needn’t be one. through creeland, dallas hunt weaves a lifeline from the ancestors through the present to a future as beautiful as it is messy. the poems in this collection are a reckoning of what it is to be at once violent and tender, to contain multitudes. in these poems, “trees speak to one another with vocabularies that could burst the grammars that house us roots and tentacles spreading reaching unfolding” (hunt 9). this language of the land could “topple empires if we would just get out of the way” (9). small. unassuming. but burrowing. not dormant. not vanished or passive. they seek and manifest a change in perspective and therefore being, so that smallness, too, becomes a position of strength. it’s all in what the gaze can and does behold. these poems defy a singular or monolithic existence, celebrating contemporary indigenous presence in its multiplicity. as hunt reminds readers of this work, the language we use—and how it is understood—is key. the language of these poems is the language of the land and body, of lived experience, description as apprehension, as not defining but transformative: “the cree word for constellation / is a saskatoon berry bush in summertime” (11). there is generosity. there is gratitude. but gratitude does not free one from accountability. and at times hunt’s poems are pointed, as when a poem of thanksgiving ends with the admonishment to “be clear that / trying is / not the/ same as / doing” (15) without breaking the persistent, percussive cadence by which poet and poems continue to beat. the use of cree language throughout creeland emphasizes strangeness even as it returns the colonizing language of english back to readers as strange: “the (colonial) abigail chabitnoy review of creeland 193 gateway / to the northwest // a benevolent misnomer / portneuf gap more of a maw” (24). in “mahihkan,” the slipperiness between language(s) is invoked through proximity: “rarely do you see / wolves by / the highway, / i say, and for a moment / it looks like / he might believe me” (27). mahihkan. wolf. colonized. colonizer. what is revealed between language? hunt’s use of language is as deliberate as its placement, from the level of vocabulary to the arrangement of the poems within creeland. in the poetics of space, gaston bachelard comments that “to put just anything, just any way, in just any piece of furniture, is the mark of unusual weakness in the function of inhabiting” (100). such accusations of weakness cannot be made against the arrangement of these poems, where “mahihkan” (translated as “wolf” in the glossary at the back of the book) is followed immediately by a poem of kinship, in which the self indeed spills over into language and landscape and kin. we as readers search for ourselves where such networks of being meet. we reflect so often on the self voicing the poems but forget the gift poetry offers the reader who becomes, or at least momentarily inhabits, the speaker. language becomes charm, becomes an article of protection. if these poems are concerned with politics and settler tensions, their sights are still ultimately broader than that. in “no obvious signs of distress,” though problematic institutions are called out each in turn, one cannot ignore the tenderness of the poem’s supplication—what can we do against the fear of dying alone? indeed, there are moments in these poems that are simply devastatingly tender. from “i was born blue”: it was worth it, being born blue, to be outside of history for a moment to relate deeply to a mother who will not have the vocabularies to relate to you otherwise in the future (38) poems such as “tracks” ask what if our continued presence is not in fact the solution? what if the answer is somewhere between here and not here, the said and unsaid, transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 194 earth and sky, the heartbeat of language insisted in each poem? hunt’s poems do not shy from their position of the impending moment of reckoning they at once herald and summon. rather they demand we pause and consider a broader web of relations and consider the network of kin outside of the immediate. just as they question our understanding of language, they compel us to question our understanding of the self, teasing self out of its own confines. after all, “flooding is love / (to be) made in / overflowing, pipes / bursting” (54). what is the work of the poem? the poems of creeland simultaneously prod and sow the hurts that nourish, while seeking—perhaps not to bridge the gap between home and wound—but to navigate the space of becoming between them. in “a prairie fire that wanders about,” for example, language and form invoke an enigma of becoming, a history of sowing, of harvest and cleaning by fire and flood. hunt is a poet who knows the many possible gestures of a poem’s intent—not least of which is, from time to time, a clear, earnest, plaintive call to act differently. similar to ada limon’s ability to tease revelations from observations of the mundane, in “main street and sixth avenue,” hunt recognizes the obvious lesson in bird cannibalism in regard to the resource extraction industry in northern alberta. but if we beg the question of what a poetics of accountability might look like, the answer hunt suggests is a poetics of relations. how is a poem, is language, an act of care and love? creeland is arranged as an arc to this question. these poems are not interested in performing to meet preconceived expectations. writing about “economies of / care and relation” (108) that defy voyeuristic settler desires for more culture entertainment, hunt writes, “i know that acts of care and love / are supposed to be noisy / declarations, to draw attention to both / the recipient and giver of love” (109). if “an ill-fitting / shell is consignment / to death” (101), hunt has found in the shapes of these poems forms capable of growth, of surviving and thriving, lamenting and yes, laughing—enough to not merely be consumed. hunt’s poems poke at the irony undergirding the unexamined language of settler colonialism, a language spoken by (unwashed) mouths “full of splinters” (99). if metaphor is a language of abstraction and overlay, perhaps it is through metonymy hunt’s poems reveal that which carries on in the gaps and the between. hunt understands and demonstrates the power of language and stories to imagine and manifest alternative realities. in “narrative trap(ping),” for example, hunt revisits tropes of ongoing indigenous extinction to show what is possible if we simply look longer, if not harder. following the usual scene of wounded indigenous bodies left presumably to expire on the beach: abigail chabitnoy review of creeland 195 before the cut to darkness to black to the credits, the settler protagonist, gazing intently toward the horizon, has a brain aneurysm, dying instantly the indigenous guide sits on the beach alive help heard in the offing in the distance. (110) of course, the outcome cannot be assured. language is as much a living body as those still to be revived on the beach and always becoming where/as it is spoken. still, perhaps hunt is right that a lot of poems these days are different ways of writing pain and longing: form obscures, language obfuscates, but longing clarifies, longing sharpens, while stealing focus, until all you have is something pure and painful: yearning (113) but if what hunt says is true, that “desire is / a struggling river” (114), poetry reflects our efforts to keep afloat. the “cure for existential angst” (116) cannot be bought in smudge kits at your local grocer or shopping mall. but perhaps it can be found in transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 196 poetry. cheesy, i know. and my words, not hunt’s. but at the end of it all, the power of language, dallas hunt reminds us, cannot be denied where it is spoken. abigail chabitnoy, university of massachussetts, amherst works cited: bachelard, gaston. the poetics of space. 1958. penguin classics, 2014. microsoft word paul cunningham.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 252 tommy pico. feed. tin house books, 2019. 84 pp. isbn: 1947793578. https://bookshop.org/books/feed-9781947793576/9781947793576 rich and willie and chase twalk about the proud boys stalking up cap hill 70 strong twice the size they were last year and i can only think how much smaller the year before that or maybe not smaller but so much less brazen before the terracotta slob slithered their truth (25) these lines were written by poet tommy pico long before january 6, 2021, the day former president donald trump incited violence during a so-called “save america” rally by encouraging his supporters to “take back” their country and join him on a march to the capitol. so we are going to—we are going to walk down pennsylvania avenue, i love pennsylvania avenue, and we are going to the capitol […] we’re try—going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. so let’s walk down pennsylvania avenue. (jacabo, n.pag.) following the then-incumbent president’s speech, proud boys, qanon, and other farright, white nationalist factions violently stormed the united states capitol building. they vandalized and eventually fought their way into the building, gaining access to the house chamber. feed, the newest book from pico, not only marks the completion of an important literary cycle, but also through pico’s prophetic insights, sheds much light on the ways the trump presidency has gradually emboldened american racism. a book-length poem largely about food, culture, and growth, feed also sets its sights on the country’s concerningly steady growth of hate. readers familiar with pico’s previous titles (irl [2016]; nature poem [2017]; and junk [2018]) will find feed a deeply affecting conclusion to the teebs cycle, an epic four-book reflection on the myriad links between indigenous spirituality, american history, internet culture, and queerness. paul cunningham review of feed 253 like his other works, pico’s feed is direct (“dear reader”) and written in present tense, rapidly unfolding in the moment. “there’s no past tense because the english language is a colonial legacy in the way in which it has absorbed the languages of the people that it’s conquered,” pico said when discussing irl, his debut book of poetry, in a september 2016 issue of nylon (tosone, n.pag.) “english itself is like a living history of colonialism, so when we’re using these words, we are living with the past as well” (ibid). given the book’s sense of urgency, stylistic experimentation, and other joycean figurations, a reader’s experience of feed might feel akin to navigating a twitter chain, a data stream, or a lengthy text message conversation. as the book unfolds like a social media feed, pico gives readers opportunities to pause and hover on one of the many distressing (and real) news headlines that flood the book, pro-gun russian bots flood twitter after mass shooting (58) or to reflect on one of his playlist selections: track 12: “shout” by tears for fears. first of all, best band name in america. second, how cathartic am i right? really, just let it all out. what else can you do in an intractable situation but shout? (52) lgbtq readers will find much to appreciate in pico’s queerings of certain playlist tracks. for instance, when it comes to mgmt’s “electric feel,” teebs tells the reader to “change the pronoun from ‘girl’ to ‘boy,’” resulting in the following lyric: “i said, ooh, boy / shock me like an electric eel” (42). in drake’s “hold on, we’re going home,” teebs, wanting to focus on the difficulty of doing things alone after a relationship ends, asks readers to “ignore the music video entirely” because it’s “paternalistic garbage” (37). throughout feed, pico is constantly inviting his readers to break norms and create new spaces for the queer self. likening poems to “food” or “feed” from the beginning, pico’s feed is complexly refreshing in the way teebs addresses a variety of hungers—social, spiritual, sexual—in an attempt to fill the absence of any knowledge of his own indigenous food tradition. in the teebs cycle, a recurring challenge for pico, who grew up on the viejas indian reservation of the kumeyaay nation, is to use poetry to fill in the historical gaps in his own life’s story, gaps caused by settler colonialism. for example, in nature poem, teebs forces himself to write a new kind of “nature poem,” one in which he creates his transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 254 own definitions of “nature,” combating stereotypes that frequently link indigenous people to the natural world. pico also acknowledges his ideological trappings, hinting at the multi-layered feed to come: but i don’t want to be an identity or a belief or a feedbag. i wanna b me. i want to open my arms like winning a foot race and keep my stories to myself, i tell my audience. (30) to “be” a feedbag in nature poem is to be the bag that both feeds and muzzles a horse, to be the grain that feeds the past, something pico wants to avoid at all costs. according to an 1835 census of 34 men from the kumeyaay indian pueblo in san pascual, many cultural changes in kumeyaay society were caused by the spanish introduction of horses. settler colonialism’s culture of horses resulted in kumeyaay vaqueros, muleteers, blacksmiths, weavers, millers, and cheesemakers. for many native californians, to separate horse culture from colonizers is an impossibility (lacson, 211): “every feed owes itself to death. poetry is feed to the horses within me” (18). like trauma absorbed by mind and body, pico writes a culture of horses—a loss of kumeyaay food traditions—into teebs’ body, resulting in a poetic language that sprawls, at times, like a news feed, but doesn’t always nourish. according to the speaker, if “poetry,” which is only sometimes food-like, is “feed” and every feed “owes itself to death,” poetry should encourage both mindfulness and dissidence (“poems light up corridors of the mind, like food” [18]). for example, the numerous latin phrases that spring up are often attached to figurations of violence. the phrase “terracotta slob slithers” seems to reference the orange-colored donald trump, who, during his 2016 presidential campaign, recited the lyrics of a song called “the snake,” by civil-rights activist oscar brown, during rallies in bloomington, indiana and estero, florida. trump performed the poem in close proximity to his comments on immigration, syrian refugees, and islam: “i saved you,” cried that woman “and you've bit me even, why? you know your bite is poisonous and now i'm going to die” “oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin “you knew damn well i was a snake before you took me in.” (pinchin, n.pag.) paul cunningham review of feed 255 pico also references “insulin” in multifaceted ways, juxtaposing “sugar” with “isle” and “island,” prompting one to consider the islands of the west indies where the slave labor of millions of africans and indigenous people shaped the world’s sugar market (tomich 205). undigested sugar molecules rage around the blood, doing all sorts of crimes insulin, from the latin insula: isle island—sugar— insula: a smattering of convulsions situated at the base of the lateral fissure of the brain (pico 53) interestingly, in a book review in the new yorker, poet dan chiasson suggests pico’s speaker is “luxuriating” in the latin pronunciation of a vast assortment of plants and flowers, indian grass, sorghastrum nutans; sor-gas-trum newtons switchgrass, panicum virgatum; panic-um ver-gate-um autumn moor grass, sesleria autumnalis; sess-leer-ee-uh autumn nay-lus (chiasson and pico 56) opting for an “anti-pastoral” which, again, feels reminiscent of pico’s project in nature poem. the presence of latin in feed is unquestionably a volatile substance. pico may very well be luxuriating in an excessive language of flowers, all while teaching his readers the latin pronunciation, but this might also be a deliberate move to simultaneously evoke the latin many indigenous youths were most likely exposed to during religious rituals in the indian boarding schools of colonial california. tanya l. rathburn has compared the strict religious teachings and catholic rituals at st. boniface indian school to spanish missions where many christian schools were created to “convert heathen indians” (rathburn 156). when contemplating whether “heartbeats” by swedish electronic group the knife is a song about atheism or not, pico’s speaker claims, “prayer never helped nobody do nothing” (39). a stunning meditation on everything from pop culture to astronomy, pico’s scope is far ranging as usual. the poet seeks to address questions that can only have complex transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 256 answers: can a person be too real? is darkness a necessary part of life? is simply choosing to continue a revolutionary act in its own right? tommy pico’s feed has all the right ingredients—an inspired continuation of a poet’s hunger for companionship and understanding: “i am the recipe i protect” (53). university of georgia works cited jacabo, julia. “this is what trump told supporters before many stormed capitol hill.” abc news, 7 january 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/politics/trump-toldsupporters-stormed-capitol-hill/story?id=75110558. accessed 30 march 2021. lacson, paul albert. “‘born of horses’: missionaries, indigenous vaqueros, and ecological expansion during the spanish colonization of california.” the journal of san diego history, vol. 60, no 3, 2015, pp. 207-229. pinchin, karen. “insects, floods, and ‘the snake’: what trump’s use of metaphors reveals.” pbs, 22 october 2019, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/insects-floods-and-the-snake-whattrumps-use-of-metaphors-reveals/. accessed 30 march 2021. rathburn, tanya l. “hail mary: the catholic experience at st. boniface indian school.” boarding school blues: revisiting american indian educational experiences. edited by clifford e. trafzer and jean a. keller. introduction by lorene sisquoc. university of nebraska press, 2006, pp. 155-172. tosone, austen. “author tommy pico’s debut irl will have you like omg,” nylon, sept. 2016, https://www.nylon.com/articles/tommy-pico-irl. accessed 30 march 2021. tomich, dale w. slavery in the circuit of sugar: martinique and the world-economy, 1830-1848. 1990. second edition. suny press, 2016. microsoft word warburton.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     124   rebecca tillett, ed. howling for justice: new perspectives on leslie marmon silko’s almanac of the dead. tucson: university of arizona press. 2014. http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/books/bid2491.htm as a collection that fills a gap in scholarship on leslie marmon silko’s body of work, howling for justice is broad in scope while maintaining a key focus in its analysis of silko’s epic 1991 novel almanac of the dead. clearly grounded in an exploration of how both critical and scholarly responses to almanac have differed from ceremony, silko’s most widely-read and acclaimed work, this collection succeeds at diving head-first into some of the most controversial aspects of silko’s text. as editor rebecca tillett notes in the introductory chapter, “given the gentle lyrical beauty of silko’s first novel ceremony (1977), which fed the expectations of readers and critics alike, almanac unsurprisingly generated not only confusion but also a series of passionate and heated responses” (5). because of this, howling for justice “analyzes and explores some of the key topics that critics and readers alike have identified as confusing, problematic, and divisive, and provides a means by which the reader can begin to negotiate the world of the text” (8). as a collection, these essays work together to explore the legacy of silko’s almanac more than twenty years after its initial publication, reflecting collectively on the deep resonances between the text and the contemporary socio-political world. tillett begins the collection with a series of chapters that provide an introduction to the text itself, as well as some useful contextualization of almanac including its place in silko’s broader body of work, critical reception both now and at the time of its appearance, and milestones in scholarly engagements with the text. she also provides an analysis of the relationship between this text and contemporary political activism and social movements, noting the deep resonances between silko’s novel and the emergence of the zapatistas in 1994, the ratification of the north american free trade agreement, the 2008 financial collapse, and movements like occupy wall street and idle no more. in framing the collection, tillett argues that almanac is perhaps even more resonant now than it was when it was first published, that it is prophetic in vision, and transnational in scope. the collection follows this framework, maintaining an organization that focuses on grouping readings and analyses of almanac in a way that highlights its relevance to anti-capitalist and environmentalist movements in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. building on tillett’s own reading of almanac as a work of ‘environmental and social justice’ (“‘sixty million dead souls howl for justice in the americas!’: almanac as political activism and environmental and social justice”), the second section of the text attempts to “situate almanac within a history of multiethnic american literary resistance and revisionism” (9). entitled “tales of trauma,” this section includes essays that compare the critical reception of almanac to that of toni morrison’s 1987 novel beloved, use the lens of disability studies to analyze silko’s commentary on afro-native histories and communities, and explore how silko makes use of medical discourse to articulate the relationship between capitalism and the body. in doing so, this section engages the deep discomfort that many readers and critics seem to have felt in response to silko’s creation of what is often perceived as a traumatic and violent world. expanding on the literary and political goals of representations of trauma, the third section focuses on silko’s allegorical examination of related structures of institutionalized oppression, especially those that have “capitalist, environmental, political, and sexual” dimensions (10). with chapters that place silko’s engagement with marx alongside cedric robinson’s black theresa warburton review of howling for justice       125   marxism (2000) in order to explore the capitalist dimensions of american settlement of native land and the enslavement of african peoples, critically engage her controversial representation of gay men through the lenses of freudian psychoanalysis and french feminism, use ecocriticism to explore the relationship between ‘natural’ environmental and technological discourse in the geographies of silko’s text, and re-read the spatial dimensions of almanac through the lens of urban studies, this section engages analyses of the trauma and violence of almanac’s worlds in order to develop readings that illuminate silko’s philosophical contributions not only as a novelist but as a political theorist. the final section of the collection, “transformation and resistance,” builds along the trajectory established by the earlier sections by extrapolating on the visions of the future incumbent within silko’s rendering of the spaces and worlds contained within almanac. through discussions of the gothic dimensions of language and resistance, a rereading of silko’s representations of community as prophetically open rather than catastrophically destructive, and an exploration of the literary mechanisms silko uses to interpellate the reader into activism, this section “calls upon readers to recognize and interpret contemporary struggles of indigenous groups against political, economic, and environmental injustices” (12). and, in what is perhaps the most exciting addition to this collection, this section ends with an extensive interview with silko in which she reflects on the contours, the meaning, and the life of the novel after the twentieth anniversary of its publication. the structure of the collection is extremely well thought-out and executed, following an overarching trajectory that begins by taking seriously the common criticism that almanac of the dead is a bleak, depressing text while offering a more nuanced analysis of it that demonstrates how carefully and thoughtfully it was crafted. true to the title, the collection maintains a central focus on the question of silko’s vision of justice with some essays that offer some extremely innovative approaches to literary criticism in general and native literature in specific. for instance, keely byars-nichols’ “the black indian with one foot: reading somatic difference and disability in almanac” does an excellent job of arguing that silko’s novel provides an innovative framework for navigating the timely discussion of multiculturalism in numerous fields, including english and ethnic studies. she notes that “silko defies the eurocentric narrative of history and creates a new definition of multiculturalism that recognizes each separate culture as sovereign, while demonstrating that, for justice or political reversal to take place, there must be collaboration and a sense of a ‘community of difference’ among characters from different racial, cultural, and physical realities” (42). contributing to a growing body of literature on the relationship between african-descended and native peoples in north america, byarsnichols’ essay offers an astute reading of the intersection of disability, race, and indigeneity in almanac that can encourage broader discussions in the field more generally. similarly, amanda walker johnson’s “silko’s almanac: engaging marx and the critique of capitalism” engages the novel as a theoretical contribution to discussions of marxism, slavery, and colonialism, arguing that “almanac reenvisions the marx of capital as a storyteller testifying to the embodied impact of capitalist emergence and accumulation, as well as exposing the economy of desires, the ‘thirsts’ that fuel slavery and capitalism, mythologized as vampires and werewolves” (91). placing almanac alongside robinson’s black marxism: the making of the black radical tradition, johnson is able to use silko’s discussion of marx as another entry point into an exploration of her commentary on the relationship between the european colonization of africa and the settlement of north america. ruxandra rădulescu’s “unearthing the urban: city revolutions in silko’s almanac” is another bright spot which “investigates the role that cities transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     126   play in almanac,” demonstrating that “the minor role to which they are relegated by literary criticism creates a dichotomous view of types of human environment...which silko’s novel undermines to a large extent” (119). rădulescu’s urban studies approach to silko’s novel provides analyses of how previous literary engagements with the text reify the association of euro-americanness with the urban and indigeneity with the rural, offering instead a reading of almanac that views cities as revolutionary spaces for indigenous peoples. despite strong organization and a number of well-executed and exciting essays, the collection does have some limitations. perhaps the most glaring is the fact that, though the collection is ostensibly grounded in exploring the relationship between silko’s novel and contemporary social movements, there is very little engagement with the extensive scholarly literature on those social movements. this may be because much of the discussion of social movements is centered on the continued relevance of almanac in the contemporary moment, rather than providing historical context relating to the time during which it was written. in fact, silko is essentially the only one who provides this type of context, noting how reagan’s presidency affected her writing.1 given the extensive focus on questions of ecology, ecocriticism and environmentalism in the collection itself, it seems an oversight to not have any in-depth discussion of either the environmental degradation (especially the deforestation of the amazon rainforest) or environmental justice activism that were both prevalent in the socio-political and cultural world of the americas in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the era in which almanac was both written and published. this lacuna seems to, perhaps, be due to a larger lack of interdisciplinary engagement throughout the collection—for instance, there is very extensive use of scholars of native american literature, but very little engagement with scholars in native american and indigenous studies more broadly. the result is that ‘justice’ ends up being a relatively murky concept throughout the text. though there are some brief mentions of native land reclamation, sovereignty, and selfdetermination, there aren’t any more thorough uses of native studies scholarship to flesh out what this concept of ‘justice’ might mean for native communities and why. though no collection can carry out an analysis of every single aspect of a novel, especially one as extensive and complex as almanac, the fact that ‘justice’ is proposed as a central tenet of both silko’s text and the authors’ examination of it means that the reader needs a more concrete examination of it in both literary and conceptual terms. in the end, these limitations seem to be an issue rooted in a framing that isn’t completely realized rather than in any lack of skill, precision, or originality. rather than ending up as an interdisciplinary collection that deeply engages the root and expression of justice in leslie marmon silko’s almanac of the dead, it is an excellent demonstration of the breadth and depth of literary criticism on this text. it is, indeed, exciting to have a collection of essays that provide such a thoughtful and thorough look at a novel that does not seems to have received the amount of scholarly or popular engagement that is warranted by the level of its profundity, perception, and prophecy. theresa warburton, western washington university                                                                                                                 1 in the interview that finishes the collection, silko herself notes: “at the beginning of the eighties, when i was first writing almanac, ronald reagan got elected, and you could begin to theresa warburton review of howling for justice       127     see terrible days were coming. and it was after reagan got elected that they began to interfere with the indian tribes located along the border with mexico...and so i wasn’t thinking about the readers at all, but about human beings and human communities, in the past, present, and in the future. if what came out was bleak and violent, i did not invent that: i only reported it, and i did not do it because i was trying to sell books or make people like me. i was only performing the work that a novelist does, which is to try to eluvidate the situation and try to reveal some kind of truth. certainly in the americas and in the u.s., that’s what the big money-maker powers don’t want: they don’t want anyone to tell the truth” (206). microsoft word calcaterra.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 226 angeline boulley. firekeeper’s daughter. henry holt and company, 2021. 494 pp. isbn: 9781250766564. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250766571/firekeepersdaughter toward the end of angeline boulley’s riveting ya novel firekeeper’s daughter, perry, the young cousin of protagonist daunis firekeeper, worries about her “auntie” daunis going off to college. “is college like a boarding school?” perry wonders (484), declaring that at the “boarding schools for anishinaabem… the government took kids even when moms and dads said no,” and the kids “got punished if they didn’t follow school rules” (485). “kids couldn’t speak anishinaabemowin and they couldn’t go to ceremonies,” perry announces with awe and horror (485). she then “points defiantly at her own chest as she declares, ‘indanishinaabem’” (485). perry’s defiance—her very ability to proudly declare “i speak anishinaabemowin” in her language—is a powerful expression of what her relatives and generations of anishinaabeg before her have made and continue to make possible for anishinaabe children. daunis’s auntie teddie firekeeper has just taught perry and her twin about the trauma of the boarding schools; long before this lesson, she and other relatives have offered anishinaabe teachings and language that enable the children to defy centuries of settler colonial attacks on their traditions, language, relations, and lives. though daunis firekeeper is firekeeper’s daughter’s unforgettable protagonist, i begin this review with her young relative’s capacity for power in relation to language and community because daunis’s force as a character accumulates by way of relationality. we first encounter eighteen-year-old daunis during her pre-morning-run ritual, in which boulley immediately introduces us to the forms of knowledge, carefully taught by her elders, that guide her. as she stretches, daunis offers a prayer to one of the seven grandfathers: “teachings about living a good life”… “humility. respect. honesty. bravery. wisdom. love. truth” (166). she then silently identifies each muscle she stretches: “i want an edge over the other college freshmen in my human anatomy class this fall” (5). the seven grandfathers, we learn later, guide her alongside the “seven steps of the scientific method” that her late uncle david taught her: “observe, question, research, hypothesize, experiment, analyze, conclude” (202). she ends her morning run at evercare, an elder-care facility which currently houses her grandmother on her white mother’s side, grandmary, whom daunis visits nearly every day since her uncle david died; grandmary seems to slip further and further away. here, she also regularly connects with many anishinaabe elders. her next stop is the ice rank, where as a former player for the idolized sault ste. marie junior a-league hockey team—the angela calcaterra review of firekeeper’s daughter 227 superiors or “supes”—daunis joins the team (including her brother, levi) in their weekly open skate with local kids. her nieces and auntie are a part of the skating ritual; the kids’ exuberant joy reverberates off the page as daunis swings them around on the ice with her scarf, just like her late father used to do with her. as the story progresses, boulley peels back increasing layers of daunis’s intricate relationship to her family and community, a community that includes anishinaabeg past, present, and future, as well as the lands and waters of sugar island and the michigan upper penninsula (u.p.) that have been home to the anishinaabeg for millennia and that ground daunis in her tribe’s history and future. if daunis had a motto, it might best be elaborated by michi saagiig nishnaabeg scholar and author leanne betasmoke simpson’s definition of “indigenous freedom”: i want my great-grandchildren to be able to fall in love with every piece of our territory. i want their bodies to carry with them every story, every song, every piece of poetry hidden in our nishnaabeg language. i want them to be able to dance through their lives with joy. i want them to live without fear because they know respect, because they know in their bones what respect feels like. i want them to live without fear because they have a pristine environment with clear waterways that will provide them with the physical and emotional sustenance to uphold their responsibilities to the land, their families, their communities, and their nations. i want them to be valued, heard, and cherished by our communities. i want my great-great-grandchildren and their great-greatgrandchildren to be able to live as michi saagiig nishnaabeg unharrassed and undeterred in our homeland. (7-8) though young and trying to determine the contours of her future, as well as facing layers of tragedy and deception in her community, daunis remembers that her actions now have the power to affect many generations to come, and this thought increasingly guides her as she is thrust into a series of events that bring danger, loss, heartache, and intense romance. while daunis carries the emotions that anyone who has been a teenager will recognize, she consistently evinces a keen, steady awareness of how to rein in her reactions to deceit and violence and to stay the course (or break the rules) in conversation with anishinaabe thought and practice. daunis’s consistent rituals that connect her to place and kin are a choice, and they provide practical tools for determining what truth and knowledge mean when the stakes of uncertainty become increasingly high. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 228 such practices serve daunis particularly well when she witnesses a tragic murder and is thrust into an fbi investigation. by centering the novel on daunis as participant in a federal investigation, one chosen for her knowledge of both “science” and her “culture” (110), boulley expertly and often subtly draws our attention to what stephanie lemenager has described as “euro-westerners’ longtime extractive passion for indigenous practices and thought” (103). daunis quickly realizes that, although the investigation provides an opportunity to seek justice for her friend lily and to help “nish children,” the investigators (despite being native themselves) will never understand the depths of her community: “it’s their investigation, but it’s my life,” she realizes, and at one point she chides undercover officers ron and jamie: “it’s like… you haven’t earned our stories” (170, 217). the separation between investigation and life becomes blurred by daunis’s shifting relationship with the young undercover officer who poses as a supes player and goes by the name of jamie johnson. throughout their relationship and the investigation, one of daunis’s most striking characteristics is her growing awareness of precisely when and how to share or hide information, as well as when to let down her guard and when to be tough. following her late uncle david’s example, she organizes and documents, but she soon learns when scientific precision falls short of truth and when to offer only so much information to the fbi. by the end of the novel, daunis learns more precisely how the investigation falls short of healing her community, something she has sensed all along. floored by the lack of resolution that the criminal justice system brings to herself and her community despite the fact that some end up behind bars, daunis attends a generational gathering involving hundreds of women that promises healing in the face of systemic lack of accountability. like louise erdrich’s iconic fleur pillager, boulley’s daunis firekeeper sears the reader: i can’t stop thinking about her. i find myself want to emulate her smoldering power, her immense care and thoughtfulness, her constantly looking to past and future to determine how to act. in tracks, set in the early twentieth century, fleur pillager’s storming desperation as the majority of her kin die of smallpox and their land is “sold and divided” ends with a careful, methodical calculation that brings revenge but ultimately forces her to leave her community (erdrich, 290). daunis seems almost an extension and revision of fleur for the contemporary world. daunis’s approaches are methodical, scientific, patient: uncle david, the high-school science teacher, taught her to “sequence the order of tasks” (201) so as not to become overwhelmed by seeming chaos. she walks on cedar at her best friend’s funeral and offers tobacco to the river during the most turbulent crossings; these rituals likewise equip her to move deliberately, to slow down, to take time to assess and calculate, even in the face of angela calcaterra review of firekeeper’s daughter 229 extreme danger and tender, consuming love. anishinaabe methods are, boulley suggests, scientific: it is no surprise that, by the end of the novel, daunis has made plans to continue her education at both a renowned ethnobotany program and summer internships with the traditional medicine program at home. she also handles her relationship with jamie with immense care and love; this relationship binds her even closer to her values and community, rather than leading her away. boulley drives home throughout the book that daunis’s clarity in the face of emotional turbulence is earned, carefully cultivated in ritual and relationality. boulley indicates that anishinaabe kids and young adults, and particularly young women, need such methods at their disposal to handle the loss, death, violence, and drug use that are a part of this tribe’s story, but importantly by no means the whole story. the novel’s denouement and the investigation’s end leave us wondering for whom justice was really sought. attuned to anishinaabe relational accountability in the face of the american federal law enforcement and judicial system’s extractive, singleminded approach to holistic problems, firekeeper’s daughter complements academic monographs such as john borrows’s law’s indigenous ethics (2019) and sarah deer’s the beginning and end of rape: confronting sexual violence in native america (2015). it also joins a burgeoning world of indigenous ya literature rooted in the power of relations, traditional teachings, and indigenous languages, most notably cherie dimaline’s the marrow thieves (2017). i began this review by drawing attention to danuis’s young relative; i’ll end it with attention to her elders. two of the most moving moments in the novel occur when daunis’s elders combine forces to support her, in one instance by providing attestations to her tribal identity and in the other by assisting her as she attempts to escape life-threatening danger. in both cases, the elders team up to save the day, because they know daunis, know her truth, in every sense of the word. reciprocity carries a life-saving realism in this book that reminds readers how relations can mean survival. boulley has given us a great gift in allowing us to get to know daunis and all her relations, and has laid a path here to truth via ethical relationships. she has made a story of drugs, deception, and crime a deeply moving story of how to live with care. i can only hope for more stories of the u.p. from storyteller angeline boulley. angela calcaterra, university of north texas transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 230 works cited borrows, john. law’s indigenous ethics. university of toronto press, 2019. deer, sarah. the beginning and end of rape: confronting sexual violence in native america. university of minnesota press, 2015. dimaline, cherie. the marrow thieves. cormorant books, 2017. erdrich, louise. tracks. 1988. harper perennial, 2017. lemenager, stephanie. “love and theft: or, provincializing the anthropocene.” pmla, vol. 136, no. 1, 2021, pp. 102-109. simpson, leanne betasamosake. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. university of minnesota press, 2017. microsoft word carlson.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   151   elizabeth cook-lynn. that guy wolf dancing. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2014. 125 pp. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-3454 the plot of elizabeth cook-lynn’s new novella is propelled forward by the bequest of a mysterious “indian artifact” from a dying, demerol-addicted socialite to its narrator, philip big pipe. what is this artifact? why did this woman leave it to one of her hospital attendants, whom she knows only as “the indian?” how did she come to possess it? how will the presence of this object impact the life of a man who claims that his “great gift” is to “feel inconsequential” (19)? if these are the most obvious questions driving the story, there are also a number of other more subtle lacunae that highlight the depth and complexity of this fine work. in many respects, that guy wolf dancing fits neatly in cook-lynn’s oeuvre of fictions dealing with the big pipe tiospaye of the crow creek reservation (the series of books now published together as the aurelia trilogy). as in those earlier texts, cook-lynn here creates a distinctive and challenging form of triballyspecific realism which explores questions of jurisdiction and authority. what sets her new book apart from the older work, perhaps, is its particularly subtle treatment of the problem of individual alienation and agency in contemporary indian country. that guy wolf dancing gestures more towards an existentialist politics of authenticity than one might first expect from an author who has famously rejected what she sees as the mere thematization of settler-colonial experience in narratives narrowly focused on problems of individual identity. cook-lynn’s great success here, however, is in rethinking the existentialist dilemma through a tribally-specific lens. in doing so, she has produced her most satisfying and sophisticated work of fiction since the 1980 short story collection the power of horses. one of the most striking features of this novella, to me, is its approach to handling place. a great deal is said in the text about the “white town” that serves as the primary setting for much of the narrative (1). philip repeatedly comments on “this college town a mere couple of hundred miles from the crow creek reservation” (1), “this little college town not too far from the rez” (14), or “this river town [the vermillion river] with its state college” (34). there is enough of this type of exposition sprinkled throughout the book to allow the reader to deduce that we are probably talking about farmington, minnesota (just outside of minneapolis-st paul). cook-lynn’s recurrent recourse to this incomplete mapping of the setting is rather suggestive, however. instead of being merely clumsy or repetitive, it actually serves to draw our attention to her dogged refusal to ever name this settler-colonial place. that omission is particularly striking when one notes both her contrasting specificity in discussing tribally-significant places (like the crow creek reservation, the missouri river, and the old indian footpaths alongside it) and the novella’s explicit invocation of the place-centered dakota narrative genre of the keyapi tale in discussing the constellation and sacred place called zuzuecha, the snake. (zuzuecha, we will eventually learn, is intimately related to the mysterious artifact and its role in dakota history.) reflecting its narrator’s own quiet defiance, that guy wolf david j. carlson review of that guy wolf dancing     152   dancing endeavors as much as possible to refuse to recognize colonial space and authority. philip reinforces this sense of resistance explicitly in the book, both by referencing the yankton sioux indians’ possession of land “for, some say, thousands of years” and by offering only the most limited cooperation with authorities investigating the death of the socialite (euthanized by her husband in the hospital) based on his understanding of yankton treaty-rights. the evasion of narrative conventions and external legal authority represents just some of the ways that philip’s story is a “wolf dance.” “wolf dancing” is never explicitly defined in the text, though its meaning emerges fairly clearly through context. a basic definition would be philip’s own: “trying to be something that i’m not” (9). based on what has already been said here, however, it should be clear that this type of deviance is an ambiguous act, varying greatly in significance depending upon whether it is directed outward at the colonial society of the u.s. or inward at the dakota community itself. such ambivalence is central to the novel’s complex characterization of philip. his insistence that he is not a stereotype (not a “loser” or “stoic”), along with his apprehension of the empty materialism and violent heritage of american society, clearly represent positive aspects of his refusal to meet certain expectations of him (43). at the same time, he struggles in many respects to locate himself in contemporary tribal life, having fled the reservation to seek an alternative path that he cannot fully articulate or realize. philip variously describes himself as a cynic, a nonbeliever, a transient, and an exile, and he clearly sees that one of the negative aspects of his “wolf dancing” is the way it separates him from his tiospaye. (it is no coincidence that the novella’s title links his wolf dancing with the nameless anonymity of being simply “that guy.”) interestingly, though, cook-lynn is very careful to avoid depicting philip as a familiar type of “tragic” indian protagonist, caught between two worlds in a struggle for individual identity. (this is the kind of contemporary indian narrative she loathes.) in the end, philip cannot really be described as an alienated character. rather, he is a philosophical man patiently, if somewhat passively, living his life in a quest for an authenticity that goes beyond mere individualism. “people think i’m just an indian guy without much insight, ‘just doing my thing,’” he observes, “but the truth is i’m a santee dakotah born and bred, which means is it my obligation to be something more than just a guy occupying space” (46). while he recognizes that he is struggling with deep personal grief (tied to the suicide of his uncle tony), philip regularly evinces a quiet confidence that he will eventually figure out what his obligations are. “in my heart,” he notes, “i know the steps you take lead you nowhere unless you attempt to direct and control and develop the dance itself” (45). philip is simply in no hurry to take control of that process of development. the most explicitly stated theme in the novella is the idea of the accident. it is through various instantiations of this theme that philip is able to reflect fully on the balance between fate and personal agency in the way that he, as a dakota man in 1980s america, must confront personal and tribal history. in one telling moment, philip’s lover dorothy brings him to an epiphany regarding his struggle with tony’s death by observing simply transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   153   that “some people survive and some don’t” (93). this simple mantra allows philip to begin to place survival at the center of his consciousness, instead of death: “it was clear then that i had been drifting in my own sorrow, ‘by accident,’ going about my so-called life emptying bedpans and changing sheets for people i didn’t know, and i was doing it because i couldn’t make sense of senseless death. and because i wanted an explanation for things that had no explanations” (94). at this point, it would seem that philip’s journey into an authentic, functional life might be a conventionally existential one— surrendering the search for transcendent meaning in the face of absurdity and chance and embracing the individual will to life. but cook-lynn is no sartre or camus (despite an epigraph in the novella from the latter), and so philip eventually comes to feel that it is as problematic to embrace a radically individual liberation as it is to surrender to inactivity. what he comes to see is that history proceeds in ways that involve us in larger patterns of meaning and experience whether or not we seek them out. it is at this point that the mysterious artifact reveals its centrality to the story. in time, philip learns that he has inherited a buckskin war shirt (and war stick) adorned with a snake pattern. this regalia had been stolen from the grave of one of the wakicun, the “shirt-wearer” society of the santee, over a hundred years ago. significantly, it had been worn by one of the mankato 38, hung by the u.s. government in the largest public execution on the nation’s history at the conclusion of the dakota war of 1862. philip’s recovery and repatriation of the shirt changes his relationship to his tribal community as well as his own sense of consciousness and purpose. the shirt creates a new sense of structure for the entire narrative. understanding it allows him to ground his developing political consciousness (formerly rooted mostly in books) in a deeper awareness of dakota history and relationship to place. the snake pattern also invokes both one of the key constellations of dakota cosmology (and thus the dakota origin story) and a sacred place located near medicine creek spoken of in a keyapi tale partially re-told in the novella. at the latter “zuzuecha,” the rocks have been arranged in the form of a snake “to commemorate those times of becoming, those times when the world was just becoming” (47). significantly, at the end of the novel, philip will be on his way north to this location, engaged in both a literal and figurative journey of becoming. cook-lynn subtly develops the motif of the journey throughout the book, linking it broadly to dakota identity through the traditional stories of their original migrations to earth as the “star people,” through invocations of prophetic knowledge regarding the nation’s difficult journey during the historical period where the sacred hoop has been broken, and through philip’s own personal wanderings. philip’s grandfather big pipe reminds him that “when we were oyate wichapi we journeyed into the real world by the sky path,” and that “the sky path is just a path to humanity” (44). philip’s increasing understanding of this path allows him to move beyond his sense of transience and develop a more complex understanding of how he must engage with the “accidents” of his life. to be sure, there remains at the end of the novel a tension between an existentialist quietism and a more active and tribally-grounded type of agency. philip observes at the end of the novel that he “no longer asked the question of whether this was david j. carlson review of that guy wolf dancing     154   history or just a series of ‘accidents’; it if was destiny, or is it had any deeper meaning than the absurdity of being human” (121). what he has concluded is that “any man who believes in the power of ancient rock shrines, i knew then, could simple fade into the landscape” (123). this fading is not passivity in the face of traumatic history, though. it is a grounded sense of purpose, one that balances an awareness that by engaging with narratives larger than our own we shape our experiences and relationships. it also reflects a recognition that individual human beings possess the strength to endure the vicissitudes of chance. philip’s ability to embrace two somewhat contradictory propositions--that “some people survive and some don’t” and that “there are probably no accidents” is not an index of philosophical confusion, but rather of balance (95). by the end of the narrative, he is able to hold to the notion that there is a structure and purpose to dakota life, even in a time of historic trial and transition. this awareness does not suggest a fatalist passivity, however. philip’s journey is nowhere near over at the end of the book (one wonders if cook-lynn plans another trilogy), but this seems appropriate considering the nature of his character and its development throughout the narrative. philip’s experiential process is that of an extremely thoughtful dakota man engaged in the serious philosophical work of reconciling what he knows about the land and being santee with the world that settler colonialism has made around him. he comes to embrace the burden of living with/through the time of the broken hoop and transcends his cynicism to remain open for deeper insights, insights that have not necessarily come by the final pages. the novel concludes with philip heading north toward zuzuecha “making it my business to find that dancing road…through history and difficult times…toward the shapes that are open to the sky, a cure for my own exile” (125). the lack of closure here, i would suggest, is both another facet of the realism that cook-lynn is striving for in the text and a reflection of the fact that she has written a book that truly celebrates the depth of dakota thought—a dakota philosophical novel, one might say. she is content, therefore, to end her narrative with the depiction of her reflective protagonist’s emerging understanding of his relationship to a history that he can shape as well as endure. to the extent that this denouement challenges some readers’ expectations of how a plot should resolve itself, the novella itself is wolf dancing just as much as its unusual hero. david j carlson, california state university san bernardino microsoft word andrews.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 181 daniel heath justice and jean m. o’brien, editors, allotment stories: indigenous land relations under settler siege. university of minnesota press, 2021. 333 pp. isbn: 978-1-5179-0876-8 https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/allotment-stories allotment stories: indigenous land relations under siege, edited by daniel heath justice and jean m. o’brien, gathers thirty stories of allotment (the process by which settler colonists render communal land as private “property”) into a multi-genre volume that is equal parts moving and necessary. at times devastating and at others deeply hopeful, every essay in the collection carries a weight atypical in scholarly anthologies; readers are made to feel a sense of responsibility and gratitude for the often-personal narratives, which adds productively to the vast expanse of allotmentrelated articles, monographs, and edited collections in native american / indigenous studies and related fields. although it is structured in parts and chapters reminiscent of other edited academic anthologies, the book reads as much as memoire or nonfiction prose as it does a teaching volume, and, indeed, it is easy to imagine the text having wide circulation both in popular bookstores and classrooms. editors justice and o’brien introduce the volume by pointing to the evergreen timeliness and urgency of conversations about indigenous land dispossession, citing, in this moment, the immediacy of the mcgirt decision (2020) in the united states, devastating fires in the amazon, and the ongoing “settler siege” of the wet’suwet’en and sipekne’katik first nations in occupied canada (xii). the concise introduction summarizes settler attitudes that figure indigenous land relations as “antiquated, primitive, antimodern, [and] impoverishing” (xiv) in ways that helpfully orient readers who are new to the topic of allotment and indigenous dispossession. extended quotes from theodore roosevelt, henry dawes, and carl shurz contextualize settler philosophies of allotment in broader discourses of calvinism and protestantism, speaking to the many ways that allotment is imbricated in the violence of assimilation and unfettered capitalist desire—which is perhaps more recognizable as violence to an introductory reader. the u.s. emphasis of this summary reflects the titanic global impact of the dawes act (u.s. 1887) on settler privatization strategies and the areas of focus in the volume—namely north american, although contributions also include stories from the pacific, sápmi, palestine, and mexico. justice and o’brien acknowledge this focus and also note the silences present in the volume, “for example, five tribes freedmen experiences of dispossession by both whites and non-black tarren andrews review of allotment stories 182 native people” (xx). in reflecting on the presences, absences, and potentials of the current collection, the editors invite “further interrogation of how u.s. models of privatization have been taken up and customized for indigenous expropriation elsewhere: latin america, fiji, japan, australia, and beyond” (xiv). this capacious invitation for engagement is facilitated by the volume’s structure which intersperses its four parts—“family narrations of privatization,” “racial and gender taxonomies,” “privatization as state violence,” and “resistance and resurgence”— with creative interludes, including poetry and short stories (leanne betasamosake simpson’s “amikode” is not to be missed!). the multi-genre interludes underscore the inherent multi-genre nature of narrative and support the radical sense of community cultivated in the text by creating bridges between the sections, which are more loose groupings than they are hard and fast indicators of content or method. “part i: family narrations of privatization” gathers seven narratives of allotment that are deeply personal to the authors, who recount parallel stories of allotment as told in their extended family networks and in colonial documents. beginning with sarah biscarra dilley’s poetic mediation on a “cartography of collusion,” this opening gathering implicitly asks readers to be intensely present in their reading and to carry the stories shared therein with a particular reverence. dilley recounts the story of her grandmother, louisa, sharing the story as it is told in her family and augmenting it with colonial documentation to illustrate louisa’s savvy navigation of contested cartographies in california. similarly, jean o’brien and sheryl lightfoot share stories of matriarchs and other family members who made calculated and complicated decisions to stay on and sometimes sell their allotment lands, speaking to the inherent mobility of indigenous peoples on the land and through settler colonial structures. also in this section, contributions by nick estes and joseph pierce speak to allotment and its constituent processes of adoption and relocation as an “arithmetic of dispossession” (estes 49), highlighting the many ways that allotment worked to dispossess indigenous peoples, not just of land, but of kin, stories, and connections. more so than the others, part i keeps a focus on u.s. allotment policies, with each author explaining an aspect of allotment that specifically affects their family—the dawes act, the land buy back program, and relevant court cases, to name just a few. the centrality of the dawes act, which is briefly summarized in each essay, to so many of these stories can feel a bit repetitive when read all at once, but such repetition also serves the purpose of illustrating the nuances of allotment programs and their widely differing deployments across the united states. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 183 the u.s. focus of part i gives way to a broader north american lens in “part ii: racial and gender taxonomies.” darren o’toole and jennifer adese address the role of allotment in creating métis racial identities and the legal nuances therein. both chapters usefully narrate scrip systems (a kind of coupon system wherein scrips worth 160 acres or $160 were distributed to individuals to then be turned into the correct government agency in exchange for their recorded value) unique to métis-canadian relations, illustrating how land scrip and money scrip served to dispossess métis peoples from their land and their indigenous identities. jameson r. sweet takes up similar concerns of mixed-race dispossession in dakota lands before the dawes act. in all three cases, indigenous peoples, figured as “mixed race” by colonial forces, are uniquely dispossessed both in terms of the allotment process and in terms of their connections to larger kin networks that are not understood as products of “mixed ancestry.” the futility of such colonial distinctions is underscored by candessa tehee’s story, which illuminates the failings of colonial records to account for how “clan and ceremony were inextricably intertwined in what made a person cherokee” (132). despite white and creek paternity in her family’s ancestral line, tehee beautifully articulates, in english and cherokee, what it means for her to be “full-blood cherokee”; when understood through clan and by ceremony, it has very little to do with blood. also in part ii, susan gray’s contribution resonates with dilley’s from part i, detailing na-ji-we-kwa’s story to illustrate how anishinaabe women manipulated the allotment system to maintain their relations to the land, keeping up gendered seasonal rounds that “merge landownership and some wage labor with more traditional ways of living on the land” (120). widening the focus, “part iii: privatization as state violence” includes stories of privatization from guåhan, aotearoa, hawai’i, and alaska. in addition to expanding the geographic reach of allotment stories, part iii also shifts the temporal scope from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. ever evocative, christine taitano delisle and vicente m. diaz open this section with a reading of roads in guåhan. figured in diaz’s section metaphorically and concretely as enablers of sexual(ized) violence against indigenous peoples and lands, the roads in delisle’s story are also paths for indigenous feminist resurgence and resistance. j. kēhaulani kauanui and dione payne detail recent court cases in hawai’i and aotearoa, respectively, narrating settlers’ contemporary legal strategies for indigenous dispossession through privatization. in “‘why does a hat need so much land?’” shiri pasternak takes up similar concerns with a focus on narrating the legal landscape surrounding the unist’ot’en blockade as it relates to wet’suwet’en land rights and “crown land.” closing part iii, william bauer and benjamin hugh velaise tarren andrews review of allotment stories 184 story the complex tensions within indigenous communities as nations and individuals navigate the present conditions of dispossession, capitalism, and environmental change in the united states (bauer) and in alaska (velaise). both authors deftly characterize multiple approaches to sovereignty in indigenous communities, some of which have been critiqued as “selling out,” while others are accused of unrealistic traditionalism. what is clear from each essay is that indigenous articulations of sovereignty are multifaceted, polyphonic, and ongoing even in the face of colonial dispossession, assimilation, and privatization. as promised by heath and o’brien in the introduction, “part iv: resistance and resurgence” gathers stories that inspire and remain hopeful despite ongoing settler colonization. tero mustonen and paulina feodoroff open part iv with a history of sámifinnish relations as they relate to land in sápmi since 1542. their detailed accounting will likely be of great interest to indigenous studies scholars in north america and the global south who may be unfamiliar with the details of sámi histories and land relations. the co-authors close with stories of rewilding efforts that have not only invited finland to reconsider nature conservation efforts, but also encouraged sámi farmers to join collective efforts towards language and cultural revitalization. more meditatively, ruby hansen murray, tells the story of bison coming home to the osage nation, returned to their land by way of a $74 million dollar exchange between the osage nation and ted turner. their arrival, for murray, punctuates several realities all at once, realities of capitalism and poverty, of dispossession and cultural resurgence, of oil and death, and of the past and the future. also interested in resurgence and the conditions that make it materially possible, land among them, megan baker tells the story of choctaw language revitalization. kelly s. mcdonough invites us to think across the north-south border in the western hemisphere, narrating shared “creative tactics employed by native peoples affected by settler colonial policies and practices” in both anglophone and hispanophone contexts, with the specific example of “primordial titles” (245). in a similar geographic context, argelia segovia liga traces the efforts of settler colonization in mexico city from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, the effects of which, liga argues, “led directly to the events that would spark the landless movements that clamored for access once again to communally administered lands during the mexican revolution of 1910 (255). in “after property,” munir fakher eldin narrates the palestinian social history of property. the story of sakhina, a small village in the beisan valley, presents a variety of definitions and experiences of “property,” teaching us that “communal life [is] possible after the loss of official titles” (264). more stories of indigenous success in the colonial courts are recounted in khal schneider and michael p. taylor’s contributions, which detail both individual and collective transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 185 petitions for land and rights in hawai’i, california, haudenosaunee territory, and alaska. the volume closes with an afterword wherein stacy l. leeds reminds us that, although allotment has done unquantifiable damage to indigenous peoples the world over, it was not a wholly successful endeavor. the stories collected in this volume are testaments to the failure of allotment as an engine of indigenous erasure, and as we continue on in our languages, on our lands, with one another, we create opportunities to return property to land; as the editors claim in the introduction, “the engine stops where community begins” (xviii). allotment stories is a vital collection for teaching and research. it is one of few volumes that puts transnational and transhistorical dispossession tactics in direct conversation. the utility of stories about the dawes act, land scrip, militarization efforts in the pacific, global contemporary court cases, and historic accounts of land-relations in hawai’i, sápmi, and palestine being put together in such close proximity cannot be overstated. this is as true for students as it is for researchers, who often have expertise in one or two of these geographic, temporal, or legal contexts and would benefit from being able to engage in a more comparative approach. the glossary, collated by the contributors and editors, as well, is an excellent stand-alone resource for students as well as interested readers with varying degrees of experience in native american and indigenous studies. it is a text of our moment that does the hard work of telling stories for the future. tarren andrews, yale university microsoft word 132-1257-1-ce.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 85 jackalope walks into a minneapolis art gallery denise low on the phone the medicine man whispers directions—bockley gallery on 21st street. the voice had an odd quality, almost a soft growl, but not unfriendly. cousin leland highly recommended this northern spiritual healer, so jack decides to take the plunge. he has come this far. a light snow begins to fall, covering the streets. he turns the ignition of the rental car and it catches, no problem. after following twisting roads around lake of the isles, he finally finds the art gallery, a small place tucked into a neighborhood shopping center. birchbark books, with a huge blue sign, is next door. the bookstore looks inviting, with bright windows, but the art gallery is murky. just like a medicine person to choose a film noir setting as a place to meet. jack reknots his muffler and hops out of the car. he takes a deep breath, then regrets it immediately. the zero-degree temperature is not lung-friendly. sifting white dust blows into his eyes and stings his exposed cheeks. he is becoming a sissy, too comfortable in his car with heated seats. jack shifts to warrior mode and skitters up the snowy sidewalk. inside, the gallery is not much warmer, although a space heater blows loudly. as he scans the room, no one looks like his contact. a few people mill about the room. folding chairs fan out from a podium. on the back wall, a poster shows anishinaabe author gerald vizenor’s face, set in a thoughtful expression. jack reads, “gerald vizenor & his novel blue ravens, 7:00.” that is just a few moments away, and still no medicine man. he looks at the poster again, at the writer’s eyes, which bore into him. he turns away. on the walls, bright colors come into focus, neon-bright paintings. not since a fauvist exhibit in paris has jack seen such an eruption of bright hues—orange, scarlet, teal and cerise. he checks a tag next to a painting: “jim denomie, ‘vatican café.’” bold outlines depict a last supper scene, with a jesus figure in the center holding a goblet and a fork. next to him are the lone ranger, tonto, and elvis presley. on the other side sit denise low “jackalope” 86 monkeys, one with a priest’s collar. beyond them, ku klux klan members circle a cross. people surround a woman burning at the stake. a military tank smolders red. “what’s good here?” asks tonto in a thought bubble. jack steps back. yikes. ouch. wow. postcolonial angst to the max. a tap on his shoulder interrupts his response. jack turns around to see gerald vizenor in person. “are you jack?” he asks in a throaty voice. “why, yes.” “i’m the man you are looking for. i have to give this talk, and then i can see you.” “okay, no problem.” “we start in a minute. there’s a bit of wine in the office area if you want some refreshment.” what a surprise to discover gerald has a double life as a medicine man. jack finds red wine on a back table, pinot noir from the mendocino coast. the label shows an ant pushing a grape uphill, anthill farms. perhaps ants burrow somewhere below this tundra, but right now the image is out of context. jack pours himself a glass and takes a chair. at 7:04, louise erdrich, from birchbark, brings the audience to order. she introduces gerald, author of trickster of liberty, fugitive poses, and word arrows. she gives basics of the bio, stops, and says, “i’ll just read the first paragraph of the new novel blue ravens: “‘aloyisius hudson beaulieu created marvelous blue ravens that stormy summer. he painted blue ravens over the mission church, blue ravens in the clouds, celestial blue ravens with tousled manes perched on the crossbeams of the new telegraph poles . . . .’” as she reads, he understands what power gerald has with words. even when jack closes his eyes, images of blue ravens continue to circle. the white earth reservation of northern minnesota becomes real—the small downtown, church windows, a gate to the hospital. louise finishes and starts to sit down, but stops, “i want to recognize a special guest tonight, in the back row. frances densmore, a musicologist, is visiting from red wing. she has been doing field work at white earth, about the same time period as this novel.” polite applause, and a gray-haired, blue-eyed woman dwarfed by her overcoat stands briefly and sits back down. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 87 gerald walks up and quietly commands the front of the room, creating an invisible proscenium. jack heard on the moccasin telegraph that the grand gentleman ‘shnob just turned eighty. the old man looks great, fit and crackling with energy. he sits and settles in a chair. he puts on glasses and rustles papers. they wait. behind gerald’s largish nose, jack notices a yellow owl in the “vatican café” painting. funny he did not see that earlier. also, squares of bright blue in the foreground start to move, as if they were alive. the author’s voice brings him back to the moment, “this novel is set during world war i, before native people were united states citizens.” he tells more about white earth ojibwa relatives who served in the great war, including a great aunt who was a nurse. the story follows two brothers’ travels in france, during the war and the spanish influenza outbreak. he continues to talk, but jack is distracted by the painting again as a blue winged figure takes shape, a crow. it steps delicately out of the painting’s frame. it ruffles its feathers a moment and then takes wing. worst of all, it flies to the chair next to him. people stare. it perches, preens a moment, and says in a very audible voice, “hi, you look like a stranger, mr. jackalope. i’m your translator for the evening.” “thanks, but i’m okay on my own,” he whispers. jack turns back to gerald, who is much more interesting than a blue blackbird. “let me add,” says gerald as he pulls out some notes. “the soul dancer in me celebrates transformations and intuitive connections between our bodies and the earth, animals, birds, ocean, creation.” the blue crow tugs at jack’s sleeve. “what he means is decolonization against monologic oppressors ruptures narratives inserting themselves into a hybrid recuperated space. . . .” jack glares. “that’s enough, mr. blue crow.” “oh, okay. just trying to be helpful.” jack turns back to gerald’s talk. “the street dancer in me is the trickster, the picaresque survivor in the wordwars, at common human intersections, in a classroom, at a supermarket, on a bus,” he says. denise low “jackalope” 88 students in the audience bend to take notes, and the crow flies to a small group of them. the first brushes it away, and it flies to the next. gerald pauses to take a drink of water as more audience members notice the crow. jack reflects on “picaresque,” one of his favorite words. it describes his life, a series of episodes stitching together fragments of dreams, aromas, words, and memory. he relates to the picaro, the low-born spanish hero who is something of a rascal but always honest. trickster roams everywhere, tells discrete and related stories, even when disguised as rabbit or spider. gerald turns a page in another notebook and finds his place. he clears his throat and reads so softly jack has to lean forward to hear, “the word dancer in me is the imaginative performer, the mask bearer, the shield holder, the teller in mythic stories at the treeline.” the word “mask” strikes jack, another favorite word, from french masque or latin masca, a “face covering,” and before that a “specter,” and from some pre-indoeuropean language, the “dark cloud before rain.” mask. he knows how he distances himself from even his closest family members, his own dance of survival and pain, by wearing a joker’s mask. mask, unmask. jack understands, as gerald continues to speak, how words are strong medicine. “caw! caw! caw! caw!” the blue crow startles jack as it flutters about the room with cries of alarm. it darts over gerald a moment, almost suspended, then dive bombs him. “begone!” yells gerald. everyone laughs as the author shoos it away. the crow flies to the ceiling light fixture, clings a moment, then heads back into the painting, where it flattens into an indistinct blue blob under tonto’s feet. gerald waves goodbye to the crow, then continues, “the last dancer in me practices alone, in silence, to remember the manners on the street, the gestures of the soul, and the words beneath the earth.” jack thinks over the term “words beneath the earth.” he imagines syllables as subject to primal gravity, as immutable elements of creation, as phonemes sinking into sedimentary layers. an irreversible force tugs them downward. jack waits for the next teaching from this warrior. gerald takes out the new novel. it has on the cover a huge green and blue raven, static and in motion at once. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 89 gerald opens it and begins, “aloyisius hudson beaulieu created marvelous blue ravens that stormy summer.” the cadence of the writer’s voice pulls jack into the story, following the delicate filigree of interrelationships between french and anishinaabe relatives at a precise latitude and longitude intersection, the early 20th century war. jack rouses from the storyteller’s trance when the audience applauds. gerald smiles. louise stands and says, “we have time for a short question-and-answer session.” hands rise. afterwards, jack walks slowly around the gallery. he cannot make small talk after gerald’s overwhelming presentation. students surround the author and pepper him with questions. a few have books for him to sign. they chatter like sparrows on the ground pecking at seeds. jack waits for the crowd to disperse. behind a water cooler jack stops cold. he finds a painting directed toward him, as if the painter expected a wandering western jackalope to find it, even in this north woods city. “dream rabbit #5,” says the placard beside a midnight-blue landscape. two plateaus rise from the darkness. on one sits a white rabbit. on the other are three deer heads, bucks with seven-point antler racks. jack feels like he has been split in two, with the jackrabbit side facing the antelope. how stunning. he stands before it, thinking nothing, for long moments. soon most of the hangers-on leave, with cold gusts blowing each time the door opens. jack shivers. he turns as gerald approaches and says, “i’ve given you my best.” he tugs his way into a brown wool overcoat. “that was exactly what i needed to hear. i have a lot to think about and a lot to forget. thanks.” jack remembers his manners, “i meant to give you this small gift of tobacco.” he takes a red tobacco tie package from his vest pocket and presents it. “of course. i appreciate it. well, i must be off. take care of yourself, jack.” they shake hands. close up, jack notices unusually thick hair beneath gerald’s collar, and his breath is unexpectedly fetid. he steps back as the author raises his arms to untie something on his head. gerald’s face tilts. pointed ears poke out. big eyes appear. big teeth. then the gerald mask is off, and before him stands a bear in a man’s coat. jack’s eyes widen. denise low “jackalope” 90 “oh, didn’t you know?” asks bear, as he puts on a fedora. “life is a chance, a story is a chance. that i am here is a chance.” he puts on large mittens and wraps a red cashmere scarf around the lower part of his face, covering his snout. his eyes smile. “frances, where are you?” bear turns to frances densmore, who has been waiting beside him, and takes her arm. “we need to be getting back home before it snows too hard,” he says to her. jack stares, speechless, and feebly waves. they walk out the door into the thickening snow. in a moment, they have disappeared. the gallery owner is stacking the folding chairs onto a cart. “are they all right out there?” he asks him. “of course. they know the north winds well. they know the roads.” jack takes one last look at “dream rabbit #5” and heads out the door. he watches his step, careful not to slip. in the partly shoveled path, he follows their tracks, bear prints and her boots. then the sky collapses onto earth and everything is frozen white. “life is a chance” quotation, good reads, accessed 12.24.14 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/347818-life-is-a-chance-a-story-is-a-chance-that other quotations are from the native american writers, “gerald vizenor, chippewa,” a biographical online article about vizenor, accessed 12.24.14 http://nativeamericanlit.com/vizenor.html microsoft word final transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 1 transgender, two-spirit and nonbinary indigenous literatures introduction kai minosh pyle and danne jobin there is a significant history of depictions of queer and transgender themes in native american literature, especially since the native american literary renaissance. writers such as louise erdrich, gerald vizenor, and paula gunn allen, among many others, have grappled with the complexities of gender and sexuality in indigenous contexts in their writing. in the past decade, there has also been an increasing number of contemporary transgender, two-spirit, and nonbinary indigenous writers who have published creative work. in recognition of the burst of both creative and scholarly writing that has emerged in the past ten years, we wanted to gather contributions that would specifically consider transgender lives in native american and broader indigenous studies contexts. this special issue of transmotion is intended to help address some of the gaps that exist in the scholarly study of queer, trans, and twospirit indigenous literatures. literature and literary analysis have been central to the development of queer indigenous studies in the past decade. while the scholarly origins of the current field of queer indigenous studies are often dated to the 2011 publication of the anthology queer indigenous studies and the 2010 special issue of glq titled sexuality, nationality, and indigeneity, several years earlier in 2008 there had been a prior special issue of studies in american indian literatures focusing on queer figures in indigenous literature. all three collections dealt with literature as a central facet of their kai minosh pyle & danne jobin introduction 2 investigations of queer indigenous life and experiences. among the monographs on queer indigenous studies that followed these three publications, literature remained a prevalent concern, particularly in the work of mark rifkin and lisa tatonetti. analyzing both works by queer indigenous writers as well as queer figures in writing by non-queer indigenous authors, these academic works made a strong case for the centrality of literature to the analysis of queer indigeneity as well as the centrality of queerness to indigenous literature. these scholars have made the case that gender and sexuality must be attended to in any consideration of indigenous realities. indeed, the establishment and policing of binary genders consolidates settler logic and echoes other sets of restrictive classifications. joanne barker states that “gender as a category of analysis stabilizes and universalizes binary oppositions at other levels, including sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and nationalism” (critically sovereign 13), while qwo-li driskill, daniel heath justice, deborah miranda and lisa tatonetti reclaim “sovereign erotics” as a political and spiritual act that “relates our bodies to our nations, traditions, and histories” and whose suppression derives from settler colonisation (qwo-li driskill et. al. sovereign erotics 3). driskill further points out that the heteronormativity of patriarchal gender systems “undermines struggles for decolonization and sovereignty, and buoys the powers of colonial governance” (queer indigenous studies 19). as such, critical attention to sexualities and gender expression constitute a crucial nexus for indigenous studies. despite their disciplinary positioning within women’s studies, gender studies and queer studies, trans studies sit somewhat uncomfortably within these fields. far from being a recent development, transgender realities have long been either obscured or else seen as an appendage to other concerns regarding sexual orientation and gender. cáel m. keegan frames trans studies as a truth that cannot be heard transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 3 (“getting disciplined” 4) and defines them as “a story that seeks to illuminate the experiences of transgender people and give an account of our claim to sex and gender, without which we cannot fully appear as other than a problem in someone else’s narrative” (4). in order to break free from models that will always treat trans lives as an afterthought, trans studies must develop their own epistemological frameworks (5). indeed, trans is much more than an allegory for queerness, anchored as it is in the material realities of embodied experience. in addition, trans studies ask whether “bodies simply are certain genders/sexes unquestionably” in ways that “map neatly onto the operations of power” (7). with this in mind, trans indigenous studies are likely to re-examine and challenge some of the premises that queer indigenous studies take as a given. what is more, transgender people’s experience of embodiment is shifting as medical care becomes more accessible and the discourse around genderqueer, genderfluid and nonbinary identities gains a wider audience. how do two-spirit individuals both adopt and resist some of the signifiers mapped onto trans bodies? how can we discuss access to hormones and surgery and the ways in which these have created new possibilities for transgender embodiment that perhaps break away from older categories of winkte, nádleehi, or māhū without reifying questions of authenticity? how important/useful is it to try and maintain continuity with such categories? while we use “transgender” and “trans” as interchangeable umbrella terms that can encompass, but do not necessarily coincide with, other labels such as 2sq and nonbinary, contributors may use different terminology. vocabulary evolves at a fast pace and there are cases where the authors discussed by our contributors use terms to describe themselves that are less appropriate in the context of scholarly discussion (max wolf valerio’s identity as a transsexual, for instance). indigenous communities also have distinct understandings of gender and sexuality and some literary depictions may kai minosh pyle & danne jobin introduction 4 not fit comfortably within the categories of “transgender” or “cisgender.” queer mohawk scholar marie laing has written that there is also often significant pressure placed on two-spirit, queer, and trans indigenous people to define what two-spirit means in an “easy answer” or a brief soundbite (reframing two-spirit 35). we have aimed to handle these complexities appropriately without restricting the full range of identifications. as laing notes, while definitions are important, becoming tangled up in them can sometimes prevent us from getting to deeper and more urgent conversations. in this issue, we seek to celebrate and interrogate the exciting emergence of many new trans indigenous authors, but we also want to recognize that trans indigenous literature does not begin in the 2010s. lisa tatonetti’s article, for instance, reminds us of a longer history in the trajectory of max wolf valerio’s literary career. often older records of trans indigenous writing appear in forms we might not expect. aiyyana maracle, whose work has been amplified by younger trans artists like morgan m. page and arielle twist, was a prolific performance artist in the 1990s, and her article “a journey in gender,” which critiqued popular two-spirit discourse for centering non-transgender experiences, was published over twenty years ago. diné/oneida artist carrie house created the film i am, about queer and trans indigenous workers, in 1997, while nonbinary cree filmmaker thirza cuthand released her first film, lessons in baby dyke theory, in 1995. undoubtedly there are many more of these earlier trans indigenous creators who have yet to come to the attention of the mainstream, whether the indigenous literary mainstream or the trans literary mainstream. considerations of more recent work by trans indigenous artists are enriched by placing them in the context of those who have come before. trans indigenous studies have specific elements to bring not only to indigenous studies as a whole, but to the field of queer studies as well. for one, two-spirit, transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 5 transgender and nonbinary indigenous north american writers represent an exciting juncture in indigenous literature that articulates new ways of relating and building community. queer expressions of gender challenge preconceived notions of belonging to outline alternative forms of kinship. more specifically, the articles included in this special issue make it clear that trans people take on very different roles and identities depending on the context in which they evolve, and that their gender identity requires them to renegotiate their positionality and relationships within their communities. how do trans people’s lives shed light on family dynamics and the viability of wider communal networks? another important aspect of trans indigenous studies is the extent to which the policing of gender and the regulation of monogamous heterosexuality have been part and parcel of the colonial settler project. kim tallbear denounces “compulsory settler sex, family and nation” (“making love and relations” 151), as well as “heteronormative settler sexuality categories,” as extraneous impositions on indigenous bodies. this idea is complicated by the eurocentric impulse to romanticise traditional native american and first nation views of gender, which tends to obscures the frequent discrimination of queer subjects by their families and reservation communities as well as the racism and fetishisation that indigenous individuals face in the dating world. billy-ray belcourt reminds us that “reserves can be incubators of transphobia and homophobia as a symptom of the christianizing project carried out by settlers for decades” (a history of my brief body 111). thus, trans indigenous identities often strike a precarious balance between the traditional gender roles disrupted by settler colonialism and more globalised contemporary articulations of gender. these two axes—the definition of transgender identities and the relationships that are disrupted and reimagined in the wake of coming out—run through all of the contributions to this special issue. kai minosh pyle & danne jobin introduction 6 exploring the life’s work of one of the first trans indigenous writers, lisa tatonetti’s analysis of max wolf valerio demonstrates how masculinity tends to be assimilated into a marker of whiteness by natives and non-natives alike and interpreted as a negation of the indigeneity written onto the body. valerio wrenches masculinity out of the constraints of settler normativity and colonial shame as his transition enables him to draw a joyful, exuberant felt experience from his changing physicality and repair the relational fractures that often affect the lives of queer subjects. james mackay tackles the next generation of trans writers in his analysis of digital media’s role in contemporary poetry. applying innovative methodologies to smokii sumac’s interplay between digital platforms and poetic praxis, he discusses how social media informs trans indigenous people’s experience of gender and describes some of the techniques sumac employs to resist fragmentation, such as incorporating natural spaces and ceremonial elements into his work. “hunger for culture” represents the coming together of queer/2sq/trans indigenous performers clementine bordeaux, kenneth r. ramos, and arianna taylor to offer a unique reflection on the premiere of larissa fasthorse’s urban rez production in 2016. through this rare opportunity to bring their whole queer and indigenous selves to the stage for a community-focused performance, the co-authors position urban rez as a disruption of settler logic and a form of visual sovereignty. lee schweninger explores sydney freeland’s reflections on nádleehí identity in the film drunktown’s finest, a term that lacks specificity in its definition as a “third gender” but nevertheless provides a way for nádleehí to connect to one another. while heteronormativity is framed as a colonial cliché—albeit one that is often reproduced by male navajo leaders—trans identity enables modes of belonging beyond the biological family through other forms of mutuality and dynamics of interdependence. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 7 in maddee clark’s reading of australian indigenous trans literary accounts, the terms “sistergirl” and “brotherboy” articulate a nuanced and communal relationship to gender embodiment that problematizes western understandings of queer and trans identities. as clark argues, such community self-definitions and “desire-based” frameworks offer alternative narratives that oppose “damage-centred” research that tends to treat transgender and indigenous lives in damaging ways. june scudeler frames tommy pico’s poetry quartet (irl, nature poem, junk and feed) as a contemporary epic that artfully combines pop culture with theory and kumeyaay song tradition with urban indigeneity into an intersectional, queer poetry cycle tracing the seasonality of romantic relationships. through the character of teebs, pico effectively writes his own epic until he reaches the point where teebs, “becoming himself through his various communities,” is no longer defined by relational loss. many of the themes that contributors discuss in these pieces are also common themes emerging in indigenous literatures more broadly. bordeaux, ramos, and taylor’s focus on community-driven approaches to native american performance and clark’s depiction of how indigenous australian trans, sistergirl, and brotherboy individuals resist damage-centered research are two examples of how concerns within indigenous communities and literary studies are refracted through trans and genderspecific contexts. scudeler and mackay’s exploration of the works of tommy pico and smokii sumac likewise take up the issue of digital spaces and popular culture that have come to the fore of much present-day indigenous literature and art. one thing these contributions reveal, then, is the ways trans indigenous literatures are very much intertwined with broader indigenous issues. at the same time, they also remind us that their specificity as trans is important. for instance, tatonetti’s reading of max wolf valerio’s oeuvre asserts that the transness, or the non-cisness, of valerio’s indigenous masculinity has important ramifications for reading his work. the interplay between kai minosh pyle & danne jobin introduction 8 trans-specificity and broader indigenous contexts is one area that we might suggest as a fruitful starting point for future investigations of trans indigenous literatures. far from attempting to set any definitive parameters on what trans indigenous studies might look like, we offer this special issue as an invitation in hopes that more scholars might take up these questions. this issue only brushes the surface of the vast possibilities that arise in thinking trans and indigenous and literature together. with numerous trans indigenous writers in the united states and canada gaining acclaim in recent years—jas m. morgan, arielle twist, janet mock, lady dane figueroa edidi, to name a few—there is certainly an ever increasing body of literature to work from. furthermore, beyond anglophone north america artists such as dan taulapapa mcmullin, yuki kihara, and amaranta gómez regalado have made waves and even challenged the categories of “transgender” and “cisgender” altogether from indigenous perspectives. we hope that this issue may open up conversations that span the full geographical and temporal reaches of transgender indigenous literatures in order to more deeply address central questions in indigenous studies, trans studies, and beyond. works cited barker, joanne (ed). critically sovereign: indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. durham and london: duke university press. 2017. belcourt, billy-ray. a history of my brief body. columbus, ohio: two-dollar radio. 2020. driskill, qwo-li et. al. queer indigenous studies: critical interventions in theory, politics, and literature. tucson: the university of arizona press. 2011. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 9 driskill, qwo-li et. al. sovereign erotics: a collection of two-spirit literature. tucson: the university of arizona press. 2011. keegan, m. cáel. “getting disciplined: what’s trans* about queer studies now?” journal of homosexuality 67:2 (october 2018): 1-14. laing, marie. urban indigenous youth reframing two-spirit. new york: routledge, 2021. tallbear, kim. “making love and relations beyond settler sex and family.” adele e. clarke and donna haraway (eds). making kin not population. chicago: prickly paradigm press. 2018. microsoft word going home (final).docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       72 going home 2015 kim shuck from above the ponds and creeks and rivers have gone feral and hold hands i always forget how humid oklahoma is, how, in the heat, the tulsa airport is the tropics with wild aggressive plant smells. i’ve come because of family, home and rain. they’re not, on the face of them, complicated ideas. still, two of the three have become major features in constructing identity for native americans, american indians, first nations people… whatever we’re being called these days. as for the rain, oklahoma had been awash for weeks. on the ground waiting for my luggage there was no evidence of the reported flood. the sunlight was loud and hot, not a cloud to the western horizon. route 66 was the river we all lived with knowing its habits and fauna the sacred diners and cafes on its shores and the seasonal overflow over flow the map that came with the rental car was a cartoon, similar to those given out at amusement parks. still, it’s not that difficult to find north in oklahoma. up through the port of catoosa, past the whale, the area around tulsa unfolds along 66, and although kim shuck “going home”       73 there is a turnpike that will spit you out finally in vinita, my heart belongs to the long way through, i lost it there as a child and haven’t bothered to collect it back. grandpa had a bronze american leviathan the horehound drops jerky moccasins gas and the incandescent constellations of towns at night telling their very own stories my family is an assembly of shared tales: linguistic, chemical, and behavioral. i could have never even visited oklahoma and still i’d have wanted to call it home because my father called it home. as a child i made myself a mental necklace with more than a few meanings for this word: the way i had to tug upwards on my grandmother’s doorknob to make the key turn, fishing, locusts, the hills in san francisco, bay water and creek water and lake water. our stories, our definitions are not tidy things unless we sacrifice some of our selves to the imagined order. it is up to the individual to decide if being multidentified means eternal exile or frequent belonging. for myself, well, i slip into oklahoma as if it were one of grandma’s flannel nightgowns. it's just a river but the name trips me up the bridges the mythology of route 66 all of the family stories running those shores this was indian territory when my grandma mae was born. i have pictures of her on a buckboard with her sisters along some of these very routes to and from. her grandfather, david rowe, was a cherokee court judge born in the east in 1820. on some paperwork he is called oo-sut-sut-ee. his son, mae’s dad, was named david lucullus. lucullus was a roman politician and general. his brother, mae’s uncle, was named napoleon. if transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       74 naming is a kind of wishing we can guess at what was wanted for these boys. in life they were called pol and cull. chasing horse creek north and east north and east and back to the 70s it runs back and forth dancing the road under old bridges and the flickers perch on slouching thigh high fences here was the flood. horse creek was more enthusiastic than i remember it, up on the tree trunks. pecan, butternut, black walnut: they aren’t just a collection of botanical curiosities, but another part of the family. they are dye and food and calendar and map. i have to smile at how green the pecans are with their feet in splashing water. i can see squirrel nests and think of soup and climbing. all of the flood worry of coming back here was fading and i was coaxed into an expectation of play. the hot wet relentless air talks me out of my half century and replaces it with coneys and creek water and trees and trees and flickers and hawks like bait for fishing and i was happy to be the fish, glad to strike on familiar treats. wpa bridge over the neosho i stood on it in full flood with my dad the water just kissing the underside of the boards the river moans shivering up my legs it stood until a flood licked out the footings they replaced it but when i dream the neosho the old bridge is there kim shuck “going home”       75 oklahoma is a unique place in indian country. there are lots of us in many varieties here and the non-indian people know it too. oklahoma was the giant relocation camp for eastern indigenes, but that’s too simplistic. the best horror stories keep the victims on edge and make them somewhat complicit in the process of their terror. the cherokees were moved here smack into other peoples’ territory, they landed us in the middle of osage and kaw and quapaw and others as unwilling invaders. we fetched up in these woods and by these rivers wracked with illness, loss and lack of food, and then we rebuilt. it took a lot to bring cherokees down: a collection of wars, influenza epidemics, small pox epidemics… the usual theft and lies and then allotment. it’s easy to write the misery of colonization. it’s just as easy to write the romantic frosting of connections with the land, of religions that seem mysterious to outsiders, of the exotic. unfortunately for a storyteller some of each of those things is true and contributes in varying degrees. there is a traditional story telling style that i’ve heard called ‘walking around the tree’, in which you indicate where the tree (truth) is without nailing it too firmly down. unfortunately at this writing many of the trees in oklahoma are a few feet into water and walking around them is a daunting proposition fraught with potential snakes. what’s more there are a lot of trees. we who steal ourselves back from the songs and laws and habits that claim us and everything about us the long men the wide hipped and generous bays protective as any mother there is a surprising lack of road kill at the moment. i caught sight of one dead armadillo but none of the usual dead possums, dead raccoons. there were more dying roadside transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       76 buildings than i remember. considering the current state of that part of oklahoma i’m not surprised. i suppose that i should come clean. my family is from picher ok. if you are a particularly avid environmental activist you may know that when love canal was also on the epa most polluted list picher was at the top of that list. it sits on an old lead and zinc mine. there is radon gas and cadmium. there are huge piles of mine tailings that we called chat and used to ride down on pieces of cardboard. after playing we’d blow our noses and my nose would kick out material that was orange or yellow. that’s the cadmium. it’s not exactly a health aid. anyway, picher was toxic, had been forever. then the mines started falling in more frequently. well, it wasn’t the first time. downtown had been fenced off since the 50s i think, before my time anyway. the final nail in the coffin was a tornado. the government condemned the place a while back. i’ve heard that there are ten or so people still living there. i’m probably related to all of them. my grandpa told me that in my lifetime it’s likely that there will be a cave-in from joplin, missouri to miami, oklahoma which will then fill with water and be the tri-state area’s own salton sea. i suppose we’ll find out. they took the zinc out until they hit the daylight of 3rd street you could see the crack in the pavement looked like another pothole and there was sunlight in the mine sunlight just there with the dull ache of lead and the grim scowl of jack my uncles and grandpa worked the mines. grandpa died of esophageal cancer and earl died of… i don’t know, stomach cancer. david died in ww2 when his ship was torpedoed. i think larry died from something heart related. frank and his wife eb lasted the longest. it’s embarrassing that i don’t remember what took each of them. if i had a think i’d probably remember. there’s a whole culture of death. i know people who collect those prayer cards from wakes, pictures of the dead in their coffins. they should kim shuck “going home”       77 be commemorated, celebrated. i remember grandpa’s funeral quite well. one relative may have been selling meth at that. here’s what i remember better, the shuck boys were stunners in their time and into old age. they were athletes, coordinated and in shape. people would turn to look at them. larry was thought to be the prettiest. frank, or tede as he was called more often, told the best stories and at the risk of betraying my grandfather’s memory i thought that he was the most adorable. my point here is that i’m not unaware of the deaths but maybe i’m just wired wrong because i like to remember who they were happy and healthy and strong. they were thought of as good men, did things for people. they weren’t perfect but they were good, very good. they were the hearth ends the ones who grew up in that house lead miners by day until 4pm branch hobos would drop a hooked line into every bit of water in the county maybe it’s been done already but i’ve always thought that there should be a native poetry anthology about trains. not just those ledger art images of plains people chasing the train on horseback, but also the 20th century childhoods spent alongside tracks. we can lose the bridge walking cliché, but there are a fair few moments that i spent fishing near collapsed trestles or cutting between roads by hopping from wooden tie to wooden tie. i like trains. i know that their split note cries make some people lonely but for me the sound makes me think of my grandfather and my great grandfather’s railroad pocket watch. state highway is charting the weeds just there she is alone busy we hit ottawa county near the transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       78 railroad crossing complete with red lights and the train looked as shocked as i was there is something appropriate about trying to navigate a place i haven’t been in years, in a state of flood, at dusk. it takes some focus, is exhausting. some of my navigational aids have weathered out, fallen down. some are under floodwater. cannibal retail has taken over from small stores and more than one remembered main street has a ghost town feel to it. sometimes there are visible people. the man chain smoking in a rattan chair on the corner in downtown afton reassured me. people, there are still people. the avon motel, also in afton, is a series of roofless rooms full of old tires and trees. an equally roofless restaurant still advertises free coffee refills. there is no shortage of space here, no need to pull down the bones and reclaim the land. my eyes and memory replace the flesh and i recognize family history. branches pulling at the old ceiling studs just outside of afton can just about make out the name on the sign the free coffee refills the old red bridge near vinita i found cousins on a social networking site. it was an accident, i wasn’t looking for them, but there they were, threads of family leading off in other directions. we admired one another’s thoughts and work from florida and california and indiana. we compared, shared, basted each other in stories we all knew, if not true at least consistent. we passed information hand to hand as if it were an eyeball we took turns with, a way to view ourselves in the mirror of family history. among those hatched turtles one found his way kim shuck “going home”       79 not into grand lake but to the screen door of gran’s old house she fed him with fried catfish and biscuits with crayfish and that turtle was your grandfather at some point anyone’s family story becomes more mythology than reality. for native people this mythologizing gets a helping hand from other peoples’ expectations and, i think their hopes. for most families the myth probably takes hold at the point just past living memory, just around the corner. when i was a kid all it took was for people to meet my dad for them to start asking what my “indian” name was. i did an arts residency at a museum once where i was asked if i’d killed the deer whose hide i was beading. not many deer at large in san francisco. i imagine them wandering down market street past cafes and strip joints and ‘fell off the truck’ stores. i wonder how many painters are asked if they make their own paint. we will stand in the very center of the sacred lake and blaze so brightly that our enemies cannot help but see us my uncle rufus ran a wild west show. ok, rufus was my great grand uncle. to be absolutely clear rufus was married to my great grand aunt goods, my great grandma mae’s sister. anyway, rufus had a few career high points in his life. he is in the cowboy hall of fame for riding two hall of fame horses. the marty robbins song “cowboy in the continental suit” was based on a true story about rufe. he also drove the first getaway car used in a bank robbery, but i can’t remember if it’s the first in the country or the first in oklahoma. either way he was driving for henry starr, who is related to the rowe family so everything comes around in circles. rufe taught my dad how to spin a rope, which he can still do at over 70 and counting. wild west shows have their own answers transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       80 to give for the rewriting of the american west and i guess that rufe had a hand in it, though i suspect that his was more a display of riding and roping than the kind of storytelling that buffalo bill lumbered us with. when they used to introduce rufe at the rodeo they called him a ‘squaw man.’ simian grip against equine lunge he waits for the slippery shift of muscle waits for a fluid denial of the idea of cowboy ride against toss rufe waits for the buzzer i can read oklahoma. i know the weather, the creeks, the roadside food. i know bingo games and pecan trees and unexpected berry bushes. as much as i know oklahoma it’s also a closed book. my father’s mother was adopted. she had been born into a large family and during her lifetime had found a brother and a sister. after she died we were contacted by the children, or grandchildren of another sister. they were scattered. it’s possible to tell any story about her background. the name of her birth father is pretty generic and if i were moved to do so, i could choose from a variety of native and nonnative men who might have been her dad. if early life sets our character, my grandma was always going to be confused and needy. she didn’t have an easy, or even understandable path. that year the wind took the topsoil and the children the maps all changed and not everyone found a pair of magical shoes or good kim shuck “going home”       81 company my grandmother’s is a classic native story with no ending whether or not she’s native. there are no welcoming songs, no family eating macaroni salad around a kitchen table, no clan beading patterns. she just was and then she stopped being. she wrapped herself around my grandfather and held on until he passed away. she left no one for us to tell. pat was a complicated person and i can’t say that i liked her, but i’m here to sing for her and i do. we’re often curios, we indigenous western hemispherians. we’re accused of hanging on to a legacy of sorrow while these things are still happening to us, while the fallout of these things is still happening to us. i have no idea how this helps me to map the oklahoma roads and waterways. it’s just more pictures of little girls in flour sack shirts. pictures that look as scoured by dust storms as any of the fall down buildings they also took pictures of. she was stolen from herself, whatever the reasons for it. she had a collection of avon sales awards. she was a scrabble wizard. at her funeral there was an honor guard of hell’s angels on their bikes, her remaining long-term friends, her children and people from her church. renewing the dust baptism the dry pink making its way into my shirt my thoughts we ramble down through grove. a pair of round hay bales float in the floodwater and two angry oaks surrounded by pecan trees. the string of streetlights vanish into grand lake. a no parking sign is adrift ten feet out from the current shore. the lake has a selective memory. we drive over another bridge, water stretching up nearly to the road. two boys fish from a boat. my grandfather may have been born in this town. one of the stories says so. we’re headed to talequah. there are things to do there. young girl in temporary escape from the transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       82 upper middle class the pipes in her apartment are loud and two men sleep on her stairs with their things a museum of lives she has no decoder ring to understand but i talk story talk cherokee navy story and she tells me why it’s wrong tells me that if we don’t visit the battlefield there is no battle she explains war to me is earnest has no crackerjack replacement cypher no window no insight we visit the cherokee veteran’s center. my family is not unique, not unusual, not even one standard deviation off. it may be, as has been suggested, that we always feel at war, or that we are brave and need to express it or maybe that we’re angry and need an outlet. it may be a way to get educated. we do this. we do it individually and in families. we are pretty good at the military. look at the records. ozark roads spool out and out and storefronts and cinder block churches painted white and the water can’t wait to tell you can’t wait in every voice it can think of these foothills have news there is news kim shuck “going home”       83 my dr. pepper habit has reasserted itself. i can’t bring myself to drink the sugar free version, so i sit there with my feet dangling off of the stone wall and sip my sweet soda like a kid. the heat is. a child catches a wild baby rabbit and brings it over to us. it’s scared and probably won’t survive now. it pants in his hands. we tell him to put it down in the roots of a tree and it pants there for a while. there we are, three or four cherokee women talking family and forced relocation each with an eye on a scrap of bunny pretending to be tree roots. i sip my pop. we figure out how we are related, because we’re always related. suddenly the bunny rubs herself in the dirt. rubs and rubs and then jumps straight up, four feet or so into the air and runs off to the brush. maybe she’ll live. some people die and some become a day a street a church festival some people become a day a definition a punishment a curse that can mean half of a planet “who do you write for?” this is the classic question for authors, for poets. this thing that we do, this message, where is it meant to go? the all too easy answer is that i mean my writing for other women like me: educated, mixed-ndn, over 40. i’m writing what i’d like to read, not always with the clarity that i’d choose. then again, everyone is part of more than one conversation. who are the voices in my head? they change daily but some characters are more persistent than others. i write to the creeks and rivers and puddles. i write to my mom, my daughter, my sons. i write to my dad and my grandfather. i write to the grandma who was proud of me and to the one who was always disappointed that my poems don’t rhyme. i write to ceremonies that were banned and to the everyday ceremony of family supper. i write to ideas and places and people, both living and dead. i write to the weather, to gravel roads and dirt roads and grand lake. i write to silly people transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       84 and to angry people and to willfully ignorant people. i write for myself. i only ever speak for myself. microsoft word van alst.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 170 poshrat? whereto (self) publishing? author note: this is a work of academic creative non-fiction, a rarely read genre produced for no pay. thus, none of the names have been changed, nor have the setting and places. the author hopes that will make it more interesting to you, gentle reader... editor via author note: or, an answer to the reviewer’s seemingly eternal question: all for you, my friend. i want your honest opinion as in, if these are bad books, or non-books, that's still interesting in terms of this no-gatekeeper stuff. and i guess it might be fun to talk about genre zombies, erotica, sci-fi and how that might provide an outlet for transgender native writing. but really, i just want whatever comes out of your brainsss. welp. here we go. time to check those brainsss, anyway. semester is about to start. paul mason writing for the guardian wakes us up with a guardian essay about e-books, -writing, and -publishing.1 after giving a reason or two for our collective shorter attention span (and stories, with their “searchable digital text… being read on devices we use for other things”), he tells us: “every major publisher has experimented with short stories, serialised (do i write sic because i spell with american “z’s” but am quoting a british-penned piece even though i suppose my final will be published internationally by a place in england and at least a couple of the editorial types will be all “hey that’s the way you spell that, mister,” whilst their eyes are filled with old-world humo(u)r and well, can we say, sparkle?) fiction, anthologies and mid-range “e-only” books.”2 surprisingly, there’s no list given (you had one job, internets), so we must avail ourselves of implied knowledge of these things. just so you know, i’m not going to provide you with one either, but then again that’s not really the point of this essay. we’re here to examine a bit of self-published work, not the cagey attempts of bigshot publishing houses to be on some imagined “edge” of writing. and remember, our ambitious aforementioned editor is looking for fun—“fun with genre,” perhaps. erotic zombies sexily shuffling through short sci-fi tales would likely fit that bill. today we’ll go in search of that rich and surely elusive conglomerate, and i’ll report back with what i find. the couple thousand or so words allotted won’t likely get us too far, but i’m hopeful it will put us further down a path of discussion. there’s a single author in mind for this beginning, so let’s get introduced. choctaw writer cheryce clayton's series of short books for kindle have made their way onto my device of that name (well, not really just that name; set up by the guy in the store—thanks for nothing, there, clerk man—it’s called “theodore’s kindle2” like a nerdy b-boy tag), as well as my laptop and now phone. that’s no humblebrag, kids, that’s how these things work now. no more just-a-book-on-the-shelf. dynamic, son. in particular, we’re interested in her work that directly engages native characters, so i’ll be theodore c van alst poshrat? 171 looking at one of the e-books (do we need that e-qualifier©?) briefly, and the other more in depth. let’s meet her http://www.amazon.com/cheryce-clayton/e/b00o07c20k/. if you know anything about amazon writer pages, this seems to be where they’ve asked for a "brief biographical paragraph." she replies: “cheryce clayton, writer” and then: oh, more? i once named a company poshrat, it means half-blood and out of culture in romani. i can remember my great grandfather speaking choctaw, i've spent more years living on reservations than off, i speak a few words, i go to a couple of powwows a year, and i know how to bead. and yet i always feel like i'm on the outside looking at a circle of old friends gathered around a fire, not quite sure how to join in and feeling too tall to blend in. she continues as a writer? i am not defined as a writer by the facts that that i am a member of the choctaw nation of oklahoma, that i have spent my life as a trans / bisexual woman, that i write speculative fiction, horror, and erotica, that i live with chronic pain, or that i am a survivor of violence. i am defined as a writer by the stories i write and my first book "obligations" is a gender confused story of crossed cultures and the myths of childhood that haunt and hold us back, my webcomic "tales from the zombpocalypse: living in the quarantine zone" starts seven years after the hyped zombie apocalypse as life goes on in a new normal, and the story "lowrez" is as much a coming of age tale on a future reservation as my attempt to look forward and project the current idle no more stand into the cultural vanishing point. http://zombpocalypse.cartoonistsleague.org/ i can be found on fb as cheryceclayton and my webcomic page is talesfromthezombieapocalypse yes. and i have done that finding, so for this review, well; i’m trying really hard not to just send cheryce a note. maybe i’ll write most of it, and then do that…please reflect on what her work might look like as we discuss more of this self-(i)e-publishing (“©“, folks?) and what it might mean for native american / american indian / first nations / aboriginal / indigenous literature. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 172 the democratization of data via the internet gets kicked around quite a bit (and begs questions like the one that opens this essay). for myself, i suppose that means it’s just a matter of time before i can 3-d print that maroon ’65 gto i’ve wanted ever since i saw an ad for it on the back cover of one of my grandpa’s national geographics when i was a kid. for others, it might mean the nanotech printing of our food (see neal stephenson’s the diamond age: or, a young lady's illustrated primer [1995] for more on that coming delight). for us, obviously, it means we need to talk about the inevitable selfpublishing of books, gatekeeping, quality (or should we say “e-quality ©,” as i go ahead and copyright that one, too), and just maybe those covers that kind of publishing produces (you know, the ones that look like outtakes from the earliest builds of photoshop platforms, but if they were run by sarcastic teenaged monkeys): . i’d mention other tales, like taken by the t-rex, and ravished by the triceratops, but that seems unnecessary, so trump-style, i won’t. what are people saying about digital self-publishing?3 it’s been around for a bit. if you have some time to spend, go ahead and wiki that question for yourself; the leads you’ll get are fascinating.4 quotes to note, though, include this one from a january 2011 amazon press release: “amazon.com is now selling more kindle books than paperback books,”5 and (sad trombone) this one: the big six publishers became the big five on july 1, 2013, when the penguin random house merger was completed. the publishers are: hachette, harpercollins, macmillan, penguin random house, and simon & schuster. together these companies control roughly two-thirds of the u.s. consumer book publishing market.6 that’s an awful lot of concentrated control. one of the features of “democracy,” at least in its classical sense, is that it tends to resent things like oligarchy and monopoly. ‘twould appear that some sort of e-revolution (no “©“ on that one) could/should/would be at hand. and as with every “revolution,” there are bound to be some…kinks, to work out. mason argues, for instance, “but a novel such as donna tartt’s pulitzer-winning the goldfinch, subtly derided by the literary world for its readability, is not the product of the theodore c van alst poshrat? 173 kindle—but of a new relationship between writer and reader.”7 this is an important insight—in native lit, we are often (good or bad, but for another conversation, to be sure) particularly invested in the identity of the author (and quite frequently, there is already a relationship between writer and reader)—which leads us down another path our editor has asked me to illuminate. here he is: “i'd also really like to get your thoughts on the future of indigenous literature in an era of self-publishing without gatekeepers. after reading your foreword to off the path (that’s vol. 2, btw), i know you'll have more thoughts about it.” well, dang. no pressure. but yes. thanks, james. as they say, the future is here. if you haven’t yet read off the path, vol. 2 (off the pass press, 2015), i cannot suggest it strongly enough. in that foreword i attempt to address a question directed by an interviewer to the writer sterling holywhitemountain: “why are you telling this?” i reply, too often (and here i’m thinking of some films that were refused screenings at certain festivals due to content and other “concerns”) native artists are told what to do, what to show, what to say. it reminds me of the issues experienced by african american intellectuals and artists related to concepts of “racial uplift” beginning in the early twentieth century (and on through the harlem renaissance). here we are, a hundred years or more later, and, well, here we are. indeed. i should’ve also asked, “why is this native literature?” along with “is this native literature?” investigating that category, tag, “genre” (lol), bookshelf, is the stuff of dreams and nightmares. and part of many of our missions, so let’s continue the quest. charlyce (chy) clayton has given us something to work with, no doubt. when i was first asked to delve into this author’s work, i picked up rabid run, and waited for low rez, which we’ll look at as well. rabid run opens up in a world that’s vaguely different. there’s a quarantine zone, tobacco is at a premium, and cigarettes are “salvaged or hoarded.” ok, i’ve been there, so maybe not that unusual. and the only “ndn” thing i’m seeing right now is the jeep cherokee and the marlboro reds.8 the work is bookended with quiet and similar sex scenes. the first is “fast and…desperate,”9 and the other is, i suppose, recreative rather than procreative: “‘i don’t want kids yet,’ was all she said before looking up to accept his kiss.”10 both use the same position; the first one lets us know: “he accepted her lead when she turned her back to him and pulled his arms around her like a blanket,”11 the other tells us, “i thought i lost you,” alec said from behind her in the shower. tia held his arms around her as the hot water hit her in the face.”12 the story itself is a good entry in the post-zombie-apocalyptic genre—firefighter/emt’s turned bio-containing dispatchers of the unfortunate victims of “dead fever”—zombie slayers somewhere near tacoma falling in and out of love and camaraderie. it treats the presence of the undead in a matter of fact way that gives the reader pause as they follow along with the characters. subtitled “tza: rabid run book 1,” it lets us know there is more coming from the zone, and that’s encouraging. clayton is a thoughtful writer who pays extra attention to craft, a welcome alternative to what one transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 174 finds too frequently in the low/no cost world of e-pubs—something like, wait, i can’t think of the name of that low-key misogynist, racist p.o.s. story i read to the end because even though it was free, well, #ocd, and i’m committed to finishing things like it or not, and hold on, i’ll go to my kindle library and hope i didn’t drop it like the literary murder weapon that it is and three or four minutes of online searching because i did in fact wipe it from my reader… got it. it was called “chop suey” [imagine] starring a truly unlikeable character named, “darby stansfield.”) there are more than a couple of moments though, working through rabid run, when the text is awash in acronyms like kme, nfpa, als, pd, bls, mva, ked, et, bls, hbw, uhf, and mrsa, and i feel like mary, the girl who couldn’t fly, when she hears, “military guys speaking some weird language of abbreviations i couldn't understand...”13 it’s not that we can’t figure them out through context (and i appreciate the writer crediting the reader’s intelligence), but that we shouldn’t have to, particularly if the specialization is refined enough to distract us from the story. if it's intentional, it narrows the audience, showing the writer’s knowledge, but limiting the reader’s. it’s a fine, fine line treading between a specialized audience (ndn paramedics zombie hunters) and a generalized one (ndn paramedic zombie hunter enthusiasts), but rabid run does it fairly well. is it interesting and insightful and well written and do i want to read “book 2” and will i pay for that, too? you bet. unless i friend her online and i can get her to send it to me for free ;) speaking of free, i received a pdf sneak preview of clayton’s low rez. this work also pretty quickly announces a world slightly changed, and is up front that we’re about to read native-penned work with this introduction to one of the main characters (whom we’ll shortly find out, is puyallup), who phones it in at the emerald queen casino paddleboat: patricia tilgard worked the midnight til nine am shift on weekends where she sat at one of the entrances to the busy parking lot calling in license plates, not to turn stolen or out-of-tag cars in to na hullo’s authority, but so that tribal lawyers could offer their services to those in need with cash.14 her girlfriend angie, who says “christ” a lot, is “oklahoma choctaw, born in navajocentric northern arizona.”15 clayton quickly sets the parameters of the tale, letting us know that patty (nickname “low rez,” not so much for being from the poor side of the reservation as for being “low resolution—out of tune”16), as a tribal member, can work at the casino, but angie cannot. the rez (sovereign land well-placed after massive global floods), tribal descent (native eggs are at a premium), and sovereignty (personal and political) underpin much of the work, a tale somewhat evocative (and maybe it’s related to the pacific northwest setting as well) of early cyberpunk worlds created by william gibson (burning chrome, 1986) and neal stephenson (snowcrash, 1992), but centering around two teenage girlfriends and their personal and familial woes. the character of angie, in particular, is possessed of a certain fury: angie took a deep breath and wondered what it would be like to be from a calmer people, instead of being choctaw and dine. desert fire seemed to burn inside her, with every breath she tried to push down the anger that theodore c van alst poshrat? 175 seethed and bubbled deep in the back of her mind. it was always easier to let her mind wander and tune out than to live with the pain that colored everything red.17 the anger in low rez is explosive and abrupt, but like the violence it likely arises from, the two are brother and sister in arms, well made and well met. in addition to strong emotions and story, there is a ladder18 in low rez; it’s like the ladder in so many sci-fi movies, the one that leads to the starship, though this one leads to a train, (a reappropriation of that “iron horse” we know so well?) that leads off-world. here is its introduction: across from her, on the false smoke stacks of the casino paddleboat, a large two-toned hummingbird was painted hovering at a stylized flower, … the paint was faded green and red, and when she squinted the bird seemed to hover in front of the now pink flower. from behind the large river boat, the ladder rose into the sky, all rust colored and shiny, and the bird seemed to move from the flower upwards as the flotilla balloons lifted the morning train toward space. another boatload of emigrants, abandoning everything for the hope of something new.19 when you’re done picturing yet another boatload of american emigrants, you can find an image of that emerald queen casino paddleboat, likely not then the glamorous host to the likes of sinbad, and rob schneider, and whitesnake (but not led zeppelin and their own stairway to heaven), as it is now, but far removed, for some perhaps, from its earlier, “humbler” days: http://postdefiance.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/02/sign.jpg, though i see the hummingbirds she describes more in the louie gong vein rather than some strange post-industrial m. stewart homemaker hideousness. we can go into colonization (re/ de/ neo, and otherwise), but that, i think, would spoil much of a story i’d prefer you read for yourself. i’ll say finally that the ladder is an interesting feature; i had to spend some time thinking about that ladder, and i thought i’d do a bit of research on it (very perfunctory, so please pardon any shallow insights). my efforts returned a choctaw20 story: “all of the prayers went up to sandlephone who sat on a great ladder high in the sky. as soon as the prayers had come into his hands, they were changed into lovely flowers. he closed the blossoms and dropped the seeds upon the earth while the perfume was carried on into the heavens where great spirit was. “the little folk cared for the seeds as they fell and from them sprang the wild flowers. they watched and tended the flowers. the indians loved them but never hurt them. they called the flowers ‘tokens of love from great spirit.’” “oh,” said josephine, “after this i shall not break them. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 176 in the end, when it comes to self-publishing, we gotta pete rose this thing (without the gambling, i suppose—sorry, pete); we gotta hustle, get our voices out there, disseminate some knowledge. bark this carnival of indigenous voices. social media platforms, meet and greets, conferences—awp and otherwise, indiginetworks, friends & family, support. support. and if we have to publish ourselves, well, then, let’s make it good. cheryce clayton is certainly giving it a go. theodore c. van alst, university of montana notes 1 mason, "ebooks are changing the way we read, and the way novelists write." 2 ibid, n.p. 3 for more on standard self-publishing, fiction of course takes the cake. i could read foucault’s pendulum right now, if i didn’t have a deadline or two. 4 before you do the wiki-groan (remembering, of course, it’s usually a good place to look for sources on subjects, not the definitive citation), read this bit from mason: “and while the academic study guides to major novels are usually worthless, the wikipedia pages devoted to them can be invaluable. that is because study guides are often the work of a single, low-paid hack and the wikipedia page contains the real-time wisdom of crowds: often wrong, but rarely worthless.” hmmmmm. how…democratic. 5 “amazon.com announces fourth quarter sales.” 6 “frequently asked questions regarding e-books and u.s. libraries.” 7 mason, “ebooks are changing the way we read,” n.p. 8 kindle location 17 9 kindle location 54 10 kindle location 457 11 kindle location 53 12 kindle locations 453-454 13 jones, p.t. floating boy and the girl who couldn’t fly, 119 14 clayton, low rez, 2 15 ibid, 3 16 ibid 17 ibid, 6 18 latimer, josephine. "why the flowers grow.” 19 clayton, rez run, 4 20 or at least “part choctaw” according to the choctaw nation of oklahoma; “mrs. josephine latimer, part choctaw, who told the remaining stories,” one of which is “why the flowers grow”: <http://www.choctawnation.com/culture-heritage/social-lifethrough-the-years/choctaw-childrens-legend/> works cited "amazon.com announces fourth quarter sales up 36% to $12.95 billion." amazon.com. amazon.com, inc., 27 jan. 2011. web. 18 aug. 2015. http://phx.corporate theodore c van alst poshrat? 177 ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsarticle&id=1521090. press release. clayton, cheryce. low rez. pdf ed. six point, 2015. 74. clayton, cheryce. rabid run: living in the quarantine zone (tza: rabid run book 1). kindle ed. six point, 2015. 30. "frequently asked questions regarding e-books and u.s. libraries." libraries transform. american library association, 3 oct. 2014. web. 18 aug. 2015. http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/frequently-asked-questions-e-books-uslibraries. jones, p.t. floating boy and the girl who couldn’t fly. chizine publications, 2014. 250. print. latimer, josephine. "why the flowers grow."" choctaw nation of oklahoma. 2010. web. 20 aug. 2015. http://www.choctawnation.com/culture-heritage/social-lifethrough-the-years/choctaw-childrens-legend/. mason, paul. "ebooks are changing the way we read, and the way novelists write." the guardian. 2015 guardian news and media limited, 10 aug. 2015. web. 13 aug. 2015. urban, diana. "ultimate guide to self-publishing & book distribution tools." bookbub partners blog. bookbub, 11 aug. 2015. web. 17 aug. 2015. microsoft word semple.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       98   on idle no more yale d. belanger and p. whitney lackenbauer. blockades or breakthroughs?: aboriginal peoples confront the canadian state. quebec: mcgill-queen’s u p, 2014. http://www.mqup.ca/ ken coates. #idlenomore and the remaking of canada. regina: u of regina p, 2015. http://uofrpress.ca/ kino-nda-niimi collective. the winter we danced: voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement. winnipeg: arp books, 2014. http://arpbooks.org/ kisukyukyit, hu qakǂik angela semple. i am a member of the ktunaxa nation located in southeastern british columbia, and a status indian according to section 6.2 of canada’s indian act. i choose to open this review by positioning myself as an “insider” when it comes to indigenous people in canada: an important starting point, as it has become wellaccepted practice within indigenous studies to acknowledge our positionality as writers, activists, scholars, and community members. i will focus strongly on this concept of positionality throughout my discussion of the three texts reviewed. following the footsteps of many of the authors under review, i’d like to share a bit about my own experience with the idle no more movement. when i was approached to write this essay, i was immediately brought back to the winter of 2012/2013, where i followed and participated in the movement in various ways, from attending gatherings (park royal mall, vancouver) and marches (elsipogtog rally, vancouver), speaking at events (idle no more rally, simon fraser university), all the while tweeting and facebooking the hashtag along with thousands of people across the world over the past three years. never in my lifetime have i experienced this kind of indigenous pride and unity, and i am eternally grateful for the experience, which will follow me through a lifetime of being “idle no more.” but what is “idle no more?” while the social media posts and gatherings that happened worldwide were life-changing for myself and many other indigenous people in canada, the majority of canadians still have little to no understanding of the events that took place, or of their continued impact on our communities. often, not surprisingly given the historical coverage of indigenous resistance, the media “went wrong” (winter, 294) in regards to idle no more. this illustrates a necessity for literature such as the three books in review. “idle no more” as a catch phrase was coined by four women in saskatchewan: jessica gordon, sylvia mcadam, sheelah mclean, and nina wilson. in 2012, these women found themselves “fed up” with the canadian government’s omnibus bill c-45, a “massive piece of impenetrable federal legislation” (coates, xiii), taking particular issue with proposed changes in environmental protections and indian act legislation. gordon, mcadam, mclean and wilson decided to hold a “teach-in” on november 10 to garner angela semple review essay, on idle no more       99   support in their protest. they advertised the teach-in through a facebook event under the title “idle no more” as a “grassroots movement for solidarity which welcomes all community members!” (coates 3). the women also took to twitter, with jessica gordon using the hashtag (#idlenomore) for the first time on october 30, later tweeting it to sean atleo, then chief of the assembly of first nations (4). the response was immediate, as indigenous people from all over canada began sharing the idle no more hashtag and planning their own events, from teach-ins to round dances to a “national day of solidarity and resurgence” held on december 10, 2012 (kino-nda-niimi collective 391). i cannot remember the first moment i heard about idle no more, though i do remember an early conversation where a friend of mine shrugged it off “oh, right, we shouldn’t leave our cars idling…” (many cities and towns have “idle-free zone” signs posted in parking lots and pick-up zones, an almost unattainable goal during canadian winters). i giggled, wondering myself about the title. i echoed the sentiments shared in some of the works under review that we, as indigenous people, had never been “idle,” and i questioned the connotations that “idle no more” had when thinking about our elders and their own fights and movements (ie. oka or aim). but as time went on, i came to view it as an immediate call to action rather than a reflection on the history of indigenous protest. as coates explains, “gordon, mcadam, mclean, and wilson decided to do something. this, among all the things that happened over the coming months, was the most radical step” (coates, 3). and that is the heart of “idle no more”: of course, we, as indigenous people have been doing good work in our communities since time immemorial, but with this current (2012) federal government and their secretive and destructive omnibus bills, it simply wasn’t enough. “idle no more” became our rallying cry. what is truly fascinating, though, is how idle no more grew to encompass much more than a specific protest about a specific piece of legislation. as the events spread through cities, small towns, and indigenous communities, it was clear that indigenous peoples and our allies had simply been waiting for a spark to start the forest fire that became idle no more. this metaphorical forest fire spread far and wide in the milliseconds it took to click thousands of “retweet” and “share” buttons. it burned in our hearts as we sang, drummed, and danced together. it left any sense of apathy behind in its ashes, clearing a path for a renewed empowerment of indigenous voices within canada. at each idle no more event i attended, and every time i logged in to check the progress of the hashtag on twitter, i was inspired and uplifted by the connections idle no more was making all over the world. i was born more than a decade after the height of the american indian movement, and was only two years old when oka happened. for me, idle no more created a sense of indigenous community that i had never been a part of before, and it did so through social media. known in indian country as our newest form of the “moccasin telegraph,” social media has transformed the way indigenous communities across north america are able to communicate with each other, connecting our elders, children, aunties, and uncles from all different nations in mere seconds, and allowing us to find solidarity on issues we care about, as seen through idle no more. here i want to return to the discussion of positionality. as i mentioned, i have placed myself in the role of the “insider”: someone who participated in the idle no more transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       100   movement as a status indian in canada. i’ve identified myself by sharing my nation with you (ktunaxa). this is protocol within indigenous communities. in certain settings, for example at a community gathering, i would follow this up by naming my grandmothers (patricia sam and sabina cote) in order to situate myself further within the community. because this protocol is so well established, it is a natural progression for indigenous scholars to continue this form of introduction through our academic work. it is important to note here that indigenous studies is a relatively new field within the academy, and to also acknowledge that indigenous-authored scholarship within the field is an even more recent advancement. i point this out, as until 1960 it was illegal for a status indian in canada to obtain a university degree unless they were willing to give up their status. under those conditions, non-indigenous people created virtually all research done about indigenous people. this concept of control over representation is not a new one, but i want to stress it to the context of the three books being reviewed here, at a time when thousands of indigenous academics, writers, artists, filmmakers, elders, teachers, community leaders, and even politicians have emerged to tell our stories from our point of view. this is inherently important when it comes to idle no more, as each of the texts explains issues with media coverage of indigenous resistance and resurgence. when, for a century or more, we’ve seen non-indigenous people continuously get it wrong, it is important that we share our own stories, and that those stories get heard. this is not—i repeat, firmly, not—to say that non-indigenous people cannot participate in indigenous studies. instead, i am arguing for a careful examination of work on or about indigenous people that includes awareness of the positionality of the author or editors. to explain this further, i want to draw upon ken coates’ description in #idlenomore and the remaking of canada: in fact, idle no more was not meant for non-aboriginal canadians. it was not an attempt to persuade, convince, or direct political change. idle no more, it seemed clear as time went on, was by aboriginal people, for aboriginal people, and about aboriginal people. for the first time in canadian history, nonaboriginal canadians were relegated to the sidelines (xxi). so, if the movement was by us, for us, and about us, who better to look to for an explanation than the “insiders”? i have outlined the concept of positionality here in detail because i think it is one of the major defining factors between the three works in review. the winter we danced is an anthology edited by the kino-nda-niimi collective, (kino-nda-niimi means “we are dancing”1) described as “a group of indigenous writers, artists, editors, curators, and allies…” with the lead editors listed as niigaanwewidam james sinclair (anishinaabe), leanne betasamosake simpson (anishinaabe), tanya kappo (nehiyaw), wanda nanibush (anishinaabe), and hayden king (anishinaabe), who—along with many colleagues, relatives, friends, and organizations—assembled this collection together over the summer and fall of 2013.” (kino-nda-niimi collective, 439). the winter we danced illustrates its “insider” status right from the outset. using the term “we” in the title creates an important union between the editors of the anthology, the writers of each piece, and angela semple review essay, on idle no more       101   the reader. the dedication of the book reads “for those who danced…and are still dancing” (kino-nda-niimi collective, 5). it is clear that this book is intended, in the spirit of idle no more, as an offering to those who have been inspired by the movement. the next few pages of the winter we danced hold a photo by hannah yoon of two women in regalia lighting a sage bundle, and a poem titled “a healing time” by skyblue mary morin. opening with this dedication, photograph, and poem illustrates the centering concept of the anthology: sharing indigenous voices on idle no more through art, poetry, and essays. if you decide to read only one of the books reviewed here, i wholeheartedly hope that you choose the winter we danced. this collection showcases a multitude of indigenous voices sharing their thoughts on the movement as it happened. many of the essays were actually published in various blogs, newspapers, and journals over the course of the winter of 2012/13, and have been republished here in order to provide an overview of idle no more as a whole. as the kino-nda-niimi collective explains “what is striking is that never before have indigenous writers and artists had the capacity to write the movement, alongside the movement taking place taking place, and the result is a diverse collection of voices and perspectives that represent our experience of the movement” (439). here we have insights into the movement created by the participants in real time, as they lived and breathed the growth of idle no more. i want to share another story of my experience in the movement. in the winter of 2012, i had attended and worked at simon fraser university (sfu) for over five years. throughout my time there, i had never once seen a police officer on campus, even when we had more controversial (for example, pro-life) demonstrations, campus security handled these events solely on their own. yet when i stood up to speak at the idle no more event on campus there were two uniformed (and armed) police officers in the audience. it turns out the rcmp were under orders to be present at every idle no more event held in canada. in an internal rcmp report on idle no more, the movement was deemed a “bacteria.”2 when i read those words, just as when i saw armed police at the events i attended, my heart sank. this is exactly the kind of misunderstanding of idle no more that the winter we danced works to combat. instead of violence and anger, our movement aimed to share love of our communities and our mother earth, and, most importantly, to show our hope for the future. the collection captures the spirit that was (and is) present throughout idle no more. essays explore the power of indigenous peoples and our ceremonies, photos celebrate the gatherings that we held to create space for ourselves within the colonial nation state of canada, while poems speak of the intergenerational trauma from which we are healing. the winter we danced is a collection made up of scholarly essays, poetry, photography, and other forms of visual art. the inclusion of more creative works is unique to this collection, among the three books reviewed. while the majority of the book is made up of scholarly essays, it would not be complete without the inclusion of photos that capture the movement (again, in real time), and the artwork from various indigenous artists. the choice to give voice to the artists is an incredibly important one, as it acknowledges something that is inherent within indigenous knowledge: we are all connected. each part transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       102   of the community must necessarily be involved for us to move forward. so, we have essays from well-known academics like pam palmater. we have poems, songs, and personal reflections on the movement from artists including tara williamson, we have visual art from sonny assu alongside a historical timeline from the editors of the collection. all of this illustrates the broad spectrum of the movement that is idle no more. including visual art and poetry alongside the scholarly, historic, and political essays is inherently important because there is so much art that was inspired and created during the movement. to ignore that aspect is to re-define the movement in terms that would miss the point, and again, “get it wrong.” finally, this inclusion of creative works acknowledges a fact that is often explored within indigenous studies; the personal cannot be separated from the academic. rather than strive for some mythical objectivity, we share our own personal experiences in various mediums in the hopes that we can give you the “gift” of a greater understanding of idle no more and indigenous peoples, my own coming in the form of this essay, and of course, the kino-nda-niimi collective with their beautiful contribution that is the winter we danced. just as it was when we gathered over the winter of 2012/13, we are reaching out with our words in the hopes that we can change the future for our children, our grandchildren, and our ancestors who are always with us. one final note about the book, is that all of the royalties from the sale of the book go directly back into the community, specifically being donated to the native youth sexual health network. (kino-nda-niimi collective, 411). the kino-nda-niimi collective’s dedication to community here is shown through action, not simply through the words of the anthology. as i have stressed throughout this essay, examining the positionality of the author in the field of indigenous studies is of great importance. by explicitly sharing your position as an indigenous or non-indigenous person, you are respecting the protocols of our communities, and creating space for indigenous understandings (the practice of introducing yourself and your place in the community) within the academy. while this may not strike a chord with academics who continue to strive for objectivity or lack of bias, i believe that indigenous scholars place less importance on objectivity, and a much greater importance on responsibility and relationality. how you situate yourself within a community is of utmost importance, then, not because of a bias that could make you unreliable, but instead because reliability is based on your relationship to the community you are addressing. part of this responsibility to community comes from a long-standing history of non-indigenous people researching and, in effect, “stealing” from indigenous communities, telling our stories without our control and “spinning” the truth to fit political agendas of assimilation and colonization. again, i’m not arguing that only indigenous scholars should do research about indigenous people. the important part, in my opinion, is that researchers identify themselves and their experiences in relation to the community they are talking about. this gives readers the ability to discern their reliability in the context of information they are sharing, especially when it comes to talking about indigenous communities and issues. ken coates provides us with a perfect example of the kind of self-reflexivity that i angela semple review essay, on idle no more       103   would call responsible and respectful scholarship. at various times throughout his book, #idlenomore, coates identifies himself as non-indigenous, for example: as a non-aboriginal man who watched from the sidelines and did not participate in any of the organized activities or demonstrations associated with idle no more, i am, in many ways, far removed from the centre of the movement. i have, however, worked on aboriginal issues for decades… (xiv). further on, coates makes an important academic distinction: “i do not like being described as an ‘expert’ on aboriginal affairs. i am, instead, always a student, and i have been blessed by the willingness of many aboriginal people to share their stories, experiences, and perspectives with…” (xv). as an indigenous academic myself, i have often experienced difficulties forcing the academy to understand, respect, and value indigenous knowledge. as an example, when our elders speak of their knowledge, they will often say, “i do not know much” or “i know nothing.” this show of humility does not mean that they are not “experts,” or that they have no wealth of knowledge. instead, it illustrates that we are always in a state of learning, as coates so aptly captures in the above quotation. i recommend #idlenomore for two reasons. first and foremost, as a companion to the winter we danced. i believe coates would agree with me on this, as he speaks about the kino-nda-niimi collective anthology as an inspiration for his own work, and he points to needing to listen to indigenous voices to get a better understanding of what is an inherently indigenous movement. as a companion piece, this work gives an extensive overview of the idle no more movement as it follows the progression through coates’ research: “in the pages that follow i will offer my view of what happened, gleaned from hundreds of youtube videos, thousands of facebook postings, and tens of thousands of tweets, newspaper accounts, and other evidence of a movement that refused to follow the rules of both canadian politics and global protest” (xix). if i were to teach a course that included idle no more, i would pair the timeline chapters from this book with some of the more personally involved pieces in the winter we danced. secondly, this is an important book for allies. in telling his own story, as a nonindigenous person growing up in northern canada, coates describes being almost completely unaware of indigenous people and issues. this personal background provides important insight into indigenous/non-indigenous relations in canada. while the winter we danced provides a brief timeline of the idle no more movement, i would look to this to provide more detailed research into how the movement grew, and into specific moments (such as chapter four: “the ottawa distraction and the complicated evolution of idle no more”). coates gives us a detailed look at how the movement formed, and it’s implications in wider canadian society. while his writing style is generally self-reflexive, coates has done his homework. even though i don’t always agree with all of his statements regarding the movement, for example, teresa spence’s request to speak to the governer general, although it may seem “confused” to non-indigenous peoples makes sense when you consider our treaties being signed with the crown, coates work is thorough and respectful. for those looking for chronology as well as a more thorough transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)       104   examination of the “technologies of mass mobilization” (coates, chapter seven), this is a highly useful text. finally, the anthology from yale d. belanger and p. whitney lackenbauer titled blockades or breakthroughs?: aboriginal people confront the canadian state. as i have outlined, acknowledging our place as researchers in indigenous studies is becoming increasingly mainstream, and as far as i can tell, the editors and contributors to this anthology are exclusively non-indigenous. this is an assumption based on a clear lack of positioning throughout the anthology, as well as my googling each contributor. i do not mean to police identity in any way, so i do hope the contributors forgive me if i am mistaken. that being said, my argument centres not on the actual identity of a person (i’ve already discussed coates as a non-indigenous ally), but rather on how they present themselves when discussing indigenous issues. from the outset, blockades or breakthroughs? left me wanting. the cover of this book displays an iconic photograph by ossie michelin taken from a protest in elsipogtog. the photo shows a woman, kneeling before a wall of police officers in combat gear (shields and masks), holding up a single eagle feather. oddly enough, the titled caption states “aboriginal peoples confront the canadian state.” the image jars, as we see, in fact, the canadian state confronting this indigenous woman, peacefully holding up a feather. for those who do not know about elsipogtog, it is another moment in our history where indigenous people took action (peaceful occupation) of their traditional, and in this case unceded territory, and the army was sent in to uphold an injunction for a multi-national fracking company. this, of course, is simplifying the conflict, but i take issue with language such as “confront” or “protest.” indigenous people involved in actions such as blockades, or even idle no more gatherings, are defenders of our relation, the land. as per the goals of the idle no more movement, the canadian state has done very little to honour its treaties with indigenous nations, and has actively and genocidally sought out our destruction as indigenous peoples. in our eyes, then, canada has always been “confronting” or worse yet, “attacking” who we are, and we are simply standing up, celebrating our survivance, and saying we will no longer let these attacks happen. the other issue i take with this anthology is the question itself: “blockades or breakthroughs?” this question removes the agency of indigenous nations by questioning their tactics from an outsider perspective. each contributor examines the “facts” of an individual land dispute in a singular chapter. in this sense, the overarching picture gets missed for a discipline specific (i.e. historical or political science based) approach as western academics discuss the outcomes of various displays of indigenous resistance. the title question here, i argue, misses the point. each of the disputes in question comes out of a colonial history that sought to get rid of us as indigenous people. while contributors to this anthology may feel that they have the right to decide the “success” of a movement, or whether an indigenous blockade succeeded as a “breakthrough,” they do so through a lens that privileges non-indigenous academic concepts over indigenous knowledge and “insider” voices. works like the winter we danced and #idlenomore instead illustrate how everything that we do as indigenous people, including just the simple act of existing in the face of desired cultural genocide, is a angela semple review essay, on idle no more       105   breakthrough. we have already succeeded, and now we are celebrating, educating, and creating together through movements like idle no more. in closing, i’d like to leave you with a bit of the spirit of idle no more, as shared in the opening poem of the winter we danced: we dance to soften the hard lumps that have formed in the heart, the hurt inside3 the idle no more movement allowed us, as indigenous peoples, to come together in ceremony—our jingle dancers leading the way, our sage bundles lit, our drums connecting us to the heart beat of mother earth. for a community that is continuously faced with colonial violence, these moments spent dancing together are vital for our healing, and for rekindling the fires within us for future generations. in ktunaxa, we say hu sukiⱡ k̓uq̓ni. thank you. angela semple, trent university                                                                                                                 1 schwartz, daniel. “idle no more prepares for day of action” cbcnews. 7 oct 2013. web. 25. sept 2015. http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/news/story/1.1913429 2 barrera, jorge. “idle no more movement was like ‘bacteria,’ says internal rcmp document” aptn national news. 7 may 2015. web. 17 september 2015 http://aptn.ca/news/2015/05/07/46350/ 3 from “a healing time” by sky mary morin, the winter we danced, page 9. microsoft word moore.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 77 the next wave of native american writing? jawort, adrian l. ed. off the path: an anthology of 21st century montana american indian writers. billings, mt: off the pass press, 2014. https://www.facebook.com/pages/off-the-pass-press-llc/656769057706973 it’s hard not to be hyperbolic about this book. this new anthology grabs an indigenous literary baton and runs with it in full stride. a new generation of native american writers in montana bursts on the scene. indeed, their short fiction claims to open a new perspective, a chosen new trail in off the path. i won’t presume in this short review to fully map or name what is or is not new about it—that will take later literary historians—but i’ll open with that question. the dark stories in this volume are suffused with reservation blues, and as sherman alexie has explained, such music is a song of mourning that is also a song of celebration. if transmotion shifts things with a certain trickster temper, with flair and force and precision, then this collection is an act of transmotion. it bends, deconstructs, and transcends certain hierarchies and categories. it plays with gender and race and class, even as it pushes on right and wrong, communal and singular, life and death. as it does so it moves the reader into new perceptions—like showing us that ravens are not black but blue. if one mark of a good story is how it breaks into the reader, how it stays with you, how it carves new synapses in your brain and body, then this collection has nine pretty good ones. these short fictions by five young montana writers work beyond merely moving you to tears or frightening you or renewing your sense of understanding. they haul you into material realities of reservation life and thought rare in print yet familiar in indian country. incisive and original voices inhabit a painfully candid set of human stories behind the statistics. the prose lives inside scenes of community pathology and strength, violence, addiction, abuse, insight, and quiet, compelling realization. the significance of this contribution to indigenous publishing is both aesthetic and political. it consciously aims to add another stark chapter in american indian literature, and it does so with convincing force. the new press’s website describes the stories as “beautifully bleak.” editor, publisher, and writer adrian l. jawort launched this series, off the path, with vol. 1 as an anthology of 21st century montana american indian writers. transmotion resonates in the title itself, clearly setting out to open new ground, as well as in the title’s playful near-confusion with the name of the publishing house: off the pass press llc. yes, the website offthepasspressllc.com has a tendency toward campy, self-satirizing hyperbole. jawort has announced the imminent volume ii, adding “and indigenous” to the subtitle and going global: “off the path volume ii continues to forge a new trail to a place your mind has never been. up and coming contemporary writers from the northern plains, the american southwest, hawaii, and on over to new zealand are represented in this powerful book.” in addition, jawort’s noir novel, moonrise falling, is scheduled as well, which he describes as “wild and sure to offend!” in an interview with craig lancaster, jawort says that upcoming volumes in the series include a “female native writer anthology edited by cinnamon spear,” plus a poetry anthology. david l. moore review essay, off the path 78 jawort is confident and convincing about his approach to publication as an independent press, which in the digital era simply cannot be equated with vanity publishing. grassroots publishing might be a better term, or democratic publishing. as jawort explains in an interview, “but why wait for someone else to give us permission to go forward, you know?” a dynamic of transmotion works first in the project itself as a series, which feels like a phenomenon, an event. there is room on these pages for another layer of copy editing to filter out some minor typos, but this is literary activism, legitimated for the bookstore market by its llc business license and its own isbn bar code numbers. “the faster production and lower costs of getting books these days out were certainly huge factors,” he explains, revealing another subversive stratagem of transmotion in this project. “i’ve studied the publishing industry closely for years and there have rapid and major changes lately like ebooks that big publishing houses have been slow to grasp because nothing much changed with the status quo for decades but the names, and they were the proverbial gatekeepers and that was that.... but now it’s easier to merely take all of those middlemen out and speed up the process and do things like hire your own freelance editors or cover designers if need be, et cetera. with diligent work, i was able to get out a high quality, handsomely printed product that does justice to the content within. and although ebooks are free to make, a print book has seemed to be by far the preferred reading medium of montanans at least.” as he goes global with volume ii, it will be interesting to see if ebooks outpace print. the accomplished young writers in this inaugural volume seem as fascinating as the stories themselves, and we can be grateful to jawort as editor and publisher for bringing them to center stage. as jawort mentions of his model, “the late and great montana blackfeet and gros ventre writer james welch” in the book’s introduction, “it was writing about what he knew as an american indian growing up in his ancestral and present day territory that ultimately propelled him to literary eminence.” welch’s realistic, seemingly non-fictional dynamic is intensified and complicated here by seven of the nine pieces being in first-person point of view, the other two in similarly limited third-person. however convincingly autobiographical this prose may seem, it is accomplished fiction rather than autobiography. perhaps this intensely gritty personal voice is the next wave, following on sherman alexie and debra earling and so many others, who themselves followed on the now canonical generation of momaday, vizenor, welch, silko, et al, many of whom are still writing at the height of their powers. indeed, this volume amplifies the kind of exposure of the reservation underbelly that louise erdrich offers recently in her fourteenth novel, the round house, focusing on violence and abuse. when asked by interviewer craig lancaster what had been missing from western writing about reservations, jawort explained, “our own specific voices as told by younger natives themselves. although we natives have, respectfully, sherman alexie and louise erdrich and older writers representing us on the best seller lists, their experiences don’t mirror our own, and i wanted to showcase rising talent... reservations and tribes may be similar in many ways in that we can always relate on some base level, but to note natives as one singular conglomerate and say ‘alexie speaks for all of us!’ is to negate all of those factors like language and cultural beliefs unique to individual tribes, and would be like claiming england and germany and france are all alike just because they’re mostly white people.” jawort suggests more layers of personal, generational, cultural, and national discourse emerging in this prose. the reasoning of his project is not unlike music production on the reservations, where for a generation young artists have been producing digital recordings of hopi hiphop, navajo heavy metal, and lakota blues. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 79 so on the way to the fiction let’s take a look at the five contributors before we discuss their absorbing prose. jawort (northern cheyenne) is a veteran journalist who writes for various indie newspapers as well as for national periodicals such as cowboys & indians, native peoples, and indian country today media network. he offers three of the nine stories here, in addition to a short, openhearted introduction to the volume, inviting readers to “hop on this war pony of life and take a ride to a place you’ve never been.” as editor, jawort addresses insiders also: “for those of you who do know these places and feel these characters from your own personal trials and tribulations, i hope this helps tell your story as well.” he describes how these writers have journeyed away from home and back, and how, “while away from it they experienced revelations about how truly unique their homeland is, as other people were truly fascinated and yearned to hear more about the area they came from.” it’s a generous invitation, though gentler than some of the rough terrain in the pages themselves. i’m reminded of the contrast, noted by many of us who met the late jim welch, between the author’s warm personality and his cold narratives. this is, however another generation. as jawort says, “... this anthology will nonetheless open a portal into that world as told from one living in the 21st century—because it is a unique viewpoint.” cinnamon spear (northern cheyenne) also offers three tales. the notes on contributors explain that as “the only student from lame deer high school to receive an ivy league education, she regularly returns as a motivational speaker for youth.” if anything, her bachelors and masters degrees from dartmouth college give voice in her fiction to even more heart and vulnerability. she writes with a level of honesty that reaches healing proportions. her profile is telling: “as she flew back and forth between poverty and privilege (both states existing on and off the reservation), spear realized that her super-exposed, bi-cultured hybrid state allowed her to teach the world about the northern cheyenne people, and likewise, to teach her people about the world.” if her stories have an instructive edge, it is not didactic, but dramatic and lyrical even as it looks forthrightly through brutality and anguish. luella brien (apsáalooké/crow), a graduate in journalism from the university of montana with numerous writing awards, has worked for reznetnews.org, the ravalli republic, and the billings gazette. now, as the contributors’ notes put it, she “serves her community as a communication arts instructor at little big horn college in crow agency,” one of the three dozen long-standing institutions in the tribal college network nationwide. that professional engagement is a measure of the intimate community engagement that animates hers and the other pieces in this collection. as with some of the others in this anthology, i’ve attended readings by eric bigman brien (apsáalooké/ crow) here in missoula. in a bookstore panel, he wore a shiny grey-green suit and a porkpie hat, and bore a stage presence that certainly lived up to his name. his bio in the “about the authors” section is also worth quoting: “he credits his numerous teachers, grandmother beverly and sister luella as those who have inspired him to write. when he is not writing he moonlights as an elvis impersonator and enjoys reading religious tracts, travel brochures and medical pamphlets. he is fond of carnivals and cosplay, and describes being a member of the crow native american tribe as, ‘swell.’” the irony of that sincerity is its own story. such undercurrents of self-reflective humor and irony, sometimes cryptic, sometimes loud, rise out of the dramatic and traumatic depths in each entry of the collection. david l. moore review essay, off the path 80 sterling holywhitemountain (blackfeet), also a graduate of the university of montana, holds a master of creative writing from the prestigious iowa writers’ workshop and was a james c. mccreight fiction fellow at the university of wisconsin. as the notes explain, “he lived the first part of his life according to the laws of the local basketball religion” on the blackfeet reservation. currently he has returned to um to work toward an additional bachelor’s degree in native american studies. his is the final story in the anthology, and indeed it rounds out the collection thematically, as i will suggest below. jawort’s project to publish a series for contemporary indigenous voices launches here from his montana ground, and these five young writers indeed set a remarkable standard. there’s a magnetic quality to their prose, each charged by polarities of professional stylistic accomplishment, on the one hand, and unique, expressive realism, on the other. montana has a long literary tradition, both native and non-native, and this anthology bodes well for the future of the art. so let’s look at their offerings. cinnamon spear’s first story “god’s plan,” opening the volume like a slap in the face, is an inside look at the morning after another “friday night tornado” of drunken domestic abuse when her mother has again been brutalized. it is a harrowing and perfect emotional map through the eyes of a daughter who understands her father as victimizer and her mother as victim all too well. with quiet dramatic intensity, the traumatized narrator is trying to gauge whether her father, a “blood vein-bulging, raging lunatic from the night before,” might again “wake up being the softspoken nice guy who wants to take the kids fishing.” perhaps because of its realistic emotional poignancy, the narrative conveys not only the numbing “carnage” wreaked upon her mother’s body, not only the twisted parental manipulation of the children, and not only the bitter failure of prayer, but also the girl’s strength to “never ever forgive him for as long as i lived.” her second piece, entitled “sweetheart,” profiles “a young, motivated, drug and alcohol free, ‘goody two shoes’ kind of girl”—who falls “insanely in love” with a “kingpin drug dealer” doing time in federal prison. she keeps justifying her delusional adventure by insisting, “he was a sweetheart.” the story works on several levels, satirizing such an adoring crush with its clichéd language of love under the close watch of prison guards during visiting hours, and marking predictable pitfalls of addictive romance even as it affirms a certain desperate freedom. spear’s third offering, “bloody hands,” probes at the impact of a teenage pregnancy on a family, through the eyes of an older sister off at college. she clearly maps the alienated domestic terrain, “imagining what the space between my sister and mom looked like” and “how far away my dad could set himself emotionally and physically from what was happening.” operating on the fundamental meaning of kinship, the prose segues naturally to family questions of abortion and sacrifice, of how to succeed with and without community support. through it all, there remains a tangible personality in the narrative voice. without any pretense or theatrics, spear validates kinship in both its tragic absence and its understated presence. jawort’s three pieces in the collection take a strangely refreshing and light-hearted, if uncanny, look at the afterlife, murder, and suicide, respectively. his lucid, and contemplative prose brings these topics out of the shadows into a remarkable sense of humanity. without waxing transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 81 metaphysical, he invokes spiritual ethics. in “he doesn’t know he’s dead yet,” the narrator decides that the first anniversary of his brother’s murder is the time to quit drinking with him and to let him know he’s dead. “tonight i think i’ll tell him.” we never know for sure if it’s the narrator or the deceased who is living—or dying—in an illusion. jawort doesn’t overwork the ambiguity. instead, he lets it resonate into unspoken levels, allowing without comment that other people did “seem to notice” the dead brother “—at least some of the time—and even acknowledged him. that at least made me feel not so schizophrenic… i’d have to come straight out with it.” as a kind of extended joke, the effect on the reader can be both heartening and disorienting. the longest piece in the collection, “where custer last slept” by jawort, could become a powerful film script—as could several of these stories. this one is a complex portrait of an interracial group of friends dealing with a vicious bully in their midst, even as it portrays rez party night life on the open prairie, near the little bighorn battlefield. in the aura of that historical context, the voices in this narrative face the most sinister of dilemmas. there are echoes here of welch’s fools crow facing the threat of the evil napikwan, the white hunter who wastes his kill. at the denouement, the narrator explains, “i guess it was just a story that needed to be told—needed to be let out of my blood. however, i see no reason to ‘pretty it up’ by excluding the alcohol and drug references or violence to make myself or anyone else seem noble… i hope this finally puts my restless mind at ease. i hope the ghosts will let me as well as themselves rest now. most of all, i want people to know that this story did happen, and lives on some little reservation town where general george armstrong custer last slept are forever different—for better or worse—because of it.” it’s brilliant realism, beyond “suspension of disbelief” into a realm of restless questioning in the reader’s, if not the writer’s, mind. in “the stereo typer,” jawort takes us inside the agonizingly ironic mind of a homeless suicide: “she was the epitome of the starving artist.” the remarkable drama is entirely internal. having blown her college career, “pretty much decimated her education prospects for the foreseeable future,” by getting “busted for having marijuana on her in an essentially illegal search and seizure” during finals week, “she got out of jail to a cold reception of nothing....” even her alcoholic mom resents her, “‘and now you think you’re better than me? going to some college? you watch now, you won’t amount to nothing!” but she feels guilty for having had to punch her way out of the abuse: "she never felt so good, so liberated, and so sickened at the same time in her life. she’d defended herself finally, but at what cost? no one should ever hit their own mother like that, no matter what they’d done. geezus.” the roller coaster of her thoughts includes an appropriate literary allusion from tennyson’s “the lotus-eaters” and her ominous comment “what a lovely poem to die to.” then she veers to bizarre self-assertion: “most normal girls attempted suicide as lame cries for help and never succeeded, but she wasn’t like them.” strangely, inside the insecure egotism there remains a faith in herself, in the face of such disasters. luella brien’s remarkable “green-eyed regret” starts and ends with seventeen-year-old maddy lying “on the concrete thinking she was cold.... yearning for a blanket... she never made the connection that she was cold because of the excessive amount of blood she’d lost.” the story of a fractured prom night, bracketed neatly in death, is split along a racial divide that turns romance into senseless, even unconscious violence. it’s another measure of endemic brutality in david l. moore review essay, off the path 82 reservation life, even as the prose is punctuated with great lines throughout where we learn to feel maddy’s promise and pain: “as her spirit escaped towards the thin layer of clouds covering the stars, she became the statistic she never wanted to be.” “the tension between cowboys and indians was palpable and maddy never knew which side of the battle she was on.” of her parents: “an indian rodeo queen and a white cowboy? it just didn’t seem like it’d be even plausible. so he left with a bit of guilt, but it was nothing a few beers couldn’t cure.” “madeline jean thompson was born with green eyes and freckles. it was enough to make sydney hate her baby instantly. she hated her so much that she gave her the lanky cowboy’s last name.” of grandma: “she never made her only grandchild feel bad for not being indian enough; her mother did that all the time.” maddy’s family residue grows more convoluted: “but she didn’t want to watch as the meth ate her mother away like she was a walking corpse.... people whispered about her mom’s beauty like it was a ghost that haunted the town.... maddy couldn’t quite figure out how having a baby could ruin someone’s life 17 years later.” and as the plot thickens: “he only drank on the weekends and his parents were still actually married. for any other girl he was a catch. he wrote sad, sad poetry about the creator and owls or coyotes. he wanted to grow up to be a tribal chairman. it made maddy want to gag. but she kept telling herself that he was a catch, and even if she couldn’t stand his self-serving political dreams and stereotypical indian poetry, she stayed with him. she smiled and played the part. besides, the prom was coming up.” the limited possibilities constrict the clear intelligence of the narrative voice. it’s again an affirmation of strength in spite of radical loss. eric brien’s excerpt from a novella, “my brother’s keeper,” is another confident, unique voice. it drives the reader along with lively, well-timed dialogue, mostly an early-morning telephone conversation between the narrator and his estranged, dying brother, but it is punctuated by erudite and ironic asides. “after 30 years i still recognized my brother solomon’s incredibly thick and unnecessary crow accent. what i mean by ‘unnecessary’ is that our mother never actually spoke the crow language, and our white father was unknown to us.... my brother in english, however, always sounded like he was teaching the oral traditions around a campfire for tourists; and it always seemed more well-rehearsed and got even stoically deeper when he thought he was saying something especially profound.” brien’s critique of self-inflicted stereotypes echoes sherman alexie’s sarcasm televised on 60 minutes (in 2001) about indians playing indian for white audiences: “it’s that whole ‘corn pollen, four directions, mother earth, father sky’ indian thing where everybody starts speaking slowly, and their vocabulary shrinks down until they sound like dick and jane. and it’s all about spirituality, and it’s all about politics....” brien’s application of this irony is particularly telling in its brusqueness, because the “annoying” brother’s phone call, after thirty years of resentful silence, announces a pending death. “this was already a long day of questions, and it was just starting.” it’s a compelling and intriguing start to the novella that i want to get my hands on. the final piece in the collection doesn’t answer questions neatly either, but as a coming-of-age story it underlines the challenges and questions and values at work throughout the volume. “the education of little man false star boy” by sterling holywhitemountain combines teenage longing with the persistent trauma of violent death on the reservation, plus poignant feeling and gestures of traditional indigenous respect, and finally with a reminder of what everyone there is really living and dying for: the land and the people on the land. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 83 appropriately, the tale earns its ageless value of indigenous ground through irony, inaugurated in the first line: “that was the summer i got the one and only claim check of my life and spent my own small piece of the sweetgrass hills.” it was also a summer of unrequited love followed by an ample sexual education. on turning 18 in their graduating year, he and his friends receive “settlement money,” each spending it on a new set of wheels—by which too many die in drunken car accidents that first year out of school. “i wrote out the names of the dead on a piece of paper. i counted them up and tried to picture each of their faces. i put checks next to the ones who were related to me. i put an x next to the ones who had died in a claim check car.” as his uncle eventually educates the narrator, “claim checks are settlement money, he said. money to us from the government to make up for not paying for all that land the first time. so think of it like this—every cent you spend is you spending your piece of those hills. that’s what that money is. pretty weird, enit.” as the narrator begins to grasp the sinister history tainting that money, and as he tries “to give my last hundred to my grandpa,” the beloved old man refuses. “i don’t want nothing to do with that money, he said. let me pay the phone bill, then, i said. nope, he said. go pay somebody else’s bills. so i did—i paid my auntie’s phone bill…” at the finale, again with precise absurdity, he gives the remainder away to a mooching cousin, who gestures, “bro, i’ll get you back for it, he said.... don’t worry about it, i said. i don’t want it anymore. he smiled his huge smile. now that’s a good indin, he said.” the words perfectly express the perfect irony. in his political and cultural awakening to the value of the land—in its absence—his rejection of blood money for that land is misinterpreted by his cousin as traditional generosity. like welch’s fools crow who grows beyond his childhood name of white man’s dog, here the narrator has grown from little man to false star boy, a name with—now ironic—sacred resonance in blackfeet mythology. it’s a fine mixture of rugged rez life, told through the eyes of an acute observer and participant, punctuated with nuggets of wisdom and vulnerability. plus humor, as the narrator’s grandfather sums it up: “not much is funny... but you got to laugh anyway.” driven by this energetic momentum of off the pass press—and its whitmanesque selfpromotion (“without missing a stride from the original and beautifully bleak montana-based off the path... volume ii continues to forge a new trail to a place your mind has never been”)—there may be two or three more new publications by the time this review posts. that publishing energy is its own transmotion. it affirms the ancient and post-postmodern, postindian art of tricking boundaries. it navigates the world’s judgments, expectations, and divisions with a clear eye, where personal and political, artistic and historical, new and old, mind and matter, right and wrong, alienation and compassion move. david l. moore, university of montana works cited lancaster, craig. "going off the path with adrian jawort." craig lancaster. n.p., 20 june 2014. web. 29 jan. 2015. microsoft word stoecklein.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 231 david heska wanbli weiden. winter counts. ecco, 2020. 318 pp. isbn: 9780062968944 https://davidweiden.com winter counts by david heska wanbli weiden (sicangu lakota) is nothing short of fantastic. with glowing praise from outlets like the new york times, publishers weekly, los angeles times, and usa today, the novel has caught the attention and won the hearts of the mainstream media. with the plethora of awards, nominations, and accolades it has garnered—such as being named one of the best books of the year by npr, winning the anthony award for best first novel (weiden being the first native american author to do so), and winning the spur awards for best contemporary novel and best first novel—winter counts has also gained esteem in the critical literary sphere. furthermore, the book has a global presence; it has been translated into french and released in france under the title justice indienne and is being translated into multiple other languages. finally, and unsurprisingly, winter counts has also been optioned for film production. the unanimous acclaim this novel has received could fill up this whole review; clearly, weiden’s debut novel is widely regarded as excellent. the plaudits winter counts has received are not only notable because it is weiden’s first novel, but also because it shows promise in the public’s potential to pay more attention to native american literature, and subsequently more attention to issues that impact indian country. because winter counts does such an excellent job of simultaneously entertaining and informing its readers, this mystery novel is far more important than most of us realize. set on the rosebud indian reservation in south dakota, the novel is told from the firstperson perspective of virgil wounded horse, the local vigilante-for-hire who is also the legal guardian of his late sister’s fourteen-year-old son, nathan. virgil’s profession springs from the absence of legal justice in indian country, a critical theme of the novel—a theme that also highlights weiden’s training in law. the opening scene depicts virgil brutally beating up guv yellowhawk, the p.e. teacher at the local school who has been raping and assaulting his students. the school refuses to punish guv because he comes from a prominent family; the tribal police are unable to do anything because the feds prosecute all felonies committed on the reservation, and they typically refuse to investigate anything short of murder. the tangle of corrupt local politics and the jurisdictional nightmare that exists within indian country sit front and center right away. mary stoecklein review of winter counts 232 the opening scene is also particularly interesting when analyzed within the context of the structure of the mystery genre. in many mystery, crime, detective, or thriller novels, the opening depicts a crime scene, a dead body, or a murder—something that relates to the greater puzzle that won’t be pieced together until the very end. in winter counts, however, while the opening scene does depict a crime—virgil beating up guv—guv yellowhawk plays little to no role in the remainder of the book. rather than being an oblique reference to the novel’s main crime, the opening scene of winter counts serves a larger purpose. it introduces the reader to virgil as well as operates as a metaphor for the atrocities that plague indian country today. guv yellowhawk is just one tiny example. the scene represents both the internal contemporary problems and the jurisdictional issues that stem from centuries of unabated settler colonialism. indian country is a place in which a p.e. teacher rapes minors, and people in official positions of power are either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. in this world, virgil is a necessity. the opening scene is also a good example of how weiden takes a no-holds-barred approach when it comes to this novel. a native man is raping and assaulting native children and is not being stopped by the tribal school, while the feds also look the other way. a native vigilante is tasked with beating up the rapist. virgil shares numerous other tragic anecdotes throughout: a man beating up his five-monthspregnant girlfriend so badly that she has a miscarriage and later kills her own cat and commits suicide; a two-year-old left in his car seat over a brutal winter night freezing to death; a man forcing his young niece into sexual activities; tribal council members embezzling money meant to be used to feed the community. there are no rosecolored glasses to be found here. no sugarcoating. i imagine some readers may take issue with these details and argue that weiden’s portrayal of life on rosebud is too bleak, that the number of native people portrayed as criminals is damaging, and that the novel doesn’t do enough to blame settlers. i can see how some readers may have these critiques, but weiden aims to portray both the good and the bad of life on the rosebud reservation. furthermore, weiden underscores the past’s role in creating these conditions, and the novel’s core focus on criminal behavior and the subsequent lack of justice makes a strong call to action regarding serious reform of federal indian law. as an additional rebuttal to those who may take issue with weiden’s depictions, it doesn’t appear that weiden is interested in playing any sort of games with stereotypes—or negative. part of what makes this book such a joy to read is the compilation of characters that populate this storyworld. they are deeply rendered, transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 233 complex, distinct, and simultaneously flawed and admirable – virgil included. the cast of characters weiden creates conveys both the difficulties and the pleasures of life on the rosebud reservation. another example is virgil’s buddy, tommy: an ex-con who reads vine deloria jr., drinks quite a bit, becomes a cook at the tribe’s casino restaurant, and eventually finds romance toward the end of the novel. tommy doesn’t play any vital role in the crime or the investigation, but as a person in virgil’s life, the reader learns much about tommy—which seems like a pretty smart move for future books in the series. another important theme embedded in winter counts is identity. virgil is frequently bullied as a child, especially about him being an iyeska, a mixed-race individual. virgil credits his success as the “local enforcer” to his experiences being bullied: “yeah, i liked the fighting… often i’d forget who it was i was pounding and begin to imagine i was back in junior high school” (93). even though virgil has been able to channel pain from his past into work he believes is for the greater good, he still struggles with his identity. for example, the reader learns that when virgil’s father passed away, virgil had been in the woods fasting and praying, hoping to find ways to help his father’s pancreatic cancer prognosis. when he returns to discover that his father died while he was gone, he loses all faith in traditional lakota practices: “i knew then that native traditions—the ceremonies, prayers, teachings—were horseshit” (17). however, as virgil deals with the disappearance of his nephew, he is tested in ways he couldn’t have imagined, and his relationship with traditional lakota beliefs and practices evolves. an additional layer that helps winter counts shine is its influence from native writer louis owens. in “a conversation with david heska wanbli weiden,” which is included in the paperback edition, the author states that winter counts “contains hidden tributes to a native author and fairly well-known crime writer.” later in the conversation, weiden is less oblique and explains that he was “heavily influenced by the native crime writer louis owens, who wrote some terrific indigenous crime novels in the 1990s.” while i did not locate all of the easter egg references to owens’s work in winter counts, i couldn’t help but observe the likeness in writing style. owens’s crime novels utilize taut, sparse, and no-nonsense prose. weiden takes that style and kicks it up a notch, making for an addicting and fast-paced read. in addition, i see a lot of similarities between virgil and cole mccurtain—the mixedblood protagonist of the sharpest sight and bone game—particularly with regard to identity. both characters wish to embrace the full spectrum of their identities, but struggle to figure out how. overarching themes about history and place are also ways in which winter counts makes nods to owens’s work. finally, in winter counts, as in owens’s novels, the mary stoecklein review of winter counts 234 crimes at hand are only a small part of the much bigger criminal story of settler colonialism. the only minor critique i have of winter counts revolves around some of the characterizations, like those of virgil. no doubt he is a nuanced and thoughtfully molded character, but some basic details seem to be missing. for example, it is difficult to determine virgil’s age. the reader knows he’s been out of high school for at least a few years, and since he’s raising his fourteen-year-old-nephew, i guesstimated that virgil was somewhere in his mid-thirties or early forties. however, this seemed a bit old, at least to me, since virgil’s girlfriend marie (who is his classmate and thus his same age) is applying to medical schools. while it’s certainly not unrealistic to apply to medical school in your mid-thirties, this was an aspect of the book i wish had been cleared up. how old is virgil? additionally, the descriptions of characters’ appearances are sparse, especially that of virgil. the physicality that defines virgil’s character—as a vigilante beating up “bad guys”—suggests that he is an imposing, strong man, but the lack of specific descriptions make picturing him difficult. overall, weiden expertly melds elements from the mystery genre with native american literature to tell a fast-paced and distinctly addicting story. as a first-in-a-series novel, winter counts leaves readers begging for more with its taut prose, distinct storyworld, nuanced characters, and the seamless inclusion of lakota cultural details. furthermore, the unanimous praise that winter counts has received suggests that this novel is a much bigger story than simply an entertaining read about virgil investigating a supposed heroin ring on the reservation. winter counts and its influence have the potential to make notable changes on the ground in indian country. mary stoecklein, pima community college transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 191 toni jensen. carry: a memoir of survival on stolen land. ballantine books, 2020. 304 pp. isbn: 9781984821188. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608247/carry-by-toni-jensen/ carry: a memoir of survival on stolen land by toni jensen is a poetic and creative memoir about a present-day métis woman’s life as she moves across the us for her academic pursuits. jensen uncovers historical place-based revelations to show that these mundane places are not always what they seem, nor are they as simple as the words on a sign describe. in fact, these places carry a broken story that, if truly confronted by the visitors and inhabitants of these places, they would undoubtedly awaken to the historical and continued violence across the us. jensen shows how people living in the same place do not all share the same story. she exposes how indigenous stories have largely been erased in an effort to favor a more desirable story of american exceptionalism. she repeats the theme of uncovering the hidden and unspoken stories of violence against indigenous peoples as she takes readers along her journey in academia, as both student and teacher, across several locations during her undergraduate and eventually her completed phd studies, over years of travel for her studies and employment. jensen’s constant connection to place-based violence is interpreted through her love for words and language. she references and grounds her understanding in language by noting merriam-webster’s collegiate dictionary throughout the text. jensen defines the most seemingly trivial of words and phrases, only later to reveal the connections to a more complicated historical interpretation that helps to explain the present expressions of violence in society. jensen shows this historical messiness in the over-simplification of a place by pulling multiple stories together to tell the history and story of a place. the complicated and parallel histories of place tied together through violence is part of jensen’s mission while telling her family and personal story, though with less focus on the family. while some family details are shared, this is not central to her memoir. instead, it is her pursuits in academia that bring the reader to most locations. at one point, jensen locates herself at the university of arkansas and describes a slew of interwoven events ranging from the legal right for people to carry a handgun on campus to an overall critique of the american campus as having inherent contributions to the stolen land of indigenous peoples. jensen revisits many institutions of higher education https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608247/carry-by-toni-jensen/ deanne grant review of carry 192 which formed her academic career, with the point of showcasing their complicities in the land grab. as she jumps from location to location in each chapter, jensen seeks to understand the chaos of local violence that usually manifests in omnipresent awareness. these perceptions of violence range from the quietly maintained violent tendencies within individuals to the ghastly obsession with maintaining intimacy with violence. one such example is in the form of a placard on the door notifying motel guests they are sleeping in the exact room timothy mcveigh stayed in while in kingman, arizona. of course, jensen knows timothy mcveigh’s notoriety and involvement in what is often referred to as the worst domestic act of terrorism in us history. yet she easily finds examples, such as the greenwood massacre and the 8,700-17,000 indigenous peoples who died during the removal era, as comparable acts of domestic terrorism in the same place now called oklahoma. the hypocrisy of memorializing violence is revealed with mcveigh’s name appearing like a miniature hollywood walk of fame with gold stars surrounding the placard outside the motel room that jensen finds herself in at one point. her cross-country travels present new opportunities for making sense of the local historical violence that has occurred. these historical references to violence also serve as a warning of continued, unexpected violence at the same place due to historical amnesia. she does this as she pursues teaching as a career and eventually earns a phd while periodically referencing her family, friends, and children who make up her personal world and upbringing. her cross-country academic pursuits make it hard to feel grounded in the story, given the quick tendency to pack-up and move on very soon. jensen engages the misleading simplicity of us violence through her love of language. she details the passive language that exists within the official records on the indian removal act, which indicate indigenous peoples “were removed” from their homelands. she notes that the passive phrasing of “were removed” gives no semblance of coercion or violent action from soldiers’ bayonets or the presence of thousands of armed us soldiers (59). violence seems inherent to most interactions across her cross-country experience. at times, the thread to violence is rooted in land, those who exploit it for economic gain and those who have indigenous ties to it. her memoir is less of an indigenous-centered storytelling and more of a person observing layered violence within their local communities while also being of indigenous ancestry; this third point allows for a more nuanced consideration of how violence is embedded within places. she avoids a linear timeline and allows each of the fifteen transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 193 chapters to transport the reader to a new time and place, avoiding a sequential order altogether. instead, place and relevant historical violence to that particular place are the focus of each chapter. jensen covers many types of violence, including domestic violence, dating violence, gun violence, campus violence, colonial violence, and domestic terrorism, all while revealing the american hypocrisy of simplistic understandings to violence. for example, the overly simplistic us interpretations of race classify her as white, while her nephew is read as black, when neither of them are just that. she is keenly aware of the ongoing erasure of their indigenous identities occurring simultaneously with a phenotypical understanding of them both as either white or black, which is another act of violence. she maintains the pulse of present-day violence with current references to covid-19 and george floyd’s murder through the media and the public’s obsession with mass shootings and our subsequent comfort with them (257). jensen seeks to disrupt this comfort through sense-making and local ties that explain the inherent violence of life in the us. the intended audience would be interested in making sense of the fundamental presence of violence across the us through the life story of a métis woman who possesses a knack for drawing out meaning in the mundane normalcy and regularity of us violence. this is a quick read with references to violence that leave a reader to contemplate their own relationship to local violence in a more nuanced way. deanne grant, fort lewis college microsoft word leblanc.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   107   fortunate eagle, adam. scalping columbus and other damn indian stories: truths, halftruths, and outright lies. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2014. 216pp. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/1827/scalping%20columbus%20and%20othe r%20damn%20indian%20stories in the opening acknowledgements of his fourth book, adam fortunate eagle (red lake chippewa) gives thanks to his editor for transcribing his handwritten stories and arranging them into the loosely chronological order in which they are presented. clearly it was no easy task—the collection includes stories about outhouses, “tp,” and flatulence alongside those that recount the indian occupation of alcatraz, the “discovery” of italy, and an audience with the pope. five short paragraphs of thank-yous introduce the threads that hold the stories together—fortunate eagle’s american indian identity, his “shoshone wife, bobbie,” his distinctive narrative voice, and his appreciation for “one of mankind’s oldest oral art forms: bullshit” (xi). scalping columbus and other damn indian stories: truths, half-truths, and outright lies is a celebration of storytelling and stories—“bullshit” and not. through the telling of stories, fortunate eagle shares the story of his life journey—in bits and pieces. not all of the 50 “stories” (including front and back matter) are autobiographical, but the fabrications and remembered jokes that he chooses to share tell us as much about him as the accounts of his numerous escapades as a child, businessman, social activist, ceremonial dancer, artist, and more. the appendix, entitled “percentage of bullshit per story,” ostensibly provides a quantitative guide to each chapter’s veracity, but beware—“[t]hese tales test not only the literary creativity of the author but also the gullibility of the reader” (xv). at 84 years of age, fortunate eagle has led a full life, and it is a life that he is proud to share. while some readers might find him a bit too proud of his own accomplishments, none could argue that he’s afraid to say what’s on his mind. the humorous tone set by the title and author’s introductory comments is sustained, often in almost slapstick fashion, throughout the book. but it would be a mistake to pass judgment based only on his frequent references to the passing of bodily byproducts—fortunate eagle’s sense of humor extends beyond the outhouse. the “scalping columbus” chapter expands on the version of a true story told by fortunate eagle in heart of the rock: the indian invasion of alcatraz (53– 4), making the 1968 “scalping” of a local (san francisco) italian american part of an international saga that includes a 1973 trip to the vatican wearing his “beaded buckskin shirt and all the trimmings, along with human hair scalp locks” (43). the story documents fortunate eagle’s ironic affront to colonization and its devastating effects. although his showmanship and the enjoyment with which he accepts being cast as an ambassador for all native americans are at times disconcerting because they promote stereotypical portrayals of indians, his antics can be seen as acts of survivance. by generating international attention to specific concerns of contemporary native americans—by living these stories and then by telling them over and over again—he “creates a sense of native presence over absence, nihility, and victimry” (vizenor 1). in “tell me another damn indian story, grandpa,” like other funny stories in the collection, native presence, culture, and family are central to the narrative. driving through montana with his wife and granddaughters, fortunate eagle makes it a point to stop at “the famous crow fair” for a “reunion with [his] adopted crow family, the old elks” (124). he explains: “my wife, bobbie, and i have always believed it is important to immerse our children and grandchildren in michael leblanc review of scalping columbus   108   the indian ways and traditions. perhaps they can pass that knowledge down to future generations” (124). as the trip continues, he passes the time by telling “indian stories and legends” for his granddaughter mahnee, “who demonstrated a genuine interest in her tribal past” (125). fortunate eagle highlights the importance of family and kinship while he demonstrates the power of stories to entertain and teach. in this context he sets up the punch line of the story— which is about picking up an odiferous hitchhiker and dropping her off as quickly as possible. when the excitement of the encounter with the hitchhiker subsides and mahnee requests “another damn indian story,” her grandpa replies, “you just experienced one, my dear” (126). by characterizing the story of their lived experience as another of the “indian stories and legends” that pass on tribal knowledge and traditions, fortunate eagle not only asserts native presence, but he also challenges us to think about what makes “indian stories” indian. if fortunate eagle’s hitchhiker story is an indian story, does that mean that all of his silly anecdotes are indian stories, too? perhaps. this is a question that i have been asking myself since i picked up the book and recognized the chapter “tp” as a story that my father (a white, frenchcanadian american) told me as a child. does fortunate eagle’s telling the tale of the “chief” who drowns “in his own tea pee” make it an indian story? (10) or does his telling accentuate the ridiculous ways in which many stories about indians fail to acknowledge indian presence—the ways in which such stories continue to exercise the kind of racism that often gets trivialized by those who tell them? or is it simply a bad joke, a childish pun? it’s difficult to tell what fortunate eagle thinks—because the fabricated “bs” stories and the “100% true” stories are told in the same voice and style, and there is no context provided to explain where many of the stories come from or when they were first heard. the answers to these questions are left for readers to contemplate—which is clearly the intention of the author, who asks us directly in the preface, “don’t you agree that bullshit is the fertilizer of the mind?” (xv). the nature of the stories in scalping columbus and other damn indian stories—short, standalone, and straightforward—makes it a book that can be read from cover to cover or one story at a time. reading it from start to finish, however, enables us to more fully understand its most serious offering, the epistolary chapter “peace and friendship.” in this letter fortunate eagle remembers the stages of his long life—the stories of his life—and he recognizes in those stories the process of “trying to find meaning through his work and his being in the indian past and the indian present” (162). adam fortunate eagle’s adventures as a self-proclaimed “contrary warrior” (xiii, 39) and his willingness to play the american indian certainly invite controversy, but it’s the kind of controversy that, like his bullshit, promotes thinking critically about how we fit into the world around us. michael leblanc, university of massachusetts boston works cited fortunate eagle, adam. heart of the rock: the indian invasion of alcatraz. norman: u of oklahoma p, 2002. print. vizenor, gerald. “aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice.” survivance: narratives of native presence. ed. gerald vizenor. lincoln: u of nebraska p, 2008. 1 23. print. microsoft word 143-768-2-ce.doc transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     63   the unmissable: transmotion in native stories and literature gerald vizenor the presence of natural motion and transmotion is obvious in native stories, but the sense of motion is not always evident in literature. the migration of birds, traces of the seasons, shadows in the snow, and tropes of totemic animal and bird are unmissable, easy gestures of motion in stories and literature. yet the erudite taxonomies and literary practices of commercial literature weigh the obvious sense of natural motion, and empire names and doctrines become at times more significant than the irony and tropes of literary natural motion. the learned botanical name cypripedium acaule, for instance, inadvertently denatures the exquisite poetic blush of a moccasin flower in the moist shadows, and other more common names and comparative similes lessen the motion of images, such as the heavy breath of bears, the marvelous shimmer of early morning dew, twilight favors on a spider web, ravens tease of hunters in camouflage, stray shadows lean over the fence, or the perfect dive of a water ouzel in a mountain stream. the most memorable native stories are ironic, and the scenes of natural motion are sometimes parodies. native ceremonial clowns, cultural and communal teases are ironic because the original sources are not rubric sacraments, and never certain, and the spirit, imagination, and hearsay of the moment are never the same in the continuous imaginative recount of stories. likewise the printed scenes in literature are ironic by the selection of names and teaser words. the definitions of words are inconclusive, no more precise that tropes, and the connotations of words are deferred to yet another situation and literary act of writers and readers. the literary scenes and notions are shelved in libraries, and wait for readers to hear the natural motion in the books. the means of natural motion are easily grasped in the singular tropes and gestures of innovative literature, but the pleasures of ironic motion are hardly perceived in ordinary comparative similes, such as, walks like a duck, eats like a dog, or dumb as a donkey. comparative similes are facile, and cynical similes sideline the spontaneous imagination and tropes of natural motion. gerald vizenor “the unmissable”       64 “overhanging clouds, echoing my words, with a pleasing sound, across the earth, everywhere, making my voice heard,” and, “the first to come, epithet among the birds, bringing the rain, crow is my name,” are ironic dream songs and tropes of natural motion by a nineteenth century native anishinaabe (densmore 15). kobayashi issa, the generous haiku poet of eighteenth century japan, created a poignant image about the death of his young daughter, “the world of dew, is the world of dew, and yet. . . and yet” (issa 103-4). the imagistic scene creates a natural sense of motion, a world of dew, and at the same time a trope of memory and impermanence. the scene is elusive and in motion, not a descriptive contrast or closure. stephen addiss in the art of haiku provided a rather reductive interpretation that the image “captures the moment when sincere religious understanding meets the deepest feeling of the heart.” the natural motion of that concise image of sorrow and a world of dew was not a captured scene, instead the scene continues as a visionary motion of memory (addiss 260). literature is a tricky voice of the past, and customarily omniscient in style. native stories tease a sense of presence, an ironic presence, and create an elusive consciousness that is more than the mere simulations of similitude and sincerity, or the editorial investments of culture, intrigue, adventure, and petitions of conceited reality in commercial narratives. native stories are not priestly liturgies. the stories of creation and the marvelous scenes of trickster transmotion and transformation are related in motion and visual memory without recitations, storyline or plot resolutions, shibboleths of character development, or the denouement of commercial literature. consider, for instance, the concept of transmotion and the literary perception of other words with the trans prefix such as transcendentalism, the spiritual sense of natural motion and cultural survivance, or notions of transpacific, transhistorical, transracial, transsexual, and the common practice of transactions. the trans prefix initiates a sense of action or change, a literary and unitary motion, and a wider concept of the motion in images and words. the literary inspiration and spirited totemic portrayals of birds, animals, ocean waves, and whales are transmotion, more than mere denotation, or simile. scenes of transmotion are not syntactical clauses or closure, not simulations, and not an outline of absence, of want or scarcity of motion and presence. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     65   the stories of native survivance are instances of natural motion, and transmotion, a visionary resistance to cultural dominance, the practices of monotheism, policies of federal reservations, and the heavy loads of industrial conversions. regrettably commercial literature about natives has often been structured with the familiar themes of classical, heroic tragedy, and modern victimry, but scarcely classical irony or comedy. native stories, however, are imagined and related with a sense of natural motion and survivance, not cultural denouement and victimry. the publishers of the most saleable themes of romantic victimry have obligated many native storiers and writers to convert a native sense of survivance to absence and victimry, including the popular black elk speaks by john neihardt, and unfortunately the surrounded by d’arcy mcnickle. the discussion of transmotion, a spirited and visionary sense of natural motion, has evolved in my critical studies as an original aesthetic theory to interpret and compare the modes, distinctions, situations, and the traces of motion in sacred objects, stories, art, and literature. native literary artists, those who pose in the emotive shadows of natural motion and totemic cultures, are clearly obligated, in my view, to create innovative narratives and poetic scenes that tease and reveal the fusions of native ethos, transmotion, and stories of survivance. commercial editorial dominance, and crave of cultural victimry, must be outwitted, ridiculed, and controverted in the chance and future of native stories and innovative literature. native transmotion is directly related to the ordinary practices of survivance, a visionary resistance and sense of natural motion over separatism, literary denouement, and cultural victimry. survivance and transmotion are original critical philosophies and ethical convictions derived from personal experiences of ceremonies, critical examination of sacred objects in museums, and relative observations of natural motion and totemic associations in native art, stories, and literature. leslie silko encircles the reader with mythic witches, ironic creation stories, and a sense of natural motion in her novel ceremony. “that is the trickery of the witchcraft,” said the old man. “they want us to believe all evil resides with white people. they will look no further to see what is really happening. they want us to separate ourselves from white people, to be ignorant and helpless as we watch our own destruction. but white people are only tools that the witchery manipulates; and i tell you, we can deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. gerald vizenor “the unmissable”       66 we can because we invented white people; it was indian witchery that made white people in the first place” (silko 132-3). the witches contrived a customary binary structure of race, a mythic colorant of cultural separation. the literary witchery is ironic, of course, a lively trace of transmotion in a contemporary novel. toni jensen creates a sense of transmotion and native survivance in “at the powwow hotel,” a short story published in from the hill. the story starts with the natural motion and visionary presence of corn. “when the cornfield arrived, i was standing in our hotel’s kitchen, starting lester’s birthday cake. it was raining outside, foggy too, for the sixth day in a row, and there was flour all over my blue jeans. . . . we live in west texas on a three-hundred-acre cotton farm at the edge of blanco canyon. we own the blanco canyon hotel, all twelve rooms, though everybody in town calls it the powwow hotel on account of lester and me being indian” (jensen 55-7). other natives arrived at the powwow hotel that day and the conversations continued with gestures to the miraculous arrival of corn, a field of corn. the navajos “talked about why the corn had skipped them, had set its course east of their tribes.” “but tonight,” the narrator declares, “there was the sound of feet, moving counterclockwise, the smell of coffee and bread and the raw, greenness of the field. and tonight, there were my legs, still at first, but surprising me by doing anything at all, and then there i was, part of it, moving.” jensen creates marvelous scenes of natural motion, corn, greenery, and cultural survivance. the arrival of the corn is a crucial and memorable scene of totemic and visionary transmotion at the powwow hotel (jensen 67). “i have no state but my visionary portrayals in art, no native nation but a sensual, totemic landscape of memories, and the unreserved resistance of dominance and nostalgia,” declared dogroy beaulieu, the native artist and narrator of my recent novel shrouds of white earth. “does anyone ever experience a native state, a secure place of stories, solace, and sentiments that never torment the heart and memories? yes, of course, my friend, you create marvelous literary scenes and stories of the reservation, and yet your characters are always in flight from the mundane notions of reality. you write stories not to escape, but to evade the tiresome politics of native victimry. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     67   “i create traces of totemic creatures, paint visionary characters in magical flight, native scenes in the bright colors of survivance, and you create the same scenes by the tease of words and irony” (vizenor, shrouds 3; 5-6). dogroy relates that the name beaulieu, his surname, is a visionary place, and an actual township on the white earth reservation. he creates shrouds of animals and birds, the traces and shadows of natural motion. “the books have voices. i hear them in the library,” writes diane glancy in the first scene of native poetic motion in designs of the night sky. “i know the voices are from the books. yet i know the old stories do not like books. . . . i hear the books. not with my ears, but in my imagination. maybe the voices camp in the library because the written words hold them there. maybe they are captives with no place to go” (glancy 5). n. scott momaday, the novelist, points out in the way to rainy mountain that his grandmother “lived out her long life in the shadow of rainy mountain, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood.” aho, his grandmother, told stories about the great native migration, a visual journey that continued for some five hundred years. “i wanted to see in reality what she had seem more perfectly in the mind’s eye” (momaday 7).1 the stories of that memorable native migration are inadvertent sources of the theory of transmotion, or visionary motion, clearly a trace and presence of native continental liberty. yes, transmotion, the presence of visionary narrative voices and stories are overheard at universities, libraries, in the book, and with the same sense of natural motion in nature. many readers are creative, truly inspired by literary scenes, and enriched by a sense of presence with native voices on great migrations, and the visionary motion of birds and animals. the most memorable stories are in natural motion, but not, of course, with the literary construction of denouement and victimry, or the commercial guidance that writers must turn visionary scenes and natural motion into mere descriptive characters with ideologies and wearisome representations of motivation and development. native trickster stories start with motion, visionary transmotion, but not the closure of descriptive nominations. trickster was going along, and the listener or reader can easily sense and imagine the motion and the visionary transmotion of the story. some listeners and readers have lost the capacity to appreciate the transmutations of time, gender, water, myths, ironic scenes, and the many mutations of trickster figures by gesture, word, imagination, and tricky maneuvers. these trickster gestures create a sense of visionary motion. the stories of native creation and trickster gerald vizenor “the unmissable”       68 scenes were seldom told in the same way, and visionary characters must elude simulations, description, causation, denouement, and cultural victimry. these commercial nominations, along with facile comparative similes, would never inspire or provide a native sense of visionary presence and survivance. “call me ishmael,” an ironic biblical name, and the first sentence of the novel moby-dick by herman melville, is one of many first person voices that are overheard in libraries, trickster stories, and in literary adventures. melville creates a truly memorable sailor of natural motion and spectacular survivance, and pursues the ironic visionary and moral transcendence of a crippled sea warrior and transmotion of a mighty white whale. ishmael is an everlasting trope and trouble of natural motion and transcendence, and the very tease of reality and mortality. “but this deepest fear is not death; he fears that there is nothing beyond our shell of existence; there is no ideal reality beyond the material; there is nothing,” observed john bryant in “moby-dick as revolution.” nothingness is a paradox, of course, but nothingness is a “universal constant with no higher reality” (bryant 73). herman melville is a master of the tropes of motion, and he creates an essential sense of visionary motion, or transmotion in almost every scene of moby-dick, but his mastery and perceptions of natural motion are more direct and descriptive in the chapter "the tail." he is noticeably more representative than visionary, and describes five specific motions of the tail. the fifth motion is "the ordinary floating posture" (melville 373). melville's descriptions of the motions of the tail are knowing and necessary, and yet he declares, "the more i consider this mighty tail, the more do i deplore my inability to express it. at times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well grace the hand of many, remain wholly inexplicable." the motion of the tails may be "mystical gestures." he concludes the chapter with references to signs and symbols, an ironic conversation "with the world" (374). the cetology and whale tail discourse in this chapter mimic the creative transmotion or the visionary scenes of motion in the novel moby-dick. ishmael related in the first scene of moby-dick that when he was sidetracked on a dreary day he paused at “coffin warehouses” and then “quietly took to the ship. there is nothing surprising in this,” and “almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me” (3). transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     69   that portrayal of sentiments of the ocean is an obvious invitation to stories of natural motion, and no matter the tease or chance of a whaler, the crease, thrust, and surge of waves, the natural motion of the sea always provides a sublime transcendence of sorrow, cultural closure, and victimry. “so ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world,” ishmael declared, “that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical or otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at moby dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more deplorable, a hideous and intolerable allegory” (204-5). the reference to an “intolerable allegory” is a literary gesture that respects the natural motion of the great whale, and not the mere parable or moral stories that reveal an obscure and covert sense of absence and literary closure. moby dick is a trope of transmotion, and the menace of the mighty white whale outmaneuvers the similes of literary whalers and the missionaries of enlightenment. natural motion and transmotion are portrayed in the scenes of the ocean, and sailors in search of whales. moby dick, the great white whale, however, is an obscure presence in the novel, and the outcome is not an unbearable or mere nihilistic allegory of vengeance or victimry. natural motion is a heartbeat, ravens on the wing, the rise of thunderclouds and the mysterious weight of whales. transmotion is the visionary or creative perceptions of the seasons and the visual scenes of motion in art and literature. the literary portrayal and tropes of transmotion are actual and visual images across, beyond, on the other side, or in another place, and with an ironic and visionary sense of presence. the portrayal of motion is not a simulation of absence, but rather a creative literary image of motion and presence. ishmael related that he would paint “without a canvas something like the true form of the whale,” and announced that it was time to prove that some pictures of whales were wrong. it may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will be found among the oldest” sculptures of the hindus, egyptians, and grecians (261-2). “the french are the lads for painting action,” ishmael declared, and the “natural aptitude of the french for seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be particularly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. with not one tenth of england’s experience in the fishery, and not the thousandths part of that of the americans, they have gerald vizenor “the unmissable”       70 nevertheless furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt.” the french portrayed scenes of whales with a visionary sense that conveyed transmotion and the surge of the ocean. the “english and american whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid” (268). the portrayals of whales that ishmael so admired were in natural motion, a visionary image that transcended the closure of a “mechanical outline” and created a sense of the presence of whales. he favored the painterly show of transmotion, the surge of the ocean, and likewise revealed the same sense of motion in narratives. moby dick, the great white whale, is a spectacular portrayal of literary transmotion, a spirited and mysterious image of natural motion in the ocean, in the book, and in the imagination of the reader. “one often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,” declared ishmael. “how then, with me, writing of this leviathan?” the “mere act of penning my thoughts of this leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs” (melville 447-448). rightly so, the great portrayals of whales are in natural motion, the transmotion and “panoramas” of the universe. likewise the notable diction of the narrator and his astute manner and maneuvers of words created images of the natural motion of science, ideologies, and history. ishmael created a figurative sweep of humans and whales, and a distinct sense of motion in a narrative of irony and chance. moby-dick is a “mediation on democracy” declared stephen zelnick in “moby-dick: the republic at sea.” consider the scenes of equality in the novel, “the exalted imagery of common workmen. . . .” ishmael “tells us more about the embattled american experience in liberty and democracy than most have chosen to recognize” (zelnick 691; 703). transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     71   melville created contentious characters in natural motion, and the scenes of visionary transmotion, political ideologies, moral transcendence, and vengeance were carried out in the spectacular pursuit of the mysterious white whale. john bryant asserted in “moby-dick as revolution” that the novel “depicts the struggle to understand the relation between the promise of transcendental thought and its abnegating opposite, the fear of nothingness.” moby-dick, “at first glance. . . seems a revolution almost exclusively in its aesthetic modernity. the long, rhythmic lines, the prose poetry, the mixture of genres and multiplicity of voices, the experiments in point of view, symbolism, and psychology,” however, the “novel’s radical politics seem strangely submerged. surely, we can extract from the novel’s veil of allegory a prophetic warning that the american ship of state is heading toward the disaster of civil war” (70). the narrative structure, chase of whales, luminous waves, and figurative portrayals of the ocean, create a literary sense of natural motion. “ishmael knows the transcendental problem. he begins in crisis, seeing death,” but “his deepest fear is not death; he fears that there is nothing beyond our shell of existence” and the absence of a reality. “ishmael takes to sea democratically to confront his fear of nothingness, just as ahab takes to seas autocratically to kill that fear in the form of the white whale” (bryant 72). the whale by herman melville was first published in london in 1851, and later in the same year moby-dick was published in new york. melville, once a neglected author, was not widely recognized or celebrated as a literary artist until the end of the first world war. the secure cultural representations of the enlightenment were in ruins at the time, and the breakdown of rational structures and institutions turned many young survivors into extremists, creative storiers, and innovative artists. moby-dick was discovered in the context of the ruins of empires, rational governance, and the rise of modern abstract art at the end of the first world war. melville created a wild whaler, and a direct, expressive narrator of survivance. ishmael was a sailor portrayed in natural motion, a storier of great ocean waves and exotic scenes of liberty. ishmael was a sailor of resistance, inspired by chance and transcendence, and he became the sole survivor and storier of the mighty whale moby dick, the demise of the tormented and crippled captain ahab, and the absolute visionary destruction of the whaleship pequod. natural motion and the literature of survivance create a vital and astute sense of presence over absence in stories, art, and literature. “the nature of survivance creates a sense of narrative gerald vizenor “the unmissable”       72 resistance to absence, literary tragedy, nihility, and victimry. native survivance is an active sense of presence over historical absence” (vizenor, native liberty 1; 162). herman melville clearly conveyed the natural motion of sailors and the sea, and he portrayed the tease, trouble and havoc of whalers. ishmael created a sense of presence and situations of transmotion with tropes, diction, character expressions, irony, and comparative scenes. consider these selected scenes of natural and visionary motion from various chapters of moby-dick. but queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition state—neither caterpillar nor butterfly. he was enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner. (29-30) queequeg is seen as a creature in “transition,” or natural motion, change, and the evolution of an incredible and memorable character of literature. thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from god. (114) the description of the action is direct, the trope wields and drives, and the visionary motion is “democratic dignity.” god surely “radiates” a constant course of eternal splendor and the steady oceanic ironies of whalers. while their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a report. (150) this ironic scene favors the natural chewing sounds of harpooneers over the manners of the masters at sea on the pequod. the sperm whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and reliable uniformity. and thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other tribes of his genus. (214) the sperm whale is distinctive and the natural motion of breath from a blowhole is a reliable count. melville frequently creates scenes of motion with precise and singular similes, or with comparative images that are common, such as “blows as a clock ticks.” now, sometimes, in the japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of effulgences,” melville writes in moby-dick. “that unblinkingly vivid japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass. the sky looks lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of god’s throne. (487) melville created some scenes with ornate words, such as “freshets of transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     73   effulgences” and “unblinkingly” to enhance the image of motion, or visionary transmotion of the sun and sea near japan. upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and some few splintered plans, of what had once been a whaleboat; but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse. (526) consider the words “shattered” and “splintered” to recount the whaleboat. these two words create a concise scene of breaking that lingers as an image and then the narrator turns to a comparative phrase, “as plainly as you see,” a verbal gesture to create a new trope, and a sense of motion in the point of view, the peeled and “bleaching skeleton of a horse.” and thus, through the serene tranquilities of the tropical sea, among waves whose handclapping were suspended by exceeding rapture, moby dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. (534-35) moby dick was a presence in natural motion, and the clapping of waves on a serene tropical sea was “suspended” by “rapture.” the image creates a crucial convergence of natural motion, and the sense of visionary transmotion continues in memory. moby dick swam swiftly round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. . . . meanwhile ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,--though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst. (537) moby dick was in natural motion and the narrator portrays the scene with a direct, ordinary, poetic, and rhythmic phrase, “round and round the wrecked crew.” the first image is common, “round and round,” and then the water churns in a vengeful scene. so suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and stood there gradually fading and fading away from the first sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale. (544-45) the “blue plains of the sea” is a magical poetic scene in the natural motion of memory. bluer yet against the sky, and then in visionary transmotion “glittered and glared like a glacier” and faded away “to a dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.” gerald vizenor “the unmissable”       74 suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; they quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. . . . shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back into the deep. crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale. (555) melville once again creates the natural motion of the ocean. ishmael the narrator was a master of these images, and mainly when he observes the uncertainty of an expansive sea slowly swelling in “broad circles.” the poetic images and visionary transmotion of this scene are magnificent, the shrouds and veils of mist and “rainbowed air” are the mysterious motion of moby dick. the rise of the great white whale “crushed thirty feet upwards” and with “heaps of fountains” leaves the surface of the sea “creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale.” herman melville portrayed the marvelous character ishmael as a painter might have done with natural hues of visionary motion, with memorable scenes and tropes of transmotion, and with a sense of survivance over victimry. gerald vizenor, september 21, 2014.   notes 1 a fuller discussion in manifest manners, 57.   works cited addiss, stephen. the art of haiku. boston: shambhala, 2012. print. bryant, john. “moby-dick as revolution.” the cambridge companion to herman melville, ed. robert s. levine. cambridge university press, 1998. 65-90. print. densmore, frances. chippewa music. minneapolis: ross & haines, 1973. print. glancy, diane. designs of the night sky. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2002. print. issa, kobayashi. the year of my life. ogara haru, translated by nobuyaki yuasa. berkeley: university of california press, 1960. print. jensen, toni. “at the powwow hotel.” from the hilltop. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2010. 55-68. print. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     75   melville, herman. moby-dick. new york: w. w. norton, 1976. print. momaday, n. scott. the way to rainy mountain. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 1969. print. silko, leslie marmon. ceremony. new york: viking penguin, 1977. print. vizenor, gerald. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009. print. ----. shrouds of white earth. albany: state university of new york press, excelsior edition, 2010. print. ----. ed. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1994. print. zelnick, stephen. “moby-dick: the republic at sea.” moby-dick, herman melville, ed. mary r. reichardt. san francisco, california: ignatius press, 2011. print. microsoft word killelea.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   116   rogers, janet marie. peace in duress. vancouver: talon books, 2012. 128pp. http://talonbooks.com/books/peace-in-duress rogers, janet marie. janet marie rogers stream on soundcloud. 2013. web. 3 jan. 2015. https://soundcloud.com/janet-marie-rogers peace in duress is janet rogers' fourth poetry collection available from talon books (214). as a recent poet laureate of victoria, british colombia, rogers hails from the mohawk-tuscarora nations and engages a staggering range of timely themes such as environmental justice, first nations sovereignty and struggles for decolonization, gender and sexuality, oral traditions (see "sky woman falling" and "red-black" especially), critiques of capitalism and more. this list is hardly exhaustive, and the collection itself resists easy reductions, as hers is a powerful, edgy voice that simultaneously thunders and soothes, aggravates and celebrates-sometimes in the very same breath. hers is a voice that thunders as it demands political change—"we want more/and we want it now"—and she urges readers/listeners to do the same in "move like a mountain," writing "you better walk loud." yet even as she painfully points our eyes to the "fractures/in the sacred," and reminds us that we are, "standing on stolen territories," rogers likewise declares that the people are "singing new songs" and implores the audience to "resist the hate/keep praying." whether she is taking aim at attacks on the land and tribal sovereignty, or rejoicing in a kiss or other act of human kindness, peace in duress is overflowing with the spirit of resistance to confining notions of both poetry and indigeneity. skillfully blending images and rhythms of contemporary urban experiences with original instructions and "the great laws of being" (28), rogers' pages present "raven/dancing on fresh concrete" (53) alongside "visions of medicine/dropping like acid on the skin" (38). the poet reminds the people early on in the collection that "our greatest asset/is memory" (6) in a colonial world forcefully urging cultural and spiritual amnesia. here, rogers is a poet-warrior writing from the trenches, bearing witness to the epidemic of disappeared first nations women in "move a mountain (walk a mile in her shoes)," which picks up the discourse of the walking with our sisters activist campaign as the speaker darkly narrates, "if we could really walk in her shoes/ [we’d be] running for our lives." the poet later intones, "come back," repeating impassioned phrases meant to return the disappeared women and heal both self and community, a rebalancing poetics that links with another piece in the collection, "giving a shit." here, in the second to last poem, the reader finds rogers' telling account of the idle no more movement, particularly a description of a round dance addressing canadian prime minister harper's failure to address chief theresa spence's (attawapiskat) request to meet with first nations peoples to discuss the government's failures to honor the treaties and the earth. rogers writes, "have you nothing to say" and warns that, "the movement has just begun." but peace in duress is far more than a catalogue of violence against peoples and the earth, for even as her poems offer harsh testimonies, "telling the stories, willingly," these are also pages filled with sensuality and love. for example, in "the sexual revolution will be televised," rogers speaks of the rejection of colonial shame surrounding sexuality and the reclamation of positive conceptions of erotic, what she calls "the rez-erection." here, the very personal is very patricia killelea review of peace in duress   117   political as, "we can have power over our own bodies/imagine: we can have authority over our own skin." the book is likewise brimming with celebration and "powerful pleasure" (85) from front to back, resulting in a collection centered on (re)balancing and forging connections even in the midst of so much disruption and disconnection. rogers' rhythms pulse on the page, and i was immediately drawn to the musicality of her repetition and galloping cadences, like in "three-day road" and "forty dayz," where "dirt doesn't want to stay down" and "welcome winds whip." even the earth itself moves to the rhythm of the poet's voice, as "this land is my favorite song that skips at my favourite part." for these reasons, it is no wonder that janet rogers identifies as a spoken-word artist and maintains an active soundcloud page devoted to experimental vocal-musical performances (rogers, "janet marie rogers stream on soundcloud"). although her digital poems unarguably complement any reading of peace in duress-sometimes even offering exciting, alternate versions of the written text-they also function as stand-alone works in their own right, suggesting that one element of rogers' activism as a poet is ultimately structural in nature since she not only resists easy binaries in her content but also in terms of genre as she fluidly moves from the page to the air. some of rogers' performances of poems in the book utilize microbeats that sound like anxious heartbeats or drops of rain hitting the sidewalk, but all along the focus still remains on her voice and the materiality of language itself. many of rogers' spoken works turn to reverb and delay vocal effects (see especially "love and protection"), which emphasize and elongate critical lines and syllables, creating haunting and, at times, chaotic and dreamlike, sonic atmospheres. such repetitions reinforce the lingering nature of rogers' content, where issues like violence targeting first nations women and the destruction of nature are ongoing, or in other places where the listener is made to dwell on a single word in all of its sonic permutations. in this way, rogers as an artist is a master of echoes, both on the page and in performance, where her poems talk back to the listener/reader as well as to each other, and necessary visions retrace their steps, audibly stumbling into one another again and again. in these ways, janet rogers' peace in duress and her accompanying spoken performances on soundcloud come together to form a sonic tour-de-force of contemporary indigenous resistance. they will appeal to readers and listeners interested in works that are both experimental and at the same time accessible, as well as audiences eager to engage narratives of survival, resistance, and strength from an unwavering voice that isn't afraid to speak the truth no matter the cost. patricia killelea, university of california, davis microsoft word mackay.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     122   arnott, joanne. halfling spring: an internet romance. illus. leo yerxa. neyaashiinigmiing, on: kegedonce, 2013. 127pp. http://www.kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/55-halfling-spring-an-internet-romance.html the story starts with two usernames in what the first poem of this collection calls an internet geography: in (cyber)reality, this is riverspine, an e-group for poets to exchange and comment on each others’ work. here teaandoranges, another user, intrigues specificallyjo, who scents something intriguing, draws her head back to sense the “taste in the air” (1). maybe the leonard cohen reference draws her, given the similarity in delicate imagery. the two meet via dadababy, a third user or possibly a forum: as is often the case in this collection, the phrasing is indirect and imagistic. the introduction leads to showing each other their “dusty / back rooms”—a poetic phrase for what i think must mean allowing each other into the private areas of the forum where their creative works are stored—and talking in the public “foyer.” by the end of the first poem of this linked collection, teaandoranges has a name, alastair, and a more confident sub-title announces that the two are “e-dating.” and so begins, as the subtitle would have it, an internet romance. as the acknowledgements section at the end makes clear, the poems in this collection document a real relationship between specificallyjo, a name which a quick google search shows to be joanne arnott’s real handle on such sites as wikipedia, youtube, soundcloud and (presumably) many more forums, and alastair campbell. not, thank goodness, the foul-mouthed scottish politico, but rather a distinguished historian and anthropologist who has carried out extensive work for first nations organisations including the assembly of first nations and the government of nunavut. in other words, this is a relationship conducted via the written word—and, later, phone conversations— between two mature adults, in the no-space of the internet. it’s unusual territory for first nations writing, which as has so often been remarked is distinguished by an emphasis on physical geography and close relationships (or alienation from ancestral geographies and kin-ties, which amounts to the same thing). yet what stands out immediately in this collection (aside from the wonderfully spare illustrations) is precisely that it neither drifts off into cyber-abstraction nor absents itself from the real world. the relationship begins with early days in which the poet (“not an elder yet” (55)) opens herself up to the possibility of becoming once again giggly, silly, flirtatious, willing to trade experiences and believe in the possibility of romance. in the poem “savour,” for example, she remarks that “i think i used the word ‘love’ twice / how indiscreet” (7). from there, the emotional forward drift of the relationship pulls us along to the full blossoming of a desire that “calls me in a low crowmoan, distracting” (63), including brief side-stops into jealousy or uncertainty, eventually leading the speaker and listener to their first physical meeting. through all this are threaded the more mundane and the more sacred concerns of the world, which does not stop for this relationship (nor, it seems, would either participant wish it to do so). the early poems are filled with natural imagery, with canadian animals (jaybird, watermoccasin) and a métis/first nations consciousness of landscape. dropping like a stone into the lighthearted early section comes the poem “climate change,” which meditates upon an earth destroyed “by the greed of wealthy nations” (17), an earth who “may shift about any time she chooses” (18). given the lover’s location in inuit territory, it is obvious how this destruction of polar ice and northern habitats feeds into the main theme of the collection. yet it also points up the ways in which the james mackay review of halfling spring   123   poet refuses to see her and her lover as being in any way walled off from the larger political concerns for social and environmental justice that have always centered arnott’s work. the earth is wounded, and the work of healing does not stop at the border of the computer screen. equally, arnott shows how the virtual conversation infects and inflects the real world. as she comes to accept that “there is someone in this world” (27) and as desire builds through poems such as “delving” (41), with its multiple explorations of pocket imagery, so the sight of “on the sidewalk across the street / crow is fucking crow” (51) takes her back to her own insecurities within the relationship. as the poet travels around canada, she adopts local nations’ traditions, referencing sacred totemic animals such as crow, hummingbird and water glider. given alastair’s location on baffin island, it is not a surprise that inuit traditions, particularly the sacred cairns known as inuksuit, are particularly on her mind. she wrestles with the ways she can image an “urban inuksuit,” a single figure i think for indigenous continuance and change in a ravaged and colonised landscape. of the many and varied cultural references (e.g. chanticleer), one in particular stands out, namely the employment of audre lorde’s title “uses of the erotic (the erotic as power).” the entire collection can be seen as a poet’s claiming of her erotic self and refusal to allow any of her lived experiences—as mother, as métis person, as older woman, as pseudonymous internet presence, as traveller, as survivor—to preclude or occlude any other. the tenderness and willingness to open oneself to another is a feature of the lover and of the ethical inhabitant of the land: the two are not separable and should not be seen as such. possibly arnott’s most successfully intertwined work yet, this collection delicately yet firmly brings first nations poetry into a digital age, insisting on a continuing transmotion into a new (un)colonised space that nonetheless can be inscribed with traditional imagery. leo yerxa, who according to arnott’s afterword was given the entire corpus and allowed to choose which poems to illustrate, has done a fantastic job of capturing the feel of arnott’s deft blend of the simple and direct with the allusive and symbolic, using the simplest possible pencil lines to create images of natural landscape and human body. james mackay, european university, cyprus transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 202 jaye simpson. it was never going to be okay. nightwood editions, 2020. 114 pp. isbn: 9780889713826. https://harbourpublishing.com/products/9780889713826 jaye simpson, it was never going to be okay jaye simpson’s (they/them) debut poetry collection, it was never going to be okay, is comprised of strikingly powerful affective complexities from beginning to end, which extend beyond comfortability to, ultimately, grow. they explained to david ly in their interview with prism international that “as a foster kid i was told hundreds, if not thousands, of times that it was going to be okay, and then i came across this comic series and one of the lines was ‘it was never going to be okay,’ and with that realization the protagonist came into their own power. me realizing that it wasn’t going to be okay allowed me the ability to cope and then heal” (june 2021). simpson is an oji-cree saulteaux indigiqueer from the sapotaweyak cree nation and uses the imposed colonial language to describe themselves as a two-spirit, trans, queer, non-binary woman (“queering and reclaiming”). it was never going to be okay is a remarkable addition to trans indigenous literature that ingeniously navigates hope, love, trauma, and growth. the collection is sectioned into four parts with an intentional sequencing to move the reader through the various informative moments and experiences, all of which are interwoven with intricate affects. the composition—specifically the arrangement of their words and lines throughout the pages—of simpson’s poetry is strikingly dynamic. while the prose throughout their collection might have been inspired by necessity for their spoken word performances, it skillfully encourages thoughtful engagement of the reader https://harbourpublishing.com/products/9780889713826 emerson parker pehl review of it was never going to be okay 203 throughout the entirety of the collection. simpson’s poetry examines the traumatic effects of the settler foster care system historically, intergenerationally, and individually, and specifically speaks to the impacts of childhood sexual abuse by a non-native foster mother as a young, trans native child. these experiences produce “her,” which is what simpson names dissociation in the early poems “her. (i.)” and “her. (ii.)”. their poems move through (dis)connected relationships with their biological family of origin as well as those that are romantic, sexual, and platonic. simpson writes devastatingly beautiful queer, trans erotics in various poems which fortunately adds to the literature of indigenous eroticism as specifically trans and queer. moreover, in this significant debut collection, simpson references their experiences of queer polyamory and trans sex work as an indigiqueer non-binary woman. tremendously, though, it was never going to be okay emphasizes (queer) indigenous ways of trauma healing that tenderly encourages queer indigenous kin to persistently cope and heal from (colonial) traumas. simpson explains in an interview with the university of victoria’s independent newspaper, martlet, that they dedicated it was never going to be okay to “all the queer ndn foster kids out there” because they were raised to believe, by settler colonial foster systems enacting a logic of native elimination, that they were the only queer indigenous foster child to exist (wolfe). “to think that you’re alone, in that sense, is one of the biggest acts of violence that can be done onto you” simpson observes (feb. 2021). to be made to feel alone, isolated, and alienated, especially when experiencing historic, intergenerational, and mezzoand micro-systemic types of traumas, is arguably also an act of violence. throughout simpson’s poetry, they skillfully provide a type of descriptive reflection for queer native youth to recognize their experiences and themselves through such affectively powerful prose. there needs to be a realization of one’s own experiences before someone can ever metabolize or even heal from them (menakem). transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 204 in “/ /” there is enough ambiguity in their specificity that many other queer indigenous kin might also be able to impose and recognize some of their own experiences for what they are, painful and valid: (40) simpson’s use of space in their stanzas and throughout the page as well as the presence of italics necessitates the reader to critically engage with the words and their ambiguously interpretive meaning. as the italicization prompts the reader to invoke a emerson parker pehl review of it was never going to be okay 205 different voice than the speaker, or of their own as the reader, the oscillating dynamics of the poem has the potential to instigate the reader’s own experiences of shame, pain, stress, and potentially trauma throughout readings of the poem. incredibly, i find that each time i read “/ /,” often repeatedly before continuing further along simpson’s path in their collection, i am able to superimpose various layers of narrative detail to this poem that refocus certain moments of pain and trauma that i have come to know personally and through the shared experiences of others that i care for. simpson’s incredible ability to foster resonating feelings throughout this entire collection creates remarkable opportunities, particularly for queer native foster children: to recognize themselves and their experiences as well to feel validated and in relation with other (queer) indigenous kin, all through poetry. when jaye simpson was asked in their interview with christopher driscoll if writing it was never going to be okay was a form of catharsis for them, they adamantly stated that “it’s less about a catharsis of exorcising trauma, that kind of puts the onus on the speaker, and what i’m doing is saying that this has happened to me because of someone else, look at… the one who is enacting that. it is not about it me…” (feb. 2021). it is seemingly their decentering of self throughout their collection that provides an opportunity for queer native foster children to recognize themselves through simpson’s poetry. if catharsis is the process of releasing strong or repressed emotions, then simpson certainly provides a collection of poetry that might be the cardinal catalyst of it for queer, trans native youth, potentially amongst innumerable others. emerson parker pehl, university of illinois works cited menakem, resmaa. my grandmother’s hands: racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. central recover press, 2017. simpson, jaye. interview by christopher driscoll. “poet jaye simpson on queering and reclaiming poetry.” martlet, 12 feb. 2021, https://www.martlet.ca/poet-jayesimpson-on-queering-and-reclaiming-the-world-of-poetry/. ---. interview by david ly. “‘the power i came into”: an interview with jaye simpson.” prism international, 24 jun. 2021, https://prismmagazine.ca/2021/06/24/thepower-i-came-into-an-interview-with-jaye-simpson/. https://www.martlet.ca/poet-jaye-simpson-on-queering-and-reclaiming-the-world-of-poetry/ https://www.martlet.ca/poet-jaye-simpson-on-queering-and-reclaiming-the-world-of-poetry/ https://prismmagazine.ca/2021/06/24/the-power-i-came-into-an-interview-with-jaye-simpson/ https://prismmagazine.ca/2021/06/24/the-power-i-came-into-an-interview-with-jaye-simpson/ transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 206 wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2006, pp. 387-409. microsoft word editorial.docx transmotion       vol  1,  no  1  (2015)         i   editorial gerald vizenor has for over forty years been the voice of innovation in native literatures. from his campaigning early journalism and delicate natural haiku scenes, through his raucous satires and powerhouse unification of tribal tradition with continental critical philosophy, to his latest emergence as imaginative historical novelist and framer of constitutions, vizenor has continuously embodied both the modernist credo of “make it new,” and also (paradoxically?) the continuing vitality of tribal narrative traditions. in founding transmotion, only the second journal with indigenous north american literatures as its primary focus, it is our intention to encourage this continuing spirit of creative jouissance in the field of native critical studies. in particular, we are looking to promote the academic study of experimental and avant-garde indigenous writers, and equally to encourage innovative, surprising, unexpected and creative critique of american indian literatures and other creative arts. it has been frequently perceived that native american and first nations studies are wary of overt theorizing, particularly of theoretical models derived from outside writer-specific tribal traditions. for instance, audra simpson and andrea smith describe in the introduction to their edited volume theorizing native studies (2014) a “turn against theory” (1), and note that activist praxis and community engagement are seen as inherently, or at any rate ethically, more valuable scholarly interventions than a seemingly abstracted and rarified theorization of indigenous literary output. (it’s an attitude that they and the contributors to their landmark volume decisively disprove). on top of being seen as ethically removed, the spirit of philosophical play that motivates theoretical innovation also runs counter to both the anthropologically-inflected criticism of early studies and more recent emphases on archival research and a historicist approach to tribal literatures. yet imaginative literature is not the same thing as historical documentation, and writing a poem is not lobbying. literary works slip and wriggle under the microscope: influences and intentions blur and contradict themselves. writers self-contradict knowingly and unconsciously, and no writer can be reduced to being a robotic representative of culture. literary interpretation of works by native writers must take as its watchword vizenor’s seven-word manifesto: to “elude historicism, racial representations and remain historical.” the fact that this manifesto issues from a wheelchair-bound hermaphrodite trickster’s dialogue with a cultural anthropologist, and thus is already unstable, ironic and contextual, further emphasizes just why literature in particular is best served by an imaginative, open and un-predetermined criticism. we hope that, if nothing else, the founding of this journal will allow for new critical perspectives to complicate the reading of native literatures. we will also host new creative work, and welcome submissions of critical/creative hybrid pieces. finally, it is our intention to host as many reviews of relevant books as possible, to ensure that the breadth and depth of the scholarship devoted to native american, first nations, and indigenous literatures more broadly is brought to light in one place. the journal itself is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic transmotion       vol  1,  no  1  (2015)         ii   insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the journal’s online ‘about’ section). we chose transmotion as a title to reflect the sense of intellectual movement and energy characterizing the vizenorian project, and it is only right that this inaugural issue should concentrate in the main on this theme. we are particularly honored that gerald vizenor has himself contributed an original essay explicating the theme of transmotion, one that updates and expands his challenge to writers and critics to now “elude simulations, description, causation, denouement, and cultural victimry.” joseph bauerkemper in his examination of the constitution of the white earth nation, a document that brings an artistic irony to the process of forming a nation, argues that the “anishinaabeg are [through its adoption] reconstituting themselves as transnational citizens” and making transmotion a foundational part of their identity as a nation that refuses the dominant paradigms of statehood. deborah madsen takes this further in her discussion of the 17th century imprisonment of “praying indians” on deer island: invoking agamben’s “state of exception,” madsen demonstrates the threat that transmotion poses to settler narratives. finally, paul stewart places vizenor’s communal and comic vision of continuance in dead voices against the agonized attempt to refuse identity found in one of his professed inspirations, samuel beckett. rounding off the issue, diane glancy’s original poem “kansas” brings transmotion to life, as the driving narrator muses that “in travel, i become the moving place that distance is.” james mackay april 2015 david carlson david stirrup laura adams weaver microsoft word glancy.doc transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   126 vizenor, gerald. favor of crows: new and selected haiku. middletown: wesleyan university press, 2014. 168 pp. http://www.upne.com/0819574329.html “the first to come / i am called / among the birds. / i bring the rain. / crow is my name” song of the crows, henry selkirk gerald vizenor poses a hefty 26-page introduction that gives insight into his fifty years of working with the form. “my very first literary creations were haiku scenes, and since then, that imagistic sense of nature has always been present in my writing. i may never know if my haiku are right by nature, only that the scenes are my best memories. in this way, my sense of presence, haiku creations, and survivance is in nature and in the book.” books such as this are fortunate to have introductions in them. they give direction. they are a map of where the book is going. a history of where the form has been. giving the reader a handle on more than the reader knew would be there. recently i have had to rethink my idea of nature. the native ideal of the earth as a living being, a relative, is still true. but i’ve also seen another side. i live part-time on a county road in rural texas to help a part of my family. the dust, drought, heat, hot wind, occasional cats abandoned on the road, the litters born from them. the animal fights i hear in the night. the grasshoppers, red ants, a multitude of small brown ants, bugs and spiders—large brown fiddle-back spiders. the harshness. “from the half / of the sky / that which lives there / is coming / and makes a noise” [an early anishinaabe song recorded by the ethnographer, frances densmore]. occasional intense storms come across the land with nothing to hold them back. it must be a cumulative hardship i pick up in the air. a historical longing, hunger and need. the horses in the field pull up roots of grass as they eat, making a ripping sound. i think of haiku as a clutter of fragility with a wham of recognition on rice paper. the termites would eat them here. words would be gulped. but haiku is sturdy enough in vizenor’s hands to handle the hardness of the texas terrain. this one—“dusty road / horses at the rusted gate / scent of mown hay” of course, the smell of the diesel tractor and the roar of mowing is implied in the smell of hay. and maybe the desire of horses to leave the enclosed field. and another—“ant mounds / flooded in a thunderstorm / restored by morning.” yes, that is exactly the way it is. diane glancy review of favor of crows       127 the vibrancy of haiku lives in vizenor’s new collection. the crows have brought their blessing— the distant likenesses, the reverberations, the tenuous link of one thing to another, the bright and unexpected connections. it was vizenoresque to find the word “tease” on the first line of the introduction. the haiku is a tease of nature. the winnowing of an impression. the opening of an image. the haiku on the page seem like clothes hanging on a line in the country. or with three haiku on each age, the view from a three-story building. “haiku is visionary, a timely meditation, an ironic manner of creation, and a sense of motion, and, at the same time, a consciousness of seasonal impermanence.” vizenor’s images are startling—the pressure of ice that pushes a hole in the bucket of frozen water. large ice chunks floating on a river reflecting the full moon in the river itself broken with ice and in turn breaking the moon hurtful yet playful almost as a ball bouncing. the union of water across the stones and birds copying the sound in a tease or costume of mimicry. river stones under thin ice like an ancient bridge of little people. the haiku is fleeting as milkweed fuzz in the wind and transitory as understanding a passage of eternity. vizenor’s work opens the human soul—“honeysuckle climbs / a withered fruit tree / reach of memory.” you see how the universe can be held in the smallest seed—the withered past that once bore fruit, but no longer does, still has life of another kind growing upon it. to me, there is a longing for something past, or someone. it even could be the story of the loss of the native way of life, but with acculturation, another life has come. vizenor’s word, survivance, also is there in the opening of the introduction. it is the survivance of the native mindset after all that survives. vizenor explains that he sees the virtual world in haiku. almost as if they were film. or images on a scrim. “the fugitive turns and transitions of the season.” vizenor, an expansive writer of all genres, finds the largeness of his craft even in the haiku. [it] “was my first sense of totemic survivance in poetry, the visual and imagistic associations of nature, and of perception and experience. the metaphors in my initial haiku scenes were teases of nature and memory. the traces of my imagistic names cut to the seasons, not to mere imitation, or the cosmopolitan representation and ruminations of an image in a mirror of nature.” i think what is important in favor of crows are the towers of the haiku, the essay on the form itself, and the overall sense of not what it is, but what it causes—a living energy, a causer in its own right. a generator of a comprehensive city that is built within the book. all of which haiku is for vizenor. i also need to say something about the haunting cover, crow’s mortality tale, rick bartow. it is the head of a creature that looks something like a bear or maybe a bald man. it has one human eye and one animal eye. the chartreuse ghost in the background. the blue hand in the foreground that often is seen imprinted on ghost dance shirts in museums. it is an accretion of transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   128 thought, memory, artifact, innuendo that provides a conceptual shadowing of the haiku vizenor writes. he also ties together japanese and chippewa cultures. the white earth reservation in minnesota and the pine islands of matsushima. basho to vizenor who sees haiku as a native dreamsong. “…the dispositions of manidoo and shi are perceptive moments of presence in nature…” the solid world is pulled apart like a milkweed pod, and the fuzz spreads its down on the wind. the coilings and connectives. the taking apart of a part of the world to see beyond the world. the interpretations and exigencies. the governmental agency for dispersing rations. or vizenor’s haiku as totems like the small stone bears i have in my china closet. one with a book in its mouth. the other with a parchment tied on its back. “the anishinaabe dream songs and tricky stories of creation that bear the totemic nature, elusive ironies, and tragic wisdom of natives were traduced and depreciated by the hauteur of discovery, the cruelties of monotheism, and the pernicious literature of dominance.” vizenor also mentions the history of his family as well as the removal of his anishinaabeg tribe to the white earth reservation. the wounded in spirit. vizenor’s new collection still finds him in his waders in the steady stream of the evocative. diane glancy, macalester college microsoft word alexander williams.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 265 kelli jo ford. crooked hallelujah. grove press, 2020. 288 pp. isbn: 9780802149121. https://bookshop.org/books/crooked-hallelujah-9780802149138/9780802149121 when we seek to understand trauma, we must remember above all else, the body always keeps the score. in kelli jo ford’s crooked hallelujah, she explores the limits that a body can withstand before it succumbs to the harsh violence tallied from its traumatic encounters. above all else, crooked hallelujah is a story of trauma. ford’s powerful novel details the harrowing story of justine barnes and her search for freedom: a freedom from trauma, broken dreams, and the plight of the internal child she leaves behind in motherhood. the cherokee nation of oklahoma, one of the main settings in the novel, is painted as a land where trauma entrenches itself into the bodies of all who live there. such deep-seated pain and sorrow have their origins in the geopolitical fallout from the trail of tears and the ontological terror this historical act of violence imposes upon native bodies. ford’s text is a literary engagement with trauma’s elusive duality: the twisted darkness justine’s family harbours is what both binds them together and keeps them hopelessly imprisoned. structurally, the text flows with a heightened urgency, despite certain chapters of narration – namely the chapter narrated by pitch’s father – failing to meet the higher standard set by others. ford is deft in revealing the many layers to the female souls in her novel but does not achieve this same effect with male characters like pitch and his father. while the matriarchs of justine’s family are robust and powerfully human, the male characters in crooked hallelujah fail to replicate that same human intensity. wes, kenny, russell gibson, and the other masculine characters all exude a violent streak exasperated by poorly hidden agendas and flat developmental arcs. the narrative shifts in the novel to pitch’s father and mose lee lack the same hardened vulnerability present with justine and her daughter, reney. these shifts seem unnecessary and tangential to the core of the novel, particularly because ford could have used those sections to flesh out the ending climax. because the male characters are wooden, the relationships they have with the female characters are less enjoyable to read. despite these small faults, the cherokee world ford creates is captivating. the words on the page read with such cinematic potential as walter dean myers’ ya novel monster (1999) and expose a harsh reality some people refuse to accept. alexander williams review of crooked hallelujah 266 ford’s text asks readers to consider the implications arising from history’s cyclical nature and the trauma created from the clash between the external and the internal. in the early parts of ford’s novel, we are introduced to a young justine entrenched in conflict; while navigating the oppressive nature of her community’s religion, she must reconcile being the victim of sexual violence and the shame following this trauma. between the oppression she faces from her religious community to her eventual downfall, justine’s story prompts vital questions of how haunting travels from body to body, leaving ruin in its wake. justine’s shame and regret remain palpable forces influencing every facet of her life, from the terrible men she surrounds herself with to the desperate hope she clings onto that reney will have a better life than herself. the mothers in ford’s novel all occupy the murky intersection between trauma and destiny as evidenced when justine pleads to reney to break the family’s traumatic cycle: when i started pulling away that summer—doing what kids do—she’d [justine] lived exactly half her life doing all she could to make sure my life was better than hers. after taking stock of all the ways we matched and saying, “good night my tiny teeny reney,” she’d hold me close and whisper, “don’t be like me. don’t ever be like me.” (97) ford is clever and effective in demonstrating how reney is justine’s way of reconciling the sexual violence done to her: reney’s characterization is a phenomenological exploration into how something so beautiful can come from a place so dark. by having reney, justine had to give up on the child within herself she could never save and tries to find this child in reney. the mother-daughter relationships in the novel are constant negotiations centered around freedom, religion, and the power one wields amidst economically disenfranchised environments. in reading ford’s text, i found myself thinking about the connections between her writing and that of margaret atwood and john rollin ridge, particularly with how ford explores societal colonization of bodies. crooked hallelujah and ridge’s the life and adventures of joaquin murieta: the celebrated california bandit (1854) both lie at the intersection of race and agency and work to expose the immediacy of native literature. in their respective texts, both ridge and ford explore the traumatic struggles of people stuck between two very different worlds: for ford’s justine, she is caught between religion and freedom, while ridge’s murieta is caught between revenge and closure. the oppression of women in crooked hallelujah invokes similar questions on religion and power as atwood’s the handmaid’s tale, but i hope a reader’s discomfort with the oppression of justine and reney provides a powerful perspective on the plight of native women. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 267 despite some minimal character considerations, crooked hallelujah is an important text depicting a modern native experience. justine’s and reney’s sufferings are cherokee in nature, but human in impact. ford’s writing serves as an essential retort to the native erasure embedded within the american racial consciousness. her message is prophetic and a humbling reminder to those who feel destined to repeat the history from which they are so desperately trying to run away. crooked hallelujah is a testament to native bodies everywhere suffering under the weight of survival in a society that refuses to see them. in the critical vein of judith butler and avery gordon, ford posits her characters as victims of a history they inadvertently repeat despite their best efforts to break free from the chains that suppress the freedom they deserve. in her writing, ford seeks to expose the flawed and broken human condition that transcends environment, sex, and race. with each page, i found myself more and more drawn to justine and reney, desperately pleading to the two women to pursue something more than the life they have accepted. therein lies the palpable power of ford’s writing: each broken female character demonstrated a deep emotional complexity, forcing me to consider the fixed judgment we so often bestow upon others and the internal responsibility we exercise in healing. ucla works cited atwood, margaret. the handmaid’s tale. 1985. london: vintage books, 1996. myers, walter dean. monster. 1999. new york, amistad press, 2001. ridge, john rollin (yellow bird). the life and adventures of joaquin murieta: the celebrated california bandit. 1854. introduction by joseph henry jackson. norman, university of oklahoma press, 1977. microsoft word brown-spiers.doc transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 118 dustin tahmahkera. tribal television: viewing native people in sitcoms. chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2014. 244 pp. http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/12737.html in tribal television: viewing native people in sitcoms, dustin tahmahkera introduces the key concepts of “decolonized viewing” and “sitcom sovereignty,” which he then uses to analyze televisual representations of indigenous peoples over the past seventy years. he draws upon theoretical approaches based in indigenous studies, cultural studies, and television studies, bringing the three fields into conversation in order to offer a complex reading of both the “recognizably indian” and the “recognizably native” through “an indigenous-centered lens” (15, 24, xv). tahmahkera grounds his arguments in an ongoing discussion that includes the voices of respected indigenous authors, scholars, and community leaders—including, for instance, commentary by sherman alexie, oren lyons, and joy harjo. relying on these sources to demonstrate both the positive and negative influences of television in general and sitcoms in particular, tahmahkera contends that native peoples can not only “critique popular culture’s contributions to colonialism,” but, ultimately, that they can replace colonizing representations with “recognizably native comedy” that “liberates by uncovering and analyzing the recognizably indian” (13, 29). throughout the text, tahmahkera traces the slow process by which televisual representations of the indian, beginning with the indian head test pattern of the 1930s, have given way to the “recognizably native” in contemporary broadcast and digital comedy. deftly weaving together an analysis of american indian policy since the midtwentieth century, a discussion of the sitcom and its generic tropes, and a history of the complicated narrative of creation and production that takes place off-screen, tribal television makes a compelling argument about the ways that sitcoms reflect popular attitudes toward indigenous peoples and, more importantly, about the ways that native peoples take control of those narratives. early in the text, tahmahkera explains that, “[w]hereas the recognizably indian has largely marginalized, disavowed, and displaced the native, the recognizably native has labored to critically resist and creatively circumvent the indian” (24). by drawing a distinction between the “recognizably indian” and the “recognizably native,” he creates a framework for acknowledging the distinction between stereotypical representations— often created by non-native writers and producers—and native people’s portrayals of themselves. although tribal television situates the indian and the native at opposite ends of a spectrum, each chapter acknowledges the complexities and irregularities that accompany individual representations. moreover, although the text moves chronologically, it does not simply assume that the oldest representations are the most offensive or, by the same logic, that more recent texts are necessarily more likely to be recognizably native. for instance, tahmahkera makes a point of discussing an unusual moment on the 1963 the beverly hillbillies episode called “jed cuts the family tree,” in which “jed questions pearl’s unchecked social hierarchy and implied white privilege” miriam brown spiers review of tribal television 119 (23). similarly, a brief analysis of episodes of family guy, the simpsons, and south park illustrates that the recognizably indian is alive and well in the twenty-first century. the nuanced critiques that arise out of this critical framework are one of the text’s great strengths. it would be easy enough to distinguish between “good” and “bad” representations of native people: on one side of the line would be episodes of i love lucy and the flintstones that feature characters trying to defend themselves against “savages,” and on the other would be mixed blessings, the aboriginal people’s television network (aptn) sitcom featuring indigenous producers, writers, and actors. but such a book might easily become both self-righteous and self-congratulatory without offering a substantial contribution to the discussion. instead, tahmahkera tackles murkier—and more interesting—questions of identity and representation. even when discussing sitcoms that seem as though they could be easily divided into the binary categories of “indian” or “native,” tribal television avoids demonizing or idealizing particular shows by situating them within a larger cultural and political landscape. rather than simply condemning a particularly condescending and historically inaccurate episode of the brady bunch, for instance, tahmahkera draws parallels between mike brady’s problematic paternalism and the contemporary political rhetoric of presidents lyndon johnson and richard nixon, who espoused self-determination without following through in their policies. at the other end of the spectrum, mixed blessings is similarly situated within the narrative of both aptn’s development as a network and head writer drew hayden taylor’s career as a native humorist. the convoluted and overlapping relationship between the indian and the native is most clearly illustrated in chapter three, “the neo-indian in king of the hill.” here, tahmahkera explores the onand off-screen development of the character john redcorn, a complicated process that has included not only the writers and producers of king of the hill but also the increasing influence of jonathan joss, the white mountain apache actor who voices redcorn. in early episodes, redcorn clearly filled the role of the recognizably indian: he appeared only occasionally and was identified as a new age healer who shared sacred ceremonies with non-native characters. as joss urged writers to give redcorn a bigger role within the “settler-dominated universe of king of the hill . . . dueling processes of submission and resistance play[ed] out and overlap[ped] each other” (107). ultimately, tahmahkera situates redcorn in an ambiguous space between the recognizably indian and the recognizably native. in exploring such nuances, tribal television illustrates the complexity of representation in popular culture; the finished product is an amalgam of information from many sources, both indigenous and nonindigenous, sometimes accurate and tribally specific, and sometimes ill-informed and problematic. despite the success—or lack thereof—of any individual representation, tahmahkera argues that decolonized viewing must also involve “recognizing native peoples as long time producers, receivers, and traders . . . of a multitude of pop cultural practices and texts spanning generations” (13). the range of examples included in tribal television, which range from non-native actor max gail’s efforts to include native storylines on barney miller to charlie hill’s rewriting of a thanksgiving episode of roseanne, transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 120 reinforce the text’s depiction of “a televisual tribalography that includes the indigenous and their relations with the nonindigenous” (25). within this framework, tahmahkera’s lengthy analysis of john redcorn’s origins on king of the hill contribute to a depiction of pop culture that blurs the lines between representations of the indian and the native in order to remind us that native peoples are not simply victims of hollywood but also active participants who retain agency—albeit rarely as equal partners—and have a voice in negotiating the “televisions,” in tahmahkera’s terms, that ultimately appear on our screens. emphasizing the importance of native voices not only in the creation of sitcoms but also within the text itself, tribal television draws on the work of contemporary scholars in native studies, such as jodi byrd and leanne howe, to establish major theoretical concepts. in one of the most productive examples of this approach, tahmahkera turns to gerald vizenor’s definition of a simulation as “the absence of a tribal real,” a concept that he applies to sitcom storylines that feature “guest-starring older male indians [who] appear briefly and attempt to assert their agency before conveniently dying and leaving a temporary impact on settler characters” (19). such characters may attempt to stand in for the authentically “native,” but, finally, they fail to demonstrate that they are “grounded in their contemporary familial and tribal ways of expressing indigeneity” (24). thanks to tahmahkera’s insightful analysis and cross-disciplinary approach to the topic, tribal television will appeal to audiences in both native studies and critical media studies. students of either field will appreciate the text’s solid theoretical foundations, but it is also possible to follow tahmahkera’s argument with fairly little preparation in either area. similarly, readers need not come to the text with an intimate knowledge of the sitcom in popular culture. although audiences are likely to be familiar with at least some of the texts that are analyzed here, the easy balance of exposition and analysis welcomes readers of various backgrounds, including students working in multiple disciplines. although much of the text consists of a critique of popular culture, tribal television never falls into the dangerous trap of shaming its audience. tahmahkera makes it clear from the very beginning that he identifies, with sherman alexie, as a “sit-com kid” who has been deeply influenced by the material that he analyzes (xii). perhaps because television is a collaborative medium, he never ends up shaking his finger at a particular actor, writer, or audience. although the text certainly makes no excuses for the recognizably indian, it remains focused instead on ways that the recognizably native, from sitcoms like mixed blessings to digital media like the short videos produced by the 1491s, can respond to and replace such harmful representations. ultimately, tribal television combines an emphasis on decolonized viewing and sitcom sovereignty with tahmahkera’s respect for and academically rigorous critique of his material in order to engage readers in a serious discussion of the sitcom. miriam brown spiers, university of california merced microsoft word boxer.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 222 john joseph mathews and michael snyder. our osage hills: toward an osage ecology and tribalography of the early twentieth century. lehigh university press, 2020. 318 pages. isbn: 9781611463019. https://rowman.com/isbn/9781611463019/our-osage-hills-toward-an-osageecology-and-tribalography-of-the-early-twentieth-century sharing co-authorship alongside john joseph mathews (1894-1979), michael snyder draws primarily upon archival research using the newspaper daily journal-capital (pawhuska, oklahoma) to locate additional and lesser-known writings of mathews, the osage “author, historian, and naturalist” (1). our osage hills: toward an osage ecology and tribalography of the early twentieth century reintroduces mathews to a new audience and firmly centers his writings to the growth and development of indigenous intellectualism in the first half of the twentieth century. while snyder does not draw these parallels or conclusions, one should place mathews’ literary work alongside the literary and cultural achievements of both d’arcy mcnickle and ella deloria who are contemporaries of mathews. snyder further reminds the reader that mathews “was a brilliant intermediary between lower plains indian culture and mainstream north american readers, and an intrepid advocate for his osage nation” (1). the monograph draws upon a newspaper column, “our osage hills,” written by mathews with companion essays, written by snyder, each with their own italicized headings, providing historical, cultural, and literary contexts. snyder explains: “my pieces tell a broader story of osage cultural survivance, continuity, and the struggle for sovereignty” (2). furthermore, snyder explains that his intent was to loosely organize mathews’ writings chronologically; although, he does depart from a rigid timeline to group the writings according to theme. these eleven themes are as follows: scene setting, birds of the osage, culture and politics, romance of the osage, african americans, autumn, man in nature, osage women and others, conservation, critique of settler colonialism, and murder. these themes are given titles by snyder, including the titles for each of mathews’ narratives which have a publication date but did not include a title other than the title of his column, our osage hills. snyder uses the theoretical lens of “tribalography,” a term he attributes to author leanne howe which “entails synthesizing through narrative the collective experiences of individuals, families, clans, and ancestors into a meaningful form to inform readers about who, in this case, the wahzhazhe people truly are” (8). additionally, snyder majel boxer review of our osage hills 223 draws attention to what he terms as the “osage ecology” contained in the writings of mathews. for example, in the first theme of the text, “scene setting,” the reader is introduced to osage ecology when mathews writes, “the osage is unique in its topography. its hills can be seen from almost every direction from adjoining counties”; he continues, “one wonders if we who live here will ever grow to the stature of the osage hills. man’s environment plays a great part in moulding him, but he must come to an appreciation of that environment” (16). clearly, mathews had been “moulded” by his environment because he writes in his many observations about the natural world and the “balance of nature. this was the status quo before the advent of the white man. in the struggle for existence, each animal, bird, fish, and insect played a role in the osage” (25). osage ecology is further explained in mathews’ narrative #49, found in the second theme, birds of the osage, and titled “hawk and quail: the balance of nature before the white man.” in this narrative, mathews writes about the hawk being a “flesh-eater and […] very fond of quail” (23). he continues at length to describe the “delicate balance” (25) between the hawk and quail: “to go back to the hawk, we find that the number of the hawks is limited by food supply, which really depends upon the ability of the quail to protect himself. but there is more to the balance of nature than this” (24). snyder also expands upon mathew’s observations of hawks and quails by writing, “mathews knew hawks like the back of his hand, and he deeply loved this bird of prey. he described more than once gazing up at the circling red-tail hawk as a boy and literally crying tears of frustration at his inability to fly” (35). mathews’ use of “osage ecology” also made him a conservationist, as when he writes of prairie chickens: the chicken is admirably adapted to the prairie of the osage. there is no reason why there should not be thousands of them […] these gunners seem to feel vindictive; they, in a spirit of defiance of the law and its representative, the game warden, take pride in outwitting the latter and in shooting the remnant of the great flocks wherever and whenever they find them; it is a sort of determined action to exterminate this great bird. (38) for snyder, he sees a distinct osage ecology emerge in the writings of mathews – an osage ecology that is rooted to the close relationship mathews has with the land, his observations about the interplay between animals and “man,” but also mathews’ call for the preservation of those animals against “man.” transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 224 in snyder’s companion essays, he follows through on his earlier statement that his “pieces tell a broader story” (2) by including discussions and deeper research into the historical change that came to mathews and the osage people in the 1920s and through the great depression. while the third theme of “culture and politics” speaks to these tumultuous changes, mathews’ our osage hills column remains focused on landscapes, found within, for example, the narratives titled “one of many beautiful places in the world,” “life cycles,” and “the moon,” all written beautifully in mathews’ style of prose. it is snyder who writes and provides a deeper understanding of the tumult that those decades had upon the osage people. for example, while mathews writes about “how natural it was for primitive people to worship the moon,” in narrative #20, titled “the moon” (74), snyder follows with a companion essay, “the passing of red eagles” (75). this is not snyder’s attempt at osage ecology. rather this essay shares with the reader that “three days after the preceding column ran [‘the moon’ written by mathews, dated may 13th, 1930], readers of the pawhuska daily journal-capital learned that the case of ida martin, a ‘pawnee farm woman’ charged with selling wine to a party of fullblood osages, had been submitted to a jury in the federal court” (75). snyder continues to tell the darker history of the “osage murders,” a topic that mathews was reluctant to write about. snyder offers this: “joe red eagle’s death speaks volumes of the precarious period in which he lived. the 1920s and early 1930s were a violent and risky time to be a fullblood osage” (77). snyder would return to this topic in the last theme, entitled “murder.” here, snyder offers this important context, that mathews was living overseas and that “one crucial fact has eluded writers covering the osage murders: the victims were almost entirely of mathews’s own band, the big hill band, whose members mainly lived in the vicinity of gray horse indian village” (260). thus, a fuller picture emerges, that mathews was away from the community during the times of the osage murders and that he would reluctantly write about them in other published works. this monograph is an important contribution to the field of american indian studies because it brings attention to the writings of john joseph mathews. alongside his fellow indigenous intellectuals, mcnickle and deloria, all three represent the scholarly and literary achievements that create a deeper understanding of “tribalography,” and the collective experiences of indigenous peoples can be traced through their writings. finally, the sharing of co-authorship by snyder re-centers and gives primacy to the majel boxer review of our osage hills 225 work of mathews, thus giving credit to mathews and bringing his lesser-known writings to a new audience. majel boxer, fort lewis college microsoft word sayre.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 121 lionel larré. histoire de la nation cherokee. pessac: presses universitaires de bordeaux, 2014. 285 pp. http://climas.u-bordeaux3.fr/publication/bibliographie/33-ouvrages/185-larre-l-histoirede-la-nation-cherokee lionel larré is a french academic who has edited writings by john milton oskison, as well as textbooks. this book is designed for use in courses on american indian history for francophone students. it consists of thirteen expository chapters in french, interleaved with thirty-nine documents in english, excerpts from primary sources selected to illustrate cherokee history. the documents have been drawn from treaties and treaty negotiations, letters of colonial officials, memoirs of traders, reports by missionaries, and from books by henry timberlake, william bartram, and james adair. larré emphasizes earlier periods—the chapter on the trail of tears or piste de larmes begins only on page 201. this emphasis reflects the strength of prof. larré’s research, which analyzes the geo-politics of the southeast in the eighteenth century, when english, spanish, and french imperial ambitions collided in the cherokee lands of southern appalachia. early sources such as alexander hewatt and james adair have been used primarily by english-language scholars who have too easily accepted their anglophilic jingoism. hewatt, in the first of the documentary excerpts, claimed that the cherokee “despised the french, whom they called light as a feather, fickle as the wind, and deceitful as serpents; and, being naturally of a very grave cast, they considered the levity of that people as an unpardonable insult” (23). in truth the cherokee, like other tribes, were fond of humor, and most successful when they were able to play one imperial power off against the others. among a few french sources on the 18th-century cherokee is a narrative by antoine de bonnefoy, captured by the tribe in 1741 when he was involved in the french attacks on the chickasaws, part of the aftermath of the natchez attack on the french in 1729 in the town now known as natchez. bonnefoy was taken to the upper tennessee river where he met christian priber (identified as "pierre albert" in bonnefoy's writings), a german lawyer from zittau erroneously labeled a jesuit in some sources. he had sailed to georgia at the time james oglethorpe was creating the colony in the early 1730s. after 18 months in charleston, priber sold his possessions to leave for the mountains, where he assimilated into cherokee society and earned their trust and support. priber planned to build a utopian society, and to welcome refugees from english, french, or spanish colonies. bonnefoy reported he had already “got together a considerable number of recruits, men and women, of all conditions and occupations” as well as cherokee people, …of whom a large number were already instructed in the form of his republic and determined to join it; that the nation in general urged him to establish himself upon their lands, but that he was determined to locate himself half way between them and the alibamons, where the lands appeared to him of better quality than those of the cherakis, and there he would be disposed to open a trade with the english and french; that in his republic there would be no superiority; that all should be equal there; that he would take the superintendence of it only for the gordon m. sayre review of histoire de la nation cherokee 122 honor of establishing it. (mereness, ed., 248-249) priber was apprehended by creek warriors and brought to frederika island where he was held prisoner and interrogated by general oglethorpe and by an anonymous journalist who signed his articles “americus.” as an egalitarian utopian socialist in a time of absolutist monarchy and mercantilist colonialism, priber's story stands out, and underlines the contrast between native egalitarianism and european despotism. to the british, priber was suspected of trying to solidify cherokee trade relations with the french at mobile, and for this reason was described in very hostile terms by james adair in his history of the american indians. larré explains that cherokee had a matrilineal kinship network and decentralized political structure, and nuances priber’s proto-communist vision of cherokee society and its contrast to the monarchical visions of other traders and officers. for instance alexander cuming in 1729-30 travelled to the cherokee, presented himself as the envoy of king george, and supposedly induced several towns’ “kings” to each bow down and bear tribute to him and to the english. cuming claimed for himself the ceremonial “crown” of feathers. cuming’s arrogance was exposed by ludovic grant’s narrative of the 1730 travels, which includes a dialogue between “the governor of south carolina and chuconnunta a head man of the cherokkes whose name formerly was ouconecaw” (a phonemic version of the chiefly title attakullakulla). the latter insisted that there was no proposal to give away cherokee lands to “great king george” (89). larré uses these radically contrasting sources as an object lesson in the difficulties of interpreting colonial materials about the cherokee, and the resulting historiographies. cuming proudly claimed the traditional “crown” of cherokee leaders. following his tour, cuming sailed for london, taking with him “the crown of the cherrokee nation” and “he let the secretary of state immediately know that he had full power from that nation to lay their crown as his majesty’s feet, and that he had brought over seven indian chiefs as an evidence of the truth” (5) larré’s book is valuable for tracing the origins and evolution of cherokee sovereignty, and helps one understand how cherokee national identity developed out of a history of frontier imperial conflicts and post-colonial revolutions. larré asserts that “the practicalities of treaties created the cherokee ‘nation’ as such” (54), for by signing a treaty the british crown implicitly recognized the cherokee as a sovereign state, even in the absence of any centralized authority or government among the tribe. a chapter titled “the birth of the united states” explains how the revolutionary war divided cherokees into a chickamauga faction led by dragging canoe, who fought alongside the british, and a peace party led by attakullakulla. the process of negotiating treaties asked the cherokee to appoint a leadership empowered to represent the entire nation. the u.s. constitution faced the difficulty of balancing the sovereignty of thirteen states, much as the cherokee had to unite the upper and lower towns, and later balance five factions after the removal period. larré's discussion of métissage is also valuable, and it is worth noting that the french transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 123 term has no direct equivalent in english, for whereas métis identity is officially recognized in canada and the adjective is increasingly used in scholarship on native peoples in the u.s., the noun form has not been adopted into english. the word “mixedbloodness” does not exist. larré points out that, as elsewhere in north america, many fur traders married cherokee women and produced offspring who might be perceived as “white” in appearance, education, and dress. l’essentialisation prédominante dan l’historiographie des sang-purs ou fullbloods défini comme les traditionalistes et des métis comme des progressistes, est bien trop simpliste pour vraiment comprendre les complexités sociales et politiques des cherokees. (124) the essentialism dominant in historiography defines the full-bloods as the traditionalists and the métis as progressives. this is much too simplistic to really comprehend the social and political complexities of the cherokees. francophone students will get an excellent education in cherokee history from this book, and any reader of french can enjoy it as well. gordon m. sayre, university of oregon works cited adair, james, history of the american indians ed. kathryn e. holland braund tuscaloosa: u of alabama press, 2005. “journal of antoine bonnefoy” in travels in the american colonies. ed. and trans. newton d. mereness. new york: macmillan, 1916; 239-258. “account of the cherokee indians, and of sir alexander cuming’s journey amongst them” the historical register vol. 18, no. lxi (1731), 1-18. “historical relation of facts delivered by ludovick grant, indian trader, to his excellency the governor of south carolina” the south carolina historical and genealogical magazine 10:1 (january 1909), 54-68. mellon, knox, jr. “christian priber’s cherokee ‘kingdom of peace” the georgia historical quarterly, vol. 57, no. 3 (fall, 1973), 319-331. microsoft word bevacqua.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   84   the song maps of craig santos perez perez, craig santos. from unincorporated territory [hacha]. kaneohe: tinfish press, 2008. http://tinfishpress.com/?projects=from-unincorporated-territory perez, craig santos. from unincorporated territory [saina]. richmond, ca: omnidawn, 2010. 136 pp. http://www.omnidawn.com/products-page/current/from-unincorporated-territory-saina-craigsantos-perez/ perez, craig santos. from unincorporated territory [guma’]. richmond, ca: omnidawn, 2014. 96 pp. http://www.omnidawn.com/products-page/current/from-unincorporated-territory-gumacraigsantos-perez/ in micronesia there is a tradition that some islanders have kept, but that chamorros, the natives of the mariana islands, lost due to colonization long ago: the creation of song maps. after journeys were completed, a song would be created that would weave geographic, biological, and sensory elements together in order to form a map. these songs would take on features such as the stars, the color of the water, the features of shorelines, changes in clouds, the songs of birds. so long as these songs were remembered and passed on, a return journey was always possible. you could find your way back there, even generations later. the work of chamorro poet craig santos perez in his series from unincorporated territory: [hacha], [saina], and [guma’] represents a similar technique. through his poetry, he weaves together different languages, citations, and spatial configurations in order to challenge old maps and to retrace the steps of chamorros through their ancient past and challenge the ways in which key points on that journey have come to be represented, remembered, or forgotten. in challenging colonialist, eurocentric maps, he is also in essence creating new song maps meant to lead chamorros in new directions in terms of their consciousness and their identity. his work represents a poetic and a political decolonization, whereby the sites that once constricted and constrained us can now help us imagine our liberation. the from unincorporated territory books share an emphasis on chamorro history and language, chronicling both the centuries of foreign colonization and the myriad forms of native resistance. interspersed in his poems are lines from conversations with his elders, found textual objects, and collaged documents of many kinds: footnotes, theoretical essays on poetry and postcolonialism, government edicts, religious texts and others. a common focus in his poetry is the commodifying aspects of guam’s tourist economy and the dangerous realities of guam being a strategically important base for the united states. these themes also link the chamorro people to many other island nations in the pacific suffering under continuing u.s. imperialism, including perez’s current home of hawai’i, where he is the michael lujan bevacqua review essay: craig santos perez   85   director of the creative writing program at the university of hawai’i in manoa. perez writes, in [saina], his second book, “no page is ever terra nullius—each page infused with myth legends talk story—” (65). he is arguing for a poetics informed by postcolonial theory in which the chamorro archipelago, and other pacific islands, are viewed not as virgin territory to be discovered and plundered by foreigners, but as distinct, sovereign states with their own civilization and culture long in place. his words remind us of where we have been and of things we may have forgotten or learned not to remember, and, in doing so, he pushes us into directions we have not considered for centuries. even a foreign reader not familiar with chamorro culture, language, or politics will experience life under the weight of imperialism when reading or studying perez’s work—the experience of colonialism, and of decolonizing activism. a passage from his first work, [hacha], provides a key insight into the theoretical underpinnings of all three books. he writes: on some maps, guam doesn’t exist; i point to an empty space in the pacific and say, “i’m from here.” on some maps, guam is a small unnamed island; i say, “i’m from this unnamed place.” on some maps, guam is named “guam u.s.a.” i say, “i’m from a territory of the united states.” on some maps, guam is named, simply, “guam”; i say, “i am from guam.” guam is a place that is small compared to most nations in the world but large compared to most islands in the pacific. although it has been on the maps of europeans longer than any others in the pacific, its existence has always been in flux, in more ways than one. in [hacha], perez produces a map formed of the list of names that guam has had or been given by europeans and other invaders on their maps over the centuries. they range from the guåhan to isla de los ladrones, san juan, bahan, and “first province of the great ocean.” in addition to those he lists, there are forty other variations of guam’s name that appear on european maps. this lability of meaning is not simply a list of mistakes, but part of guam’s colonial past and present. the undecipherability of meaning for the island, the in-between nature of it, is not a misperception, but it is the truth of its formal existence. as a longtime colony, guam’s meaning is flexible and moves constantly between the invisible and the hypervisible. guam is, after all, the first in the pacific to be colonized and one of the last now yet to be “free.” it is both a tourist paradise for asian travelers and a military fortress. for the united states, it is a location that is foreign in a domestic sense. it is both a tiny, insignificant dot on the map and one which global security analyst john pike argues the us can use to rule the world. guam is a place that represents itself as where america’s day begins, but you will not find it on the flag or even included on most maps of the us. a place which boasts the highest per capita enlistment in the us military forces, but whose residents don’t even get (the pretense) to vote for their commander in chief. through his three books, perez draws out the contradictions in guam’s existence. challenging on the one hand its invisibility, but also the hypervisibility that is derived from us military strategic interests whereby it becomes the uss guam, fortress guam, an unsinkable aircraft carrier. perez draws on many different voices from guåhan. he brings in conversations with his elders in his family, government documents, history books, song lyrics, quotes, and poems. his use of “guam mentions” is particularly apt: instances, oftentimes ephemeral, momentary, or even slips transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   86   of the tongue, where guam is somehow, in some foreign context, invoked or mentioned. for most academics, these mentions would be meaningless, but, as i have argued, for a place where its formal existence is an obscene lability, those moments carry the trace of guam’s colonization. they expose aspects of guam’s reality as a historical and contemporary colony. the phrase that perez constantly untangles and reweaves in his work—“put guam on the map”—is oftentimes used on guåhan itself, firstly for the arrival of magellan during his attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1521. as guåhan was the first island in the pacific to be found by europeans, it represents the tip of the so-called spear of modernity in the region. that idea of being put on the map is analogous to realizing the promises of modernity. chamorros entangled in a colonial framework feel compelled to reenact that scene of “being seen” again. as a result, chamorros can sometimes retrace their lives through the guam mentions that they have collected. they can recall the names of bob hope, gloria estefan, johnny carson, ben stiller, hank johnson, howard stern, mariah carey, and others who have mocked guam or mentioned it in movies. there is a colonizing dependency here that perez seeks to dismantle. missionaries and explorers supposedly “discovered” us. they “gave” us modern meaning: without them we would be too obviously part of the obscene underbelly of modernity, and so we must continue to crave the gaze of the colonizer in order to continue to exist and move forward into the future. across his three books, perez reminds us of what these perverted maps of meaning look like. in [hacha], he reproduces maps that show guam as crossroads in the pacific, linking together the west and the east. maps that show battlefields during world war ii. maps that show the fact that 29% of guam’s 212 square miles are us military facilities off-limits to the island’s ancestral people. in both [saina] and [guma’], he continues to create maps, albeit not through literal reproductions but instead helping to illustrate guam’s place in the maps of us strategic interests in the pacific and maps on colonial/imperial violence from spanish, american and japanese sources. but perez’s intent, as already mentioned, is to go beyond these maps to create new ones. his use of guam mentions subverts the colonial “common sense” and instead accurately connects the gaze of the colonizer not to possibility but to impossibility, to trauma, to damage, to loss. in [guma’], he quotes ezra pound, whose guam mention is both bewildering and insulting. during world war ii, when the japanese were massacring and enslaving the chamorro people, pound proposed giving japan the island of guåhan as a spoil of war in exchange for films of noh theater. the colonial structure of guam’s relationship to the u.s. is clear in this mention, as the island and its people matter little, but exist to be used and traded off by poets seeking japanese culture or imperial powers seeking strategic nodes on military maps. perez seeks to turn the reader away from those mythical maps of modernity, whereby inclusion and assimilation lead to viability and universality. he seeks to push them in new directions not beset by those limiting politics of recognition. while his colonial citations challenge, he includes a number of native chamorro citations as well, which change from conversations with his grandparents to discussions of chamorro culture during different epochs. the chamorro language often provides the basis for these alternative paths, like echoing sonar, leading us through layers of language and time. even if the poems are primarily in english, many of them are written atop foundational chamorro terms, such as hånom (water), unai (sand), tåno’ (land), tåsi (ocean). these archetypal terms are meant to reclaim things, most importantly the land and michael lujan bevacqua review essay: craig santos perez   87   the sea, which have long been claimed to belong to the imperialist fist of the u.s. but for thousands of years have truly belonged to the chamorro people. guam’s visibility is heavily dependent upon its militarization, the history of it being used for military purposes by the united states. for chamorros the land is tåno’, tano’-hu (my land), lina’la’ (life), but for the us, it is territory, a base, a colony to be utilized. but as the island, its land, its people are weighted beneath layers of colonial ideology, this requires the kind of unpacking that perez does. one cannot just try to re-signify the meaning, but must rearticulate it, change the hue from colonial to decolonial, move the land from something that is used to project power for another to something that sustains and nurtures life. on the surface of representation, guam appears to exude american benevolence and excellence. it is a site of american victory over the japanese in wwii. it is a base that has played a key role in every american conflict in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” in asia and the middle east since 1945. it is a minefield of american patriotism, where the largest holiday each year is “liberation day” meant to commemorate the american expulsion of the japanese and celebrate america’s ability to fight for freedom. perez works hard, over the course of all three books, to challenge this particular false representation of chamorros and their island by representing guam not just as a place of american victories and patriotism, but also one inundated with spam and brown tree snakes. spam and brown tree snakes don’t signify glorious gain, but instead loss—the loss of beauty, health, vitality, sustainability. the brown tree snake is a pest that was brought into guam accidentally by the us military, which led to the wiping out of most of the island’s native bird population. in [hacha], perez provides an analogy between the death of a treasured relative and the arrival of the brown tree snake. in “descending plumeria,” he places on the bottom of the page information on the brown tree snake and its deadly environmental impacts, as he recounts the loss of his cousin who created beautiful artwork that has faded over the years. in [guma’], several passages talk about the centrality of spam to contemporary chamorro culture. the meat came into the island after world war ii, and, along with other lifestyle and diet changes, has led to numerous health problems for chamorros. this theoretical intervention is also found in [saina]. while perez cites various texts that represent chamorro patriotism and eager participation in the american war machine, he fills [saina] with the names of soldiers from micronesia (guåhan and the other islands around it) who have been killed while serving in america’s “war of terror.” he crosses out the information that surrounds their names, as to how they died, leaving only their names untouched. it is a reminder to not be caught up in the metrics by which islanders sometimes judge themselves, as being small and not really mattering. guåhan and the other islands in micronesia boast both the highest rates of enlistment and also the highest killed-in-action statistics per capita. we are encouraged not to remember these names and these people in the context of their military service but as our neighbors and friends. perez’s critique exposes the cost of their participation and prompts us to understand that our island’s forced participation may be too high. many would position perez’s work as being “diasporic.” he articulates his own positionality as such, in the way he talks about his youth being spent in guam, but formative years being spent in california and now hawai’i. many commentators would argue that the maps that he is developing are part of his reconnection to his “home.” these maps are meant to help him and other chamorros with feelings of lost identity find their “roots.” but i would argue that his work transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   88   is far more than that. it is less a geographic journey, more a theoretical, temporal and even spiritual one. much can be said of his spatial placement of words, carmina figurata or concrete poetry made to look like iconic forms such as the island of guam or the latte, massive stone pillars upon which chamorros of the past built their houses. but in those spatial arrangements there are temporal ones as well. the citations echo textual traces throughout time. on a single page you will find fragments of a number of different historical periods. you will find chamorro mixed with japanese, english, and even spanish. the journeys that we are meant to take through his texts are just as much through time and history as they are across oceans in the pacific. the height of colonial commonsense is the linking of the possibility of the colonized subject to dependence on the colonizer. in perez’s poetry we delve into that history, seeing pieces with new eyes, to see past that dependency, where the maps don’t take us back to the pentagon, don’t take us back to the vatican, don’t take us back to magellan. it is important, however, not to conceive of these decolonial maps as being time traveling endeavors. they are meant to take us into the future, not the past. as we see perez creating, with his ever-expanding archive of texts, we are meant to look past questions of who put us on the map or which maps we are on and which we aren’t. we are meant to reflect on the ability we have to make our own maps, and regardless of the past or present, to decolonize and chart our own course into the future. michael lujan bevacqua, university of guam microsoft word poremski.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   160   trevino brings plenty. wakpá wanáǧi, ghost river. omaha, ne: the backwaters press, 2015. 81 pp. http://thebackwaterspress.com/our-authors/trevino-l-brings-plenty/ghost-river/ the title of trevino brings plenty’s newest book of poetry, wakpá wanáǧi, ghost river, signals his close ties to his lakota culture despite the disruptions of colonialism and removals from home and language that his body of work depicts. in this latest work, the focus becomes not just the urban poet and his personal concerns, but also extended family and the people he encounters in his role as a social worker in a large city. even as the speaker of these poems notes the damage done by these relatives, people whose neglect or abuse will inevitably create heart-rending problems in the future, he treats them with respect for the ways in which they’re doing the best they can, or doing what they know, given their resources and the ways in which their own lives have been affected by loss, addiction, and mental illness. the poems show us that these people, too, are worthy of compassion even while we recognize the danger of trusting them. in this way, whether they are literal blood relatives or not, the people depicted in wakpá wanáǧi feel like members of an extended family—the people you love and who break your heart, who are capable of great sacrifice and betrayal, people who give you the best and worst of who you are. that family is everywhere in this recent book, reminding readers of mitakuye oyas’in, the lakota concept of the interrelatedness of all people and all things. if we are all relatives, the poems in wakpá wanáǧi show us how to think about the most troubled and troubling among us. from the very first poem of the book, “the well” (3) there is a sense of working together to move toward healing. the speaker addresses his cousin, and describes a well that is “deeper than you recalled” and that is “darkly filled with your family’s story,” its images causing tears that can’t be extinguished. however, he offers his willingness to do the work together, to face the pain that will inevitably come from this process: cousin, my back is strong. we will tend these waters together. we will dig wells for our neighbors. cousin, we will pull through together. by working together on this task, they can improve not only their own situation, but bring water (healing) to others. this first poem highlights the concept of being a good relative, an important lakota value. it gives the reader a sense of hope, too: here is someone who is willing to lend a hand, to do the hard work of bringing healing. we are not alone, no matter how difficult the task. but if that sounds romantic—like something from a leaning tree greeting card—the book’s remaining poems show starkly the situations that will arise from taking seriously the concept of mitakuye oyas’in, situations so painful they will make digging a well feel like just about the worst idea anyone could come up with. there is a teenage girl who seems hell-bent on destroying herself in front of the speaker’s eyes, and then he notes that karen m. poremski review of wakpá wanáǧi   161   she is just one in a constant stream of suicidal young women. the details of her self-harm will haunt the reader. there is a boy who plays basketball, and whose poem nods to the possibility that basketball can be a metaphor for navigating life, or navigating the challenges of mental illness; but the poem’s title also names him “the kid i fear” (3536) and notes that he has experienced terrible violence, and may be capable of unleashing it even against someone trying to help him. there is a man who will go on smoking even after a cancer diagnosis, telling us the cigarettes smoke out the spiders in his throat, put there by iktomi’s woman. he calmly awaits his turn to traverse the milky way (the wakpá wanáǧi of the book’s title). there is a grandmother who loses custody of her grandchildren because she leaves them alone while she hunts for a job; she turns to alcohol and prostitution in her grief. there is the poem about the celebrity who has committed suicide, whose last act will influence the speaker’s clients. there are literal blood relatives, uncles who do nothing to stop a woman from being beaten, or who become grandfathers but do not take seriously the responsibility of the role. the people who are depicted in these poems push the reader to consider what it would mean to treat others with compassion and respect even as we see them fail. in addition to creating a world of relatives, wakpá wanáǧi moves through time. the book’s first section includes poems that feature the speaker’s past and childhood memories of the reservation, of his grandfather, and of learning the new geographies of post-relocation life in the city—learning to eat fast food, staying in hotels. several poems in the book, especially in this section, depict a kind of hypnosis in urban indians brought on by the blue flicker of the television screen, the constant buzz of social media. while the poet critiques compliance and complacency, he also notes the appearance of these motifs in his own childhood in the city. in his adult life, memory asserts and reasserts itself, sometimes in surprising moments, insisting on its ability to take the speaker out of the present moment, to make him lose himself for a time and meet the demands of the past. several poems in the book’s last section look forward to the near or distant future—one that sometimes delves into the world of science fiction though it is still recognizable. for example, the poem “simulacra reconstructive memory therapy” (75-76) depicts a time when advances in artificial intelligence mean you can heal from personal trauma by having new experiences with a simulacrum of the loved one who has caused you pain—a replica you can love who does not, for a change, engage in neglect and abuse. but the stanzas also sound like the familiar cadences of a drug ad, promising that “these units are implanted with your memories and aid to transmute your traumas to give you that sense of safety and security” (76). except you can’t really get away from trauma: seeing pictures of wounded knee triggers a memory of grandparents, and the therapy is undone. it’s as if, in some of these poems, the utopic future imagined by other writers is disrupted by the realities of colonialism that will persist. a number of poems in this fourth section of the book address questions of identity and blood quantum, perhaps suggesting that, as we turn to the future, these issues demand some sort of resolution, or at least acknowledgement. these will be familiar subjects to readers of brings plenty’s past work. in real indian junk jewelry, issues of identity and transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   162   stereotype take poetic center stage, as do the very personal topics of romantic relationships that cause acute pain and addictions that overshadow and overtake a life. while there is some continuity between the books, of course, real indian junk jewelry, particularly in its earlier half, feels more intensely focused on the self, compared to these new poems. in addition to bringing new subject matter to his poetry, brings plenty engages new forms in wakpá wanáǧi. many of the poems continue the narrative style of his previous works, featuring long lines that are unrhymed, and stanzas with no line breaks; these poems read more like lyric narrative than strictly formed poetry. but in many of these new poems, the narrative has been condensed into a smaller space. it’s as if brings plenty deploys poetic alchemy to condense the concepts into shorter, more powerful lines. the lines gain power from the multivalent nature of the words; sometimes it’s their connotations that multiply meaning in these lines, and sometimes it’s the flexibility of their grammatical function. for example, in many poems, words that we usually think of as nouns become verbs: cup, bottle, womb, map, hem, story. sometimes it feels as if brings plenty is creating a new kind of villanelle; sometimes it feels as if he’s the long-lost lakota cousin of emily dickinson. whether formally compact or more loose and flowing, brings plenty’s work is undeniably rooted in lakota culture. even as they address life in the city and the ways in which colonial processes have destroyed home and culture, the poems in wakpá wanáǧi assert the continuation of that culture through references to lakota values or figures or events. for example, iktomi shows up in several poems; the number four is emphasized in some of the poetic forms (four stanzas, or stanzas of four lines) as well as the structure of the book overall (four sections). poems describe ghost [dance] shirts, make reference to the sun dance, note that participating in ceremony makes a huge difference, or none at all. and of course, there’s the title of the book—a reference to the path that souls use to reach the afterlife, following the river of stars in the sky. the last poem of the book, “ghost river” (80), brings the reader back to the title and to water and family, to links with the past and tradition, and hints of trauma: i’m mostly water. there has been family swept under by raw currents. i’m from planters by the river. we dredged riverbed bones. we end where we began, it seems, in the world of water that signals nurturing (crops being watered) as well as violence (family being swept under). the ghost river connects the speaker to his relatives, his ancestors, his homeland, his language, even as he gives witness that these things yield pain along with survival. there’s a lot more in wakpá wanáǧi to be moved by. i haven’t even told you about the poem from the point of view of a speaker who is deciding what belongings to take after his relationship fails, its ring made of black hills gold a symbol that tempted trouble. or karen m. poremski review of wakpá wanáǧi   163   the poem that depicts a boy locked in an institution whose “one-on-one” counselor is the poet; as they walk outside, the boy finds two snakes and tries to bring them inside. this turns out to be a perfectly understandable thing when you see, as the poet does, that this boy is trying to hold onto family. there’s a whole world under this water that readers will find beautiful as well as painful, whose images and phrases will stick with you as you put the book down and think about your own place, your own family, your own time. karen m. poremski, ohio wesleyan university microsoft word miranda.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 177 peter h. russell. sovereignty: the biography of a claim. university of toronto press, 2021. 192 pp. isbn: 9781487509095. https://utorontopress.com/9781487509095/sovereignty/ peter h. russell opens sovereignty: the biograph of a claim with two occasions that would bring him into conversation with the dene nation. the first occurs in 1974 when james washee, then grand chief, contacts russell seeking consultation on canada’s constitutional government and dene efforts to draft a declaration asserting their rights as a sovereign nation. russell accepts the invitation to visit dene leaders, where he is stumped by the question from a dene woman, who asks how canada established sovereignty over the dene. for russell, this question spurred his investigation into european sovereignty and its dominance as a political instrument over indigenous and non-indigenous people. moreover, it leads to him to conclude that sovereignty is a claim, which should be understood as a “a relationship, not a thing” (10). and, as he states, in the context of the nation-state, this claim works to legitimate an absolutist form of governing power based on (internal and external) territorial recognition. the second event that russell describes occurs in 1999 when he is asked to serve as “canada’s envoy” to the dene nation. as envoy, he is tasked with producing a statement of shared environmental and governing principles that would be supported by both the deh cho dene and canada. while twenty-one principles could be agreed upon, it was the disagreement over sovereignty that returns russell’s attention to this subject, stating that sovereignty does the “pernicious work of preventing an indigenous people from sharing its territory with canadians in ways that take into account its interests and respect its principles” (9). here russell goes on to argue that the solution to limiting these harmful consequences is a robust federalism that can check the claims of absolutism by dividing governing power. as these two arguments suggest, the biographical subject of the study is a european form of sovereignty that is in stark contrast with indigenous articulations of selfdetermination. this focus on western governance is reflected in the structure of the book, with early chapters swiftly moving from the medieval disputes between kings and popes to the eventual reforms of liberal democracy before turning to the adoption of sovereign claims by colonial governments. chapter three opens on the conventional origin story of european sovereignty with jean bodin and thomas hobbes, whose major works on feudal governance loosely bookend the peace of westphalia in 1654. jim miranda review of sovereignty 178 the discussion on liberal democracy in chapter four continues its movement through european thinkers – specifically john locke and jean-jacques rousseau – to show how the rule of the people came to replace the divine right of kings as the legitimating logic underwriting nation-state sovereignty. while this european story is well-worn territory, russell offers a critical approach to “liberal sovereignty,” which he suggests serves as a unifying force in the mythic construction of europe’s democratic age and aids in solidifying imperial power over colonial peoples. but as russell notes, the blatant contradictions of “liberal sovereignty” not only emerge in the historic violence and oppression of colonial governance but in an illusory democratic nation-state where rule by the people persists as an imaginary construction. it is not difficult to recognize in this story the crucial role liberal ideals play in the articulation of nation-state sovereignty; yet the chapter does not fully draw out the consequences of this critique. instead, the argument softens in the conclusion by stating that this liberal form of popular sovereignty “has had the benign effect of advancing equality by widening opportunities of all people to participate in politics and governance” (52-53). such statements reflect the limits of the biography since “liberal sovereignty” may have the upshot of paving the way toward equality, an arguable claim in-itself, but the realization of this potential would need to account for indigenous peoples, and other oppressed groups, actively organizing and calling for participation. instead, the argument shifts from this general story of the birth of european liberal ideals to distinguishing between different forms of sovereignty as they take hold in colonial settings. in the next three chapters, which respectively cover european imperialism, “settler sovereignty,” and federalism, the implications of this implied progress toward equitable governance come into tension with settler colonialism (a concept not used or referenced by russell). this is especially evident in the fact that colonial practices predate european democratic reforms, which means russell must return to the discursive justifications that denied indigenous sovereignty, thus disrupting the historical trajectory established in the first four chapters. for example, chapter five focuses on european imperialism as a set of 17thand 18th-century colonial logics and practices – such as terra nullis and the doctrine of discovery – that legitimized the dispossession of indigenous land by framing indigenous peoples as barbarous (less than human) and/or in need of civilization. in these moments, the book reveals what is at stake in articulations of sovereignty which, as in the case of “liberal sovereignty,” can foster the illusion of a more equitable future in one context while in another denies the basic humanity of populations it deems as an obstacle to absolute power. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 179 therefore, the effort of sovereignty: the biography of claim to provide a full biography can feel compromised by the centering of european forms of governance and legal precedents which structure this typological account of sovereignty. take, for example, the distinction between “imperial” and “settler” sovereignty, which is problematic when considering the long durée of settler colonialism. such distinctions yield interesting points worth considering, such as how sovereignty was not always claimed over colonial settings but was instead denied to indigenous people for the purpose of global positioning and economic ends. but the lack of historical grounding for such distinctions ultimately results in conclusions that attempt to salvage “liberal sovereignty” against what it views as the more egregious abuses of “settler sovereignty.” such distinctions lead to claims – for example, “indigenous people in colonial canada did not experience the force of settler sovereignty until the 1830s” (72) – that seem out of step with contemporary scholarship on settler colonialism that emphasizes the structural impact of early settlers on indigenous communities. the critique of sovereignty as an absolutist form of governance that must be blunted by federalism (or shared governance between local and national entities) is further obscured in the final chapters where russell argues for a global governing body capable of externally checking nation-state sovereignty. from this, the book concludes on a cautionary note that emphasizes the failure of nations to address the existential crises precipitated by global issues such as climate change. but here too, the limits of the critique – which cannot think outside the preservation of western forms of sovereignty – become apparent when considering how little attention is given to the active role indigenous and other local governing bodies play in attending to these global issues. as russell argues, “it is only they [nation-states] who have the capacity to deal effectively with three gravest issues facing our planet…threats of nuclear war, climate change, and migration of people” (116). in an epilogue aimed at addressing the global pandemic brought about by covid, these conclusions are pushed further with an almost full vindication of nation-state sovereignty alongside the clear need for international governance. the early remarks on the “pernicious work” of sovereignty are eclipsed by the ability of nation-state sovereignty to police borders and impose national lockdowns. russell still calls for international governing bodies, like the world health organization, to coordinate and guide the response to this global crisis, but federalism, he states, is more an obstacle than a possible solution. in a striking contrast to the introduction, russell states that the claim of “sovereignty over territory and people has not had any jim miranda review of sovereignty 180 major harmful effects in addressing the pandemic” (143). it is important to note that russell was writing in the early stages of the pandemic as control measures took precedence, but many will find the claim of “no harm” difficult to parse with unequal rates of mortality among indigenous populations, increased numbers of migrants being denied asylum, and international inequities in necessary medical equipment and treatment. sovereignty: the biography of a claim ultimately offers an ambitious intervention into the study of sovereignty that takes a wide-ranging scope – from medieval to contemporary global politics – to foreground how european governance has come to dominate large portions of the world’s population. the advantage of this approach is in telling a story of governance that coheres around the articulation of sovereignty as a claim, thus providing a useful overview for scholars and students new to this subject. those familiar with this historical emplotment of european governance may find this structure less compelling and may look to studies with more historical and/or theoretical specificity. to russell’s credit, he provides a useful list of suggested readings at the end of the book for those seeking to delve deeper into this subject. for those engaged with and aware of indigenous (and other non-state actors) articulations of sovereignty, the biography may seem to stop short of contemporary scholarship that decenters the state. as russell mentions briefly, questions of sovereignty no longer rest solely with the nation-state (or territory) and now encompass people and movements whose works speak to a range of self-determined ontologies and practices: from food production and distribution of care to migration and autonomy over one’s body. for this reason, sovereignty: the biography of a claim provides a nuanced, even if at points conflicted, approach to nation-state claims of sovereignty that serve as a useful contrast to indigenous and emerging articulations of self-determination, thus underscoring the relationships at stake in such claims and the practices these claims foster. jim miranda, bentley university microsoft word alberts.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 155 diane glancy. fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2014. 136 pp. http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/fort-marion-prisoners-and-the-trauma-ofnative-edu,675967.aspx diane glancy. report to the department of the interior: poems. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2015. 97 pp. http://unmpress.com/books.php?id=20000000005780&page=book although diane glancy, an author of german and cherokee descent, began writing “late” in life by contemporary standards, in the thirty or so years since the appearance of her first chapbook she has written more than twenty-five books, many of which defy generic classification. her body of work draws upon her life experiences, involves in-depth research, and features reoccurring themes: the gaps in recorded history, the reclamation of native voices, the role of place, issues surrounding the written word versus oral storytelling, and tensions between christianity and traditional religious practices, among others. two of her most recent publications—fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education and report to the department of the interior: poems—return to these subjects in thoughtful and challenging ways, pushing readers to think about the on-going repercussions of 19th century us government actions on native education, culture, identity, and fundamental well-being. glancy has retold or reimagined relatively well known historical events from native points of view more than once, focusing on the trail of tears in pushing the bear (1996) and the lewis and clark expedition in stone heart: a novel of sacajawea (2003), just to give two examples. however, in fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education, she turns to what is perhaps a lesser known event, but one that has had farreaching and long-term effects: the end of the southern plains indian wars in 1875. specifically, glancy concentrates on seventy-two of the “worst prisoners,” who were ripped from everyone and everything that they knew, shackled, and shipped via rail from fort sill, indian territory (now near lawson, oklahoma) to fort marion in st. augustine, florida, where they were delivered into the custody of (then) captain richard henry pratt, who went on to found the carlisle indian industrial school in 1879. simply put, these prisoners were pratt’s initial experiment in cultural assimilation through education that would serve as the model for native boarding schools for decades. it is, essentially, where he put his infamous philosophy of “[k]ill the indian […] and save the man” into practice for the first time. in 2005, after viewing their “afraid or defiant or passive” facial expressions preserved in “plaster casts or life masks” and locked away in storage at harvard’s peabody museum, glancy became inspired to write about these prisoners (fort marion 43). it is there that she “felt their stories wanting to be told” (fort marion 43). in the nearly ten years between that moment and the publication of fort marion, as she reveals in the three sections entitled “the process of writing” (and as is her general practice), glancy crystal k. alberts review of fort marion prisoners and report to the department of the interior 156 traveled the land—mostly by car and preferably alone—visiting the places where the prisoners had been held—fort sill, fort marion—absorbing the physical realities of those locations. she consulted printed histories on the subject (many published by the us government), as well as conducted research at numerous museums and archives (as her acknowledgments and bibliography attest). glancy weaves this “factual” information into fort marion, including photographs of the prisoners, multiple replications of their drawings from their “ledger books,” and transcriptions of various historical government documents, which perhaps explains why this book is ostensibly thought of, or at least marketed, as (creative) non-fiction. however, the emphasis should be on creative, particularly as, throughout this work (and presumably throughout the entire process of writing it), glancy was in search of the “history that was not in history books” (fort marion 60). fort marion is her attempt to give voice to those whose stories not only weren’t recorded, but who have nearly been erased from memory. in order to accomplish this, glancy begins fort marion with an historical overview of the events, a partial list of prisoners, a stereograph of them in “native costume,” and a collective “they,” as the reader travels with the prisoners by train from fort sill to fort marion, stopping periodically to be paraded in front of the assembled crowds (fort marion 5). as the work progresses, glancy moves from person to person (one may as well say from character to character) imagining their individual reactions to their imprisonment, surroundings, and experiences; she allows pratt to speak from time to time, and occasionally interjects her own voice, drawing comparisons to her own life, particularly in relation to schooling. “their voices” and the text also “carry the elements of all genres” (fort marion 88). glancy consciously uses this style, because “[s]ometimes it takes an accretion of incongruous layers to reach the undercurrents of meanings in the structure of native concepts and oralities” (fort marion 109). for those unfamiliar with glancy’s work, this form may feel fragmented and circular (some might uncharitably think repetitive). however, glancy believes it is necessary to reconstruct these events, as she explains: i’m interested in different versions of the same story—the telling and retelling of the story in different ways—moving from third person to first and back. it’s how multiple retellings seem to work [….] the rewrite of a broken history broken into different narratives (fort marion 14). part of reconstructing this broken native history involves addressing the issues that surround who is telling the stories and how those stories are told (orally or in writing). consequently, this attention to form is not accidental. it is central to understanding what happened at fort marion: the place where the native prisoners were stripped of their tribal identity, including language, given “ledger books in which to draw,” and “taught to read and write” in english (1). it is also necessary to grasping what glancy wants to do in this text, which is to “giv[e] voice to those marked with the long and sometimes cruel transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 157 history of indian education” and “to set right a small part of america’s history by recognizing the stains on america’s self-appointed clean self-image” (fort marion 47). and in this work, it isn’t just giving voice to the seventy-two prisoners of fort marion, whose drawings were overwritten with english “explanations” by pratt, but also the opportunity for glancy to testify to her own native education, where she “was relegated to invisibility,” “could not speak,” and “learned [she] was nothing [and] would be nothing” (fort marion 71). although fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education and report to the department of the interior: poems are separate works, they can be seen as complementary, as both address the impact of us government involvement on native education. glancy signals this thematic focus with her poetry collection’s title: since 1849, the department of the interior has overseen the bureau of indian affairs, which, in turn, controls education on native american reservations. each year, the doi releases its annual report to congress, describing expenditures, progress, and other administrative details; however, they do not tell all. as glancy explains in “to say from their way:” whatever they said was said in government reports and filed in drawers that might be read again. but schools cannot be contained on pages. dear sir, if only you were here you would know the conditions. (report 28) in report to the department of the interior, glancy is once again in search of history not found in the official us government record. and while she kept fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education focused on those initial victims of pratt, with the occasional reference to her own experiences, through her poetry, glancy stories others who were subjected to the “systematic effort to educate the indians” inspired by pratt into existence (fort marion 2). report to the department of the interior includes found poems taken from historical documents, but the poems are more than just a relating of “facts.” they dive into the inner lives of those who have learned that “indian education” means “[l]iving without part of oneself. living outside oneself. living with a smaller self,” and not being “able to return to tribal life, or [be] able to make a living in the new world” (report 39). they capture the experiences of those educated in a system that “demolished a sense of self and sent the fragments broken/into the world” (report 82). to emphasize these points, glancy does mention those who ended up at pratt’s carlisle indian industrial school, but she spends more time exploring the interior landscape of even more marginalized, complicated, and sometimes controversial figures from bull head’s wife to jeff weise (although not explicitly named) to an anonymous, collective “we,” representing contemporary american indian women who have survived sexual assault. crystal k. alberts review of fort marion prisoners and report to the department of the interior 158 these poems challenge readers on multiple fronts. they expect that the reader know (or be willing to find out) that bull head was the tribal police officer responsible for killing sitting bull while serving a warrant for his arrest (and who was himself mortally wounded in the process). they force the reader to see life from the point of view of the school shooter responsible for the “red lake massacre.” they drive the reader to drink deeply, “then [blot] out all that happened—taking it back as a report to our own department of the interior” (report 79). but the tests aren’t restricted to information recall or emotionally charged content. glancy’s poetry—like all of her work—often breaks formal boundaries, but more often than not it can best be categorized as free verse, prose poetry, or even examples of concrete poetry, and this characterization is true of the work in report. the poem “bull head’s wife reads cliff notes of indian history,” for instance, is printed along the lefthand margin and is no more than an inch-wide at any point. the rest of the page is blank, reinforcing the image of “[t]he spider” making “herself/thin/as a/needle,” and the point that native american history has been pushed to the side in textbooks, education, and us culture, generally (report 18). all of which is to say, glancy has never been afraid to experiment to find the right form for her purpose, but a few of the poems in report to the department of the interior seem to break new ground even for glancy. a case in point is “bull head’s wife opens ristorante hortense fiquet, fort yates, north dakota,” which reads like a menu featuring, among other things: pan-roasted prairie rainbow trout wrapped in ham 22 oven-roasted pheasant with creamy horseradish-ramp risotto 24 grilled leg of elk with yellow-potato puree, grilled baby artichoke, and dried cherries 26 (14) facing a found poem entitled “bull head’s wife studies frances glessner lee’s visible proofs, a series of crime scenes reconstructed in miniature in the 1940s and ‘50s for use in forensics,” one might be tempted to think that this is a found poem as well (and maybe it is). found or not, it makes readers sort through an “accretion of incongruous layers.” the title alone offers at least four: fort yates, located on the north dakota side of the standing rock indian reservation, was the initial burial place of sitting bull in 1890. sioux county, in which fort yates is located (according to recent census data), states that over 37% of the population lives in poverty.1 hortense fiquet was paul cézanne’s artistic model (and wife); one of his biographers notes that, as a result, “she was […] silenced: sitters are seen but not heard” (danchev 152).2 and while fiquet was french, “ristorante” is italian. and then there’s the menu itself. needless to say, no such restaurant actually exists in fort yates (i googled it just to make certain). what should readers make of all of this? i’m not sure, although i have a few ideas. all of which is to say, the poems in glancy’s report to the department of the interior tackle difficult subjects; they are cerebral; they can be disorienting, disturbing; and, sometimes, they are dream-like, which is fitting in that they are an attempt to imagine a transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 159 person’s interior world. they illustrate—in content, feeling, and form—what it might be like to be caught between “two world views that could not coexist” (report 52). this collection, along with fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education, give readers pause and make them think, which is good, because we might learn something. crystal k. alberts, university of north dakota 1 see us census bureau “quickfacts beta” for sioux county, nd available at http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/pst045214/38085,00 accessed 17 august 2015. 2 although published after report to the department of the interior, for information on hortense fiquet, see alex danchev’s cézanne: a life (new york: pantheon, 2012), pp. 152-179. microsoft word galley main.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 136 spork david heska wanbli weiden the russians had gotten wind of his business. the e-mail read: “hello sir. do not to build more replicas. we know were you live.” no signature. simple, spare. chilling. eugene knew the russians had dominated the field for years, but he’d always hoped to fly under their radar. he built his replicas slowly, one by one, didn’t contract the work out as the russians reportedly did. quality, not quantity. never flooded the market. his fakes usually fetched three or four hundred dollars on ebay, sometimes more. a couple of these per week, he could pay his bills, live in style. not champagne, maybe. but. beer. cable. a movie. his latest ebay auction was ending in 53 minutes. his masterpiece, this must have been the fake that drew the russians’ attention. so far, it had garnered a high bid of $563, but the price would certainly go up in the last few seconds as the snipers made their last-second bids. eugene studied his listing: “rare!!! spork just found! discovered at former pine ridge reservation, colony of south dakota! intact, vf. guaranteed genuine!” as he watched, new bids appeared: $565, then $566, $567. this was looking to be his most profitable auction ever since he’d started making the fakes, three years ago. he’d learned his trade by starting off with the easy stuff—a kfc knife, a dunkin’ donuts spoon. cutting the plastic, striking off, molding, baking, distressing it just enough. the early fakes, not so good. impatient, he rushed the process. he’d since learned that it took at least fifteen or twenty hours to create a convincing fake. then, a few minutes to print out a “certificate of authenticity.” he considered himself a craftsman now. the craft, that was the important part, not the money. in the last two years, only one fake had been challenged by a buyer. and really, that was his fault. he’d bitten off more than he could chew. he’d tried to create a mcdonald’s coffee stirrer. the holy grail. the tiny oval bowl, the mcdonald’s legend along the handle, the arches logo at the top. no one had been able to create a convincing replica of the mcdonald’s stirrer, not since young bear—the master—had disappeared a decade ago. hubris, to think that he could create on the same level as young bear. that would take a david heska wanbli weiden “spork” 137 lifetime of study, practice, dedication to the craft. for now, he was happy to specialize in taco bell, arby’s, burger king. put out just enough fakes on the market to keep going, financially, as he got better and better. that was the plan, anyway. now the russians knew about him. no point in worrying about it now. eugene saw the red message light blinking, flashing the number 2 on his old-school answering machine. should he listen to the messages? what if it was the russians? his hands trembling, he picked up the phone and pressed the messages button. “eugene, it’s tony. just wanted to tell you about the latest at the daycare center. my boss is hacked at me because during story time i told the kids about quetzalcoatl and chac. i thought they’d like the story about how chac made jaguar and deer live together in the desert; then i told them how quetzalcoatl ate the roadrunner and vomited out an eagle, then they asked about the bloodletting and how the people cut out their own tongues. . .” eugene put the phone down on the table. to get to the second message, he’d have to let the entire first message play out before he could delete it. the doorbell rang. eugene froze. tony was at work, zero was out of town, and angela wasn’t speaking to him anymore. he considered his options. the only way out of the apartment, besides the front door, was the back deck. his unit was on the third floor, so jumping off of the deck would likely bring a broken leg or worse. maybe pretend he wasn’t home, hope they went away? the doorbell rang again, then a knock. another knock. now or never. eugene opened the top drawer of his dresser, pulled out the bersa. semiautomatic, double action, 380 acp, 3.5 inch barrel, 15 round capacity, fixed sights, matte finish, fired casing. loaded. eugene stood behind the door at an angle, out of the line of fire, then yanked it open quickly. a zombie stood there, staring straight ahead. green flesh rotting off the skull, one eye missing, mouth contorted into a frenzied scowl, blood splattered and splintered. the undead. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 138 “trick or treat!” eugene noticed a pirate standing behind the zombie, the pirate’s face looking expectantly at him. he stuck the gun in his pocket. no candy in his apartment. he’d had a snitchum a few weeks ago, but that was long gone. “wait here, guys, i’ve got something for you.” eugene went to his kitchen, found what he was looking for. “hold out your bags.” he gave each of the kids a large bachunk of red pepper hummus, straight into their sacks. they grinned at him, their smiles radiating joy and delight. his heart skittering, eugene picked up the phone again to finish listening to his messages. he heard tony’s voice still crackling: “. . . their hearts wept, oh, our sons, we give you counsel before you leave on your journey, do not forget us, do not erase us, go on your path and reclaim the honor which has been lost to our people, go forth and see the place from which we came, go forth. . .” eugene put the phone down on the table again. he had to get out of the apartment, clear his head, come back in the morning. next day, nerves still shaky coming back to the apartment complex. eugene got off the elevator, crouched down in the hallway and peered around the corner, looking to see if anyone was lurking by his unit. so far, so good. he slowly walked down the hallway, then saw a handwritten note taped to his door. what now? “how dare you put that paste in my sons trick or treat bag. it is ruined. i do not appreciate it. you owe my son another bag. please bring it to #307. thank you, diana ps he is olfactorily challenged" olfactorily challenged? did he attend a special school? eugene took the note and crumpackled it, threw it in the corner. he saw the phone, still playing the first message, lifted it to his ear and listened, “. . . they punctured their ears and their arms, their blood flowing before the divinities, and they collected their blood and put it in a urn near the rocks, and the rocks were not really rocks, but appeared in the likeness of a youth, and . . .” eugene put the phone down, and jaggled the touchpad on his laptop. he watched the david heska wanbli weiden “spork” 139 computer screen slowly return to ebay. the winning bid on the spork: $815, already paid. a new record. finally, some good news. he’d pack up the fake and ship it off. but first, he’d go see diana in 307. what the hell. he’d give the kid one of his fakes, maybe the dairy queen parfait scraper. kids loved those, that should chill her out. no sense making enemies. eugene rang the doorbell at unit 307. a long pause. finally, the door opened. “yes?” the woman at the door looked to be about 30 or so. long black hair, brown skin, green eyes, strange eye makeup. the makeup—what was it called? eyeliner? mascara?—angled up to the corner of her face, nearly to her hairline, giving her a cat-like appearance. “i’m eugene, i live in 315, you left a note on my door?” he looked around for the kid, didn’t see him. maybe at school? he held out the package that he’d wrapped up as a gift and gave it to the woman, who was presumably diana, the author of the note. “please come in,” she said, a strained smile on her face as she took the package. he walked into the apartment, stood in the foyer. she locked the door behind him. a dank, earthy odor enveloped him. what was that smell? he’d never eaten a rutabaga, but he imagined this was what it smelled like. “am i interrupting?” he asked. “no. sit down.” he walked into the kitchen, where he saw a cauldron of red liquid roiling and steaming on the stove. “what is that?” he sat down at the kitchen table. “soup.” “what kind of soup?” “we call it blood soup,” she said. she ladled some of the mixture into an ancient metal bowl and set it in front of him. when the steam cleared, he could see that the soup was viscous, oily, with large green and white chunks floating within. smaller, iridescent pieces resembling migrant worker fingertips rose to the top then sank. she stared at him, expectantly. he looked at the soup. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 140 eugene took a battered wooden spoon and disheveled some liquid—no chunks—into it. he blew on it, waited. he raised it to his nose, inhaled. it smelled like a mustache, a street light, an old chair, an exhaust manifold. he tasted it. the first note was a deep animal saltiness, accented by the flavor of sage and vinegarweed. then he tasted red wine, dark beer, pearl onions, defragmented celery, slithered carrots. the finishing note was of sugar, butter, cinnamon, a mellow and polite sweetness, like a beef pie crust mixed with blackberries and girl scout cookies. this soup was like nothing he’d ever eaten—tasting it was like a journey to the kingdom of zembla, or perhaps a vacation to a distant planet with as yet undiscovered herbs, spices redolent of the musky alien soil, the thin atmosphere, the toil of the spice workers. “good,” he said. he ate the soup quickly, hungrily, as if it were his last meal, without speaking. when he was finished, she opened her icebox and took out what appeared to be a block of distressed cherry wood. she took a hack saw and carved off a slice, wrapped it in newspaper. “you take this for later. now go, before my son gets home.” he nodded, left without saying goodbye. later that night, eugene ate the bread. it was a revelation. dense and spongy, it tasted of forest hops and prairie grasses. he wanted more. during the next week, he tried to concentrate on his business, not diana. although it wasn’t his best work, he finished his latest project by the end of the week and put up a new listing: “genuine!!! hardee’s knife, just found! no chips or cracks, great condition, some mustard residue!! appears to be from former chicago area! no reserve!!!!” eugene hoped to clear a few hundred dollars, but the russians had saturated the market with hardee’s cutlery last year, so he’d be lucky to get anything, especially in this post-war economy. within hours of putting up the hardee’s listing, he received another e-mail message: “no legs, no problems.” what did this mean? to clear his head, eugene picked up his phone, which was still playing tony’s message: “. . . and xbalanque cut off hunahpu’s legs and offered him as a sacrifice, but hunahpu arose from the dead, and one death and seven deaths, the lords of the sky, demanded that the david heska wanbli weiden “spork” 141 miracle be performed again, and the twins cut off the lords’ legs but did not bring them back from the dead, and the xibalbans despaired, and begged for mercy. . .” he had to get out. he walked down the hall to unit 307 and rang the bell. diana opened the door, motioned him inside. he started to speak, but she silenced him. she pulled him into the bedroom and sank to her knees. a warm red cloud began to envelope eugene’s brain. he peered through the cloud and looked around the room. he saw galvanic paintings, defenestrated posters, kachina dolls. he gave over to the cloud, electrolytic charges traveling to his extremities, soft waves of ions dissolving into positive and negative particles. spent, he sat down on the bed. he stared at a photograph of a soldier holding an automatic weapon. after a while, she brought out a small translucent container, filled with what looked like pickled cactus and dried fruit. “this is called acorn soup,” she said, handing him the box. “when can i see you again?” he asked. she gave him a faint smile and shut the door behind him. in the following weeks, eugene settled into a routine. work on the fakes, go to the post office, maybe pick up a bottle of tree vodka as a gift before going to diana’s apartment in the afternoon. she would dejizzle him, then give him some new dish to take back to his flat. he never saw her kid, and she would only smile when he asked about him. he never knew what to expect from the strange food she gave him, but each bite took him back to the red cloud. he could no longer look at root vegetables or fish without becoming tumescent. as a consequence, he avoided farmers’ markets and aquariums, but still became aroused at the inadvertent sight of nuts or smell of turnips. when he felt lonely, he listened to tony’s message, still playing: “. . . and when the twins did return to the village, they did see that all were dead and murdered, and the village had been burned, and they did despair of the evil that had been brought, and they did, in their sadness, walk and walk until the end of time, and then they ascended into the middle of the sky so that one was the sun and one was the moon. . .” transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 142 one afternoon, eugene stopped by diana’s apartment and found the front door open. “diana?” no answer. he looked inside, saw no one. he called her name again. he walked into the foyer, poked his head around the wall. “hello?” still no answer. he noticed that a light was on in the bathroom—the light squeaking around the doorjamb like a picture frame. he opened the door. on the counter, a makeup mirror shined like the sun, eight clear bulbs blazing and surrounding the lunar surface of the mirror. the smell of copper and magnesium filled the small space. diana was nude, lying down in the tub on her side, facing away from him. it looked like she was bathing in soup—shiny red liquid completely covered the bottom of the bowl. eugene leaned down and turned her over on her back. blood covered her face and drizzled over her lifeless green eyes, which were still open. her skin was pure white, the color of bleached chalk. he stared down at her torso. her legs were gone at the knees. only crinkled and crenulated stumps remained, gray tendons and white bone contrasting with the scarlet and crimson of veins and muscles. no legs, no problems. he wasn’t sure what to do—cover her up, say some words, call the cops? he turned off the light and shut the bathroom door, slowly. he walked into the kitchen. eugene stared at her spices, her pots, her spoons, her forks. he looked at her dishes, her bags of flour, sugar, salt. he opened the refrigerator and gazed at her vegetables, meats, fruits. he started to cook. he used no recipe, no formula. he went by instinct, taking vegetables he’d never seen before; peeling, slicing, and boiling them. he fried unknown cuts of meat, then chopped them into smaller pieces and added them to the stock pot. in the cupboard, there were jars of spices with strange symbols on the labels. he added these to the pot without tasting them. the soup boiled and simmered. eugene waited. david heska wanbli weiden “spork” 143 as night began to fall, he ate, using his spork, which he found on the table. and then he walked. did he think, in that diaphanous moment between dusk and nightfall, that she would return? did he walk the streets each night, listening to snatches of conversation, hearing her voice in the markets, the cafes, the elevators? did he eat dark bread and corn soup, constantly, obsessively? did he try to swallow in a foreign language? wouldn’t you? microsoft word low.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 186 eileen tabios. dovelion: a fairy tale for our times. ac books, 2021, 309 pages. isbn: 978-1-939901-19-4. https://www.acbooks.org/dovelion eileen r. tabios’ dovelion is a slipstream work of fiction. it has characters, and a plotline develops, slowly, in the background, like a novel. some of this work is fictional, some autobiographical. the central site is in an imagined place, pacifica, which is supposedly connected to the philippines (where tabios was born before moving to the united states). but rather than autofiction, the narrative is a work of indigenous futurism as it shifts among strands of transcolonial experience. “transcolonial,” not postcolonial, is the better term to describe the book’s political critique, to suggest how imperial powers have dominated indigenous peoples like those of the philippines and how their influence continues and will continue in myriad guises globally. the author is simultaneously a rebel against erasure of indigenous sovereignty and a visionary who offers new expressions of cultural traditions and personal wholeness. indigenous futurisms writers generate literary and other artifacts that revise western european literatures. with her textual inventions, tabios disrupts the expectations of english-language genres. poetry, geography, political science, dialogue, prose poetry, culinary arts, visual art critique—all wend their way through the sequential and gradual unmasking of the characters in dovelion. this is tabios’ method of character development. there is a through-line present in the novel-like book: a marcos-like dictator and his family terrorize the populace and exploit the environment, until overthrown. two lovers are children of enemies. the woman’s pregnancy results in a child and then grandchildren who commingle bloodlines of the feuding families. events occur and recur in the narrative fabric, like revisited memories. tabios’ body of work includes other experiments with form, including invention of the tercet form hay(na)ku. several of these are embedded within the work: “when i bleed / i camouflage / tears” and “when i weep / i camouflage / blood” (71-2). each diary-like section begins with a day and month, but no year. the dates are not sequential, but instead seem random. tabios created a random language generator for her project murder death resurrection: a poetry generator (2018), so the nonlinear system for dates in dovelion is consistent with the author’s modus operandi. jumbled dates suggest entry into an alternative time, where linear sequence is irrelevant. like oral tradition stories, the same incidents repeat with varying emphases. point-of-view shifts denise low review of dovelion 187 among characters. thus, dovelion’s underlying scaffolding is a three-dimensional clothesline upon which to hang moments of all shapes and sizes. all entries begin with the fairy-tale phrase “once upon a time.” the chapter entitled “12 april” illustrates one of the unexpected directions of the prose; it begins with reflections on the love affair and proceeds to a quotation from “the poet eileen r. tabios,” who is, the narrator avers, “a strong influence on my work” (60). the book’s narrator and author separate here and elsewhere and re-engage, as tabios interrogates the act of authorship. sequential chapters, one through twenty-five, order the book, an overlay on the randomly dated subsections. and tabios further divides the book into three overarching sections that create another mapping: “there was is,” “there became is,” and “there will be is.” english verb tenses collapse into a single tense of presence. time is a recurring concern of the book. decolonization through restructuring of language and genre is one dimension of dovelion. another is revitalization of indigenous values. tabios writes about her book murder, death and resurrection: a poetry generator: i also wanted to deepen my interrogation (and disruption) of english which had facilitated twentieth-century us colonialism in my birthland, the philippines. . . . i wanted to develop a consciously closer link to the filipino indigenous value of “kapwa.” “kapwa” refers to “shared self” or “shared identity” whereby everyone and everything is connected.” (jacket2, june 2, 2019) dovelion defines, explicates, reveals, and dramatizes the timeless value of “kapwa.” a “nanny” first explains the term in the book as “despite diversity, one is all and all is one” (57). in another embedded quotation from the author’s own writings, she explains a poetics that expands on the meaning of kapwa: the human, by being rooted onto the planet but also touching the sky, is connected to everything in the universe and across all time, including that the human is rooted to the past and future—indeed, there is no unfolding of time. in that moment, all of existence—past, present, and future—has coalesced into a singular moment, a single gem with an infinite expanse. (dovelion 60, originally published in the awakening, 2013) the author also explains kapwa in terms of the science of physics, explaining that “it’s not only a cultural belief. various physicists have long proposed time is not linear. some call time a dimension of spacetime and, thus, [time] does not pass because spacetime doesn’t” (156). the theory is a praxis. the restoration of the intact, healthy transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 188 culture is predicted by its onetime existence in the past. the filipino child’s tale “an emerald island sits upon a blue sapphire ocean and both glow under the beam of a 24carat sun” is a continuous refrain throughout the narration and a continuous expectation. islands are a motif in dovelion, from the invented island country of pacifica to the philippines to a “large grey building” where the two lovers meet in isolation. each individual is a discrete “island” of individuality, which links to others through sex, children, and social relationships. kapwa links each person. unspoken is the john donne poem, “no man is an island,” but it is present nonetheless as all writings in all time exist simultaneously in kapwa time. tabios does not allow decolonization principles to devolve into rhetoric without action. rather, she previews a future where enemies reconnect in alliances against dictatorships. she shows how the restoration of a continuous concept of time corrects the fallacy of linear time, where the past falls off the left-hand edge of the page and can be ignored (like nineteenth-century us treaties with indigenous nations). tabios offers options. she recognizes june 12, the day the philippines overthrew spanish rule, through an imaginary website june12.com. she restores indigenous values in new form. dovelion is a blueprint for further investigations into a future where indigenous knowledge structures the narratives. denise low, baker university works cited: tabios, eileen. the awakening: a long poem triptych & a poetics fragment. theenk books, 2013. –––. “murder death resurrection: another way for poetry.” jacket 2. june 2, 2019. murder death resurrection | jacket2. –––. murder death resurrection: a poetry generator, dos madres, 2018. microsoft word contributors 1_2.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   178   author biographies david j. carlson is professor of english at california state university, san bernardino. he is the author of sovereign selves: american indian autobiography and the law (university of illinois press, 2006) and imagining sovereignty: the discourse of self-determination in american indian law and literature (forthcoming, university of oklahoma press, 2016). molly mcglennen was born and raised in minneapolis, minnesota and is of anishinaabe and european descent. currently, she is an associate professor of english and native american studies at vassar college. she earned a phd in native american studies from university of california, davis and an mfa in creative writing from mills college. her creative writing and scholarship have been published widely. she is the author of a collection of poetry fried fish and flour biscuits, published by salt’s awardwinning “earthworks series” of indigenous writers, and a critical monograph creative alliances: the transnational designs of indigenous women’s poetry from university of oklahoma press, which earned the beatrice medicine award for outstanding scholarship in american indian literature. denise low, kansas poet laureate 2009-2011, lives in lawrence, kansas. she founded the creative writing program at haskell indian nations university. she is a free-lance writer and reviewer. her family is unaffiliated delaware and british isles. her most recent books are melange block, poetry from red mountain press; natural theologies, critical essays about the grasslands from the backwaters press; and ghost stories, mixed genre from woodley memorial press. she is director of four ledgers on the plains indian ledger art website (uc-san diego). kim shuck is a poet and bead artist who has been published and shown in asia, south america and europe as well as all over north america. born in her mother’s hometown of san francisco, shuck had a very good seat from which to view the events of both late 60s/early 70s hippy/post hippy scene and the red power movement. kim cut her teeth on poetry readings that included carolee sanchez, paula gunn allen and john trudell as well as various beat poets. she is the winner of the 2005 diane decorah award for her 2006 collection smuggling cherokee. she spent some years on the board of directors for california poets in the schools and has taught poetry from the elementary school level to the university level. her most recent collection of poems is clouds running in from taurean horn press. billy j. stratton (phd, american indian studies—university of arizona) is currently an assistant professor in the english department at the university of denver. his teaching and research centers on contemporary american/native american literature, critical theory and creative writing. his first book, buried in shades of night, was published in 2013.   microsoft word viehmann.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 164 frances washburn. the red bird all-indian traveling band. tucson: arizona up, 2014. http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/books/bid2476.htm the opening chapter of frances washburn’s third novel, the red bird all-indian traveling band, is lyrical and down-to-earth, and thoroughly engrossing. we immediately want to know more about the kind of trouble in which the “gift or [...] curse” of “being a human wailing wall” entangles sissy roberts, and we want details about the death of buffalo ames (3-4). like her other novels, washburn sets the red bird all-indian traveling band in centralsouthern south dakota, between pine ridge and rosebud. the band and its fans travel among small towns that only those who have lived in or passed through lakota country are likely to have heard of. but most days find sissy in the fictional jackson, an offreservation town where local ranchers, both lakota and white, do business, and where indians and whites intermingle at school and work, and in cafes and bars. it’s 1969, and sissy is trying to figure out how to escape the ceaseless round of saturday nights playing in the band or drinking too much, hanging with people she’s known all her life, and working as a waitress. she can’t imagine settling into marriage and child-rearing, yet her future seems just beyond the horizon, out of sight but tantalizingly immanent. her dream of seeing the world is like the women’s movement that sissy almost embodies as she observes the competition and frustrations resulting from unexamined social norms, or like the american indian movement that is not quite behind the interracial tension and near riot that breaks out in a chapter titled “red power.” like sissy’s future, these social movements haven’t yet arrived in south dakota in the summer of 1969. washburn portrays the restlessness, precursor to the sexual and ethnic revolutions, as she focuses on an array of interesting and flawed characters. by the end of the novel, the mystery of buffalo ames’s death is solved and sissy has found a way to get out of jackson while maintaining ties to her family. sissy is an appealing character who stands out among her friends and neighbors; she is a little smarter, a little more interested in the world, a little more reliable, like the older lakota women, despite the piles of dirty dishes and clothes she leaves in her wake. sissy is witness to or part of a series of events that are both raw and entertaining, like the bull rider who is thrown into a soupy pile of dung. with its strong female protagonist and its engaging dramas of the everyday, the red bird all-indian traveling band may be washburn’s most successful novel. washburn has an unfortunate tendency of letting her narrators drift into lectures on indian affairs; while it’s not surprising that hazel in the sacred white turkey or oscar in elsie’s business knows such details, and while the information may help readers new to indigenous studies understand the import of the serious issues–white violence against native women and corruption in tribal governments respectively–that these earlier novels address, the asides are leaden. except for a few scenes during which the fbi agent speaks like a crime report and a few unnecessary details in the early chapters, the writing in red bird is both graceful and hilarious. washburn has a gift for humor that allows her to make even a topic like suicide martha viehmann review of the red bird all-indian traveling band 165 laughable, without undermining its seriousness. the suicide scene begins with urgency, a panicked girl seeking sissy’s help, a crowd of men pounding on a door, trying to talk their friend out of his desperate act, but the dialog quickly turns absurd. quotes can’t do the scene justice. it’s better you read it yourself. like the lesser blessed by richard van camp, the red bird all-indian traveling band is rich in pop culture references, especially to music. some may feel this makes it less a native american novel than washburn’s first two books, which represent racism, traditional arts, living off the land, or ceremony. that would be a mistake. sissy roberts is a joy to spend time with, and the question of how a band can play country western standards and still be “all-indian” is worth pondering. martha viehmann, sinclair community college microsoft word renae watchman.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 229 review essay: alicia elliott. a mind spread out on the ground. anchor canada, 2020. 223 pp. isbn: 9780385692403 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/588523/a-mind-spread-out-on-theground-by-alicia-elliott/9780385692403 “wake’nikonhra’kwenhtará:’on” is the kanien’kéha (mohawk language) phrase that roughly translates to “his mind fell to the ground […]. literally stretched or sprawled out on the ground. it's all over” (9). wake’nikonhra’kwenhtará:’on is used to capture and express depression, which is one of the many threads that run through alicia elliott’s memoir, a mind spread out on the ground. the richness of kanien’kéha is illustrated in another translation of wake’nikonhrèn:ton. it also means “the mind is suspended” (9), which is in direct contrast of having a clear head and being in a state of good-mindedness or kan’nikonhrí:io (maracle). finally, the english translation of elliott’s memoir calls attention to the importance of the mind. of critical and cultural importance to the haudenosaunee is their thanksgiving address, which reiterates minds coming together as one in a prayer of gratitude, humility, recognition, and relationality to others, including animals, land, waters, and plant-based kin. the bringing together of clear, unsuspended minds is an act of daily healing and restoration, which is an overall aim of elliott’s honest and illuminating stories. the memoir as a genre has increasingly gained momentum by indigenous literary artists but is not new as a form of storytelling. elliott’s a mind spread out on the ground profoundly resonated with some of my personal, familial, and professional experiences, even though we are from distinct indigenous nations, communities, and generations. elliott’s gifts of literary style and form – combined with her humour, wit, and compassionate, poetic disclosures from her life – make for a refreshing and empowering narrative. compiled from fourteen critically reflective autobiographical essays, a mind spread out on the ground is more than just an intimate sharing of lived experiences. elliott unflinchingly uncovers why these lived experiences shape so many indigenous lives in this contemporary canadian state. while each individual story could be read in isolation, the book’s essays are situated semi-chronologically to be read in order. renae watchman review essay: a mind spread out on the ground 230 “a mind spread out on the ground” is also the title of the first short story which introduces and contextualizes depression: elliott’s, her mother’s, and historically among her community. elliott discloses that she was sixteen when she wrote her first suicide note. by this time in her life, elliott had witnessed and endured her mother’s life-long struggle with depression, which she addresses in the chapter “crude collages of my mother.” elliott’s depression and suicidal tendencies were not in isolation. she explains that “[t]hough suicide was quite rare for onkwehon:we pre-contact, after contact and the subsequent effects of colonialism it has ballooned so much that, as of 2013, suicide and self-inflicted injuries are the leading cause of death for native people under the age of forty-four” (8). this segues into an apt description of canada as an abusive father, which foreshadows the final story in the book, “extraction mentalities.” this first essay closes with an explanation of wake’nikonhra’kwenhtará:’on and elliott poetically illustrates how depression is akin to colonialism, as both have robbed her of language, but both can be reversed through ceremony. the second essay, “half-breed: a racial biography in five parts” is an acute introspective critique on how nature and nurture impacted elliott’s life story. the key points of each of the five parts include: 1) alcoholism. the scent of alcoholic breath was so redolent of her homelife that she considered it to be genetic (14); 2) shame for being indigenous. in grade two, elliott realized her white skin could be weaponized against indigeneity and she pretended not to be native because of her new york classmates’ outright disdain for indigenous peoples; 3) catholicism vs. long house teachings. elliott’s parents were ideological and cultural polar opposites, which pitted them against each other when they moved to six nations. her mother defended and minimized the catholic church’s treatment of indigenous children, while her father quietly embraced haudenosaunee life ways; 4) bullying. in grade eleven, elliott became the target of lateral violence and bullying, due to her white skin: “that's when it became clear: whiteness meant different things in different contexts. on the rez, carrie and i could share skin colours and still be perceived entirely different as native people” (18); 5) teen pregnancy, internalized racism, and self-hatred. at eighteen, elliott recalls the day she went into labour. in a shocking but powerful scene, elliot reflects on how “internalized racism had warped” (20) her to the point of relief that her newborn was pink and “didn't look like my father, my aunts, my uncle, my grandmother” (20). elliott’s father had educated her on the impacts of indian act legislation, but as a teen mother, she had not fully embraced what it meant to bear the responsibilities of a haudenosaunee matriarch until she became a mother. the turmoil transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 231 of being both white and tuscarora manifested into internalized self-hatred. fortunately, this book is testament to elliott’s ongoing growth and healing: “this is how i can decolonize my mind: by refusing the colonial narratives that try to keep me alienated from my own community. i can raise my kid to love being haudenosaunee in a way my parents couldn't, in a way my grandparents couldn't. this is my responsibility as a haudenosaunee woman” (22). the third essay, “on seeing and being seen” is about elliott’s introduction to indigenous writers. she reveals the overwhelming love and weight of literary erasure being lifted when she read islands of decolonial love by leanne betasamosake simpson (23). elliott shares that she had never been encouraged to hone her talents as a promising writer but was instead dismissed as one. she was indeed told she could publish, not because of her writing but because she is indigenous. coupled with her experiences with systemic racism and sexism, elliott had not been admitted into any mfa programs and did not write for years. elliott’s exposure to reading an indigenous woman author prompts discussion of the lack of indigenous presence in publishing. she discusses e. pauline johnson (27), contextualizes the historic and political landscape johnson wrote in, and clearly links the trajectory of literary stereotypes of indigenous women with a strong critique. she returns to love, and the love she felt as she read simpson’s book, asking non-indigenous authors, “if you can't write about us with a love for who we are as a people, what we've survived, what we've accomplished despite all attempts to keep us from doing so [...,] why are you writing about us at all?” (30) “weight” adopts a reflective, second-person voice as elliott writes to herself. we learn about the weight of parenthood as elliott experienced it. she reflects on her high school love with mike and subsequent teen pregnancy, which leads to an account of having to admit her mother’s bipolar disorder during an early pregnancy exam. this traumatic experience jolts elliott as she realizes “genes could be toxic” (37), which unleashes a torrent of memories on the weight of being parented by a stay-at-home mom who battled depression. elliott’s mother made some difficult decisions for two of her seven children: “one of them chose to live with your grandmother after a custody battle, and another was disabled, with very little control over her muscles, so your mother put her in a home where they could provide round the clock care” (40). elliott reflects on juggling being a university student and mother, and her guilt of having to leave her child with mike’s mother during the week. renae watchman review essay: a mind spread out on the ground 232 the short essay “the same space” is about indigenous diaspora on turtle island, in urban centers and on indigenous homelands. elliott captures the reality of generations of indigenous people who, for a multitude of reasons, have had to leave their home communities for places that have deep indigenous roots which are usually not wellknown. elliott explains the history of tkaronto and the dish with one spoon treaty that was supposed to be treated as one collective dish each nation had to share, hunting an equal but sustainable amount of game. all would eat from that dish together, using a beavertail spoon instead of a knife to ensure there was no accidental bloodshed—which might lead to intentional bloodshed. in this way, it was a space of mutual peace and prosperity. (49) in perhaps the most powerful and thought-provoking essay “dark matters,” elliott creates a dialectic between western scientific discourse about cosmological dark matter and the dark matters of indigenous history and experiences. in juxtaposed prose, elliott’s brief sections about scientific laws on dark matter alternate with lengthy and articulate reflections about colten boushie’s murder, racism, and the dark injustice against indigenous peoples that continues to pervade canadian courtrooms. the essay opens with a comparison and critique of the “discovery” of dark matter, which is akin to saying indigenous peoples of turtle island were discovered. elliott then pivots in the next paragraph to talk about the moment she learned about the stanley acquittal (54), which resonates with many as we braced for the monumental verdict. i would liken this to the moment the world witnessed the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11. the verdict is etched in our collective indigenous memories, and we know exactly where we were and with whom. elliot and her family lived in british columbia during her one-year fellowship and were touring the province when the verdict was announced, prompting them to cancel their tourist plans. alongside many, they participated in the march in support of colten boushie’s family (65); such marches were immediately organized because of the overwhelming collective grief over the evidence that indigenous people and lives do not matter. elliott succinctly sums it up as “some things don't matter when a white man does them” (55). while framed around the murder of boushie, this essay is also an apt discussion on poverty, racism and its origins, inequities, and legislation that does not protect indigenous people. drawing together her two themes, elliott ends the chapter with the following: “racism, for many people, seems to occupy space in transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 233 very much the same way as dark matter: it forms the skeleton of our world, yet remains ultimately invisible, undetectable. this is convenient. if nothing is racism, then nothing needs to be done to address it” (70). “scratch” is about elliott’s ten-year plus relationship with head lice, with whom she related: “as a poor, mixed-race kid, i was treated like a parasite, too” (72). her white grandmother (her mother’s mom) was disgusted by the lice and did not acknowledge her family’s circumstances: they did not have running water, were impoverished, and had insignificant supports. with elliott’s mother’s illnesses that spanned schizophrenia, postpartum depression, and manic depression, treating head lice was not a high priority in their home. elliott’s mother was frequently hospitalized, leaving her father to solo parent. elliott left home at eighteen and lived in a place with running water, which is when she finally got rid of her head lice. in an essay that connects elliott’s early dependency on food for happiness with poverty’s constraints, “34 grams per dose” is an honest analysis of decolonizing diets. the chapter’s title alludes to chips ahoy! triple chocolate chunk cookies, which are “170 calories per 34 grams” (91). to decolonize centuries of colonialism and capitalism is to confront the near genocide of indigenous and racialized peoples through governmental policies, where if “racialized people aren't considered human, [then] it's okay for them to have unhealthy bodies. it's okay if they have unhealthy minds (98). elliott recognizes pre-colonial indigenous diets are the way forward, but this path is not accessible to all, enabling the continuation of obesity, disease, and death. elliott remembers how, as a child she did not eat lunch for a year and a half because it was not part of the canadian school lunch program. her father had to prioritize their budget to feed only the younger children, as he constantly feared that social workers would apprehend his children. this memory launches a discussion on historical indian residential schools, malnutrition, and starvation policies as well as the ongoing fostering of indigenous children in violent homes, “as if white abuse could ever be better than indigenous love” (105). the essay ends with a return to acknowledging the medicine and relationality of indigenous foods: “corn, beans and squash were once all my people really needed. they were so essential to our everyday lives that we refer to them as our sisters. [...gifting seeds] was an act of absolute, undiminished intergenerational love” (116). renae watchman review essay: a mind spread out on the ground 234 elliott’s “boundaries like bruises” is a love letter of sorts, and an ode to her white husband and their decolonial, antiracist partnership. while reflecting on her parent’s dysfunctional love, she embraces those experiences as having taught her to recognize her own strength in setting up boundaries by breaking their cycles. elliott’s love and respect for her husband is returned and reminds her of the teachings of the two row wampum: “one row represents the ship the settlers are steering; the other represents the canoe the haudenosaunee are steering. each vessel holds those peoples’ culture, language, history and values” (120). in the essay “on forbidden rooms and intentional forgetting,” elliot uses the style of a fairy tale to talk about sexual assault. as a survivor, she advocates for her own agency and decision making, which is what her rapist took from her. a devout catholic, elliott’s mother now lives in an adult care home in florida and is the focus of “crude collages of my mother.” elliott’s descriptive poetics about her mother are insightful, “she radiated outward. in my mind she is forever tinged by orange light dash a sunset, perhaps, or an open flame” (135). elliott’s mother felt isolated on six nations, which manifested into mania that smothered their homelife as depression and chaos. elliott distinguishes her depression from her mom’s. while anticipating a happy ending for this chapter, there was none. it is a solemn and honest recollection of “crude collages,” and she has not seen her mom in five years. “not your noble savage” adopts a humorous tone to address white expectations of indigeneity in writing by indigenous authors. elliott also asserts a sharp critique of indigenous literary erasure and white ignorance of indigenous sovereignty by beginning with a story. she admits she has never learned to dance at a powwow, a place to enact one’s indigeneity and where we are palatable to non-indigenous spectators and onlookers as “genuine artifacts.” in 2006, these same gawkers were incensed by indigenous land protectors in caledonia, whom “we could entertain […] every summer and pose in photos with their children, sure, but attempting to assert sovereignty over our lands elicited moral outrage on par with drowning kittens” (152). the common thread in this essay is a recognition that there is a lone, fetishized indigenous image in the collective consciousness that further expects indigenous literary arts to recycle that very same image and storyline. when “noble savage” checkboxes are not met, elliott says, “colonial ownership over indigenous people within the literary community” (153) constitutes literary colonialism. while indigenous transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 235 authors have a centuries-long presence, critics and non-indigenous literary reviewers have outright ignored, forgotten about, and dismissed their contributions. elliott zooms in on surfacing (1972), a survey by margaret atwood of canadian literature. atwood completely disregarded indigenous writers because, ostensibly, she could not find any, yet she did write “a chapter that examined non-native writers’ fictive portrayals of indigenous peoples” (154). atwood’s faux pas resulted in a flippant response: “why did i overlook pauline johnson? perhaps because, being half-white, she somehow didn't rate as the real thing, even among natives, although she is undergoing a reclamation today” (qtd. in elliot, 154). elliot critiques this excuse and counters it with evidence of sexism in literature. she further educates her readers about indian act policies and forces us to confront our own biases on the content of indigenous stories by indigenous authors. in closing, elliott returns to the story and imagery of powwows, joking that esteemed author eden robinson should stifle her creative energies to feed the colonial imaginary and policing of indigenous identities and labels. in all seriousness, proclaims elliott, she and hundreds of indigenous authors are no one’s noble savage. elliott’s concern for and critique of fetishized images continues in the essay “sontag, in snapshots: reflecting on ‘in plato’s cave’ in 2018,” which addresses still photographic images of indigenous people since the advent of the camera. elliott shares her insecurities of being photographed, punctuated by indigenous photographic experiences as both subjects and as photographers illuminating a decolonial gaze. her research on early european male photographers explores their complicity in indigenous erasure by capturing vanishing indians. elliott theorizes about selfies (179) and critiques imperial beauty standards (181). returning to the style of the memoir, elliott states that “photographs are family-building exercises” (183) and recalls that her parents denied her memories by withholding an image of a baby named angelica, elliott’s half-sister (184). this painful discovery prompts her to acknowledge the power of photographic images, which simultaneously acknowledges sontag’s assessment of photography as predatory (189). elliott ends by positing, “maybe the reason everything exists to end in a photograph is because this world isn't equipped to offer something more meaningful: for everything to end in respect, acceptance, and acknowledgement” (194). the memoir ends with a final participatory essay, “extraction mentalities.” elliott explicitly shares memories that are violent, visceral, and triggering. she follows up by renae watchman review essay: a mind spread out on the ground 236 providing prompts and asks questions for the reader to fill in blank spaces or not, as “even blank spaces speak volumes” (195). we learn, finally, that her father was very abusive to her sister. in a gentle, yet thoroughly introspective and firm tone, elliott challenges accepted misinformation about abusers. what is clear is that elliott endured abuse and trauma and she loves her father. this was the most poignant chapter, as i related to her experiences. elliott has fond memories of her father as loving and as someone who supported her goals and aspirations of writing, which explains the essay’s title (201). going beyond sharing these experiences, elliott illuminates (but does not excuse) that her father was a survivor of his father, and how their behaviour were tactics to survive colonialism (203). her ability to return to these moments as a haudenosaunee woman and mother create a heartbreaking and empowering conclusion to the book. as part of her healing journey, i interpret this chapter as a monologue for readers to begin their own healing journeys. just as her own memory extracted bad behaviours and events, her prompts and questions encourage readers to recall similar events and behaviours that they can navigate in a space that is at once beautifully candid and anonymously safe. elliott concludes “extraction mentalities” by carefully examining extraction and dehumanization, which are products of colonialism. indigenous traditional resource extraction, she says, is “a cornerstone of capitalism, colonialism, and settler colonialism” (213). she then poses the question if readers have ever felt dehumanized. here elliott strongly connects the justification of colonialism with the dehumanisation of indigenous peoples and compares this to the demonization of her father as an abusive man who is surviving colonialism (217). elliott has offered a sophisticated collection of memories and experiences, traumatic and joyful. her writing reflects literary caring and pathos that affords personal growth and healing, communal rejuvenation, and generational wisdom. our minds may be suspended and “spread out on the ground” but, as she demonstrates, minds are resilient. coming to peace and having a good mind are in reach. mcmaster university works cited atwood, margaret. survival. 1972. toronto, house of anansi press, 2021. maracle, gabriel karenhoton. “the good mind: haudenosaunee models of healing and trauma.” ngā pae o te māramatanga media centre, 11 november 2020, transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 237 www.mediacentre.maramatanga.ac.nz/system/files/10.the%20good%20mind% 20haudenosaunee%20models%20of%20healing%20and%20trauma.pdf. accessed 18 may 2021. microsoft word gage.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 164 little books, big horror: review of night of mannequins, taaqtumi, and anoka stephen graham jones. night of the mannequins. tor, 2020. 128 pages. isbn: 978-1250-75207-9. https://publishing.tor.com/nightofthemannequinsstephengrahamjones/9781250752062/ neil christopher, editor. taaqtumi: an anthology of arctic horror stories. inhabit media, 2019. 184 pages. isbn: 978-1-77227-214-7. https://inhabitmedia.com/2019/08/21/taaqtumi/ shane hawk. anoka. black hills press, 2020. 140 pages. isbn: 9798674225195. https://www.shanehawk.com/anoka not to be overlooked amid stephen graham jones’ ongoing winning streak is a little book with the unassumingly goosebumps-flavoured title night of the mannequins. the first-person narrator and antihero in mannequins is sawyer, a teen who is caught up the dark and uncertain months between the end of high school and the start of quoteunquote adulthood. the choice of the given name sawyer is a playful reminder of jones’ unparalleled horror cred. for one, it signals the ways in which mannequins straddles genres and canons by evoking the not-so-disparate worlds of mark twain and tobe hooper, if not james wan and leigh whannell too. for another, it raises subtle questions about gender and national identity when it’s revealed that the other teens call him “saw” for short, which for all we know could be pronounced as spelled or instead as “soy.” the premise of night of the mannequins is deceptively simple; where it manages to subvert our expectations is in the convoluted intricacies of sawyer’s (psycho-)logic as he embraces his role as antihero. sawyer is obsessed with the possibility of losing his friends—either to the passage of time or, more pressingly, to manny, the department store mannequin that he and his friends had salvaged from a ditch, played around with for years, and then forgotten about once the joke had worn off. following a prank gone wrong, sawyer becomes convinced that manny, scorned and abandoned by his old friend group, has come alive to seek revenge. when the first member of the group turns up dead in a freak accident, sawyer’s paranoia escalates to the point where he starts to believe that the only way to stop the cycle of violence before it’s too late is by beating manny to the punch––to be clear, this means murdering his own childhood friends. gage karahkwí:io diabo review essay: little books, big horror 165 as preoccupied as it is with nostalgia and melancholy about the end of innocence, mannequins ultimately shares less with king’s the body or the aforementioned r.l. stein series than it does with jones’ own the only good indians (2020). in that novel as well as mannequins, jones mines horror from an unthinkable scenario: the compulsion to kill your loved ones. the mental gymnastics it would require in order to arrive at that point are an endless source of page-turning suspense and black comedy for jones. but whereas the only good indians signalled its ties to coloniality and indigenous kinship principles right from the title, mannequins, which does not identify its characters as indigenous or otherwise, takes an approach that is perhaps easier to miss. chapter 9 of mannequins––which begins with the whopper of an opening line, “over dinner the night i was to kill danielle, my dad told a wandering-all-over-story about his dad taking him fishing” (73)–– is where the book’s concern with violated kinship obligations comes into full focus. jones’ conversational, almost stream-ofconsciousness prose style is the connective tissue that binds sawyer with his friends, his family, and even his own neuroses. consider the fluidity with which he transitions from the dad’s innocuous “wandering-all-over-story” to the chilling violence of the central murder plot: this time through the story i was just watching how tight that deep-sea fishing line of grandpa’s probably was before it snapped. and how it was probably bright green, and how nobody except me would ever know how that mattered, how that matched up with a certain coil of line in my pocket that i kept having to sneak touches down to, to be sure it hadn’t slithered away, to be sure it wasn’t going to go killing without me. (74) here, not only do we get an implied familial origin for sawyer’s scatterbrained way of relaying an otherwise simple story, but we also get a hefty dose of psychological black comedy when our antihero’s thoughts abruptly drift back to the murder weapon hidden in his pocket that, as with manny the mannequin, he fears will come alive and abandon him. one of the final pieces of the twisted puzzle that jones lays out for us in mannequins, lastly, is the ubiquity of superhero narratives in contemporary media. both the aborted prank that triggers the novel’s events and sawyer’s eventual killing spree center on a superhero movie—the third and final installment in a trilogy that sawyer and the gang have been following throughout their adolescent years. jones is tactful enough not to name the franchise in question or to belabour the underlying point about how the genre’s current fixation on flawed, violent protagonists might feed into sawyer’s delusions about heroism and sacrifice. rather, it is the matter-of-fact tone of sawyer’s transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 166 narration that teases out these delusions, such as when he rationalizes that “all i’d been doing ever since shanna [died], it was saving lives left and right. yeah, the superhero movie was on dvd in my bag, but i was also in a superhero movie, as that superhero. not the one everyone wants, no, but real life isn’t always like the movies” (110). jones’ verbal irony in moments like these is devastating, as is the cosmic irony he invokes with the realization that the novel’s events are triggered by a single unpaid movie ticket. in the grander scheme of the hollywood production-distribution system, as jones seems to suggest, it all centers on the insistence that audiences pay to see these movies in the cinemas. for the teens in night of the mannequins, the price of the ticket is literally their lives. truly scary stuff! speaking of scary stuff: taaqtumi: an anthology of arctic horror stories, compiled by settler educator and inhabit media co-founder neil christopher, is a collection of short stories by authors spanning the dene, inuit, and cree peoples of the north. canada, whether as a political or geographic framework, is tellingly absent from the anthology, which instead centers the ancestral narratives and the everyday terrors of those who have traditionally made their home in the unforgiving arctic. in addition to the nine collected stories, taaqtumi also includes a brief pronunciation guide and glossary of the inuktitut and northern athabaskan terms used throughout the body of the anthology. back matter aside, christopher does not include any prefatory material in taaqtumi. while the stories are rich enough to speak for themselves, the lack of a critical introduction or accompanying essay is unfortunate, not just because indigenous horror is an increasingly vital topic of critical discussion and teaching, but because the specificity of arctic horror certainly deserves more generous contextualization for those of us on the outside. arguably the centerpiece of taaqtumi is “lounge,” a speculative fiction novella by the prolific cree-inuit-scottish-mohawk team of rachel and sean qitsualik-tinsley. “lounge” is close kin with larissa lai’s the tiger flu (2018), another hallucinogenic and often elliptical tale of life beyond humanity. the protagonist, talli, is an italian-inuit particle physicist who arrives in the arctic territory of avvajja to study a series of cosmic anomalies—namely, that the earth’s continental plates all seem to be converging on this one northern location. she is disturbed to find that the other members of her research team are skeptical of, if not completely uninterested in, the strange phenomena in avvajja. hoping to break the ice (pun intended), talli, along with her mushroom-shaped cybernetic companion drashtr, organizes a virtual reality “lounge” party that quickly goes awry when the energy emanating from the land begins to manipulate the team members’ senses and emotions. as she struggles to make sense gage karahkwí:io diabo review essay: little books, big horror 167 of the otherworldly imagery that seems to absorb and pacify her teammates, talli is forced to reconcile her family’s tragic history with the supernatural forces that are pulling her deep into the mystery of avvajja. “lounge” is more than just a slow descent into sci-fi weirdness. for one, its story structure is cyclical, beginning with a flash-forward to its denouement before tracking the hours that lead up to the titular virtual reality party. in this sense, “lounge” is less a slow burn than it is a trial-by-fire for the reader who, not unlike talli herself, must gradually learn the story’s technical and emotional vocabularies as the narrative progresses. for another, the story thus raises illuminating questions about the ways in which human and beyond-human forms of consciousness might (fail to) interact. talli and her team’s lack of communication contrasts with drashtr’s unique ability to “debate” with, and thereby assimilate to, avvajja’s foreign environment. the novella also plays on the fetishistic imperialist vision of the arctic as a final threshold of discovery; ironically, it does so by affirming that the arctic and its ancestral custodians are, in fact, located at the center of the universe. talli often repeats a joke told by her late uncle charlie which claims that the arctic is “a place where people go to become” (103). from a colonial-extractivist perspective, this sense of becoming is rooted in a belief that exceptionalism and meritocracy will elevate humanity—rather, certain privileged pockets of humanity—beyond its “savage” origins. by this logic, to conquer the harshest environment on the planet is to rise above all else on said planet. as talli ultimately discovers, though, even the process of becoming itself is cyclical and contingent. after all, “to become” only works as a transitive verb or as a link between objects—one has to become something. in avvajja, you simply become what you always already were. in the same ontological register, uncle charlie’s backstory is also where “lounge” takes some of its most provocative turns. just as the characters in lai’s the tiger flu grapple with the dubious promise of life beyond the human body when a tech company offers to upload its users’ consciousnesses to a planet-sized hive, the world that the qitsualik-tinsleys create in “lounge” is one where individuals with terminal illnesses can pre-emptively “sell” their deaths to the research industry in exchange for cash and a digital copy of their medical records to be inherited by their next of kin. for talli, her uncle charlie’s legacy is therefore complicated. not only do the proceeds from the “sale” of his dying days help to fund talli’s education and research, but his death file—which may or may not hold secrets to their family history and to the cosmic anomalies in avvajja—sits on her computer desktop like an archive that she dares not transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 168 touch. talli’s alternating hesitation toward and obsession with both the land of avvajja and her uncle charlie provide the emotional backbone of “lounge.” while “lounge” takes up more pages and lofty concepts, the surrounding tales in taaqtumi are no less compelling. aviaq johnston, author of the wonderful those who run with the sky (2017) series of young adult novels, delivers arguably the best oldfashioned chills in the entire volume with the cliff-hanger ending of the opening story, “iqsinaqtutalik piqtuq: the haunted blizzard.” gayle kabloona’s “utiqtuq” is a postapocalyptic inuit zombie story (did you know, by the way, that there’s a word for “zombie” in inuktitut?) that, like all great survival-horror narratives, dwells on the impossible life-or-death decisions that the living must make, including whether or not and how to abandon those we love. jay bulckaert’s “the wildest game,” if i may name just one more favourite of mine, is a first-person confessional that fleshes out (again: pun intended) jim siedow the cook’s notorious line from the original texas chain saw massacre: “i just can’t take no pleasure in killing. there’s just some things you gotta’ do. don’t mean you have to like it.” in contrast with taaqtumi¸ cheyenne-arapaho writer shane hawk’s inaugural collection of short stories, anoka, is packed with supplementary material. in his introduction to the volume, hawk explores the personal and political significance of his creative choices, including the (mostly nominal) decision to base the stories in the real-life community of anoka, minnesota, which advertises itself as the “halloween capital of the world.” the name “anoka” derives from the dakota word “anokatanhan,” which hawk translates as “on both sides of the river” by way of an explicit reference to his own mixed settler-indigenous parentage. even more illuminating are hawk’s “story notes,” which he of course recommends reading only after one is finished with the stories themselves. there, the author briefly sketches out his inspirations and motivations for writing each of the stories, pointing out specific intertextual allusions or talking shop about the precision craft of flash fiction. these endnotes are arguably unnecessary (at least in a world where we’ve effectively “killed the author”), yet i am thankful that they’re included if only so that we can measure hawk’s initial expectations for each story against their final products. hawk’s “story notes” are an intriguing peek behind the curtain of the author-reader divide, offering unique levels of insight into the creative process of an emerging master of the short story. i would love to see more authors take up this practice, regardless of whether they’re career veterans or firsttimers. gage karahkwí:io diabo review essay: little books, big horror 169 it is worth mentioning too how hawk’s own black hills press has brought anoka to life as a pocket-sized print edition. tiny as it is, anoka is presented gorgeously—a perfect little book, whether your intention is to carry it around, to assign it to students, or just to display it. seweryn jasińsky’s black-and-white cover design is a striking marriage of saul bass’s poppy all-caps lettering and stephen gammell’s notorious illustrations from the scary stories to tell in the dark series. the back cover blurb, attributed to “my skeptical, yet supportive grandma,” tells us everything we need to know about the book: homespun, crafted with love, and loath to take itself too seriously. anoka’s status as an attractive-looking book is fitting, because many of the stories contained therein deal specifically with the inherent spookiness of collecting rare books of obscure provenance. there is a mysterious leather-bound volume called simply “the book” that features in the opening story, “soilborne,” in which two prospective parents try (and fail) to conjure up a child straight from the earth. creepier still is the book in “wounded,” which seems to delight in subjecting its current owner to all manners of supernatural and psychological horror. when our lakota protagonist philip wounded first discovers the book stashed among the liquor bottles under his late grandfather’s workbench, it is coated with ice and grime “as if it had been sitting in the freezer next to his venison all winter” (7). its pages are cluttered with spanish text and english marginalia (the latter centering on a repeated imperative to “kill, kill, kill”). when philip brings the book to a spanish-speaking friend for translation, it mockingly transforms itself into a copy of david foster wallace’s infinite jest, complete with the iconic blue-sky dust jacket of the first edition. it bleeds and oozes pus-filled worms when philip tries to destroy it. worst of all—and here is where the psychological terror comes into play—it plagues philip’s dreams with intrusive, suicidal thoughts. these thoughts, which stem from an adolescent drinking binge during which he neglected to watch over his younger sister on the day she was kidnapped and murdered, are some of the most brutal and disturbing content that hawk commits to the page. coupled with the book’s dedication “to all missing indigenous girls and women,” it’s clear in moments like these that the subject matter hits close to home for the author, in one sense or another. so too are the joys, expectations, and terrors of kinship central to the stories in anoka. in “imitate,” a middle-aged father with a history of substance abuse and an unfaithful marriage discovers one day that his child, tate, has been replaced by a doppelganger with charcoal eyes. the imitation child has cravings uncharacteristic of a ten-year-old: he demands coffee, peanut butter without bread, and plenty of broccoli. in the scenes where tate is the object of dinner-table fights between father and mother over what transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 170 the child should and should not be eating, i was reminded of my own childhood experience as a picky eater and how those running arguments fundamentally shaped my relationship to food. as the conflict in “imitate” escalates to violence, meanwhile, its mysteries only deepen. the story resists any straightforward allegorical reading (is the doppelganger a manifestation of infidelity, of guilt, of addiction, of abuse?) by foregrounding the kinship violation of a father killing his son. the doppelganger stresses this visceral sense of transgression with its final line, “killed the real son?” (45). lastly, i should point out that richard van camp and shane hawk each take the step of including genderqueer characters, in the stories “wheetago war ii: the summoners” from taaqtumi and “transfigured” from anoka. neither writer is overzealous or selfcongratulatory on this topic, which is worth commending. van camp’s character dove is known as much for their heroic deeds as for the uniqueness of their genderfluidity. we even get a sympathetic take on the elder narrator’s clumsy efforts to treat dove with courtesy and respect, as evident in the lines “no, i do not know what dove is, but i am here to nominate them for the mark of the butterfly. you bet your ass, i am. dove goddamned saved me. i pray he and she wakes up soon” (31). it’s a lot of characterization packed into a few simple pronouns. hawk, who explains in his “story notes” that “the modern werewolf is a perfect allusion to some people in the queer community” (78), identifies the unnamed lycanthropic narrator of “transfigured” as genderfluid too. while i find that the narrator’s joking identification with silence of the lambs’ buffalo bill errs on the insensitive side, i can’t help but appreciate hawk’s ability to convey sincere gender euphoria when the narrator thinks to herself, after being called “sweetest woman i ever seen” by a flirtatious stranger, “woman. there was the word again, floating in and out of my brain” (64). it’s a great little flourish in a book full of great little flourishes. looking at night of the mannequins, taaqtumi, and anoka as an ensemble, i’m reminded of lillian gish’s fourth wall-breaking line in another famous “night of the…” story, the night of the hunter: “it’s a hard world for little things.” like the young characters in the stories themselves, these books are easy to underestimate on the basis of their size and recency. as jones, hawk, and the authors collected in taaqtumi each illustrate, though, it’s the little things that stand to teach us the most about power and resilience where we least expect them. gage karahkwí:io diabo, university of british columbia gage karahkwí:io diabo review essay: little books, big horror 171 works cited: johnston, aviaq. those who run with the sky. toronto, ontario and iqaluit, nanuvut: inhabit media, 2017. jones, stephen graham. the only good indians. new york city: saga press / london: titan books, 2020. king, stephen. the body. different seasons. new york city: viking, 1982. lai, larissa. the tiger flu. vancouver, bc: arsenal pulp press, 2018. microsoft word 142-790-2-le-2.doc transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   76   kansas diane glancy according to [the physicist, richard] feynman, a system has not just one history but every possible history— the grand design, stephen hawking there is land and sky and the car passing between them making a small rip in the passage as it goes. the moving car unzips the sky from the land. i remember this as a child. the oppressive life in my house opened to the land. in the early days, we traveled from kansas city to my grandparent’s farm near fulton. then my father was transferred to packing houses across the great plains. slaughter houses they were called. the cattle entered and were killed. 1. the cutting off. 2. the slitting of sky from land. it was a hollow place between parents. 3. feudal and 4. futile. the starkness of their lives. the land. the sky. the grass between them. my moving life continued moving when my father’s transfers continued— 5. kansas city, 6. indianapolis, 7. st. louis, 8. reading, 9. kansas city, 10. st. joseph, 11. denver, 12. chicago, 13. sioux city. my great ship of exploration was a moving van. 14. atlas. 15. mayflower. i had more than one beginning. i have travels from multiple beginnings. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. kansas is named after an indian tribe. the name means 31. people of the wind, though i remember hearing it also meant 32. blue smoke from indian campfires on the prairie. kansas became a state in 1861. in travel, i become the moving place that distance is. driving the land has every possible history encamped in rock and stone and soil and voices smack against the windshield. smackie. smackie. have i ever known who i am— but in the placement of thought in travel? travel is the establishment of a moving place so i can’t be swallowed by storms that thunder. i can be 33. one place, then 34. another. travel is a map of connections. a group of correlations in the (t)rip. my mother was born in hume, missouri on the missouri / kansas border. my father was born in viola, arkansas and died in sioux city, iowa. the moving car exhumes the past. it is a travel of associations. 35. exhaust and 36. exhumation. 37. pastward and 38. forward to every possible future— microsoft word viehmann.doc transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 111 grover, linda legarde. the road back to sweetgrass: a novel. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2014. 208 pp. http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-road-back-to-sweetgrass the road back to sweetgrass tells the story of how margie robineau came to be “the handsdown best frybread maker on the entire mozhay point indian reservation” (5), which is the story of how young margie coped with unrequited love, overcame her insecurities, and, over the years, became an upstanding member of her ojibwe community. it is a coming-into-maturity novel rather than a coming of age story. and like other indigenous variations on the bildungsroman, it is not simply the story of an individual. grover also tells stories about and from the perspective of others with ties to mozhay point, all of whom are essential “ingredients” in margie’s life (11). the narrative shifts among characters, switches between third and first person, and jumps back and forward through time with such grace and power that readers are never lost. the different parts add up to a satisfying and coherent tale that nonetheless leaves much unsaid, just like the well-mannered ojibwe refrain from prying despite their obvious curiosity or from speaking aloud their ill-tempered thoughts. grover says just enough to show us how margie approaches elderhood without telling us exactly how she got there. she provides a straightforward surface story with depths to ponder. for example, “the road back to sweetgrass” is literally the road to the family land and cabin where margie lives at the chronological end of her story, the road the dionne sisters take in the first chapter to bring their mother for a visit. but sweetgrass is also elusive. the scent arises from the old laforce allotment (margie robineau is a laforce, but if the novel explains the lineage, i missed it), but there is no patch of that plant on the land. zho wash, who is not a laforce but lives in the cabin, brings margie sweetgrass and teaches her how to make baskets (only after margie and her friend theresa, back in the 1970s, the chronological beginning of margie’s story, mention they do not know how to make them). the scent arises in the prologue, wafting over the ricers who gather at lost lake: “the scent reminds us that we have been blessed by the creator in all ways, understood or otherwise, here during our time on mother earth, and so we accept the mystery for what it is” (1). margie finds her way back to the sweetgrass cabin on the laforce allotment in the 1970s, and over the next forty years she travels the road of acceptance to embrace the blessings in dropping out of college, loving with no hope, and moving back into a “wreck” of a cabin. this sounds awfully earnest, but the novel is not. the misunderstood blessings are the source of much humor. those dionne sisters had me laughing out loud as they fumed over their mother’s favoritism and insisted that margie must be withholding the secret of her perfect frybread. margie’s maturation and her renovation of the tiny sweetgrass cabin parallel the revitalization of the mozhay point reservation. superficially, the economic development made possible by the building of first a bingo hall and then a casino would appear to be the source. but the narrative structure of the road back to sweetgrass suggests otherwise. michael turns his back on the american indian history professor who seeks validation from her first indian student (because she doesn’t see theresa—history is about warrior men). michael returns to sweetgrass, his father, and his traplines. dale ann returns to mozhay point from her relocation placement in chicago and slowly establishes herself as the beloved daughter. the characters survive forced martha viehmann review of the road back to sweetgrass 112 sterilization, children being adopted outside of the tribe, and insults and stereotypes of all stripes. they return home and become solid people, not the images outsiders project upon them. through the careful attention and selective truth-telling of the elders, the young people are guided to tend to themselves and their community. out of the careful cultivation of relationships, the economic success arises. throughout the road back to sweetgrass, grover acknowledges larger historical forces, but the pain or blessings they bring carry no more significance than the everyday blessings of which characters take note, like a child’s touch or ice crystals glittering in the sun that shines through a break in the clouds. there’s much in grover’s novel that will seem familiar. the setting on an imaginary ojibwe reservation with ties to an urban area is like erdrich’s novels. an english language novel sprinkled with ojibwe words, many but not all translated, reminds me of treuer’s use of names in the translation of dr. apelles. satirical descriptions of a white professor who claims to be an expert on indians and of the bumbling behavior of an outsider remind me of vizenor’s biting humor. the emphasis on the seasonal activities that mark the ojibwe year echo jim northrup’s stories. yet grover’s voice is hers alone, one that clearly has a place in this growing body of contemporary ojibwe literature. there’s a reason linda legarde grover has won prizes for her short story collection and her first novel. like margie robineau’s light and golden frybread, grover’s prose is “so tasty that the very thought” that the stories will come to an end creates “an undertone of sorrow” that adds to the pleasure of reading (5). in the road back to sweetgrass and in the dance boots, grover has already brought to life a large cast of characters whose lives are only partially revealed. i can’t wait for the next tale about the goings-on at mozhay point. martha viehmann, sinclair community college microsoft word williams.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 235 abe streep. brothers on three. celadon books, 2021. 349 pp. isbn: 9781250210685 https://celadonbooks.com/book/brothers-on-three/ any baller worth their salt will tell you the best coaches don’t teach you about basketball, they teach you about life and about trust because the basketball will always follow. abe streep may not be a coach, but brothers on three passionately teaches its readers about the arlee warriors basketball team and the trust that empowered their back-to-back championship titles. this true story of family, resistance, and hope is the very definition of a page-turner. in his book, streep becomes equal parts reporter and poet, painting the illustrious beauty of montanan landscapes overlooked by mainstream america and the complex people intimately connected to these landscapes’ past, present, and future. rendering brothers on three as purely a basketball story would be a gross injustice to the perseverance of the young men who gave everything to fulfill their dreams in the wake of a community scarred by trauma and suicide clusters, what streep calls a “darkness” (4) haunting the flathead reservation. i found streep’s structural approach to be, at times, a little chaotic and loose, but i came to accept his choices as a reflection of basketball—where the line between chaos and order is often blurred or, at times, even nonexistent. the book is split into chapters defined by temporal markers, but because these chapters are sometimes rooted within the same temporal windows, it can prove difficult for a reader to pinpoint a precise chronological flow. i found these moments occurring more often towards the end of the text, when phil and will had graduated, and streep was following their college careers. at the end of the book, streep includes an epilogue that functions more like a continuation of the book’s end than a separate structural entity, and it fails to deliver the same emotional gravitas. despite these small faults, streep is masterful in capturing the humanity, history, and individuality of the people within the flathead reservation and beyond. brothers on three’s dialectic purpose can best be described by a meditation streep came to after speaking with john malatare, father of arlee star phil malatare: over the coming years, when i got lost, when any concrete sense of time eluded me, or when i wondered what i was doing here, i came back to that: it was about alexander williams review of brothers on three 236 these boys from arlee. as people throughout montana and the country asked the impossible of the arlee warriors, seeking bold-font answers where few existed, looking for some clean, bright redemption, john’s words returned. it was about these boys from arlee. what they had done and what they would choose. (53) as a work of nonfiction, brothers on three reads like a biographical constellation: in between vignettes of basketball, geography, and history, streep provides comprehensive detail into the “galaxy of interpersonal relations” (95) connecting the warriors to their community. streep’s voice is poignant and piercing as it documents how arlee’s communal struggles reflect larger colonial systems terrorizing indigenous bodies. one particularly powerful instance of this is a conversation streep has with phil’s grandfather, bear, who somberly recounts his days at the ursuline academy, a “re-education school” where he would be savagely beaten for writing left-handed and speaking his native cree. bear was beaten by the school’s nuns so many times that, in his old age, he only knew “a few words and that’s about it” (153). sadly, bear’s story is just another example of american history repeating itself, the kind of history woven into the fabric of native communities and those that call the flathead reservation home. i could not write this review without listing the names of the “boys from arlee” (53) who made streep’s book possible: alex moran, billy fisher, chase gardner, cody tanner, darshan bolen, david “tapit” haynes, greg whitesell, isaac fisher, ivory brien, lane johnson, lane schall, nate coulson, phil malatare, tyler tanner, and will mesteth, jr. after reading the number of times these boys ran seventeens until they puked, played games fresh off iv drips, and shouldered an entire reservation’s expectations on their backs, i feel an ethical responsibility to list these names in honor of the sacrifice they made in order to give their community hope. if i gleaned one thing from streep’s text, it’s that these young men are a testament to native athletes everywhere, suffering in a society that refuses to see them. despite some minimal structural considerations, brothers on three is a must read. in his reporting, streep is vulnerable, ethical, attentive, and committed. he takes great professional and personal care to consider the diversity of perspectives in tribal communities and to tell the arlee warriors’ story in its appropriate geopolitical and ontological contexts. he is deft in uncovering how decades-old, asbestos-ridden school buildings can coexist with multimillion-dollar gymnasiums in a state responsible for centuries of settler violence. his respect for basketball as a sport is contagious, and he is honest in his intentions and approach. in a state with a reported native american transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 237 population “between 5 and 7 percent, [whose] reservation teams comprised 18 percent of those competing for boys’ state championships” (65), the arlee warriors fought to be respected as athletes competing at the highest level. in many ways, brothers on three functions like a playbook: you learn tendencies, motions, assignments, defenses, and sets. in one moment, the reader is engulfed by the thrills of seeing arlee beat manhattan christian and the next distraught by the news of another suicide. with each page, i found myself increasingly drawn to long drives and pregame warmups, eagerly wondering which open shooter will and phil would find or which unfortunate player would be the next victim of an isaac fisher dunk. above all else, brothers on three humanizes a group of high school kids, each struggling to find their identities and callings in life. to the residents of arlee, basketball occupies “emotional terrain somewhere between escape and religion” (3), and, thanks to streep’s text, i can safely surmise the court is where the masses congregate for church. alexander williams, university of colorado, boulder microsoft word 124-1225-1-pb mcglennan galley proof.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     1 “by my heart”: gerald vizenor’s almost ashore and bear island: the war at sugar point molly mcglennen “i grew up at little earth (officially little earth of united tribes). akiearth, akiinslittle earth. i don't know how many relocation programs were geared toward mpls. seems too close to home for it to be an effective site. that's probably what drew many anishinaabe to that city. i still tell people i'm from akiins [because] i think it would be dishonest or deceptive to say that i'm from waswaaganing (lac du flambeau) or bwaan akiing (enemy territory, marty, sd), i only stayed at those places for weeks or months during the year. so to be totally clear i always say i'm from little earth and my parents are from... if they want clarity i explain. i know there are problems that go with saying you are not from a particular rez but i think a bigger problem is portraying myself as if i have intimate knowledge of a place where i haven't lived. the way i see nationhood you have to have a homeland. for this to happen in the city, anishinaabe must claim the city as their territory. this is a little of why i claim it as where i'm from…. gigawaabamin miinawa, ben” the quotation above derives from an email my friend and scholar ben burgess sent to me a few years ago, and i include it here as it has prompted some questions i have had in recent years toward native literary nationalism, indigenous transnationalisms, and claiming homelands. ben and i both graduated from uc davis’s phd program in native american studies, and we are both born and raised in minneapolis, minnesota, though because of our scholarly/creative professions and our family obligations, neither of us resides there currently. we both go back and visit often, however, as our extended families still live in the twin cities. it is within this setting that our conversation about how we view home (minneapolis) and what that place means more broadly for anishinaabe peoples began and continues. ben has helped me think more critically about how anishinaabe people unsettle and complicate urban and off-reservation life through various ways and practices, whether through ceremony, physical activity, creative molly mcglennen “by my heart”     2 expression, or alliance building. and i want to cite his wisdom and honor his words here before i continue. how do we who are invested in native peoples and their communities, as well as those working from native american studies frameworks, critically access and assess indigenous definitions of nation, sovereignty, and citizenship, when those definitions are actively determined and granted nuance by indigenous peoples themselves in ways contrary to colonial and even tribal definitions—by indigenous peoples, as burgess suggests, who think critically and creatively about “connection to place?”1 two recent collections of poetry by the ever-prolific gerald vizenor, almost ashore and bear island (both published in 2006), illuminate these sets of questions about anishinaabe nationhood, but perhaps not in the way american indian literary nationalists or even anishinaabe studies theorists might imagine. through the creative medium of poetry, vizenor reveals de-territorialized concepts of tribal identity and, at the same time, the continuance and resilience of a sovereign nation firmly located in anishinaabe homelands. though this creative exploration of an at-once rooted and destabilized citizenship could be viewed as a contradictory framework, vizenor’s poetry anchors this paradox in a particular landscape, set of stories, relationships, and memories, which ultimately demonstrates anishinaabe peoples defining their own sense of transnational mobility and their own relationships to their nation. in short, what i argue ahead is that vizenor’s poetry offers a blueprint for anishinaabe definitions of nation and citizenship marked not by states’ attempts to regulate movement of people across borders, but rather by the people themselves determining the locales and ideals of the nation. vizenor’s poetry specifically evokes this through the term “by my heart” in his epic poem bear island: the war at sugar point and then extending the concept, albeit in less explicit terms, in his poems in almost ashore. read in translation from the anishinaabe word bagwana, “by my heart” shapes the integrity of anishinaabe storytelling as historical narrative and political mapping through geographical and relational rather than temporal means. by examining his epic work bear island as well as three poems from almost ashore (a trio i call his “minneapolis poems”—“family portrait,” “guthrie theater,” and “raising the flag”), i suggest that vizenor’s poetry depicts anishinaabeg self-determining their realities and transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     3 their definitions of their nation, even in the midst of horror. the poems reveal anishinaabe defiance, subversion, and valor in the face of those who would act to ignore, minimize, and stamp out a people’s autonomy. “by my heart” as anishinaabe gps vizenor first presents the phrase, “by my heart,” in the introduction to bear island as the transcription of bagwana or bugaunak, a pillager warrior, and translates it as “at random, by chance, anyhow, and by heart” (6). vizenor, in the epic poem that follows, evokes this phrase throughout many of the lines of the lyric. i use vizenor’s phrase as a meaningful poetic marker that provides definitions of the political and social constructions of anishinaabe nationhood and citizenship at the same time it gestures toward what it means to be a member of or have a connection to a heart-center that has no colonial or tribal boundaries, no matter where that member resides. although anishinaabe language speakers will read and understand bagwana as “by random chance,” and that definition suggests a particular way to unpack the lines of poetry, it is crucial to remember that vizenor writes in english, for the most part, and that the phrase “by my heart”—while it is vizenor’s translation of bagwana—also exists in lines of poetry in english. thus, i argue that my cooptation of the phrase “by my heart” as a critical lens suggests two ways of understanding anishinaabe citizenship, nationhood, and connection to place. first, it alludes to poetry by heart, as in the memorized or memory-based language one carries with oneself—language as a determining factor of a sovereign body of people. from this, “by my heart” signals a heart-center that supplants colonial and tribal mappings of territory with storied and peopled “mappings” of territory. second, the phrase points to a transliteration of stories through poetry. bagwana uttered in story and in conversation, captured on paper, and finally translated into english signals vizenor’s notion of chance, or narrative chance, in which ambiguity and nuance (playfulness) replace the logic of cause and effect and the “traumatizing, monolithic ‘terminal creeds’ perpetuated by social science discourses” (madsen 69), narratives that embrace irony over predetermined courses of demise. “by my heart,” then, communicates the aliveness of anishinaabe peoples, the active presence of a nation, and molly mcglennen “by my heart”     4 not the tragic, flatness of indians within the narrative of euro-american progressivist history. sugar point (where the battle takes place near bear island on leech lake on the leech lake reservation in northern minnesota) and minneapolis, minnesota,2 are two locations where vizenor’s poetry illustrates anishinaabe nationhood with bounded social and cultural actors who at the same time create physical, spiritual, and philosophical connections that extend beyond both colonial and indigenous borders. understanding these transnational practices of the anishinaabe through vizenor’s creative writing is to understand poetry as a meeting place of sorts, a mechanism that resists narratives that taxonimize native histories and realities and pushes against the limits of equation that enclose native peoples one dimensionally and fix discourses of domination; as such, vizenor presents anishinaabeg functioning in self-determining ways—not as inevitably globalized peoples or nations, or those with “multicultural” identities, but sovereign anishinaabe peoples who, by their heart, control and bolster native presence across lands, borders, states, and lines. bear island traces in the introduction to his lyric history, vizenor indicates some of his motivation for wanting to write such a poem: sugar point is a trace of creation and the modern site of a war enacted by the united states army in 1898. the anishinaabe had resisted the arrogant and capricious federal marshals and then routed, by imagination, natural reason, stealth, and strategy, the imperious officers and immigrant soldiers from the leech lake reservation. the defeat is seldom mentioned in military histories. (4) galvanized by hole in the day, the pillager warriors resist the third infantry on october 5, 1898 in the war at sugar point, and decidedly win the battle. for the pillagers, it marked vehement opposition to “federal policies that spurned their native rights and eroded their sacred land” (10). while the defeat itself is “seldom mentioned in military histories” (10) and in many ways underscores a fierce anishinaabe nationalism located in the heart of the leech lake reservation—a nation advancing self-determination as it decried flooded rice beds and degraded grave sites as well as illegal timber harvesting— transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     5 the defeat also demonstrates the transnational sites of presence for the anishinaabe in interesting ways. for instance, vizenor’s foregrounding of anishinaabe diplomacy, military moves, and cosmopolitan sensibilities as well as his echoing the legacy of anishinaabe resistance and resisters throughout the text underscores his insistence on the international pursuits and transnational “boundedness” of the anishinaabe. guarzino and smith assert in “the locations of transnationalism” that “the actual mooring and, thus, boundedness of transnationalism by the opportunities and constraints found in particular localities where transnational practices occur” resonates with the colonial experience of indigenous peoples in north america, and specifically with mid-19th century (and beyond) realities of anishinaabe peoples (12). in his introduction to the poem, vizenor foregrounds anishinaabe movement across the continent, and the spiritual presence with which that migration continued to occur—from their eastern migration from the atlantic ocean to lake superior following the miigis to the grand medicine society’s permeations in anishinaabe cultural philosophy and day-to-day life. vizenor is also purposeful in chronicling the line of anishinaabe spiritual and military leaders, from chief flat mouth to keeshkemun to black dog to bugaunak to hole in the day. taken altogether, this provides a legacy of resistance that spans anishinaabe history and provides a map of indigenous experience. anishinaabe create translocal and transnational practices and relations that provide both “opportunities and constraints” within those systems. vizenor depicts national alliances rooted not in bordered nation-states but in migrations of many kinds, from the midewewin spiritual practices to the journeying of the miigis shell. anishinaabe points of origin appear through various locales and, in vizenor’s narrative, as necessarily preceding particular accounts of anishinaabe nation-building. in this manner, the introduction frames the entire epic so that the pillager military victory is neither isolated nor accidental, but a sign of the enduring global designs and transnational practices of the anishinaabe nation. migration, then, is not linear, progressivist action as much as it is relational, widening movement: “the anishinaabe envisioned their associations with the earth by natural reason…an imagic sense of presence in the time and seasons of the woodland lakes” (3), says vizenor in the introduction. scott lyons in x-marks notes how migration is fundamental to the anishinaabe: “if anything can be molly mcglennen “by my heart”     6 considered an enduring value for ojibwe people, it has got to be migration [starting with] the legend of the great migration passed down through the oral tradition…” (3). in bawaajimo, margaret noodin echoes lyons’ emphasis on migration. drawing first on roger roulette’s assertion countering the idea that indigenous peoples were ‘nomadic,’ noodin ties that to the anishinaabe concept of nametwaawaa: long ago the anishinaabeg moved around and left a presence while transporting things; they traveled for three to five years at a time and always kept in mind the places they had been (interview). this practice of nametwaawaa, which is the verb that can describe a relationship with a place, not random wandering, but enlightened stewardship that allowed people to circle a vast homeland, learning when to be where. many stories speak of places visited in dreams or visions, places like the sky or a cave at the bottom of the lake, or the kitchen table of nokomisba, who is no longer living. this ability to visit elsewhere, perhaps stepping out of time, is part of many anishinaabe stories and can be found in the writing of contemporary anishinaabe authors as frequently as the lakes and forests” (37).3 vizenor’s poem, then, excises the war at sugar point from dominant discourses, the terminal creeds that lock and flatten indian people as non-agents, by creating a narrative that circles and widens by “natural reason” and is concerned with “the provenance of story” (36). the poem’s prelude, “overture: manidoo creations,” forecasts the battle only after it moors the anishinaabe as “natives of the miigis”; descendents of the “crafty trickster / naanabozho / created natives / bear and cranes / muskrats”; and, beneficiaries of “manidoo creation / blood totems / bear covenants / of native survivance” (13-14), as if to say the initiative of history writing in this narrative is located in and grows out of indigenous sensibilities to what constitutes nationhood for the anishinaabe and how their “boundaries” are etched out. “bagwana: the pillagers of liberty,” which is the first of five movements in the lyric poem, establishes the pillager clan as the ancestral antecedent of the line of warrior anishinaabeg, illuminating for the reader a current of resistance which seems to have always been moving in and beyond anishinaabe physical and cultural territoriality. the bagwana portion of the narrative sets a foundation to transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     7 conceptualize the war at sugar point because through it the reader understands more deeply this inheritance that hole in the day calls upon. early in this first section, vizenor offers a prelude to the battle: six soldiers dead bones cracked muscles torn bloody wounds by winchesters over the turnips cabbage and potatoes in a ragged garden cultivated near shore by bugonaygeshig hole in the day midewiwin healer and elusive pillager (20). quickly, vizenor connects this narrative to one of its cultural precursors: solitary spirits marvelous sentiments of shamans court and tradition under the cedar set by names ravens and bears visual memories traces of bagwana turned in translation by my heart a native warrior and natural presence at the tree line (20-21). molly mcglennen “by my heart”     8 vizenor relays to his reader that bagwana and fourteen other anishinaabe warriors, led by black dog, seek vengeance on some “dakota riders” for killing a pillager child. bagwana is the only warrior to “survive the war” and “by my heart / returned a shaman / silent and alone / to bear island” (23). throughout the narrative, there is a visual and philosophical conflation of the warrior and the shaman, vengeance and spirituality, with anishinaabe leadership pushing against colonial acts. what sets the stage for narrating hole in the day and the war at sugar point, then, is not only the “greedy factors / caught in the dirty / mirrors of civilization,” the “frontier justice / contrived by grafters” (29), and christianity’s role in “manifest manners” and acts of genocide, but also the visionary leaders “forever honored / by the anishinaabe” (28). it is through this frame, then, the reader comes to follow the story of bear island. vizenor repeats “by my heart” fifteen times throughout the poem, each time indicating a unifying citizenship of the descendants of “native liberty,” inheritors bequeathed a shared story of experience that characterizes their sense of nation as eternally “natural reason / anishinaabe survivance” (46). and because vizenor so closely links hole in the day and other anishinaabe leaders to the mide and anishinaabe religion, the concept of citizenship, which reveals the ideals of anishinaabe nationhood, shifts the reader’s perception of historical renderings and readings of war and colonial oppression. in the section “bearwalkers: 5 october, 1898,” vizenor says, nineteen natives bear island warriors shrouded at home in the brush under the maples winchesters ready to scare and menace untried soldiers back to the steamer and recover the pleasures of native stories transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     9 and medicine dances by my heart and hole in the day alight as birds (61). “by my heart” echoes throughout the poem, each time preceded or followed by an anishinaabe presence, whether hole in the day, bagwana, keeshkemun, chief flat mouth, pillager warriors, bear clan, an “elusive raven,” “trace of native shamans” or “manidoo bounty” (73, 25), as the phrase in many ways implies a legacy of resistance and warriors, and signals anishinaabe culture and homelands. as such, it is the genealogies of anishinaabe stories and histories that transform national alliances, transgress borders, and re-order western understandings of militarization. and the phrase “by my heart” communicates that shifting because of its associations to extant peoples. this complicated reorientation of how to perceive and understand indigenous historiography, nation-building, and global presence is precisely the work in which vizenor’s poetry is engaged. bear island reveals anishinaabeg mapping out the territory of their nation by rendering not a place compromised by its federal trust status but a place defended by five totemic alliances and specifically the leaders of the makwa clan (bear, the warriors) and the ajijaak clan (crane, the orators). whether through militancy or diplomacy, vizenor illustrates the anishinaabe as envoys crossing colonial borders to defend their lifeways. for example, in “gatling gun: 6 october 1898” vizenor says, chief white cloud waubanaquot anishinaabe ogimaa white earth reservation a native patriot of natural reason died at the agency on his way to mediate peace with the army pillager warriors molly mcglennen “by my heart”     10 and federal agents (81). here, in the middle of narrating the battle, vizenor insists on telling the stories of anishinaabe leaders, their diplomatic pursuits, transnational moves and cosmopolitan interests. using the term “native patriot,” vizenor shifts the reader’s perception of “national allegiance” and common understandings of “u.s. history,” as he reveals anishinaabe leaders demonstrating their mediatory intentions. anishinaabe military procedures, too, are cast in stark contrast to historical metanarratives of united states military might and progress. the native warrior who fired the shot was only fifteen the pillager son of hole in the day he waited with his winchester at the tree line in the dark maples for a wild soldier and fired once to forewarn the military poachers the second round was the last and deadly shot of the war that cold morning at sugar point (80). native survivance depends on a “native mercy shot” which the white soldier survives (79); it is only after the soldier continues to rummage through hole in the day’s garden looking for sustenance that the pillager son fires a second fatal bullet. vizenor narrates the war in a way that scrutinizes the colonial tendency to sanctify manifest destiny and the conqueror’s military might. in addition to the scene with the “native mercy shot,” vizenor ends the epic poem with the section “war necklace: 9 october 1898,” in which transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     11 the master narrative of u.s. history based on “cultural conceit” and “constitutional trickery” is turned on its head (93). vizenor provides a final litany of dead white soldiers subverting western ways of remembrance of valor, making real and very ugly the realities of war. he foregrounds the litany, however, with hole in the day’s continuance as an “undaunted warrior” (85), able to peacefully attend to his garden once again and his practices as a mide member: he fashions “a memorial / war necklace / native survivance / remembrance / a defeated army / overcome by winchesters / and fierce irony” (86). the litany of u.s. soldiers, then, reads not as a legacy of u.s. military prowess, but as fierce commentary on a “treacherous / emissary war” and its “cruel renunciation / of native reason / treaty rights / and continental liberty” (93). by the end, the poem has provided a narrative that works to show the anishinaabeg working transnationally—across clan, tribe, and colonial lines—and engaging a level of indigeneity not as an evanescent phenomena but as consistent philosophical and political design. in this way, the war at sugar point does not signify the closing of the frontier or the last chapter for native americans, as mainstream u.s. history would have it, but instead it marks a turning point, albeit a complicated one, for the anishinaabe. similarly, vizenor’s minneapolis poems from almost ashore, as i argue ahead, mark defining moments in recent indigenous history. minneapolis: the 8th rez4 the urban (off-reservation) realities of the latter half of the 20th century, like the contentious realities for the anishinaabe at the turn of the 20th century in bear island, demonstrate the resilient nation-building efforts of threatened and dislocated peoples. writing about these historical experiences, vizenor exposes just how insufficient the colonial construction of the city/reservation dichotomy is to understand native american nationhood or to unlock the bindings of colonially imposed definitions of citizenship. in native hubs: culture, community, and belonging in silicon valley and beyond, renya ramirez aptly asserts that the “traditional-community/reservation-member” versus the “modern-urbanite” not only lacks paradigmatic utility, but it is also constructed in part as a tool for continued colonial attack, a means to diffuse native cultures. further, in his essay “the urban tradition among americans,” jack forbes stresses that “what many molly mcglennen “by my heart”     12 non-native writers do not realize is that the first americans have, in fact, gone through periods of deurbanization and reurbanization on various occasions in their history and that urban life has been a major aspect of american life from ancient times” (5). indigenous alliance building is something native peoples practiced before europeans ever arrived in the americas (made evident in mounds, earthworks, architecture etc.); indeed, anishinaabe nation-building is also an age-old practice, which included ways by which the anishinaabe differentiated themselves between clans, other tribes like the dakota, and early european groups, like the french and norwegians. vizenor’s minneapolis poems reveal various types of what i have elsewhere called dislocations5, which native peoples have continually experienced as they evoke the idea of “by my heart” as a means to express unique forms of continuance and connection despite urbanity, destabilized citizenship, and military action. to be sure, this construction of the transnational is not one formed by postcolonial concepts of “the center and its margins” or by the experience of the quintessential unbounded transnational migrant, but rather one that takes very seriously something robert warrior asserted nearly five years ago in relationship to the growth of indigenous studies: the “mere invocation of the transnational is not enough. as an analytical category, transnationalism is, to put it mildly, all over the place” (120). instead he argues that, “in effect, our [native] nationalism is born out of native transnationalism, the flow and exchange of ideas and politics across our respective nations’ borders” (125). vizenor’s poems impart a framework that is flexible and nuanced enough to recognize the perviousness of nation-state and tribal borders, the complication of nationalist alliances, and the observance of anishinaabe people as actively determining their “place” in north america and in the world, wherever they might be. indeed, modern definitions of the citizen and the state as shaped by the treaty of westphalia in 1648 and similar and ongoing iterations of international relations6 thoroughly complicate and vex contemporary tribal notions of sovereignty, nationhood, and citizenship—as the collision suggests a particular dialectic of an official national narrative that creates static and secure boundaries around the nation-state. i believe the minneapolis poems prompt a critical study of these types of normalizing dialectic constructions and dominant discourses, ultimately demonstrating what scott lyons in xtransmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     13 marks sees as “discursive formations, or ways of speaking that are traceable to institutions, the state, and dominant cultural understandings, and always associated with power and hierarchies” (23-24). in fact, if one takes shelley fisher fishkin's idea of “interrogat[ing] “the ‘naturalness’ of some of the borders, boundaries, and binaries” that have accounted for the “multidirectional flows of people, ideas, and goods” as a working definition of transnational studies (22), then the anishinaabe experience as expressed in vizenor’s poetry can be more affectively framed as a transnational project, albeit a necessarily anishinaabe one. “family photograph” in her essay “picture revolution: transnationalism, american studies, and the politics of contemporary native culture, shari huhndorf asserts that “native americans present the most radical challenges to u.s. nationalist myths and imperial practices…contained by neither place nor time, this on-going process [of colonization] cannot be marginalized; instead it implicates all nonindigenous peoples in conquest” (368). while the storied inheritance of colonialism as experienced in the americas incorporates all peoples—colonists and indigenous peoples alike, the process of colonization cannot be limited to a particular location or era for native peoples in general; notwithstanding, individual indigenous families and communities certainly have specific narratives of colonial impact and conquest that add to the legacy of native peoples’ struggle and resistance. stories are vehicles for capturing or mirroring that ongoing process because of the ability language holds to move beyond the dichotomies that structure the colonial experience (e.g. conquered vs. conqueror, outsider vs. insider, reservation-based vs. urban-based, traditional vs. assimilated). for instance, in “family photograph,” vizenor portrays the legacy of colonial impact on a young man and his family departing from the reservation toward life in the city: my father turned away from white earth the reservation colonial genealogies molly mcglennen “by my heart”     14 and moved to the city with family at twenty three (lines 10-17). here, a white earth community member (who we understand as vizenor’s father) chooses to move his family to the city of minneapolis; up to this point, a colonial context frames the spaces of the reservation and the urban locale within the poem. a racialized space, the city is portrayed with forgotten and overlooked individuals. for instance, vizenor’s father and other indigenous city “immigrant[s]” are “deserted twice” and “by combat / and crusades / thrown back / forever / to evangelists / and charity” (74, 36, 4853). despite this, clement vizenor’s story does not end with obscurity or isolation (though we know from vizenor’s autobiography clement is mysteriously murdered); rather, vizenor enlivens his father’s figure in specific anishinaabe ways: “native tricksters / teased his memory / shared dreams / and chance” (28-31), in which anishinaabe culture is actively represented “by my heart.” more than planting indigenous cues in the minneapolis setting, vizenor’s poem reveals through the figure of his father an active anishinaabe territory, a place of native “immigrant” diaspora, positioning a generation of anishinaabeg not as “removed” peoples but as those “deliver[ing] / the first / white earth / native stories / in the suburbs” (81-85). in other words, through the poem, vizenor reveals how the anishinaabe determined and continue to station themselves in places not delineated by colonial boundaries but by indigenous notions of mapping. understandably, in her essay “picture revolution,” huhndorf points toward the challenge native texts pose as they assert the “national and transnational dimensions of indigenous politics” (369), and she leans on j.b. harley in the new nature of maps: essays in the history of cartography to assert native communities’ vexed relationship to the nation-state through the role cartography continues to play in notions of empire: ‘[m]aps have been the weapons of imperialism’: not only are they essential for claiming, settling, and exploiting land; they also establish boundaries for the ‘containment of subject populations’ and ‘create myths [to] assist in the maintenance of the territorial status quo.’ as graphic renderings of europe’s conquests, maps remain, harley concludes, ‘preeminently a language of power, not protest.’ (huhndorf, 359) transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     15 unlike western cartography, however, indigenous mappings of place render far more dimension. according to mark warhus in another america, “maps were not created as permanent documents in native american traditions. the features of geography were part of a much larger interconnected mental map that existed in oral traditions…native american maps were pictures of experience” (3).7 “family photograph” illustrates an indigenous way of reading and framing the city by poetically recording human experience in relationship to a place, a landscape the anishinaabe have always known through stories, trade routes, seasonal migrations, and intertribal relationships. in fact, the poem helps reveal how nationhood for indigenous people was and is supported by transnational tribal formations. what links anishinaabe people is not the geo-political spaces mapped by colonial boundaries, but the cultural and spiritual foundations that give rise to a peoplehood and that challenge the many standard dichotomies colonial narratives have produced. still, for clement vizenor, minneapolis becomes a place of poverty and “racial shame” (71). the poem, however, seems to erupt from these creases of despair, enlivening the landscape of anishinaabe lifeways via transnational indigenous connections: native stories masterly during the great depression inspired survivance in unheated cold water rooms stained by kerosene city blisters memories in exile and the fate of families burst overnight (91-103). molly mcglennen “by my heart”     16 in vizenor’s almost ashore, minneapolis is understood not as an indigenous space constructed as a result of relocation legislation of the 1950’s, but as a “nationalized” homeland of the anishinaabe—a heart-center, thereby suggesting the transnational identities of anishinaabe people. in this poem, minneapolis becomes a location transformed by anishinaabe people because of relocation, but it is also a place recuperated by the anishinaabeg as traditional homelands. in each way, anishinaabe life ways are marked by bold political moves and acts of resistance. though clement vizenor ultimately “lost at cards” (116) (and, again, we know from vizenor’s autobiographies that clement dies in obscurity), the figure in the poem just as compellingly persists as an active presence, an agent of anishinaabe culture, perpetuating stories, bloodlines, and defiance toward “colonial genealogies” (14). this active presence evokes the poetic marker “by my heart” in the ways the poem unflattens the colonial terminal creeds of relocation. “guthrie theater” in the second of vizenor’s minneapolis poems, vizenor uses the site of the famed guthrie theater in downtown minneapolis and the image of the theater more generally to expose the playing of indian in stark contrast to an indigenous homeless veteran outside of the minneapolis institution. while school children file into the building, american indian / … limps past / the new theater // wounded indian / comes to attention / on a plastic leg / and delivers / a smart salute // with the wrong hand” (lines 1, 11-18). this image of the veteran saluting with “the wrong hand” recurs at the end of the poem as well and signals the indian’s subversion to colonial depictions of the fallen native, despite the u.s. government’s utter betrayal of native people, especially toward veterans of war. once again like in bear island, empty promises echo the recurring “treaties [broken]” and disillusioned populations of native people illustrated by “forsaken warriors / [who] retire overnight / in cardboard suites / under the interstates” (52, 42-45). while in vizenor’s poem the theatrics of posing come from the actors within the theater in the form of the ultimate romanticization and fetishization of the indian simulation (the rehearsing of wounded knee as “night after night / the actors / new posers / mount and ride / on perfect ponies / out to the wild / cultural westerns / hilly transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     17 suburbs / with buffalo bill” [54-61]), the anishinaabe veteran “salutes the actors / with the wrong hand” (49-50), suggesting perhaps his disoriented state but also, and more powerfully, his politics of subversion and his defiance in the face of being disregarded. here, outside of the guthrie, a space lauded for ingenuity and creativity, it is the homeless veteran that makes transparent the on-going colonial legacies of playing indian and non-indigenous people’s investment in and perpetuation of that role. in fact, through this poem readers are reminded how indigenous peoples have continually remade urban spaces as sites of resistance and invention. renya ramirez says in her essay “healing through grief: urban indians reimagining culture and community” that urban areas exist as indigenous “hubs,” information centers “where indians from all the different tribes can share and then send this information back home” (259). cities exist as native cultural, communal, and imaginative hubs that “challenge acculturation theory” and foil dichotomous means of registering native life as either “traditional” (reservation-based) or “modern” (urban-based). therefore, cities as indigenous hubs where ideas and life ways ebb and flow, continue and adapt, thrive and evolve can “strengthen indian peoples’ collective voice and ability to mobilize for social change” (259). thus, in “guthrie theater,” vizenor is able to assert “culture wars / wound the heart / and dishonor / the uniform” because the anishinaabe veteran’s strength and rebellion stand in stark contrast to the colonial imaginings of the forgotten indian under the highway or simulated indian on the theater’s stage (38-41). as in “family photograph,” the urban space of minneapolis in “guthrie theater” is marked as anishinaabe territory on an indigenous map of experience, a transnational space that— like any ojibwe homeland—fosters social forces for change and anchors the anishinaabeg in powerful moments of adaptability. the urban warrior with incredible military intelligence is in this poem a dimensional human being, one whom lyons may cite as making a “signature of assent” against “discursive formations” of dominance (24). “raising the flag” luis eduardo guarnizo and michael peter smith assert in their introduction “the locations of transnationalism” to transnationalism from below assert molly mcglennen “by my heart”     18 transnational practices do not take place in an imaginary ‘third space’ abstractly located ‘in between’ national territories. thus, the image of transnational migrants as deterritorialized, free-floating people represented by the now popular academic adage ‘neither here nor there’ deserves closer scrutiny. intermittent spatial mobility, dense social ties, and intense exchanges fostered by transmigrants across national borders have…fed the formulation of metaphors of transnationalism as a boundless and therefore liberatory process. however, transnational practices, while connecting collectivities located in more than one national territory, are embodied in specific social relations established between specific people, situated in unequivocal localities, at historically determined times (11). while these scholars present a scope of analysis that leaves out indigenous notions of transnational practices as it relates to the geo-political realities of native american and first nation tribes under the auspices of the u.s. and canadian governments, their assertions still formulate helpful connections to the ways in which vizenor’s minneapolis poems express indigenous transnational experience; as such, anishinaabe people (on the u.s. side of the nation-state border in this case) create autonomous spaces in which the u.s. government has limited access and control. if we are to read the transnational turn into narratives of native resistance, we realize a context that signifies intertribal experience less as a result of colonial dominance or oppressive policy making and more as a comment on the global designs of indigenous groups. in fact, huhndorf makes note of these broader designs when she says, “indigenous transnationalism arises from connections that supersede and contest colonial national boundaries.” (369). what this means is that other mechanisms for recognizing, recording, and experiencing nationhood exist. walter mignolo in local histories / global designs asserts that the nation-state runs on hegemony and the “coloniality of power” over its citizens (16), works toward the imperial deployment and naturalization of mono(theistic) culture while still publically delivering the rhetoric of multiculturalism (229), and invests its interests in guarding and militarizing its borders. on the other hand, indigenous notions of the nation (as we understand them through vizenor’s writing) grow out of the landscape-based (“earthed”) and storied origins, genealogies of “manidoo creations,” “blood totems,” and “natural presence” (lines from bear island), the pre-subaltern transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     19 context of which mignolo defines as a diverse, plurilogical, and pluritopical set of temporalities “that moves in all possible directions” from its local history and epistemology outward (202). vizenor’s minneapolis poems, moreover, narrate nationhood in anishinaabe-specific ways, in ways in which narrative chance denaturalizes colonial definitions. within this framework, vizenor’s “raising the flag” depicts a “native urban experience” in which a woman once held in esteem by her community now finds herself alone and poor in minneapolis’s “indian” neighborhood: native woman once a healer by a thousand years anishinaabe time shivered alone in a telephone booth at the corner of tenth and chicago in minneapolis (lines 1-9) vizenor’s poem continues from there to signal recognizable u.s/native federal policies and practices that accompanied relocation, such as generations of native people as recipients of “federal school[ing],” being “outed” to white farmers, being subject to “federal agents,” “separation / and cultural / dominance,” “charity shoes,” and racial defamation (13, 16, 21, 26-28, 33). but vizenor unfastens these supposed tightened effects of conquest by centering the heart of anishinaabe people in revealing the women’s defiance, valor, and sense of continuance: she was down with a sacred name alone forever in a telephone booth unbearable marks of civilization waiting to hear molly mcglennen “by my heart”     20 the voices of her children stolen by welfare security agents (55-65) the poem turns here (literally with the word “turned”) to soothe the pain of and heal from the “marks of civilization:” she turned at the winter bar raised a flag of eagle feathers and honored by song hole in the day pillager warriors at bear island and sugar point (66-75) the flag in the title evokes the u.s. flag, and thus a certain type of loyalty, but by the last stanza one understands an anishinaabe sense of nationalism, which anchors a transnational anishinaabe politic, marked by an allegiance to a “flag / of eagle feathers” and to traditional ways; and in this moment, the reader recognizes her fierce and resistant ancestors who champion her valor, as the woman in the poem recognizes and recalls her traditional (and ongoing) honoring practices. in “raising the flag,” vizenor characterizes her as heart-filled, good-hearted, and led “by her heart”: though alone, she searches for ways to connect with her children “stolen by welfare agents”; though separated from her community and her traditional ways and language, she attempts connection with phone calls; though freezing and starving, she perseveres with her “patent red / charity shoes” and “check[s] twice / the coin return” (32-33, 38-39); and finally, though “teased,” “cursed,” “mauled”, and defamed (44, 49, 52), she honors and calls for strength from a legacy that she as an anishinaabe women has inherited, a legacy, specifically, from the powerful and diplomatic ojibwe leader, hole in the day.8 and she is emboldened by memories, which store and register anishinaabe people not as broken and downtrodden, transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     21 but as powerful bands of people that have resisted and continue to resist colonial forces. finally, the figure in “raising the flag” illustrates the undoing of homogeneous nationalities as she delineates a kind of autonomous anishinaabe territory that also includes non-anishinaabe peoples. indeed, all three of vizenor’s minneapolis poems, “family photograph,” “guthrie theater,” and “raising the flag,” narrate moments of resistance that echo the pillagers at sugar point. each figure in vizenor’s poems from almost ashore ultimately defends a nationalism, a territory (minneapolis, or gakaabikaang in ojibwemowin) because of his/her indigenous understandings of land and movement, defined by experience, cultural traditions, and spiritually-rooted connection. this resistance suggests a transnational understanding of their place on the continent and in the world. for the anishinaabe according to vizenor, homeland is found at the crossroads of redefining and indigenizing understandings of colonial versions of tribalism and nationalism. at the very least, indigenous transnationalisms challenge definitions and realities of the nation-state and its colonial reach. as such, vizenor’s minneapolis poems suggest alternative modes of mapping indigenous experience. whether it’s clement vizenor’s bringing white earth stories to the suburbs, an anishinaabe veteran advancing subversive political moves, or an anishinaabe mother honoring and calling upon her inheritance of powerful resisters, each narrative embodied in the poems shapes the integrity of anishinaabe storytelling and historiography, a communally shared contract that originates from the center, the “heart,” and moves outward to all anishinaabeg, no matter where they reside. when understood from the heart—or “by my heart” as vizenor presents it in bear island— anishinaabe nationhood and historiography construct cartographic guides through storied geographical locations rather than linear timelines or colonial boundaries. in his poems, then, vizenor creates an indigenous cartography to understand anishinaabe territoriality—one that undoes the natural order of conquest. if we understand these two moments in anishinaabe history (a military victory at bear island and post-relocation recuperation of minneapolis as anishinaabe territory), we see transnational politics at work at the same time indigenous peoples are asserting national sovereignty. considering the framework of “by my heart” throughout vizenor’s poetry allows for the mapping of anishinaabe experience as perpetually adaptable as it is molly mcglennen “by my heart”     22 rooted in its specific epistemological belief systems and spiritual practices. as creative documents of anishinaabe testimony, bear island and almost ashore are key sites of political struggle for anishinaabe peoples; in this way, vizenor’s literature makes transparent the colonial tendency to obfuscate conquest and naturalize ownership of “the nation.     notes 1 in his email, burgess continued to write: …but i understand too that i'm just one person who is of mixed nakota/anishinaabe heritage. what i think about also is the connection to place. i have walked/ran the edge of the mississippi river so many times that i feel a connection to the river. on those runs i'd often make offerings to the river and say a prayer. i went there to meditate and think about things when i felt lost or discouraged about things. i can still maintain that connection up here in bemidji because the river runs through the lake. in fact my office looks right out on the lake. i can still make my offerings and have daily interactions with that river. that to me is how you build nationhood by relating to a particular place. there are also thoughts people have about the city ruining or destroying the sacredness of place. i have some thoughts on that subject as well… one of the main things would be that if we think of earth as our mother than all parts of earth are parts of our mother. when we are born as humans sometimes our human mother is permanently scarred and that is symbolic of the sacrifice that our mother's make so that we might live. we also leave scars on our earth mother and that is hard to deal with because sometimes it is because we make bad or wrong choices. this makes me think of the creation story with the hero twins arguing inside their mother's belly over who gets to be born first. in their arguing they kill their mother. but i truly believe that our earth mother still loves us and that we should continue to honor all the places throughout her body even when we have made poor choices and have scarred her. if this means making an offering to the mississippi in the middle of all the pollution that the city inflicts on that river, then so be it. i'll still do it.   2 according to the minneapolis american indian center’s website, minneapolis is home to perhaps 7,500 or more ojibwe people. there are over 35,000 american indian people in the broader minneapolis metro area. 3 mii gwech to the reader of an earlier draft of this paper for his/her extremely helpful advice about the practice of nametwaawaa and its relationship to “by my heart.” 4 the 8th rez is a term of which ben burgess made me aware. fond du lac, grand portage, leech lake, white earth, red lake, net lake, mille lacs are the official seven ojibwe reservations in minnesota. he shared this mnemonic device to help me remember: “fat geese like wild rice near marshes.”   5 in my book creative alliances: the transnational designs of indigenous women’s poetry, published by university of oklahoma press in 2014, i create and employ the term dislocation as a key term that encompasses the many types of displacements transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     23   contemporary native people experience from “non-recognition, disenrollment, diaspora and migration, destabilized citizenship, intertribalism, queer identity, and, more broadly, transnational experiences” (4). 6 sociologist barry hindess, in his essay “citizenship and empire,” points out the “glaring asymmetry” of globalization, the contemporary global order. he asserts that empire is the “emerging form of sovereignty” and that empire “does not rely on territorial boundaries”; however, “there is a radical discontinuity between our present condition and the earlier world order” (241), which, he argues, grows out of the standard of civilization that emerged from the treaty of westphalia. while hindess is not specifically alluding to contemporary native american experience, his model of how the organizing principle of imperial rule was and is a civilizing mission remains helpful in the framework for this paper. 7 though warhus explores the “traditional” notion of native american mapping, the trajectory of that notion is still viable today, i believe, in the way native peoples creatively engage the imaginative means of writing as a continued version of recording oral documents. 8 there is some controversy around hole in the day’s leadership and death. see anton treuer’s history the assassination of hole in the day for more. works cited burgess, ben. personal correspondence. april 14, 2011. fishkin, shelley fisher. “crossroads of culture: the transnational turn in american studies”—presidential address to the american studies association, november 12, 2004. american quarterly 57.1 (2005): 17-57. print. forbes, jack. “the urban tradition among native americans.” american indians and the urban experience. eds. susan lobo and kurt peters. lanham, md.: altamira press, 2001. 5-26. print. guarnizo, luis eduardo and michael peter smith. “the locations of transnationalism.” transnationalism from below. eds. luis eduardo guarnizo and michael peter smith london: transaction publishers, 1998, 2004. print. harley, j. b. the new nature of maps: essays in the history of cartography. baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 2001. print. hindess, barry. “citizenship and empire.” sovereign bodies: citizens, migrants, and states in the postcolonial world. eds. thomas blom hansen and finn stepputat. new jersey: princeton university press, 2005. 241-256. print. molly mcglennen “by my heart”     24   huhndorf, shari. “picture revolution: transnationalism, american studies, and the politics of contemporary native culture.” american quarterly 61.2 (2009): 359381. print. lyons, scott. x-marks: native signatures of assent. minneapolis: university of minnesota, 2010. print. madsen, deborah. “on subjectivity and survivance: rereading trauma through the heirs of columbus and the crown of columbus.” survivance: narratives of native presence. ed. gerald vizenor. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2008. 61-88. print. mcglennen, molly. creative alliances: the transnational designs of indigenous women’s poetry. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2014. print. mignolo, walter. local histories/global designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. princeton: princeton university press, 2000. print. noodin, margaret. bawaajimo: a dialect of dreams in anishinaabe language and literature. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2014. print. ramirez, renya. “healing through grief: urban indians reimagining culture and community.” american indians and the urban experience. eds. susan lobo and kurt peters. lanham, md.: altamira press, 2001. 249-264. print. ----. native hubs: culture, community, and belonging in silicon valley and beyond. durham: duke university press books, 2007. print. treuer, anton. the assassination of hole in the day. st. paul: minnesota historical society press, 2010. print. vizenor, gerald. almost ashore. cambridge: salt publishing, 2006. print. ----. bear island: the war at sugar point. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2006. print. ----. “family photograph.” almost ashore, 6-9. ----. “guthrie theater.” almost ashore, 15-16. ----. “raising the flag.” almost ashore, 17-19. warhus, mark. another america: native american maps and the history of our land. new york: st martin’s press, 1997. print. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)     25   warrior, robert. “native american scholarship and the transnational turn.” cultural studies review 15.2 (2009): 119-130. print.   microsoft word castillo.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   128   eniko sepsi, judit nagy, miklos vassanyi and janos kenyeres, eds. indigenous perspectives of north america. newcastle: cambridge scholars publishing, 2014. 527 pp. http://www.cambridgescholars.com/indigenous-perspectives-of-north-america on opening indigenous perspectives of north america, i had hoped to encounter essays written by indigenous scholars describing their perspectives on north american history, art and culture, as the title would seem to indicate. this, i fear, is not the case, and the title is a bit of a misnomer. what this volume does offer the reader is thirty-five research papers on native american matters, written in english, french and spanish, by specialists based in central europe and north america. it is divided into four sections. the first, titled “wider perspectives”, is characterized as including articles which are more general in scope. the following four sections are single-topic essays on matters related to indigenous issues. section 2 focuses on representations of indigenous people and groups in cinema, fine art, and literature, while the third section looks at issues of culture and identity. the fourth and final section analyzes topics linked to history and indigenous-related policy. in a collection of this type, there are inevitably variations in the quality of the essays presented. some, however, are well worth reading. in the “wider perspectives” section of the book, in his essay “between relativism and romanticism: traditional ecological knowledge as social critique”, nathan kowalsky tackles the complex question of indigenous knowledge of (and practices related to) the conversation of the environment. he argues that tek, the inelegant acronym by which traditional ecological knowledge is designated in the discourse of canadian conservation management, should be understood as social critique. he takes the bold step of proposing that the radical environmental perspective known as primitivism should be viewed as a basis to critique certain aspects of contemporary canadian life. one may not agree with all of kowalsky’s conclusions, but he sets them forth with intelligence, even-handedness, and scholarly verve. helmut lutz, in “aboriginal literatures in canada: multiculturalism and fourth world decolonization”, sets forth in admirably clear and lucid prose a history of aboriginal literatures in canada in the context of both government policy and of critical perspectives such as postcolonial theory and fourth world thought. lutz’s close readings of aboriginal texts are particularly insightful and sensitive. agustin cadena, in “representaciones del mundo indigena en la literatura mexicana del siglo xx”, offers a useful overview of representations of indigeneity in twentieth-century mexican literature, though why this is included in the first section rather than in the following one dedicated to representations of indigenous peoples in literature is perplexing. an interesting aspect of this essay is its exploration of the porous and permeable boundaries between ethnographic writing and the literary. in the following section of the book, other essays stand out, such as katalin kurtosi’s nicely interdisciplinary “indians and their art: emily carr’s imagery in painting and in writing,” and emma sanchez montanes’s excellent study of representations of susan castillo review of indigenous perspectives of north america   129   indigenous people in the accounts of the malespina expedition at the end of the eighteenth century. the last part of the book, with its comparatist perspective, is particularly interesting, with special mention for daryana maximova’s comparative analysis of indigenous policy in northern canada and northern russia and tivadar palagyi’s study of multilingualism and indigenous identities among the houma indians of louisiana and the russophone turks of moldavia. in conclusion: there is much to praise about this volume. its interdisciplinary approach,and its cosmopolitan, multilingual character, are genuinely valuable. this review began, however, by expressing disappointment that the volume does not deliver what the title promises: aboriginal perspectives of north america, and this is the book’s main failing. aboriginal perspectives of north america would have gained immeasurably by including essays from indigenous authors; so far as this critic can tell from the biographical notes at the end of the volume, not a single one of the contributors is from an indigenous background. susan castillo, king’s college, london microsoft word carlson.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)     102   clements, william b. imagining geronimo: an apache icon in popular culture. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2013. 305 pp. http://unmpress.com/books.php?id=20000000005364&page=book from the time that he first emerged as a figure of interest in news reports emanating from the southwest in the 1870s, the apache shaman and war leader geronimo has endured as a recurrent, and ambivalent image of “indianness” in american popular culture. this, essentially, is the thesis of william clements’ copiously researched new volume. over the course of seven chapters, clements surveys geronimo’s presence in newspapers, folklore, film, literature, photography, and public appearances. largely refraining from in-depth analysis of his examples, clements instead aims to provide readers with a useful and provocative archive of material from which to draw for further study. readers in native american studies will be particularly interested in his discussion of how geronimo attempted (with mixed results) to exert some control over his image during his own lifetime. and readers with a particular interest in gerald vizenor’s work will find a variety of provocative examples of geronimo’s “postindian” presence, examples sure to reward further consideration. clements begins his book with a discussion of the contemporaneous newspaper coverage of geronimo’s exploits, his eventual capture by the u.s. military, and his relocation to florida and oklahoma, where he would live out his days in exile from his arizona homeland. not surprisingly, this survey reveals that the majority of the early accounts of geronimo tended to depict him as an archetypal savage, or “red devil,” with only a handful of instances where his later image as a freedom fighter and patriot began to emerge. suggestive of the complex role that the colonial construct of indian “savagism” plays in american history, though, clements also draws attention to the emergence of a genre of “geronimo stories” in the oral culture and folkways of the american southwest. anglo setters, in particular, employed both the spectral figure of geronimo and a range of tall-tales regarding their encounters, or near-encounters, with him, as a means of legitimizing their presence in this newly tamed “frontier.” this corpus of geronimo stories identified by clements thus comes across as one rich with potential for further analysis. this type of material clearly cries out to be situated within the framework of recent revisionist paradigms in western history. the best-developed section of the book is clements’ discussion of geronimo’s agency vis-a-vis his own image. he takes up this topic in a long chapter dealing with geronimo’s presence at three world’s fairs between 1895 and 1904 and his participation in theodore roosevelt’s inauguration in 1905. clements here makes good use of key concepts in post-colonial theory (such as spivak’s notion of the subaltern) as well as james clifford’s important interventions into our understanding of ethnography and museum studies to provide a historically grounded and persuasive account of semiotic struggle. the battle over geronimo’s image (waged between geronimo himself and a wide-range of american actors with their own economic and ideological motives) emerges here as an emblematic story whose implications extend well beyond its turnof-the century context. clements is not always as successful in making these broader connections; his linkage of geronimo’s reported conversion to christianity to the literature surrounding black elk in a subsequent chapter is thin, by comparison. but the gestures that he makes along these lines are always welcome ones, as they offer still further evidence of the symbolic potency surrounding geronimo as an “icon.” david j. carlson review of imagining geronimo   103   clements’ discussion of photographic representations of geronimo’s is both particularly stimulating and representative of the way that his book draws attention to an archive in need of further analysis. he grounds his discussion of the photographs with a brief nod to the philosophical distinction between idea (here understood as an image that becomes emblematic or representative) and event (here understood as an image where the subject retains its individuality). the resulting insight that geronimo’s image functions as both image and event is a provocative one. for many american viewers, in his time in particular, geronimo has provided the “face to savagism” (155). his intense stare, never-smiling face, and willingness to pose wellarmed are well-known features in his photographic portfolio. interestingly enough, this side of geronimo has also been repurposed in recent years; one of the most famous photographs depicting him along with three other armed apache men now symbolizes pan-indian patriotism in a poster bearing the label “homeland security: fighting terrorism since 1492.” at the same time, as clements notes, geronimo’s face remains one of the most distinctive and inimitable images in american culture. it is suggestive, in this regard, that in presenting geronimo as one of the emblematic “vanishing indians,” edward curtis was forced to render him in profile, thus blunting much of the effect of his visual distinctiveness. clements concludes his discussion of geronimo in the photographic record by loosely invoking vizenor’s notion of trickster discourse. while he does not pursue this insight with any specificity, it seems clear that much could be achieved in applying vizenorian critical concepts to these powerful images. minimally, the photographed geronimo (viewed as idea/event) represents an intriguing example of visual irony. it should be noted that, because of the nature of clements’ project, there is a certain amount of unavoidable unevenness in imagining geronimo. for example, the long chapter on literature reveals, first, that geronimo is often only invoked in the title of works in which he makes no actual appearance and, second, that when he does play a larger role he is usually “flat and undeveloped” (192). with little interpretive interest inherent in the material, then, clements discussion of the “literary geronimo” seldom rises above the level of listing and describing sources. the concluding chapter’s discussion of geronimo’s presence in film, on the other hand, provides evidence to support clements’ central claim about the fluidity of his image. nevertheless, this chapter is surprisingly short (about one third of the length of the literature chapter) and undeveloped. contrasting the earlier chapter on the world’s fairs with the chapter on film is suggestive, in this respect, for in the former clements’ efforts to thicken the historical and critical context yields a much more complex survey of the archive itself. one imagines he could have done some of the same in his treatment of film. there are moments in imagining geronimo where the reader is confronted with an impressive collection of material that cries out for a theory with which to approach it. to be sure, clements’ book does achieve what it set out to do; it provides readers with a comprehensive overview of geronimo’s appearances in popular culture that avoids the suggestion of a “simplistic developmental contour” that clements finds in the work of earlier scholars (4). where this book really shines, though, is in those moments when it moves beyond being a largely bibliographical study toward becoming a full-fledged analysis. it does so often enough to suggest some of the ways that future scholars will be able to build on the foundations clements has established. david j. carlson, california state university san bernardino microsoft word semple.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   109   rice, waubgeshig. legacy. pendicton: theytus, 2014. 192 pp. http://www.theytus.com/book-list/legacy at once both heartbreakingly devastating and breathtakingly hopeful, waubgeshig rice truly gifts his readers a legacy with his debut novel. published by indigenous-owned and operated theytus books, this work acknowledges the hardships facing today’s indigenous communities, while simultaneously affirming the resilience of indigenous, and specifically anishinaabe, identity. legacy opens with the story of eva, a young anishinaabe woman who has left her home on the birchbark indian reservation to attend university in toronto. with his first chapter, rice captures the uncomfortable reality of indigenous students leaving the close-knit communities of home and being thrust into the urban world of academia where our indigineity is an unavoidable reality. being indian becomes a badge that rice’s characters struggle to wear proudly in the face of institutional and individual racism. as an example of this, eva is challenged by an ignorant professor in her intro to canadian politics class who essentially tells her to “get over it,” in regard to issues of “poverty and despair” on native reserves. while non-indigenous readers may be surprised at the tone this professor takes, or may accept it based on the fact that legacy’s first chapter is set in 1989, indigenous academics will see all too familiar echoes of our own experiences in university as we read eva’s frustration. though much of the novel is set in ontario cities, shown as dark and dangerous places where the indigenous characters struggle (with some failing) to survive, the heart of the book lies in the birchbark indian reservation, a fictional community located on the beautiful north shore of lake huron. between tragic and sometimes violent moments, rice weaves intricate details depicting the beauty of the land, helping to transform the stereotypical images of a reserve life setting into something deeper—an acknowledgement of the spiritual connection that his anishinaabe characters hold with this place. we see eva reflecting on her favorite memories of the beach she grew up on, remembering her mother asking, “you see all the sand on the beach here? this is all ours to share, but it’s yours to use however you want.” in moments like these, rice gives us insight into anishinaabe ways of knowing—concepts about how land connects us as a community. notably, legacy does not solely subsist on celebrating the beauty that can and does exist in reserve life. there is a consistent undercurrent of suffering and the desire to numb the pain throughout rice’s novel that points to the complexities behind indigenous issues in canada. we learn within the first few pages that eva’s parents have been killed by a drunk driver, and without giving too much away, later on, how death continues to ravage the family. rice masterfully illustrates the suffocating and never-ending affects of grief in the way he formats the novel—every chapter following eva’s gives us a different perspective from one of her four siblings, stanley, maria, norman, and edgar, and simultaneously moves us through time, each story beginning two years from where the last chapter has left us. even as years pass through every chapter, propelling the story forward, the reader is consistently brought back to the vivid moments of each character experiencing the news that their parents had been killed as if it had just happened. we see each sibling grappling with various reactions to grieving: stanley heading angela semple review of legacy   110   off to school to try and follow in his sister eva’s footsteps; norman and maria stumbling their way through, numbing the pain with alcohol and drugs; edgar, the eldest, trying to raise his younger siblings, as well as a family of his own, after dropping out of university himself. rice courageously gives us an honest picture of indigenous life in ontario, from alcoholism, violence, racism, and tragedy, to the uplifting connections with language and land, honouring important anishinaabe teachings by sharing them with his reader. in the end, what allows each of these siblings to come through their darkness is a strong connection to anishinaabe tradition and ceremony. culture is celebrated in rice’s book as we see both maria and norman healing from their alcoholism through learning about sacred medicines and sweat lodge teachings. far from painting a bleak future for indigenous peoples, rice illustrates the power of reconnecting with indigenous traditions as we see this family begin to overcome their haunting past and strengthen their bonds with each other by learning the teachings of their ancestors. if there is one thing i can say as a criticism of legacy, it would be that there are a few moments where pronoun use can get a little choppy. while this may be a deliberate choice to create a dream-like quality (especially in chapters where we see characters under the influence of alcohol) there were some moments where it was simply distracting having to go back and re-read more than once to understand which “he” was “him.” also, on a personal note, rice sets up his final chapter with an agonizing feeling of dread, which left me almost wishing he had left the ending out so as to save me from a harsh dose of reality. that being said, the finale of this novel carries on the distinct honesty found throughout rice’s work, which illustrates the author’s in depth understanding of anishinaabe thought, where truth and honesty are highly valued. therefore, rice’s ending lends to the authenticity of his voice, and without it the story would be left unbearably incomplete. overall, legacy is an important read for both indigenous and non-indigenous readers alike. for anishinaabe readers, it is a celebration of indigenous identity: a look at the resilience of our communities and the power of connecting to our traditional languages, homelands and cultures. for non-indigenous readers, rice allows a window into indigenous life that resists stereotypes by actively acknowledging the inescapable truths of colonialism. on the surface, rice gives us a story of tragic deaths in an individual anishinaabe family, but this work goes much deeper than that in examining the larger legacy of canada’s colonial history and the continued effects of it on our communities, broken only by reconnection to our truths as indigenous peoples. angela semple (ktunaxa), trent university transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 184 david groulx. from turtle island to gaza. athabasca university press, 2019. 70 pp. isbn: 9781771992626. https://www.aupress.ca/books/120284-from-turtle-island-to-gaza/ when i look at a map of the gaza, she, the land, resembles the body of a woman lying on her side, facing the mediterranean sea. her head has long ago been buried in the sand as if someone is trying to snuff out her memories of an open, borderless sky. writing this book review has caused me to search through my memories and photographs of my first visit to gaza in december 1992. the weather was unseasonably cold. most days, gaza’s 25-mile-long coastline moderates the temperatures, but today it’s bitter cold. i’d traveled 100 miles by bus from amman, jordan to gaza on the coast. in the uplands, snow blanketed the earth and was in danger of freezing the region’s fruit trees. leanne howe (on the right, in purple) walks with palestinian children on a neighborhood street in a refugee camp in gaza, 1992. https://www.aupress.ca/books/120284-from-turtle-island-to-gaza/ leanne howe review of from turtle island to gaza 185 in the picture above, i’m wearing two coats, a purple raincoat, two pairs of socks to keep my feet warm, and a wool cap covered with a palestinian keffiyeh. yet, many of the gaza children are wearing only a light jacket, no socks. i came to the region in 1992 on a middle east study tour two weeks before christmas. i loved everything about the trip to gaza except riding on the bus with american christians who would frequently break out into songs, such as “onward christian soldiers” and “blessed redeemer.” (at the time, i wrote in my journal, “i want to strangle them all especially the man in the yankees’ ballcap. these are the same people, cut from the same cloth, that build churches and highways over the sacred sights of native peoples in the united states.”) while on that tour, i didn’t know if i would ever return to the middle east region, but the next year, my husband, who had lived in lebanon and syria for nine years and was fluent in arabic, received a fulbright-hays scholarship. we moved to amman for a year in 1993-94. in 2011, i would receive a fulbright to jordan and live in amman for another year. in 2013, we returned again to the region. what i learned while on that first 1992 tour was that gaza has been held captive since 1967 by the israelis, but her history of abuse is much longer. her earliest settlements were at tell el sakan and tall al-ajjul, two bronze age sites. the philistines occupied gaza territories until she was captured by alexander the great in 332 bce. the history of gaza reads like a biblical account of begetting, one war begat another war. during the seventh century she, gaza, the land, was passed back and forth between the byzantine empire and the persians like a gang rape victim. gaza today is a vast refugee camp of nearly 800,000 people on the eastern coast of the mediterranean sea. she borders egypt on the southwest and israel on the east and north along a 51km border. it is through this lens of bordering colonizers, war and reprisals, and the broken bodies of men and bird wings that david groulx (ojibwe indian and french canadian) drew inspiration from in his collection of 54 poems, from turtle island to gaza. he wrote the book some years after meeting an unnamed palestinian man at a poetry reading in harborfront, toronto. “we both knew we shared that long execution – that distance, religion, education could not beak what we shared, said groulx in his introduction for from turtle island to gaza. some years later, he decided to write poems about gaza, but not exactly gaza; rather, the poems are about contested lands, the places indigenous people recognize, bordered, and meant for keeping native people out and keeping invading settlers in. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 186 groulx takes us on an embodied journey in his poems about ojibwe and palestinians, often comparing, and contrasting landscapes; yet he resists the impulse to imply these two places and their histories, native and palestinian, are the same. rather he braids his poems with the powerful imagery of oppression and mercy: i know not to cry while the rockets bluster and the snow gruff and deep. this fine white garment clothes the earth. (2.2) some of the poems are in the voice of an indifferent tour-guide. even as matter-of-fact as a real estate developer: this place was called ayn hawad now it is ein hod the settlers live there now painting pictures writing stories our lives are silent (5.2) “only in israel do they celebrate the building of a concentration camp, writes gideon levy of haareta, an israeli news organization. “only the skies of the ghetto are somehow still open, and that is in a limited fashion too. coming soon, the next devilish invention of the defense establishment: a dome of iron, a huge ceiling over the skies of gaza. the head of the ‘border and seamline’ administration is already working on it” (2021). i taught from turtle island to gaza in a graduate course this past year at the university of georgia, and i will teach it again. the class talked about groulx’s poems in the collection as wreaking havoc on our ability to speak casually about gaza and gazans. i am grateful to groulx for reminding me that we must re-train our eyes to see the continual dirty work of removal and erasure by the colonizers amongst us. leanne howe review of from turtle island to gaza 187 groulx leaves us with an enduring lesson: where should we go? you and i where can we go? we. refuge refuge refuse from the occupied (6.2) david groulx is the author of nine poetry books and his work appears in over 160 publications in 16 countries. after receiving his ba from lakehead university, where he won the munro poetry prize, he studied creative writing at the en’owkin centre in penticton, b.c., where he won the simon j lucas jr. memorial award for poetry. his book from turtle island to gaza is not a celebration but an elegy. i highly recommend it, but not as bedtime reading. leanne howe, university of georgia work cited levy, gideon. “opinion | two million people are imprisoned for 15 years. the new barrier will remain there forever.” haaretz, haaretz daily newspaper ltd., 9 dec. 2021, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-congratulations-thegaza-ghetto-now-has-a-fence-around-it1.10451441?fbclid=iwar1itigheiw0kcnysqkkq6u_1wnfaad8psqaf0dbbp6q -sjahl69l5e6u7a. microsoft word 1076-article text-6343-2-11-20221220.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 27 a bridge through time: epistolary form and nonlinear temporality in stephen graham jones’s ledfeather zachary perdieu in an essay on stephen graham jones’s third novel, the bird is gone (2003), birgit däwes explores the colonial politics of linear time. däwes argues that the bird is gone “destabilizes linear hierarchies of chronology and thus radically challenges previously established discourses” through an “intricately transversal structure” wherein “events and characters are interrelated across centuries through unique narrative and symbolic techniques—back to columbus and beyond, to quetzalcoatl and the migration from siberia, and forward into an unspecified future” (113). for däwes, the resulting “densely woven web of nonlinear semantic and structural crossings” of the bird is gone “powerfully defeats western historiography, poses creative alternatives to linear time, and thus effectively engages indigenous systems of knowledge” (113). six novels later, jones continued this project of structural experimentation in an exploration of nonlinear temporality in his novel ledfeather (2008), turning this time to the epistolary to create a hybridized literary form capable of representing nonlinear, spatialized time. the epistolary “has a broader function than many other modes” in that its ““very looseness” permits integration with other literary forms (kauffman xiv). this inherent looseness offers a logical entry point as jones experiments with literary zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 28 hybridizations to contend with multiple distinct but interconnected narratives in a single text. jones’s initial introduction of the epistolary in ledfeather establishes two seemingly independent narratives; the epistolic narrative of francis dalimpere, indian agent for a montana blackfeet reservation in the 1880s; and the non-epistolic narrative of doby saxon, a blackfeet teenager living on the same reservation one hundred years later. as the novel progresses, however, the barriers between the two primary narrative timelines of saxon and dalimpere began to wane. jones’s subversion and deconstruction of the epistolary form mirrors the collapse of the novel’s two independent narratives as they conflate to become a single, interactive, and cohabitated temporality inhabiting the same textual space, where each narratives’ respective form slowly collapses, as well, until the dalimpere sections become less epistolic, and saxon’s sections become increasingly more so. the result of this hybridization is the introduction of a new atemporal textual paradigm capable of replicating an indigenous perspective where space is the vessel of memory, history, and narrative more so than time. in this new atemporal textual space, historical and ancestral trauma is addressed and exorcized by jones’s characters through the interaction between past, present, and future. jones uses the epistolary form to present two distinct narratives containing separate temporal moments coexisting within the same textual structure simultaneously, undermining western transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 29 concepts of linear time and giving space primacy over time in mapping history, memory, and narrative. jones then demonstrates the authoritative nature of indigenous systems of knowledge by deconstructing his epistolary narrative to chart the assimilation of its colonial perspective into that of an indigenous one. this process of hybridization, deconstruction, and assimilation contributes to a return to what mark rifkin has called “indigenous temporal sovereignty” (2) by creating a textual paradigm capable of replicating indigenous temporal and spatial ways of knowing. the divide between western and indigenous ways of knowing, especially as it pertains to concepts of time and space, has long been discussed by indigenous studies scholars, with many calling for new forms or approaches aimed at reclaiming indigenous ontological sovereignty. in his highly influential work god is red (1994), vine deloria jr. argues that “american indians hold their lands—places—as having the highest possible meaning,” while euro-americans “review the movement of their ancestors across the continent as a steady progression of basically good events and experiences, thereby placing history—time—in the best possible light” (62). the separation results in a foundational divide between conceptions of history between the two groups, wherein “statements of either group do not make much sense when transferred from one context to the other” (deloria 63). in light of this divide, däwes summarizes how “deloria calls for a reconceptualization of history in spatial terms, zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 30 whereby, ‘the story itself is important, not its precise chronological location’” (däwes 115). this return to space and place-based models of time and history has become a central tenant of conceptualizing indigenous futures. daniel r. wildcat notes how the very foundations of many “different tribal identities” are “fundamentally spatial in character” and considers an indigenized future where “humanity has reached a ‘time’ when spatial or place-centered considerations are emerging around the world” (431, 438). responding directly to deloria’s work, glen coulthard argues that such an understanding of “land and/or place… anchors many indigenous peoples’ critique of colonial relations of force and command, but also our visions of what a truly postcolonial relationship of peaceful co-existence might look like” (80). as i argue below, this conflict between western and indigenous temporal understanding, and the disenfranchising impact it has on the depicted blackfeet people, plays a central role in ledfeather. in his influential work blackfeet physics (1994), f. david peat locates concepts of spatialized and nonlinear time directly to the blackfeet culture which jones takes as his subject in ledfeather. regarding western conceptions of temporality, peat writes, “time… was an ever-flowing stream that moved, without resistance or change of pace, from the past into the future… bodies are immersed in the constantly flowing river of time and nothing that we can do can alter the speed or direction of this flow. time is linear and totally independent of us transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 31 and of all the workings of the cosmos” (199). conversely, peat argues that the blackfeet conception of temporality sees time as “animate,” “alive,” so that “all of time can be accessed from within the present moment” (199). in the modern history of the united states, however, the two perspectives have hardly been on equal footing, as mark rifkin explains: u.s. settler colonialism produces its own temporal formation, with its own particular ways of apprehending time, and the state’s policies, mappings, and imperatives generate the frame of reference (such as plotting events with respect to their place in national history and seeing change in terms of forms of american progress). more than just affecting ideologies of discourses of time, that network of institutionalized authority over ‘domestic’ territory also powerfully shapes the possibilities for interaction, development, and regularities within it (rifkin 2). the result of this institutionalized authority over both time and space is the systemic denial of what rifkin calls “indigenous temporal sovereignty” (rifkin 2). jones’s hybridized novel allows for an obvious textual divide between these opposing worldviews. the letters from an indian agent within ledfeather demonstrate an attempt to achieve such a dynamic of institutionalized authority over indigenous temporality, wherein the white indian agent works to catalog events, indigenous spaces, and zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 32 indigenous figures within a u.s. settler colonialist temporal formation. as i will demonstrate, however, jones deconstructs this portion of the narrative and slowly assimilates the indian agent into an indigenous spatial and nonlinear temporal worldview, simultaneously dissolving the assumed u.s. settler colonialism temporal formation and replacing it with an indigenous one. this process works toward indigenous temporal sovereignty and acts as a response to calls for spatialized conceptions of history and memory from the likes of deloria, wildcat, and coulthard. ledfeather is a hybrid text, where the epistolary narrative is contained and framed by a more traditional prose narrative. when reading a hybrid text like ledfeather, the reader is presented with two narrative timelines; the timeline of the main narrative where the reader of the correspondence physically exists, and the timeline encapsulated within the text of the letter. such is the case in ledfeather, which opens with six sections set in the late 20th century on a blackfeet reservation in montana, where saxon, the reader of the letters, is the central figure. dalimpere’s letters physically exist within the broader narrative of the novel as objects that saxon can carry around from place to place to be visited as “islands of the day before,” a phrase used by russell west-pavlov to discuss postmodern time but is useful in informing jones’s depiction of indigenous temporality (137).1 the sixth section ends with saxon tossing the stack of dalimpere’s letters, which he had retrieved from a transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 33 museum, at a passing car, before gathering them back up and beginning to read them. the section ends abruptly mid-sentence, and the reader is transported to around one hundred years previous, on the same blackfeet reservation, where the last sentence of the previous section, “but he was stuck right at the first of it, sounding it out, just saying,” is completed with the opening word of the first epistle—“claire” (46-47). upon the letters’ appearance in saxon’s narrative, a second narrative timeline is introduced. this arrangement creates a disruption of linear temporality, as the main narrative is suddenly broken, and the reader is presented with a new narrative “present”– one that has theoretically already passed within the timeline of the main narrative, but which is conveyed in the present tense, as the writer of the letter was “inhabiting the present” at the time of writing (visconti 299). janet altman similarly notes how the “letter writer is anchored in a present time” which is encapsulated and contained within the epistle (117). the represented “i” narrator of the correspondence and the reader of that letter do not, therefore, exist at the same moment, in the same “present,” but both “presents” exist simultaneously, as melanie micir explains: “the temporal divide present in the initial composition and reception of the letters—that is, the separation of the time of writing from the time of reading—expands into the necessary duality of time” (micir 44). in the space of one shared sentence, saxon is zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 34 sitting on the side of the road in the 1980s reading the letters “in his stupid way, where his lips followed what was on the page” (46) and dalimpere is sitting in his federal quarters writing to his wife, claire, on october 15. 1884. the duality of time expands across the landscape, as the present moment of the two narratives layer atop one another in ledfeather’s montana. the permanence of the represented moment in the letters permits the “present” of each correspondence to be revisited across time and space, as “the letters, deposited in one generation, are available to be interpreted… by subsequent generations” (micir 44). this is precisely what jones does in ledfeather, opening with a narrative in the 1980s before disrupting it by depositing “islands of the day before” in the form of dalimpere’s letters. the sudden break in saxon’s narrative initiates a run of eleven consecutive epistolary chapters where, presumably, saxon remains in his own time reading the letters. each of these two primary narratives—that of saxon’s and dalimpere’s—then unfold in fits and starts throughout the novel, each simultaneously possessing their own “present,” despite happening one-hundred years apart, before subsequently collapsing into a shared textual space. inherent in the epistolary form where both epistles and narrative prose exists, therefore, is a representation of a nonlinear timeline that jumps back and forth chronologically, presenting the reader with a frequently changing “present.” after taking advantage of the inherent transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 35 nonlinearity of hybrid epistolary texts, jones then turns to subverting standards of the epistolary form to further complicate concepts of linear temporality and establish his dual narratives as more beholden to the physical space of the reservation than to chronology. disrupting the epistolary pact when the earliest letters enter into the narrative of ledfeather, jones establishes many standards of the epistolary form only to subsequently subvert them. the first letter retains all the basic structural components of the epistolary form, beginning with an addressee, a first-person address of that addressee, and ending with a signature and full date—“october the 15th of 1884” (jones 48). dalimpere’s first correspondence to his wife, claire, who remains back east, acts as the initiator of what altman calls an “epistolary pact,” in which the writer of the letter sends out a “call for response from a specific reader within the correspondent’s world” (altman 89). the addressee of this first letter paired with dalimpere’s signature that closes it establishes an “i-you relationship,” through which the “’i’ becomes defined relative to the you whom he addresses” (altman 118). jones then strengthens this epistolary pact by turning to one of the oldest and most common genres of the literary epistle—the love letter. in her highly influential study on the epistolary form, altman notes that the “letter form seems tailored for the love plot, with its emphasis on separation and zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 36 reunion” (14). altman highlights this aspect of the form by analyzing several of the letters in ovid’s epistulae heroidum, a collection framed as correspondences between mythological female figures like dido, briseis, and penelope, and their respective absent lovers. many of the letters in epistulae heroidum “repeatedly bemoan the distance separating [the mythological women] from their lovers” (altman 13). in an analysis that could be of the letters in jones’s novel, altman continues to break down the archetype of the love letter: the lover who takes up his pen to write his loved one is conscious of the interrelation of presence and absence and the way in which his very medium of communication reflects both the absence and presence of his addressee. at one moment he may proclaim the power of the letter to make the distant addressee present and at the next lament the absence of the loved one and the letter's powerlessness to replace the spoken word or physical presence (altman 14). dalimpere regularly embodies these yearnings, writing laments like “the absence of you, the resulting incompleteness of myself. i should never have left your embrace. i should never have left you alone” and “i was wrong to ever leave you. i feel it more every day, every night” (jones 52 and 77). the romantic lean of dalimpere’s early letters solidifies the call for an epistolary pact which would traditionally serve the role of closing the spatial divide for the members of the pact. altman explains how the letter transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 37 “function[s] as a connector between two distant points, as a bridge between sender and receiver,” which allows “the epistolary author […] to emphasize either the distance or the bridge” (13). the “distance” altman introduces here is a spatial one—that between the physical location of the sender and that of the receiver—as well as a metaphorical one, where the letter “is seen as facilitating a union” bringing two individuals together (altman 14). in his first letter, dalimpere makes clear the bridge he hopes to establish adheres to similar concerns of spatial and romantic reunion, when he imagines the space between he and claire collapsing, writing of a day dream where his wife arrives at the reservation on a nonexistent trainline, before flipping the fantasy to consider his own return to the east (46-47). despite these persistent romantic calls, however, jones disrupts the epistolary pact by denying the intended response, repurposing dalimpere’s letters as a temporal bridge instead of a spatial one. dalimpere repeatedly expresses doubt that yellow tail, a blackfeet man who dalimpere regularly interacts with and an ancestor of saxon’s, is carrying out the delivery of these correspondences. the first mention of this arrangement in dalimpere’s letters is when the indian agent notes that a blackfeet man who is watching him “even as [dalimpere] writes… knows something” (jones 48). this, dalimpere explains, “is the man i’ve been reduced to entrusting to deliver my correspondence to the stage” (48). dalimpere’s trepidation goes beyond his own zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 38 letters being intercepted, however, as he speculates in the second intended correspondence that he is “dead twice over,” which “would explain why none of [claire’s] letters have found [him]” (jones 50). this revelation of no incoming letters implies another fear of dalimpere’s—even if claire is not receiving his letters, why would she not send her own? in a lament that encapsulates the duality of presence and absence in dalimpere’s letters, he writes, “claire. clair. clare. if i spell your name in every way will that force the world to give you to me, or will it make it seem i’m a stranger who doesn’t deserve you, an admirer who has never received a missive from you in all this time and thus knows not the letters that make you up?” (77). the disruption of the epistolary pact repositions dalimpere’s letters as what altman calls an “emblem of separation” (altman 15), the opposite of the bridge dalimpere hopes them to be. the space between the two distant points grows, and the union between man and wife is called into question by the disruption of the call and response. this disruption figures prominently into the narrative, as dalimpere goes so far as confronting other readers in his letters, writing “yellow tail, if you can follow my hand, know that in his indirect, shuffling ways, marsh told me about your wife, whom you refused to name” (52). the fractured epistolary pact is complicated further through the dramatic irony of the reader understanding that the letters likely were never delivered, due to their transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 39 presence in the museum where saxon found them decades after dalimpere’s death, making saxon, not claire, the eventual receiver of the correspondence. the dramatic irony of the undelivered letters is eventually alleviated in the sixth letter, when dalimpere notes that “it’s not as if i’m even addressing [the letters] anymore” (66), confirming for both dalimpere and the reader that the letters now serve as more of a journal for dalimpere—a call to his absent lover which will never receive a response. the letters, like dalimpere himself, remain isolated in the space of the reservation. jones thus subverts the traditional function of the epistle “as a connector between two distant points” across space, and instead facilitates a union between two individuals inhabiting the same space, one hundred years apart from one another. even dalimpere eventually sees the failure of his epistolary pact and the new function it will serve, as a sort of historical document, a bridge between his moment in time and the future, writing “i leave you this only as a record… i keep these missives to you rolled tightly in a burlap sack in the hollow post of the frame to my bed” (jones 72). denying this call and response highlights how the memory and historical narrative embedded in the letters are dependent on the land, the space which the memory inhabits, just as the blackfeet “anchor the story to the land” in the novel (jones 109). given the option “to emphasize either the distance or the bridge” (altman 13) of the epistolary form, jones subverts both, having the letters remain in stasis as zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 40 they slowly march across a time bridge to a future generation. when saxon accesses the letters, he unleashes the present-of-the-past onto the landscape and a layering effect takes place. the deployable nature of the epistolary “present” and the duality of time created as a result provides jones with raw material to create a new textual structure where the memories of many moments simultaneously cohabit the same textual space. the montana landscape that acts as ledfeather’s setting holds the memories of both dalimpere and saxon’s narratives, so as the book moves forward, a single space is populated by the ghostly memories of both characters. ghosts of the past and future when the narrative returns to saxon, a similar transition between sections occurs, with dalimpere’s narrative ending mid-sentence, “so that all i can see is,” and saxon’s section completing the thought with, “his back” (79, 80). this time, however, the abrupt change acts as more than a simple disruption of narrative, but as a fusion or overlaying of the two. the object that links the sections, the “back,” exists physically in each of the character’s narratives. mikhail bakhtin defines his theory of the literary chronotope as the instances where “spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole” (bakhtin 84). in the following sections, a specific plot of what was historically blackfeet land but is now divided between reservation and federal lands, acts as a shared literary chronotope for saxon and dalimpere, where transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 41 their individual memories and experiences, as well as other memories contained by the land, all collapse in the same temporal space. in the next several sections, both saxon and dalimpere are traversing the same landscape during a snowstorm, one-hundred years apart. saxon wanders the landscape through various experiences of his life; following his father, earl yellowtail, into the national park on the day of his father’s death, or running out of the casino the day his mother attacks the pit boss, who was trying to cut saxon off from gambling. other moments are partially his memories and partially belong to other eras tied to the land, such as when saxon steps out of the museum after taking dalimpere’s letters and the land he walks into contains the “windswept grass” of dalimpere’s time and the “blacktop” of saxon’s own (jones 91). saxon’s movement through this space begins the process of creating what györgy lukács’s calls a literary cartograph, a theory of literary spatial mapping closely related to bakhtin’s chronotope. lukács’s concept of literary cartography considers the writer as mapmaker, and the character of a narrative as “surveyor of spaces” (tally jr. 48). as the character moves through the textual space, they “sew these spaces into a new unity” and “ultimately ‘invent’ the world so surveyed and stitched together” to create something much like a narrative map—a textual structure which orients the reader and makes sense of the textual world (tally, zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 42 jr. 48). robert tally, jr. notes the growing primacy of space to narrative driven by this process: narrative… would seem more closely tied to time, as narrative by definition retains a powerfully temporal aspect. that is, narrative entails the temporality of the plot—a beginning, a middle, and end… whereas, arguably, a short poem maintains a ‘spatial form’ in which all parts are present at once (see frank 1991: 18). however… narrative is also spatial, and the beginnings middles and ends of a given story may refer as much to sites or locations in a particular spatial organization as to moments in time in a temporal one (tally, jr. 49). both saxon and dalimpere create such a literary cartograph in their movement through their shared space. at issue for jones, however, is the centrality of space in containing a multiplicity of blackfeet narratives, histories, and memories. a literary cartograph charting a single narrative moment would not suffice to replicate blackfeet temporality. to return to deloria jr., space holds primacy over a narrative’s “precise chronological location” (deloria 112). peat notes how similar, layered mapping functions in blackfeet culture, where a “map in the head” is created which acts as an “expression of the relationship of the land to the people” (peat 86). this internalized map “transcends any mere geographical representation, for in it are enfolded the songs, ceremonies, transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 43 histories of a people” and contains “cycles of time that, while stretching back into the distant past, can be renewed in the immediate present” (peat 86). to replicate this atemporal space, jones depicts a literary cartograph where several moments, past, present, and future, all exist within the same literary chronotope, made possible by the layering of disparate “present” moments in ledfeather. the surveys of space carried out by saxon and dalimpere are not separate—they are not a map laid over a map—instead, they are like the charting of two journeys on the same shared map. times collapse on space, on land to create a textual space that is “animate, processual, and part of a shared consciousness” (baudemann 172). these two journeys are the pertinent ones to this particular literary cartograph, but they are crisscrossed with eons of similar tales on this land by the blackfeet. in what is perhaps an attempt to create a “‘spatial form’ in which all parts are present at once” (tally, jr. 49) like that of a poem, jones signifies the duality of time collapsing on the same space simultaneously by blurring the lines between his two forms and structurally replicating the presence of two narratives. the transition between dalimpere’s letters and saxon’s narrative (79-80) which uses “his back” as a hinge, holds some structural resemblance to the epistolary mode; the two words that cross over, “his back,” open saxon’s section above the rest of the text in the way the zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 44 addressee does of dalimpere’s letters. saxon then begins to blur his memories with dalimpere’s experience when he mistakenly laments the lost “horses” instead of the lost snowmobiles (81). the next time saxon accidentally thinks “horses” instead of “snowmobiles,” the word is crossed out on the page, “to the horses snowmobiles” (81), creating a structural representation of the presence of both saxon and dalimpere in a single textual space, despite the temporal divide. these crossed out phrases and replacements, a technique termed sous rature by martin heidegger, create what baudemann calls “time-slipping” within a given section, instead of just between sections (166).2 other narrative slips and fixes continue to appear throughout saxon’s experience, such as “head lanterns” being crossed out and replaced by “headlights” (91), extensively connecting both narratives in a shared textual space. leah pennywark explains these moments as, “doby and francis’s shared consciousness… trying to hold together two different times and two different identities that cannot exist together and yet do” (104). jones’s hybridized textual structure makes this seemingly impossible duality possible by layering various moments of time atop the land which anchors it. we see the density of these various moments in time collapsing on jones’s literary cartograph when the narrative again turns to dalimpere, whose next section, beginning on page 93, discards the epistolary form to mirror the form of saxon’s section. the section opens like saxon’s previous one, with a single word acting as a transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 45 hinge to the preceding section’s final sentence. while the word that opens the section is “claire” it is not in the traditional addressee form, where the name is followed by a comma. instead, it is finished with a period akin to the “his back” which frames saxon’s section starting on page 80. furthermore, the “i-you” relationship of the earlier letters, which is essential to the epistolary form, is absent. the fracturing of the epistolary pact limits dalimpere’s ability to define his “i” by claire’s “you.” as a result of this fracturing, the “i-you” relationship falls away in this section and dalimpere is dislodged from the “pivotal present tense” of the epistolary form, and instead navigates the textual space of this section as saxon does—an evolution of epistolary narrative time which i will cover in greater depth shortly. the merging of both form and narrative acts as a spatial form where two moments are present at once and past, present, and future subsequently interact independent of linear chronology. much has been said by critics about the past’s impact on the present in ledfeather. frances washburn notes how “references to the land… in ledfeather… hold the trauma of the past and bring it, literally, into the present” (washburn 66), and pennywark writes that “the seemingly dead past haunts the living” (89) in the novel. but the future plays an equally haunting role in ledfeather. when the narrative returns to dalimpere, he is lost in his own blizzard of the 1880s, looking for yellow tail, who had been leading time to the dugout home of catches weasel where a young piegan zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 46 boy named lead feather is suffering from a grievous, self-inflicted injury. as he wanders through the wilderness, dalimpere stumbles upon several ghostly forms from the future; he enters browning, the town on the reservation from saxon’s time, where he encounters earl yellowtail, descendent of the yellow tail he had been following through the storm moments before. as he walks through the future town, dalimpere leans against a building only for it to “waver and dissipate, the storm blowing through as if it wasn’t there at all” like an apparition (107). shortly after, dalimpere crawls into what he believes to be catches weasel’s dugout but is in fact the concrete shelter of saxon’s time (jones 108), where he again meets another figure from the future— saxon’s cousin, jamie, who overdoses in that same structure decades after dalimpere’s life. dalimpere imagines this place as an “encampment of the dead” (104) and “ghost ridge,” but they are not ghosts of the past which haunt the indian agent; while he is certainly traumatized by his actions in the past of denying the blackfeet their federal rations as a form of punishment, dalimpere’s true ghosts are the blackfeet in the future who will continue to pay for those actions. in jones’s atemporal literary cartograph, just as the past does to the future, the future creeps back into the past, into dalimpere’s present, creating what might be called islands of the day after, and they are populated by ghosts of the future dead. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 47 the literary cartograph that jones creates in ledfeather is a space where the past, present, and future all interact with one another. the result is a new textual space which answers deloria’s call for a spatialized history, where land is privileged over chronology as a vessel for memory. completing his definition of the literary chronotope, bakhtin explains how “time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history” (84). peat cites a similar metaphor specific to blackfoot conception of the landscape, writing “the blackfoot say that to walk on the land is to walk on your own flesh” where “the memory of this landscape transcends anything we have in the west, for its trees, rocks, animals, and plants are also imbued with energies, powers, and spirits” (peat 86). in jones’s literary chronotope, the blackfeet landscape has the flesh of many moments layered atop it. if “the chronotope is the place where the knots of the narrative are tied and untied” (bakhtin 250), then jones brings the knots of all moments from centuries of blackfeet to bear in one space in his new hybrid textual space. this fusion and hybridity of forms and narrative is mirrored by the same process in dalimpere and saxon, as they come together to share a consciousness. jones demonstrates the continuation of this assimilation of dalimpere through the continued subversion and deconstructions of dalimpere’s epistolic narrative. zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 48 escaping the pivotal present jones’s subversion of the epistolary form reorders the power structure between dalimpere and the blackfeet people. dalimpere is traumatized by his guilt grounded in his actions that led to the starvation winter where 600 piegan died.3 the event acts as a sort of apparition, just on the margins of dalimpere’s letters throughout. in moments when jones is closest to confronting the trauma, the epistolic standards are most tenuous. jones’s continued subversion and evolution of the epistolary form positions dalimpere’s perspective as a trauma narrative as that perspective copes with the trauma of its colonizing decisions. in the process of this coping, dalimpere is indoctrinated into a spatially minded understanding of time which dislodges him from his linear temporal reality and disrupts the epistolary form in which he documents this assimilation. by presenting the tragic events of the historical starvation winter through the eyes of the perpetrator of these events instead of the victim, jones turns to what rené girard calls the “perspective of the persecutors” (6). girard explains how persecutors of massacres “are convinced that their violence is justified; they consider themselves judges, and therefore they must have guilty victims” (6). dalimpere’s actions take place in a broader scheme of persecution, as both his supervisor, m. sheffield, and his predecessor, andrew collins iii, play a pivotal role in crafting the transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 49 circumstances of dalimpere’s decision-making. it is later revealed that collins is actually responsible for the inciting incident, the theft of a blanket, for which dalimpere decides to punish the blackfeet, contributing to dalimpere’s realization that he has persecuted a guiltless victim for the transgressions of the network of persecution. in spite of his subsequent guilt, dalimpere still firmly places himself in the role of the self-righteous persecutor when he finally gets around to confirming the extent of his own role in the starvation winter, as he callously recounts, “i had no choice. it was about discipline. if a child misbehaves, should he not be chastised?” (jones 174).4 jones opens his letters with the perspective of the persecutor before depicting the “traumatic disintegration” of dalimpere’s identity, which causes his “consciousness to become increasingly hybrid” (pennywark 101) reversing the process of assimilation of blackfeet to western values and systems of knowledge. jones repositions the indian agent as a traumatized voyager in a strange land, and through his immersion in the land, he is slowly indoctrinated into the blackfeet systems of knowing, so that his “very self, his identity as both a white man and a representative of the colonizing power, is gradually erased with each successive letter he writes for claire” (baudemann 154). in dalimpere’s earliest letters, he exists firmly within the linear temporal understanding of western thought. as dalimpere realizes his isolation, however, completed by the fracturing of the epistolary pact, his grasp on linear time slips. zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 50 sequentially, the first six letters are dated, “october the 15th of 1884,” (48) “1884” (53), “21 d’octobre” (55), letter four has no date (60), “10 novembre” (63), and “novembre 1884” (66). dalimpere also demonstrates a grasp of linear chronology in the early epistles through inter-letter references and comments like “it’s been three days since i last wrote you” (49), a claim which opens the second letter. in the same letter where dalimpere writes that he is no longer addressing the letters, thus confirming to himself that the epistolary pact had been broken, the indian agent reflects on the land’s ability to reshape an individual: “perhaps… personality or cultural attitude is in fact defined by the land one is immersed in” (jones 66). once dalimpere realizes he is isolated on the blackfeet land, his grasp of linearity slips, a fact evident in the following letter, which dalimpere dates, “1883, 1884, 188-“ (67), demonstrating his inability to grasp on to a set date. dalimpere begins to accept how his immersion in the landscape slowly redefines his system of knowledge, writing that he “would rather be indian than indian agent” and he slowly becomes “a product of” the land, and his path to assimilation begins (jones 77, 106). as dalimpere attempts to assuage his guilt, he dedicates himself “completely in the survival of one indian boy, this lead feather” (jones 152), who dalimpere had witnessed attempting suicide instead of suffering the reality of the harsh winter brought on by the botched decisions of the indian agent. but this is not an entirely transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 51 selfless venture as “francis’s attempt to save a piegan boy… is an attempt to rewrite his own history” (pennywark 96). dalimpere’s immersion in the land has a profound impact on his outlook, however, and as he navigates the blackfeet landscape, he is not only sharing a textual space with a saxon from one hundred years in the future, but a consciousness with him, as well. this potentiality, seen in the mirroring between the two characters’ trek through snow, the strike-throughs which replicate both saxon and dalimpere’s consciousnesses simultaneously as previously discussed, and through dalimpere possessing “memories not [his] own” (147) when he is traversing the future town of browning, is later revealed to be a product of an agreement between dalimpere and yellow tail (155). dalimpere frames this agreement as penance, purgatory in the “pagan landscape” (155): it was his punishment, to become blackfeet, to be piegan. to live on the reservation he’d created, the situation he was already leaving behind. to replace his own life with an indian one, and thus know firsthand the end result of his policies. an end result generations away from last winter, just so he could see the scope of what he’d done, that it still had traceable effect. so that, in a sense, he could be inflicting it upon himself (117). dalimpere’s immersion in the landscape and guilt from his “role as a tool of colonial oppression” that “leads to his psychic destruction” (pennywark 100) set the stage for zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 52 the indian agent’s assimilation, but his new identity is fully initiated when he makes this deal with yellow tail. the letters become a ceremony, through which dalimpere dislodges himself from western linear chronology and begins to understand history’s dependency on the land and forcing him to address his impact on the blackfeet. this process acts as the “sacred space of the ceremony” where “one can enter the flux of time and move within its vastness” which peat argues is a “fundamental component of blackfeet temporality” (199). to replicate this process in his hybrid literary form, jones depicts dalimpere finally breaking free completely from the linear restraints of the epistolary form. altman explains that the letter writer writes in a “pivotal and impossible present tense” which acts as “a pivot for past and future events” (117-118). this results in the letter writer being “highly conscious of writing in a specific present against which past and future are plotted” (altman 122). in his early letters, dalimpere is firmly grounded in this present tense, referring to the past but not engaging with it.5 in the earliest letters, the past operates just as altman explains it does in the pivotal present tense— as “interloper, intervening to shed light on the present” (altman 123). as dalimpere assimilates into an indigenous nonlinear and spatially based system of knowledge, his epistles break from the chronological restraints of the “pivotal present” wherein the past and future can only be addressed from a fixed “present,” mirroring the transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 53 reconfiguring of his understanding of temporality. this is first seen at length in the previously discussed section, where dalimpere moves through the wilderness in an active present tense (93). while the epistolic standards return in some subsequent letters, the deterioration of the pivotal present continues in dalimpere’s final letters. this deterioration of epistolic standards mirrors dalimpere’s own willingness to accept his pivotal role in the starvation winter. when he is most distant from understanding his own guilt, he presents the events firmly grounded in the “i-you” relationship, in the passive, writing “by my rude count… the piegan numbers were nearly halved last winter, after they’d already been halved by pox” (jones 66). as he approaches the reality of his role, however, the final vestiges of the epistolary form which had represented his attempt to catalog his experience in blackfeet land in the temporal and historical framework of u.s. settler colonialism deteriorates, representing his final conversion to an indigenous temporal model. when dalimpere finally gets to his confession, he opens the letter maintaining the “i-you” relationship: “i would need no pen, claire” (159). he also starts this letter existing firming in the pivotal present tense, referring to past and future moments in relation to his letter-writing present: “when i woke it took me long minutes to place myself in this dug out” (159). when dalimpere finally decides “it is time” (159) to provide his ceremonial confession, however, the “i” narrator recedes to give way to the zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 54 third-person “indian agent” and the absolute nature of the epistolary present tense similarly gives way to what instead resembles a memoir, where the reader “is transported to the world of a distant past, experiencing as his new present scenes from the life of the actor in the story rather than experiencing the present of the narrator telling the story” (altman 122-123). this turn is evident immediately as dalimpere works through his confession: “the indian agent for the blackfeet was mucking the ration meat out of the tack house when the post came from his superior” (jones 165). when the “i” narrator appears in this altered narrative, it initially serves a separate role than the “i” narrator of a letter. as altman explains regarding memoir, “even when the voice of the narrator interrupts momentarily our involvement in a past-become-present, the present of the memoir narrator intervenes only to shed light on the past that interests us, to add the illuminating perspective of now's reflections to the obscurity of then actions” (123). we see precisely such an intervention by the “i” narrator in dalimpere’s confession, when he returns briefly to lament again the fractured epistolary pact which shaped the decisions of the “indian agent” from which he has removed himself: “but allow me if you will how alone with myself i was… i longed for you, or, in lieu of you, just someone to remind me i was alive” (jones 163). by returning to a memoir-like past-become-present, the letters themselves become a hybridized text, where dalimpere can step lightly back and forth between his traumatic past and his transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 55 epistle present. this narrative movement mirrors his interaction across time he experienced in his trek across the snow, where the past and the future were experiential—pasts-and-futures-become-present. the disintegration of the “i” figure and the final liberation from the confines of the epistolary present are completed in dalimpere’s final letter. the “i” narrator makes no appearance in this final letter, and the temporal relationship between letter writer and third-person subject makes it impossible for them to co-exist. despite the presence of a clear addressee “claire –“ (181), and signatory, “francis dalimpere” (186), none of the “i-you” language which defines the epistolary form is present. the writer of the letter describes events that could only happen in a future separate from the pivotal present of dalimpere-as-letter-writer, as the final letter describes how dalimpere hands the very epistle which the scene is dictated in over to yellow tail before he “straightened himself atop the horse… and then this indian agent man rode away from his first federal posting, and was never seen again” (186). in these final letters, the necessary pivotal-present of the epistolary form “from which all else radiates” (altman 122) is gone, and the letter writer writes of past and future moments in a more traditional narrative prose, living them instead of addressing them from a pivotal-present. this final deconstruction of the epistolary mode demonstrates dalimpere’s assimilation into a blackfeet system of knowing where zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 56 he is liberated from the chronological temporal standards of the form so he can navigate both a past and future to address and exorcize his trauma. jones’s ledfeather offers a unique and evolutionary depiction of indigenous conceptions of space and time. evidenced by däwes’s work on the bird is gone, this is a project that jones has revisited throughout his career, but it is also a project many other indigenous writers have engaged with, as well. in an essay on leslie marmon silko’s ceremony (1977) and craig womack’s drowning in fire (2001), joseph bauerkemper argues how “nonlinear characteristics… are crucial to their narrations of indigenous nationhood” (28). laura maria de vos examines how cherie dimaline’s the marrow thieves (2017) depicts spiralic temporality, which “refers to an indigenous experience of time that is informed by a people’s particular relationships to the seasonal cycles on their lands, and which acknowledges the present generations’ responsibilities to the ancestors and those not yet born (2). these novels and many others work to reclaim indigenous temporal sovereignty by introducing nonlinear and/or spatialized histories through the simple and radical act of depicting various indigenous ways of knowing. they respond to calls by deloria and wildcat for spatialized and indigenized futures. jones’s ledfeather offers a unique contribution to this facet of indigenous literature by hybridizing two traditionally western literary forms to create a new atemporal textual structure, allowing him to both depict a nonlinear transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 57 and spatialized view of history and reverse the process of assimilation into a new temporal formation. ledfeather ends with saxon symbolically resolving the long disrupted epistolary pact by delivering dalimpere’s letters to a girl named “clairvoyant,” as saxon finally abandons his suicidal intentions he has fostered most of the book. the letters filled in much of saxon’s history for him, but in the final scene, he, too, adds to the long historical narrative by symbolically completing the delivery of the letters and contributing to the myth of a man surviving inside of a dead elk during a snowstorm—a story which figures prominently in saxon and dalimpere’s shared history. the letters thus become more than just an extant historical document—they are themselves a new hybridized textual form which helps saxon understand and cope with his own trauma, allowing him to continue on to that final temporal frontier which had not yet been traversed in the novel—his own future. by ending with the hopeful move toward a modern blackfeet individual’s future, ledfeather speaks to an indigenized world where indigenous ontological and temporal sovereignty is again possible and a process of healing and renewal can take place. notes 1 ledfeather, like many other indigenous novels, simultaneously “fits within many of the traditional tenets of postmodern literature and native american renaissance” (gaudet 30). zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 58 2 baudemann offers “spivak’s translation of derrida’s adaption of heidegger’s term” of sous rature as “under erasure.” see baudemann’s essay for more on jones’s use of sous rature as a means of narrative and historical erasure. 3 jones based this on historical events where hundreds of blackfeet died during the winter of 1883-1884 due to mismanagement of federal supplies by federal employees. see pennywark (p. 90). 4 pennywark importantly notes that, historically, the supplies francis was withholding were “neither rations nor gifts but payment for a piece of land the blackfeet sold the federal government in 1865 in exchange for $50,000 worth of goods annually for twenty years (wise 68)” (pennywark 92). 5 jones compares this quality of the epistolary form to sándor márai’s novel embers: “it’s just about two old dues at a remote estate, just sitting by a fire and talking about things that happened fifty-eight or sixty years ago. and nothing happens. they’re just talking about old stuff from forever ago, trying to figure out the past” (stratton and jones 28). works cited altman, janet. epistolary: approaches to form. ohio state up, 1982. print. bakhtin, mikhail, the dialogic imaginations: four essays. edited and translated by caryl emerson and michael holquist, austin tx, texas up. print. baudemann, kristina. “characters sous rature: death by writing and shadow survivance in stephen graham jones’s ledfeather,” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion, edited by billy j. stratton. u of new mexico press, albuquerque, 2016. pp. 151-176. print. bauerkemper, joseph. “narrating nationhood: indian time and ideologies of progress,” studies in american indian literatures, vol 19, no. 4, 2007, pp. 17-53. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 59 coulthard, glen. “place against empire: understanding indigenous anti-colonialism.” affinities: a journal of radical theory, culture, and action (2010): 79-83. däwes, birgit. “’back to before all this, he said’: history, temporarily and knowledge in stephen graham jones’s the bird is gone,” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. edited by billy j. stratton. u of new mexico p, 2016. pp. 111-131. print. deloria vine, jr. god is red: a native view of religion. delta, 1973. print. de vos, laura m. “spiralic time and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty: idle no more and the marrow thieves,” transmotion vol. 6, no. 2, 2020, pp 142. gaudet, joseph. “i remember you: postironic belief and settler colonialism in stephen graham jones’s ledfeather,” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 28, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21-44. girard, rené. the scapegoat. translated by yvonne freccero. john hopkins up. 1986. print. jones, stephen graham. ledfeather. u of alabama p. 2008. print. kaufman, linda s. discourses of desire: gender, genre, and epistolary fictions, cornell up, 1986. print. zachary perdieu “a bridge through time” 60 lee, a. robert. “native postmodernism? remediating history in the fiction of stephen graham jones and d.l. birchfield.” mediating indianness. edited by cathy covell waegner. michigan state up, 2015, pp. 73-89. micir, melanie. the passion projects: modernist women, intimate archives, unfinished lives. princeton up, 2019. print. peat, f. david. blackfoot physics: a journey into the native american universe. weiser books, 2002. print. pennywark, leah. “narrative possession in stephen graham jones’s ledfeather,” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 29, no. 3, fall 2017, pp. 89-110. rifkin, mark. beyond settler time: temporal sovereignty and indigenous selfdetermination. duke up, 2017. stratton, billy j and stephen graham jones. “observations on the shadow self: dialogues with stephen graham jones,” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. edited by billy j. stratton. u of new mexico press, 2016. pp. 14-59. print. tally, jr., robert t. spatiality. routledge, 2013. print. visconti, laura. “the beginnings of the epistolary novel in england,” contexts of prenovel narrative: the european tradition. edited by r.t. eriksen, 1994. pp. 293318. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 61 washburn, frances. “stephen graham jones’s cosmopolitan literary aesthetic,” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. edited by billy j. stratton. u of new mexico press, 2016. pp. 63-81. print. west-pavlov, russell. temporalities, routledge, 2013. wildcat, daniel r. “indigenizing the future: why we must think spatially in the twenty-first century,” american studies, vol. 46, no. 3/4, 2005. pp. 417-40. microsoft word jenna gersie.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 238 billy-ray belcourt. a history of my brief body. two dollar radio, 2020. 140 pp. isbn: 9781937512934. https://twodollarradio.com/collections/all-books/products/history-of-my-brief-body billy-ray belcourt, from the driftpile cree nation, dedicates his first book of nonfiction to “those for whom utopia is a rallying call,” noting that the book itself is an ode “to the world-to-come” (3). in the fourteen short essays that make up a history of my brief body, belcourt blends personal history, theory, and discussions of craft in a creative nonfiction form that serves as resistance to “the glass walls of canadian habit that entrap us all in compressed forms of subjectivity” (9). creativity, poetry, writing itself are tools with which we might enter that world-to-come, and love is what will get us there. by describing and reaching toward the “queer ndn joy” (54) that he claims over and over in spite of the violence and sorrow of daily life, belcourt takes readers to a place of openness, vulnerability, and intimacy. the essays in this collection take different forms: letters, lists, and longer expositions. “an ndn boyhood” shares family history; “gay: 8 scenes” traces belcourt’s life from a closeted teen to falling in love for the first time to experiences on and after dating apps; “fragments from a half-existence” offers pieces of novels that belcourt has tried to write; “robert” takes readers through a year of moments and messages. read individually or together, these essays can be taught in any creative writing classroom to encourage experimentation and explore the threads of argumentation. in “an alphabet of longing,” belcourt writes: “my field of study is ndn freedom. my theoretical stance is a desire for ndn freedom. my thesis statement: joy is an at once minimalist and momentous facet of ndn life that widens the spaces of living thinned by structures of unfreedom” (88). joy—a “durational performance of emotion” (8), the art of breathing within oppressive and asphyxiating conditions—is that “ecology of feeling” (8) scattered throughout this short book: a hug between a father and son, “[b]uzzing with glee” (89) on a second date, finding “a book that was more than a book” (113), one that speaks to beingness and its inherent beauty. yet as belcourt notes, creative writing “traffics in ugly” (41)—and those moments that threaten the possibility of utopia are here too: communicating needs to an unsympathetic doctor after a nonconsensual experience, being followed by a straight white couple after jenna gersie review of a history of my brief body 239 being spotted holding hands with a boyfriend, the heartbreak of falling in and out of love. these moments are layered with reflections on what it means to be both queer and ndn, to live in a settler state that “has yet to recoil at its reflection in the rear-view mirror” (38). in the title essay, belcourt writes that “the past starts into my brief body like a knife” (26). histories of oppression thrive in the present in the form of police and mass shooters who live as if they were guns, white men who either fetishize ndns or claim color-blindness, the disposability and unlivability of life. to all those who live in a world they did not want, belcourt says, “please keep loving” (111). love is both a path forward to utopia and an act to challenge the daily lived oppression of colonialism. “join me in the ruins of the museum of political depression!” (9) belcourt invites; amidst these ruins of “the world-at-large” (7), we reach the world-tocome through practices of love, joy, “radical empathy” (105), and poetry. belcourt’s writing is a practice of humanity, a counter to “the world of [the] courtroom” (123), a seeking of beauty in spite of all that is not beautiful. belcourt writes, “we need to write against the unwritability of utopia” (9). by experiencing and telling these stories of living and loving, he opens possibilities for a future where “canadian cruelty” (5) is no match for this “metaphysics of joy” (88). belcourt’s writing is at times conversational, telling stories of meeting men on grindr or questioning the blurry area between wanting to put words on a page and wanting to fall in love. at other times, belcourt adds to critical conversations about capitalism, coloniality, and the politics of care. “‘i’m an emotional person, so i read theory day in and day out’” (82), he tells an audience of conference attendees. quoting from judith butler, michel foucault, roland barthes, and others, belcourt moves fluidly between theory, poetry, and story. sentences are clear, making it possible to move through this small book quickly, but paragraph breaks, blank spaces on the page, and enumerations urge the reader to pause, to sit with quotes by maggie nelson and ocean vuong, or to linger with belcourt’s imagery: “a shoreline the water of memory drags its palm across” (21), “a question mark with fur” (41), “a glistening tragedy” (73), “a maw full of smoke” (114). in the preface to a history of my brief body, “a letter to nôhkom,” belcourt honors his grandmother and her unconditional love for him. though these were the first pages transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 240 of the book i read, they are the ones that stayed with me the longest, this letter to a caretaker who was the core of the family, someone who derived joy from those daily moments of giving love. belcourt writes, “back then your love incubated a refuge, one i can always return to if need be” (5), and it is his kokum’s “philosophy of love, which is also a theory of freedom” (6) that belcourt inherits and through which he learns and practices joy, through which he can “love at the speed of utopia” (5). this book urges us to love, to always insist upon love. university of colorado, boulder microsoft word andrews.docx transmotion vol  1,  no  2  (2015)       111   neal mcleod, ed. indigenous poetics in canada. waterloo: wilfred laurier university press, 2014. vi, 416pp. http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/catalog/mcleod-n.shtml there is poetic justice, to use a clichéd phrase, in the fact that just as the truth and reconciliation commission was beginning its closing events in ottawa, blocks away on the campus of the university of ottawa, indigenous poetics in canada, edited by neal mcleod, was awarded the 2014 acql gabrielle roy prize for excellence in english language canadian criticism. while the border that divides canada from the united states has been rightly described by thomas king as “a line from someone else’s imagination” (rooke 72), as a settler woman who has written about indigenous literatures for close to twenty years, the reality is that the 49th parallel has led to false divisions between indigenous literatures and cultures south and north of the border; some tribes literally straddle the border. despite this, and while i am uncomfortable with the tendency to categorize indigenous texts based on a western version of imposed nationalism, i remain impressed by the thoughtful and innovative work done by writers situated on the north side of that artificial line, work that all too often get overlooked in american discussions of indigenous literatures. for instance, while speak to me words: essays on contemporary indian american poetry (2003) makes a compelling case for the need to rethink poetry as traditionally defined through the lens of western genres, it does not enact the generic diversity or present the depth and breadth of perspectives that are integral to indigenous poetics. indigenous poetics builds upon a foundation of strong connections between writers and scholars—many of whom work in both worlds—who trust each other and listen attentively in order to find ways to articulate individually and collectively their visions of how and what an indigenous poetics might look like. as with looking at the words of our people: first nations analysis of literature (1993), a book that i still return to regularly for its incisive and elegant exploration of indigenous literatures, indigenous poetics in canada promises to radically shift approaches to and understandings of aboriginal poetries. this book began, as mcleod explains in his “preface” as a panel at the ogamas aboriginal festival in brandon, where the discussion of three poets—louise halfe, randy lundy, and duncan mercredi—provided the grounding for both a workshop on indigenous poetics and the subsequent monograph which defies, in so many ways, the strictures of academic publication by incorporating a deeply compelling array of contributions that span four main sections: “the poetics of memory;” “the poetics of place;” “the poetics of performance,” and “the poetics of medicine.” as mcleod explains in his introduction, these sections reflect “an organic and contextualized understanding of indigenous poetics” that is grounded in indigenous beliefs and practices rather than relying on the “anglo-môniyâw interpretive matrix” (3). paradoxically, the collection is comprised of essays, stories, poems, and interviews with contemporary native writers that at first glance appear decidedly scholarly, complete with notes and bibliographies. ultimately, however, the collection resists such strictures in form and theme through its inclusiveness by encouraging readers to look beyond the notion of a “text” and instead employ the cree concept of aniskwâcimopicikêwin, which as mcleod jennifer  andrews review  of  indigenous  poetics  in  canada       112   explains, means “the process of connecting stories together” to recognize the “constant play between orality” (8) and the works on the page, which are never fully represented when treated statically. as a result, i found myself repeatedly reading sections of this book out loud in an effort to experience the sheer beauty of the poems that are included and in order to relish the range of viewpoints and forms of expression in the collection. divided into four sections that attain balance by facilitating a constant flow between and among them, indigenous poetics models for readers, native and non-native, the diversity and specificity of this exciting field. the collection tangibly demonstrates the need to be attentive to the particular nuances of individual tribal languages, spoken and written, and the importance of acknowledging and understanding tribal storytelling practices, both historical and contemporary. in addition, the collection makes a compelling case for engaging with indigenous pictographs and classical narratives, and recognizing that indigenous poetics are shaped by carefully crafted and sustained relationships to space and place. as part of the collection’s mandate, mcleod includes several essays in the “poetics of performance” section that thoughtfully explore the intersection of indigenous and dub poetries in canada, developing the concept of “sound identities” and examining how native and caribbean canadian poets employ precise and often shared language practices to “recover and reconstitute” their own distinctive voices (gingell 273). the result is a book that enables readers to engage with issues thematically and couples creative and scholarly perspectives to encourage sustained conversations among and beyond the pages of this single monograph. the depth and breadth of indigenous poetics is remarkable and a testament to the energy devoted to this project by the participants in the initial workshop, the editor, and wilfred laurier university press. the book is comprised of longer essays by established and emerging indigenous and settler scholars and creative writers, including warren cariou, sam mckegney, alyce johnson, susan gingell, jesse rae archibald-barber, tasha beeds, michèle lacombe, leanne simpson, gail mckay, david newhouse, lesley belleau, neal mcleod, and niigaanwewidam james sinclair, along with shorter pieces by contemporary poets including marilyn dumont, daniel david moses, waaseyaa’sin christine sy, rosanna deerchild, lillian allen, lee maracle. gregory scofield. joanne arnott, duncan mercredi, janet rogers, and lindsay “eekwol” knight. finally, the collection offers interviews with three key indigenous poets, the late marvin francis, armand garnet ruffo, and kateri akiwenzie-damm that powerfully convey how these writers employ playful language to explore serious subjects with humour and joy. the essays, poems, and interviews often are infused with indigenous words and phrases, and while cree dominates, the movement between and among indigenous and colonial languages enacts the flexibility and ingenuity that is integral to the spoken and written words of these scholars and writers who so skilfully “re-sound identities for themselves and their people” (gingell 280). the result is a collection that stories and sings its way into readers’ hearts and minds, offering an affective experience that is also rigorously intellectual. as duncan mercredi reminds readers at the end of his essay, part of the task of the truth and reconciliation commission has been to gather “stories from the survivors of the residential school transmotion vol  1,  no  2  (2015)       113   experiment of indoctrination” (21). those “emotional, gut-wrenching stories…were told in such a way that they would remain embedded in the memories of those hearing them for the first time. they were poetic” (21). mercredi stresses the importance of retaining the power of these narratives through the poetic and urges readers to keep the “heart of the story” (21) alive by using indigenous languages and cultivating oral traditions that put forward native perspectives in all of their complexities. indigenous poetics enacts mercredi’s call to action by bringing the aesthetic and political together into a single volume that is worth savouring and returning to, again and again. jennifer andrews, university of new brunswick works cited armstrong, jeannette, ed. looking at the words of our people: first nations analysis of literature. penticton: theytus, 1993. mcleod, neal, ed. indigenous poetics in canada. waterloo: wilfred laurier up, 2014. rader, dean, and janice gould, eds. speak to me words: essays on contemporary american indian poetry. tucson: u of arizona p., 2003. rooke, constance. “interview with tom king.” world literature written in english 30.2 (1990): 62-76. microsoft word gamber.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 106 cathy covell waegner, ed. mediating indianness. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2015. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-3473#.ve5ups4zdoo this collection grows out of a four-panel session at mesea – the society for multiethnic studies: europe and the americas biennial conference held in barcelona in 2012. its goal is “to offer fresh insights into interpretation of pertinent cultural and historical phenomena, drawing from both sides of the atlantic” (x). as the preface explains, “the unusual project team combines (native) american and european (german, british, romanian) scholars, an interdisciplinary group of both senior and junior academics from the fields of cultural and literary studies, anthropology, rhetoric, and creative writing” (x). the collection coheres around its eponymous idea of mediation, albeit loosely. the idea of mediation recurs throughout, and certainly we can recognize that indianness as applies to the indigenous peoples of the americas represents a concept introduced through contact and reinforced through colonialism that has never existed outside of multiple layers of mediation. in as much as this is true, the essays in this collection, indeed all of native american studies, could be read through the discourse of mediation, as cosmopolitan critics have been noting for years. this cosmopolitan thread certainly runs throughout the majority of the essays in this collection, though the term cosmopolitan remains largely absent. this is not a critique per se; it is clear that many of the authors in this collection opt out of cosmopolitanism as a structuring force in their work—though the absence of a discussion as to why seems notable for the collection as a whole. the unifying theme of mediation does feel a bit forced at times, shoehorned into introductions and conclusions but disappeared in the body of certain essays. these moments are noticeable, but they don’t entirely detract from the quality of all of those essays. the scope of the subjects and disciplinary approaches in this collection is impressive, ranging from history, sculpture, biography, literature, postmodernism, orthography, hiphop, film, photography, dance, ceremony, drama, painting, poetry, mixed genre artists, and documentary. approaches favor the humanities, but also encompass the social sciences. if this striking breadth were not enough, the collection concludes with a freeform epistolary round table replied to by gerald vizenor. this concluding work fits the bill particularly considering the ways that vizenor (who the preface calls “a grandmaster of native american studies” and to whom the collection is dedicated) informs so many of the pieces herein (xi). billy j. stratton’s essay, “you have liberty to return to your own country: tecumseh, myth, and the rhetoric of native sovereignty,” begins the collection, and it does so on a strong note. this essay ostensibly studies a pair of sculptures depicting the death of shawnee leader tecumseh. however, its primary focus is in fact the “ways in which native american historical experience has been instrumentalized in the construction of national identity” (3). this essay examines a variety of historical records and documents to demonstrate the specific ways that the united states’ settler narratives wield the images of native leaders to signify “not only the tragic, yet inevitable, vanquishing of native american peoples but also the broader conquest of the north american john gamber review of mediating indianness 107 wilderness” (3). this thesis, of course, is not groundbreaking; the equation of native people with the land reverberates throughout the us’s rhetorical traditions and all scholars of native american studies understand that. however, stratton’s writing is unrelenting on this front, refusing to let the settler state off the hook not only for its egregious crimes of the past but also for its failure to acknowledge the violence of itself in the past and present, the denial that those crimes of the past continue to the present. stratton calls this a “farce [that] is only made possible by an american public’s unwillingness to acknowledge the violence and traumatic nature of collective history” (6). in contrast to such a farce, and alongside the ways it has concretized itself within american consciousness, stratton examines the recorded words of tecumseh himself, demonstrating that they “can be seen as efforts to articulate claims of tribal sovereignty, while also serving as some of the earliest vehicles of decolonization” (11). stratton’s claims of primacy notwithstanding (and this claim does seem to require qualification), the wresting of the shawnee leader’s words from the settler project stands out as an important anticolonial move. stratton concludes, “the reclamation of native historical figures such as tecumseh from the status of instrumental colonial signifier demands a renewed approach to historical narrative and the posting of alternate lines of critical inquiry” (20). stratton notes that native claims have often faced a greater scrutiny than those of settlers and their histories, which are far more likely to be taken at face value. stratton urges an equal questioning of those settler narratives, including the “primary documents of american colonial history” (21). stratton’s essay represents what this collection does best: it offers readings that seem to be interdisciplinary, but in fact demonstrate how disciplinary boundaries have never held up; it offers a new mode of reading across those supposed boundaries, of mediating them, i suppose, but more in simply ignoring them. these moments that cut across fence lines matter-of-factly rather than reactively offer native american studies as a series of intellectual acts that exist with or without colonial modes of framing. a. robert lee’s pair of short essays, which are best read together as a linked dyad, take the form of creative meditations on the works they address, the fiction of stephen graham jones and, to a lesser extent, d.l. birchfield in the first, and vizenor’s latest novel, blue ravens, in the second. vizenor inspired as ever, lee’s essays truck in postmodernism as a descriptive term for the works he addresses. we can think of vizenor’s 1989 edited collection narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian novels as a forerunner of such analyses. there, vizenor posits, “postmodernism liberates imagination and widens the audiences for tribal literatures, this new criticism rouses a comic world view, narrative discourse and language games on the past” (6). for vizenor, postmodernism offers an alternative not only to literary or artistic modernism, but also to a brand of modernity driven by social science discourses that posit the indigenous as a form of premodern other. vizenor contends, “the instrumental language of the social sciences are tragic or hypotragic modes that withhold communal discourse” (9). vizenor goes on to baldly assert, “the trickster is postmodern” (9). expanding such an idea places indigenous narrative traditions (by which i mean narrative modes stretching far into the past and continuing through the present and into the future, altered however they might be altered by their communities in the process of existing) as postmodern before that term came into being. lee, then, rides vizenor’s reclamation to transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 108 the work of jones and birchfield. certainly, both authors craft playful narratives that mock reader expectations of linearity and gravity. but, of course, postmodernism has proven notoriously difficult to define, and perhaps nothing is less postmodern than identified texts that present themselves as “native american literature” (ledfeather, the bird is gone: a manifesto, and the fast red road: a plainsong) to his “genre fiction” (it came from del rio, zombie bake off, and the utterly masterful demon theory, among others). lee’s move in bringing back postmodernism, a strucuting body we have largely moved on from, works to canonize the under-read authors. birchfield’s field of honor, for example, needs to be read alongside catch-22 and m.a.s.h. it also must be read alongside first blood and its novelistic and filmic spin-offs starring their “mixedblood” native protagonist john rambo (his father is diné). the melding of popular culture influences, popular film and music as well as postmodern literary classics establishes each of these authors as part of the postmodern continuum. returning to the connection between trickster and postmodernism, vizenor asserts “silence and separation…are the antitheses of trickster discourse” (9). trickster stories, operating in a comic mode, emphasize such connections as jones’s and birchfield’s texts do, connections between and across genres, connections of “high” and “low” art, of literature and pop culture. moreover, they work against silence, the tragic vanished indian stereotype, sure, but also the silencing of stories by native authors that comes in readers’ expectations that they keep replicating the homing plots of the native american renaissance. lee’s move from there into his second essay reveals the interconnection of his pieces, as he slyly reminds the reader that vizenor, perhaps the most staunch advocate for the recognition of native literature as postmodern, has placed his latest novel within a modernist milieu, further connecting the movements and modes across time and space, connecting anishinaabe characters with the land of their colonial ancestors, another bridge between the seemingly disparate we will revisit in this review’s conclusion. the collection moves from these interesting pieces to a string of others. ellen cushman’s examination of cherokee writing serves both as an introductory history of sequoia’s development thereof as well as the values and worldviews that the language embeds within itself. cushman argues that “the instrumentality of the writing system itself acts as a decolonial rhetoric” (103). her claims are bold, perhaps overly sweeping, but certainly worthy of being addressed by other scholars of the language (an ongoing robust engagement that is itself a decolonial statement). chris lalonde presents yet another very strong essay in his examination of hip-hop artist quese imc’s three-album oeuvre. lalonde deftly weaves textual examination of song lyrics with analyses of rhythm, musical allusions and subversions in quese’s choice and use of samples, and expansion of his music into film and art. in a refreshing move reminiscent of cushman’s piece, lalonde offers his essay with a brief introduction to his subject but without any need to justify it as important or worthy of academic pursuit. lalonde’s essay, which begins with and incorporates many references to native film, including the work of sterlin harjo serves as a well-placed transition to a series of essays engaging other films: jim jarmusch’s dead man as examined by christine plicht and chris eyre’s movies, by ludmila martanovschi—each a tangible addition to the scholarship of these works. john gamber review of mediating indianness 109 kimberly blaeser offers a truly outstanding article, “refraction and helio-tropes: native photography and visions of light.” she begins with a brief survey of the ways that native people have been written out of their contemporaneous presents in sepia-toned images of disappearing and victimry, what blaeser terms “time-bound, romantic stereotypes of primitive warrior, noble savage, tragic half-breed…vanishing indian (154). building off of chanette romero’s concept of “visual sovereignty” (which romero wields in relation to victor masayesva’s photography—also studied by blaeser in this essay), blaeser offers a diachronic reading of native people in photographs as well as native people taking them, reading acts of survivance not only into the latter but also the former. as both a scholar and a practitioner of photography, blaeser renders her essay even stronger by including her own photography and artistic decision making. we see a similar attention to the visual in kerstin schmidt’s piece on minda martin’s documentary film free land. schmidt focuses on a series of tropes within this film as emblematized by particular visual moments—an almost photographic sensibility in addressing moving pictures. a pair of essays examine eric gansworth’s generally under-studied work, nicholle dragone’s focuses on his dramas, while john purdy’s devotes attention across gansworth’s multi-genre oeuvre. sally mcbeth’s essay examining the nuche (or northern ute) bear dances seems somewhat out of place not for its quality but only for its discipline, as the only anthropological piece in the collection. about two-thirds of the way through the text, the reader encounters the interlude, which comes in the form of a pair of creative pieces by evaline zuni lucero and jane haladay. these works engage on a meta-conference level, speaking to the experiences of their respective authors (in concert) during, as well as in the environing time of the mesea conference. befitting an interlude, they serve as a break in the collection, but also as a reward for those who have read it, making many allusions to the essays that have come before as well as the issues including therein (both muse upon columbus’s memorialization throughout the conference’s site of barcelona, for example). the collection concludes with a free-wheeling “two-year creative roundtable discussion” carried out via email between blaeser, haladay, gordon henry jr., molly mcglennen, and jesse peters, collectively labeling themselves members of the “crow commons.” haladay, or perhaps her roundtable persona jane explains, “we intend to rework methods that normally define conference panels by delivering an exposition of our exchanges leading up to the conference and our creative responses to these conversations; we foresee our roundtable as an evolving engagement with anishinaabe poets in culturally specific formations of knowledge-building” (282). molly continues, “we imagine the theory of the cultural commons and literary/ personal filiations/ affiliations to be our vision for a new kind of conferencing that is dynamic, collaborative, ongoing, teasing, personal, intellectual, and resonant with patterns in and the motion of the natural world” (282). no doubt there are those who will roll their eyes as such a structure, certain that this approach must be lacking in academic rigor (and probably at its core some new-agey drivel unbefitting intellectual pursuits). on the contrary, this collective work represents the traditional approach of the essay as montaigne imagined it, a meditation on a theme by which the authors work through a particular issue: connection in literature (what does that look like? in what forms does it come? what and how does it mean to different transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 110 people?) as such, this essay does not seek a thesis, but rather riffs off of hypotheses and experiences. to conclude, vizenor responds to the crow commons in prose and verse, drawing parallels between this collective and anishinaabe stories of crows as well as between his writing, anishinaabe narratives, and haiku. this last piece teases a narrative thread of seemingly unlikely connections represented throughout these essays and works, as throughout the 2012 mesea conference and the shared narratives leading up to and surrounding it, connections that stretch across continents and centuries as well as across genres and disciplines. this collection lacks an index, demonstrating its participation in an unfortunate trend among some edited collections. we understand that such end pieces are expensive to produce, either in terms of the money or manpower it takes to do them well, but they are also invaluable addenda for academic research. moreover, just as some of the essays integrate the framing concept of mediation more thoroughly than some others, it is also safe to say that some of the essays are significantly stronger than others. the overall quality is very good, but a small few seem like the work of scholars who are very new to native american studies, unengaged or unfamiliar with the canon of work in the field. that said, the majority of the pieces are quite strong. indeed, despite the collection’s shortcomings, one nonetheless appreciates its daring and scope. the essays demonstrate the diversity of native american studies as a field, and is one of few collections that reflects the breadth of work engaged in by its scholars. john gamber, columbia university works cited vizenor, gerald. narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian novels. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 1989. waegner, cathy covell, ed. mediating indianness. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2015. microsoft word lush.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 189 elissa washuta. white magic. tin house, 2021. 424 pages. isbn : 9781951142391 https://tinhouse.com/book/white-magic magical. mystical. haunting. these words describe washuta’s non-fiction essay and memoir collection white magic. these words could equally be used to describe new age clichés and stereotypes about indigeneity that washuta astutely identifies and critiques. the careful attention to the multiple meanings and contexts that live in every word, turn of phrase, and cultural reference makes washuta’s work a spellbinding (punintended) read which addresses the interconnected legacies of land, family, gender, and sexual violence. washuta positions what it means to be a cowlitz woman navigating myriad layers of cultural expectations, violence, and stereotypes while considering historical and ongoing questions about agency and survival. magic, and whether it is cosmic, an illusion, or something that one can cultivate, frames the range of cultural references throughout the book and allows washuta to produce a work of non-fiction that, as she describes, makes insights over plot. more specifically, washuta tells the reader early on that the goal of the non-fiction writer is to “shape the recollected by how the remembering changes us. the mind wants to understand what’s done but not settled” (25). settling and unsettling as concepts appear in various contexts in this collection: the unsettling experiences of daily life that create anxiety or reckoning with the violent history of u.s expansion and how to unsettle this legacy of settler colonialism today. the essays in this volume meditate on cultural artefacts associated in some way with magic: whether it’s the witchy aesthetic of stevie nicks, or the supernatural narrative of twin peaks, or the uncanny ability of computerized settlers in the game oregon trail to continually resurrect themselves in their pursuit of westward expansion and displacement of native peoples. the cultural touchstones – from music, film, and popular culture – function as a lens through which to see the magic and power of such works as narratives that weave their own kind of spell on audiences, but also provide a way to create a new narrative forged out of intertextuality that recenters the interconnectedness of time, place, and space. intertextuality allows for an exploration of the limits of familiarity and relatability and raises questions about the intended audience for the narratives that permeate the dominant cultural imagination. the textual interrogation that comes with this intertextuality also highlights when new narratives are necessary to overturn harmful cycles of repetition. rebecca lush review of white magic 190 white magic is a work of non-fiction that arranges its chapters into three acts, each defined by titles that come from tarot cards. by opening each act with a three-card tarot spread to establish the direction, themes, and experiences explored in the essays, the author blends form with subject matter and exemplifies a common thread throughout that “[a]ny narrative is a magic trick” (400). the organization of the book also emphasizes the dramatic features of the text; like acts in a play, washuta teases that her narrative has a rising and falling action, but these narrative trappings are ultimately ones she invites us to question and reconsider as she suggests time and again that the human experience cannot be neatly folded into narrative conventions or even be viewed linearly. washuta plays with form and style, revisiting experiences, scenes, and places from different perspectives and in a different chronology. in the book’s third and last act, washuta experiments with form the most in a series of diarylike entries that resist chronology, with some entries summarizing scenes and plot points from twin peak and the prestige that function as interpretative commentaries on her own lived experiences. another notable topic in the book is washuta’s discussion of digital games oregon trail and red dead redemption, which immerse the player in a narrative world to replay historical narratives (and traumas) from the nation’s past. it is in the discussions of these games that the implication of the title “white magic” feels most prominent, as washuta describes the cognitive dissonance of being a native woman immersed in the disorientating experience of playing the role of the white settler in an act of settler sleight of hand. simulated realities versus historical realities versus living realities blur in these moments of gameplay and serve as reminders of how the past and the narratives and myth of the american west (the white magic ur-text of national mythology that excuses settler colonialism) haunts the present. washuta’s white magic is a rich volume full of metatextual and intertextual playfulness that addresses topical and significant issues in u.s. american and indigenous cultures today. it’s a book that ultimately explores the things that hold power over us and how we can hold power via narrative. washuta may write about traumas, but she always resists narratives of victrimry and terminal creeds. feminist scholarship and theory has long considered how the figure of the witch can be a symbol of cultural and patriarchal resistance, whether in the work of barbara creed’s the monstrous feminine (1993) or the more recently translated work of swiss theorist mona chollet’s sorcières (2018) (english title: in defense of witches). yet, these explorations often privilege eurocentric and western notions of magic and witchery. washuta’s essays acknowledge the transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 191 pervasiveness of western and pop culture witches and magic but don’t let these tropes and approaches dominate. washuta’s essays, instead, provide an alternative way of viewing witchcraft and gender that brings a much-needed indigenous perspective. these essays will stay with you long after you’ve read them. rebecca lush, california state university, san marcos works cited: chollet, mona. sorcières. zones, 2018. creed, barbara. the monstrous feminine. routledge, 1993. microsoft word goeman.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)       104   mcglennen, molly. creative alliances: the transnational designs of indigenous women’s poetry. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2014. 230 pp. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/1897/creative%20alliances in creative alliances: the transnational designs of indigenous women’s poetry, mcglennen takes the much-welcomed approach of foregrounding gender and genre in the field of native american and indigenous studies. best of all, she engages this task as a poet collaborating with the voices of other indigenous women poets and is deliberate in her choice to take on a “poetcritic lens” in order to “forward more inclusive analytical models so to stave off the anthropologization and ownership that has often framed the work of indigenous writers” (23). in doing so, mcglennen creates a narrative around the importance of poetry in the everyday of poets whose crafts form alliances throughout indian country and often beyond in transnational circles. while the poets she primarily addresses are u.s.-based, she does account for the ways poetic words see beyond nation-state borders, as well as tribal jurisdictions, to make connections with other indigenous peoples. for mcglennen, poetry works in the service of alliance making between indigenous peoples and fosters what she refers to as a generative process of pushing boundaries, adjusting margins, and decolonizing colonially-informed knowledge of the spatial and temporal. in her book, mcglennen states that poetry is a “mediating mechanism” between various communities (38) that carries “transformative properties” to see beyond colonial structures that create divisiveness (63), as the “form’s mobilizing and politicizing capacity” (46) is key to resistance. by focusing on indigenous women’s poetic collaborations, the author also emphasizes how the collaborative nature of poetry enables a “revision of politics” and “transfer and continuance” of indigenous lifeways. poetry makes clear, according to mcglennen, that these lifeways are living and do so within and beyond boundaries of the reservation, a point especially made in her examination of “home girls” (120) luci tapahonso and kimberly blaeser. all in all, mcglennen is consistent with her rightly justified emphasis on the importance of creativity and poetry’s ability as a genre to build alliances. in six chapters, mcglennen speaks to the various places that creative alliances occur and communities are built. in her first chapter, she sets out the relationship between gender and the genre of poetry, focusing primarily on poets’ work that has addressed various aspects of gender’s influence on the everyday. yet, engagement with the burgeoning field of indigenous feminism or the inclusion of examinations of gendered colonialism would help to flesh out her arguments and many of the excellent points she makes. while the author, for instance, takes on western science and its “misogynistic undercurrents that stimulate” it, she does not address the array of feminist work in indigenous studies on this matter. the specific and important work of indigenous feminist scholars, such as kim tallbear, aileen moreton-robinson, j. kehaulani kauanui, sandy grande, and maile arvin, who have examined the discourse of science and effects on nationbuilding and its gendered forms, would be incredibly beneficial to her argument. this move to include indigenous feminist scholars inside and outside of native poets and literary scholarship would support her as she moves out into the specifics of how poetry upsets spatial and temporal logics in her next chapters. poetry as “alternative documentation” to colonial writings that erase indigenous presence in traditional territories and urban settings becomes the subject of chapter 2, where mcglennen examines esther belin and allison adelle hedge coke’s poetry as a form of knowledge mishuana goeman review of creative alliances   105   production. her examination of the earthworks site and insight she provides through interviews of the poets is especially illuminating in regards to poetry and the complexity of native places, as well as relationships to those places through time. are all processes of making place the same, however? what does the shift from a historic site to an urban site tell us about the varying ways that native people process place? at times in the book, the quick jumping from different kinds of places from poem to poem or poet to poet left the reader with more questions. at one point, the author speaks to the ways that urban poets “reclaim these territories as indigenous homelands because of the forms mobilizing and politicizing capacity.” yet, she does not continue down a path to question what it means that la and oakland already and always have had an indigenous presence of ohlone, tongva, tataviam and other tribal nations complete with expansive trade routes, artistry, and relationships with those who came west with the development of us industrialized cities. this is an important point, and an ethical one, that belin makes clear in her poetry. mcglennen does, however, upset the urban as a place of force, or dislocation, and loss. she positions poetry and spoken word circles in urban contexts as an assembly of various tribes that “rekindle centuries old systems” that become more than an act of making a “surrogate nation” (52). mcglennen affirms poetry’s ability to unravel colonial discourses through language that is situated in tribal epistemologies and also its ability to move out from the center or, in her words and title of chapter three, poetry’s ability to “adjust the margins.” i very much appreciated this intervention in her examination of several poets that employ the genre in order to mend the rifts of “limited points of access and spiritual disconnects” (153) caused by colonialism’s on-going effects. in chapter four, she extends an analysis of the politics of enrollment and blood quantum by exploring luci tapahanso and kimberly blaeser’s poetry on migration and cross tribal alliance work. this analysis provides a substantial critique of literary nationalism, while not dismissing the crucial work it has accomplished (106), by examining the genre of poetry as “collaboration and celebration of influence” (109). particularly useful in the approach to privileging poets’ voices, is mcglennen’s use of amendments, that is poems that return to earlier poems and address similar topics, themes, or issues that are on-going but have changed either through politics, awareness, or in the personal lives of the poets themselves. looking at over thirty years of a poet’s collective work, especially in light of tribal citizenship, has many benefits that could be explored even further in future work. i appreciate this idea and its unfixedness of the knowledge production, particularly in the case where she speaks of the effects of discourses of racial purity. this move is emblematic of the thoughtfulness i associate with indigenous feminisms. you must return to ideas and revisit in order to, as mcglennen puts it, “chart new directions” forward. i do wish, however, more attention was paid to historical context in these moments as the poets are also reflecting with others around them. for instance, indigenous women’s interactions with women of color poets influenced these early moments of poetry alliances. this moment also resulted from the need to make room for non-patriarchal and nonracist forms of knowledge production, as lisa hall’s indigenous feminist work makes evident, in both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. in chapter five, mcglennen examines poets who engage a “land ethics” that is collaborative and a genre that promotes “streamlined methodologies that only a reliance on shared indigenous transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)       106   antecedents can bring about” (130). here she contends that elements of poetry perform the reparative task of thinking through the fragmentation caused by imposed gender and racial hierarchies resulting from western science. this task, however, requires the collaboration and listening that the genre of poetry demands and mcglennen compellingly asks that we take this seriously for survival and growth of native communities. to end her chapters, mcglennen takes up poetry as a gathering place, particularly by examining the space of the anthology, early moments of collaboration, and queer identity. it is a fitting end to examine, in the words of the author, “how one might rethink boundaries as a means to understand what brings people together across colonial, tribal, and hemispheric divides—and not just what separates them” (183). the repositioning of the question above to emphasize the creative rather than loss or colonial destruction is representative of the consistent positive relation the author has to poetry and critique. she has definitely written a text where the warmth and sustenance that stems from poetry’s creative alliances shines through colonial quagmires. mishuana goeman, university of california, los angeles microsoft word twenter.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 113 lone hill, dana. pointing with lips: a week in the life of a rez chick. greenfield: blue hand books, 2014. isbn: 978-1-4959-4529-8. 326 pp. https://www.createspace.com/4670234?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026 humor. there is much one can say about this important first novel by dana lone hill, pointing with lips: a week in the life of a rez chick, but humor is at the forefront of her work. on nearly every page there is something to make the reader smile, chuckle, or tear up with laughter. to be sure there are serious issues dealt with in the novel, but humor sustains the reader through the work, as humor sustained the author growing up on pine ridge indian reservation, the setting for pointing with lips. in custer died for your sins, vine deloria, jr. argues, “one of the best ways to understand a people is to know what makes them laugh. laughter encompasses the limits of the soul. in humor life is redefined and accepted. irony and satire provide much keener insights into a group’s collective psyche and values than do years of research” (140). lone hill uses laughter as a setting for growing up oglala lakota on pine ridge. in order to understand what encompasses being a “rez chick,” the reader must understand the importance of humor in the lakota nation. likewise, one must know lakota culture to understand the clear portrait of what it means to be a member of contemporary lakota reservation life as portrayed in pointing with lips. in a recent interview i conducted with lone hill, i asked her about the humor in the novel. she responded, “my grandmother dod was the funniest woman i know… my uncles, my brothers, my father, so many people in my life and people i grew up with have the best sense of humor. i believe it is something we have always had and always will—it gets us through life. especially when you grow up in poverty, i mean you can’t always cry.” for sincere strongheart, known primarily as “sis,” the protagonist and narrator of pointing with lips, survival is her daily existence. sis, single mother of three children by two different men, lives and works a dead end job at the great sioux shopping center on pine ridge. before the reader is ten pages into the novel, sis explains her entire family structure. i was struck with the oddity of a narrator clearly laying out a family tree so quickly in the story, until i remembered the importance of lakota kinship relationships. lone hill discussed the emphasis on kinship in the novel: “i try to emphasize [kinship] so much because we keep our families close, and i think we do it because we lose so much and lost so much. i introduced her whole family first, even those absent in the book, because it is our reality.” reality is what comes across in her delightfully drawn words, lakota reality. sis observes, “if an indian woman’s worth is finding out a way you’re related to her then the women in my family are priceless” (146). wolakota ogna skanpo, can be loosely translated, “to do this is in the lakota way.” it became readily clear to me that lone hill was writing a novel wolakota ogna skanpo, or what i call “writing lakota.” in pointing with lips, lone hill translates modern reservation life through the lens of lakota customs, traditions, and lifeways. first words of a novel have always been important to me, a map to guide the reader through the novel. sis begins her story: “the pow wow grounds on my reservation are always dusty. actually, the whole village of pine ridge, south dakota is dusty.” to those familiar with lakota creation histories, the little brother of the four winds, the four directions, yumnimni (yum), the “little whirlwind or dust devil,” can be seen in these opening lines. lone hill acknowledged that brian j. twenter review of pointing with lips 114 she is familiar with lakota origin stories, and at least “subconsciously,” she references, at the very least, the lessons handed down to her through these stories. throughout the text i kept finding characteristics that yum and sis share. for amusement they will risk anything, they are governed by chance and favor, and they cannot protect others or even themselves until they find themselves. sis protects her family, particularly her winkte cousin and best friend boogie and her children, only to realize that she cannot until she confronts her own burden, alcohol. critics will surely have much to say about another comedic take on the “drunken reservation indian,” but i am reminded of what muskogee poet joy harjo said in an interview with laura coltelli; “alcoholism is an epidemic in native people, and i write about it. i was criticized for bringing it up, because some people want to present a certain image of themselves. but again, it comes back to what i was saying: part of the process of healing is to address what is evil” (140). lone hill is writing her reality: when i wrote pointing with lips, i was incarcerated, awaiting sentencing. my future was up in the air and i had no idea how long i was going away. all i knew was i was so absolutely lonesome for my kids, my family… my home, my land… i was hoping, in a way, i can show people on the rez, reckless behavior will never let you advance; you have to do it yourself. i was tired of the “i am a victim” society i grew up in, and i wanted to show we are survivors. the seven days sis narrates cover drunken and drugged out mothers who do not take care of their children, and she translates the extremely horrific consequences of those actions through her own family’s history, but there is hope too, as when she believes, “if someone wants to quit drinking it has to come from within them self” (181). the connection to yum is readily apparent and it is in this connection to lakota tradition and customs where lone hill demonstrates a means for survival. the connection to lakota humor and landscape are also a means of survivance. sis describes a drunken scene in a corn field following a night out in a border town: we are throwing the cans in some farmer’s field, i am sure in the morning some fat farmer, riding his tractor will be raging and shaking his fist at the lord in the sky, “these damn drunken injuns!” fuck him i think, as i throw a half full can into his field. this is our land!” whoa, now i know i am shit faced. i hate littering. i really do, not to the point where i am the fake indian letting a tear roll down my cheek. but i do care to the point where i do give a hoot to not pollute. (65-66) pointing with lips is filled with wonderful inside jokes about psa indians, recycling owls, commod cheese, wateca, and pointing with lips, but there are also lakota lessons being passed along in the picturesque descriptions of the black hills, badlands, and even the pine ridge reservation. in our interview, lone hill told me, “people see our reservations and they see poverty, broken down communities and families. what they do not see is the beauty i see and respect. landscapes tell a story, they tell [us] we need to continue with educating the next transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 115 generation that we belong to this land and we need to care for the land that feeds us, shelters us, gives us water.” the stories are passed down from generation to generation in the novel and in lone hill’s life, “i think my biggest influences for storytelling were two of my grandfathers. i was never presented them in written form, always oral and i try to remember them and tell them to my children. it is a way of keeping our history… alive.” the story lone hill passes down and the stories sis narrates are lakota histories recorded for survivance. there are a number of critics who have lamented sis’s “white boyfriend” mason thomas, “mase,” riding to the rescue of sis at the end of the novel. i asked lone hill what she thought of this characterization: “i don’t think mase saved her at all, i think it was the first time in her life she felt appreciated by a man. i think sis has to save herself; however, much support from mase and mainly her family will get her there.” if the text is read in a lakota way, lessons from origin histories, like the tales of yum, and kinship relationships, can guide the reader to better understand how sis has to save herself, with the help of her family and friends, including mase. while pointing with lips can be seen as just another comedic “rez chick” novel, (though lone hill acknowledges she labels it as such) it is really much more when read through a lakota lens. writing lakota is a challenging task. to fill a novel full of traditional lakota kinship relationships, stories, language, landscapes, and humor is demanding, but to do so and portray real contemporary reservation life, the good, the bad, ugly and sad, in a thoughtful, honest, and humorous portrayal is what makes writing lakota and dana lone hill’s pointing with lips uniquely wonderful. brian j. twenter, university of south dakota works cited deloria jr., vine. custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1998. print. harjo, joy. “a laughter of absolute sanity: an interview with angels carabi.” the spiral of memory: interviews. ed. laura cotelli. ann arbor: university of michigan press, 1996. 133-42. print. microsoft word 113-686-1-le-3.doc transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 23 the sovereignty of transmotion in a state of exception: lessons from the internment of ‘praying indians’ on deer island, massachusetts bay colony, 1675-1676 deborah l. madsen “natives have always been on the move, by chance, necessity, barter, reciprocal sustenance, and by trade over extensive routes; the actual motion is a natural right, and the tribal stories of transmotion are a continuous sense of visionary sovereignty” (gerald vizenor, manifest manners ix) the concept of native sovereignty in vizenor's writing is both complex and simple, connected inseparably to his notions of “survivance” and “transmotion.” while he would seem to reject the territorial understanding of “tribal sovereignty” as a restrictive concept that limits the practices of sovereignty to designated geographical boundaries (like the reservations described as “federal enclaves where tribal people are contained” in earthdivers 34), the sovereignty that “transmotion” encompasses is, as michael snyder explains, “rooted in traditional native uses of land and cultural practice” (47-48). these land usages and cultural practices assume the fundamental right of unrestricted movement, a right which is highlighted in the preamble to the constitution of the white earth nation where the anishinaabeg of the white earth nation are initially defined as “the successors of a great tradition of continental liberty.” in his commentary on the constitution, david carlson cites the list of definitions of selected terms used, published in anishinaabeg today (wednesday, september 2, 2009), which includes the phrase “continental liberty”: “continental liberty refers to the continent of north american [sic], and native liberty refers to the natural freedoms and rights of natives before contact with europeans. natives had established extensive and active trade routes throughout the continent and hemisphere. trade routes, and other associations of native communities required a sophisticated sense of rights, travel, trade, and native liberty” (19; quoted in carlson 28). the sovereignty of transmotion is, then, the right to freedom of travel but not simply the right of motion. transmotion is the freedom to move across physical and conceptual boundaries; deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 24 between what, in interior landscapes, vizenor calls “communal tribal cultures and those material and urban pretensions that counter conservative traditions” (162). however, in the absence of that freedom of physical movement, many other freedoms become impossible. this is where the inherent link between transmotion and survivance becomes crucial. as i have written elsewhere, in its original french meaning ... [s]urvivance signifies the qualification to inherit an estate and formal recognition of the legal status of a survivor. or, in vizenor's words to jöelle rostkowski, '[s]urvivance ... is the heritable right of succession or reversion of an estate, and, in the course of international declarations of human rights, a narrative estate of native survivance.' what this means in a native context is the readiness of individuals and communities alike to continue the transmission of tribal cultures, values, and knowledges to future generations, through international and domestic legal instruments, through creative storying in literature, art, music, and through the practices of everyday life. (xiii) transmotion, then, is the practice of transmitting tribal cultural practices across time as well as spaces of travel and trade. above all, it is the freedom explored by jodi byrd in the transit of empire to resist “the cultural and political modes [by which] 'indianness' [is] regulated and produced by u.s. settler imperialism née colonialism” (xv), a regime of production that generates an understanding of indigeneity, byrd continues, “as rooted and static, located in a discrete place” (xvi). christopher schedler opens his essay, “wiindigoo sovereignty and native transmotion in gerald vizenor's bearheart,” with an incisive account of the criticisms of vizenor's tricky position on the issue of tribal sovereignty—made from the perspective of american indian literary nationalism by elizabeth cook-lynn and sean kicummah teuton—in which schedler defends vizenor's vision of “the inherent native rights of presence, motion, and survivance on this continent as an 'originary' form of sovereignty, which is sustained through treaties but is not limited by them,” quoting vizenor's claim that “sovereignty as transmotion is not the same as notions of indigenous treaty sovereignty; transmotion can be scorned and denied, but motion is never granted by a government” (schedler 35; fugitive poses 188). as schedler goes on to explain, treaty sovereignty is constrained by the context in which it is granted: the authority of the us federal government. but as vizenor insists throughout his work, indigenous sovereignty, transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 25 ultimately, is not a power that can be granted. the sovereignty that is indigenous “presence, motion, and survivance” – transmotion – inheres in native peoples and not in the settler state. this conception of native sovereignty, as articulated by vizenor, has always been in conflict with the claims to sovereignty made by settler-colonial authorities: not only the federal us government but, much earlier, those colonial governments and the european crowns they served that initiated the symbolic economy of “indianness” that jodi byrd addresses. metacom's war (or “king philip's war” 1675-1676) offers a dramatic instance of this early conflict, as well as the process of clearing colonial space through the settler-colonial “logic of elimination” defined by patrick wolfe as the separation, dispossession, removal, and disappearance of indigenous peoples from their homelands (wolfe 387).1 among the many grievances that metacom presented to the deputy governor of rhode island colony, john easton, during their negotiations in june 1675 were the increasing pace of land loss, the threat posed by christian proselytizing, and the loss of tribal jurisdiction. these grievances represent two major dynamics of later us settler colonialism: territorial and cultural dispossession. however, at the outset of hostilities, the settler colonies employed a further strategy of native displacement and sequestration, culminating in the internment of so-called “praying indians” on deer island in boston harbor: the focus of this essay.2 atrocities committed against christian “indians” have a special resonance: as subjects of the english crown, a fact acknowledged by metacom in his negotiations with easton, these “friendly” natives should have enjoyed the protections accorded english subjects.3 the denial of such protections through the suspension of english sovereign law makes this internment an instance of giorgio agamben's “state of exception.” agamben's exploration of the concept draws heavily on carl schmitt's political theology (1922), in which he theorizes sovereignty as arising from the assertion of authority rather than the normative power of law, demonstrated in the sovereign's capacity to suspend law in states of emergency. indeed, the suspension of law is neither only nor most importantly an assertion of the sovereign's authority; in its performance, this act is constitutive of sovereignty itself. it would be inaccurate to assume that metacom's grievances were complaints about rights actively taken away from passive native communities by english settlers; rather, the settler assertion of the right to christianize, the right to claim land, the right to legal jurisdiction, were performative assertions that produced the colonizing authority that settlers claimed. the power of agamben's reworking of schmitt's deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 26 fundamental idea of sovereignty, and much of its appeal to scholars of settler colonialism, lies in his topographical mapping of the concept into spatial or territorial terms: “being outside yet belonging, this is the topological structure of the state of exception” (2005, 35). through this paradoxical construction, the exception defines “the very space in which the juridico-political order can have validity” (1998, 19). native space, while belonging to the territory that is to be colonized and yet placed outside it in juridico-political terms, is rendered exceptional by the assertion of sovereign settler authority to claim land, jurisdiction, and cultural control. in the spaces of new england “praying towns,” the rule of judeo-christian law produced an exceptional discursive and material space in which “praying indians” both belonged to the category of english subjects and yet were placed outside it. as mark rifkin so cogently points out in his analysis of the frontier as a space of exception, “being within the sphere of state sovereignty but not covered by the normal legal principles of national law … bespeaks the fundamental anxiety that animates the settler-state” (2014, 176). though he is referring to an historical context some hundred or more years after metacom's war, the discursive dynamics that rifkin identifies can be seen clearly at work in this earlier moment of the historical record. that is, the state of exception exploited by the us after 1776 had been animating the settler-state at least since the seventeenth century. beyond the battles, bloodshed, and unprecedented destruction in new england of metacom's war, the conflict was essentially one of stories, the “authorizing” power of rhetoric, in what vizenor calls “the word wars” (wordarrows viii). granted, the war was motivated by conflict over legal jurisdiction and ownership of land; the imposition of english judicial structures and the worldview embedded in those structures—urgent issues related to native sovereignty. but these grievances were grounded in a system of conflicting symbolic meanings expressed in cultural narratives, most notably the nascent ideology of american exceptionalism. as i hope to point out, the “exceptional” state of new england native communities—and specifically the so-called “praying indians”—represents the attempt to create a state of discursive stasis, of rhetorical immobility: a state imposed by the english crown, through the government of the settler colonies, as an act of imperial sovereignty. i want to suggest that this symbolic discursive condition contributed materially both to the confinement of christianized natives first in the enclaves known as “praying towns” and later the internment camps on deer island and long island, and also to the enduring simulation of the “indian” (the everlasting sky xiii-iv; transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 27 manifest manners vii; fugitive poses 15-14) that is located outside the historical space of european modernity and its conceptual space of rights discourses.4 in fugitive poses vizenor refers to “[t]ricky stories, totemic pictures, and mental mappery [as] the embodiment of native transmotion and sovereignty” (170). transmotion then is an expression of native ontology, located in narratives that bring together the physical land with an expression of native cultural presence. this native presence is, as niigonwedom james sinclair describes in his essay “a sovereignty of transmotion,” a vision of “both the physical and psychological realms of the universe [as] made up of interconnectivities and relationships” (127). words that express transmotion, he continues, are “not only mythic vehicles and vessels for anishinaabeg spirituality, philosophy, and 'traditional' teachings … but [are] historical, subjective, and political anishinaabeg-centered creative, critical, and activist acts” (127). the right to physical spatial movement is a key aspect of indigenous sovereignty, as is the native spiritual, philosophical, and subjective engagement with material space, without which sovereignty can be rendered precarious and vulnerable to domination by settler-colonial interests. a fully-realized sovereign politics addresses not only the right to land but also the right to express a specifically native-centered relationship to land through physical and conceptual mobility. the example of the internment of converted native communities on deer island (and elsewhere) highlights the necessary interconnection between territorial and cultural sovereignty. exceptional “indians” the events of 1675 to 1676 constitute one of the major turning-points in early settler-native relations. metacom's war was bloody, brutal, and devastating for both sides. more than a series of violent martial encounters, however, the war highlighted the fundamental incommensurability of native and settler ontologies, focused on the issue of sovereignty. in this essay, i want to think about this ontological incommensurability in relation to issues of mobility and confinement. as jean o'brien notes, in dispossession by degrees, because indians moved their fields every few years to avoid soil exhaustion, landownership shifted with land use as well as the seasons. ideas about property rights in hunting, fishing, and gathering related to ecological use … but principles of mobility existed alongside notions of fixity, as in movements between central village sites and, for example, the annually abundant fish spawning sites. (21) deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 28 these practices, related to native mobility and fixity, were increasingly denied to the native communities of new england in the period leading up to and following the war; mobility not only in territorial space but also in judicial, cultural, and spiritual terms was at issue for metacom from the start. in june 1675, in negotiations with the deputy governor of the rhode island colony, john easton, metacom presented a series of grievances which included the increasing pace of land loss through fraudulent land sales protected by english law, the invasion of native cornfields by the settlers' cattle, the threat posed by christianization and the selling of alcohol, and the loss of tribal jurisdiction.5 of course, the latter complaint—the expansion of english legal jurisdiction over native communities—had been rankling since the treaties agreed in the aftermath of the pequod war. the extension of colonial judicial sovereignty intensified in the wake of john sassamon's death in 1674, but the assertion of settler sovereignty that culminated in the internment of christianized native communities on deer island went beyond the imposition of english law—in a manner illustrative of schmitt's account of sovereignty as an artifact of authority rather than law—to assert the crown's sovereign right to suspend the application of legal rights to certain subjects. as acknowledged subjects of the english crown, the “praying indians” who were removed to deer island should have enjoyed the protections extended to all english subjects. but they were not. in this respect, “praying indians” occupied a discursive position that increasingly reduced the capacity to exercise the sovereignty of transmotion by enforcing a cumulative regime of sequestration, confinement, and immobilization. in his account of the establishment of the “praying towns” by the missionary john eliot, between 1651 and 1674, neal salisbury argues that the fourteen towns deliberately isolated native converts from “both settlers and independent indians” (1974, 32). town government was structured on a biblical model and the court system was analogous to that of an english county court; while native men played a role in town governance, all decisions were subject to approval by the “superintendent of subject indians” (32), a position occupied by daniel gookin at the time of the war. the legal code enforced by the town courts, designed by eliot, regulated a range of customs and behaviors in the interests of pursuing the colonial project of “civilizing” the christian converts. through territorial isolation and acculturation, salisbury claims, “[i]n countless subtle ways the indians' distance from their past was reinforced while they were as far as ever from being accepted as members of 'civilized' society” (34). transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 29 the settler or migrant rhetoric of american exceptionalism, which has roots in this colonial period, posits the united states and its founding pilgrim fathers as the nation uniquely able, and indeed charged, with the mission to bring into being a perfected world. from the colonial period, the understanding of new england's exceptional destiny has depended upon the “visible sainthood” of leaders who guide god's mission into the wilderness of the new world. but the assumption of sainthood for some relies upon the conviction that others are diabolical agents, active agents of evil, determined to destroy the divinely-sanctioned new world experiment. the prominent boston minister cotton mather, in the wonders of the invisible world (1693), describes the land colonized by new englanders as having originally belonged to satan, who is just waiting to claim his lands back: “the new-englanders are a people of god settled in those, which were once the devils territories; and it may easily be supposed that the devil was exceedingly disturbed, when he perceived such a people here accomplishing the promise of old made unto our blessed jesus, that he should have the utmost parts of the earth for his possession” (xi-xii original emphases). in these settler terms, the exceptional nature of colonial new england lies in the ability to win over, for christians, territory (both literal and spiritual) that is satan's. but in order to do this, those visible saints must engage in continuous combat with the invisible agents of satan who will use any means to retake what they believe is theirs. within this symbolic context, seventeenth-century native communities occupied an ambivalent position. on the one hand, natives were seen as heathen, as barbarous, uncivilized, and often as the agents of satan. on the other hand, natives were also interpreted as tools in the hands of a punishing god. so sometimes their attacks on english settlements were interpreted as the acts of satanic agents, working on behalf of the devil who was trying to recapture his lost territory. at other times, native people were interpreted as god's scourge, punishing the colonists who were failing to advance in their exceptional mission. this is how metacom's war was interpreted by daniel gookin, a sympathetic observer: “to make a rod of the barbarous heathen to chastise and punish the english for their sins” (historical account 437). since gentle chastisements had not worked to produce among colonists “effectual humiliation and reformation, hence the righteous and holy lord is necessitated to draw for this smarting rod of the vile and brutish heathen, who indeed have been a very scourge unto new england, especially the jurisdiction of massachusetts” (437-8). deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 30 elsewhere, gookin is more ambivalent in his inscription of christian converts into the puritan providential scheme. j. patrick cesarini's account of the interconnections between gookin's empiricism and providentialism highlights the complexities of his thought concerning the exceptional position of “praying indians.” in his historical account, gookin writes the active presence of native allies into the historical record of metacom's war, in ways that caused the book to be refused publication in 1677. as cesarini points out, he presents the hostility of settlers as the justification for native mistrust and, in some cases, defection to unconverted communities (492). indeed, gookin claims that the “praying towns” were at one point during the war offered as a kind of human shield or “wall of defence [sic] about the greatest part of the colony of massachusetts” both as evidence of the fidelity and loyalty of the inhabitants and their desire to “take off the animosity and displeasure that they perceived was enkindled in some english against them” (historical account, 436). he then takes the opportunity to observe that the english could have avoided much of the suffering of the war if only they had embraced converted natives as their full allies. at its most radical, gookin's writing portrays the “praying indians” as victims of what cesarini calls “a puritan colony unable to control itself – either politically or spiritually” (500). this view leads gookin then to propose a dramatic reversal of the providential role played by puritans and “praying indians” respectively: in order to test the authenticity of their conversion, god has transformed the settler community into a scourge of indigenous converts. this is a radical subversion of the providential scheme in which, as cesarini explains, “the indians were considered the objects, the special instruments, of god's agency, but the english alone were god's subjects. god spoke through the indians, but he never spoke to them” (497 original emphases). the perception that the settlers may be in need of reminders of god's disfavor was not, as cesarini notes, confined to gookin; contemporaries like increase mather saw metacom's war as a providential sign of the colonists' sinful backsliding and so called for a general renewal of the covenant that joins all members of all new england churches with each other and with god. gookin claims that his “primary appeal on behalf of the converts was to remind colonial authorities that they were bound by their covenants to deal justly with them” (cesarini 506). here then is a further “exceptionalization” of christian natives: they were english subjects but denied the protections of that status; they were members of the puritan covenant but they were denied the rights of membership.6 even such a sympathetic commentator as daniel gookin transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 31 admits as much, in a striking use of typological rhetoric to express his providentialism. describing one of the “praying towns”—okommakamesit—he writes: “this town doth join so near to the english of marlborough, that it was spoken of david in type, and our lord jesus christ, the antitype, under his shadow ye shall rejoice: but the indians here do not much rejoice in the english men's shadow; who do so overtop them in their number of people, stocks of cattle, &c. that the indians do not greatly flourish, or delight in their station at present” (historical collections 45).7 by failing to answer the biblical promise (“spoken … in type”) of flourishing in the shadow of the “godly,” the “indians” fail to answer (in the antitype) the exceptionalist promise of the new england mission. the symbolic promise symbolized by david and fulfilled by the coming of the messiah has not been fulfilled by the promise of the converts' delivery into a new dispensation. they are excluded from the divine destiny of the new england colonies by biblical authority, which gookin interestingly spatializes. thus, even converted “indians” can never become sufficiently converted to participate fully in the exceptionalist colonial mission and so can never possess the full rights that attach to a puritan subject of the english crown. there is no doubt that converted natives submitted formally to the sovereignty of the colonial government and hence to the crown. neal salisbury traces the events that led the massachusett sachem cutshamekin to submit formally to the massachusetts bay government in 1644, in a move designed to protect his standing among his people but that instead opened his community to the influence of missionaries, which soon challenged his authority. salisbury remarks, “the massachusett thereby became the first indians in new england to enter a new legal status, one in which they were neither independent nor assimilated into white society” (1974, 36). four years later, the massachusetts general court, at the session held on 4 november, announced that two ministers would be sent each year to preach in native communities because of the fact that “divers of them [indians] are become subjects to the english, and have engaged themselves to be willing and ready to understand the law of god” (shurtleff, 178). daniel gookin, in his historical collections of the indians in new england, explains that “the reason, why the english government is concerned with the indians' affairs in point of rule and order, is because all those praying indians in massachusetts colony did long since, before they began to worship god, actually and solemnly submit themselves unto the jurisdiction and government of the english in the massachusetts, as the records do declare” (39). and in his “notes on the nipmuc indian reservation at hassanamesit,” quoting from the deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 32 massachusetts bay records (mbr, 30:146), thomas lewis doughton highlights the moment in may 1668 when nipmuc sagamores formally “submitted” to english colonial authority, which is worth quoting at length: the humble submission and subjection of the native indians sagamores and people of the nipmucks inhabiting within the bounds of the patttens [sic] of massachusetts and near adjoining unto the english towns so-called of mendon and marlboroug[h] we the inhabitants of mongunkachogok chaubunkongkomuk asukodnogest kesapusgus wabuhquoshish and the adjacent parts of nipmuk being convinced of our great sinns & how good it is to turn unto the lord and be his servants by praying or calling upon his name ... do give up ourselves to god ... we finding by experience how good it is to live under laws & good government and how much we need the protection of the english. we doe freely out of our own motion and voluntary choyce do submit our selves to the government of massachusetts (n.p.). despite this symbolic and material “subjection” to the crown, in the course of the war, “praying indians” were denied their fundamental rights as english subjects. the order for their removal was passed by the general court in boston in october 1675; survivors were permitted to return to the mainland in may 1676. the notion that an entire community can be deemed a security risk is a recurrent theme in american history, but this settler logic reaches back into the colonial heritage, and produces the enduring image of the threatening unassimilated “indian.” that the people could be removed to deer island so efficiently was the consequence of their earlier confinement to so-called “praying towns” – notably natick, from which everyone was removed to deer island. in the 1647 tract, “day breaking if not the sun rising of the gospel with the indians of new england,” john eliot describes the missionary effort to persuade the massachusetts general court to establish a separate town for converted natives (9, 27). the request came from native leaders and, as scholars such as jean o'brien have noted, represented one strategy by which native communities attempted to retain some formal title to what land they could claim, as well as allowing native participation in political and legal matters. however, as she goes on to explain in relation to natick specifically: the commonwealth elaborated a special judicial mechanism for indians when transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 33 daniel gookin was appointed as superintendent of indians in 1656. the system gookin implemented followed the precedents of the submission agreements and praying town codes, while creating a structure of indian magistrates operating under the ultimate supervision of the english. there was to be no mistaking who gained ultimate power. (dispossession by degrees, 50) and, in the course of the war, towns such as this became effective prisons for converted native people. interestingly, in his account of the establishment of the “praying towns”, daniel gookin cites two reasons why objections to the grant of land are invalid. the first and foremost is “forasmuch as it was all their native country and propriety, before the english came into america; the answer is ready: first, that the english claim right to their land, by patent from our king” (historical collections 39). gookin implicitly draws on the doctrine of vacuum domicilium but explicitly links the right to land with the sovereignty of the english crown. there is a contradiction here: if land is rightfully granted to his subjects through the sovereign power of the english king then, as english subjects, christian natives should not need to justify their claim to the land. and yet they do. it is here that gookin captures the paradox of indigenous exceptionalism, the consequences of which are formulated so clearly by mark rifkin: the knowledge of the prior presence and continuing existence of indigenous peoples in now-'domestic' space ... enters settler law as the difficulty of legitimizing the state's jurisdiction over native peoples. the attendant series of logical and normative confusions, contradictions, and crises generated by this problem leads to the legal and administrative construction of a state of exception for native peoples. (177) movement, stasis, and the state of exception the internment of the inhabitants of the fourteen “praying towns” was not a sudden move on the part of the colonial authorities but a process: the culmination of the erosion of the sovereign native freedom of movement that intensified during the period of the war. starting in 1675, in a process of ever-increasing confinement and immobilization, these native people were first prohibited from leaving their villages, and then were removed from their homes to deer island in boston harbor, where many perished of hunger, disease, and exposure. in june 1675 all the deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 34 “praying indians” in new england were relocated to five towns; in october 1675 the general court removed the people to two camps: one on long island, the other a larger camp on deer island—including, as i remarked earlier, the entire population of natick (clark 22). on 5 may 1676, the general court ordered the removal of the native people confined at the long island camp to english garrisons, where they were to stay on pain of death (shurtleff 86). granted, the detention of the “praying indians” took place in the context of the most vicious conflict ever fought on american soil. in the fourteen months between june 1675 and august 1676 more than half the settler towns were destroyed, according to jill lepore's account, pushing english settlement back to the coast, and coming within only a few miles of boston.8 thousands of native people died, many of starvation or disease, and later many were sold into slavery in the west indies. the session held on 9 july 1675, where gookin was present, voted to repeal the law allowing licensed persons to sell to “any indian or indians, not in hostility wth us, pouder, shott, lead, guns, hand gunnes, rapier blades, swords, &c” (shurtleff, 45). in the august 1675 session the massachusetts council ordered all converted natives to be confined to “praying towns” and, according to gookin's report of the court records, a series of further constraints on native mobility was imposed: hunting in the woods was prohibited, as was entertaining “any strange indians,” and a limit was set of one mile from their “dwellings” unless accompanied by english persons (historical account 450). this issue of native “dwellings” is supplemented by the court's assertion that “the places of the indians’ residence are, natick, punquapog, nashobah, wamesit and hassanamesit. and if there be any that belong to other places, they are to repair to some one of these” (historical account 451). this proclamation defines “indianness” according to the occupation of space, constraining indigenous identity to specific spaces and enforcing through the threat of death the identification of place with “indianness.” for a native person to be “out of place” would be to become a “not-indian” or a “strange indian” who can be killed with impunity because such a person has no ontology within this exceptional scheme, once they are located outside the circumscribed paradoxical space of “the christian indian.” the provision for enforcing these orders was death, for which native people found outside their designated place would be to blame. in this way, the exercise of the sovereignty of transmotion – which so clearly subverts the immobility of the state of exception – was effectively deemed a capital offence. native people could move between towns only with the transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 35 express authorization of the general court and the confinement of christian natives was further intensified during the following legislative session, on 13 october 1675, when the massachusetts council ordered that christian indians be forcibly removed to deer island. this is the opening article of the session: “whereas not wthstanding the councils former prohibition of all indians coming to, or remayning in, the toune of boston, wee finde that still there remajnes ground of feare that, vnless more effectuall care be taken, wee may be exposed to mischiefe by some of that barbarous crew, or any strangers, not of our nation, by the coming into or residing in the toune of boston, this court doeth therefore order”… and eight separate orders follow (shurtleff 47). firstly, that no one will “entertain or countenance” any “indian” under penalty of treason; secondly, guards will prevent the entry of any “indian” into boston and armed guards will accompany any “indian” allowed access and those who are “employed upon any message or business” of the council will be taken directly to the governor and by him be “disposed of & secured during their necessary stay for the dispatch of their business,” while no other “indian” will permitted to stay in the town “unless in prison”; thirdly, any unguarded “indian” could be lawfully “secured” by any person; fourthly, that the military are instructed to be alert for the approach of canoes; fifthly, that the charles town ferry is prohibited from allowing any “indian” to disembark unless accompanied by an armed guard; sixthly, that any person may lawfully “apprehend and secure” any “indian” approaching the town; seventhly, and i want to quote this order in full: that account be taken of all straingers who are not his majestjes subjects, and that they remajne not in toune vnless security be given for their fidelity, and that none be admitted but vpon the like security, and that no master of any vessell bring in any wthout acquainting the gouernor therewith, & presenting their persons in order to their examination, who, if vpon their examination can give no good account of their business, and security for their good behaviour, shall be sent to prison vnless they doe forth with depart (shurtleff 47). the final order in this list of constraints on native mobility specified that no inhabitant of boston could lawfully entertain “any stranger” in their house, under pain of any penalty the court might see fit to impose (shurtleff, 46-7). i have quoted the seventh order in full because, again, it formally if implicitly, excludes converted natives from the category of “his majesty's subjects.” in the state of exception, subject native people were rendered immobile by these deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 36 orders and those that specified the condition of capital punishment under which detainees were interned. the court record states: whereas this court haue, for weighty reasons, placed sundry indians (that haue subjected to our goumt) vpon some islands for their and our security,- it is ordered, that none of the sajd indians shall presume to goe off the sajd islands voluntarily, vpon pajne of death; and it shallbe [sic] laufull for the english to destroy those that they shall finde stragling off from the sajd places of theire confinement, vnlesse taken of by order from authorjty, and vnder an english guard. and it is further ordered, that if any person or persons shall presume to take, steale, or carry away either man, woeman, or child of the sajd indians, off from any the sajd islands where they are placed, wthout order from the generall court or council, he or they shall be accounted breakers of the capitall law printed & published against man stealing; and this order to be forthuith posted and published. the whole court being mett, it is ordered, that the country tresurer take care for ye provission of those indians that are sent doune to deare island, so as to pvent their perishing by any extremity that they may be put vnto for want of absolute necessaries, and for that end he is to appoint meet persons to vissit [sic] them from time to time (shurtleff 64). the effects of this confinement are described by gookin as follows: “by this order … the poor christian indians were reduced to great sufferings, being hindered from their hunting and looking after their cattle, swine, and getting in their corn, or laboring among the english to get clothes, and many other ways incommoded also, were daily exposed to be slain or imprisoned, if at any time they were found without their limits” (historical account 451). and even while acknowledging the severe sufferings and the brutal conditions of deer island, the court enforced the detention of christian natives with the threat of summary execution. at the end of december 1675, gookin accompanied john eliot on a visit to the island. in his account of this visit he reflects that i observed in all my visits to them, that they carried themselves patiently, humbly, and piously, without murmuring or complaining against the english for their sufferings, (which were not few), for they lived chiefly upon clams and shell-fish, that they digged out of the sand, at low water; the island was bleak and cold, their transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 37 wigwams poor and mean, their clothes few and thin; some little corn they had of their own, which the council ordered to be fetched from their plantations, and conveyed to them by little and little; also a boat and man was appointed to look after them. (historical account 485-86) the paradoxical rhetoric of the exception the tone of gookin's account is apologetic; he explains parenthetically that the council was obliged to take these measures “to quiet the people” (451) but rhetorically he is caught between a sympathetic view of the native right to freedom of movement—the sovereignty of transmotion—and the impact of settler violence against all indigenous people, including “praying indians.” indeed, he attempts to navigate the complex position of native communities that are acknowledged as sovereign nations, on the one hand, and domestic combatants, on the other. he cites the opinion of the council that restrictions on native mobility are necessary because the hostile tribes act “contrary to the practice of civil nations” (450). trapped physically and rhetorically between the status of “civil nations” and hostile subject peoples, gookin's communities of “praying indians” were exceptionally marked for forced removal, immobilization, and summary execution should they exercise the right to transmotion. rendered “strangers” in their traditional lands, but at the same time subjects of the crown before the representatives of which they rhetorically prostrate themselves, “praying indians” were placed in the exceptional rhetorical position of being “out of place” wherever they were placed. being “out of place” for any native person, who could not justify being in the place where (s)he was apprehended, was treated severely. for example, in the same session of the court, “two indians, one an old man named mannapaugh, & mannanesit, a young man, his sonn, pretending themselues to belong to vncas, being found at chelmsford, where the haystacke was fired, giving no reason of their coming & staying here, was judged to be spyes, and ordered to be sent away by the treasurer” (shurtleff 58). this phrase, “to be sent away by the treasurer,” was a euphemism for being sold out of the colony to the west indies as a slave. and here we have perhaps the most scandalous exemption from the protections of law suffered by the native peoples of new england during this conflict—the selling into slavery of loyal “indians,” who had no real part in the conflict. as jill lepore explains, a dramatic case was that of metacom's son. when metacom's wife and 9-year-old son were apprehended, they were imprisoned in deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 38 boston while the court debated the child's fate. contradictory scriptural passages were invoked to determine whether or not the child should be executed: on the one hand, the injunction that the crimes of the father should not be visited upon the child and, on the other hand, biblical examples where children grow up to be the scourge of future generations. after eight months delay, the boy was sent into exile – sold and shipped to barbados or jamaica. as lepore notes, the legality of enslaving this child was debated but the legality of enslaving native subjects of the english crown, interpreting them instead as sovereign enemy combatants, was not debated. indeed, as she observes: “this ambiguity, over whether indian peoples are sovereign or subjected, would lie at the heart of indian-white relations in the colonies and later the union, until the u.s. supreme court ruling in cherokee nation v. georgia in 1831, in which john marshall would assign indians the unique status of 'domestic dependent nations'” (164). this contradictory and ambivalent condition – the subjected sovereign subject – represents agamben's state of exception as the situation in which the rule of law is exceptionally suspended in an act that validates in its very exercise the sovereignty of the power that suspends the law. in this case, the general court of massachusetts, threatened in its very existence by metacom's resistance, asserted its sovereignty over communities of converted natives by first accepting their formal subjection to english rule and then exempting those native subjects from the protections of english law. the denial of such protections through the suspension of english sovereign law makes this internment an illustrative instance of agamben's state of exception. according to agamben, exemption from the law through the intervention of a sovereign power confirms that power's sovereignty and transcendence of law by the act of creating the exception. though this exception is enacted as being itself exceptional, agamben points out that in fact such exceptions prove the rule of sovereign power: “the paradox of sovereignty consists in the fact the sovereign is, at the same time, outside and inside the juridical order. … the sovereign, having the legal power to suspend the validity of the law, legally places himself outside the law” (homo sacer 15).9 for example, gookin recorded joseph tuckapawill's remarks when he and his family were offered hospitality by english friends of john eliot before they were sent to deer island: … i am greatly distressed this day on every side; the english have taken away some of my estate, my corn, cattle, my plough, cart, chain, and other goods [tuckapawill explained]. the enemy indians have also taken a part of what i had; and the wicked transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 39 indians mock and scoff at me, saying ‘now what is become of your praying to god?’ the english also censure me, and say i am a hypocrite. in this distress i have no where to look, but up to god in heaven to help me; now my dear wife and eldest son are (through english threatening) run away, and i fear will perish in the woods for want of food; also my aged mother is lost; and all this doth greatly aggravate my grief. but yet i desire to look up to god in christ jesus, in whom alone is my help ... i never did join with them against the english. indeed, they solicited me, but i utterly denied and refused it. i thought within myself, it is better to die than to fight against the church of christ. (qtd. doughton, n.p.) here we see the space of the exception at its most brutal. immobilized juridically so he has no recourse to either english or native justice (both steal from him with impunity), caught discursively between the categories of native and english, and confronting the prospect of internment at the hands of his fellow english subjects and covenant members, john tuckapawill is left with only the thought of death. he has no other place to go. the losses experienced by exceptional “praying indians” like tuckapawill are suggested by michael clark who, in his introduction to the eliot tracts, describes the profound changes undergone by converted native people: the shift to permanent residence versus a seminomadic [sic] lifestyle, the need for european farming techniques to make the permanently cultivated fields productive, corollary changes in gender roles and generational expectations regarding children and the elderly, and new british names, clothes, and hairstyles, ... name only the most obvious examples of how life changed for the indians who moved into the praying towns. (18) to these factors neal salisbury adds those that were the indirect consequence of environmental changes. for example, the scarcity of bear's grease prevented its use on skin and hair, while furs required for clothing and the construction of wigwams were inaccessible (1974, 34). harold w. van lonkhuyzen, in his “reappraisal of the praying indians,” makes the same point about changing material lifeways but takes this further to observe the ways in which these changes are related to profound shifts in tribal ontology: so the increasing reliance on domesticated animals produced an alteration in relations with animals and animal spirit masters (412), the building of fences changed attitudes towards property, land, and the earth; the influence of heteropatriarchy deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 40 disrupted gender and social roles; and education, especially reading, “altered the converted indians' cognitive appreciation of the world” (413). these transformations, for christian natives like tuckapawill, were the consequences of their choice to live within the territorial jurisdiction of new england and to accept the sovereignty of the english crown. and yet they were imprisoned in murderous conditions because they remained “indians” despite their religious conversion and cultural assimilation. why? salisbury shows convincingly that while the “praying towns” may have seemed to be in transition to a state of full assimilation into english culture, the greatest opposition to the towns came from those settlers in closest proximity to them, revealing that full integration was never, in fact, on the colonial agenda (1974, 41-42). the experience of the “praying indians” exposes the fact that race, and white supremacy specifically, underpins the settler-colonial state of exception.10 the general court record reports multiple cases where the “wrong kind of indian” was inadvertently sold into slavery – because all native people looked alike to english eyes. those who could not be sold were indistinguishable from those who could; the enemy was indistinguishable from the ally. as the court reflected, “it being difficult to discern between friends & foes ... this court doth order and appoint that ... such [indians] as are not [abroad] are forthwith to return to their respective stations, as also such as are sojourning within any of our towns excepting only those who are constant dwellers in english houses” (quoted o'brien, dispossession by degrees 70; mass archive, 30: 315, 1689/90). the only way to protect friendly natives was to imprison them. the bodily markers of difference operated only to distinguish “white” from “red,” not to signify degrees of political and cultural allegiance. gookin, in his historical account, is only one of many proponents of the view that internment on deer island was a good thing for converted native people because confinement offered protection from violently hostile settlers (485). jean o'brien explains that the term “friend indians,” to signify allies, was agreed between the english and the mohawks who had been raiding “praying indians” since the 1660s. she describes how “[t]heir negotiations centered on the problem of how to tell the difference between the two” (dispossession by degrees 65). mohawks, thinking militarily, would ask: “why would 'friend indians' require 'stockadoes' for protection? 'friend indians' resided 'in ye woods,' not barricaded within a fortress in the shadow of english settlements” (65); in contrast, english thinking was in terms of allies and the council specified four towns where “friends” lived: natick, punkapoag, hassanamisco, and wamesit. o'brien notes that “these indian transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 41 settlements carried english implications about boundaries, and the sedentary organization of town activities,” unlike the mohawk who had different ideas about where friends and allies would be located (dispossession by degrees 66). in discursive terms, the category of the “indian,” to which enemies and allies of the english alike were subject, reduced all native people to the cultural binaries of civilization versus savagery. in these terms, all “indians” were “savages” and of necessity excluded from the exceptional destiny of english america. placed under erasure as native yet un-erasable as christians, the rhetorical or categorical immobility of the exception to which christian natives were subject can be seen as the symbolic counterpoint to their material confinement – in praying towns, in english garrisons, on deer island and long island – and in the continuing restrictions on indigenous mobility, on native transmotion, imposed in the aftermath of metacom's war. conclusion: transmotion, survivance, and the lessons of deer island harold van lonkhuyzen highlights the profound consequences of immobilization or what he calls the increasing “sedentarism” (412) of the new england tribes during this period, a tendency that was accelerated under the influence of missionaries like john eliot: “sedentarism impeded mobility and disrupted traditional subsistence cycles of food gathering and production” (412). in addition to changing usages of the land through the abandonment of indigenous forms of agriculture—and the changing material lifeways to which this gave rise—converted natives experienced changes in their ontological orientation to the world. among the examples that van lonkhuyzen offers is fences, the impact of which he traces directly to missionary influence: “the fences eliot encouraged the natick men to build simply could not be integrated into the indians' traditional ethos but instead required and simultaneously reinforced a new one. many other bands never made the significant change in behavior and cognitive understanding such enclosures necessitated. fences went unbuilt; those that were, were not maintained” (413). we might recall here stone columbus' proclamation: “the notion of sovereignty is not tied to the earth, sovereignty is neither fence nor feathers” (heirs of columbus 67). the new tribal nation imagined at point assinika is aligned with a vision of borderless sovereignty that exceeds but does not deny territorial sovereignty: stone columbus continues, “the essence of sovereignty is imaginative, an original tribal trope, communal and spiritual, an idea that is more than metes and bounds in treaties” (67). immobilization in place, secured by the discourse of exceptionalism, deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 42 works to oppose the sovereignty of transmotion. many scholars have addressed the ironic outcomes of the acculturative efforts of native people in this period; the effort to adapt english social, judicial, and cultural structures to traditional tribal practices in the interests of maintaining claims to land, but which resulted in losses in terms of land and cultural practices, and sovereignty over both. in the aftermath of the war, those survivors who escaped enslavement were sequestrated in the four remaining “praying towns” that salisbury describes as “no longer havens for those making conscious commitments to christianity; they were reservations for an entire native population” (1974, 54). reserved and exceptional, the indigenous inhabitants of towns like natick found, in the decades following the war, that the material necessities of traditional tribal life became increasingly scarce (such as deer and timber); in the 1680s the first white settlers arrived on the natick reserve; and van lonkhuyzen ventures to guess that the practice of communal habitation was abandoned around 1700 (424). over the following fifty years or so, whites came to occupy all the offices of town government, native languages fell into disuse, and rights to common land were vested in family inheritance rather than communal membership (van lonkhuyzen 423427). in the state of exception, converted natives were immobilized discursively and territorially in place; while bounded and fenced this space was not quarantined from the material impacts of the wider settler-colonial environment. consequently, the capacity of these native communities to create the conditions for an inheritable estate, a fundamental aspect of survivance, were compromised (though not destroyed) along with the denial of imaginative freedoms that constitute the sovereignty of transmotion. the legacy of this history then is twofold: insight into the discursive workings of settler colonialism and the possibilities for indigenous resistance highlighted by vizenor's concept of “transmotion”: “that sense of native motion and ... active presence, [which] is sui generis sovereignty” (fugitive poses 15). the liminal discursive position of “exceptional” native people during metacom's war was materialized or symbolized by, but also enabled, their detention on deer island and elsewhere. the very denial of indigenous mobility highlights its crucial importance in the structure of settler colonialism. as niigonwedom sinclair notes in the essay cited at the beginning of this essay, transmotion in vizenor's anishinaabe conception “is the practical combination of perception and expression, thought and action, imagination and motion. … transmotion is not about giving up tribal identities, knowledges, and beliefs when you leave transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 43 the imaginative world, but bringing them into being. … it is this movement between imaginative and 'real' worlds that brings sovereignty into being” (145). it is perhaps to historical events such as metacom's war that vizenor responds in his emphasis on the symbolic importance of mobility as a fundamental aspect of native sovereignty, an emphasis that characterizes the imaginative and discursive sovereignty asserted by the constitution of the white earth nation. an emphasis on issues of territorial treaty sovereignty risks the stasis of the exceptional, liminal figure of the “indian”—as the fate of the deer island “indians” shows. in contrast, transmotion, an indigenous understanding of mobility that brings together discursive and territorial practices of sovereignty makes possible a native-specific, “sui generis” sovereignty. notes 1. patrick wolfe describes settler colonialism as a structure that works in two dimensions: “negatively, it strives for the dissolution of native societies. positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base” (388). here, i focus on the negative dimension of settler colonialism as it works to erase not only physical but also conceptual traces of prior native presence. 2. i am suggesting that the internment of native communities on deer island in 1675-76 is an early colonial instance of what became the federally imposed native “enclaves” that vizenor references, for example, in wordarrows as reservations (82), and in chair of tears where the museum enclaves (115) that exhibit native subjects contrast with actual natives who are, significantly, “museums in motion” (116, emphasis added), and in earthdivers where he describes how “[t]he curse of racism rules the ruinous institutions and federal enclaves where tribal people are contained” (34). 3. in view of vizenor's comprehensive critique of the term “indian,” throughout i have used the term “praying indians” where it is used in the documentary record but the terms “converted natives” and “christian natives” in my own usage. 4. on the erasure of native people from the discourse of modernity in general and the colonial new england discourse of nation-building in particular, see jean o'brien, firsting and lasting: writing indians out of existence in new england (2010). 5. see john easton, “a relation of the indian war” (1675) in a narrative of the causes which led to philip's indian war of 1675 and 1676, ed. franklin b. hough, 1-31. see also neal salisbury's introduction to his edition of mary rowlandson's the sovereignty and goodness of god, and yasuhide kawashima's compelling account of the aggressive extension of legal jurisdiction by plymouth colony, which shifted discursive relations between settlers and indigenous peoples in the direction of war, in igniting king philip's war (2001). 6. on the central discursive importance of the federal covenant to proto-national identity, see sacvan bercovitch, the puritan origins of the american self (1975). 7. in reference to settler opposition to the establishment of praying towns, salisbury observes: “the most intransigent opposition came from the residents of marlborough, whose conflict with the praying town of okommakamesit, immediately adjoining, persisted into king philip's war” deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 44 (1974, 40). 8. edward randolph was sent to new england as an emissary of king james ii to report on the extent of the losses occasioned by the conflict. in 1685 he reported: “no advantage but many disadvantages have arisen to the english by the warre, for about 600 men have been slaine, and 12 captains, most of them brave and stout persons and of loyal principles, whilest the church members had liberty to stay at home and not hazard their persons in the wildernesse. the losse to the english in the severall colonies, in their habitations and stock, is reckoned to amount to [£]150,000/ there having been about 1200 houses burned, 8000 head of cattle, great and small, killed, and many thousand bushels of wheat, pease and other grain burned (of which the massachusets colony hath not been damnifyed one third part, the great losse falling upon new plymouth and connecticot colonies) and upward of 3000 indians men women and children destroyed, who if well managed would have been very serviceable to the english, which makes all manner of labour dear” (460). benjamin trumbull, in his history of connecticut (1818; i. 351) notes that “all the buildings in narraganset, from providence to stonington, a tract of about 50 miles, were burned, or otherwise destroyed” (editorial note; gookin, historical account, 437n). 9. see mark rifkin's essay in which he offers a revision of agamben's concept of the state of exception from three perspectives: “the persistent inside/outside tropology he uses to address the exception, specifically the ways it serves as a metaphor divorced from territoriality; the notion of ‘bare life’ as the basis of the exception, especially the individualizing ways that he uses that concept; and the implicit depiction of sovereignty as a self-confident exercise of authority free from anxiety over the legitimacy of state actions” (90). 10. we might recall here samson occom's similar recognition at the end of his short narrative of my life (1768) that although he exercised imaginative transmotion, moving between mohegan and english cultural worlds, still he was confronted with the daily racism of white supremacy. occom concludes, “i must say, i believe it is because i am a poor indian. i can't help that god has made me so; i did not make myself so.–” (collected writings, 58). works cited agamben, giorgio. homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. trans. daniel heller-roazen. stanford: stanford university press, 1998. print. ----. state of exception. trans. kevin attell. chicago: university of chicago press, 2005. print. bercovitch, sacvan. the puritan origins of the american self. new haven & london: yale university press, 1975. print. byrd, jodi. the transit of empire. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011. carlson, david j. “trickster hermeneutics and the postindian reader: gerald vizenor’s constitutional praxis.” studies in american indian literatures 23. 4 (winter, 2011): 1347. print. cesarini, j. patrick. “'what has become of your praying to god?': daniel gookin's troubled history of king philip's war.” early american literature, 44. 3 (2009): 489-515. print. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 45 clark, michael p. ed. the eliot tracts, with letters from john eliot to thomas thorowgood and richard baxter. westport, ct: praeger, 2003. print. doughton, thomas lewis. “notes on the nipmuc indian reservation at hassanamesit or hassanamisco and the nipmuc people of hassanamesit, later grafton, massachusetts.” 1990, 1997. indian history and genealogy. web. 28 may 2012. ms held at the indian and colonial research center, old mystic, ct. easton, john. a narrative of the causes which led to philip's indian war of 1675 and 1676. ed. franklin b. hough. albany: j. munsell, 1858. university of pittsburgh library system. web. 28 may 2012. eliot, john. day breaking if not the sun rising of the gospel with the indians of new england. 1647. rpt. new york: joseph sabin, 1865. print. gookin, daniel. historical collections of the indians in new england. of their several nations, numbers, customs, manners, religion and government, before the english planted there. 1792. 1st ed. vol. 1, 1st series collections of the mass. hist. soc. rpt. new york: arno press, 1972. print. ----. an historical account of the doings and sufferings of the christian indians in new england, in the years 1675, 1676, 1677. impartially drawn by one well acquainted with that affair, and presented unto the right honourable the corporation residing in london, appointed by the king's most excellent majesty for promoting the gospel among the indians in america. archaeologia americana. transactions and collections of the american antiquarian society. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1836. vol. 2. 423-534. print. kawashima, yasuhide. igniting king philip's war: the john sassamon murder trial. lawrence: university press of kansas, 2001. print. lepore, jill. the name of war: king philip's war and the origins of american identity. new york: knopf, 1999. print. madsen, deborah l. “preface: tragic wisdom and survivance.” joelle rostkowsi, conversations with remarkable native americans. albany: state university of new york press, 2012, xi-xviii. print. mather, cotton. the wonders of the invisible world. observations as well historical as theological, upon the nature, the number, and the operations of the devils. deborah l. madsen “the sovereignty of transmotion” 46 (1693). ed. reiner smolinski. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2011. zea ebooks. book 4. web 28 may 2012. o'brien, jean. dispossession by degrees: indian land and identity in natick, massachusetts cambridge, ma: cambridge university press, 1997. print. ----. firsting and lasting: writing indians out of existence in new england. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2010. print. occom, samson. the collected writings of samson occom, mohegan: literature and leadership in eighteenth-century native america. ed. joanna brooks. new york & oxford: oxford university press, 2006. print. randolph, edward. “the causes and results of king philip's war (1685).” in american history told by contemporaries. ed. albert bushnell hart. new york, 1898. vol. 1, 458-60. internet archive. web. 28 may 2012. rifkin, mark. “the frontier as (movable) space of exception.” settler colonial studies, 4. 2 (2014): 176-180. print. ----. “indigenizing agamben: rethinking sovereignty in light of the 'peculiar' status of native peoples.” cultural critique, 73. (fall 2009): 88-124. print. salisbury, neal. “red puritans: the 'praying indians of massachusetts bay and john eliot.” the william and mary quarterly, third series, 31. 1 (jan. 1974): 27-54. print. ----. ed. the sovereignty and goodness of god by mary rowlandson with related documents. boston: bedford books, 1997. print. schedler, christopher. “wiindigoo sovereignty and native transmotion in gerald vizenor’s bearheart.” studies in american indian literatures, 23. 3 (fall 2011): 34-68. print. schmitt, carl. political theology. four chapters on the concept of sovereignty (1922). trans. g. schwab, chicago: university of chicago press, 2005. print. shurtleff, nathaniel b. records of the governor and company of the massachusetts bay in new england, vol. v, 1674-1686. boston: william white, 1854. print. sinclair, niigonwedom james. “a sovereignty of transmotion: imagination and the ‘real,’ gerald vizenor, and native literary nationalism.” stories through theories/theories through stories: native american storytelling & critique. eds. gordon henry jr. et al. east lansing, mi: michigan state university press, 2009, 23-58. print. snyder, michael. “gerald's game: postindian subjectivity in vizenor's interior landscapes.” transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 47 gerald vizenor: texts and contexts, ed. deborah l. madsen & a. robert lee. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2010, 46-66. print. van lonkhuyzen, harold w. “a reappraisal of the praying indians: acculturation, conversion, and identity at natick, massachusetts, 1646-1730.” the new england quarterly, 63. 3 (sept. 1990): 396-428. print. vinx, lars. “carl schmitt.” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (winter 2014 edition), ed. edward n. zalta, url = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/schmitt/>. vizenor, gerald. earthdivers: tribal narratives on mixed descent. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1981. print. ----. the everlasting sky: new voices from the people named the chippewa. new york: crowell-collier press, london: collier-macmillan, 1972. print. ----. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1998. print. ----. heirs of columbus. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, 1991. print. ----. interior landscapes: autobiographical myths and metaphors. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1990. print. ----. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1994. print. ----. wordarrows: native states of literary sovereignty. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2003. print. vizenor, gerald and others. “the constitution of the white earth nation.” gerald vizenor: texts and contexts, ed. deborah l. madsen & a. robert lee. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2010, 290-306. print. wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research, 8. 4 (2006): 387-409. print. microsoft word martinez-falquina.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 114 nancy e. van deusen. global indios: the indigenous struggle for justice in sixteenth-century spain. durham and london: duke university press, 2015. 336 pp. https://www.dukeupress.edu/global-indios we often tend to think that globalization is the sign of our own times, the key to characterize the contemporary world in contrast to earlier historical periods. nancy e. van deusen’s global indios makes us reconsider this assumption with its interesting analysis of the play between the global and the local in sixteenth-century castile. the aim of this volume, as the author makes clear from the beginning, is to give voice to the voiceless, more particularly the indigenous people who were imported as slaves into sixteenth-century castile from america. as part of the massive inter-american forced migration in the period—at least 650,000 indigenous people were victims of the lucrative transatlantic indigenous slave trade that started in the 1490s—van deusen discovers that more than two thousand indios reached the spanish kingdom of castile. after charles v’s new laws were passed in 1542 stating that indios from the spanish domains were free and could no longer be enslaved, and due to ambivalence and loopholes in the understanding and application of the law, a number of indigenous men and women decided to initiate lawsuits in order to acquire a piece of paper from the spanish courts— la casa de la contratación or the council of the indies—saying that they were free vassals. many of them became what van deusen calls “trans-imperial” subjects with complicated identities (2) because of their forced crossing of spanish-portuguese borders. this is the side of the story that the author is set out to tell by studying the varied cases of 184 indio litigants between 1530 and 1585, and as she does so, she calls the readers’ attention to the process of construction of these and other identity-related borders. van deusen goes beyond the master narrative of the invasion period by focusing on the survivors rather than on the often studied disintegration and extermination of the indios. she is not particularly concerned with heroes either, although she acknowledges the role of bartolomé de las casas as well as of heroic indigenous individuals like hatuey, enriquillo or manco inca yupanqui (18). she focuses instead on the stories of litigants, studying their cases in detail for excerpts of narrative that she then reconstructs in order to offer a wider view on the several thousand indio slaves living in castile and how they made sense of themselves as they endured bondage. because of the way she constantly emphasizes dialogues between america and castile, the global and the local, the past and the present, her reflections on the scale of human bondage and the contradictions and meanings of slavery go beyond the sixteenth century spanish context to acquire a much wider and contemporary relevance. one of the expressed objectives of the text is to recognise the multiplicity and complexity of indios, “to argue against the sameness of those individuals called indios” (28). as van deusen explains, over the course of the sixteenth century, the term indio “referred to people from the east and west indies, china, the moluccas, india, brazil, hispaniola, mexico, and peru. […] from its inception, indio was a homogenizing label that constituted difference based on unequal power relations” (11). evoking arjun appadurai’s neologism ethnoscape, van deusen coins the term indioscape, which refers silvia martínez-falquina review of global indios 115 to the high mobility of indios and their lack of connection to a given place in order “to argue that indio identities were no longer spatially bound or culturally homogeneous, but rather transimperially present in the imaginations of those slaves and masters whose own ‘local’ experiences […] were mirrored against the experiences of other slaves and masters” (12). appropriately, she refers to how the notion of an indioscape includes both a sense of rootedness, “of belonging to places and cultures other than castile and in castile” (13), and rootedness, “or a distinct sense of time and space based on experiences of bondage and deracination” (13). the account of indios in this text underlines their mobile and dynamic nature and addresses their characteristic tensions between enslavement and vindication, deracination and newly formed connection, conquest and survival. the creation of indioness is understood as a series of global interactions which illuminate the process of construction and reformulation of self in relation to the other and it is precisely the dialogue between the local, transatlantic and global dimensions of indigenous slavery, which van deusen constantly emphasises, that contributes to an understanding of identity politics with a relevance beyond the period she analyses. in chapter 1 the author centers on the globalized castilian village of carmona, near seville, to explore “how the four parts of the world could inhabit carmona” (35). she studies the litigation suits of two indigenous women, who did not precisely embrace their transimperial identities but on the contrary, searched for a fixed definition as indias that would allow them to be free. village and imperial politics are at play here, and the chapter offers a good view on transculturation without resorting to this useful term. chapter 2 centers on the transition from free self to commodified object, the forced atlantic crossing of slaves, their entrance into castilian households and their reconnection into new communities of indios. van deusen’s study of this dynamics of mobility, disruption and reconfiguration, together with her account of several acts of litigation, offer a good perspective on the intricacies of bondage and the fine line between freedom and slavery. chapter 3 deals with the effects of the two royal inspections by gregorio lópez tóvar (1543) and hernán pérez de la fuente (1549) in seville. of special interest here is the account of the changes in the discourse on slavery and the new meaning of the word libertad (freedom). chapter 4 goes beyond the mere analysis of the narrative contents of documents or witness depositions and centers on the physical evidence used in the courtroom as an active site of power: bills of sale, travel documents, brands on the bodies of slaves, or the typology of witnesses are studied as what hayden white would call “plot elements” in the metanarrative of bondage (126). van deusen also comments on the relevance of the strong belief in “papereality” and the difficulty to revert it by means of oral testimony. in chapter 5 she centers on legal vocabulary—terms like naturaleza, rescate or just war—their relevance in the definition of indios, and the slaves’ attempts to revert them. chapter 6 studies the conventions, mainly physiognomic and linguistic, used to identify indios, and carefully examines the specific understanding of color in the sixteenth century. chapter 7 focuses on transimperial indios and deals with litigations related to three distinct imperial sites which van deusen characterizes as borderlands: the moluccas (today the maluku islands), the borderlands of brazil and río de la plata, and pegu (now called bagu, in myanmar). in this chapter we get a good view of the broad conceptualization of indios, the tenuous nature of colonialism due to limited dominion over those territories and people, and especially, the disputes over the meanings transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 116 of sovereignty. i have found the introduction and conclusion particularly clear and useful. these, together with the opening and closing chapters, are the parts of the book that will probably be more useful to readers who are interested in extrapolating some of van deusen’s theoretical conclusions to other periods or contexts, for it is there that we can find the key to the theoretical framework of the text, whereas chapters 2-6 are more focused on the detailed analysis of the period. van deusen adopts the methods used in microhistorical analyses, as she compares evidence from over one hundred litigation suits with other records “to access the global and local dimensions of slavery in individual lives” (14). part of her merit lies in the way she uses information from the litigation suits and an outstanding amount of records from local and imperial archives in spain and latin america, extracting the narrative fragments in all of them. she also draws on a number of scholars who have studied indigenous slavery. in fact, van deusen uses a rich variety of sources, which, apart from the extensive number of archives, includes a thorough bibliography of printed sources that covers the hispanic world as well as some colonial and postcolonial theories from the anglo-speaking world. i personally think the work might have benefitted from establishing some relations to us native american studies, which would have positively illuminated the definition of indianness. however, the author’s familiarity with references on slavery and indigeneity is wide-ranging and authoritative. as part of her analysis, van deusen offers a clear and pertinent discussion of relevant vocabulary: the definition, study and implications of “just war,” “rescate,” “naborías,” “naturaleza,” and others are particularly illuminating. of special relevance in this respect is the fact that she is never afraid of facing complexity or ambivalence; on the contrary, part of the strength of her work derives from the way she addresses them directly. as a result of this critical attitude, the reader can extract several particularly useful theoretical implications from the text: by examining the changes of the global movements in the local practices, and the changing way europeans looked at themselves and the world, van deusen offers a relevant view on the construction of the self in relation to the other; her attention to the constant complication of borders—geographical, like those between portugal and spain, or conceptual, like those between slavery and bondage—draws the reader’s attention to the constructed, interested nature of those and other borders or rhetorical markers of difference; her study of the journey into and out of slavery narrative counters the view of slavery as the natural order of things and emphasizes its process of construction. last but not least, her appreciation of the textual structure and logic of the cases, their storytelling frame, her interesting study of the struggle for control of representation and the relevance of positioning—indios vs. masters—and the perceptive view of the invention, re-creation and revision of history provide a very useful reflection on representation. needless to say, all of these are relevant issues which still require our critical attention at the beginning of the twenty-first century. van deusen is not only a skilled historian and critic, but also a talented story finder and teller. i especially value her effort at tracing and extracting previously hidden stories and giving them back to us organized as solid, at times even gripping narratives. for example, the preface tells the story of the slave catalina de velasco and her encounter with silvia martínez-falquina review of global indios 117 bartolomé de las casas, who identified her as an india from the spanish empire, after which she was freed. the anticipation that some stories of injustice could have a happy ending and the reflection on the complications of race definitions and relations makes the reader eager for more from the very beginning. the reading is especially gratifying when van deusen focuses on the different stories of indios and indias struggling for their freedom, as in the cases of beatriz and felipa. one of the very few imperfections that i can mention about this text is that, because of the author’s emphasis on her intention to give voice to the voiceless, i expected to hear more indios voices in the text, more quoted lines than the ones that are offered. in spite of this, it is obvious that van deusen’s narrative is the result of a careful job of research and reconstruction and its merit needs to be acknowledged. global indios will be of interest to scholars in the areas of legal history, 16th century history, and civil rights history. it will also be welcome in the field of indigenous and postcolonial studies for its view on the diaspora and its pertinent observations on the process of race and ethnicity construction. all in all, this is a necessary study, and it tells a story that still needed to be told. as we learn here, the indios’ talking-back voices were filtered and silenced, but that does not mean they were not there. their words, like van deusen surely proves with her own, “are not empty words” (29). silvia martínez-falquina, university of zaragoza, spain microsoft word gamily.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 166 stephen graham jones; ed. theodore c. van alst, jr. the faster redder road: the best unamerican stories of stephen graham jones. university of new mexico press, 2015. 408pp. http://www.unmpress.com/books.php?id=20000000006088 the best unamerican short stories. the subtitle streaks boldly across the book’s cover with a truck’s headlights in the distance, while the words and image hint at stephen graham jones’s underlying intention for his latest book—a journey into the unknown. thirty-five stories were chosen or excerpted from some of his most notable books, such as demon theory, all the beautiful sinners and the gospel of z. some of jones’s fans have struggled to categorize his work as purely horror, crime noir, sci-fi or native american literature, but this anthology eradicates those purist views and pushes his work into the mainstream. the introduction written by jones’s collaborator and editor, theodore c. van alst, jr., serves as a guide to the inner thoughts of a complex author. readers may be tempted to skip the introduction, but in the case of jones’s work, such a leap would be a mistake. van alst’s observations are critical to orient the newcomer before embarking on a wild ride through the pages. jones provides short commentaries about his craft and thoughts behind each story. however, his most revealing statement comes at the end of “how billy hanson destroyed the planet earth and everyone on it,” where he explains that the reason that he writes is to create awe and wonder within readers and leave them feeling connected. this anthology is a series of stories that explore human nature and serve as an indirect commentary on society. honesty is a critical element in this compilation, with its implication that the author is a kind of leveler, using his stories to expose the darkness within humanity. his work will appeal to almost any reader, whether diehard genre lover or literary purist. the tone and effortless writing style knit the collection into a cohesive body of work. jones’s strength lies in his ability to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, thus creating a tension that moves each story forward, often in unexpected ways. the detailed descriptions of small towns and places where jones lived or visited throughout his life provide a level of authenticity than can only be derived from firsthand experience. the dialogue, phrasing, and use of colloquialisms indigenous to the time period and location only draw the reader closer, making them feel as if they are passengers along for the ride. notable is his story, “rendezvous with sula prime,” where the main character, sam drinks coffee at a truck stop as he contemplates suicide, twenty years after his first wife’s death. a mysterious stranger, ted approaches him and draws him into a concurrent world connecting reality, suicide and hell. sam grapples with his sanity as he time travels alongside a shape shifting reptile to heal invisible lions and decide whether he will pay the tax to the ferryman or walk amongst the living. readers will be on the edge of their seats, confused between the normal and supernatural, and wondering what will happen next. but whether jones writes about the future or the end nanette gamily review of the faster redder road 167 of days, his stories beckon his readers like a siren’s song, inviting them to play beside him in a state of suspended disbelief. jones's writing is an exploration of people who live on the fringe of society. events lead his unwitting characters to a crossroads where their character and morality meet. on the surface, these individuals appear simple, but as each story unfolds, layers of complexity are revealed that, at times, test our sympathies. nowhere in the anthology is the reader’s compassion put to a greater test than in “interstate love affair,” a story about a serial killer who mercilessly kills women and dogs along interstate 10. told from a third person perspective, jones provides a gruesome, realistic view of a serial killer’s thoughts and actions, devoid of any of the romanticized elements prevalent in pop culture today. the reader may feel fascinated, frightened and repulsed all at once, yet they won’t find be able to stop turning the pages. much of the material is rooted in west texas, where jones, a boy of blackfeet descent, grew up facing small town values and native american stereotypes. within each story, innocuous events build to the point of eruption, leaving the reader in the aftermath to ask why. jones’s work cannot be characterized as purely native american literature. only four stories have overt native references, “lonegan’s luck,” “captivity narrative 109,” “discovering america,” and “rocket man.” however, one could argue that jones’ blackfeet heritage is softly tucked into the titles, scenery, dialogue and characters, making it impossible to separate the work from the author. in “captivity narrative 109” from bleed into me, an indian man, aiche, leaves his reservation to pawn a rifle. when a young girl and boy get into his truck, a simple mistake unfolds into a series of unplanned for consequences that reveal how much racial bias is woven into the fabric of society. the most disturbing element is not the racial prejudice. it is aiche’s deep seeded belief that he will be convicted for a crime simply because he is indian. jones is a reluctant autobiographer, leaving his readers to guess what personal history is reflected in his work. but in “discovering america,” some of the sources of his earlier stories become clear. whether it is lonegan, aicher or the boy referred to as chief in “rocket man,” each character experiences racial bias in everyday interactions. the prejudice becomes more explicit when jones describes his personal experiences when he worked the fields between florida and west texas one summer. he begins each paragraph with the phrase, “because i am indian” and tells about the wide-spread ignorance and racism that is pervasive in america today. one can only empathize with jones as he recounts how he was asked to identify animal tracks and perform a rain dance. humans. vampires. zombies. it doesn’t matter. jones’s stories hit the mark, taking the reader to a place where the dark and unadulterated parts of people can roam together freely. nanette gamily microsoft word 955-article text-5179-1-2-20201110.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) i editorial yes, you’re right, it’s about time! it feels like so much has been blamed on covid19 that it’s become a cliché, and we couldn’t even specifically point to a way in which the pandemic has slowed us down. we’re sure we’re not alone in saying that this last year has been busier than ever, though. is it an institutional thing? i mean they know where we are at every hour of the day, right…? anyway, we’re going to keep this really brief so that you can head straight for the good stuff. we’re really delighted to have worked with kai minosh pyle and danne jobin on this special issue devoted to transgender, two-spirit, and nonbinary indigenous literatures. they have brought together a fantastic line-up of authors and subject matter, which they introduce perfectly in their standalone introduction—so we won’t do a chapter breakdown here. we will, however, just note the one additional article in this issue. cassandra krauss’s analysis of david treuer’s prudence offers reading of the ways the novel collapses time and distance to examine the continuities of colonial violence in the context of international warfare. treating the novel as indigenous war/historical fiction, but exploring the ways treuer unpicks and unsettles generic convention, it makes, we believe, a strong intervention. as ever, our team of review editors have put together an exceptional list of reviews, and we are grateful as ever to all those who work with us behind the scenes to put the journal together and make the journal a valuable contribution to the field. this year, those people include the amazing speakers at the 42nd annual american indian workshop, organized by james mackay and held in collaboration with transmotion. the conference was a huge success—deeply thought provoking, moving, and great fun. there will be a standalone special issue in the not-distant future, and keep an eye out for announcements about further online events. in the meantime… enjoy! -- as a reminder to our readers, transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) ii two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ”about” section). david stirrup august 2021 david carlson theodore c. van alst james mackay bryn skibo-birney microsoft word editorial for full galley.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   i   editorial “canterbury,” announces the narrator of hotline healers, “was the start of my stories, the place where my parents met… and the actual place of my conception” (40). standing in for his cousin, almost gegaa browne, the narrator’s arrival at the university of kent to guest lecture at the invitation of professor robert ‘bricky’ lee, represents the briefest of forays into england—a country the author knows well. only in the heirs of columbus does the uk feature to any greater extent in gerald vizenor’s work, when filippa flowers appears in gravesend (also in kent) on her quest to find the remains of pocahontas. these two brief excursions to the country and indeed county of transmotion’s host university reveal only the most tenuous of connections between that site and the genesis of this journal’s inspiration. nevertheless, they fold canterbury, gravesend, and kent more generally, into the multiply storied world of vizenor’s fiction—part of a transnational landscape that threads connections between the lakes and woodlands of the midwestern usa, france, china, japan, and more. kent’s part in that world may be small, but as a node in the intellectual and physical odyssey of the vizenorian traveler, it has its own significance, taking the brunt of a parodic beating as its status as the seat of the anglican church is positively unsettled, and ironic home of homes to the narrator’s origins and thus, of course, to the narrative itself. the contributions to this, the second issue of transmotion, speak in a variety of ways to the broader theme of travel and transmotion, whether in terms of transport, (dis)location, intercultural influence and exchange, transitional and transformative space, or the broader arcs of globalization. so, in "‘by my heart’: gerald vizenor's almost ashore and bear island: the war at sugar point,’ molly mcglennen takes specific starting points in linguistic, historical, and geographic locations to analyze the conceptions of nationhood vizenor’s recent poetry constructs that, while forging a distinct—and distinctly anishinaabe—sense of nationhood, resists the hierarchical and dichotomous archetypes that term connotes. thus, she demonstrates a key unsettling in vizenor’s work of the binaries of ‘urban’ and ‘reservation’ community, showing ultimately that relocation does not necessary equate to dislocation. in “the columbian moment: overcoming globalization in vizenor’s the heirs of columbus,” david j. carlson moves beyond the nation, to consider the transnational nexus forged by and through the “columbian moment”—a moment that is increasingly, urgently, put under scrutiny through the recovery of indigenous histories. where carlson shines a light on an often-neglected novel, billy j. stratton introduces us to the vivid but under-appreciated poetry of nora marks dauenhauer in “‘carried in the arms of standing waves:’ the transmotional aesthetics of nora marks dauenhauer”. drawing aptly and invigoratingly on kim blaeser and vizenor’s own work on, and in, the haiku form, stratton’s article opens the lens on the “transmotional fidelity” between the tlingit aesthetic sensibility stratton discerns in dauenhauer’s poetry and the japanese zen poetic tradition. taking a lead from the deft transitions vizenor himself makes between different forms of writing and tones of discourse, we include a more reflective piece of non-fiction in each issue—work that, whether implicitly or more explicitly ruminates explores the nature of american indian writing, the place of native writers in the world, representations, transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   ii   landscapes, and any other theme that may catch our invited writer’s eye. in this issue, kim shuck’s poetic-road piece “going home,” provides just such a function. in it, shuck brings a variety of questions—from identity and community, through (mis)identification and expectation, to the importance of place whether “there” or elsewhere—to bear on the experience of taking a road trip from her san francisco home to the family homeland in oklahoma. an affective journey in space and memory, the road-trip—as all good roadtrips do—catalyzes meditation on the histories and geographies of here and now. in our final, creative piece, meanwhile, denise low offers a wildly funny parodic sketch of a reading by a certain anishinaabe intellectual in a certain well-known art gallery next to a certain bookshop in a certain city. why the evasive attempt to generate mystique? read the story to see spaces transform from 2d representations to actual spaces producing actual crows to irritate an audience already entranced and baffled by a speaker-comebear-in-waiting… curious? we hope so. -- transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ‘about’ section). david stirrup november 2015 james mackay david carlson laura adams weaver microsoft word brown.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   94   nelson, joshua b. progressive traditions: identity in cherokee literature and culture. norman: u of oklahoma p, 2014. 278 pp. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/1908/progressive%20traditions equal parts literary, cultural, social, and political analysis, progressive traditions is a full frontal assault on intellectual and political paradigms still problematically structured on a binary that pits tradition against modernity, resistance against acquiescence, conservativism against progressivism, nationalism against assimilation, and authenticity against rote performance. locating the study in debates between literary nationalists and cosmopolitanists that have defined native literary studies for over two decades, nelson claims that both schools fail to rigorously theorize the central terms of their analyses, and remain troublingly committed to centralized political/state authority (12-25). “if we look at traditionalism and assimilation [i.e. progressivism] as they play out within tribal groups,” nelson writes, “we can see that tradition is not an unadulterated force of unalterable conservatism nor is assimilation one of unrestrained avant-garde progress, but that both are oriented toward the support of community cohesion, collective values, and basically making people’s lives better” (26). placing discussions of cherokee cultural practices and beliefs in conversation with the cultural theories of pierre bourdieu, nelson identifies in writings by catherine brown, elias boudinot, john ross, and sequoyah guess, flexible “dispositions,” “principled practices,” and shared values that regulate change while also maintaining and innovating tradition (26, 32). these include deep commitments to local, distributed authority; consensus decision-making, open deliberation, and a respect for dissent; values of diversity, multiplicity, and pluralism; and ethics of hospitality and inclusivity, to name a few. taken together, they suggest for nelson a larger cherokee disposition toward what he terms “indigenous anarchism,” or “a pluralist, community-centered political philosophy that looks to practices that preceded and surpass the nation-state as ways of helping cherokee people prosper” (4). with this anarchic frame as its foundation, progressive traditions is interested less in defining or identifying what counts as “progress” or “tradition” than in exploring the “surprising range of strategies … principles and practices”—some recognizable, some anomalous—through which cherokees “[combine] old and new ways of doing things as they employ traditional adaptive strategies to resolve cultural and historical problems” (xiii). in six chapters, divided into two sections, nelson puts this approach to work, exploring everything from religious practices and community ethics of cooperation and hospitality to philosophical debates over political authority and conflicting measures by which cherokees have reckoned identity, community, and belonging across history. “part i: we worship” historicizes cherokee spiritual traditions and the multiple affiliations and associations that have characterized religious and political life in the nation. with this history as context, nelson turns to brown’s and guess’s work, identifying in both what he terms “cherokee sacred humanism” (40) and a “religiously minded pluralist pragmatism” (112) rooted in practices of worship, prayer, education, and community edification, and in principles of cooperation, hospitality, and respect geared toward establishing and maintaining “right relations” between cherokee and noncherokee peoples. “part ii: we argue” highlights the movement from clan based social relations and town politics toward increasing nationalization in order to reframe conflicts between john ross and elias boudinot (and cherokee history more broadly) from narratives inevitable factional conflict to an ongoing philosophical debate about centralized social and political kirby brown review of progressive traditions     95   authority in the cherokee state, and its increasingly coercive restrictions on local governance, consensus decision making, and modes and mechanisms for open dissent. highlighting the very real stakes involved in the historical encounter—the massive loss of life attending removal, reprisal killings attending relocation, and factional strife continuing into the present—nelson turns in the conclusion to practices of hospitality, adoption, and political naturalization as “anarchic” dispositions better equipped to address the often toxic and seemingly intractable politics of race, identity, community, and nation evident in cherokee country today. drawing on a wide range of anthropological, sociological, historical, and local archives of knowledge, nelson provides some of the most nuanced readings of cherokee identity and culture in literature that i’m familiar with. part of this novelty is due to his methodological focus on dispositions and practices rather than on definitive political positions, cultural markers of authenticity, racial identities, or theoretical “models” delimiting what does or doesn’t constitute either “tradition” or “progressivism.” for instance, though scholars have broadly understood catherine brown’s memoir as an assimilationist text, nelson argues in chapter two that brown’s text demonstrates a cherokee disposition toward “gaining knowledge” in its investigation of christian theology and practice, and its commitment to community vetting as a potential “solution” to the “problem” of assimilation and removal. contextualized within a larger history of women finding agency and asserting political influence through educational and religious institutions, as well as a cherokee communities openly soliciting religious missions as a strategy to establish educational infrastructure, nelson convincingly argues that brown’s “improvised” synthesis of christian theology with cherokee practices of dreaming, open air worship and prayer, fasting, and purification, evidences an explicitly gendered, distinctly cherokee practice of christianity. combined with the text’s subtle, rhetorical indictments of us hypocrisy, the memoir stands not as a tragic artifact of assimilationist pressures but the record of a young woman committed to the survivance of her immediate and larger relations as cherokees and christians (107-09). through close readings of language, plot, character, and imagery, nelson turns in chapter three to guess’s 1992 science fiction novel kholvn as a model of dispositions and practices through which contemporary social and political factionalism in the nation might be more productively mediated. situated within the context of the revitalization of the keetoowah society and stomp dance communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nelson highlights the “improvisational” innovations the society worked through to develop a membership policy capable of reckoning stomp and christian theologies and practices while also maintaining their opposition to allotment and coercive political authority (114). in its valuing of multiple spaces of worship and concepts of faith, commitments to cooperation and hospitality, understanding of knowledge as bounded and contingent, and view of difference and multiplicity as resources rather than liabilities, a related “deliberate,” “moderated pluralism” structures guess’s novel (120-21). advancing “an ethic of democratic, populist—that is, indigenist anarchist—cooperative confederation” as long-standing and valued dispositions in cherokee social and political history, nelson positions novel as a model to negotiate political conflicts over identity, politics, and community in cherokee country today (131-32). having laid the groundwork for a more “compassionate,” inclusive, and responsive theoretical and political praxis, nelson then turns his dispositional approach explicitly to questions of cherokee governance represented in writings by john ross and elias boudinot. vehemently resisting understandings of 19th century political conflict as a narrative of ross patriots versus transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   96   treaty party traitors or resistant full-blood traditionalists against self-interested, assimilationist, mixed-blood elites, nelson instead situates the conflict in a growing divide over the course cherokee governance and the location of social and political authority. chapter four chronicles the movement away from localized consensus politics in autonomous towns toward the assumption of social and political authority vested in an increasingly centralized cherokee nation-state. though critical of how such moves subsumed local interests and intimacies into “the national” and circumscribed open deliberation and political dissent, nelson cautions against reactive condemnations of nationalization altogether, emphasizing the carefully-considered, “volitional” responses to intensifying removal pressures, rooted initially in cherokee practices of consultative deliberation and caucusing (143, 145), that was (and is) “attended by both successes and failures as it drew from, improved on, and betrayed traditions” (138). from this perspective, it becomes possible to see figures like ross and boudinot—and the constituencies, positions, and trajectories they have come to represent—in more complicated (and compassionate?) terms. chapter five engages in precisely this project, situating both as cherokee nationalists committed to a qualified program of acculturation and social change who came to hold strongly divergent views on the course of cherokee governance, and who at times acted unilaterally according to those convictions. lest the analysis descend into a relativist apologia for both men, nelson turns again to cherokee dispositions of consensus, deliberation, persuasion, and dissent to explain the implications of both the treaty party’s subversion of popular will and ross’s—and the state’s— violent suppression of dissent. what emerges through nelson’s nuanced readings of boudinot’s and ross’s work is a complex story of a people attempting to navigate tradition and innovation amid impossible circumstances that often forced them into positions and conflicts in which they might not have otherwise engaged. the stakes of this reorientation from rupture, loss, and victimization to continuity-through-dispositional innovation is clear: “[a]lthough political centralization aspired to defend the nation’s physical and cultural boundaries, its attendant strategies for establishing hegemony ran counter to the irrepressible dispositions of deliberation and dissent … there is no better way to start bringing cherokee people together than by learning how to hear them differ” (166). attending to and navigating difference is the subject of the book’s concluding chapter and nelson’s explicit foray into contemporary cherokee politics (231). framed by both the political context of the disenfranchisement of cherokee freedmen and his unsuccessful attempt to navigate the bureaucratic and legal machinery of the indian child welfare act, “strangers and kin” looks to concepts of hospitality, adoption, and naturalization as dispositional tools through which to mediate acute crises over identity and political belonging. noting the longstanding conflicts between governors and the governed, between the people and the state, as they play out in cherokee and other political communities, nelson suggests that a return to dispositional values of local governance, consensus politics, and a healthy valuing of multiplicity and dissent would enable cherokee people to re-envision “a more compassionate” nationhood “built upon the participatory consensus of the people” and the recognition and restoration (political and otherwise) of “definite, organic historical connections tying … excluded others to cherokee people” (231, 204). at issue is not simply the question of whether or not to “recognize” freedmen as citizens or how best to account for the interests of cherokee children against those of cherokee state and federal bureaucracies. rather, the question for nelson seems to be how cherokees might reckon contemporary conflicts with “traditionally progressive” dispositions that locate authority, identity, and belonging in ostensibly more flexible and responsive social kirby brown review of progressive traditions     97   structures independent of the state (i.e. family, town, religious community, benevolent organizations, etc.). though left implicit, nelson here is calling for political project to re-vision cherokee governance legible as a centralized, sovereign political authority in external affairs with settler-states and other tribal nations, while distributing social authority, expanding political participation, and guaranteeing mechanisms for dissent and local self-determination in internal matters. this political project is also tied to an ethical project to honestly and critically reckon contemporary understandings of identity, family, citizenship, and community belonging (often tethered to settler logics of race, patriarchy, and hierarchical, coercive authority) with the multiple forms and strategies of association practiced throughout cherokee history. while i’m deeply attracted to such work, i’m less clear on how it might play out “on the ground” so speak. it remains to be seen whether and to what extent “indigenous anarchism” can function practically to address these tensions, and in what conditions it might more productively be applied. for instance, how does consensus governance work in a tribal-nation with an economically-diverse and geographically-dispersed citizenship exceeding 300,000 and growing, who are often deeply divided on questions of race, identity, culture, and political authority like the cherokee or navajo nations? how does it help us makes sense of the emergence of stateendorsed “satellite” communities of citizens forming in urban centers across the country with recent efforts within the fourteen county area to restrict political participation of non-resident citizens and reduce the presumed influence of diasporic communities in local political affairs? as this example suggests, power and coercion aren’t always the product of a cherokee leviathan in the same way that consensus politics and local authority don’t always guarantee the dispositions “indigenous anarchism” advocates. at a more prosaic level, considering the largely conservative, christian influence on cherokee politics at both local and state levels, it’s also doubtful whether the language of “anarchism” would find purchase outside of academic and intellectual circles. while useful as a theoretical framework to engage the important and necessary work of critiquing the limitations and blindspots of other intellectual and political paradigms, exchanging the language of anarchism for bourdieu’s “dispositions” or nelson’s own “principled practices” might prove more useful in the long run. put differently, as much as i share nelson’s suspicion of centralized authority and value the dispositions he excavates with such nuance and precision, i hesitate to claim that state power (or related concepts of nationhood and sovereignty) aren’t both necessary and useful for cherokee peoples. whether we like it or not, states negotiate with states, and nations, not peoples, are invested with sovereignty, however complicated and problematic those relations are. in a world where native children can be removed from their families against the wishes of both their communities and the express designs of federal legislation; where indigenous trust lands and resources are still routinely stolen as a function of unrelated legislation; where native women remain vulnerable in a settler legal system where “justice” is denied them at every turn; and where native bodies are routinely gunned down by racist, overly-zealous, or simply incompetent police forces suggests the continuing need for a strong political authority of some kind. on the other hand, indigenous nation-states are quite as capable as their settler counterparts of coercion and violence, whether in the rash of disenrollment and disenfranchisement campaigns tied to profit and material resources; in citizenship and residential laws that privilege racial identity and blood quantum over kinship, family, and cultural/local ties; or in privileging state priorities over and above those of local communities. as progressive traditions makes plainly evident, these transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015)   98   are neither neat nor easy questions to work through. without question, we need to theorize these relationships further within both tribally-specific and trans-indigenous contexts, and hold tribal states accountable to the people in the same measure that we hold settler states accountable to the trust relationship. i am convinced that part of doing so will involve “refashion[ing] contemporary communities in healthy alignment” with the dispositions, principles, practices, and values explored throughout the text as a means to better negotiate difference (204) and revalue “historic and organic connections” across race, religion, culture, geography, politics, and family (215). by advancing a tribally-specific conversation about formalizing these dispositions into a social and political program not exclusively tied to or moderated by cherokee state power, nelson goes a long way to realize both projects. that it ties this project to an ethical mandate ultimately designed to extricate cherokee communities from settler-logics of elimination by drawing our attention to the multiple forms and strategies of association practiced throughout cherokee history situates progressive traditions alongside some of the more exciting, innovative, and provocative work currently taking place in the field. i fully expect it to find a wide readership among cherokees as well as native/indigenous scholars alike. kirby brown (cherokee nation), university of oregon microsoft word ami.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 209 review essay: esther g. belin, jeff berglund, connie a. jacobs, anthony k. webster, editors. the diné reader: an anthology of navajo literature. foreword by sherwin bitsui. university of arizona press, 2021. 409 pp. isbn: 9780816540990. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-dine-reader strands of wool hung from my loom – łighai, dootł’izh, łitsoi, łizhiin – like unfinished sentences awaiting its final composition. the arrival of the diné reader in the mail caught my bluebird’s song mid-chorus. my husband handed these voices to me as i wrote another sentence in wool. i paused to receive the words, thoughts, images, histories, and hopes of navajo writers, young and old, many known to me, some whose homes are still within the navajo nation and others who are replanted far from our mountains, ones who were birthed with our language on their tongue and others who dream of it. i then placed them alongside my loom and continued to listen to dólii’s song. once i finished the woven crest of dólii’s head, i covered my loom with red material, gifted to me at a sing before covid closed our cage. i turned my attention from my writing in wool to the print on the pages. jinii of this compilation of diné poetry, short stories, essays, and novel excerpts preceded its arrival to our home in tsaile. the confirming news brought me back to my time as an associate instructor teaching native american literatures at the university of california, davis. in 2011, dr. inés hernández ávila (nez perce/tejana), who led an eager group of native american studies graduate students through their first-year experiences teaching composition at the university level, approved my syllabus for a class on navajo literatures. commencing that semester, i began introducing undergraduate students from a range of ethnicities to the works of diné writers like gracey boyne, esther belin, della frank, sherwin bitsui, luci tapahonso, roberta d. joe, berenice levchuck, hershman john, irvin morris, and marley shebala. more christine ami review essay: the diné reader 210 intimately, i shared chapters written in wool by my nálí, ida mae mccabe, who taught them the metanarratives inherent to our cultural arts. these stories told to our weavings, pottery, baskets, leatherwork, and jewelry as they were given shape still serve as threads holding them together. łibá łibá ch'ilgo dootł'izh łibá łibá as i glimpsed over the table of contents, names of those voices from my time teaching navajo literatures undergraduate courses returned to visit by way of this anthology, forming what could be considered a stalk of the diné literary cannon. these stalk writers delve into the world of reconciling clashes of cultures, the memories of home, boarding school, and reservation life, the reemergence of traditional philosophies, stories, and songs, and, ultimately, the realities of life, death, and the unseen entities that guide us through this journey. it is this writing of life and death that caught my attention – not merely for my practices and studies of diné traditional sheep butchering nor for its clear affront of the diné “taboo” surrounding discussions of death amongst the living. rather, this anthology embraces death’s integral relationship to our cycle of life—of our corn, sheep, ways of knowing. grey cohoe’s (kinłichinii) “the promised visit” reveals natural and supernatural levels of death with doorways of cultural teachings, including that of sealed hogans. “within dinétah the people’s spirit remains strong” by laura tohe (tsé nahabiłnii) transports stories of near-death to highlight resilience in our existence. della frank (naakai dine’é), with her imagery of a corralled sheep ready for sale, reminds us of impending deaths of human and non-human alike in “i hate to see…” the most prominent overture of death is that of shonto begay (tódich’iinii), whose artwork also provides the cover image of this anthology. in “darkness at noon,” he canvases a solar eclipse experience from his youth. akin to many of the pieces in this collection, this story merges with my own memories, in particular that from 2017, sitting mid-day in a deafening silence, curtains closed, with my husband and a hungry newborn. as i read, i re-live the trepidation for the life that my husband and i had just brought into this world which was on the verge of ending. but just as the sun comes back to begay and to us, the diné reader reminds us to embrace the day and live with prayer, gratitude, and actions that will see us into the next world. łitso łibá ch'ilgo dootł'izh łibá łistso transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 211 a harvesting of new voices emerges from this stalk. notably, these new ears find their voices budding through english and creative writing m.f.a., m.a., and ph.d. programs. this demonstration in academic achievement answers the literary call to action made by joy harjo (muscogee) and gloria bird (spokane) to reinvent the enemy’s language: “many of us at the end of the century are using the ‘enemy language’ with which to tell our truths, to sing, to remember ourselves during these troubled times…but to speak, at whatever the cost, is to become empowered rather than victimized by destruction” (harjo 1998, 21). the youth included in this compilation attest to that empowerment by way of their dismembering and remembering of the english language into a rain cloud demanding its place in academia. as this new corn feasts on the rain which both encourages and challenges their growth, i hear the echoes of native american studies lectures, i share in their self-realizations of cultural gaps, and i celebrate their daring voices that contest trends in academia. they too speak of death. bojan louis (‘áshįįhí) sheds light on the death and violence inherently associated with decolonization. shinaaí, byron aspaas (táchii’nii) pushes past stagnant roles of victimization to reveal us as our own monsters. venaya yazzie (hooghanłání) calls for the death of feminism’s cling to our matriarchal way of understanding the world. y á g o d o o t ł ’ i z h in addition to the archetypical literary demonstrations within the anthology (poetry, essays, short stories, etc.), the text includes additional resources to assist the readers with cultural references, linear timelines, and analytical suggestions. one example is a re-printing of the “diné directional knowledge and symbolic associations” by harold carey jr. that postulates symbolic cultural contextualization present in many of the writings of this anthology. the “introduction” provides an exemplary demonstration of the literature review academic exercise, addressing key literary productions by diné people, rationale for this compilation, justification for its westernized linear format, and statement of sa’ah naagháí bik’eh hózhóón’s influence to the editing process. most of the selected 33 authors are introduced through interview excerpts, allowing readers to glimpse their world(s), influences, and words of advice for new generations of diné writers. the diné reader concludes with appendix-like “interventions” to address the systemic erasure of nonwhite voices and experiences within national and local curriculum designs (15). renowned diné historian, jennifer denetdale (tł’ogi), contributes a chronological portrait of diné political and literary events for diné and non-diné readers alike. michael thompson (myskoke creek), retired member of the christine ami review essay: the diné reader 212 navajo nation teacher education consortium, suggests pedagogical frameworks for instructors and intrigued minds wishing to contemplate the philosophical brilliance within these pages. shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thup i placed this tremendous exposition of diné voices aside, removed the red material covering my loom, picked up my baton, and carefully opened pockets of rain. it was time to digest—not only for this book review but also for the growth of my own creative thinking. “how should i evaluate this work as a diné academic, teacher, and mother, dólii?” i asked my bluebird as i started the feet of a flicker with whom dólii would soon be at war. “ah, yes—time to assess. don’t you remember the first time you made me?” dólii responded. “nálí hastiin told you i was beautiful, and he was so proud of you. nálí aszdaan agreed, smiling. and after she finished the dishes, she sat down next to you and told you that i looked like i had eaten a lot and i needed to go on a diet. then she told you that you needed to learn songs to keep working with birds to protect yourself. we are not mere blessings; we can be dangerous.” dump dump dump dump dump “yes, my angry birds with chubby bellies. i remember,” i giggled as i patted down a sentence of color with my comb. “how scared i was to bring that rug to their house for that critique! everyone celebrated my piece, proud that i was continuing the traditions. but i didn’t want celebration for mere continuation, i wanted to tell better stories with wool. my nálí lady, she was a weaver – prolific. showing her took courage and letting her know it was okay to help me be better made me stronger. with her critique, she provided me with cultural re-orientation and technical skills. and now look at you, dólii!” “you know what to do then. celebrate the accomplishments of this unique compilation of diné voices bound together by a group of individuals who have dedicated themselves to seeding new diné writers. what these writer and editors did took transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 213 courage, and their own people should make the strongest critique. consider where they overseeded and underweeded.” “i wonder about accusations of lateral oppression and cultural gate keeping that i may receive … we, as navajo writers and academics, want to create, publish, be read, we say we want to re-learn, re-member, re-vitalize but … are we ready to be reviewed by our own people in all its celebrations and critical feedback? it’s hard, but i learned from my nálí that not all criticism is a microor macroaggression of cultural bullying. more often than not, it is an undoing and rethreading of a misplaced line of wool to reconnect us with our traditional teachings.” “true… people will tell me that i have no place on this stalk nor on this loom. that i am from across the sea, brought here by way of a global market and through the dictation of non-native traders on the diné weaving aesthetic. and they are right—partially. but let them feel my songs early in the morning in the winter during yeii bi cheii. i’m more than just an acculturated style of writing with wool; i am even more than just a model for a flour bag. you have heard those songs, christine. so, embrace the critical feedback you receive and give. is that not the purpose of the engagement of sih hasin in our way of knowing according to sa’ah naagháí bik’eh hózhóón? if we don’t honestly self-assess, then how do we know that we have angry birds on our loom? now be careful, you’ve made my neighbor, the flicker, a bit heavy.” ppppppppppppppppppppp uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz i broke our silence by removing the batten from between the wefts. “the diné reader presents a formidable stalk of diné literature albeit without field. while each contribution is testament to re-inventing the enemy’s language, the overall text lacks incorporation of diné epistemological or methodological encompassing. moving beyond the kitsch, which overspins the living being of sa’ah naagháí bik’eh hózhóón into mere stages of ‘thinking,’ ‘planning,’ ‘living,’ and ‘reflecting,’ literary and cultural devices utilized at the presentation level of these voices may have provided an ontological pathway through which readers could breathe in diné ways of knowing – like the fourfold inhalation of pollen and air after a long morning’s prayer, or of smoke from a pipe during a blessing of our mountain bundles, or of the scent of metal and stone after receiving a new piece of jewelry.” christine ami review essay: the diné reader 214 “the editors declare their use of the paradigm of sa’ah naagháí bik’eh hózhóón in their individualized processes; just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there, christine.” “indeed, dólii. perhaps i superimpose my desire for a book like this to disorientate the reader like that of a good cleansing from a sweat. instead, the book opts for a westernized presentation in both mapping and linear timeline. and i understand; it makes the reader connected in terms of chronological influences, provides direct access to specific diné authors, and neatly organizes work behind writer interviews.” shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thup “what about the symbolic and physical maps? i felt it was an astute way to coherently taxonomize the imagery that readers will be exposed to in many of the writings.” “certainly, they do. predictably, the diné reader includes a physical map, indicating native nation borders, state lines, and other significant geographical identifiers. moreover, it embraces a symbolic map of the natural and supernatural geographies associated with sa’ah naagháí bik’eh hózhóón. however, the selected map, ‘diné directional knowledge and symbolic associations,’ is a north-oriented map—a westernized preference of presenting landscapes stemming from the age of exploration when ‘discoverers’ relied on the magnetic pull to the north to familiarize themselves. this north-oriented map sets a tone for accommodation (dare i say, colonization) through a westernized mind set—instead of welcoming the readers with a sun-oriented map that moves, breathes, and every winter, threatens to leave us.” “keep going. i think i am following you.” “for ceremonial practicing diné people, our ‘magnetic pull’ is to the sun. carey jr.’s diagram, while obliging, warrants a 90-degree rotation left—or if we are going shabikehgo—270 degrees sun-rotation-wise. this re-centering, as i tell my students, is more than turning a page. it changes our perspectives and opens us to the time immemorial ways of knowing that greets the sun and penetrates our prayers. if the diné reader proposes to engross readers to and by way of diné thought through creative writing, this would necessitate a change to their centering direction beyond the inclusion of excluded voices.” transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 215 “bíigah. in the same manner that baskets, pottery, or rugs are placed in our homes opening to the sun, you hope that this book, when it opens, allows sunbeams to enter us and that our experiences reading pull from that energy.” “aoo’. in this way, the readers (re)connect not just to the words on those pages but also to our diné ways of knowing. while the voices brought forth are remarkable and the endeavor embarked upon by the editors is enthralling, i challenge the diné reader to return to our philosophies of storytelling to engage in what cherokee storyteller marilou awiakta (1993) would refer to as a compass story that connects the stalk and corn to the roots and pollen.” dump dump dump dump dump “you sing of stalks, corn, and fields. tell me more about roots and pollen?” “dólii, you are paying attention! i thought you distracted by this flicker’s wingspan!” “wah!” “okay, then—the roots. while this text exemplifies re-inventing the enemy’s language, i wonder where are our stories written in wool, mud, sand, stars, paint, leather, silver, stones? the diné reader’s introduction opens with the impact of poetry as a medium for release of our people’s ‘imprisonment of the language’ following our introduction to boarding schools (4). but our stories have always been written. many of the 33 contributors reference these written forms of diné storytelling. and though many may no longer understand how to read those stories written in wool, mud, sand, stars, paint, leather, silver, stones, they are still very much alive, telling and receiving stories.” “i get it,” dólii responded. “they are the roots of this anthology.” “the introduction also claims that they wish to unearth forgotten and unrecognized diné writers, but the anthology itself sets out to pollenate new diné writers from within english and creative writing disciplines. what about other disciplines; what about those outside of academia? how do we hear their voices, which this anthology has weeded out, and plant their corn stalks in this same field? in this same manner, while there is a head nod to comics with tatum begay’s (naasht’ézhi tábąąhí) work at the silk christine ami review essay: the diné reader 216 of the corn, how do diné fine artists, cultural artists, journalists, blog writers, and script writers break soil in this field?” “well, christine, you are asking for a book that is a long as that flicker’s tail!” “i knew you were watching! not a long book—but a field of books, dólii.” ppppppppppppppppppp uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz “this field that you sing of, how many kinds of corn do you want to plant?” dólii asked as i pulled my baton out and prepared another sentence of color. “many! yellow, white, blue, red, and my favorite color of all, sweet corn. the “the” in the title presents a minor hiccup to that variety as “the” diné reader provides a superlative identifier which implies superiority and singularity. it is much the same read i give to paul zolbrod’s title: diné bahane’: the navajo creation story (1984) as compared to irvin morris’ (tábaahí) title from the glittering world: a navajo story (1997). both are creation stories—but one title demands the ultimate compilation, while the other welcomes its individuality within the field.” “now you are just nitpicking!” “am i? our words—spoken, written, molded, fired, woven, planted—they have meaning. our words are our medicine, directions, stories. the selection of the title for this compilation has a story; we just don’t know it. i hope that the future of the diné reader is a field of plurality, reflection, strength, and hope. just like you, dólii.” i picked up the strands hanging from my loom łighai, dootł’izh, łitsoi, łizhiin and finished my review with writing in wool. christine ami, diné college transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 217 works cited awiakta, marilou. selu: seeking the corn-mother’s wisdom. golden, colo.: fulcrum publishers, 1994. harjo, joy, and gloria bird. reinventing the enemies language: contemporary native women’s writing of north america. new york: w.w. norton & co, 1998. morris, irvin. from the glittering world: a navajo story. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1997. zolbrod, paul. diné bahané: the navajo creation story. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 1984. microsoft word galley main.docx transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016)     40   blackfish emily johnson there is a fish that lives in very deep, very cold rivers. their taste is strong, pungent, oily. they are caught in weighted traps that fall, then rest somewhere near the muddy bottom. the traps are left for days. in winter, when the tops of rivers freeze, blackfish push their plump bellies down into the mud, as far from the ice as they can get. they wait. they are never seen swimming in their rivers. they don't jump up into the air to break their egg sacks like salmon or to catch bugs like trout. people know they are there because they know they are there. when blackfish are hauled up in traps, they are motionless and then they are stored in buckets. 3, 5, 6, 7 blackfish can lay in the bottom of an average bucket. they lay there, belly down. they don't flop, they don't roll off, heaving, to one side. they don't fight the air. they press their plump bellies down on the bottom of the bucket, holding themselves in the fish kind of upright. i imagine that they imagine the top of the bucket covered with ice, the bottom covered with mud. blackfish can lay in the bottom of a bucket, sitting on a porch for months; no water, no mud, no food, no fish air. they lay there, on their bellies, still. but when brought back to their river, when held in their very deep, very cold water, when gently primed in the cups of two human hands, the blackfish heaves, its sides pulse, its head moves from side to side, and then, it swims away. my cousin told me about the time he tried studying blackfish for the science fair at school. it was spring. he put his blackfish trap down into the river and waited two days. he caught four blackfish. he placed these in his bucket which he placed in the back mud room of the house near the dog food. he had to wait until fall. i said you can eat blackfish, that their taste is strong, pungent, oily. you can, but you eat them raw, and you eat them head in. head in your mouth. it's as if you eat the blackfish while, at the same time, the blackfish swims to your belly. emily  johnson                                                                                                                                                        “blackfish”         41   my cousin didn't eat his spring caught blackfish. he wanted to study them. to open them. to see the guts, the bones that seem to dissolve with spit. he imagined blood and a heart and lungs. he wanted to pin the blackfish open, draw a picture, label parts, find out how they sit themselves upright in the bottom of buckets, why they never surface their rivers, how they come to life after months pressed into mud. he took one blackfish and held it in his hand. he didn't wake it. he took a knife, and he cut it. from anus to head, up the belly. but he didn't see lungs or guts or blood. he held the knife in his right hand, the blackfish in his left, but after the cut, he couldn't hold onto the fish. it dissolved in his hand, became a kind of thick, black, liquid goo. he tried to stop it from slipping between his fingers, but the blackfish goo got heavier as it dripped toward the floor and the whole mess of it slid off his palm, gathering in a puddle at his feet. he tried another. same thing. "if you cannot cut a blackfish open to look at its insides, can you study its insides?" he asked me. but he didn't give me time to answer. instead, he continued, "i couldn't cut another. i ate my last two blackfish. and i ate the blackfish that were sitting upright in my father's bucket, the ones he caught for feasting in late winter. emily, i ate 5 blackfish," he said. "good god," i said. no one eats 5 blackfish. you eat one, for health, but my cousin thought that if he ate alot of blackfish he could find out about the blackfish soul. about what they dream during the ice over. about their survival through the harshest conditions; laying in buckets in homes, away from the deep, cold habitat of river and mud. about their swim down our throats. he thought there was something the blackfish could teach him that he could, maybe, in turn, teach his family and friends and teacher at school. but the blackfish made him puke. it poured out of his mouth, swam over his tongue, that same thick, black liquid goo he felt slipping through his fingers. it pulled out of him, leaving him transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016)     42   feeling cleaner than before, but with a horrible taste in his mouth. he lay down, belly pressed to the floor. he couldn't move, so he fell asleep. he told me, "the blackfish are unstudyable. they exist to live in rivers, and buckets, and bellies. you cannot cut a blackfish. please, do not try. you cannot eat too many. trust me, don't. but, when the blackfish enters your dreams, you hold still and listen to what it says. it will tell you when to swim, head first into danger, it will tell you when to press your belly down wherever you are, and rest. it will tell you how to survive this world. it will tell you its secrets." microsoft word white.doc transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 132 chris andersen. “métis”: race, recognition, and the struggle for indigenous peoplehood. vancouver: university of british columbia press, 2014. 267 pp http://www.ubcpress.com/search/title_book.asp?bookid=299174387 métis writer chris andersen’s book “métis”: race recognition, and the struggle for indigenous peoplehood (2014) is a comprehensive analysis of colonial, racist interference in métis identity and self-identification. the political and historic foundations on which the métis nation is built, most notably the louis riel led resistances of 1869-70 and 1885, expansion west, and the encroachment on métis territories, are each vital parts of that self-identification, and nineteenth and twentieth century responses to processes of nation building in canada. rather than recognizing the métis as a people of this nation, however, the métis are imagined, by certain governmental policies and by the majority of mainstream canadians, to be all or any people who are of ‘indian’ and white european descent. debates in canada regarding métis identity are current and increasingly contentious, often centring on who, exactly, is métis. that definition matters, both in terms of the historical treatment of people and communities defined as mixed, and in terms of government policies today. andersen argues that those policies are predicated on racist categorizations, and calls for a definitive clarification over the political and cultural ambiguities surrounding the term métis. in short, he eschews the racialization that “encompasses the hierarchical processes through which races are produced and legitimized” (15). “métis” is an important book that intervenes in the misunderstandings, confusion, and lack of knowledge surrounding métis identity. andersen challenges canada’s colonial, institutionalized racism that has formed “the worldview for most canadians, who generally have only cursory knowledge of aboriginal histories and communities in general and the métis in particular” (30). he attributes the protracted misconstruction of métis identity, in part, to academic, scholarly imprecision and scholars’ failure to grasp, or explore, the prevalent misunderstanding of métis identity as mixed-race. andersen argues that many scholars “have seized upon” the historically ambiguous meanings of métis identity “as evidence of the “natural hybridity” of the métis” (43). in order to understand andersen’s analysis and perspective, it might be wise to reconsider the complex historic and contemporary governmental policies and legislation that defined métis identity and rights. foremost among these are the revisions and amendments to both the indian and manitoba acts. devised, at various stages, to define, assimilate, and displace first nations’ and métis peoples, these acts eroded métis rights, and eventually saw the people losing their status and their land. that situation lasted for more than a century, until section 35 of the constitution act (1982) made provision for recognition of the métis as aboriginal, alongside first nations and inuit peoples. even then the court baulked at defining the métis as a people and territory, too, is left undefined. the complexities of first nations identities are recognized by more nuanced categories (regarding status, treaty, and band membership) than are granted the métis in regard to culture and territory. partly in response to the developments instigated by section 35, the métis national council—formed in 1983 to represent the métis nation—convened in robin white review of métis 133 2002 and defined “métis” as “a person who self-identifies as métis, is distinct from other aboriginal peoples, is of historic métis nation ancestry and who is accepted by the métis nation.” the historic métis nation homeland is recognized to include manitoba, saskatchewan, alberta, british columbia, sections of ontario, the northwest territories, and the northern united states. in 2003, the mnc amended their identity criteria in order to incorporate the supreme court of canada’s judgement in the r. v. powley case. this was a seminal aboriginal rights case which debated the rights of two sault ste. marie, ontario hunters, the powleys – who self-identified as métis. as métis the men had legal authority to hunt without a license, but they had been arrested for killing a bull moose nevertheless. despite that, the supreme court judged that the two men could legally hunt, as métis, under the protection of section 35 of the constitution. this right had previously been interpreted, under the natural resources transfer agreement, to mean that hunting and fishing rights of “indians” did not include the métis. subsequently, the “powley test” was formulated to set parameters that would define métis authority to determine who was legally entitled to these rights, and therefore protected under section 35. the mnc amendments read, “self-identification as a member of a métis community, ancestral connection to historic métis community whose practices ground the right in question, acceptance by the modern community with continuity to the historic métis community” (métis registration guide). andersen objects to the “ethnic origin” questions asked on past and current canadian census forms, on the grounds that they do not make a distinction between national and racial concepts. canadian census forms have four questions in relation to selfidentification as first nations people, whether or not they are registered as status/nonstatus or treaty/non-treaty ‘indians’. the first query on the questionnaire asks the respondent to answer “id _q01: “are you an aboriginal person, that is, first nations, métis or inuit?” (statistics canada) if the respondent answers yes to self-identifying as first nations/indian, they are then asked if they are a member of a “first nation or indian band”. andersen points out those respondents “can conceivably self-identify as north american indian, métis, inuit, and as a member of a first nation/indian band, with or without reporting “status” as a registered indian” (79). the confusion fostered by these census questions is that they are, as andersen argues when referring specifically to the métis, administrative terms that fail by their very design because: “historical and contemporary distinctions […] have never been so neat or categorical” (80). andersen traces the history of canadian census taking and finds that from 1886—after riel’s hanging as a traitor—and for more than half a century, “métis communities remained administratively invisible as métis to official policy makers” (81). the ambiguity within government census categorizations is a result of exclusively classifying métis people as a race rather than as a nation for the purposes of assimilation into canadian nationalism, at the expense of the development of the métis nation. while andersen acknowledges a minority of scholarship that has examined “censuses as sites of political contestation,” he censures it for seldom looking “inside ‘the black box’ of the census field itself to explore the manner in which statistics are created” (166). andersen describes canadian governmental reasoning as being deeply flawed, primarily because it relies upon racial constructions and administrative classifications of the métis. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 134 if the métis are categorized as mixed race/hybrid, he asks, then what separates them from first nations people, who also intermixed with europeans, and lived in close proximity to métis communities? why, andersen wonders, is first nations indigeneity often considered to “purer than métis indigeneity”? (38) or, put another way, why aren’t all first nations people racially identified as ‘métis’. what is crucial in this judgement is the fact that the court passed into law a definition of métis peoples which was, in effect, based on a racialized colonial mandate; no real distinction was made between métis from the historical homelands and peoples of indian/non-indian descent. moreover, no political representation was made by, or sought from, the mnc. andersen quotes the supreme court’s powley ruling in its reference to métis mixedness: “the term “métis” refers to distinctive peoples who, in addition to their mixed ancestry, developed their own customs, way of life, and recognizable group identity separate from their indian or inuit and european forebears” (65; emphasis, andersen’s). this point is of extreme importance to andersen’s thesis, primarily because he questions the racialized logic that equates a mixed indigenous/european ancestry with claims to the “historical métis community” of the red river. ethnohistorical scholarship is also reproached by andersen for steadily incorporating powley’s logics as a rationalization for its own assumptions based on the racialization of the métis. (although he does note that latterly there have been scholars who have criticized the powley decision for misrepresenting the historical community relations of the métis (219).) when the supreme court recognized the métis community in the sault ste. marie region, it created increasing numbers of métis rights conflicts that it had set out to resolve. referencing statistic canada numbers, and calling the upper great lakes region of ontario a “political hot potato,” andersen reports that between 1996 and 2006 the “métis identity population” soared from 204,000 to almost 390,000” (83). andersen stresses that he does not criticise the powleys or their legal team for the supreme court’s decision in the powley case. what is problematic, he argues, is that the court reached its decision on a racialized mandate. andersen’s position is that the sault ste. marie métis “are not métis for the reasons the powley court says they are: their métis-ness stems from—can only stem from—their connections to the métis core of red river… not their mixedness and historical separateness from tribal communities” (150; emphasis, andersen’s). in her influential book “real” indians and others: mixed-blood urban native peoples and indigenous nationhood, the mi’kmaw scholar bonita lawrence traces métis history and the role that the canadian government had in excluding métis people from a collective indigeneity. lawrence criticizes the lack of understanding of the development of the diverse meanings and uses of the terms métis and mixed-blood, likening it to the homogenization of distinct identities of indigenous nations under the use of the term “indian.” she argues that the category “métis” summarizes disparate “historical experiences” under the fur trade, and that it also condenses the immense divergence among contemporary métis. lawrence explores the complexities of métis categorization and notes that since the constitution act of 1982, mixed-blood peoples are being “encouraged to join local métis organizations, whatever their ancestral indigenous robin white review of métis 135 heritage” (85). lawrence advocates caution in the protocol of naming any historical group of mixed-blood people as métis that suggests that they have continuously “selfidentified as such” (86). but she also believes that métis people “should be free to embrace their hybrid distinctiveness as ‘new peoples’ if they choose to,” considering the arbitrariness of colonial categorizations, including the legal category of “half-breed” that had been created during the signing of the numbered treaties (87). in restricting mnc membership in 2002, lawrence finds it striking that the council issued strong statements “distancing themselves from their former constituency, calling them “wannabees” (in much the same way that status indian organizations currently dismiss métis people)” (85). in response to lawrence’s work, which he describes as “justifiably lauded,” andersen remarks that her thesis is “not about métis self-identification per se,” but objects to her use of the terms métis and “half-breed” “more or less interchangeably” (56). andersen maintains that because of lawrence’s analysis of the canadian state’s historic definition of the term “half-breed” based on blood quantum and her epistemological correlation of the term with “métis,” that it is a “small step for her to dismiss differences between racialized and nationalist self-understandings” (57). while andersen does not disregard lawrence’s logic for contemporaneous métis self-identification, he does consider her arguments to be based on deeply embedded racialized concepts. he also sees lawrence’s cautious inclusiveness of self-identifying métis outside of the métis homeland, and her challenges to the restrictions implemented by the mnc for membership, as “normative” racialization (58). andersen does find that the mnc is inconsistent in its representation of the métis nation. he argues that politically, it “incompletely” represents a large number of people who self-identify as métis and are able to “trace their roots” to the métis historical homeland of the red river, but are “not members of the métis provincial organizations.” andersen maintains that some members, conversely, are “admitted to métis organizations under various racialized criteria” even though they “cannot trace their geologies back to red river” (213 n.21). at the same time, however, he defends the mnc when it is criticised for excluding particulars of nineteenth and twentieth century details in its national narrative, claiming that the métis nation’s memory is no more selective “than any other claims to nationhood, including canada itself.” indeed, but there are double standards applied here when andersen credits canada’s powerful claims to nationhood to its ability to “better hide their inconsistencies and ambiguities, and they often do so by shining a light on the apparent frailty of others” (130). the judicious reader may wonder if this question might also be applied to andersen’s argument for strictures against identification claims of those individuals and communities outside of the métis historic homeland? andersen takes a strong position on who has the right to claim a métis identity. in his introduction he states that, from his perspective, if a self-identifying individual or group “lacks a connection to the historical core in the red river region, it is not métis” (6). he also anticipates censure and possible charges against him of “red river myopia” and essentialism. andersen answers these charges by emphasizing that those who make claims to the identity of a “red river métis” are not “necessarily” required to “produce indigenous ancestors who physically lived in or, even, had ever been to red river” (18). transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 136 andersen, as does the mnc, recognizes kinship relations that tie métis, for example, in ontario, to red river métis, through a “people-based” examination of history that “reveals links and connections among these locales, as pre-existing kinship relations were cementing a broader fur trade community” (128). but he argues against the claims of self-identifying individuals and/or communities based solely on prior presence. that is, if there is an absence of consciousness as “métis” prior to métis nationalism, and no ancestral links to a red river regional core, then they do not, “necessarily,” have legitimacy as métis (128). quoting métis scholar olive dickason, andersen points out that she “pinned the birth of métis consciousness” on the unstable conflicts with white settlers who began to arrive in red river in 1812, “rather than on the upper great lakes fur trade, which catalyzed a mild awareness into conviction. from that point, the métis knew they were a distinct people with a way of life that was worth defending” (48). but dickason has also indicated that the history of métis people outside of red river is less well-known than the “better documented northwest” (24). there is a definite rigorousness in andersen’s views on indigenous individuals and communities excluded from claiming a métis identity, for which he makes “no apologies.” he writes that although there is sympathy from the métis for those ruled out of the indian act through its prohibitory requirements, the “category “métis” is not a soup kitchen for indigenous individuals and communities disenfranchised in various ways by the canadian state.” while recognizing the volatility of métis “citizenship codes” he maintains that they grew out of necessity in reaction to and a consequence of canada’s colonialism and “they deserve to be respected” (24). in andersen’s final chapter, he details the struggles of the labrador métis to define themselves, calling it a “case of (mis)recognition.” tracing an “evolving” claim to autonymity, andersen bitingly catalogues this evolution of self-identification: “labrador metis association/labrador metis nation/nunatukavut from inuit to metis to inuitmetis to nunatukavummiut” (196). but he overlooks the history of pan-tribal collaborative tactics formed in the 1970s in order to counter colonial disenfranchisement as a consequence of the indian act policies affecting non-status, mixed indigenous people, and the red river métis. the native council of canada (from which the mnc formed, seceding from the ncc after métis inclusion in the constitution) welcomed people of mixed descent and galvanized them into self-identifying as métis. labrador métis nation scholar, kristina fagan bidwell, recounts that mixed-blood people of labrador did not start to self-identify as métis until the 1970s, after the ncc’s métis president harry daniels “visited labrador to encourage the people to organize as a metis organization, and labrador metis delegates attended ncc national meetings” (130). she also points out that when the ncc was in negotiation with the federal government over métis rights in the constitution “a delegation of labrador metis was present at the talks” (130). fagan bidwell suggests that equal weight ought to be given to the standardization of métis identity and “an understanding of métis identity that is expansive, inclusive, and grounded in the experiences of those who call themselves métis” (133). “métis” is an erudite analysis of the present tensions, controversies, and conflicts over métis rights and identity. andersen comprehensively confronts the lack of knowledge robin white review of métis 137 and confusion amongst the mainstream population—and many indigenous peoples—of canada and opens up and broadens the discourse of who the people of the métis nation are, what being métis means, and where the boundaries between race and nation might be. andersen does not claim that there is an easy resolution to the discord rooted in canada’s colonial, racialized governmental policies. but it is disquieting that andersen does not delve more closely into disparate communities outside of the historical métis homeland and how the resultant divisiveness that has been the consequence of these policies evolved. as maria campbell writes: “i believe that one day, very soon, people will set aside their differences and come together as one. maybe not because we love one another, but because we will need each other to survive” (156-57). robin white, goldsmith’s college works cited métis registration guide. www.metisnation.ca web. 19 aug. 2015 statistics canada. http://www23.statcon.gc.ca/imdb-bmdi/instrument/3250q10vieng.htm lawrence, bonita, “real” indians and others: mixed-blood urban native peoples and indigenous nationhood. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2004. print. dickason, olive patricia. “from “one nation in the northeast to “new nation” in the northwest: a look at the emergence of the métis”, in the new peoples: being and becoming métis in north america, editors jacqueline petersen and jennifer s. h. brown. winnipeg, manitoba: university of manitoba press, 1985. print. fagan bidwell, kristina. “metis identity and literature”, in the oxford handbook of indigenous american literature. oxford, england: oxford university press, 2014. print. campbell, maria, halfbreed, lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1973. print. microsoft word arvin.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 99 hoʻomanawanui, kuʻualoha. voices of fire: reweaving the literary lei of pele and hiʻiaka. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2014. 312 pages, photographs, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/voices-of-fire kanaka maoli scholar kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui’s voices of fire powerfully analyzes the moʻolelo (stories, histories, narratives) of pele and hiʻiaka, two sister akua (goddesses) and kūpuna (ancestors) of the hawaiian nation. while pele and hiʻiaka are well-known as goddesses of the volcano (specifically the currently active volcano kīlauea on hawaiʻi island) and hula, respectively, most people only know small, distorted pieces of their stories, as recorded by nineteenth-century white folklorists such as nathaniel b. emerson. seeking to kahuli (overturn) settler colonial accounts like emerson’s, which hoʻomanawanui argues often “intentionally ignored, romanticized, infantilized, or vilified kanaka maoli intellectual history and cultural practices” (xxviii), voices of fire opens up a wealth of other, previously unanalyzed sources about pele and hiʻiaka, largely from serialized accounts published in hawaiʻi newspapers between 1860 and 1928, most written in ʻōlelo hawaiʻi, hawaiian language. pele and hiʻiaka have long been cherished figures for kanaka maoli, especially among practicioners of hula, as many dances are dedicated to and tell the stories of either or both of the pair. as hoʻomanawanui suggests, in their opposing natures—pele as a fiery, tempermental, and at times destructive force of nature, and hiʻiaka as pele’s beloved younger sister, a calmer force of new growth and regeneration—the goddesses suggest a model of balance, or pono (xxvii). voices of fire does not attempt to tell their definitive story, but instead emphasizes the hawaiian value of makawalu, or multiple perspectives, noting that different serialized versions were all treasured even when their narratives varied (xxxi, xl). thus, rather than seek one definitive version of the pele and hiʻiaka narrative, voices of fire masterfully shows that debates and divergences were honored by kanaka maoli authors. there are many revelations in hoʻomanawanui’s analysis, from her meditations on pele arriving to hawaiʻi from kahiki (an ancestral homeland) that links kanaka maoli ancestrally to tahiti and other parts of the pacific to the last chapter’s incorporation of contemporary kanaka maoli poetry about pele and hiʻiaka. overall, the book is attentive to the specific places the moʻolelo take place in, including puna on hawaiʻi island as a birthplace of hula (hiʻiaka learns hula from hōpoe, her ʻaikane—intimate friend and lover—and teaches pele) and kauaʻi island (where hiʻiaka must journey to complete a task at pele’s request). it is also attentive to the historical context of the moʻolelo’s publication, such as the political statements implied in their publication especially regarding the 1893 overthrow of the hawaiian monarchy, as well as to the relevance of the moʻolelo’s themes to contemporary kanaka maoli. voices of fire accomplishes the reclamation and revitalization of the pele and hiʻiaka moʻolelo brilliantly, and yet its contribution is much more than this already remarkable feat. as hoʻomanawanui notes, voices of fire is the “first book-length study of hawaiian literature” (xxviii), and it is certainly the first to put hawaiian literature in conversation with indigenous literary nationalism, as developed in indigenous and pacific studies fields by scholars including lisa brooks, scott lyons, robert warrior, alice te punga somerville and albert wendt, among many others. “what is a hawaiian literary tradition?” (xxxi) is one of the key questions the book maile arvin review of voices of fire 100 asks. in answering this question through the example of the varied, broad scope of the pele and hiʻiaka moʻolelo, the text covers an enormous amount of ground and is truly innovative in its the theoretical and rhetorical frameworks. in terms of coverage, for example, the book’s first chapter provides an extremely comprehensive but succinct overview of kanaka maoli history, which (unlike many conventional historical accounts of hawaiʻi) highlights the continuous existence of kanaka ʻōiwi (synonymous with kanaka maoli, native hawaiian) resistance to colonization through to the present day. this chapter deserves to become standard reading for any course teaching about hawaiʻi and the history of its colonization. in terms of theoretical innovation, a key contribution is the text’s insistence that moʻolelo are an important source of the kanaka maoli lāhui’s (nation’s) intellectual and political genealogy, and that the knowledge they contain are passed down to contemporary kanaka maoli mai ka pō mai, from the beginning of time to now, and mai nā kūpuna mai, from the ancestors to us (xxxii). in this way, hoʻomanawanui theorizes moʻolelo as an original and expansive kanaka maoli literary genre which functions as a kind of literary lei (garland of flowers), or lei palapala, as it interweaves oral and written histories together into a gift for a beloved one—namely, the kanaka maoli people (xxxix). the book deeply considers the ways that traditionally valued oral performances (including mele, or song, and hula) of moʻolelo influenced the ways moʻolelo were written down, after the introduction of the written word and printing by missionaries in the early nineteenth-century, especially in chapter 2. while acknowledging that printing was introduced as part of the missionary effort to convert and civilize kanaka maoli, hoʻomanawanui also argues that kanaka ʻōiwi quickly learned to use ka palapala (written literature) as a technology that could “save moʻolelo previously recorded only in memory—traditions, histories, genealogies, and related manaʻo [knowledge]—from extinction” (39). chapter 2 also introduces meiwi, or traditional poetic devices used in the hawaiian language, which hoʻomanawanui shows were important to the advent of a written hawaiian literary tradition and also aimed to perpetuate rather than replace moʻolelo haʻi waha (orature), especially through devices encouraging memorization. drawing on the work of hiapo perreira, noenoe silva, and mary kawena pukui, among other noted hawaiian studies scholars, hoʻomanawanui identifies over twenty meiwi, such as pīnaʻi (repetition of words, actions), kaona (veiled, poetic meaning), and ʻēkoʻa (opposites) (42-3). these devices then become important to the detailed analysis of the pele and hiʻiaka moʻolelo in the book’s later chapters. voices of fire itself productively challenges and disrupts the standard format of an academic book through the use of its own kinds of meiwi. the book opens and closes with pule, or prayers, printed on facing pages in hawaiian and english that follow kanaka maoli protocols around asking permission to enter a sacred place and to begin and close an event. in doing so, hoʻomanawanui frames the book as a space of reverence and santicity, akin to the space of a hula hālau (the space where a hula group dances) (xli). this also creates an elegant counter-discourse to the conventions of the western academy by reminding readers that respect and permission is required to gain certain forms of knowledge. each chapter similarly opens with a mele (song) from the pele and hiʻiaka moʻolelo, which frames and reflects the themes of the coming chapter. additionally, within each chapter, hoʻomanawanui weaves accounts of her own moʻolelo, engaging stories drawn from her own experience, into the narrative. several chapters open with a variation of the statement, “it is [year] and i am in a particular place, doing a particular thing].” transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 101 for instance, chapter 5, which focuses on mana wahine (women’s power or powerful women), as a central aspect of the pele and hiʻiaka moʻolelo, draws the reader in with an opening story about the author drawing strength from her own mana wahine ancestors as she braves the challenges of learning to (and from) sailing a waʻa kaulua, a traditional hawaiian double-hulled canoe. through these personal narratives, readers learn not only of hoʻomanawanui’s diverse and impressive intellectual journey (including her experiences as a haumana, or student, of hula and hawaiian language) and what it has meant to her, but also a partial but strongly felt sense of the many challenges and achievements of kanaka ʻōiwi efforts to restore and revitalize the lāhui’s cultural, political, and intellectual life over the past several decades. as a kanaka maoli scholar myself, i cannot see voices of fire as anything less than a substantial gift to the native hawaiian people, which indeed, as hoʻomanwanui notes early in the book, was her intention, “he hoʻokupu kēia i ka lāhui—an offering to the hawaiian nation” (xxvi). as such, it “seeks to encourage ʻōiwi agency in our continuing rediscovery and reevaluation of our kūpuna (ancestral source) texts in culturally relevant ways, approaching and discussing these cultural treasures from within the paradigm of ʻōiwi perspectives and analysis” (xxviii). indeed, i am deeply moved and inspired by this text’s rigorous and creative contribution to kanaka maoli intellectual, political, and cultural sovereignty. yet, voices of fire is also a gift to scholars across many disciplines invested in indigenous survivance, including literature, history, and pacific, native american, and indigenous studies, as it is a beautiful example of scholarship that both demonstrates and enacts indigenous presence and power mai ka pō mai, from the beginning of time to now, and certainly well into the future. maile arvin, university of california, riverside microsoft word editorial for galley.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   i   editorial a little over two years ago, when we began the process of imagining what transmotion might become, we envisioned a journal that would push boundaries, both in terms of the diversity and sophistication of its published content and in terms of its accessibility (through the on-line format and use of an open access platform). with our second volume, published here as a double issue, we believe we are truly coming into our own in realizing that vision. volume 2 highlights the full range of subject matter and approaches that are addressed in this journal’s statement of editorial philosophy. we are excited to be publishing the first set of what we hope will be many contributions focused on the visual and performing arts. we are also pleased to be able to feature an increasingly broad range of literary scholarship and creative work. the diversity of subject matter and approaches on display here is very much in the spirit of gerald vizenor’s own boundary-breaking and incisive work. the guest-curated special section of this double issue includes its own introduction, by andrea carlson. carlson’s contextualization of the contributions by rhiana yazzie, allan ryan, emily johnson, pallas erdrich, and deborah root requires no editorial amplification here. suffice it to say that the editors are grateful to her for catching the spirit of our initial “curatorial” request to her, and in assembling a series of works that tease out visions of resistance and transformation. such a vision is also on display in stephen graham jones’s open letter to indian writers, a practical guide to the aesthetic, political, and personal benefits of literary transgression. we are grateful to the inestimable dr. jones for permission to publish this piece (which was first delivered as an address at the native american literature symposium in albuquerque, nm in 2015). and we feel confident that he will appreciate the creative contributions included in the present issue. terese mailhot’s non-fiction essay “paul simon’s money” combines the personal and political in the wickedly smart and edgy manner that readers of her work have come to expect. with david heska wanbli weiden’s short story “spork,” we also publish a new voice that takes up stephen graham jones’s call for indigenous writing to become increasingly experimental in terms of genre and tone. finally, we once again have the great fortune to feature a piece by diane glancy, in this case an appreciation of gerald vizenor’s work (“totem”) that pushes the boundaries of form and content for the scholarly essay. the more conventional literary scholarship published in volume 2 foregrounds generic diversity and experimentation in the realm of indigenous fiction, while also highlighting the ways that literary criticism can engage in constructive and politically relevant debate. miriam brown spiers’s essay, “reimagining resistance: achieving sovereignty in indigenous science fiction,” employs a theoretically sophisticated approach to genre in unpacking what is rapidly becoming a canonical work of contemporary native fiction, blake hausman’s riding the trail of tears. placing that novel in dialogue with the work of science fiction theorist darko suvin and vine deloria allows spiers to explore hausman’s indigenization of science fiction tropes in a manner that will be applicable to other writers as well. finally, we are pleased to be able to include in this issue a pair of articles that engage with james welch’s complicated novel the heartsong of charging elk. tammy wahpeconiah’s “‘an evening’s curiosity’: image and indianness in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk” contextualizes and interprets welch’s work in relation to pervasive and persistent myths of the american west. for evidence of the ongoing relevance of this work, one need look no further than the coverage of the water protector transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   ii   activism at the standing rock sioux reservation, where american audiences are fed a steady diet of images painting these contemporary events as scenes out of the nineteenth-century “wild west.” complementing wahpeconiah’s piece, we complete our issue with john gamber’s “in the master’s maison: mobile indigeneity in the heartsong of charging elk and blue ravens.” gamber reads welch’s book in dialogue with vizenor, comparing each writer’s treatment of the theme of exile and manipulation of the classic “homing plot” that has structured much native fiction since the 1960s. gamber’s sophisticated discussion takes up the intersection between those formal issues and broader contemporary debates surrounding indigenous masculinity, concluding that these novels foreground the important, if sometimes vexed, possibilities for native movement and relocation (or, as we might say, transmotion). -- transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ‘about’ section). david carlson november 2016 theodore van alst james mackay david stirrup   transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 21 trickster discourse in narrative chance: how gerald vizenor helped shape my life in academia allan j. ryan on february 4, 2014, midway through another cold, canadian winter, i received an unexpected, and heartwarming introductory email from professor dr. birgit däwes.1 she was writing to tell me that in two weeks time she would be leaving johannes gutenberg-universität mainz, in germany, to become chair of american studies at the university of vienna. what’s more, she was already planning, “with her team”, an international conference on, and with, the eminent native american writer, gerald vizenor, that would take place in a little over four months at the university of vienna, an institution where she was not yet even employed! i was impressed. clearly, dr. däwes had enviable organizational skills and leadership qualities. not to mention confidence. she went on to say—and this was the most unexpected part—that, at gerald’s suggestion, she was inviting me to participate in the conference, saying that i could speak to any aspect of his work, be it his literary texts or his theory. (it seems that he had told her i was an expert on his work and on native studies in general.) while refuting any notion of expertise with regard to gerald’s work, i said what i would like to do is speak to the profound influence his work has had on mine. to my delight, dr. däwes approved. i then set about putting together an audio-visual powerpoint presentation that utilized fifty-six images to be screened over a period of twenty-minutes. in my brief introduction to the presentation, i said, “i’m going to tell you a story. it will be the illustrated condensed version of a story that will be expanded for later publication.”2 this is that expanded story. in the summer of 2001, my family and i moved from british columbia, on canada’s west coast, to ottawa, ontario, and to carleton university, where i took up the position of new sun chair in aboriginal art and culture, the first of its kind in canada. here, i have a split appointment as associate professor, teaching courses in the school of indigenous and canadian studies, and the department of art history in the school for studies in art and culture. i also host the annual new sun conference on aboriginal arts, now in its sixteenth year. from the beginning, the job has been rich with promise and possibility. carleton university is located in the heart of ottawa at the confluence of the rideau allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 22 river and the rideau canal, a world heritage site. i have an office on the twelfth floor of dunton tower, the tallest building on campus, which offers a spectacular panoramic view, facing west, of the adjacent federal government experimental farm. from planting to harvest, in sunlight and shadow, i watch the seasons change, the world renew and the land regenerate. the view is most enchanting in winter when the farm’s red barn is piled high with snow, and the scene is reminiscent of a currier and ives picture postcard.3 my office door boasts an assortment of personal photos, cartoons and pithy cultural commentary for the reading and viewing pleasure of students waiting to see me, or visitors just passing by. for some time, this has included a brief excerpt from a 2003 letter from gerald vizenor, in response to my expressed hope in earlier correspondence to enlighten students through conversations with members of the local aboriginal community invited into the classroom. gerald’s considered, yet cautious, reply was: “the thought of enlightenment by lecture and discussion is always a long shot even under the best of circumstances.”4 it is a sobering thought, and a personal reminder of the limitations of conventional academic practice, and the need for more creative pedagogical strategies that engage students more directly, and resonate more fully with their own experience. the point here is that gerald vizenor’s wise counsel and critical reflection constitute a profound presence before you even enter my office. even if you never enter my office. if you do enter, gerald vizenor’s presence is further affirmed. as is the value of good stories. one whole shelf on my bookcase is devoted to gerald’s various writings, from novels to memoir, to haiku and beyond. i have more than forty books by or about gerald vizenor. have i read them all? not entirely. have i understood all the ones i have read? again, not entirely. but i do have in my collection several books on how to read gerald vizenor, some written by other presenters at the vienna conference, so i’m optimistic.5 these books are all part of my lived environment. they are warm and welcoming, even in their occasional darkness. through them, the presence and creative mind and values and ethics of their author, and his sense of subversive play, ground what i do and how i think about what i do. they keep me focussed… just by being there.6 i was a phd student at the university of british columbia in 1988 when i discovered the work of gerald vizenor, and recognized the centrality of the trickster to my research on humor and irony in the work of native american and first nations artists. the book, narrative chance: allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 23 postmodern discourse on native american indian literatures (1989), which gerald edited, and which contains his essay, “trickster discourse: comic holotropes and language games,” (187211) introduced me to the critical concepts of “trickster discourse,” “compassionate tricksters,” and “terminal creeds.” my dissertation was thereafter envisioned as a trickster discourse, a conversation among compassionate trickster artists creating subversive trickster narratives, in studios and galleries on the world stage. completed in 1995, the dissertation was titled, the trickster shift: a new paradigm in contemporary canadian native art.7 “the trickster shift” was a term coined by carl beam, an ojibway artist included in the study, who used it to describe his own artistic practice.8 soon after, jean wilson, senior editor at the university of british columbia press, expressed interest in publishing the dissertation, and unbeknownst to me, sent a copy of the manuscript to gerald vizenor for evaluation. it was not something i would have dared to do, but in the end i had no cause to worry. while bound by protocol and precedent to conceal the evaluator’s name from the author, jean was eager to share with me the reader’s favorable assessment, which described the work as “an outstanding study of the trickster in the consciousness of native artists and their visual art” and praised it for being “the first formal book-length study of the traces and figurative treasons of tricksters in contemporary native visual arts.” (so much for anonymity!) for me, such an endorsement validated all the research and writing i had done over the previous seven years. in 1997, i finally got to meet gerald and his wife laura hall when i gave a presentation at a meeting of the native american art studies association in berkeley, california. i must admit to being a little star struck at the time, a feeling that has not completely dissipated with the years. they treated me to dinner and we discussed the financial difficulties associated with publishing a book with so many color plates.9 a year later, we dined out again when i returned to california to interview native cartoonists for a post-doctoral research project.10 by then, we had the finances in place to publish the trickster shift. on one of those two occasions during dinner, gerald confided with great delight and detail, that he had just killed off a university provost with a bow and arrow. in print of course! while admittedly captivated by such a wicked scenario, in hindsight, i wish he hadn’t told me. over the next two years, with the release of each of gerald’s new books, i quickly scoured the pages to see if this might be where the hapless administrator met his untimely demise. that’s the danger of dining with an author who can’t resist sharing the transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 24 results of a satisfying day at the office. from conception to completion, the trickster shift took twelve years .11 in 1999, it was published as an elegant book that defied easy categorization and garnered a number of favorable reviews in several countries.12 it contained one hundred and sixty images, a hundred of them in color. plains cree artist, gerald mcmaster’s painting, counting coup (1990),13 was featured on the front of the dustjacket, and gerald vizenor’s generous assessment was the lead endorsement quoted on the back. the book was co-published by the university of british columbia press (ubc press) in canada and the university of washington press in the united states. just prior to its release, a minor concession was made to the american publisher whose director felt the book would be easier to distribute in the united states if the word “canadian” were removed from the book’s subtitle. while annoyed, i agreed to the change, on the understanding that there would be no further tampering with the text.14 again, without my knowledge, gerald vizenor brought the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art to the attention of the before columbus foundation who recognized it with an american book award in 2000 for its contribution to multicultural literature.15 i was deeply honored by this award since gerald’s novel, griever: an american monkey king in china, had received that same recognition in 1988. the award was definitely instrumental in my being offered the position of new sun chair at carleton university a few months later. in 2004, in the opening lines to a nomination letter for the prestigious canadian governor general’s visual and media arts award, i wrote that ojibway artist, carl beam, “like anishinaabe author gerald vizenor, possesses an ironic imagination that flows from a worried heart.” when beam was presented with the award in march, 2005, i adapted the nomination letter for inclusion in the accompanying publication.16 sadly, the artist passed away four months later. in 2010, the national gallery of canada mounted carl beam: a poetics of being, a solo exhibition of fifty art works by beam curated by greg hill, audain curator of indigenous art. a new documentary film, aakideh: the legacy & art of carl beam (2010), by robert waldeck allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 25 and paul eichhorn, was screened at the gallery in conjunction with the show. one of beam’s etchings, self portrait as john wayne, probably (1990), from his columbus suite series, was included in the exhibition, about face: self-portraits by native american, first nations and inuit artists, at the wheelwright museum of the american indian in santa fe, new mexico. i co-curated the exhibition with university of california art history professor, zena pearlstone, and it opened in the fall of 2005 for a six month run. despite gallery director jonathan batkin’s initial apprehension, because the works were not what visitors had come to expect from indian artists in santa fe, the show was an unqualified success. comments in the visitors guest book expressed appreciation for the personal commentaries by the show’s forty-seven artists that were posted on the wall beside each piece and included in the sumptuous catalogue. affirming the fluid nature of indigenous identity, and executed in a variety of media—from painting and sculpture to photo collage—the exuberant artworks expanded the notion of self-portraiture beyond the narrow confines of the euroamerican mimetic tradition. alter egos abounded, as did figures without faces and faces without figures. gerald and laura, who were then living in albuquerque, new mexico, attended the opening, along with several of the artists, zena pearlstone and myself. i have since used the exhibition catalogue as a text for a course on indigenous selfportraiture that has become increasingly interactive and experiential, focussing less on the works of art as “artworks” and more on the life stories that the images reveal for both the artists and the students, who now create their own self-portraits that they share with each other at the end of the term. one of the students recently wrote, “i’m not entirely certain the point of the class was to teach us about art, but to function as a trickster manoeuver which utilized the power of aboriginal self-portraiture as a medium to teach us how to connect to others.”17 it was a perceptive insight for which the student was duly rewarded. one of the most memorable, if emotionally unsettling, pieces in about face was the pastel drawing, artist not happy (2001) by the late california yurok painter, rick bartow, who often portrayed animal/human figures in a state of physical and spiritual transformation, where the psychological tension is both terrifying and palpable. since bartow’s artwork has been featured on the dustjacket of four of gerald vizenor’s recent books, as well as a study of his poetry and poetics by deborah madsen,18 it seemed fitting to screen for the class the illuminating video biography of gerald by matteo bellinelli (1994), and then consider the disquieting themes transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 26 and imagery shared by both artists. as expected, the pairing prompted a lively discussion. what i recall most vividly, however, was the startled response from students when, early on in the film, gerald thoroughly trashes the notion and usefulness of theory. “who could ever think of the world theoretically?,” he asks. “‘theoretically’ is a stupid word.” it was a moment to savor. but i am getting ahead of myself. on the easter weekend of 2006, my wife rae and i travelled to new mexico to see the about face exhibition before it closed, and to have dinner with gerald and laura, and artist jaune quick-to-see smith and her husband, andy ambrose, in albuquerque. one of jaune’s mixed media paintings, the red mean: self-portrait (1992), was in the show, and we stayed with jaune and andy at their rustic home on the outskirts of the city before venturing on to santa fe. gerald and laura drove up to santa fe sunday morning and took us to breakfast in the splendid courtyard of la fonda on the plaza, a wonderful old spanish colonial-style hotel. it was on this visit that i gave gerald a copy of three day road (2006), the recently released first novel by métis writer, joseph boyden, which traces the exploits of two young men from a cree community in northern ontario, who enlist in the canadian army and become celebrated snipers in the first world war. the novel had just won the writers’ trust award, a major canadian literary prize, and joseph read from the book at the 5th annual new sun conference on aboriginal arts: interweaving communities a few days after collecting the award in toronto. later that year, after gerald invited me to contribute an essay to the book, survivance: narratives of native presence (2008), i travelled to the boyden family retreat on sandy island, near parry sound in northern ontario, to interview joseph about writing three day road. i was pleased to provide a canadian native presence for gerald’s expansive collection of essays on survivance.19 presenting at the same new sun conference as boyden was riel benn, a young dakota sioux painter from western canada who had created a fascinating trickster alter ego he calls “the best man,” and whose appearance was inspired in part by the titular character in the 1992 film, bram stoker’s dracula, played by gary oldman.20 that summer, i went to riel’s home on the birdtail sioux reserve in southern manitoba to view the best man paintings and speak to the artist about the series. one of the works, a full frontal self-portrait split down the middle, with a naked riel (on the left) and the best man, decked out in a lavender tuxedo (on the right), was one of the great discoveries in our search for works to include in the about face exhibition.21 in 2007, i showed some of the self-portraits in about face to students and faculty at three allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 27 universities in china, where i also screened several documentary films made by canadian indigenous film makers, that had been subtitled in mandarin.22 it was my first visit to china, a truly wondrous experience and not a little surreal. i mention this because i took with me gerald’s book, griever: an american monkey king in china, however, i did not have an opportunity to read it until the flight home. had i read it beforehand, i might have been better prepared for all the new situations and sensations i encountered. on the other hand, i was then able to relate the stories in the book to my own lived experiences. that same year, i organized the 6th annual new sun conference on aboriginal arts: survivance—more than mere survival.23 while i was hoping that gerald would be able to attend, his prior commitments precluded that possibility. nevertheless, gerald was seldom out of mind. a major reason was that i was supervising the phd dissertation of molly blyth, a doctoral candidate in canadian studies at trent university, in peterborough, ontario, who was applying gerald’s concept of trickster hermeneutics to a variety of works by canadian native authors.24 in spring, 2009, i attended the convocation ceremonies at trent where dr. blyth received her degree. her dissertation, titled, “tricky stories are the cure”: contemporary indigenous writing in canada, was a masterful piece of trickster scholarship. in 2010, all the stars aligned and i was finally able to bring gerald to the 9th annual new sun conference on aboriginal arts: something else again!25 in a wide-ranging presentation that addressed the state of indigenous writing today, he discussed the works of stephen graham jones and diane glancy, whom he characterized as innovative native authors with an avant-garde sense of survivance, and whose works were to be included in a new series of books called native storiers: a series of american narratives, that he and glancy were co-editing for the university of nebraska press. as one of the contributors to the series himself, gerald read from the manuscript of a new novel, chair of tears, describing, in part, how the recently appointed head of a university native studies program forced the faculty to return to a more communal way of life by revoking their treaty rights to private offices which were converted to casinos and healing centers. he later recounted how reservation mongrel dogs had transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 28 been trained to dance and bark in the presence of those with no sense of irony. with a lilting cadence in his voice and a glint in his eye, gerald was in his element, at once erudite, ironic, droll, cerebral, charming, amusing and thoroughly entertaining. throughout his presentation, in a parallel tease of academia, and to the delight of those present, he carried on a playful (if one sided) banter with the dean of arts and social sciences, a long time supporter of the conference who was sitting nearby. in a telling question and answer session that followed, gerald spoke of his fondness for “modified” tricksters, that is “transformational tricksters,” or “compassionate tricksters,” viewing them as profound and rich visionary figures in a story, and much more than simple conmen or deceivers. when asked about the word, “survivance,” he said, “i wanted to have a word to say and write that had the power of ‘dominance,’ to challenge the notion of tragic victimry.” gerald’s engaging presentation remains a high point in the history of the new sun conference.26 at the close of the conference, gerald was invited back to the podium for a special presentation by carleton’s word warrior society, a group of native and non-native students whose name derives from a chapter title and uncited quotation from gerald vizenor in dale turner’s book, this is not a peace pipe: towards a critical indigenous philosophy (2006). the quotation reads: “we are more than a curious medicine bundle on a museum rack… we are tricksters in the blood, natural mixedblood tricksters, word warriors in that silent space between bodies, and we bear our best medicine on our voices, in our stories.”27 on this occasion, the students gifted gerald with a beautiful pendleton shared spirits blanket to recognize his pivotal contribution to the field of indigenous literature. the blanket is inscribed with the words, “to gerald vizenor, chi miigwetch, the word warriors.”28 in a spirit of creative wordplay and imagination, word warrior spokesman rodney nelson said that “honoring” gerald’s career was not enough, and that their presentation was, in fact, an act of “honorance.” engaging with the same spirit, gerald immediately replied, “i accept with honorance!” allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 29 in the spring of 2010, i was invited to help mark the sixtieth anniversary of the anthropology department at the university of british columbia (ubc). as a phd graduate of their program in 1995, i was both honored and amused. clearly the concept of illustrious alumni had changed! not one to pass on a complimentary trip back to the west coast, i took the opportunity to encourage graduate students to think outside the box, create a new box, or discard the idea of a box altogether. i titled my presentation, coyote was walking along: following the trickster on a journey through academia. gerald vizenor has been my guide and constant companion on this journey…which continues to this day. later that summer, i adapted the title of the ubc presentation for a lecture i gave on trickster mischief in native american art at the idyllwild arts academy, located in the mountains above palm springs, california, in the san bernardino national forest.29 i am again indebted to gerald for suggesting they invite me when he was unable to accept their invitation. in keeping with the spirit of trickster mischief, all but one of the images i showed were created by native canadian (not native american) artists which, i was sure, most of those in attendance had never seen before. these included: digital self-portraits by rosalie favell, in the guise of xena, the warrior princess, from her plain(s) warrior artist series;30 acrylic paintings by jim logan, whose impudent classical aboriginal series dares to imagine native inclusion in the european art history canon; several hyper-glamorized photo portraits from kc adams’s wonderful cyborg hybrid series;31 and a few carefully selected pg-rated images of cree artist kent monkman’s hilarious alter ego, the post-indian diva warrior, miss chief share eagle testickle, clad in signature pink satin pumps, diaphanous breach clout and flowing feather headdress.32 monkman’s giant mural, the triumph of mischief (2007) , with its cast of ribald revellers and numerous art historical luminaries, was a highlight of the exhibition, sakahàn: international indigenous art, that opened at the national gallery of canada in ottawa in the spring of 2013. in “native cosmototemic art,” the essay gerald contributed to the exhibition catalogue, he quotes from the white earth reservation constitution which he co-authored, noting that it is probably the only constitution, tribal or otherwise, that guarantees the protection of artistic irony. trust gerald vizenor to include that! in may of that year, gerald returned to ottawa to discuss some of the key ideas in that essay, at a symposium held in conjunction with the exhibition.33 transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 30 this brings me back to the quotation on my office door that i cited at the top of this essay, and which is taped below a photograph taken on the morning after the sakahàn symposium. in the photo, gerald and i are seated in the lobby of the fairmont chateau laurier hotel where he was staying, along with charlotte hoelke, a carleton phd student of mixed algonquin heritage, who was researching the concept of queer native survivance. later that summer, gerald kindly sent us the manuscripts to his two recent books, blue ravens: historical novel and favor of crows: new and collected haiku, and we became part of the privileged few who were able to read them far ahead of the spring 2014 publication date.34 i bought copies of both books for charlotte when they became available, and a few more— actually, sixteen more—copies of blue ravens to give to other people whose lives i thought would be enriched by reading the book. many of these were students. for those graduating from carleton university just prior to the vienna conference, i had copies bound in red leatherette with the student’s name stamped on the front in gold leaf.35 one of the recipients, eager to begin reading the book, wrote to say it would remain a treasured possession for the rest of her life.36 for me, the treasured possession has been the presence of gerald vizenor in my life for the past twenty-five years, and the opportunity to share his work with others. i’m indebted to dr. birgit däwes and gerald vizenor himself for inviting me to participate in this very special celebration of the most compassionate trickster i know, and to honor blue ravens.37 *** afterword – aftermath as befits an event organized in his honor, gerald vizenor delivered a keynote address at the university of vienna on the opening morning of the conference, and closed the proceedings a allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 31 few days later with an evening reading from blue ravens, hosted by the american embassy at the nearby amerika haus. and then, apart from the dining, and laughter, and conversations that extended well into the warm summer night, the conference was over, and immediately consigned to memory. as if by magic, or mere design. but for an event dedicated, in part, to foregrounding the importance of personal and communal memory, this was not necessarily a bad thing. for those of us privileged to play a part in this extraordinary weekend—as presenters, organizers, or attendees—our memories have been greatly enriched, and our sense of community, both personal and professional, has been greatly expanded. as if by magic, or mere design, and possibly by trickster manoeuver.38 as is frequently the case, the summer of 2014 flew by far too quickly, and disappeared into autumn with insufficient warning. too soon, the new academic year, with its attendant responsibilities and incremental time commitments, was the new reality. i subsequently added a new photo from vienna to my office door, and bought four more copies of blue ravens, bringing the cumulative total to twenty. one of the books was intended for richard blackwolf, president of the aboriginal veterans and serving members association of canada, who had offered to speak to my graduate students while in town to attend the national remembrance day ceremonies in the nation’s capital on november 11. but this year’s commemoration would be like no other. only days earlier, on october 22, a crazed gunman fatally shot corporal nathan cirillo, a reservist with the argyll and sutherland highlanders of canada regiment, as he stood sentry at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the national war memorial.39 it was a cowardly act that shocked the whole country, and prompted an unprecedented outpouring of emotion across canada. it also made the remembrance day ceremonies especially poignant. a few short blocks from the national war memorial stands the national aboriginal veterans monument, or aboriginal war memorial, as it is sometimes called.40 located in confederation park,41 on elgin street, it is a massive bronze sculpture set on a high stone base, depicting four warriors (two men and two women) facing the four directions, and representing the diversity of canada’s indigenous peoples. the figures are flanked by four animals—a bear, transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 32 wolf, bison and elk—representing their spiritual helpers. soaring above them all, and representing the creator, is a majestic eagle with outstretched wings.42 it is customary for those wishing to honor aboriginal veterans to gather at this memorial a few hours prior to the annual national ceremony of remembrance. on the morning of november 11, 2014, with sunlight playing across the surface of the eagle’s broad wings, and the scent of sage and sweetgrass comingling in the air, and carrying prayers and prayer songs up to the creator, it was not hard to imagine a giant blue raven, with a touch of rouge on its beak, hovering just above the bronze eagle, with all those assembled below safe in its warm, protective, and healing embrace. i may well have been the only one there able to imagine that wondrous blue raven. i have gerald vizenor to thank for that. notes 1 professor dr. brigit däwes. personal communication, february 4, 2014. 2 the challenge of conversion was formidable, not unlike transforming a film into a book. the international conference, native north american survivance and memory: celebrating gerald vizenor, took place june 20-23, 2014, at the university of vienna. also on the program were: gerald vizenor, kimberly blaeser, david l. moore, a. robert lee, alexandra ganser, karsten fitz, wanda nanibush, kathryn shanley, chris lalonde, sabine n. meyer, kristina baudemann, klaus löch, billy stratton and cathy waegner. see www.nativestudies@univie.ac.at. 3 currier and ives was a successful 19th century printmaking firm based in new york city that specialized in producing inexpensive black and white lithographic prints based on paintings of historic and everyday activities. the prints were then hand-colored. among the most popular subjects were winter scenes that were often reproduced on postcards and christmas greeting cards. 4 without a doubt, the proposed strategy of enlightenment through close conversation has proven immensely successful, with guest speakers offering to return year after year. still, a decade later, gerald remained cautiously optimistic about the viability of indigenous pedagogy in academia, as reflected in this email from may 24, 2013: “narrative chance moves in the creases of pedagogy, always ready to be perceived in a trickster story. i worry, though, that the nationalists have abused the original thoughts of native pedagogy with predatory academic ideology.” 5 see for example, blaeser (1996), lee (2000), madsen (2009), and madsen and lee (2011). 6 having realized the critical relevance of vizenor’s work to my research, i systematically set out to acquire as complete a library of his writing as possible. the trickster of liberty: tribal heirs to a wild baronage (1988) confirmed the playful connection and matsushima: pine islands (1984), the poetic. 7 among the artists interviewed, and whose works were analysed, were: carl beam, rebecca belmore, bob boyer, joan cardinal-schubert, tom hill, george littlechild, jim logan, gerald allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 33 mcmaster, shelley niro, ron noganosh, edward poitras, jane ash poitras, bill powless and lawrence paul yuxweluptun. 8 “what beam calls the ‘trickster shift’ is perhaps best understood as serious play, the ultimate goal of which is a radical shift in viewer perspective and even political positioning by imagining and imaging alternative perspectives” (ryan, 1999, p. 5). 9 to do justice to the artworks and the artists, i felt that at least half of the one hundred and sixty images needed to be reproduced in color. in the end we got one hundred. 10 from 1997-1999 i held a post-doctoral fellowship at simon fraser university in vancouver, researching the work of indigenous artists who employed the same critical wit and selfdeprecating humor in their cartoons for tribal newspapers as that employed by native fine artists working in mainstream galleries. a memorable moment in the research was conducting a wellattended workshop with three navajo cartoonists—jack ahasteen, vincent craig and carl terry—at the 1998 meeting of the native american journalists association in tempe, arizona. the following year, the association introduced four new awards for cartoonists. 11 that circuitous journey was documented in “trickster treatise traces humour in native art,” a story by robin laurence that ran in the georgia straight, october 21-28, 1999. it is archived with the other book reviews at www.trickstershift.com. 12 among the more memorable reviewer comments: “this is no stodgy history or ethnographic monograph, but a book about art so grandly conceived and executed as to constitute a work of art in itself” (margaret dubin in american indian art magazine, vol. 27, #4, 2002); and “the trickster shift is a visually stunning combination of cultural philosophy, social commentary and art criticism. nowhere else is the subject of native humour in art explored in such depth by the very people who employ it” (cheryl isaacs in aboriginal voices, vol. 6, #3, 1999). in 2012, the trickster shift was the focus of the essay, “merely conventional signs: the editor and the illustrated scholarly book,” written by the book’s editor, camilla blakeley, for editors, scholars and the social text, darcy cullen, editor, toronto: university of toronto press. 13 this image of a befeathered indian chief confounding a startled cavalry officer was the signature image for the cowboy/indian show, mcmaster’s 1991 exhibition at the mcmichael gallery in kleinberg, ontario. several pieces from the show were included in the trickster shift. 14 by downplaying the canadian focus, the revised title implied that the book was broader in scope than it actually is. only one reviewer (a canadian indigenous academic) took exception to the lack of american content, in particular, the absence of the controversial “cherokee/notcherokee” artist, jimmie durham, the subject of the reviewer’s own research, while another (a german academic) criticized the omission of inuit art and humor. overall, the majority of reviewers had no problem with the focus. 15 along with several other recipients, i accepted the award at a reception in chicago in the summer of 2000, that was timed to coincide with the bookexpo america convention where i picked up a pre-publication copy of gerald’s latest novel, chancers. set on the campus of the university of california at berkeley, the story opens with the introduction of a hapless university provost… 16 the resultant essay can be found at http://ggavma.canadacouncil.ca/archive/2005/winners 17 amy prouty. personal communication, april, 2014. 18 chair of tears: driving lesson, acrylic on panel, 2010; blue ravens: raven’s dream, pastel on paper, 2012; favor of crows, new and collected haiku: crow’s mortality tale, pastel on transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 34 paper, 2001; treaty shirts: voices ii, acrylic on canvas, 2015; deborah l. madsen, the poetry and poetics of gerald vizenor: mask holding (detail), 2011, pastel, graphite, spray paint on paper. all images courtesy of the artist and the froelick gallery, portland, or. in 2015, the university of oregon’s gordon schnitzer museum of art organized the appropriately titled exhibition, things you know but cannot explain, a forty year retrospective of bartow’s work. 19 i was pleased to read joseph boyden’s enthusiastic endorsement of blue ravens on the dustjacket of the novel. 20 bram stoker’s dracula, francis ford coppola, director. usa, 1992. 21 the painting later became the signature image for my essay, “riel benn’s ‘best man’: an unlikely successor to iktomi’s trickster legacy,” in the spring, 2010, issue of american indian art magazine. 22 under contract to the national film board of canada (nfb) and the department of foreign affairs and international trade (dfait), i selected thirteen nfb films by canadian aboriginal film makers for inclusion in the six-dvd collection, visual voices: a festival of canadian aboriginal film and video. subtitled in english, french, spanish and portuguese, the collection was supplemented with an online film guide available in the same four languages. several of the films were later subtitled in mandarin, with sections of the guide translated into mandarin for booklets published in conjunction with the march, 2007 canada-china forums on aboriginal (ethnic) identity: cultural preservation, held at the northwest university for nationalities in lanzhou, china, and qinghai nationalities university in xining, china. further screenings took place at guanxi university for nationalities in nanning, china. 23 presenters included cree film maker ernest webb, poet and playwright, daniel david moses, barry ace and ryan rice, co-founders of the aboriginal curatorial collective, and the musical group, taima, featuring inuit singer/songwriter elisapie isaac. 24 carleton university and trent university share a joint phd program in canadian studies, and molly blyth was my first phd supervision. 25 wanda nanibush, who videotaped the proceedings in vienna and presented at the conference, arranged for gerald and laura to visit trent university prior to travelling by train to ottawa. in ottawa, they saw the indigenous artworks in the parliament buildings and the canadian museum of history (formerly the canadian museum of civilization), and toured the indigenous holdings at the national gallery of canada with the audain curator of indigenous art, greg hill. due to the unusually mild weather, i was not able to deliver on my promise of ice skaters on the rideau canal. while at carleton, gerald kindly made time to meet with students and faculty on the afternoon preceding the conference. also on the program were métis painter and author, christi belcourt, whose stunning beadwork-inspired mural, my heart (is beautiful), was featured on the conference publicity, and served as the visual backdrop for the day’s presentations; manon barbeau, directrice of the wapikoni mobile indigenous film training program in quebec; marwin begay, navajo printmaker and diabetes awareness advocate; and tanya tagaq, inuit throat singer extraordinaire who both presented and performed. see www.trickstershift.com for photos and feedback. 26 gerald’s presentation, like those of all the other new sun conference presenters since 2002, was videotaped and archived on dvd, and can be borrowed from carleton’s macodrum library. 27 the word warriors have endowed a bursary supporting research and conference presentations that benefit indigenous people. it is a bursary that i continue to support through payroll allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 35 deduction. 28 see www.pendleton-usa.com. following the conference, gerald and laura kindly sent me a jacket made at the same pendleton woolen mills in pendleton, oregon, as the shared spirits blanket. 29 see www.idyllwildarts.org. 30 see favell (2003) and www.rosaliefavell.com. 31 see www.kcadams.com. 32 see monkman (2007) and www.kentmonkman.com. monkman/mischief is adept at deploying sexual play as a powerful metaphor for political play in a series of post-colonial narratives that re-imagine historic intercultural relationships on stage, screen and canvas. 33 in a brief message sent from his iphone may 18, 2013, while enjoying a glass of wine in the newark airport, en route home to florida from ottawa, gerald invited my wife and i to visit him and laura in naples, florida or paris. but especially paris! who knew the next time we met we’d raise a glass of wine together in vienna! 34 blue ravens is an historical novel that tells the story of two brothers from the white earth reservation in minnesota who see action in france in the first world war, come home to minnesota, then return to paris where they lead successful lives, one as a writer (and the narrator of this novel), and the other as a visual artist with a talent for painting spectacular blue ravens. favor of crows brings together new and previously published haiku poems written by gerald vizenor over the past forty years. 35 in this, i am honoring the memory of dr. samuel corrigan, who presented me with a red leather-bound monograph with my name stamped on the cover in gold leaf, when i received my bachelor’s degree from brandon university in 1975. it was an act of generosity and personal affirmation that i have sought to continue. see: “dr. sam corrigan: a personal remembrance.” canadian journal of native studies, vol. 29, 1/2, 2009, 283-285. in addition to blue ravens, i have gifted students with several other vizenor books, namely, hiroshima bugi: atomu 57, landfill meditation: crossblood stories, griever: an american monkey king in china, almost ashore, native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance, and favor of crows: new and collected haiku. 36 this is the same student, mentioned earlier, who detected a trickster maneouver in the structure of the indigenous self-portraiture class. she has recently employed gerald’s concept of survivance to frame a study of cultural resistance in contemporary inuit art. 37 wanting to celebrate the publication of blue ravens in appropriate fashion, i asked my long time friend and batik artist, sarah hale, to create an art card for gerald, displaying the words, “to honor blue ravens.” in keeping with the avian imagery described in the novel, i asked that it be rendered in various blue hues with a faint touch of rouge. the night before the conference, i inscribed the pertinent passages from the book inside the card. see www.ardenbatik.com. 38 among the most vivid memories that will remain from this, my first, but hopefully not my last, visit to vienna are: hearing gerald vizenor quote me in his keynote address—that was definitely a surreal moment; lunching in sunny street cafés with fellow vizenor scholars who were all well versed in gerald’s unique lexicon and literary tease; and with my wife rae, cruising the river danube that snakes through the city; attending a spirited performance by the vienna mozart orchestra; enjoying apple strudel at café sperl, where a pivotal scene in the 1995 film, before sunrise, was filmed; and willingly succumbing to the commercial mystique of gustav klimt and empress elizabeth—admittedly a guilty pleasure on both counts—acquiring assorted, but transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 36 “tasteful” (and even tasty) mementos, as we made our way from gallery to museum and palatial residence on vienna’s superbly interconnected transit system. 39 the national war memorial is steps from the fairmont chateau laurier hotel where gerald stayed during his visit to ottawa for the sakahàn symposium in 2013. 40 designed by lloyd noel pinay, the monument was unveiled by her excellency the right honourable adrienne clarkson, former governor general of canada and commander-in-chief of the canadian forces on june 21, 2001, national aboriginal day. 41 confederation park is located on elgin street directly across from the lord elgin hotel where gerald and laura stayed in 2010, along with the other presenters at the 9th annual new sun conference on aboriginal arts: something else again! 42 see www.canadianaboriginalveterans.ca. works cited bellinelli, matteo, producer/director. gerald vizenor, radiotelevisione della svizzera italiana. new york, ny: films media group [2009], c. 1994. film. blaeser, kimberly m. gerald vizenor: writing in the oral tradition. norman: university of oklahoma press. 1996. print. blakeley, camilla. “merely conventional signs: the editor and the illustrated scholarly book.” in editors, scholars and the social text, edited by darcy cullen. 149-173. toronto: university of toronto press, 2012. print. blyth, molly. “tricky stories are the cure”: contemporary indigenous writing in canada. phd thesis, canadian studies, trent university, peterborough, ontario. 2009. print. boyden, joseph. three day road. toronto: viking canada, 2005. print. däwes, birgit. personal communication, february 4, 2014. dubin, margaret. in american indian art magazine, vol. 27, #4, 2002, 110-111. print. favell, rosalie. rosalie favell: i searched many worlds. exhibition catalogue. winnipeg: winnipeg art gallery, 2003. print. see www.rosaliefavell.com hill, greg a. carl beam: the poetics of being. ottawa: national gallery of canada, 2010. isaacs, cheryl. review of the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art. in aboriginal voices, vol. 6, #3, 1999, 48-49. print. laurence, robin. “trickster treatise traces humour in native art.” the georgia straight, october 21-28, 1999, 85. print. lee, a. robert, ed. loosening the seams: interpretations of gerald vizenor. bowling green: bowling green state university popular press. 2000. print. allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 37 madsen, deborah l. understanding gerald vizenor. columbia: university of south carolina press. 2009. print. madsen, deborah l. ed. the poetry and poetics of gerald vizenor. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2012. print. madsen, deborah l. and a. robert lee, eds. gerald vizenor: texts and contexts, albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2011. print. monkman, kent. the triumph of mischief. hamilton: hamilton art gallery, 2007. print. see www.kentmonkman.com. pearlstone, zena and allan j. ryan, exhibition curators. about face: self-portraits by native american, first nations and inuit artists. santa fe, new mexico: wheelwright museum of the american indian, 2006. print. prouty, amy. personal communication, april, 2014. ryan, allan j. “classical aboriginal reflections.” in jim logan: the classical aboriginal series, whitehorse, yukon: yukon arts centre, 1994. print. ----. the trickster shift: a new paradigm in contemporary canadian native art. phd thesis, dept. of anthropology, university of british columbia, 1995. print. ----. the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art. vancouver: university of british columbia press and seattle: university of washington press, 1999. print. ----. visual voices: a festival of canadian aboriginal film and video. online study guide in english, french, spanish, portuguese, with some sections in mandarin. ottawa: national film board of canada/department of foreign affairs and international trade, 2006. web. no longer accessible online. ----. “dr. sam corrigan: a personal remembrance.” canadian journal of native studies, vol. 29, 1/2, 2009, 283-285. print. ----. “carl beam: an appreciation.” in the governor general’s awards in visual and media arts 2005. 10-21. ottawa: canada council for the arts. 2005. print. see carl beam – essay: http://ggavma.canadacouncil.ca/archive/2005/winners ----. “writing survivance: a conversation with joseph boyden.” in survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor. 297-311. lincoln and london: university of nebraska press. 2008. print. transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 38 ----. “riel benn’s ‘best man’: an unlikely successor to iktomi’s trickster legacy.” 46-53, 71. in american indian art magazine, spring, 2010. print. turner, dale. this is not a peace pipe: towards a critical indigenous philosophy. toronto: university of toronto press, 2006. print. vizenor, gerald. matsushima: pine islands. nodin press, 1984. print. ----. griever: an american monkey king in china. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1987. print. ----. the trickster of liberty: heirs to a wild baronage. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 1988. print. ----. “trickster discourse: comic holotropes and language games.” in narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american literatures, edited by gerald vizenor. 187211. albuquerque, university of new mexico press, 1989. print. ----. landfill meditation. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press, 1991. print. ----. hiroshima bugi: atomu 57. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2003. print. ----. personal communication, 2003. ----. almost ashore. hanksville: salt publishing, 2006. print. ----. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009. print. ----. videotaped lecture. 9th annual new sun conference on aboriginal arts: something else again! ottawa: carleton university, 2010. video. see www.trickstershift.com. ----. chair of tears. lincoln and london: university of nebraska press, 2012. print. ----. “native cosmototemic art.” in sakahàn: international indigenous art, edited by greg a. hill, candice hopkins and christine lalonde. 41-52. ottawa: national gallery of canada, 2013. print. ----. personal communication, may 18, 2013. ----. personal communication, may 24, 2013. ----. favor of crows: new and collected haiku. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press, 2014. print. ----. blue ravens. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press, 2014. print. ----. treaty shirts. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press, 2016. print. allan j. ryan “trickster discourse” 39 ---ed. narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american literatures. albuquerque, university of new mexico press, 1989. print. ---ed. survivance: narratives of native presence. lincoln and london: university of nebraska press, 2008. print. waldeck, robert and paul eichhorn, co-directors. aakideh: the art & legacy of carl beam, 2010. film. see www.carlbeamdoc.com. microsoft word grover.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   178   noodin, margaret. weweni. detroit: wayne state university press, 2015. 98 pages. http://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/weweni   “it feels like we are singing.” my aunt, who died some years ago, lived the last few decades of her life on earth as an anishinaabe elder: honored, respected, consulted and, she told me and my dad, lonely for someone with whom she could speak her native first language. although as a teacher of the ojibwe language she had the opportunity to speak with a variety of students and seekers, from neophytes to those with some degree of fluency, it wasn’t the same as conversing with another native speaker. how she looked forward to occasional rare visits with a ladyfriend who lived some distance away, a woman who shared the same reference points of age, life experience and language. “i listen to us as we talk back and forth, back and forth; i love the sound. it feels like we are singing,” she said. she had a cool, airy voice; when she spoke ojibwemowin/anishinaabewowin the sound was melodic, a pattern and rhythm that was poetic. a great reader, she enjoyed the fiction and poetry of native writers of many tribes. the first time i opened this book i thought of my aunt’s musical speech and her love of reading. margaret noodin’s weweni is a collection of original poems written in both anishinaabemowin and english. each poem is presented on two pages, in anishinaabemowin on the left side and in english language on the right. the presentation, which follows the left-to-right order by which we read, draws the consciousness of the reader to the anishinaabe words first and then anchors the reading of the poem in english to its original words. in what might be the first modern collection of its kind, noodin wrote the poems first in anishinaabemowin and then translated them into english. the translations, which are not always literal but always conceptual, are an acknowledgement and regard for the “life of its own” and lyricism of the language (ix, x). this collection has much to it that is beyond noodin’s stunningly written poetry. “weweni” is one of those concept words that can be translated both conceptually and literally, and it is a fitting title for this book. although there is no single english word like it that could be used interchangeably and accurately, “carefully” begins to approach the implications of the word “weweni” which has not sharp edges but rounded curves in pronunciation and meaning (as well as in its linguistic root sources). to approach a task or action carefully, in the style and tradition of the anishinaabeg, is to do so properly, with an awareness that all exists by the grace of the creator; in other words, with gratitude, humility and care. clearly, noodin had this in mind as she wrote the poetry that became this book. within the poetic rhythms and phrases in these poems are words that form recurring themes in the book. these can be found on both pages of the opened book, in both english and anishinaabemowin, threading their ways lightly throughout the collection. some examples of these are weweni, of course, as well as apane (always) and bimaadiziwin (the living of life). noodin introduces the concept of goodness and what constitutes the living of a good life early in the preface, always taking care to acknowledge and respect variations in dialects, the several words and roots within the word that is used to identify the people, anishinaabeg. she identifies nishin, the good and excellent people who were created by the great spirit and then gently lowered to the ground, where they would live their lives with thankfulness, humility and generosity (thus excellence), those values that define goodness (10). another descriptive word linda legarde grover review of weweni   179   for that which is good, proper and excellent, mino, is part of the imagery and phrasing of much that is in this collection. as there are many and varied ways to say something in english, so are there many and varied ways to say something in anishinaabemowin. in these poems noodin shows skill in using a lyricism grounded in the fluidity of that concept: there are myriad meanings and complexities of anishinaabe language. at the same time, in anishinaabe epistemology mino bimaadiziwin, the living of the good life that is the careful and proper “essence of anishinaabemowin” (ix) is not only present but integral. this is evident throughout the collection, even in the pronunciation key that looks and reads like a poem. there are at least as many ways to read and experience this book as there are lovers of poetry and levels of familiarity with anishinaabowin. as poetry, the skill and creative discipline of the writer are evident in every piece and the lyrical imagery shines, in both the original anishinaabemowin and in translation to english, as an example of the heartbeat that is indigenous thought and cosmology. a reader new to the language is provided with background in anishinaabe history and worldview that gives meaning to an initial reading of the poems in english; for that reader the pronunciation key makes possible an enjoyable read-aloud. for readers with some familiarity with the language (relative neophytes as well as proficient anishinaabe speakers who are longtime students of the language) the poems can be read in native language first and then in english language on the opposite page. for this reader, whose language skills are limited but who had exposure as a child to the sounds of anishinaabe speech, the matching of words and phrases to both english and my own treasured, memory-weighted and beloved small collection of ojibwe (anishinaabe) language nuggets was pleasurable. it was particularly fun and satisfying to identify in english translation the variations from the literal in order to express anishinaabe worldview and examinations of thought and meaning. where might such physical functions as taste and weight intersect in english language, or taste, sweetness and bimaadiziwin? in anishinaabemowin, and in these poems. noodin’s indirect lyricism in translation parallels the gentle manner of old-time anishinaabe storytelling, which allows for expression of the storyteller’s (in this book the storyteller/poet’s) carefully thought out and reverent sharing of history, experience and knowledge. the list of acknowledgements at the end of this collection includes the standard, expected recognitions of publications in which some of the poems have been published; it also includes thanks and acknowledgement, again in english and anishinaabemowin, to “the moon, the sun, the earth, and great lakes” as well as noodin’s family, friends and fellow poets (98). the last time i visited at my aunt’s, her brother was visiting from up north. we drank tea at the kitchen table at her apartment here in onigamiising; her brother, a quiet akiwenzii (old man) smiled as they spoke in english and occasionally switched to anishinaabowin, the cool, airy warble of her speech and the fuller autumnal tones of his carefully slowed in consideration of their guest, who was me. it did sound like singing. read aloud or silently, so does this book that is excellent in the most good and proper anishinaabe ways. linda legarde grover, university of minnesota duluth microsoft word galley_main.doc transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 1 curatorial andrea carlson someone, somewhere, long ago decided to smear one substance on to a substrate, and talk about it. that is the tradition i come from: mucking with things and talking about it. sometimes this practice is considered art making and it has value. in simple terms art making is the altering of physical materials and constructing verbal context around these configurations. it seems to me that art making as a profession is an extraordinary phenomenon, that over the years this amazing privilege has been pedestalized among many people groups all over the world. i am not a true believer in the institution of art, but my activities would suggest that i am an artist. when i was asked to guest curate this issue of transmotion, i thought about myself as a context, as an artist... but also, living in what is now called north america, a cis-gendered woman of anishinaabe descent, and this list goes on. but mostly, i identify with this strange field i've stumbled onto. and as an artist, i occupy myself with studying materials, paying close attention to how materials react to one other. one might think that i discuss this material knowledge and the process of transforming or altering materials, but i favor instead the abstractions, metaphors and storytelling. introducing the writings of others who have already included abstractions, metaphors and storytelling, i think it fitting to follow my false dichotomy and talk about physical materials, processes, environments and objects... of course, it is all storytelling in the end. *** the surface texture of paper is often called its tooth. a rough or heavy tooth allows charcoal to cut against the surface and provides more area for the particulates to bind. likewise, an inked brush will skate across the surface of smooth paper, but a deep tooth will offer enough resistance to make clean lines. resistance is important. resistance sculpts. assimilation is antithetical to resistance, to “survivance” but even in our resistance we might find ourselves conforming to a larger, dominant framework. resistance is near the outer edge of some greater formation and resistance is the skin of our cause. in “an open letter about the premiere of bloody bloody andrea carlson “curatorial” 2 andrew jackson in minneapolis from rhiana yazzie” by rhiana yazzie, resistance to a performance is characterized as anti-free expression by racist playwrights who remain indignant under a self-righteous, art-brazened banner. here, yazzie generously offers resistance to those who blindly lay claim to an “edgy” resistance themselves. these playwrights argue in favor of racist depictions, their cause is racism for the sake of racism... but they cry, “art!” back to teeth. when in the bush, my father sometimes chews dogwood in lieu of brushing his teeth. he claims bush wisdom, but my dad tends to make things up. i thought i'd check with my dentist, who supported the claim saying, “by all means, if you ever see dogwood growing in a ditch somewhere, go chew on it.” so, the jury is still out on that. my dentist also likes to make grand analogies between teeth and wood. turns out our enamel is like hardwood, hard oaks and maples, but when worn off the tooth itself is more pithy, like softwoods. coffee has a hard time staining the less porous enamel but stains the hell out of teeth when it's gone. i've digressed. the gifs by pallas erdrich are hypnotic in action. they visually chew with jagged frame jumps characteristic of gifs. erdrich has a background in media production and is prolific in the art of gif making. these images offer up vignettes of daily intimate moments, some sleight-of-hand observations, some are rather funny. the low viscosity of the frame rate combined with the slight observations seems like antidotes, urban wisdom, charms and quick advice that requires further investigation. when i was in school one of my professors confessed to a seemingly mystic belief about wood. he contended that dead trees or dried wood maintains a cellular memory of water and that by applying water to it the wood is reminded of being alive. he talked about old, dried wood twisting and moving after becoming wet. hardwood floor refinishers have a term called “water popping” that involves applying water to unfinished hardwood. this causes the grain in the wood to bloom or splay out and become porous enough to accept new stain. allan j. ryan's “trickster discourse in narrative chance: how gerald vizenor helped shape my life in academia” is a love letter or a confession of admiration presented in a timeline of ryan's career. vizenor's observed fluidity over a ridged plank, that of academia, creates an aliveness or an inspired space. ryan charts and plots a careered interaction over the course of nearly thirty years, or time immemorial. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 3 the act of carving in wood or stone is considered a subtractive form of sculpting. additive and subtractive sculpting is analogous to positive and negative space in two-dimensional artwork. although wood and stone can be jointed, glued or hinged together creating a continuous piece, it is the properties of clay that are valued for being versatile as both subtractive and additive forms for sculpture building. wet clay adheres to itself and maintains its integrity as a unit until fired or let to dry. text to the performance of “blackfish” by emily johnson requires a slow and steady, methodical read. it is on the surface a story about a fish that nearly loses its form as a survival tactic and it is the first time that emily johnson's work has ever made me cry. i heard it preformed on october 20, 2011 as part of a fundraiser event for the indian child welfare act law center in minneapolis. the memory of it has stuck with me as additive in sculpture making terms. subtractive forms of sculpture-making is a difficult analogy. in “honoring the disappeared in the art of lorena wolffer, rebecca belmore, and the walking with our sisters project,” deborah root helps us swallow our tears for a moment to discuss two artists who’ve used their platform of art making to admonish those willing to overlook the disappearance of and violence towards native women in mexico and canada. visual art is just that: visual. inherent to visual art is its ability to make visible and place in our imaginations that which has been removed, disappeared or destroyed. root's essay on the work of lorena wolffer and rebecca belmore breaks the borders that have carved-up our continent to discuss the works of two artists addressing violence towards our bodies. there are five works in this section. i call them works because it seems to be a broad enough term to be inclusive of each contribution. consider these works abstract for a moment. each one builds up a series of positions (or images), gradually unpacking and unfolding complex ideas. i am unable to reduce each of them to bite-sized summaries. this lies beyond my abilities, as i tend to over-estimate ideas that are new to me. i have ruminated on a delicate metaphor between the transformations described in the various contributions i have chosen for this issue of transmotion and the transformative aspects of sculpted physical materials. the five works included here by artists and writers have offered resistance and transformation, or they’ve shone andrea carlson “curatorial” 4 a spotlight on the resistance of others, in the form of words and images. it is my understanding that this publication will exist in the world of pixels, temporary images that scroll across the smoking mirrors of tablets and screens. please enjoy these contributions and spread them widely. in solidarity, andrea carlson, november 2016 microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 1 “we are fighting”: global indigeneity and climate change martin premoli1 recently, numerous islands across the south pacific have appeared in headlines for their increasingly acute vulnerability to our global climate crisis.1 the most recent climate models predict that if the earth warms by two degrees celsius, many low-lying islands (such as tuvalu, solomon islands, kiribati, and the maldives) will disappear beneath the ocean’s rising water levels. signs of this possible future have already started to manifest: today, these island communities face an onslaught of environmental problems linked to climate change, such as fresh-water shortage, unpredictable and intensified storm patterns, flooding, coral degradation, and the destruction of crucial foodways. even though these island nations have done little to set the global climate crisis in motion, they are in many cases the first to feel the blowback of climatological breakdown. in response to the magnitude of this crisis, islanders from the south pacific have developed numerous forms of aesthetics-based activism, drawing on creative expression to advocate for climate justice. their work emphasizes the necessity of bolstering climate change discourse with questions of social justice and indigenous sovereignty. this can be seen, for instance, in the poetry of chamoru poet, activist, and scholar craig santos perez. over the past decade, perez has emerged as one of the leading voices from the pacific for navigating the anthropocene’s submarine futures. his work is often inspired by his ancestral and personal ties to guåhan (guam), and he has received several prestigious literary awards for his writing, such as the pen 1 martin premoli is a settler-scholar, currently based in the unceded territory and ancestral land of the san manuel band of mission indians (yuhaaviatam). martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 2 center usa/poetry society of america literary prize (2011), the american book award (2015), and the hawai’i literary arts council award (2017). across his oeuvre, perez draws on and experiments with poetic form to explore the intersections of colonialism, climate change, and indigeneity. his excellent 2020 collection, habitat threshold, serves as a useful case in point. in this collection, he draws on a range of poetic forms (such as odes, sonnets, haikus, and elegies) to frame, unsettle, and invigorate numerous environmental issues, including species extinction, plastics pollution, nuclear toxicity, and food sovereignty. his poems toggle between local and global scales, allowing for a diversity of perspectives to emerge. as eric magrane writes in his review of habitat threshold, “this is a vital book of ecopoetry: perez is an essential voice in the face of the ongoing and relentless intertwining of ecological and social calamities of the anthropocene/capitalocene” (393). as an example of his climate justice based approach to anthropocene discourse, we can turn to the climate change visualization that launches habitat threshold. perez begins his collection of poems with a seemingly straightforward climate graph. this graph, charting global sea-level rise, is based on the fifth assessment report developed by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc)—an organization that has deeply influenced the direction, tone, and outcome of policy and public debates surrounding climate change.2 at first glance, perez’s reproduction of the graph appears to simply echo the information found in the ipcc’s fifth assessment report. his graph presents readers with information pertaining to the issue of long-term sea level rise, based on scenarios of greenhouse gas concentrations. following the conventions of a standard bar chart, the horizontal “x” axis functions as a timeline, starting in the early 2000s and ending at the year 2100. meanwhile, the vertical “y” axis measures sea level rise in meters. reading these two axes in relation to each other allows us to visualize sea level rise as it is projected to occur in the future. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 3 (original) (reproduction by perez) upon closer inspection, however, we begin to notice how perez has made crucial changes to the graph’s content and form, pushing readers to re-think the graph’s significance.3 this is clear, for example, through an examination of the graph’s (re)titling. while the ipcc’s visualization of sea-level rise is titled “global mean sea level rise,” perez instead opts for a very different header: “we are not drowning…” those familiar with climate justice movements in the south pacific will immediately recognize this phrase as the rallying cry of the pacific climate warriors, whose oceaniabased activism protests the ongoing violence of western climate imperialism. as stated in an article by 350.org, climate activists deploy this phrase to combat the “common perception that the pacific islands are drowning from sea-level rise” and to remind people that “it’s not yet time to give up on the islands” (packard, “we are not drowning”). the effect of perez’s re-titling is thus deeply significant: through this new (and anti-colonial) title, perez’s graph challenges the reductionist tendencies of the ipcc’s official climate visualization, which reduces the complexity of interactions between climates, environments, and societies in order to predict a singular—and typically apocalyptic—climate-changed future (hulme, “reducing the future to martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 4 climate” 247). (this is what geographer mike hulme has characterized as “climate reductionism,” which might be viewed as a variant of climate determinism.) rather, his graph insists on the importance of recognizing that the future is not foreclosed and that struggles for life are still of paramount importance.4 through this formal innovation, then, perez points toward the disruptive and empowering potential of indigenous activism in the movement toward climate justice. his poem does not denounce or deny the insights offered by positivist models of knowledge production (this would be a dangerous maneuver in our current political climate), but it does push back against the overriding tendencies toward extinction that so often characterize graphs on climate change.5 the poem thus demonstrates the potential that can come from “entangling epistemologies”: that is, integrating eurowestern positivism with “ways of knowing based in speculation, multigenerational experience, social relations, metaphor and story, and the sensing and feeling body” (houser 5).6 these “other ways of knowing,” perez suggests, are crucial for combating climate injustice and for preserving the lifeways of frontline communities in the south pacific. of course, perez is not alone in seeking climate justice for indigenous communities across oceania. numerous poets from the region have highlighted the simultaneous risk and empowerment of pacific islanders when faced with “sinking islands.” in 2014, marshallese poet and activist, kathy jetñil-kijiner, was invited to speak on the imperiled position of the marshall islands for the opening ceremony of the united nations secretary general’s climate summit. during her opening remarks, jetñil-kijiner argues that we “need a radical change in course” if we hope to tackle the global climate crisis (1:43). she powerfully elaborates on this point through a reading of her poem “dear matafele peinam,” an ode to her seven-month-old daughter and their vanishing home island. as another example, during the un climate conference in transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 5 paris, four spoken word poets—terisa siagatonu, john meta sarmiento, isabella avila borgeson, and eunice andrada—performed creative pieces that called attention to the everyday realities of climate disaster, while demanding a global response to the issue. in her poem “layers,” siagatonu asks her audience why “saving the environment rarely means saving people who come from environments like mine, where black and brown bodies are riddled with despair” (1:01). while poetry has been a particularly rich site for climate justice advocacy, artists from the south pacific have worked across the spectrum of aesthetic forms. this includes theatre and performance-based awareness projects (as seen in the performance moana: the rising of the sea), film and documentary (see anote’s ark), and other modes of literary expression (keri hulme’s short story “floating worlds,” for instance). rather than fulfilling the victimization narrative desired by the traditional media, these cultural interventions highlight the simultaneous risk and empowerment of pacific islanders when faced with “sinking islands” (ghosh “poets body as archive”). and they foreground the values and insights offered by indigenous communities in combating the climate crisis. through their work, then, these artist-activists challenge, nuance, and re-write narratives about the climate crisis—their work has become crucial for navigating what elizabeth deloughrey terms “the submarine futures of the anthropocene” (“submarine futures”). i begin with this quick overview of recent oceania-based climate activism and artistic uprisings as they speak to the motivating concerns at the heart of this special issue of transmotion. around the world, indigenous communities are leading movements to redress and counteract the violence of anthropogenic climate change, along with its driving forces of colonialism and capitalism. these movements critically reflect on how indigenous peoples define their relationships to the land and water, to martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 6 other humans and non-humans, and to history and time in order to push back against the genocidal wave of ecological violence. as jaskiran dhillon puts it, indigenous peoples are challenging structures of contemporary global capitalism, standing up and speaking out to protect the land, water, and air from further contamination and ruination, and embodying long-standing forms of relationality and kinship that counter western epistemologies of human/nature dualism. indigenous peoples are mapping the contours of alternative modes of social, political, and economic organization that speak to the past, present, and the future—catapulting us into a moment of critical, radical reflection about the substantive scope and limitations of “mainstream environmentalism” (1). this issue of transmotion builds on these insights, focusing on the innumerable and profoundly consequential ways that indigenous peoples have shaped and contributed to debates surrounding the anthropocene, particularly through forms of storytelling and cultural production. our focus on stories resonates with donna haraway’s claim that “it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. it matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories” (12). in the spirit of this sentiment, our contributors examine stories from a plurality of aesthetic forms, such as literature, photography, film, and other related modes of creative expression. drawing upon their knowledge as scholars of literary and cultural studies, our contributors tease out the ways in which indigenous storytelling depicts the complex negotiations of “nature” and “culture” in the anthropocene. this special issue thus takes seriously the anishnaabe understanding that “stories are vessels of knowledge” and that, as such, transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 7 they “carry dynamic answers to questions” posed by various indigenous communities (doerfler et al.) given the global scope of the climate crisis, this issue of transmotion focuses on the significance of anthropocene narratives in a global indigenous arena. in operationalizing a trans-indigenous framework, we support chadwick allen’s assertion that we must undertake indigenous-centered scholarship that reads indigenous texts in comparative terms, rather than in relation to a eurowestern canon. following allen, our aim is “not to displace the necessary, invigorating study of specific traditions and contexts but rather to complement these by augmenting and expanding broader, globally indigenous fields of inquiry” (xiv). across disparate locales, we consider the potential that an antiand decolonial anthropocene discourse can hold for transnational solidarity and global indigenous sovereignty. our contributors reflect on how indigenous artists and activists reconcile the local exigencies of their environment with the global discourse on climate change. through our deployment of a transindigenous methodology, we hope to offer a thought-provoking venue to explore the diverse and interrelated forms of indigenous creativity from across the globe. in what follows, i begin by overviewing some of the main interventions indigenous thinkers have made in relation to anthropocene discourse, emphasizing their strategies for decolonizing, problematizing, and unsettling dominant perspectives in this growing field. this is not a comprehensive summary of the field, rather it is a survey featuring some of the voices that have contributed to this vibrant conversation. with this context established, i turn to the growing dialogue between eco-critical and indigenous literary studies to consider how these fields have increasingly dialogued since the acceleration of anthropocene thinking, and i provide an overview of the scholarly contributions that comprise this special issue. martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 8 decolonizing the anthropocene the central theme of this issue has inspired a significant amount of critical interest in recent years. before discussing how aesthetic works, in particular, have responded to discourse on the anthropocene, it’s useful to map out how indigenous scholars from a variety of disciplines have productively engaged with and problematized discourse on the anthropocene. the term “anthropocene” was coined and popularized by ecologist eugene stoermer and atmospheric chemist paul crutzen at the turn of the 21st century. in their initial formulation of this term, the anthropocene designates a newly proposed geological epoch in which humans are considered a collective geophysical force, responsible for drastic changes to the planet’s overall habitability. for the first time in earth’s history, humankind had altered the planet’s deep chemistry—its atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere—in massive, long-lasting ways. crutzen and stoermer dated this rupture to the late eighteenth century beginnings of the industrial revolution, when unprecedented developments in trade, travel, and technology resulted in a drastic increase in global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane (which are evident in recent analyses of air trapped in polar ice). along with this important historical moment, they further identify a “great acceleration” in the midtwentieth century, when human population, consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions all skyrocketed. for these reasons, they argue that the “impact of human activities on earth [across] all scales” has made it “more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology” (17). since its early formulation, the term has become the subject of ever-growing critical debate. in particular, numerous critics have taken issue with the term’s tendency for generalization and abstraction: crutzen and stoermer’s hypothesis frames climate change as a problem caused by the human species writ large (this is evident in the line referenced above). moreover, their framework obscures the ways in which transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 9 environmental violence is disproportionately created and differentially distributed, particularly along the lines of race, class, and gender. to counteract these tendencies, scholars across disciplines have theorized spinoff “-cenes,” ones that more closely inspect the historical processes and epistemologies that directly contributed to anthropogenic climate change. jason moore’s notion of the “capitalocene” identifies the global capitalist system—with its prioritization of limitless growth and “cheap nature”—as the primary culprit in the creation of climate vulnerability. another influential alternative, the “plantationocene,” links climate change to the transatlantic slave trade and its afterlives. developed by sophie moore and collaborators, this term confronts the enduring legacies of plantations and unpacks the ways that these integral sites were produced through processes of intensive land usage, land alienation, labor extraction, and racialized violence (first indentured servitude, and later slavery). these terms thus highlight the reality that “we may all be in the anthropocene, but we are not all in it in the same way” (nixon 8). and, moreover, they speak to the crucial implications of how we define, delimit, and narrate our ecological and climatological crisis.7 writing from an indigenous studies framework, zoe todd (métis) and heather davis have offered one of the most compelling reconceptualizations of the term. in their article, “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene,” they examine the ways that climate change discourse might productively shift if we reconsider the anthropocene’s origin point. challenging the typical mid-20th century start-point, davis and todd propose linking the anthropocene to the columbian exchange (1610). this is an important historical flashpoint, they explain, for two reasons: the first is that the amount of plants and animals that were exchanged between europe and the americas during this time drastically re-shaped the martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 10 ecosystems of both of these landmasses, evidence of which can be found in the geologic layer by way of the kinds of biomass accumulated there. the second reason, which is a much more chilling indictment against the horrifying realities of colonialism, is the drop in carbon dioxide levels that can be found in the geologic layer that correspond to the genocide of the peoples of the americas and the subsequent re-growth of forests and other plants (766). in other words, this moment is significant because it offers the kind of “evidence” that geologists and scientists need for determining the onset of a new geologic epoch. when large-scale events have occurred in the earth’s deep history (such as global cooling events), they leave a geologic marker that is visible in the earth’s sedimentary strata—this is referred to as a “golden spike.” in order to determine if the anthropocene constitutes a new epoch, scientists have endeavored to trace and locate a new golden spike within the earth’s geologic bedrock (and indeed, multiple “golden spikes” have been proposed). as kathryn yusoff notes, this method operates as a disciplinary endeavor to geologically map the material relation of space and time according to stratigraphic principles and scientific precedents—and it is therefore grounded in the distinctly positivist values inherent to a eurowestern scientific system (yusoff, chapter 2). todd and davis find the aforementioned moment to be significant for other reasons, however. using a date that coincides with colonialism in the americas, they explain, allows us to understand the nature of our ecological crisis as inherently ascribed to a specific ideology that is animated by proto-capitalist logics based on extraction and accumulation through dispossession. this process also entailed the disruption of the kin relations that characterize indigenous perspectives and forms of knowledge. as they put it, the anthropocene registers “a severing of relations between transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 11 humans and the soil, between plants and animals, between minerals and our bones” (770). these logics of accumulation and dispossession, however, are not sequestered to a remote past. as todd and davis observe, they continue to shape the present day, producing our current era of growing climate destabilization. today, the economic infrastructures of settler-colonies around the world depend on extractive industries: natural resources are transported to international markets “from oil and gas fields, refineries, lumber mills, mining operations, and hydro-electric facilities located on the dispossessed lands of indigenous nations” (coulthard “thesis 2”). in many cases, cooperation between the federal government and private businesses paves the way for these extractive processes, further cementing settler control over the land while undermining indigenous authority and sovereignty.8 in recent years, this has led to the frightening manifestation of what ashley dawson describes as “extractivist populism,” wherein the bigotry and repression of authoritarian populism has combined with and amplified the ecocidal intensification of resource extraction—both in the name of “progress” and the “people’s good” (amatya and dawson 6). these ongoing instances of energy and resource extraction consistently highlight the recursive or cyclical nature of climate violence, which cuts across linear conceptions of time and straightforward notions of progress. to adapt the words of patrick wolfe, settler colonialism as climate change is a structure and not an event (388). beyond identifying capitalism and colonialism as the core problematics of the anthropocene, indigenous scholars have also stepped forward as central figures in providing alternatives to climate colonialism, offering “both knowledge and leadership in understanding and addressing environmental crises” (deloria et al. 13). the potawatomi scholar and activist kyle whyte has dedicated much of his work to crafting what he calls “indigenous climate change studies,” an indigenous-based approach to martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 12 climate change. his formulation of indigenous climate change studies is supported by three basic tenets. first, climate change is an intensification of the ways colonial structures of power have always shaped environments. second, indigenous communities can better prepare for climate change by renewing indigenous knowledges, including languages, sciences, and forms of human and nonhuman kinship. third, the perspectives of indigenous peoples who are already adapting to the postapocalyptic conditions of colonialism changes the ways these communities imagine futures affected by climate change. together, these elements yield a mode of praxis wherein one “perform[s] futurities that indigenous persons can build on in generations to come. [it is] guided by our reflection on our ancestors’ perspectives and on our desire to be good ancestors ourselves to future generations (160). instances of indigenous climate change studies have proliferated as climate breakdown has accelerated, signaling the salience and necessity of this approach. in one example, whyte describes a collaborative encounter between the state of alaska and koyukon people of koyukuk-middle yukon region in the arctic. in order to navigate unprecedented climatic shifts in the region, the state proposed hunting regulations on moose that would hamper indigenous harvesting practices. as an alternative, koyukon youth and elders drew upon their traditional knowledge of the seasonal round to create an alternative system that displayed their own understanding of seasonality. ultimately, their seasonal wheel demonstrated that “shifting the moose hunting season later so as to correspond with the indigenous view of seasonality makes more sense than the date proposed by state and federal regulators” (218). the yukon example thus illuminates the promising potential of indigenous climate change studies, and it illustrates the central role that indigenous self-determination must play in planning for climate change adaptation. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 13 importantly, whyte and other indigenous scholar-activists, have cautioned that these practices should not be utilized as tools for last-ditch efforts at climate recovery. numerous attempts at “integrating” indigenous knowledge systems (such as the work found in the “our common future” report) have often been reductive and appropriative in their approach. as leanne simpson observes, eurowestern environmentalists often believe that “traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples have some sort of secret of how to live on the land in a non-exploitative way that broader societies need to appropriate” (“dancing the world into being”). this kind of approach has the tendency to romanticize indigenous knowledge, reproducing stereotypes of the “ecological indian”—the “traditional” native who lives in harmony with the untouched environment. moreover, eurowestern approaches to indigenous knowledge often operate through a logic of intellectual extraction, in which knowledge is removed from its context, from its originary language, and from traditional knowledge holders. to counter the extractive and fetishistic tendencies of mainstream environmentalism, it is crucial to cultivate a model of “responsibility”—an environmentalist approach founded on respectful, long-standing relationships with indigenous people and with place (“dancing the world into being”).9 finally, it is crucial to recognize that decolonizing eurowestern environmentalisms is only part of what is necessary for advancing an ecological model grounded in responsibility and humility. as eve tuck and k. wayne yang explain (and as is suggested by both whyte’s and simpson’s emphasis on place), decolonization must agitate for practices of restorative land justice. in their article “decolonization is not a metaphor,” tuck and yang argue that “decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of land simultaneous to the recognition of how land and relations to land have always already been differently understood and enacted; that is, all of the land, and not just symbolically” (7). for tuck and yang, martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 14 decolonization cannot function as a stand-in for “the discourse of social justice”; instead, it must aim to recover the indigenous lands that were stolen by settlers through numerous and ongoing appropriative strategies. in turn, land recovery would then allow for the resurgence of “indigenous political-economic alternatives [that] could pose a real threat to the accumulation of capital in indigenous lands…” (coulthard “thesis 2”).10 such insights are crucial for developing an anti-colonial approach to the anthropocene: these scholars help us understand that implementing indigenous modes of environmental knowledge—which are tethered to place— necessitates the dismantling of extractive capitalism and the repatriation of indigenous lands. ignoring this reality impedes the restoration of the life-ways, practices, and kinship networks that are necessary for living responsibly in the midst of profound ecological change. as this overview suggests, indigenous studies has already proven to be a pivotal site of exchange for conversations surrounding the anthropocene—and this critical work is only continuing to grow and evolve as the climate crisis spins further out of control. the various activists and intellectuals i have discussed above allow for a fuller (and more accurate) picture of our current geological epoch to come into view. their work powerfully demonstrates the numerous ways that capitalism and settler colonialism have ushered in our warming world—and they illustrate how these violent logics are ongoing and evolving. just as importantly, however, these thinkers also emphasize how efforts for resistance and resurgence are being led by indigenous communities around the world. in doing so, they push for an honest conversation regarding how we have found ourselves in the throes of global environmental catastrophe—and, possibly, how we can imagine a future freed from domination, and built instead on a foundation of climatological justice. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 15 eh, indigenous aesthetics, and climate justice the work of imagining futures anchored in climate justice has been a primary endeavor for scholars in the environmental humanities (and the subdiscipline of eco-criticism). as an interdisciplinary (and sometimes anti-disciplinary) field, the environmental humanities “envision ecological crises fundamentally as questions of socioeconomic inequality, cultural difference, and divergent histories, values, and ethical frameworks” (heise 2). rather than insist on the belief that science, data, or technology can awaken us to the severity of our climate’s breakdown, scholarship in eh insists on emphasizing the political, social, cultural, and affective forms that the climate problem takes in different communities, cultures, and imaginaries (2). while scholars in eh acknowledge the importance of scientific understanding and technological problem-solving, they also remind us that these discourses are themselves colored by the disciplines that grant them power, and that they “stand to gain by situating themselves in [a] historical and sociocultural landscape” (2). the reality of this notion comes into clear view when we consider the ongoing nature of the climate change “debate,” particularly as it has played out within the united states. as scholars such as mike hulme and dale jamieson have shown, doubling down on the insights generated by the scientific community does little to shift social and political opinion about the climate crisis, especially when these insights remain disconnected from the larger cultural contexts and histories that influence our ideas and experiences of the climate (3). to dream of more sustainable futures, then, we must tap into the capacities of narrative (and other humanistic disciplines) for reimagining “the environment” and humankind’s place within it.11 this special issue approaches the environmental humanities from an indigenous-oriented angle, combing eh’s interests in climate and narrative with the kinds of questions and concerns i’ve outlined in this introduction’s second section.12 martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 16 scholars working at this critical crossroads have already begun exploring some of the most crucial concerns raised by indigenous creative work. much critical analysis, for instance, has examined how different genres (such as the gothic, dystopian, or speculative) assist us in navigating the specific epistemological and ontological challenges posed by the jarring disruptions of the anthropocene (anderson, deloughrey, dhillon). other work has documented the ways that indigenous narratives intersect with and inflect forms of environmental activism and protest (cariou, kinder, streeby). a growing body of literature considers the archival function of indigenous storytelling, tracing how these stories retain and transmit ecological knowledge across long swathes of time (lemenager, perez). other work has discussed some of the ways that indigenous narratives foreground questions of multi-species kinship, gender and sexual equality, anti-racism, and environmental justice in order to advance more equitable climate futures (adamson, goeman). and most recently, a collection of scholars encourage us to re-consider the utility of the anthropocene metric in and of itself: “the anthropocene is a narrative, one cooperatively composed and begging now for crowdsourced revision, with sequels that are not linear or conclusive but alternately recursive and speculative, plodding and precipitous, stale and untried” (benson taylor 10). these are only some of the issues and insights examined by an indigenousoriented ecocriticism—one that works toward the development of a decolonial climate movement on a global scale. our special issue aims to further explore such preoccupations and discover new points of critical reflection. we begin with an essay by kasey jones-matrona on jennifer elise foerster’s bright raft in the afterweather. in this essay, jones-matrona examines how foerster’s poetry draws on indigenous scientific literacies (that account for both human and nonhuman knowledge) to re-map creek lands, histories, and futures in the anthropocene. jones-matrona then connects these re-mapped transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 17 cartographies to the prospect of healing, arguing that, even in works with catastrophic themes and settings, healing is a crucial aspect of indigenous futurist work. in centering the significance of healing, jones-matrona elucidates and “amplifies an indigenousspecific notion of the anthropocene.” through an examination of ciro guerra’s embrace of the serpent, holly may treadwell explores and further develops the notion of the capitalocence (as theorized by jason moore). as treadwell explains, embrace of the serpent rejects the notion of the anthropocene and its homogenous view of “human” activity, explicitly demonstrating that it is specifically capitalism as an extension of colonialism that is having such detrimental and violent effects on the climate. treadwell focuses specifically on the way that the capitalocence, as depicted in embrace of the serpent, paves the way for extinction on three fronts: “the extinction of people via forced labor, decimation of land, murder, and dispossession; the extinction of indigenous cultures, comparing the personification, conservation, and kinship with nature, to capitalism’s commodification, exploitation, and demonization of nature; and the extinction of nature itself via its domination and cultivation.” treadwell closes their essay by asking how indigenous knowledge might challenge the wave of extinction propelled by the capitalization of nature. abdenour bouich’s essay on tanya tagaq’s novel split tooth looks at the ways in which tanya tagaq’s formally inventive work critiques the destructive “developmental” ethos of colonial capitalist modernity, which targets indigenous inuit peoples of canada. in particular, bouich’s reading focuses on the text’s depiction of the ecological disasters provoked by resource extraction and global warming brought about by global capitalism and, in particular, canadian capitalist expansionism in the arctic region. while accounting for the scale of such petro-violence, split tooth, bouich contends, also employs a variety of literary forms to catalyze the resurgence martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 18 and the recovery of “indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and politics that have long been dismissed by colonial discourses and narratives.” in doing so, the text can be read as what daniel heath justice calls an indigenous “wonderwork”—a genrecrossing text grounded in the resilient worldviews of the indigenous inuit of nunavut. in their essay on celu amberstone’s novella “refugees,” fernando pérez garcia also considers the affordances of formal experimentation, focusing on the decolonial possibilities of indigenous futurism. the article draws on leanne betasamosake simpson’s and glenn coulthard’s work on indigenous resurgence to explore how the novella comments on canada’s exploitative economic system, which relies heavily on the extraction of natural resources and the ongoing dispossession of indigenous communities. according to garcia, indigenous futurist fiction not only provides “indigenous meaning to past and ongoing colonial experiences,” but it projects an indigenous presence and epistemology into the future. “refugees,” in particular, acts as a channel for the expression of possible collective self-recognition through relationships based on reciprocity between human and non-human forms of life. such an imaginative endeavor—which envisions sovereignty from indigenous perspective—is central for conceptualizing alternatives to environmental collapse. similar concerns are taken up by kyle bladow, in their essay on louise erdrich’s speculative novel, future home of the living god. bladow’s essay assesses how “recent literary depictions of indigenous futurity coincide with grassroots activism that has been ongoing for generations and that is finding new iterations in current movements for climate justice and against settler colonial resource extraction.” bladow coins the useful term “oblique cli-fi” to describe recent post-apocalyptic novels, written by indigenous writers, which feature catastrophes that are not necessarily caused by climate change (but which have been considered under a cli-fi rubric due to the increasingly close relationship between climate change and catastrophe). erdrich’s transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 19 oblique cli-fi shows how responsibilities toward land and kin were never contingent upon permanent, unchanging ecologies but instead exist in states of dynamism and change, allowing for flexible re-creations of environmental stewardship. from this perspective, future home of the living god envisions hopeful prospects for a reservation community in an otherwise dystopian narrative. finally, isabel lockhart’s contribution considers the diverse work of métis writer, scholar, documentary filmmaker, and photographer warren cariou as a formal counterpoint to dominant representations of the athabasca tar sands. in contrast to the aerial aesthetics favored by canadian photographers, such as edward burtynsky and louis helbig, cariou favors literary and aesthetic forms that approximate the feel and smell of tar. crucially, this “from below” perspective on the tar sands not only seeks to make sensible the impacts of the oil industry, but it also illuminates indigenous presence against the settler social relations that underpin extraction in the region currently known as alberta. lockhart’s essay thus concludes with an examination of how cariou develops an alternate, indigenous politics of action that switches, as they put it, from representation of bitumen to relationships with bitumen. “by intervening directly in the use and meaning of bitumen,” lockhart argues, “cariou’s practices offer us an alternative to the terms of urgency, visibility, and action that so often frame climate art.” these reflections, anchored in the rich field of indigenous literary studies, can help re-signify and reorient interdisciplinary conversations about the anthropocene, particularly when it is framed as a product of longstanding colonial violence. moreover, these contributions seek to emphasize the necessity of centering indigenous voices in conversations about climate justice, sovereignty, and environmental sustainability, while modeling generative approaches and methodologies for this endeavor. such martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 20 work is crucial for attending to life-destroying and world-creating effects of the colonial anthropocene. notes 1 see, for example, the new york times article “a remote pacific nation, threatened by rising seas” or the article the guardian titled “one day we'll disappear: tuvalu's sinking islands.” 2 over its 23-year history, the ipcc has been presented as the authoritative voice of climate science and the global knowledge community (hulme, “meet the humanities”). however, it is important to keep in mind that in constructing their assessment reports, the ipcc privileges literature produced in the natural science disciplines, especially the earth sciences, while the minority social science citations stemmed from economics. literature from the humanities is left almost entirely unacknowledged. the framing of climate change thus constructed by the ipcc—and the framing that has thus circulated through societies and informed policy—contains a bias: it is dominated by positivist disciplines (which, for example, focus on geo-engineering our way out of climate collapse) and neglectful of interpretive ones (which might ask us to re-consider our patterns of extraction and energy usage). 3 riffing on his previous work with what perez calls “poem-maps” (poems that reimagine authoritative western mappings of the south pacific), we might call these poems “poem-models.” these poem-models present—and then formally experiment with—scientific graphs and models that visualize and predict climate change. 4 and moreover, his title adds specificity and context to the graph—something that remains absent from the ipcc’s placeless and contextless visualization. his graph, in other words, forces readers to confront the specific places and people most affected by global warming and rising water levels. as a result, we interact with the graph’s contents in a more intimate and engaged manner. 5 for a critique of extinction narratives in the context of the pacific islands, see rebecca oh’s article “making time: pacific futures in kiribati’s migration with dignity, kathy jetñ il-kijiner’s iep jaltok, and keri hulme’s stonefish.” 6 in her eye-opening book infowhelm, houser argues that recent environmental art blends scientific information (the positivist epistemologies that have dominated environmental understanding and decision making in the eurowest) with other (often marginalized) epistemological modes, reminding us that scientific information “is a representational device in its own right” (2). her monograph builds on her previous work regarding climate visualizations, where she argues that “environmental visualizations, especially those addressing climate change, cry out for humanistic transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 21 interpretation because they are not realist translations of natural phenomena. their representational features bear a great burden of signification, especially as the objects roam from their typical origins in specialized journals, to blogs and policy documents, and even into skeptics’ arguments. the interpretive tools the humanities have honed are vital to getting beyond the perceived selfevidence, the transparency, of visualizations in climate discourse” (“climate visualizations” 358). 7 crucially, these theorists do not deny the significance of historical moments (such as the “great acceleration”), rather they seek to emphasize how such dates lose political and social import if they do not account for the very real differences between peoples, governments, and geographies in contributing to eco-system collapse. for instance, a 2013 study concluded that since 1751, a mere ninety corporations have been responsible for two-thirds of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions (goldenberg 2013). 8 as jaskiran dhillon notes, these political moves are “in direct violation of treaty relationships that actively produce settler state sovereignty over the land” (“what standing rock teaches us about environmental justice”). 9 in the essay, “love and theft; or, provincializing the anthropocene” stephanie lemenager further problematizes the “long-standing tendency of euro-western environmentalism, and its various iterations in the academy, to use indigenous thought without fair attribution or sufficient understanding” (102). lemenager’s essay powerfully points out the “incomensurabilities” between indigenous knowledge and fields like the environmental humanities (a field that, at times, risks treating indigenous knowledge as a decontextualized tool kit). lemenager asks, “is it possible for […] settlers to think alongside indigenous scholars and writers, or merely to listen, without enacting theft in the form of translation and misuse?” (103-4). 10 coulthard argues that this threat would be triple-edged: first, land recovery would reconnect indigenous people to land-based practices and forms of environmental knowledge (antithetical to capitalist accumulation); second, it would offer means of subsistence that would enable a departure from a capitalist market system, focusing instead localized and sustainable production of life materials; third, it would connect indigenous modes of governance with “nontraditional economic activities.” 11 as adeline johns putra writes in her study of climate fiction, “research at the interface of narratology and neurophysiology has shown that narratives have a greater impact than non-narrative modes of communication, because the experience which is simulated in reading them is a powerful means of forming attitudes” (245). 12 this claim is reinforced by many of the author’s cited above, such as todd, davis, and whyte, who often draw on the discourse of storytelling (and genre fiction, such as science fiction) to make claims around the importance of telling new indigenous stories martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 22 and imaginings in the anthropocene. whyte, for instance, writes, “surviving the anthropocene requires new ways of imagining, and indigenous writers have led the way in this front. indigenous imaginations of our futures in relation to climate change— the stuff of didactic science fiction—begin already with our living today in postapocalyptic situation” (160). todd and davis similarly of fiction and speculation for engaging the colonial dimensions of the anthropocene. works cited adamson, joni. american indian literature, environmental justice, and ecocriticism: the middle place. tucson: u of arizona p, 2001. alaimo, stacy. exposed: environmental politics and pleasures in posthuman times. minneapolis: u of minnesota p, 2016. allen, chadwick. trans-indigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies. university of minnesota press, 2012. amatya, alok and ashely dawson, “literature in an age of extraction: an introduction.” modern fiction studies, 66:1, 2020, 1-19. anderson, eric gary, and melanie benson taylor. “letting the other story go: the native south in and beyond the anthropocene.” native south, 12, 2019, 74–98. benson taylor, melanie. “indigenous interruptions in the anthropocene.” pmla, 136:1, 2021, 9-16. cariou, warren, and isabelle st-amand. “environmental ethics through changing landscapes: indigenous activism and literary arts.” introduction. canadian review of comparative literature / revue canadienne de littérature comparée, 44:1, 2017, 7-24. coulthard, glenn. “thesis, 2: capitalism no more.” the new inquiry, 13 oct. 2014, https://thenewinquiry.com/thesis-2-capitalism-no-more/. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 23 crutzen, paul j, and eugene f. stoermer. “the ‘anthropocene’.” international geosphere-biosphere programme (igbp) global change newsletter, 41, 2000, 17-18. davis, heather, and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international journal for critical geographies, 16:4, 2017, 761-780. deloria, philip, et al. “unfolding futures: indigenous ways of knowing for the twentyfirst century.” dædalus: journal of the american academy of arts and sciences, 147:2, 2018, 6-16. deloughrey, elizabeth m. allegories of the anthropocene. durham: duke up, 2019. ---. “submarine futures of the anthropocene.” comparative literature, 69:2, 2017, 3244. dhillon, grace. walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction. the u of arizona p, 2012. dhillon, jaskiran. “indigenous resurgence, decolonization, and movements for environmental justice.” environment and society, 9:1, 2018, 1-5. ---. “what standing rock teaches us about environmental justice.” social sciences research council, 5 dec. 2017, https://items.ssrc.org/just-environments/whatstanding-rock-teaches-us-about-environmental-justice/. doerfler, jill, niigaanwewidam james sinclair, and heidi kiiwetinepinesiik stark, editors. centering anishinaabeg studies: understanding the world through stories. michigan state up, 2013. goeman, mishuana. mark my words: native women mapping our nations. u of minnesota p, 2013. ghosh, kuhelika. “poets body as archive amidst a rising ocean.” edge effects, 17 nov. 2020, https://edgeeffects.net/kathy-jetnil-kijiner/. martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 24 goldenberg, suzanne. “just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions.” the guardian, 20 nov. 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-manmade-global-warming-emissions-climate-change. haraway, donna j. staying with the trouble: making kin in the chthulucene. duke up, 2016. heise, ursula. ‘introduction: planet, species, justice—and the stories we tell about them.” the routledge companion to environmental humanities, edited by jon christensen, ursula heise, and michelle niemann, routledge, 2017. houser, heather. “climate visualizations: making data experiential.” the routledge companion to the environmental humanities, edited by jon christensen, ursula heise, and michelle niemann, routledge, 2017, 358-368. ---. infowhelm: environmental art and literature in an age of data. columbia up, 2020. hulme, mike. “meet the humanities.” exploring climate change through science and in society, edited by mike hulme, routledge, 2013, 106-109. ---. “reducing the future to climate: a story of climate determinism and reductionism.” osiris 26:1. (2011). jetñil-kijiner, kathy. “statement and poem by kathy jetnil-kijiner, climate summit 2014 opening ceremony.” youtube, uploaded by united nations, 23 sept. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc_ige7tbsy. kinder, jordan. “gaming extractivism: indigenous resurgence, unjust infrastructures, and the politics of play in elizabeth lapensée’s thunderbird strike.” canadian journal of communication, 46:2, 2021, 247-269. klein, naomi. “dancing the world into being: a conversation with idle no more’s leanne simpson.” yes! magazine, 6 mar, 2013, transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 25 https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2013/03/06/dancing-the-world-intobeing-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson. lemenager, stephanie. “love and theft; or, provincializing the anthropocene.” pmla, 136:1, 2021, 102-109. lewis, simon l., and mark a. maslin. “defining the anthropocene.” nature, 519.7542 (2015): 171–180. magrane, eric. “habitat threshold. by craig santos perez.” isle: interdisciplinary studies in literature and environment, 8:1, 2021, 393-394. mcgregor, deborah. “coming full circle: indigenous knowledge, environment, and our future.” the american indian quarterly, 28:3&4, summer/fall 2004, 385410. moore, jason w. “introduction.” anthropocene or capitalocene? nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism, edited by jason w. moore. oakland, ca: pm press, 2016, 1-11. moore, sophie, et al “the plantationocene and plantation legacies today.” edge effects, 22 jan. 2019, https://edgeeffects.net/plantation-legaciesplantationocene/. nixon, rob. “the anthropocene: the promise and pitfalls of an epochal idea.” future remains: a cabinet of curiosities for the anthropocene. ed. gregg mitman, et al. u of chicago p, 2018. oh, rebecca. “making time: pacific futures in kiribati’s migration with dignity, kathy jetñil-kijiner’s iep jaltok, and keri hulme’s stonefish.” modern fiction studies, 66:4, 2020, 597-619. packard, aaron. “350 pacific: we are not drowning. we are fighting.” 350.org, 17 feb, 2013, https://350.org/350-pacific-we-are-not-drowning-we-are-fighting/. perez, craig santos. habitat threshold. omnidawn publishing, 2020. martin premoli global indigeneity and climate change 26 johns-putra, adeline. climate and literature. cambridge university press, 2019. siagatonu, teresa. “layers – teresa siagatonu.” youtube, uploaded by internationalist, 8 dec. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7glgzmuwm0. streeby, shelley. imagining the future of climate change: world-making through science fiction and activism. university of california press, 2018. tallbear, kim. “failed settler kinship, truth and reconciliation, and science.” indigenous science technology society, 16 march 2016, indigenoussts.com/failed-settler-kinship-truth-and-reconciliation-and-science/. tuck, eve and k. wayne yang. “decolonization is not a metaphor.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, 1:1, 2012, 1-40. wenzel, jennifer. the disposition of nature: environmental crisis and world literature. fordham up, 2019. whyte, kyle powys. “indigenous climate change studies: indigenizing futures, decolonizing the anthropocene.” english language notes, 55:1-2, 2017, 153162. ---. “our ancestors’ dystopia now: indigenous conservation and the anthropocene.” the routledge companion to the environmental humanities, edited by jon christensen, ursula heise, and michelle niemann, routledge, 2017, 206-215. wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research, 8:4, 2006, 387-409. yusoff, kathryn. a billion black anthropocenes or none. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2018. microsoft word nason.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   138 brenda child. my grandfather’s knocking sticks: ojibwe family life and labor on the reservation. st. paul: minnesota state historical society, 2014. print. http://shop.mnhs.org/collections/books-american-indian-studies/products/mygrandfathers-knocking-sticks the setting of brenda child’s most recent book opens with a devastating description of her historical focus, reservation life at the turn of the 20th century. she reminds us that following numerous cessions, removals and blatant land theft, the reservation could only be described for many ojibwe people as “the aftermath of catastrophic dispossession, like a swath of land spared in the wake of a tornado or flood” (3). yet, as in the aftermath of any such catastrophe, we are reminded again and again of the determination of families and communities to rebuild, reconnect, and survive as some things stay the same, some are rebuilt stronger and others become dear yet distant memories of that time before. for child, she chooses to tell the story of the reservation after the storm as “the place where ojibwe labor was reorganized and redefined” (3), a choice that brings into focus the determination, strength and tough decisions that ojibwe families faced as their homeland was remade along with their relationships to it, to work and to each other. on its face, brenda child’s book is an engaging history of ojibwe families’ changing labor practices during the first half of the 20th century, a period marked by many forms of dispossession and removal, increasing state intervention in traditional economies, and global disasters such as the influenza outbreak of 1918-19. it is also a deeply moving tribute to her ojibwe maternal grandparents and the red lake community, who constitute the heart of a text that lovingly depicts the resiliency of everyday ojibwe people struggling to survive the targeted destruction of their way of life by greedy and unjust officials, settlers and governments. moreover, for this reviewer, child’s attention to the gendered impacts of these changes offers indigenous feminists a nuanced history that effectively connects ojibwe women’s labor, status, and knowledge at the nexus of ongoing dispossession and more importantly, ongoing resistance. by the end of her book, readers are left with a vivid understanding why women in ojibwe communities often stood to lose the most in the transition from the seasonal round to a mixed economy that characterized life on the reservation from the 20th century onward. at the same time, however, child summons theda perdue’s critique of the “declension argument” or the assumption that indigenous women in modern history are always in a space of perpetual victimhood and loss (185). rather, she asks, in what ways did women (and men) alter their relationship to work in order to address the real challenges of reservation life and, at the same time, still maintain cultural values distinct to an ojibwe perspective and philosophy? what develops in answer to this question is a measured and ever-fascinating collection of life stories from her family and others that challenge the easy binary of assimilation and traditionalism that too often over determines histories of dory nason review of my grandfather’s knocking sticks     139 everyday indigenous lives. moreover, child’s methodological approach to place alongside personal memory, family and community oral history, and more traditional archival materials produces a masterful example of indigenous (feminist) historiography that, above all, is as compelling to read as it is sound in its research. the first part of the book is a mix of memoir and family history as child examines the life of her maternal grandparents fred auginash (nahwahjewun) and jeanette jones (zoongaabawiik). opening with her grandpa auginash’s story, child is able to tell the history of dispossession for ojibwe peoples, beginning with the treaty of 1837 and running through to the allotment era for northern minnesota peoples. grounded in her grandfather’s story of an allotment he never lived on and his subsequent removal from his family home, she is able to give this well-known history meaning beyond abrogation and policy decrees. jeanette’s part of her grandparents’ story is one that underscores the importance of child’s attention to the role of patriarchal colonialism in women’s lives at this time. her investigation into jeanette’s early life uncovers letters from indian agents and school authorities concerned over her grandmother’s “fall from grace” as a carlisle graduate, becoming pregnant “out of wedlock” a few years before meeting and marrying fred. yet what child chooses to focus on in these letters is her grandmother’s determination to control her life choices and power of her own body. beyond condescension, the agents note jeanette’s refusal to marry her baby’s father or deliver her baby in a hospital. child recalls the family stories that when the time came jeanette sought out her grandmother’s care; years later, fred would serve as jeanette’s midwife in her subsequent births (32). fred’s marriage to jeanette brought him to the red lake community and into a family still immersed in the seasonal round economy characterized by trapping, hunting, sugaring, berry picking and rice gathering. yet, as child demonstrates, the oncoming economic depression, war years, and an unfortunate accident which left fred unable to attend to hard labor such as fishing, required her grandmother to enter into the world of social services, wage labor through commercial fishing and the underground economy of alcohol distribution. this practice led to her grandmother being given the affectionate title of shingababokwe or “beer woman” by her red lake community. the second chapter details jeanette’s and fred’s “criminal” activities, including charges of public drunkenness and welfare fraud respectively, two stories that underscore the surveillance of indigenous lives and the total lack of regard on the part of colonial agents for the pain that underlie such “criminal” behavior. while the chapter’s title suggests it is about religion on the reservation, it is more about the impacts of settler morality and attendant racism that made life more difficult though the criminalizing of indigenous bodies, former modes of subsistence and traditional religion. in this storied chapter, we learn of jeanette’s struggle to overcome the loss of three children, her father and fathertransmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015)   140 in-law in a matter of a few years, and the added burden of taking care of a family when fred could not. at the same time, we learn by way of court transcripts of one tribal judge’s seeming sympathy to jeanette’s depression and alleged alcohol abuse. it is these stories that pull at indigenous readers, myself included, as i recall traces of my own family memories alongside child’s, a connection that is bittersweet and profound. the second part of the book moves into a more traditional history of work and life on the reservation, yet does not lose sight of the stories of everyday people. specifically, it attends to three forms of labor in the larger ojibwe constellation of communities in the region, though with a clear focus on red lake. these three forms of work life include fishing, healing and the cultivation of wild rice, all of which underwent major change in these years. child’s decision to focus on these three forms of labor are obvious in the first and final choice, but the chapter on healing is one that highlights a creative and attentive insight to women’s contributions and knowledge that characterizes her perspective. it is this chapter that tells the story of healing through the story of the proliferation of the jingle dress dance and a new crop of ojibwe nurses during this period. highlighting the resiliency of ojibwe men, women and children in protecting traditional resources and creatively addressing the criminalization, loss of power and authority over activities they once did without intervention, these three chapters also place into context ojibwe participation in commercial fishing, government programs during the war and the development in tribal enterprises such as the red lake fishery association and a wild rice cooperative that operated briefly at cass lake. throughout these chapters, child reveals the corruption and collusion that seemed to characterize relations between the state of minnesota, game wardens, and others who came to regulate the harvest of both fish and wild rice in ways that favored white middle class sports fisherman/hunters, tourism and other settler enterprises. with each detailed set of stories, she ends these chapters with a focus on a single person whose life story brings home the human, legal and cultural costs of these injustices for ojibwe peoples. for example in the fisheries chapter, child ends with the story of “naynaabeak and the game warden.” characteristic of child’s ability to beautifully weave naynaabeak’s story about her efforts to gain a fishing permit to fish where she always has into a larger narrative of both women and ojibwe labor history, child writes, “in ojibwe culture, water was a gendered space where women possessed property rights, which they demonstrated through their long-standing practice of binding rice together . . . part of an indigenous legal system that marked territory on a lake and empowered women. from every legal angle that mattered to ojibwe women… naynaabeak was obliged to set her fishing net in the warroad river, despite the difficulties she faced in doing so by 1939” (122). this excerpt and story resonates home in the end of the last chapter, one that recalls the titular metaphor of the book, grandfather auginash’s knocking sticks. by the close of the dory nason review of my grandfather’s knocking sticks     141 first part of the twentieth century, the impositions of settler economy, patriarchy and moralizing had its impact in transforming what was once the domain of ojibwe women, the wild rice harvest, to the domain of ojibwe men. at the beginning of the book, child recalls that in her early life her grandfather’s knocking sticks led her to believe that men were traditionally in charge of the harvest. in coming to know her community and family history as an historian, she recognized that “practices i considered ‘tradition’ were in fact new approaches to work” (12). in this century, child notes the continued and new challenges that face the sacred food of the ojibwe, including our people’s changing relationship to it as a commodity, as well as the very real threats of pollution, habitat loss, and genetic research on the wild rice genome. however, child concludes her careful weaving of family and community labor history with the reminder that knocking sticks, a technology once mocked by some newcomers to the region, are still used by ojibwe peoples in the harvest and these sticks remain much the same in construction as her grandfather’s—a fitting testimony to the endurance of a people, their culture and ways of life. dory nason, university of british columbia microsoft word 111-688-1-le-2.docx transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 1 the white earth constitution, cosmopolitan nationhood, and the fruitful ironies of relational sovereignty joseph bauerkemper we are nowhere near the “end of history,” but we are still far from free from monopolizing attitudes toward it. these have not been much good in the past [...] and the quicker we teach ourselves to find alternatives, the better and safer. edward said as its title suggests, this is an essay about apparent absurdities. it is a hopeful pursuit of contradiction, a straightforward affirmation of irony. among the scholarly debates it observes is the enduring tension between perspectives that continue to see nationhood as the paramount paradigm of societal orientation and those that emphasize the ascendency of globalization. this terrain is both well trodden and continually trafficked. in 1966, international relations theorist and frequent u.s. government consultant hans morgenthau wrote, “modern technology has rendered the nation-state obsolete as a principle of political organization; the nation-state is no longer able to perform what is the elementary function of any political organization: to protect the lives of its members and their way of life” (9). while the cold war angst of nuclear destruction would slowly recede across subsequent decades, many scholars would continue sharing morgenthau’s sense that nation-states were waning in geopolitical importance. in 1990, eric hobsbawm speculatively characterized the world of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as “a world which can no longer be contained within the limits of ‘nations’ and ‘nationstates’ as these used to be defined, either politically, or economically, or culturally, or even linguistically. it will [...] reflect the decline of the old nation-state as an operational entity” (191). a few years later, french diplomat jean-marie guéhenno similarly observed, “too remote to manage the problems of our daily life, the nation nevertheless remains too constrained to confront the global problems that affect us. whether it is a question of the traditional functions of sovereignty, like defense or justice, or of economic competences, the nation appears increasingly like a straitjacket, poorly adapted to the growing integration of the world” (12-13). looking back joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 2 at these twentieth-century declarations, anthony smith sees the emergence of a “constructionist” critique of nationalism, asserting “that nationalism and nations have fulfilled their functions and are now becoming obsolete in an era of globalization” (92). the general strain of the constructionist critique endures in the twenty-first century. for jayantha dhanapala, “the nation—along with its associated ideology, nationalism—continues to provide a formidable obstacle to constructive international cooperation on an enormous variety of common global problems” (34). dhanapala suggests not only the nation’s waning relevance in a globalizing world, but that it increasingly stands in the way of desirable development. despite commitments quite distinct from dhanapala’s affirmation of globalization, michael hardt and antonio negri’s book empire makes a conceptually allied argument: the decline of the nation-state is not simply the result of an ideological position that might be reversed by an act of political will: it is a structural and irreversible process. [...] the declining effectiveness of this structure can be traced clearly through the evolution of a whole series of global juridico-economic bodies, such as gatt, the world trade organization, the world bank, and the imf. the globalization of production and circulation, supported by this supranational juridical scaffolding, supersedes the effectiveness of national juridical structures. (336) these networked institutions that regulate legal and material life under globalization orient to and reiterate a logic of power that hardt and negri theorize as “empire” (xii). while it can make use of nations and their structures, “empire” primarily displaces them. for many other scholars, however, nationhood and nationalism continue to have prevalence. according to craig calhoun, “globalization has not put an end to nationalism—not to nationalist conflicts nor to the role of nationalist categories in organizing ordinary people’s sense of belonging in the world” (171). “indeed,” calhoun writes, “much of the contemporary form of globalization is produced and driven by nation-states—at least certain powerful nationstates” (169). in alignment with calhoun and in stark contrast to hardt and negri, martin wolf argues that “globalization is not destined, it is chosen. it is a choice made to enhance a nation’s economic well-being” (182). “integration is a deliberate choice,” wolf continues, “rather than an ineluctable destiny, it cannot render states impotent. their potency lies in the choices they make” (183). and in an even more precise departure from hardt and negri, wolf writes, “institutions transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 3 such as the world trade organization (wto), the international monetary fund (imf), the world bank, the eu, and the north american free trade agreement underpin cooperation among states” (184). and finally, “global governance will come not at the expense of the state but rather as an expression of the interests that the state embodies. as the source of order and basis of governance, the state will remain in the future as effective, and will be as essential, as it has ever been” (190). while morgenthau, hobsbawm, guéhenno, and hardt and negri partake in a shared an emphasis on the nation-state’s receding significance, calhoun and wolf share the sense that nation-states remain formidable agents within an increasingly unified global market system. in the 2011 edition of his dynamic and insightfully ambivalent book globalization and the nation state, robert holton synthesizes so many of these and other scholarly perspectives, indicating that “global and national processes often interact and adapt to each other, creating processes that reflect both global and national or local elements” (2) and that “some versions of nationalism are compatible with globalization and cosmopolitanism” (227). historian and historiographer david w. noble—a friend and mentor to whom i am deeply indebted—shares with holton and many others an unwillingness to champion either nationalism or globalism. noble does, however, contribute to this discussion a unique suggestion that both nationalist and globalist imaginaries are subtle iterations of the same commitment to an aspirational exodus out of the mess of history. in his studies of historians, authors, composers, artists, economists, and scientists, noble has argued that in recent centuries middle classes on both sides of the atlantic (most notably britain, france, and the settler colonies they spawned) have consistently imagined themselves to be building nations that embody the culmination of history. according to noble, these nations imagined that “their cultures had grown out of their national landscapes, those virgin lands whose naturalness and purity were protected by national political boundaries” (death xxvi). these ostensibly organic nations had achieved the end of history by securing political sovereignty congruent with their respective fatherlands. this achievement thus marked a transcendent exodus from a timeful world of dynamic complexity and tradition into a timeless world of stable simplicity and modernity. the state-oriented concept of nationhood has been imagined by these middle classes as a signal achievement of modernity’s exodus. according to this imagination, the nation-state is the mode of socio-polity situated at the end of history’s arduous march of progress out of culture into nature, out of limits into infinitude. joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 4 yet across recent decades, it has been an important task of transnational studies to disclose the stratifying and violating power undergirding this imagination. contemporaneously with these efforts an alternative imaginary has gained formidable traction. many of the inheritors of nation-states have maintained faith in historical progress while revising their understanding of the telos in order to point eagerly toward the unfettered global marketplace as history’s culmination. “modern nations as sacred spaces had been replaced by the sacred space of the universal marketplace,” noble writes. “for the middle classes, that marketplace now represents the end of history” (death xxxvii). in his most recent book, noble continues in this vein, noting that across the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, perspectives both within and beyond the academy “replaced the nation with the global marketplace as the end of history. particular nations did not represent the timeless laws of nature; only the global marketplace expressed those universal patterns” (debating 6). dominant political and economic discourses and the array of scholarly voices cited above reveal that the frictions and intimacies between state nationalism and globalization remain heated and complex. noble’s analysis of these sentiments tells us that they are both fantasies with little to offer either the intellectual work of constructing critical histories or the material work of facilitating functional societies. neither paradigm has the potential to envision and foster a just world. imagining otherwise and creating cultural, political, and economic relations between and beyond state nationalism and market globalism is therefore crucial. among many other possibilities, indigenous writing and intellectual histories serve as important resources for this vital endeavor. when informed by the work of indigenous writers and intellectuals, efforts to reimagine structures and processes of societal affiliation might more effectively foster reconfigured, enhanced, and expanded recognitions of native sovereignties while also facilitating the deliberation and pursuit of justice in various contexts and on various scales. for the purposes of this essay, i will explore this possibility by focusing first on some of the ways in which native writing is currently studied within the academy and second on a particularly noteworthy piece of native writing: the constitution of the white earth nation. what i am suggesting here is that a meta-critical rumination on some of the primary critical approaches to native literary and intellectual traditions should help reveal for us key contributions that indigenous narratives make to the vital work of imagining ethical modes of polity. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 5 within the overlapping fields of native american literary studies and native intellectual history, recent years have witnessed a cumulative drive to systematically organize major scholars and their work into critical taxonomies. this tendency seems to be due at least in part to academic anxiety in the face of the exponential growth that these fields have enjoyed. in many instances, scholars of native writing are associated with one of two opposed categories, often termed the “cosmopolitan” and “nationalist” factions.1 upon initial consideration, this appears to be a compelling and functional schema: while the cosmopolitan critics emphasize the ways in which native literatures and intellectual histories resist the legacies of colonialism through the foregrounding of cultural fluidity, adaptation, subversive resistance, and cross-cultural engagement, nationalist critics insist that native writing remain accountable to specific tribal histories, epistemologies, and sovereignties while also aggressively confronting land dispossession and other colonial injustices. yet this dichotomy oversimplifies a wide array of available critical approaches while also ignoring the ways in which diverse, dynamic, and mutually illuminating perspectives interact and resonate with one another. as jace weaver notes, “the space between nationalism and cosmopolitanism is not as wide as some have contended” (“turning west” 33). an oppositional taxonomy thus constrains our scholarly capacities to explore the conceptions of polity remembered, imagined, and articulated in native writing. by better observing and honoring the nuance of critical voices, we can better observe and honor the significant extent to which ethics and affiliations commonly attributed to cosmopolitanism are integral to the forms and processes of native nationhood. we might thereby account for the national orientations, the cultural and historic specificities, the multivalent adaptability, and the transnationally mediated sensibilities of the community formations narrated within native writing. even a cursory consideration of the most prominent critical figures associated with the cosmopolitan and nationalist tendencies reveals the inadequacy of these categories. gerald vizenor is regarded by many (and repudiated by some) as the foremost practitioner of the cosmopolitan approach to native american studies. vizenor’s association with the cosmopolitan critical faction arises in no small part from his affinity for poststructuralist and continental theory, his skepticism toward authenticity, and his celebration of mixed-blood subjectivity. according to arnold krupat, “gerald vizenor has explored the possibilities of native cosmopolitanism in his fiction and criticism, celebrating the once pitied, or despised ‘halfbreed’ joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 6 as the ‘mixedblood’ or ‘crossblood’” (20). yet it is increasingly clear that vizenor should be recognized as a noteworthy theorist and advocate of sovereign tribal nationhood. niigaanwewidam james sinclair, for example, notes that “vizenor’s writing is deeply applicable to one of the most important processes happening in anishinaabeg communities: the redefining, reestablishment, and reassertion of practices and processes necessary for anishinaabeg notions of nationhood to be reactualized” (128). citing sinclair, lisa brooks has likewise noted that “through his fiction, vizenor has long participated in a process of imagining community survivance” (58). most recently, jace weaver has observed that “[a]mong native americans, there is no more erudite or cosmopolitan critic than vizenor. no one is more conversant with critical theory or more adept at deploying it. yet he is also a nationalist” (“turning west” 32). this nevertheless understudied trajectory of vizenor’s work is evident in the deep cultural and linguistic inflections present throughout his writing and also in his enduring and increasingly explicit examination of both orthodox and innovative theories of sovereignty. in his 1991 novel the heirs of columbus, for example, vizenor offers a narrative of the making of a “new tribal nation” explicitly described as “a sovereign nation” (119, 123). in a collection of essays from late in the same decade, he takes up a keen and sustained interest in what he terms the “sui generis sovereignty” of tribal nations (fugitive 15). for vizenor, “natives are neither exiles nor separatists from other nations or territories” (181). “the presence of natives on this continent,” he continues, “is an obvious narrative on sovereignty” (182). vizenor’s commitment to native sovereignty--a key hallmark of nationalist criticism--could not be more clear. of course, vizenor’s conception of sovereignty here is neither absolutist nor separatist; it is relational. he deliberately emphasizes “the diplomatic narratives of treaties, executive documents, and court decisions that acknowledge the rights and distinctive sovereignty of native communities” (181). in his book native liberty, vizenor’s increasing gravitation toward nationhood is evident in his engagement with various conceptions and critiques of polity and sovereignty in the work of giorgio agamben, stephen krasner, david wilkins, michael hardt and antonio negri, michel foucault, john boli, and t. alexander aleinikoff, among others. through his discussion of these theorists, vizenor asserts that “sovereignty must be reconceived” and he posits the “distinctive sense of sovereignty” (162) maintained by indigenous peoples as a resource for doing so. “natives, in the past century,” vizenor writes, “have articulated, emulated, and transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 7 litigated the notion of state sovereignty as independence and autonomy; that minimal view of state or territorial sovereignty, however, has lost significance in the economic globalization of the world” (114). vizenor thus gestures toward an innovative “visionary sovereignty” (108) that complements and resonates extensively with critical theorist nancy fraser’s critiques of the “westphalian political imaginary, which sharply distinguished ‘domestic’ from ‘international’ space” (scales of justice 12). according to fraser, the westphalian concept of sovereignty “has been challenged from at least three directions: first, by localists and communalists, who seek to locate the scope of concern in subnational units; second, by regionalists and transnationalists, who propose to identify the ‘who’ of justice with larger, though not fully universal, units, such as europe or islam; and, third, by globalists and cosmopolitans, who propose to accord equal consideration to all human beings” (“abnormal justice” 401). vizenor’s theoretical and applied narrations of sovereignty synthesize components of each of the interventions observed by fraser. of course, vizenor cannot but also posit a most fruitful and fundamental fourth: the politics of indigeneity. if vizenor—who in the early 1990s claimed that “nationalism is the most monotonous simulation of dominance” (manifest 60)—can be reasonably characterized as a writer and intellectual with substantial nationalist inclinations, we might conversely cast robert warrior— perhaps the most prominent critic associated with the nationalist critical tendency—as a scholar with a cosmopolitan bent. in 1995 warrior published his first book, tribal secrets, which carries the subtitle “recovering american indian intellectual traditions.” an exploration of american indian “intellectual sovereignty,” the study marked a watershed moment in what i have come to call the “nationalist turn” in native studies. (we might note that this nationalist turn in native studies, having emerged in the 1990s and only increasing in momentum through the present, is fully contemporaneous with the “transnational turn” that has come to so enamor much of the humanities and social sciences.) warrior set about the creative recovery of an american indian critical tradition that would neither spring from nor be sublimated within intellectual frameworks brought to the american hemisphere by colonization. tribal secrets has had significant and sustained impact on the field of native studies, informing and influencing subsequent books by each of the foremost scholars of the nationalist orientation: elizabeth cook-lynn, jace weaver, craig womack, and daniel justice, among others. in 2006, warrior joined weaver and womack to co-write american indian literary nationalism, in which the three jointly sustain the assertion joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 8 that “being a nationalist is a legitimate perspective from which to approach native american literature and criticism” (xx-xxi). yet despite this explicit affirmation and avowal of the nationalist critical cause, there are intriguing indications in many of warrior’s works that suggest cosmopolitan commitments. while as far as i know he has never had a moment of full-on kantianism like that in which the otherwise vociferously nationalist critic cook-lynn suggested “the american indian voice might [...] stir the human community to a moral view which would encompass all of humanity, not just selected parts of it” (64), warrior has nevertheless made plain within his contribution to american indian literary nationalism that “it is possible to be a critic, a nationalist, a cosmopolitan, and a humanist all at the same time” (192). as warrior writes in tribal secrets, “the process of sovereignty, whether in the political or in the intellectual sphere, is not a matter of removing ourselves and our communities from the influences of the world in which we live” (114). it is, instead, a process of dynamic relationality. to suggest that the prevailing associations of vizenor with cosmopolitanism and warrior with nationalism have not adequately accounted for the complexity of their contributions is not to dismiss these categorizations in any comprehensive fashion. rather, it is to join the chorus of theorists calling into question the general oppositional schema through which cosmopolitanism and nationalism are conventionally counter-defined. in his essay “cosmopolitan patriots” kwame anthony appiah proclaims that “the cosmopolitan patriot can entertain the possibility of a world in which everyone is a rooted cosmopolitan, attached to a home of one’s own, with its own cultural particularities, but taking pleasure from the presence of other, different places that are home to other, different people” (618). bruce robbins has more explicitly noted that “cosmopolitanism sometimes works together with nationalism rather than in opposition to it” (2). and paul rabinow complements appiah and robbins with his definition of cosmopolitanism as “an ethos of macro-interdependencies, with an acute consciousness [...] of the inescapabilities and particularities of places” (258). the grounded cosmopolitanism suggested by these and other scholars accounts for particular relations between peoples and their local places while also compelling ethical inter-community interactions of relational sovereignties. tim brennan posits an important and resonant intervention into cosmopolitan discourse, observing its tendency to drift “into an imperial apologetics” (147). yet brennan also maintains hope that we might realize “a cosmopolitanism worthy of the name” (309) that would affirm and transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 9 defend the “sovereignty of existing and emergent third-world polities [...] in the face of futurist prognoses that they have ceased existing” (316). brennan’s incisive sense of the cosmopolitan vis-a-vis the national resonates extensively with the ways in which i am understanding the sophisticated critical positions of vizenor and warrior. for these and many other indigenous writers and intellectuals, sovereignty is itself an extensively cosmopolitan endeavor. this is radically different than a conception of sovereignty marked by a governmental prerogative to decide the state of exception and to suspend the rule of law in order to uphold a disciplinary legal domain, whether isolationist or imperial. it is instead an acknowledgement that sovereignty is always relational, that it is necessarily and unavoidably rooted in culture, and that it is most operative at the interfaces where recognition and reciprocity reside. we can witness the presence of a sophisticated and vitally enduring tradition of cosmopolitan nationhood in a multitude of sites, moments, texts, and actions. in warrior’s discussion of the 1881 osage constitution, for example, it becomes clear that late nineteenthcentury osages were concerned not only for their own national interests but also for kaw rights and aspirations (the people 77-78). and well over a century later we can now witness a growing transnational wave of constitutional reform sweeping across indian country. this wave is impelled in part by enduring and increasing dissatisfaction with the mode of constitutionalism promoted in the mid twentieth century by the indian reorganization act (ira). departing from prior federal policies aimed at assimilation and land dispossession, the ira encouraged tribes to establish constitutional governance structures based on municipal practices (wilkins xxii). willfully ignoring and marginalizing tribal traditions and cultural frameworks, the ira sought a systematic reorganization of tribal government in order to serve federal purposes. the resultant frameworks, based in many instances on a “model constitution” distributed by the u.s. department of the interior, have sometimes failed to garner sufficient regard from tribal citizens and have thus contributed to intra-tribal tensions and crises (cohen on the drafting 173-177). moreover, the “self-governance” approach promoted by the ira entrenched paternalistic federal oversight and brought disruptive pressure to bear upon tribes as they crafted their formative governing documents. this intrusive pressure came heavily to bear in the early 1960s as the minnesota chippewa tribe—a confederation of ojibwe nations including white earth—updated its ira-oriented constitution. the current efforts of white earth to implement their own constitution is driven in part by dissatisfaction with facets of the minnesota chippewa tribe’s joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 10 constitution that were manipulated by the federal government (doerfler “anishinaabeg society” 22). both as a departure from ira-style tribal constitutionalism and a foray into communitybased indigenous governance, the white earth constitution offers a conceptual and material manifestation of native nationhood that illuminates and is illuminated by the tension-laden debates within native american studies regarding nationalism and cosmopolitanism. more importantly, the constitution also serves as a political instrument necessarily oriented to material functionality in the complex contexts of united states settler-colonial federalism. the white earth constitution does not mark a culmination, an end of a developmental history; rather, it marks a transition which entails both the maintenance and transformation of relations—most centrally those within the white earth nation and those between the white earth anishinaabeg, the confederated minnesota chippewa tribe, and the united states. because vizenor led the team charged with drafting the constitution, it should not come as a surprise that the document is thoroughly marked by his characteristic literary hand. creating a national constitution is perhaps the most patently nationalist task a writer can take up. as the principal scribe of a legal instrument through which the anishinaabe of white earth “constitute, ordain and establish” themselves as a nation, vizenor clearly and firmly positions himself as a writer, intellectual, and political actor deeply invested in nationalist discourse and advocacy. yet this in no way sets aside his pronouncements and positions that diverge from nationalism. indeed, as both a narration of nationhood and a framework for its practice, the constitution is both necessarily and emphatically cosmopolitan. it reimagines nationhood in ways that resonate with, enhance, and challenge the increasingly sophisticated discourses regarding nationhood, cosmopolitanism, settler colonialism, and constituency currently at the core of native studies. of course, the constitution of the white earth nation is not a solitary work of literary craft. it is born of a collaborative process detailed in the book the white earth nation: ratification of a native democratic constitution and in james mackay’s interview with vizenor. through debates, dialogs, collaborations, and constitutional conventions, the constitution bears the voices of numerous white earth anishinaabeg. each article and revision was subject to a dedicated convention procedural vote, and the final version of the constitution was ratified by a two-thirds supermajority at the final convention in april 2009. in november 2013 the constitution was affirmed by eighty percent of voting white earth band members and thereby transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 11 adopted. according to vizenor, “the constitution of the white earth nation was inspired by native reason, narratives of survivance and cultural traditions, totemic associations, cosmopolitan encounters, and modern democratic constitutions, and was ratified by native delegates with a determined sense of native presence, of resistance, and survivance over absence and victimry” (“constitutional consent” 15). these terms, familiar to most readers of vizenor, here find perhaps their most practically-oriented application. even with an inherent and necessary anishinaabeg-centric orientation, it remains important to recognize that the white earth constitution also must assert itself in relation to the fraught and ironic terrain of settler federalism where political and legal authority is divided between federal, state, and tribal governments. vizenor has noted that “the constitution of the white earth nation is neither similar to nor commensurate with the federal executive structures of governance” (“constitutional consent” 16). despite this dissimilarity and incommensurability, the constitution necessarily positions itself amid the complex overlapping sovereignties of united states federalism. while the white earth nation is not appealing to the united states for a permissive right to collective indigenous political existence (something of a distinction from the minnesota chippewa tribe constitution which situates itself as a “privilege granted the indians by the united states under existing law”), the white earth constitution does affirm the shared political and legal intimacies most centrally rooted in the 1867 treaty between the u.s. and the chippewa of the mississippi, an ongoing diplomatic relationship through which these anishinaabeg have made (under intense pressures) a sovereign investment in united states federalism. acknowledging that treaty-making involved “coercion, deception, misunderstanding, [and] fatalism” and observing that “the hundreds of treaties made between indians and americans during the nineteenth century were a mixed bag on every level,” scott richard lyons also asserts that “natives understood what was at stake in their treaties” and in affirming them “signified agency and consent—yes, limited on both counts” (127). white earth’s conflicted yet committed sovereign investment in treaty federalism was and is cosmopolitan in character. american indian sovereignty can be understood as both inherent and federated, even while extraconstitutional. tribes are, as david wilkins and tsianina lomawaima have noted, the “senior sovereigns” of this continent (249). vizenor has likewise written that “native liberty, natural reason, and survivance are concepts that originate in narratives, not in the mandates of monarchies, papacies, severe traditions, or federal policies” (“constitutional consent” 11). it is a joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 12 fundamental doctrine of indian law in the united states that the settler government does not create, gift, or delegate governing authority to tribes. sovereign power inheres in tribes, arising as it does from deep histories of human and institutional interaction that predate and endure under colonialism. this authority is acknowledged, not established, by the united states in statute, case law, and diplomatic accords. in his fundamental treatise on federal indian law, felix cohen writes: perhaps the most basic principles of all indian law supported by a host of decisions [...] is the principle that those powers which are lawfully vested in an indian tribe are not, in general, delegated powers granted by express acts of congress, but rather inherent powers of a limited sovereignty which has never been extinguished. each indian tribe begins its relationship with the federal government as a sovereign power, recognized as such in treaty and legislation. the powers of sovereignty have been limited from time to time by special treaties and laws designed to take from the indian tribes control of matters which, in the judgment of congress, then, must be examined to determine the limitations of tribal sovereignty rather than to determine its sources or its positive content. what is not expressly limited remains within the domain of tribal sovereignty. (handbook 122) as cohen’s realist account indicates, a correlating doctrine of federal indian law holds that congress has the power to diminish unilaterally the sovereignty of tribes. american indian nations thus currently enjoy and are subject to federal recognition and containment of their nevertheless resilient inherent sovereignty. through the variously diplomatic and exploitative relations shared by native nations and the united states, both are currently compromised sovereigns. sovereignty is always relational, never absolute. sovereign polities necessarily have the capacity to manage intraand interpolitical relationships. this sine qua non of sovereignty entails compromise. this includes the sense of weakness, marked by regret and disappointment. as we well know, native nations in the united states have been severely curtailed and violated in their intertwined political, legal, cultural, economic, and ecological dimensions. while far less consequential, the settler nation state’s commitments to universalizing neoliberalism are frustrated by the endurance of indigenous peoples, polities, claims, and obligations. tribes and the united states can also be transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 13 seen as compromised sovereignties in the sense that they have made mutual co-promises of interdependence. while not existentially crucial to tribes, the treaty and trust obligations associated with native-settler diplomacies have formative import for native nations. treaties did not create tribes, but they did often delineate tribal land bases and establish federal recognition of tribal nations. more starkly, the fragile and partial legitimacy of the united states’ jurisdictional claims fundamentally relies upon relations—both historical and contemporary—with native nations. without tribally affirmed diplomatic land cessions, there is no such thing as legitimate u.s. territory. “the authority of indian tribes to enter into treaties with european states and the united states,” writes phillip m. kannan, “is a prerequisite to the validity of land title in the united states” (813). while discourses of u.s. and international law continue to assert a legal doctrine of discovery in which the land claims of indigenous peoples are reduced to mere rights of occupancy, david wilkins and tsianina lomawaima argue that a more historically accurate and legally sound conceptualization of this doctrine would and should recognize that it merely grants to certain aspirational settlers a preemptive right against other aspirational settlers (19-63). wilkins and lomawaima’s preemptive account of the doctrine of discovery emphasizes relations between colonizing polities rather than direct relations between colonizers and native nations. the legitimate establishment of settler sovereignty therefore requires native assent. within the morass of federated, always-relational, and often-chafing native and settler sovereignties resides the constitution of the white earth nation. the cosmopolitan nationhood envisioned and formulated within the constitution is neither determined by, completely liberated from, nor neglectful of settler imperatives. this is evident, for example, in the constitution’s primary articles on citizenship: article 1: citizens of the white earth nation shall be descendants of anishinaabeg families and related by linear descent to enrolled members of the white earth reservation and nation, according to genealogical documents, treaties, and other agreements with the government of the united states. article 2: services and entitlements provided by government agencies to citizens, otherwise designated members of the white earth nation, shall be defined according to treaties, trusts, and diplomatic agreements, state and federal laws, rules and regulations, and in policies and procedures established by the government of the white earth nation. joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 14 the move to lineal descent resonates with vizenor’s prior warnings against “political reversions to exclusive consciousness” (fugitive 67) and marks a radical—even if not completely unproblematic—distinction from the minnesota chippewa tribe’s blood quantum-based membership criteria to a kinship-based mode of affiliation. while these emergent citizenship criteria depart from the federally generated and encouraged regime of blood quantum, they do not actually depart from relational federalism itself, which clearly remains a formative presence in these articles. indeed, while the racialist logic of blood quantum is not explicitly invoked here in article 2, that logic remains operative by way of the “laws, rules, and regulations” referenced. moreover, the move away from blood quantum is itself in certain ironic respects a move on behalf of the maintenance of federated tribal status. within her contribution to the white earth nation: ratification of a native democratic constitution, constitutional writing team member jill doerfler notes, based on current citizenship requirements, many tribes will have no new citizens in fifty years and even more will face the same fate in a century. blood quantum is mathematical termination. once native nations ‘disappear,’ the u.s. government will finally be free of their treaty and fiscal responsibilities. in an effort to prevent this situation, many tribes are changing citizenship requirements to ensure that their nations will continue in perpetuity. (“a citizen’s guide” 83) unless native nations recover and redevelop more inclusive, even cosmopolitan, approaches to defining and cultivating their citizenries, the federated political status of american indian tribes will dissolve. while blood quantum regulations do not have the direct capacity to vanish cultures or peoples, they do have the actuarial power to disappear federated polities. despite the distributive and cultural anxieties associated with native citizenries of lineal descent, the people of white earth have determined to pursue such a path in order to affirm their kinship customs and in order to ensure their own endurance as a federated native nation.2 a commitment to the relational sovereignty of federalism also explicitly arises in article 10 of the constitution’s chapter on “rights and duties”: “the people shall have the right to possess firearms except for convicted felons in accordance with state and federal laws.” this article recognizes the tenuous ecology of gun control within united states federalism and also makes a tacit gesture toward public law 83-280, which authorizes state criminal jurisdiction on the white earth reservation (among many others). article 17 of the same chapter also situates transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 15 the white earth nation in relation to united states federalism while still asserting inherent native sovereignty: the constitution of the white earth nation is inspired by inherent and traditional sovereignty, and contains, embodies, and promotes the rights and provisions provided in the articles and amendments of the indian civil rights act of 1968, and the united states constitution. this article conveys the white earth constitution’s most assertive affirmation of the federated dimension of tribal sovereignty. yet it does so, of course, in the context of an explicitly emphasized and prioritized inherent tribal sovereignty. in his essay on the constitution david carlson notes this complex, observing that the document seeks “to integrate aspects of western law (certain forms of rights consciousness, for example) into the realm of mino-bimaadiziwin, to redefine anishinaabeg legal and political identity, dialectically, in a way that speaks to the realities and contingencies of the present moment” (36). the relational and cosmopolitan orientation of native nationhood within the constitution is not at all limited to its federalist gestures. the preamble, which reads as follows, conveys the far-reaching yet intimately local scope of white earth nationhood: the anishinaabeg of the white earth nation are the successors of a great tradition of continental liberty, a native constitution of families, totemic associations. the anishinaabeg create stories of natural reason, of courage, loyalty, humor, spiritual inspiration, survivance, reciprocal altruism, and native cultural sovereignty. we the anishinaabeg of the white earth nation in order to secure an inherent and essential sovereignty, to promote traditions of liberty, justice, and peace, and reserve common resources, and to ensure the inalienable rights of native governance for our posterity, do constitute, ordain and establish this constitution of the white earth nation. reflecting both the constitutions of the united states and of japan, this preamble also conveys its immersion in anishinaabe culture, history, and kinship. within the white earth constitution’s first sentence, the anishinaabe of the white earth nation define themselves in relation to their tradition of spatial liberty. the document enshrines movement across the place of north america as a central attribute and practice of white earth nationhood. because this liberty is continental joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 16 in scope and range, we know right away that this tradition of movement—which includes the anishinaabeg migration to the places where food grows on water—brings the white earth nation and its citizens into transnational realms and discourses. furthermore, the preamble goes on to suggest that many of these interactions are informed by and become themselves stories of “survivance” and “reciprocal altruism.” as vizenor has written elsewhere, interdependence is “an honorable mandate of sovereignty” (manifest 147). and as niigaanwewidam james sinclair explains, “the migration path teaches anishinaabeg that motion is the way geographical, social, and spiritual relationships have been forged, maintained, grown, and fortified. and while the anishinaabeg nation's borders, citizens, and cultures have shifted and moved as others were met and warred with, and knowledge was traded, the nation as a whole has continued” (147). in order to reiterate and explain its emphasis on diplomatic interaction, the version of the constitution published upon convention ratification included a supplemental glossary explaining that “reciprocal is to share a mutual obligation, and altruistic is to be unselfish, benevolent, and compassionate.” that a national constitution gives voice to relational responsibilities and cosmopolitan commitments indicates the extent to which its mode of nationhood is mediated by transnational interactions. as warrior explains, indigenous nationhood “is born out of native transnationalism, the exchange of ideas and politics across our respective nations’ borders” (“native american scholarship” 125). both in relation to and well outside of the federated contours of white earth nationhood, these anishinaabeg are reconstituting themselves as transnational citizens, navigating a cosmopolitan constellation of national affiliations, obligations, and liabilities. one of the pragmatic ways the constitution accounts for this constellation is through the establishment of legislative representation for off-reservation citizens. such an arrangement affirms the extrareservation scope of white earth nationhood and the overlapping citizenships of its members. in vizenor’s book fugitive poses, something like this constellation of affiliations and responsibilities is given articulation through the term “transmotion.” he writes, “transmotion is personal, reciprocal, the source of survivance, [...] an original natural union in the stories of emergence and migration that relate humans to an environment” (182-183). and he continues, “clearly, the notions of native sovereignty must embrace more than mere reservation territory” (190). the active presence of transmotion within the constitution of the white earth nation underscores its grounded cosmopolitanism that accounts for particular relations between peoples transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 17 and their local places while also enjoining the ethical inter-community interactions of relational sovereignties. an embrace of “more than mere reservation territory” is not an abandonment thereof. in the same ink strokes in which the constitution’s preamble asserts its cosmopolitan breadth, it also posits straightforward nationalist pronouncements and aspirations. these include claiming and securing the nation’s essential sovereignty, preserving its resources as national commons, and asserting a perpetual right of self-determination. the constitution of the white earth nation thus synthesizes and materializes many of the most sophisticated scholarly insights on offer from various corners of native studies. by uniting theoretical sophistication and practical functionality, the constitution puts forth a cosmopolitan decree of native nationhood that challenges us to reconsider the conceptual and practical oppositions prevalent in political and critical thought and action, and it suggests that—in accord with kwame appiah, bruce robbins, paul rabinow, and tim brennan—grounded and materially relevant cosmopolitanism may very well be a central practice of beneficent nationhood. david noble’s broad view of historiography and intellectual traditions reveals that the twin conceits of an ostensibly transcendent modernity—liberal nation-states and market neoliberalism—have little to offer to communities of people hoping to dynamically sustain themselves and their relations. the lack of beneficial capacity brought by liberal nation-states and market globalism makes necessary the pursuit of alternative modes of polity and economy. history has not been resolved, nor shall it be. rather, we find ourselves—like all generations before and after—learning how (and how not) to take better care within both space and time. in part, this necessitates acknowledging, responding to, and learning from the complex claims, aspirations, and political status of indigenous peoples. as felix cohen famously observed, “like the miner’s canary, the indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere” (“erosion” 390). even while inconsistently and often in spite of themselves, federated and international systems of law do provide venues and opportunities for the articulation and hearing of indigenous concerns and ambitions that are not so easily absorbed by unitary nation-states or accommodated by neoliberalism. not only do these concerns and ambitions illuminate the inadequacy of those dominant structures, they also gesture toward alternative trans/national possibilities. as narrated in the white earth nation’s constitutive political instrument, a native nation is transforming itself in relation to the struggles and opportunities it encounters. in doing so it joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 18 has a great deal to teach us about how communities might live in relation to one another as we continually identify and strive for justice on a wide range of scales. we do so not in pursuit of some bliss that awaits at some end of history, but rather to remember and to imagine otherwise. notes 1 other terms for the cosmopolitan tendency include “dialogic,” “cross-culturalist,” “constructivist,” and “hybridist”; the nationalist tendency has been variously refered to as “sovereigntist,” “tribally centered,” “indigenist,” “materialist,” and “separatist.” i first worked with nascent considerations of some of the meta-critical concerns of this essay in a 2007 article published in studies in american indian literatures. appleford, brooks et al., christie, krupat, and weaver (“turning west”) have also characterized and considered these critical tendencies. 2 scholars addressing (among many other things) anxieties associated with determining native citizenship include barker, dennison, garroutte, harmon, lyons, russell, spruhan, sturm, tallbear and (in canadian first nations contexts) palmater. works cited appiah, kwame anthony. “cosmopolitan patriots.” critical inquiry 23.3 (1997): 617-639. print. appleford, rob. “a response to sam mckegney’s ‘strategies for ethical engagement: an open letter concerning non-native scholars of native literatures.’” studies in american indian literatures 21.3 (2009): 58–65. print. barker, joanne. native acts: law, recognition, and cultural 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nation-state.” colorado journal of international environmental law and policy 13.1 (2002): 29-38. print. doerfler, jill. “a citizen’s guide to the white earth constitution: highlights and reflections.” the white earth nation: ratification of a native democratic constitution. by gerald vizenor and jill doerfler. introduction by david e. wilkins. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2012. 81-94. print. ----. “anishinaabeg society 100 years from now.” anishibaabeg today [white earth, mn] 7 october 2009, 4+. print. fraser, nancy. “abnormal justice.” critical inquiry 34 (2008): 393-422. print. ----. scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalizing world. new york: columbia university press, 2009. print. garroutte, eva marie. real indians: identity and the survival of native america. berkeley: university of california press, 2003. print. guéhenno, jean-marie. the end of the nation-state. trans. victoria elliott. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1995. print. joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 20 hardt, michael and antonio negri. empire. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2000. print. harmon, alexandra. “tribal enrollment councils: lessons on law and indian identity.” western historical quarterly 32.2 (2001): 175-200. print. hobsbawm, e.j. nations and nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1990. print. holton, robert j. globalization and the nation state. 2nd ed. new york: palgrave macmillan, 2011. print. justice, daniel heath. our fire survives the storm: a cherokee literary history. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2006. print. kannan, phillip m. “reinstating treaty-making with native american tribes.” william & mary bill of rights journal 16.3 (2008): 809-837. print. krupat, arnold. red matters: native american studies. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2002. print. lyons, scott richard. x-marks: native signatures of assent. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2010. print. morgenthau, hans j. “introduction.” a working peace system. 1943. by david mitrany. chicago: quadrangle books, 1966. print. noble, david w. death of a nation: american culture and the end of exceptionalism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2002. print. ----. debating the end of history: the marketplace, utopia, and the fragmentation of intellectual life. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2012. print. palmater, pamela d. beyond blood: rethinking indigenous identity. saskatoon: purich publishing, 2011. print. rabinow, paul. “representations are social facts: modernity and post-modernity in anthropology.” writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. ed. james clifford and george e. marcus. berkeley: university of california press, 1986. 234-261. print. “revised constitution and bylaws of the minnesota chippewa tribe, minnesota.” 1963. web 26 january 2014. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 21 robbins, bruce. “introduction part i: actually existing cosmopolitanism.” cosmopolitics: thinking and feeling beyond the nation. pheng cheah and bruce robbins, eds. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1998. print. russell, steve. sequoyah rising: problems in post-colonial tribal governance. durham, nc: carolina academic press, 2010. print. said, edward w. culture and imperialism. new york: alfred a. knopf, 1993. print. sinclair, niigonwedom [niigaanwewidam] james. “a sovereignty of transmotion: imagination and the ‘real,’ gerald vizenor, and native literary nationalism.” stories through theories/ theories through stories: north american indian writing, storytelling, and critique. ed. gordon d. henry jr., nieves pascual soler, and silvia martínez-falquina. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2009. 123-158. print. smith, anthony d. nationalism. cambridge, uk: polity, 2001. print. spruhan, paul. “a legal history of blood quantum in federal indian law to 1935.” south dakota law review 51.1 (2006): 1-50. print. sturm, circe dawn. blood politics: race, culture, and identity in the cherokee nation of oklahoma. berkeley: university of california press, 2002. print. tallbear, kim. native american dna: tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2013. print. vizenor, gerald. “constitutional consent: native traditions and parchment rights.” the white earth nation: ratification of a native democratic constitution. by gerald vizenor and jill doerfler. introduction by david e. wilkins. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2012. 9-62. print. ----. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1998. print. ----. the heirs of columbus. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, 1991. print. ----. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. 1993. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1999. print. ----. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009. print. vizenor, gerald and james mackay. “constitutional narratives: a conversation with gerald vizenor.” centering anishinaabeg studies. ed. jill doerfler, niigaanwewidam james joseph bauerkemper “the white earth constitution” 22 sinclair, and heidi kiiwetinepinesiik stark. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2013. 133-148. print. warrior, robert. “native american scholarship and the transnational turn.” cultural studies review 15.2 (2009): 119-130. print. ----. the people and the word: reading native nonfiction. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2005. print. ----. tribal secrets: recovering american indian intellectual traditions. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1995. print. weaver, jace. that the people might live: native american literatures and native american community. oxford: oxford university press, 1997. print. ----. “turning west: cosmopolitanism and american indian literary nationalism.” the native american renaissance: literary imagination and achievement. ed. alan r. velie and a. robert lee. norman, university of oklahoma press, 2013. 16-38. print. weaver, jace, craig s. womack, and robert warrior. american indian literary nationalism. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2006. print. wilkins, david e. “introduction.” on the drafting of tribal constitutions. by felix s. cohen. ed. david e. wilkins. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2006. print. wilkins, david e. and k. tsianina lomawaima. uneven ground: american indian sovereignty and federal law. normal: university of oklahoma press, 2001. print. womack, craig s. red on red: native american literary separatism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1999. print. microsoft word yazzie galley main.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   5   an open letter about the premiere of bloody bloody andrew jackson in minneapolis from rhiana yazzie rhiana yazzie editor’s note: co-produced with the hennepin theatre trust, minneapolis musical theatre ran bloody bloody andrew jackson from june 6 – june 29, 2014 at the new century theatre in minneapolis, minnesota. since then, all evidence for the support of this rock musical has disappeared from hennepin theatre trust's website. no apology was ever issued. although the object of its address has now passed, we feel that this open letter is still a poignant piece of resistance writing and in the context of the 2016 u.s. presidential election, where donald trump is touted as the “new andrew jackson” we believe it is timely as well. (ac) does minnesota know itself well enough to responsibly produce a show like bloody bloody andrew jackson? the title makes the play sound like a fun, maybe even gory, critique of our seventh president, about whom most americans have heard contradictory ideas. whether or not we’ve investigated the subject, it sounds like attending this play will likely cast a clearer light on a shadowy part of american history, one that might include a critique of the spectacular violence waged from 1829–1837 by the slaveholding president dubbed old hickory. maybe bloody bloody will take andrew jackson’s campaign of ethnic cleansing head on? maybe it will acknowledge the thousands of native americans he killed. as a native american, a playwright, a musical theatre fan, and artistic director of new native theatre, i say right on. what a wonderful opportunity and contribution to american theatre to see a play responsibly take up these important issues, issues that have determined native american inclusion and access. we need as many advocates in the media as we can get. but that’s not what happens, instead this script, written by j. michael friedman and alex timbers reinforces stereotypes and leaves me assaulted, manipulated and devastatingly used as a means to a weak and codependent end. on june 6th, 2014, minneapolis musical theatre opens bloody bloody andrew jackson, a co-production with the hennepin theatre trust. it’s taken four years for any company in the twin cities to approach this offensive play since it debuted in new york in 2010. could it be because in minnesota we have a relationship with native americans and their experience collectively embraced? could it be that we know our history, the legacy of the vicious founding of this state, and its violent dealings with native americans? could it also be because minneapolis is home to the founding of the american indian movement? could it be for these rhiana  yazzie                                                                                                    “open  letter  about…  bloody  bloody  andrew  jackson”         6   reasons we can see that the play is an exercise in racial slurs against native americans justified with a thin coating of white shaming? why would we together be bothered with it then? but soon it will be performed and the character andrew jackson written by alex timbers and j. michael freedman will spew unchallenged racial epithets five times a week on soil that is still yet recovering from our own troubled history. soil where blood has been spilled and land has been taken and people have been shoved aside. there is nothing about this history that is “all sexy pants,” to quote the marketing machine that accompanied this show. the truth is that andrew jackson was not a rockstar and his campaign against tribal people—known so briefly in american history textbooks as the “indian removal act” is not a farcical backdrop to some emotive, brooding celebrity. can you imagine a show wherein hitler was portrayed as a justified, sexy rockstar? this play exacerbates the already deficient knowledge our country has when it comes to native history; in that context, a false story about this country and our engagement with native american people is unforgivable. i saw this play when it debuted at the public theater in new york in 2010 and was invited to speak with the authors among a group of other native american artists to openly discuss the play’s inaccurate history and depiction of native americans. it was dubbed as an emo rock musical paralleling george w. bush’s rise to power and the following tea party movement. i can list specifically the ways that the play distorts history, but that would take pages. instead i’ll look at a few key moments such as the inciting incident where andrew jackson’s parents are killed by indians who shoot random arrows into the young jackson’s home—no jackson’s parents were not killed by indians—which creates a vendetta that propels him throughout the rest of the play and justifies countless tirades, massacres and slurs against indians. even minneapolis musical theatre producer and director, steven meerdink says, “this show really falls short on its lack of transparency of the fact that it does not try to accurately present historical events and figures. the authors deliberately skew, distort, satirize, blur, and condense roughly 60 years of history into a 90 minute play. there are things presented in the play that never actually occurred, and many other things presented that may have occurred—but with dates, circumstances, or relevant people changed.” meerdink says this will appear in a program note. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   7   aside from skewing historical events, the play does something much worse. reading this play again this week has saddened me. it’s even made me think i might have to unfriend j. michael freedman on facebook. the most common defense of the play is that it’s a south park kind of aesthetic, therefore it’s an equal opportunity defacer. meerdink echoes what i’ve heard the authors and original producers say in person and in print, “there are ugly things said about many groups of people in the show—the british, the spanish, native americans, and european americans…” but sesame street has me thinking, one of these things is not like the other. the first time the british are depicted, they are flogging jackson. but in that scene jackson never once makes a racially based insult, in fact there isn’t one racially based insult against the british in the entire play, not even a gratuitous use of the word “limey.” jackson in fact remains in control during this scene and actually walks away from the flogging when he’s had enough, leaving the british soldiers dumbfounded. when the spanish are introduced, again, not one racial remark made to insult them. instead they are simply and accurately called spaniards. but in the introduction to this roundhouse fight with them, jackson begins a joke, “tell me what’s the difference between a little homosexual indian boy and george washington? besides the fact you’d murder either of them without thinking twice?” this joke goes unchallenged except for the spaniards calling back, “you are the gay.” the authors may have thought this was a joke, perhaps even the producers and the majority of the audience in new york when it premiered did too. but in minnesota, it’s not funny at all. maybe in the world alex timbers and j. michael freedman live in, indians are not targets of racial violence today. maybe the murder rate of native americans in their world isn’t astronomical. maybe in their world, gay native americans don’t have the highest suicide and murder rate in the entire country. then again, maybe they are right, these unfortunate indians are murdered without a second thought. maybe that’s the political comment they were hoping to make with this scene and asking their audience to be aware of and call out for a change? it is these moments of unchallenged cruelties raged against native americans that leave me pained, even more so than the untrue history. i want so badly to be on the same side as the authors, i know they want to prove jackson was a troubled character in american history with a terribly violent, unstable, genocidal mind. but when they keep adding gratuitous brutalities rhiana  yazzie                                                                                                    “open  letter  about…  bloody  bloody  andrew  jackson”         8   against indians i have to question what their real organizing principle as artists actually is when jackson says to an indian character, “you are despicable creatures! you show no loyalty to anything. your music is terrible, your table manners suck, and your painting skills are absolutely dreadful. i mean look at this.” then a stage direction reads, “pulls out a primitive drawing of a buffalo.” the fact is that the writers are not satirizing this practice, they are employing the practice as a process for writing. “primitive” is a deeply fraught and loaded term that has been used to justify atrocity against indigenous people world over. it is not a benign stage direction. it trades in the same disregard for the humanity and culture of native americans that this “emo rockstar” exhibits. where is the line? where is the satire? this isn’t the only instance where stage directions give insight to the authors’ points of view. after jackson’s parents are killed, “three young indian boys enter and dance around… taunting [jackson] all the while and pretending to shoot arrows at him. they’re really fucking annoying.” because this is the post broadway publication, i can’t help but wonder if there is an allusion to the protests the authors got from real native americans; and if not, it certainly sets up what is yet to come out of jackson’s mouth. you indians have “no artistic vision. you’re savages! you’re soulless, godless and well you get the point.” the play finds any and all opportunities to berate indian characters jackson encounters. ultimately, watching/reading the play means putting up with 85 minutes of racist tirades before getting to the last five minutes of white guilt. well, thank goodness it’s a musical and i can at least enjoy tapping my toes, at least up until ten little indians. children’s songs and nursery rhymes like this have socialized generations of children to believe that native people were expendable and that there was no need to empathize with them; it was also used to attack african americans and to envision a future that doesn’t include adult native or african americans. during ten little indians, ridiculous, inane, powerless indian characters are coerced into or are gladly signing their lands away for smallpox blankets and dream catchers—dream catchers? any minnesotan should know that’s ojibwe not cherokee. then after hearing nine ways in which indians are killed it’s reveal that the last death is a hanging. wow. how does that land here in minnesota? our state holds the record for the largest mass hanging in u.s. history when 38 dakota men were executed in mankato. would there be transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   9   any acknowledgement of this history while the production runs? or would the producers and creative team just take their paychecks quietly and move on without so much as an apology? as the play nears its end, finally, jackson doesn’t relent on his nauseating remarks about native people and their culture. to justify his defiance of the supreme court ruling that removal of tribes from their land was illegal and unconstitutional, jackson implores a native character black fox, “i wish you’d built symphonies in cities, man, and put on plays and showed yourselves a little more essential. you know, to the culture? and yeah, you totally were here first, absolutely, but we don’t give a shit, and we never will.” i will echo what steve elm, artistic director of amerinda, an arts and theatre group in new york said, “i felt that there was a joke that i wasn’t in on… this play seemed to be expressly written without any idea that there are native people still alive.” and i will further say, that this play takes for granted that people from the dominant culture don’t have the capacity for kindness, change, or self-evaluation. we have many allies here in minnesota and they will not stand idly by while history is whitewashed and native culture—already imperiled by hundreds of years of misrepresentation—is further debased as a theatrical device. if the authors had any understanding of contemporary native american culture or artists, would they have been so quick to make such debasing statements about native americans? because, let’s face it, these comments are not about indians in 1838, this is about their sense of the absence and extinction of native peoples right now. perhaps this says less about the authors themselves and more about the erasure of native history in this country. but as artists, who are political, and intentionally incendiary in so much of the body of their work, there’s no excuse for this ignorance and there’s no excuse for the way this ignorance is suffused throughout this play. how would minneapolis musical theatre handle these tirades and images of violence against native americans? would it be a safe place for a native american family to spend their sunday afternoon? would native youth that see the play feel empowered or erased and battered? how would the mmt actors feel about saying all of these cruel lines after four weeks? would it get old? would we learn anything? would they care? would we just say stop? there has to be a better way to make a political point. the first step is to be smarter about your subject matter. learn about the culture you’re trying to make a point about. ask yourself, how are contemporary people living with this historical legacy? rhiana  yazzie                                                                                                    “open  letter  about…  bloody  bloody  andrew  jackson”         10   if you don’t know what native american artists are doing right now here in our state, go to all my relations gallery in minneapolis, see great native american fine art. there’s nothing primitive about it and there never was. see shows at my company, new native theatre, we could produce four original musicals with the budget bloody bloody andrew jackson has, with work about, by, and for native americans that honors our cultures, our traditions, and broadens our understanding of american history. watch dance by emily johnson and rosy simas. listen to first person radio on kfai. read the circle news. or, look just 300 miles north to thunder bay where northwest ontario’s largest regional company, magnus theatre, has a mandate to produce at least one first nations play a year from canada’s ever growing canon of thriving aboriginal theatre. i grew up in new mexico where native american culture is very visible. most of the normal markers of new mexican culture take directly from the architecture, iconography, and native artists of the tribes that have continuously lived there for time immemorial. new mexico is not perfect in its relationship with tribes, but certainly the dominant culture in new mexico embraces it, identifies with it, and protects it. as a young person, i once attended a show in albuquerque’s big theatre, popejoy hall. the flying karamazov brothers came to do a comedy program. i don’t remember anything about the show this many years later, except for the moment when that east coast based group had a short exchange where they made a tonto voice, a quip, then a punchline. this happened right in the middle of a heightened moment of acrobatics, but instead of that new mexican audience laughing, they all stopped. not a peep came from that so-called funny punchline. in that moment, i knew my community had my back. my community said in its denial of a laugh at their punchline, that it’s not ok to stereotype and strip humanity from native americans. as a child that moment was powerful. did minnesota have the back of the native american children who call this state home? who was going to stand up for them? or did they laugh along with this ridiculous show and celebrate genocide? minnesotans should be proud that this state is where so many great contemporary native american leaders have lived and worked. those living in minneapolis should be especially proud that only a few weeks ago columbus day was changed to indigenous peoples day following the example of red wing which made the change a few months earlier. perhaps the entire state of minnesota will come next. these are things to be proud of and these are the ways transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   11   we as minnesotans can turn our trajectory from the violent past that was the founding of this state to a more equitable home for all. is minnesota, its audiences and artists, at that point yet of supporting native americans and defending their humanity in the way that audience did when i was a kid? i hope so. i think it was an unfortunate choice for minneapolis musical theatre to produce this play, and i have no doubt they played into the same disconnect the authors did, not considering the effect it could have on real people or that native americans might actually be audience members. however, my call to action lies more with the authors who will continue to profit from productions of this play. their royalties should go to places that actively do the work of dealing with andrew jackson’s legacy—like the minnesota indian women’s resource center, ain dah yung shelter for homeless native youth, the minnesota indian women’s sexual assault coalition, or many of the other worthy organizations directly serving native people—and don’t engage in the play’s same laissez-faire attitude of lightly encouraging audience members to question over cocktails whether or not andrew jackson was an american hitler while aggressively dehumanizing the people jackson tormented. because, he was. microsoft word wieser.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 91 reshaping american indian autobiography elissa washuta. my body is a book of rules. pasadena, california: red hen press, 2014. 189 pp. http://washuta.net/index.php/book/purchase american indian autobiographies have been a popular genre of american indian literatures since the publication of william apes’ (pequot) a son of the forest in 1829. mainstream american readers from the 19th century through the present have had an ongoing fascination with the insider perspective on indian life. however, there are in reality at least two different genres, perhaps three, that have fallen under this category. a number of native-authored autobiographies would somewhat fit the usual definition of the word—writing one’s own life story. samson occom’s (mohegan) “a short narrative of my life,” may be the earliest written in english dating back to september 17, 1768, though it lay unpublished in the dartmouth archives until 1982. george copway (ojibwa) published his life, history, and travels of kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh in 1847. sarah winnemucca hopkins (pauite), perhaps the first american indian woman to do so, published her life among the piutes in 1883. at this point in the chronology of the genre, however, the definition of the word “autobiography” becomes more problematic in regard of the agency of the subject in creating the text, with the autobiography of charles eastman (santee sioux), whose nonnative wife elaine acted as his collaborator on both indian boyhood (1902) and from the deep woods to civilization (1916). she says of their process: “‘dr. eastman’s books left his hand . . . as a rough draft in pencil, on scratch paper.’ she then typed copies, ‘revising, omitting, and re-writing as necessary’” (qtd. in brown ruoff 56). luther standing bear was similarly assisted by e.a. brininstool with my people, the sioux (1928). zitkala-ša (gertrude bonin) published her autobiographical pieces in atlantic monthly in 1900-01, the ones reprinted in american indian stories in 1921, during her marriage to raymond t. bonnin, but her career in literature ends after their marriage, with the exception of a collaborative effort with william hanson on sun dance, an indian opera, leaving a question about the degree of collaboration on her earlier work. but for most scholars of american indian literature, these still fall under the category of autobiography. they are categorized with later sole-authored works such as those of francis la flesche (omaha), john joseph matthews (osage), n. scott momaday (kiowa), janet campbell hale (coeur d'alene), gerald vizenor (ojibwa), delphine red shirt (lakota), and joy harjo (muscogee creek). indeed if eastman’s, standing bear’s, and zitkala-ša’s works and the later sole-authored works depart from the genre expectations of autobiography, those departures regard form and content rather questioning whether the primary creator of the text is the self. american indian autobiographies, like other indian narratives, are not necessarily chronological in structure, and they have tended, particularly since the amerian indian literary renaissance, to include stories of one’s people and not just of the self, stories of tribe and family, oral traditions, and ethnographic accounts. kimberly wieser review of my body is a book of rules 92 however, some texts considered american indian autobiographies in reality make up a sub-genre of narrated autobiographies. in fact, according to duane champagne, “native american autobiography is a unique literary form in that over 80 percent of what is usually referred to as american indian and alaskan native autobiography has been collected and edited by non-native[s]” (756). much of the non-native collected and edited material, usually gathered and prepared by anthropological method, grew out of the notion of the “vanishing indian,” the need to “preserve data” about these “dying cultures.” black elk speaks, told by black elk to john neihardt, published in 1932, is the most famous of these. raymond j. demallie’s work has shown serious questions about whose text this really is, given the amount of shaping neihardt did of black elk’s account. this has been true of a number of texts created in this manner. unfortunately, the impact of this has been to validate for outsiders through this popular genre static notions of indianness, the reinforcing of stereotypes cloaked in the deceptive forthrightness of autobiography. these texts purport authenticity, but are really designed to historicize and exoticize the other for mainstream consumption. cowlitz and cascade writer elissa washuta’s my body is a book of rules subverts all three of these genres as well as audience expectations, taking the reader on a discomforting, but enlightening and ultimately healing journey through a painful reality, giving us a level of authenticity that we actually may be unprepared for, but need. washuta has had enough narratives constructed by others attempt to control who she is or who she “should” be. her innnovation of this genre’s structure, mindbogglingly innovative, yet organic to her content, creates an unflichingly honest self-portait of an american indian young woman in 21st century america. moreover, her content has such import for an entire generation that i firmly believe it should be required reading for every college student, not merely those interested in american indian literature. an indian girl, it turns out after all, isn’t so different from other american young women today: objectified, vulnerable, confused, and abused both by those males who have been taught to internalize the dominant cultural narrative of conquest, seeing the female body as territory to exploit, and by herself. washuta’s story utilizes the power of words in the tradition of scott momaday and endless generations of indian storytellers to flip the script, change the narrative, and take possession of herself—body, mind, heart and spirit—as her own sovereign nation, both as an indian and as a woman. washuta begins her book setting us up as readers to see the sharp contrast between traditional value systems and the struggles she faces as contemporary american indian female college student, a survivor of genocide and assimilation. she juxtaposes a quote from mourning dove’s autobiography: “a girl who guarded her chastity was considered valuable in the eyes of our warriors. a man would willingly give many ponies and robes for such a wife” (1), with an account of the executions of several cascade leaders on march 28, 1856 at the order of colonel wright, including one of her own ancestors, tumalth. washuta records her geneaology as “begats,” echoing the bible carried to indians by christian colonizers, a “book of rules” that still greatly impacts lives such as washuta’s today. washuta’s life today plays out in a different relation to colonization and assimilation than mourning dove’s does in an earlier era. the “rules” have all changed. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 93 like many american indian people and tribal descendants today, washuta grew up almost as distanced by diaspora from her indian self as from her land and people. her mother’s people were from the west coast, cowlitz and cascade indians, and washuta was a non-phenotypically indian catholic school girl in maryland, growing up in a good home, born to good people, doing well in school, but struggling like all young women do today with the messages that society and media continally scream into their brains, messages that dictate what one must do to be valuable to men, worthy of what is spun to young women as “love.” largely, these “rules” proscribe how young women must conform their flesh, mold their bodies and their actions for the pleasure of men. these rules are put in schizophrenic contrast with the values of the church that america holds up on the other hand as a purportedly godly nation, rules that discipline and control female sexualty, that divide “good” women from “bad” based on its suppression or expression. this volume focuses in on washuta’s college years, beset by bi-polarity, a prescription pill roller coaster with loops, bends, and sharp drops, and an eating disorder resulting from a societal preference for the sketal complicated by medication-related weight gain and loss. sexual violence and alcohol overconsumption round out washuta’s schedule as she takes the course i call “freedom 101,” the class that makes or breaks eighteen year olds emancipated from home. her story is all too common, an experience shared with many young women today, as academics know. research tells us that one in five women are raped while in college (white house council on women and girls). likewise, we aren’t surprised with the alcohol consumption detailed in the book. we know many rapes reflect an environment we see from the margins. forty percent of college students report having engaged in binge drinking in the last thirty days. ninty-seven thousand college students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are victimized in date rapes and sexual assaults in situations involving alcohol abuse each year. more than one hundred thousand students of that age say they have been too drunk to know if they consented to sex or not at least once in the past year (national institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism). elissa washuta is far from alone, and her decision to speak out, to take control of her own story, is a cry for help from an entire generation. washuta’s book traces her surivival of ancestral genocide, assimilation, and misogyny through a unique structure. washuta’s travels through memory toward healing can be dizzing in their nonlinearity, but though there twists and turns along the way, we, like she, can see the light at the end of the tunnel. a numbered series entitled “a cascade autobiography” frames the book and separate the chapters, a miscellany of forms. it is in this series that washuta mostly addresses the “histories embedded in [her] bones” (4), her connects to her ancestors, most directly. nevertheless, the straight a student’s highlighting of her ethncity to “make [her]self special” during her interview with the scholarship committee along with her stated goal to “do something for [her] people” (7) force her to confront the complexities of her identity and identifying throughout both the book and her college years. “part 2” says: “i look white. you might think that means i am white. you are wrong. i have a photo id that says official tribal above my indian grin” (8). despite this bravado, washuta grapples, with cultural marginality and low kimberly wieser review of my body is a book of rules 94 blood quantum and tries to reconcile these with her federal recognized status as she comes to terms with her identity, taking control of her colonized indian body as she takes control of her raped female body through language. the first chapter, “the dread,” gives us our exposition in a standard enough form. the second, “note,” however, consists of a barely edited and frank letter from the psychiatrist who treated her while she was in graduate school that acquaints us with her depression, anxiety, and ptsd, the latter stemming from a “sexual assault in january of 2005” (8). we begin to get a glimpse of the medication merry-go-round washuta was subject to in treatment and the wide ranging impacts on her physical and mental well-being. yet another chapter, “please him,” is an exploration of the antipodal influences of catholic schooling and schooling in american popular culture via “sex tips from cosmopolitan,” which includes, among other forms, a list of new “commandments” washuta internalized, such as “you will never snag a husband if you don’t know what to do with his dick” (17). this is paralleled with a q and a cosmo-style, questions washuta thought were “important when she was twelves, eight years before [she] lost [her] virginity” (17). both gave me pause as a reader, beginning to realize exactly how unsheltered young girls growing up twenty to thirty years my junior had been—even before taking into account the internet, even girls were sent to catholic schools—and what a huge impact this has had on the psychology of college aged women today. the schizophrenic messages directed at her cause washuta to contemplate: “to be a sinful woman is to be a whore” (24). she combats this message through tracing a more accurate history of figures such as mary magdalene and jezebel as she reflects on her relationship with her high school boyfriend, with whom she stayed in a relationship two years into college, keeping her virginity intact (24). the next chapter, “faster than your heart can beat” traces her encounters with the subsequent twenty-four men, “counting backwards” (28). as we work back to “#1,” we work our way back through compulsive behavior to initial trauma, realizing washuta’s sexual choices had as much if not more to do with this date rape as they did with the dictates of media. “preliminary bibliography” details various literary influences on washuta growing up, from books about mermaids—the only images of women sexualized subtly enough for washuta to be allowed access to them as a “small girl” (40)—to books about sharks and shipwrecks. washuta reveals a correspondence between danger and her attraction as a young girl to the female body that redirects to males as she reaches joanna cole’s asking about sex and growing up. wally lamb’s she’s come undone, read prematurely at fourteen, makes washuta say, “i wanted to be raped, too, so that people would know my pain was real and rooted” (41). we see the pattern. literature in its varied forms, not just mass media, fetishizes the female body for all of us, transforms it as vulnerable to danger, makes it the territory to be conquered. as teenaged washuta moves on to poetry with i was a teenaged fairy, francesca lia block glorfies “beautiful, underweight tragic girls . . . starved, mentally ill, tortured from the outside in and the inside out” (42). while block led washuta to conclude that society idolizes women as victims, richard wright’s native son and bigger’s decapitation of a woman’s body, read in the class where she was “teacher’s pet,” guide her to connect attraction to transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 95 her by “much older men” to “dismembered bodies,” making both washuta and the reader connect societal obsession with young women with the victimizing of them. this is reinforced by her reading of diet books and a book on sororities. while each work she surveys fills in a gap in our understanding of her, i have to admit that the academic in me bemoans her youthful dislike of silko’s ceremony, of shakespeare, and of faulkner. washuta was far more impacted by mark danielewski’s house of leaves, his breaking of the “rules,” his use of different fonts and colors and alternative layouts. other books, expectedly at this point in our reading, connect with her experience of rape—”when we are raped, we want to read about rape” (48)—move us through changes in pysch meds, and take us across the continent with washuta to seattle for grad school in an attempt not merely to connect more with her ancestral roots, but also with the ground sacred to her erstwhile idol, kurt cobain. at this point, the book turns more to treatment, as does washuta when she relocates. we begin as readers to understand her attempts to control her body through eating as not just societal influence, but the result of the loss of control of one’s own body in rape. “prescribing information,” one of the chapters most disturbing for me as the parent of an adult autistic daughter and the daughter of a multiply vicitmized mother with bi-polar disorder, surveys twelve medications tried on washuta by physicians, giving excruciating detail of the impact they had on her mentally and physcially. as a woman who has experienced rape, the added complication of weight gain and loss caused by medications robs her yet further of control. when washuta has an allergic reaction to the medication that had the best effect for her with the least negative impact, the reader mourns along with washuta and her doctor, realizing that nothing that comes in a bottle can cure what ails her, whether the contents be alcohol with its numbing effect or something that professionals thought would “fix” her. we as readers, both as part of the world that has served washuta and other young girls up for dinner and as victimized ourselves, know there’s no easy fix for us either. other chapters include series of diary entries; a mock academic study based on real interviews washuta conducted with other young people about their sexual experiences (complete with citations and explanatory footnotes); and a law and order: special victims unit episode washuta wrote featuring herself; her rapist, ”the villian”; good cop; bad cop; attorneys; and a psychiatrist. this chapter not only clarifies the details of washuta’s initial trauma, but also introduces us to a subsequent violation, an experience all to common to those who have been raped. another includes an excerpt from washuta’s first rapist’s blog, demonstrating that he considered their experience merely a failed relationship, and flash fiction pieces by washuta that indirectly communicated her experience to others. however, the real heart of the chapter consists of the footnotes that detail the online conversation washuta had with a friend after her first rape, the conversation that actually made her accept that rape is what had taken place. “many famous people suffer from bipolar disorder” educates us on the depression of kurt cobain, long washuta’s obsession, though she has repeatedly denied at this point in the book having been suicidal as he was. washuta then turns to britney spears to demonstrate the effect of mania to us. finally, she turns to herself, showing her own condition to be somewhat in between the two, “dysphoric mania, agitated depression, or a kimberly wieser review of my body is a book of rules 96 mixed state” (139). she draws out comparisons to these icons of hers, then mock interviews cobain before moving on to saint dymphna and reminding us of the catholic roots of her outlook on sexuality. dymphna, dismembered by her mentally ill and grieving father for resisting his attempts to rape her, stands as a metaphor for all young women in mainstream american culture, raped symbolically and literally on a daily basis by those who should protect them because of the systemic nature of the violent objectification and commodification of the female body in our society. as washuta moves toward healing, she includes longer interchapter sections in the series “a cascade autobiography,” able finally to write her indian self whole despite her fractionated blood quantum. we see further healing in “i will perfect every line until my profile is flawless,” a mock match.com profile. though we may be disturbed she would even consider going out with anyone she met online after we have learned of her experiences, the extensive commentary in footnotes lets us know she is in a much better space. by we reach “please him, part 2” and “the global positioning effect,” we see a washuta who loves herself, who chooses herself over sainthood as she continues to wrestle with her complex relationship with god and the church, who chooses herself over dysfunctional behavior as she continues to seek “mr. right,” and most of all, who writes herself and her indian life even though she continues to find no easy resolution to her own struggles with mixed, marginalized identity. though the journey is traumatic as we follow washuta down the winding paths of memory through multiple genres, it is worth it, as life, despite pain, is worth it, “the most important thing god gave you” (172). for both those who have experienced trauma themselves and those who are merely part of a world where we allow such things to happen, this book is a necessary read, particularly for those in their college years and those of us who parent or teach them. this book does what a book about the impact of rape and rape culture on a young woman’s life ought to do for readers: it makes us want to find a cure for all of us that parallels her own. it forces the realization that it is we who must fix ourselves. kimberly wieser, university of oklahoma works cited brown ruoff, a. lavonne. american indian literatures: an introduction, bibliographic review, and selected bibliography. new york: mla, 1990. champagne, duane. the native north american almanac: a reference work on native north americans in the united states and canada. detroit: gale, 1994. national institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism. “college drinking factsheet.” http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/collegefactsheet/collegefactsheet.pdf. 22 aug. 2015. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 97 the white house council on women and girls. “rape and sexual assault: a renewed call to action.” january 2014. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/sexual_assault_report_1-2114.pdf. 24 aug. 2015. microsoft word carlson.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   173   kurt schweigman and lucille lang day. red indian road west: native american poetry from california. oakland: scarlet tanager books, 2016. 110 pp. california indian literatures are both understudied and underappreciated in the field of native american studies today. some of this neglect, perhaps, derives from the fact that the literary nationalist and tribal-centric paradigms that have dominated nas in recent years are only partly applicable in california contexts. demographics may offer some explanation here. according to the 2010 census, there are one hundred and eight federally-recognized tribes located within california’s borders, along with one (the juaneño band of mission indians) that is recognized by the state but not the federal government. in addition to these disparately-sized recognized entities, there are also some seventy-eight other polities currently petitioning for recognition. the size of the recognized california tribes ranges from as few as five people to as many as four thousand, and collectively they occupy nearly one hundred separate reservations or rancherias. (unrecognized groups are unable to collectively hold title over tribal lands in trust under federal law.) there is considerable variation, however, in the nature of the sovereign territorial spaces held by the recognized tribes. some are as small as six acres in size. some, like the agua caliente reservation (in palm springs), are located in the middle of urban centers. some, particularly in the northern part of the state, are rural and relatively isolated. finally, we should note that the overall indian population in california is both surprisingly large and more diverse than that in many other parts of the county. as of 2010, california had the largest number of american indian/alaskan native (ai/an) people of any state (362,801). california also had the largest mixed-blood population (people identifying as ai/an along with some other identified ethnicity) in the country, bringing the full tally of california indian people to more than 720,000. and yet, despite this large indigenous presence, california has relatively little tribal land (trust land) within its borders, with less than 3% of its total ai/an population living on a reservation or rancheria. more than half of the indian people living in california are members of tribes located outside of the state, and many members of tribes indigenous to california live either without a reservation land base or off reservation. bearing some of this data in mind, the first reaction one might have upon hearing that a pair of editors has undertaken the task of producing an anthology “encompassing… native american experience in california” would likely be a sympathetic shake of the head (11). to be sure, what kurt schweigman and lucille lang day have set out to assemble in red indian road west is not a comprehensive collection; such a book would be several times the length of this slender volume, and considerably more costly. the strengths of red indian road west are many, however, and i would argue that it nicely complements its literary ancestor, greg sarris’ 1994 anthology the sound of rattles and clappers. schweigman and day offer a much larger crosssection of california indian writing than sarris was able to in his earlier book, including both contributors from communities indigenous to the area and other, diasporic writers. they also have had some success in countering the still-persistent northern california bias in california native literary studies, by including writers from all over the state. the result is that red indian road west is a diverse, generously-edited text that should appeal to a range of audiences—both academics and general readers. one aspect of this collection particularly worth noting would be its inclusive and light-handed editorial philosophy, a wise approach for a book that will likely be received by some as an even david carlson review of red indian road west     174   more “representative” corpus of california indian texts than the editors likely intended. thirtyone poets are included in red indian road west, but none of them contributes more than three poems. indeed, the vast majority of writers are represented by only one or two entries. some of the authors included (deborah miranda, wendy rose, natalie diaz, to name a few) are likely to be more widely-known than others. encountering such a small selection of their works in these pages, then, is a refreshingly egalitarian experience, one that highlights schweigman’s and day’s goal of producing a gathering of voices that explores the diverse experiences of “being native american and living in california” without privileging any of those particular experiences, perspectives, or aesthetics (12). structurally, the book is also quite loosely organized, with no clearly defined sections, no overtly declared organizational philosophy, and no editorial paratext (outside of a brief preface and a short introduction by james luna). the editors seem to have elected to avoid clustering poems along geographic, tribal, or even thematic lines, and the effect of this is to allow each individual piece to register equally. there are, of course, recurrent themes that emerge throughout to provide some sense of cohesiveness to the collection, and there is, sometimes, an associative logic that leads from one poem to the next. the experience of place, the human connection to specific geographies, the persistence of traditional knowledge and stories, patterns of cultural endurance, and acts of historical witness all provide common subject matter in several contributions. but it is worth noting, even here, that red indian road west avoids foregrounding any curatorial sensibility that its editors might have, opting instead to allow readers full latitude in developing their own reactions to each specific poem. as a reader who approaches and employs poetry in a variety of contexts (teaching it in the classroom, presenting it at community events, enjoying it for private pleasure), i appreciate the diversity of expression in red indian road west. “native americana,” a short comic poem by sal martinez (who self-identifies as a pomo indian who works as a security guard at the garcia river casino in point arena), represents perhaps one point on that spectrum of expression. ever watch a western and think man, that john wayne has killed more italians than any american in american history? i sure do. it’s no wonder why iron eyes “the crying indian” transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   175   cody felt it safer as a real indian than a reel sicilian. (49) this is a more rhetorical voice than many of the others in the book, to be sure, and the poem relies on punning and the staccato delivery characteristic of good joke-telling for its effect. with its evocation of ordinary speech and its avoidance of aesthetic complexity in favor of a more pragmatic use of language, “native americana” possesses many of the qualities that one might associate, in a different context, with folk art. it works admirably in those terms, and by not framing it in any particular manner the book allows it to stand on its own merits. at a different point on the spectrum, we might find a more established, widely-published poet like carolyn dunn (muscogee/cherokee/seminole) whose “outfoxing coyote” opens in the following way: coyote is a yurok man who lives in a mormon mansion high on a hill in mckinleyville. he’s a storyteller, that one. tells tall tales of perfect worlds and hard places from behind dark eyes. (31) dunn’s formal control of sound (employing consonance and subtle rhyme), use of metaphor, and refined rhythmic sensibility emerges with particular clarity when contrasted with a more conversational poem like “native americana.” but the remarkable thing about red indian road west is the way the book’s structure urges that this contrast not be experienced by the reader in hierarchical or evaluative terms. one could compare poems like these formally, if one desired, of course. i would not hesitate to bring the book into a classroom setting where poetry was being discussed analytically in such a manner. but red indian road west does not insist on such david carlson review of red indian road west     176   pedagogical uses, nor does it suggest that such contrasts should be primarily critical in nature. this is precisely why one can employ the collection equally well as the centerpiece of a public reading in a non-academic context. i recently used the text for precisely that purpose at a daylong poetry festival held at a local indigenous community center, the dorothy ramon learning center in banning, california. the audience for that event, composed of both university students and a wide range of “untrained” listeners, found equal pleasure in hearing and discussing works by deborah miranda, georgiana sanchez, shaunna oteka mccovey (all of whom i had encountered before reading red indian road west) and e.k. cooper (a previously unpublished writer whose work, obviously, was entirely new to me). if there is a way in which red indian road west may be a bit too narrow in its focus, it might be in the book’s privileging of works in the lyric mode. this decision makes some sense in light of the editors’ stated goal of presenting the diverse, personal experiences of california indian peoples. it also may be a function of their more implicit goal—producing a book that would appeal at least as much to a general audience as to an academic one. the emphasis on personal lyric does have some limitations, however, in terms of the presentation of the diversity of indigenous poetic expression in contemporary california. janice gould, a writer who habitually makes skillful and sophisticated use of poetic forms, is represented here by a single poem, and there aren’t a large number of “formal” works by other writers in the collection as a whole. one also misses the presence of esther belin, a writer whose work tends to eschew lyric in favor of other, perhaps more “modernist” strategies particularly appreciated by seasoned poetry readers. at the same time, though, one must acknowledge that there are a variety of reasons behind the specific choices of poems included (or not included) in any anthology, including the general response to calls for submission, the contributing poets’ own desires, and the need to limit copyright fees and other costs. in the end, quibbling over omissions is a rather unsatisfying response to a book such as this. there is far more in the text to value than there are absences to lament. james luna describes red indian road west as a “songbook of sorts” in his introduction, and notes “i hear music when i read the voices put forward” (12). that is a perceptive response to a book that does a great service in considerably broadening our appreciation of the breadth of poetic expression by indian people of, from, and in california today. the final stanza of kim shuck’s contribution “when we are a river” picks this point up nicely. story from elsewhere shifts rock asphalt renames trade paths become freeways songs mix in complicated pattern in lines like these, we begin to see the ways in which red indian road west becomes an index of survivance in a california context. for that reason alone, this is a book that should be purchased, transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   177   read, shared, taught, and supported. anyone interested in broadening their understanding of california indian poetry or in changing the nature of the critical narratives that we tell about indigenous california today will find red indian road west to be a valuable source of inspiration and pleasure. david carlson, california state university, san bernardino microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 1 introduction: indigeneity, survival, and the colonial anthropocene martin premoli the past decade has given rise to a vast literature that explores the dynamics between climate justice and activism, environmental knowledges, and indigenous storytelling in the colonial anthropocene. a recent issue in the pmla, for example, discusses how the “dialectic of indigeneity” offers “an abiding refusal to surrender to either the limits or the logics of this ruined world” and “provides a map of untraveled routes rather than fallow destinations” (benson taylor 14). moreover, in their 2017 essay, “environmental ethics through changing landscapes: indigenous activism and literary arts,” warren cariou and isabelle st-amand “explore themes of environmental ethics and activism in a contemporary context in which resource extraction and industrialization are increasingly being countered by indigenized forms of thought and action” (9). and, to cite a final example, the collection ecocriticism and indigenous studies “takes the pulse of current indigenous artistic diversity and political expression” to examine how these forms “render ecological connections” visible for diverse audiences (adamson and monani 5). these various texts speak to a growing conversation amongst indigenous scholars and allies about our increasingly urgent environmental crisis—and the capacities of artwork and cultural production for engaging with this dire issue. part i of this special issue pursued and expanded on several of the insights highlighted above. our contributors examined the disruptive and empowering potential of indigenous storytelling in the movement toward—and realization of— global climate justice. in this special issue’s second installment, we continue this line of martin premoli introduction 2 exploration. to introduce this special issue’s most pressing concerns, i’d like once more to turn to the poetry of chamorro poet, scholar, and activist, craig santos perez. as before, i will be focusing on one of his poems from his collection habitat threshold, which introduces questions of catastrophe, entanglement, kinship, survival, and healing—questions that are attended to by the essays that populate this second issue. this poem, reproduced below, depicts the increasing frequency of species extinction in the colonial anthropocene. this extinction event, known as the holocene extinction, figures as the most recent mass extinction event of our earth’s history. scientists and scholars have suggested that mass extinction events share three common characteristics. firstly, they are necessarily global in scope, and thus not determined or constrained by regional parameters or borders. secondly, they occur when extinction rates rise significantly above background levels of extinction; or, in other words, they occur when the loss of species rapidly outpaces the rate of speciation. and finally, within a geological temporal framework, they occur across a geologically “short” period of time (the “event” might last for thousands of years, appearing to be quite slow from a human perspective). what’s unique about the holocene extinction, however, is that our present crisis is the first to have a human origin point. “right now,” elizabeth kolbert writes in her study on the topic, “we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. no other creature has ever managed this, and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy” (88).1 transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 3 perez visually represents and complicates this “legacy” through several creative innovations. the graph’s title offers us a useful starting point. rather than use a more conventionally “scientific” word for his poemodel (such as “species,” for instance), perez opts for a more intimate and familiar choice: “f m ly” (family). by referring to these non-human animals as family, perez emphasizes the kin relations that generate and sustain life: “these are relationships of co-evolution and ecological dependency. […] these relationships produce the possibility of both life and any given way of life” (van dooren 4). in other words, his poemodel recalls the importance of recognizing our co-dependence and profound intimacy with our non-human kin. in recognizing our rich entwinement with the web of life, perez’s graph also battles the perception that nonhuman animals are isolated “objects” for scientific analysis; and he destabilizes the tendency to understand species loss from a narrow, detached, statistical framework. the viewpoint presented by perez’s graph thus resonates with sophie chao and dion enari’s observation that climate imaginaries from indigenous communities in the pacific “have always recognised the interdependencies of human and other-than-human beings” and it pushes us toward the “recognition that other beings, too, have rich and meaningful lifeworlds” (35, 38). this is a crucial recognition for surviving the anthropocene, a time when the biocultural webs of life are being damaged and undone on a scale that has never been witnessed. martin premoli introduction 4 by dropping letters from the title, perez’s poem also gestures toward the broader losses in knowledge and understanding that accompany species extinction.2 as ursula heise explains, animal extinction often functions as a “proxy” for the profound, surprising, and often intangible disappearances that accompany the loss of a species (23). this is due, in part, to the fact that species occupy crucial positions in our cultural and imaginative structures—when they disappear, the vital imaginative structures built around them are unraveled and eroded. think, for instance, of the ways in which the death of coral reefs triggers anxieties over the disappearance of nature’s beauty, of possible medical discoveries, and of crucial habitats for a stunning range of marine life.3 recognizing this allows us to more fully register the unexpected effects of species loss, and in turn, develop appropriate strategies for species preservation. moreover, by dropping letters from these important reference points, we are pushed to more deeply and carefully engage with the information that is being presented to us—our gaze must linger on the graph in order to decipher and interpret its meaning.4 through this slowed down, dialectical interaction, fresh insights and understandings about the climate crisis can surface. graphs like this one, heather houser explains, thus illustrate how new ways of thinking become possible when art speaks back to forms of epistemological mastery” (1-2). and without new ways of thinking, new relations may not be possible. perez’s poemodel thus calls to mind sophie chao and dion enari’s description of climate imaginaries, which are “spaces of possibility” and “ontological, epistemological and methodological openings for (re)imagining and (re)connecting with increasingly vulnerable places, species, and relations” (34). climate imaginaries issue necessary calls for collective action that are driven by ethical, material, and political prerogatives, while simultaneously offering profound visions for inhabiting the world otherwise. in doing so, they demand a decolonial approach to the anthropocene transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 5 and emphasize the absolute importance of recognizing indigenous cosmologies, philosophies, and environmental knowledges. the essays that follow offer inspiring engagements with indigenous climate imaginaries. we begin with conrad scott’s “‘changing landscapes’: ecocritical dystopianism in contemporary indigenous sf literature.” in this essay, scott develops the term “ecocritical dystopia.” in scott’s formulation, ecocritical dystopias diverge from more traditional dystopian fiction through their unique engagement with setting. rather than imagine a future (even a near future) crisis to come, ecocritical dystopias are anchored in the real world, bringing us closer to crises that are already unfolding. as scott puts it, “we are, after all, connected to stories through our relationships (however tenuous) with the real-world landscapes altered within the narratives.” scott develops this sub-genre of dystopian fiction through an analysis of harold johnson’s corvus (2015) and louise erdrich’s future home of the living god (2017), arguing that these texts depict societies extrapolated directly from the present, reminding us of the threat of environmental collapse. svetlana seibel’s “’fleshy stories’: towards restorative narrative practices in salmon literature” introduces an archive of fiction from the pacific northwest focused on salmon—one of the most significant cultural symbols of the region. these “salmon stories” are organized around the “cultural and ecological significance of the fish for indigenous nations,” and they highlight the pervasive reach of the anthropocene, which has materialized in numerous consequences for human-salmon interdependencies and kinship. inspired by todd and davis’s observation that “fleshy philosophies and fleshy bodies are precisely the stakes of the anthropocene,” seibel examines how salmon stories create textualities of care aimed not only at criticizing the colonial economies, but at narratively restoring the threatened lifeworlds of both the martin premoli introduction 6 people and the fish.” seibel reaches this conclusion through a powerful reading of diane jacobson’s my life with the salmon and theresa may’s salmon is everything. “healing the impaired land: water, traditional knowledge, and the anthropocene in the poetry of gwen westerman” by joanna ziarkowska reads the work of sisseton wahpeton oyate poet gwen westerman from the perspective of environmental humanities and disability studies. the essay draws on sunaura taylor’s understanding that the use of “impaired” as a modifier demonstrates the extent to which western preoccupation with and privileging of ableism—able bodies which are productive under capitalism—has saturated thinking about damaged environments. through westerman’s poetry, ziarkowska locates indigenous survival in the preservation of traditions and attention to/care for the land that is polluted, altered, and in pain. she argues that, in westerman’s work, “‘impairment’ is an invitation to care and a construction (or rather the preservation) of a relationship with the land and its human, non-human and inanimate beings.” emma barnes situates her essay, “women, water and wisdom: mana wahine in mary kawena pukui’s hawaiian mo’olelo” within recent conversations surrounding how the anthropocene inaccurately unifies humans in their environmentally destructive behaviors and in their experiences of climate change, and overlooks the fact that the unequal effects of climate change disproportionately alter the lives of indigenous peoples. barnes provides a literary analysis of two short stories published consecutively by native hawaiian writer mary kawena pukui in her collection hawai’i island legends: pīkoi, pele and others. barnes situates two narratives—“the pounded water of kekela” and “woman-of-the-fire and woman-of-the-water”—as climate change fiction, and argues that they depict how drought and famine disproportionately affect native women due to their cultural and social roles. through her analysis, barnes highlights “the resilience of native hawaiian women in responding to a changing transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 7 environment, and to demonstrate the sacrifices indigenous women make in their role as cultural bearers.” “the crisis in metaphors: climate vocabularies in adivasi literatures” by ananya mishra examines the role of adivasi voices in climate change discourse and literary studies. while adivasis are the perpetual subaltern in postcolonial studies, their voices offer a necessary critique of the global industrial complex, one that echoes calls for sovereignty issued by other indigenous communities globally. mishra unpacks this claim through an examination of adivasi songs emerging from the particular geography of southern odisha. in particular, she focuses on the usage of metaphors within early climate change discourse: “indigenous literatures hold early warnings of the climate crisis in metaphors we do not yet center in climate discourse.” these metaphors, mishra suggests, serve as archives of interpretations of the climate crisis as already confronted by indigenous communities within india. our final article, “educating for indigenous futurities: applying collective continuance theory in teacher preparation education” by stephany runninghawk johnson and michelle jacob positions climate change conversations within the classroom. drawing on their experiences as indigenous university teachers, and from the experiences of their students who are training to become elementary and secondary classroom educators, runninghawk johnson and jacob demonstrate how k12 classrooms are vital sites for anti-colonial and indigenous critiques of the settlernation, neoliberalism, and globalization, all of which undermine indigenous futurities while simultaneously fueling climate change. their goal, they explain, is to “frame education as part of the larger project in which we can better understand our ancestral indigenous teachings for the purpose of deepening our indigenous identities and knowledges.” this entails calling upon indigenous peoples to work as teachers and leaders within educational contexts, and urging non-indigenous allies to educate martin premoli introduction 8 themselves on how they might best ensure indigenous resurgence, futurity, and “collective continuance.” together, the contributions featured in this special issue remind us that “stories frame our beliefs, understandings, and relationships with each other and the world around us […] our lives are interwoven stories […] we live in an ocean of stories” (kabutaulaka 47). and through their engagement with indigenous storytelling, these essays posit new, vital directions for imagining indigenous climate justice in the anthropocene. rather than foreground narratives of declension or demise in the context of anthropogenic climate change, these essays underscore the importance of telling stories that center self-determination, struggle, and solidarity. they emphasize, in other words, the importance of maintaining that better worlds are not only necessary, but possible. and in doing so, they open space for thinking and feeling our way through—and potentially beyond—the colonial anthropocene. notes 1 while humanity must reckon with its role in our present biodiversity crisis, we must also recognize that extinction is not simply an issue caused by an undifferentiated humanity, but it is a consequence of the expansion of capitalist social relations through european colonialism and imperialism, which drove what had previously been regional environmental catastrophes to a planetary scale. 2 this strategy of dropping letters is re-deployed for both labels on the y-axis: the one on the right reads “ext nct ns” and the one on the left shows several creatures fading away. 3 these anxieties take center stage in the documentary chasing coral by jeff orlowski. in its attempts at coral conservation, the film catalogues the many repercussions that accompany coral bleaching. for instance, one scientist describes coral reefs as the nurseries of the ocean—without them, up to twenty-five percent of marine life could vanish. this mass-death would then lead to food shortages on a global scale. 4 this slowed engagement with the graph also allows for numerous affective responses to arise, such as shock, anger, grief, disgust, or fear. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 9 works cited adamson, joni, and salma monani. ecocriticism and indigenous studies: conversations from earth to cosmos. new york: routledge, 2017. benson taylor, melanie. “indigenous interruptions in the anthropocene.” pmla, 136:1, 2021, 9-16. cariou, warren, and isabelle st-amand. “environmental ethics through changing landscapes: indigenous activism and literary arts.” introduction. canadian review of comparative literature / revue canadienne de littérature comparée, 44:1, 2017, 7-24. chao, sophie, and dion enari. “decolonising climate change: a call for beyond human imaginaries and knowledge generation.” etropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, 20:2, 2021, 32-54. chasing coral. directed by jeff orlowski, performed by andrew ackerman. exposure labs, 2017. netflix, orlowski, jeff. https://www.netflix.com/title/80168188 heise, ursula. imagining extinction: the cultural meanings of endangered species. u of chicago p, 2016. houser, heather. infowhelm: environmental art and literature in an age of data. columbia up, 2020. kabutaulaka, tarcisius. “covid-19 and re-storying economic development in oceania.” oceania, 90:1, 2020, 47–52. kolbert, elizabeth. the sixth extinction: an unnatural history. henry holt, 2014. perez, craig santos. habitat threshold. omnidawn publishing, 2020. van dooren, thom. flight ways: life and loss at the edge of extinction. columbia up, 2016. microsoft word miller.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   168   burying the (uncle) tomahawk kristina ackley and cristina stanciu, eds. laura cornelius kellogg: our democracy and the american indian and other works. syracuse: syracuse university press, 2015. 336pp. paul mckenzie-jones. clyde warrior: tradition, community, and red power. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2015. 256pp. progressive era oneida activist laura “minnie” cornelius kellogg literally wore many, many hats—mostly of the lavish, edwardian variety. cold war era ponca activist clyde warrior typically wore just one hat: his characteristic cowboy hat. that trivial distinction notwithstanding, both activists figuratively wore many hats in their lifelong commitment to improving conditions for native people in indian country and beyond. indeed, despite emerging from different historical contexts and tribal nations, these two vastly important figures in modern native american history are more easily linked by their commonalities than their contrasts. kellogg and warrior both worked during eras in which the united states federal government sought to assimilate indian people into anglo middle-class culture as a means toward solving its persistent “indian problem.” both countered by advocating tribal self-government, retention and recovery of tribal land, and cultural self-determination. both were grounded in and shaped by their tribal communities and obligations. both were firebrand intellectuals, capable of maneuvering within many worlds, and not just two. kellogg and warrior operated in the spaces between the teeth of colonization. both taught other indian people how to do the same. both placed treaty rights at the center of their wider messages. both fought for indian economic independence. both pursued all of these agendas on indian terms, with indian futures in mind. clyde warrior was a principal architect of the 1960s “red power” movement, built on what historian paul mckenzie-jones identifies as a foundation of community, culture, and tradition. to warrior, red power meant native communities’ strength and right to preserve indian culture, traditions, and integrity while also succeeding in the contemporary world. given this, it’s fair to suggest that, however anachronistic, minnie kellogg, too, fought for red power. paul mckenzie-jones’s scholarly biography, clyde warrior: tradition, community, and red power, emphasizes the influential ponca student-activist’s tribal cultural roots. whereas prior studies situate warrior within the wider red power movement that gained greatest visibility during the 1969 indians of all tribes alcatraz occupation and the american indian movement’s (aim) early 1970s heyday, mckenzie-jones employs an impressive corpus of oral history interviews to excavate deeper details of warrior’s tribal background. there is a bildungsroman element to this book, but one that ends less in triumph than tragedy as warrior died at the young age of 28. the triumph resonates posthumously, however, as warrior’s message inspired and informed those red power activists who followed in his dancesteps. born in oklahoma’s ponca community in 1939, clyde warrior descended from traditional chiefs on both sides of his parental lineage. raised by his grandparents, he developed a talent for drum making at a young age. mckenzie-jones characterizes warrior as a sensitive and deeply spiritual douglas miller review, “burying the (uncle) tomahawk”   169   young man who gained a reputation as a champion fancydancer on the powwow circuit and boasted an exhaustive knowledge of traditional songs. many among his generation grew up railing against their parents’ apparent failures to protect tribal cultures, lands, and treaty rights— to act sovereign. they were children of world war ii veterans and relocation program participants who chased a series of raised expectations that the federal government mostly failed to meet. as a result, warrior’s generation no longer trusted negotiating indian futures with the federal government. by the early 1960s they well understood that no matter how hard they tried they could not overcome, or even mitigate, the vast power differential between the settler state and the nations within. warrior described the previous generation as one featuring the “indignity of indians with hats in their hands pleading to powerful administrations for a few crumbs” (mckenzie-jones, 104). so the next generation sought a solution by turning inward to tribal communities and traditions, instead of moving outward into the settler state. in 1961, as a young college student in oklahoma, warrior ran a successful campaign for president of the southwest regional indian youth council, during which he for the first time opened a speech with his famous assertion, “i am a full-blood ponca indian. this is all i have to offer. the sewage of europe does not run through these veins.” that same year he joined a series of summer american indian affairs workshops led by former indian new dealer d’arcy mcnickle (cree) and world war ii veteran bob thomas (cherokee) in boulder, colorado. while mcnickle mentored warrior, he also represented the indian country establishment leadership. at the 1961 american indian chicago conference, warrior and his emerging cohort of young, disillusioned indian activists rebuked the old guard, labeling them “uncle tomahawks” for their tendency toward compromising with the united states federal government. the red power generation disowned its national indian activism progenitors, and instead embraced traditional tribal leaders such as phillip deere (creek), henry crow dog (lakota) and frank fools crow (lakota). on one hand this was essential to a red power organizing principle that emphasized cultural authenticity. but at what cost? was there a missed opportunity for greater synergy? despite warrior’s admonition against working within the system, that approach would continue to matter, even during the american indian movement’s zenith. consider for example the numerous important contributions the native american rights fund (narf) has made on behalf of tribal treaty rights and indian civil rights since its inception in 1970. maybe there is no narf without warrior. but it is also fair to suggest there is no warrior without mcnickle. warrior’s stature as a vibrant and combative spokesman for the young red power movement grew across subsequent years, especially through his leadership position within the national indian youth council. meanwhile the generational and ideological gulf reflected in his strained relationship with mcnickle only widened. eventually it grew to include fellow young, influential intellectual vine deloria jr. (dakota), the president of the national congress of american indians (ncai) who would go on to write the watershed custer died for your sins (1969). this is where mckenzie-jones falters in an otherwise impressive book poised for adoption in undergraduate courses. he perhaps allowed himself to get too close to his subject—one known for his gravitational charisma. did mcnickle deserve such derision? did deloria owe warrior transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   170   more attention in custer died for your sins—more than what mckenzie-jones suggests is a backhanded compliment? he sides with warrior’s dismissal of mcnickle’s proposed point ix program for reservation rehabilitation by claiming the program “promised ultimate tribal acculturation into mass american society” (mckenzie-jones, 102). this misrepresents what mcnickle and ncai advocated. they designed point ix to reverse the termination policy, restore lands to tribal ownership, provide job training, and to establish a revolving credit fund for tribal community and business development. mckenzie-jones contrasts this with warrior’s brand of self-determination, which “entailed sustained tribal political and economic independence” (mckenzie-jones, 102). the distinctions are not readily discernible. this might sound like nitpicking, but it reflects a persistent trend in scholarship on red power to pit one group of national leaders or one generation against another. it is tempting to think this is a product of the long shadow the american indian movement cast on the topic of indian activism. to no uncertain degree, militant red power’s legitimacy depended on ncai’s delegitimization. this amounts to an inversion of the old civil rights historiographic problem. prior to a wave of revision, too much attention had been devoted to the mlk-led civil rights establishment that emerged from black churches, and not enough attention had been granted to the importance of radical black power architects and ideologies. this was even true for king, who had become quite radical prior to his assassination. indian activism historiography, with few exceptions, has long privileged dennis banks, russell means, and clyde warrior, at the expense of a greater appreciation for indian activists of a different stripe. none of this is to suggest that clyde warrior was not singularly important, ingenious, intrepid, and inspirational. he remains all of those things, and scholarship on his life and impact is welcome and warranted. but mckenzie-jones’s book often isolates him from his wider context and his indian activism forebears. in recent years, scholars such as david beck and rosalyn lapier, philip deloria, frederick hoxie, paul rosier, and daniel cobb, among others, have done much to rehabilitate the earlier indian activists’ legacy. certainly mckenzie-jones’s clyde warrior belongs in their conversations. he provides immersive details, where they provide wider context. going forward, the field would benefit from even more scholarship that bridges these gaps and puts activists from different generations in dialogue with each other in order to highlight continuities and a richer indian activism tradition. and while we are at it, the field would benefit from more attention on native women activists, such as minnie kellogg. not only did the red power generation owe much to the “greatest (indian) generation,” it also could have located kindred spirits in the boarding school generation, from which minnie kellogg emerged as an important voice for indian rights, uplift, and empowerment. she had fewer examples than warrior to draw upon when attempting to lead her people across the treacherous terrain of turn-of-the-century reservation and assimilation programs. indeed, she deserves the attention kristina ackley and cristina stanciu grant her in their edited volume laura cornelius kellogg: our democracy and the american indian and other works, which gathers kellogg’s essays, poems, and speeches while making a convincing case for her inclusion in any discussion of the most visionary and courageous indian intellectuals of the twentieth century. in 1904, the los angeles times described kellogg as “a woman who would shine in any society” (ackley and stanciu, 3). ackley and stanciu support that assertion by emphasizing her douglas miller review, “burying the (uncle) tomahawk”   171   cosmopolitanism and mobility. born on wisconsin’s oneida reservation in 1880, kellogg first made a name for herself as an activist in 1903 when she stood for indian land rights during a dispute in california. newspapers covering the events christened her the “indian joan of arc.” after working as an instructor at the sherman institute for three years she enrolled at stanford university, and then passed through barnard college, columbia university, and the university of wisconsin. from there she began traveling throughout the united states, canada, and europe to advocate four primary goals: the development of indian industries that could connect to viable markets; the primacy of labor exchange over currency exchange; tribal community planning; and government by consensus. decades before it was fashionable among red power advocates, she argued for treaty rights and a continuation of the land trust arrangement while rejecting a subordinate role for indians in the national economy and mainstream society. she believed these goals could be achieved without giving an inch in indigeneity. in the context of federal policy initiatives designed to fully assimilate native people into second-class american citizenship, kellogg was not afraid to ask: why not “keep an indian an indian?” (ackley and stanciu, xiii). on columbus day 1911, in columbus, ohio, kellogg solidified her position as a national indian rights leader when she served on the first executive committee of the society of american indians (sai). this national organization of “red progressives” formed around a boarding school and college-educated indian vanguard that published its own journal and spread a message of indian racial uplift while challenging any assumption that native people passively accepted cultural isolation and second-class citizenship. sai established a valuable precedent for subsequent national indian activist groups to both improve on and emulate. unlike sai, ncai drew its leadership and agendas from tribal governments and communities. aim distinguished itself by departing from sai’s penchant for working within the established system to effect change. yet, like those subsequent groups, sai often suffered from internal division. indeed, kellogg proved willing to dissent from her sai cohort. she did not support the offreservation boarding school system from which she and many of her colleagues graduated. she also argued for the preservation of reservations, and refused to compare them to prisons, as many did at the time. she modeled her lolomi plan for reservation economic and community development on the urban planning initiatives she personally witnessed during a sojourn to progressive era europe. (she would fit right in daniel rodgers’s influential atlantic crossings (1998).) in this respect, she anticipated numerous urban indians who across subsequent decades moved to cities not only to survive, but also to mine metropolises for resources and experiences that could benefit tribal communities. not unlike her sai contemporary carlos montezuma, or clyde warrior for that matter, kellogg’s objections to the party line encumbered her with a reputation as an agitator, which gained her further notoriety after a series of arrests. and yet, it is a credit to her visionary intellect to suggest that, upon reading her works and learning about her life, it is not so easy to determine what, exactly, was so controversial about her agenda. of course, that sentiment is shaped by historical hindsight. kellogg does not seem so controversial on paper now precisely because we have the example of clyde warrior to draw upon. given this fresh scholarship on indian activism it is tempting to think of a different clyde. is it not strange how the field has mostly written around and beyond the topic of the american indian transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   172   movement despite not covering it in the form of a comprehensive scholarly monograph? why is that? is it because aim is such a controversial topic that few want to tackle it head on? is it because surviving leaders continue to closely guard their legacies and primary sources? is it because, given the movement’s profound importance, any book-length study is guaranteed to disappoint? the day will come, soon i predict, when that floodgate will open. when it does, scholars would be wise to further consider whether aim undermined previous decades of progress that earlier activists such as kellogg and mcnickle achieved. i am tempted to say no, and to adopt the popular vacillating opinion that aim did a lot of good, and perhaps a lot of bad. either way, this merits further inquiry. whose vision won out? or, whose vision lost? do these questions matter? summarizing what was at stake in her efforts on behalf of indian country, minnie kellogg declared, “whether he is a citizen or not, or whether he has lands or not, whether his trust funds continue or not, whether he is educated or ignorant, one thing remains unchanged with the indian: he has to have bread and butter, he has to have a covering on his back, he has to live” (ackley and stanciu, 140). compare this to an excerpt from a lecture clyde warrior delivered in 1966: “of this i am certain, when a people are powerless and their destiny is controlled by the powerful, whether they be rich or poor, they live in ignorance and frustration because they have been deprived of experience and responsibility as individuals and communities” (mckenziejones, 112). these statements suggest that, while the faces, voices, and contexts have changed, comparable challenges have persisted. it also suggests that scholars should continue seeking to bridge these generational divides, and to attempt more wide-angle studies of twentieth-century native american history that link important figures across space and time. to quote clyde warrior, “how about it? let’s raise some hell.” douglas miller, oklahoma state university transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 198 sarah deer. the beginning and end of rape: confronting sexual violence in native america. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, 2015. xxiv + 207 pp. 978-08166-9633-8. until fairly recently, the sexual violence endured by native american communities was downplayed or not mentioned at all. the 2007 amnesty international report maze of injustice, though hardly the first attempt to catalogue and combat systemic rape of indigenous women in the united states, was nonetheless crucial both in quantifying the phenomenon on a national level and in bringing the statistics to national attention. today there is no doubt that native american women are raped at a significantly higher rate than other ethnic groups. the statistic of “one in three” is well known, but may well be an underestimate: a 2010 cdc report suggests that just under half of all native women report a history of sexual violence (deer 4). what is more, there are other factors which aggravate the injury even further. violence is significantly more likely to play a part in the rape of native american women, and, uniquely to american indians, it is more likely to be perpetrated by someone of a different race to the perpetrator. this is, in other words, a reality that permeates indigenous communities and lives. for these reasons alone, sarah deer’s new monograph should be essential reading for anyone working in native american studies. the data sets that she lays out in her opening chapter are devastating in the sheer volume of criminal actions concealed behind the numbers, as they lay clear just how much of burden of colonial fallout falls excessively on women’s shoulders. it is characteristic of deer’s thinking, however, that she refuses to rely on simple statistics to prove her point, arguing that “national numbers are flat; they lack dimension and stifle future exploration” (15). national statistics gathered by federal agencies or other us nation state level organisations, can only empower national solutions. but the issue of sexual violence, for all its prevalence, is not ultimately a national problem, and will only be very partially solved through the use of federal agencies and one-size-fits-all solutions. although many people have pointed both to the complications caused by overlapping federal, state, and tribal policing, and also to restrictions on tribal prosecutions of non-natives, as being primary causes of the rape epidemic, deer forcefully notes that urban native women are just as disproportionately likely to suffer sexual assault. hence there are far more, and more deeply buried, factors at work here. indeed, one thing deer immediately points to in her opening pages is the prevalent use of a word such as “epidemic” to describe this issue. epidemics, she argues, raise images of short-term, biological infections that originate outside the social set up. instead, we need to understand that rape is a direct consequence of ongoing and specifically colonial realities. the next four chapters are staged so as to take the reader on a journey into the development of colonist rape culture. deer begins by providing clear historical evidence that precolonial indigenous societies did not use rape as a weapon of war, and that although rape was not unknown it was regarded with particular abhorrence. more, there is reason to believe that in many societies women had particular rights over the punishment of their rapists, indicating that james mackay review of the beginning and end of rape 199 the crime was seen as one of interpersonal violation rather than, as in english law, a violation of a husband or father’s property rights. though this section is brief – deer is clearly primarily dealing with contemporary reality – it nonetheless gives great force to what follows, as she traces the ways that the deliberate withholding of sovereignty from native courts over major crimes committed on reservations, and the continued failure of federal agencies to prosecute these same crimes, has created a vacuum in which neither traditional nor us law function at all. returning to the historical archive, she shows that again and again rape has been a weapon in the colonial effort, whether in fur trade marriages of convenience, on the multiple trails of tears, or in the actions of indian agents on reservations. all of this leads to what may be the centrally important chapter of this book, “relocation revisited.” here deer takes us into studies of modern prostitution, drawing on her experience in helping to compile the 2011 report garden of truth: the prostitution and trafficking of native women in minnesota (pdf here). she begins with the story of “a young, blind coos woman” known as amanda, who was forced by the us cavalry to undertake a nearly 100 mile walk barefoot as part of the ethnic cleansing of the territory now known as oregon, then takes the reader through a fast-paced pocket history of commercial sexual exploitation of native women in the past couple of centuries – in boarding schools, as means to osage oil wealth, as exploitation of their control of commodities by reservation indian agents. all of this leads to the fact that native women are significantly over-represented among street prostitutes, a result of their historically induced vulnerability to exploitation. deer argues that native women taken across state lines and/or from reservations should be treated as having been trafficked internationally, a crime that occasions more resources and more co-ordination from police forces. while this is technically feasible, it seems unlikely to pass. more, this short chapter is missing a lot of detail on the interrelationship between poverty and prostitution, and only briefly gestures here at the effects of a family history of abuse. trafficking is a useful word because it creates a situation of bad guy pimps who can be pursued by the law: here it seems not fully to cover a far more systemic oppression. chapter six, “punishing the victim,” highlights the only real lack in this study. it tells the story of dana deegan, a fort berthold mother and a victim of physical and sexual abuse, who ended up taking her own infant’s life in desperately sad circumstances. deer was brought to deegan’s case after reading a dissent by an appellate judge who stated that deegan’s ten-year sentence for this crime “represents the most clear sentencing error that this dissenting judge has ever seen” (81), and it is particularly hard to disagree after reading the particulars. indeed, this sort of close dive into the material circumstances of one crime is so impactful that it suggests that deer should have replicated this approach elsewhere in the text. of course there are many difficulties with such an approach: deer has come across many of the stories she knows through work with sexual assault survivors, who may prefer that their stories are not told. still, there are more than enough people speaking up, and more stories of the type that she presents in this anomalous chapter would have maybe served to make the study seem less abstract and more urgent. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/garden_of_truth_final_project_web.pdf transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 200 the second half of the book is devoted to indigenous theories of jurisprudence over rape. as deer has shown that rape prosecutions founder in the disjunctive zones of tribal, state and federal law enforcement, she is clear that rape prosecution should be a tribal responsibility. this makes sense, but what if tribes wish to utilise norms other than contemporary western ones for dealing with sexual assault? deer gives examples of traditional stories as being the source of juridical decisions, but does not always seem to take the most obvious lesson from them. here i am particularly thinking of her reading of the gwichi’in athanbascan story of “taa’ii’ ti’ and the russians” (120-121), a story that seems to call pretty unambiguously for the death penalty for rapists, while deer interprets it merely as showing the need for jurisdiction over non-indians. in a later chapter, she takes issue with the navajo peacemaking system (and other forms of indigenous peacemaking such as hollow water), for being primarily male-dominated and open to various forms of abuse, including victim-blaming and over-lenient treatment of offenders. again, this sits slightly uncomfortably with a demand for the strongest possible restoration of sovereignty: surely sovereignty includes the right to different processes and outcomes? should a tribal outsider like deer be picking apart systems that have been evolved from specific tribes’ traditions? these are uncomfortable questions, to be sure, but they do seem to illustrate the difficulty with concretising abstract notions of sovereignty and culture. deer finishes with a chapter of strong proposals for federal and tribal law reforms to deal with sexual assault. as she recognises, “there is no such thing as the perfect rape law” (142): nonetheless, the recommendations she makes here are both sensible and flexible enough to form the basis for intra-tribal discussion. banishment, imprisonment, re-education, protection orders and incarceration are all considered and the advantages and disadvantages of each weighed up. finally, a set of question are given that would form the basis for activists and tribal governments to work together to assess sovereign tribes’ ability and willingness to deal with rape. these last two chapters are essential reading. i did not end this book confident that the damage done by colonisation and genocide, manifesting in the form of rape, can be undone any time soon, so the book’s title maybe be a little optimistic. nonetheless, this is a powerful and thoughtful study of the topic, the best in a native american context thus far. james mackay, european university cyprus microsoft word horton.docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   190   review of bill anthes, edgar heap of birds, duke university press, 2015. 232pp. 978-08223-5994-4   https://www.dukeupress.edu/edgar-heap-of-birds   having completed a book about contemporary indigenous art within a few months of reviewing bill anthes’s edgar heap of birds, i appreciate certain shared challenges. in writing the first monograph on the multidisciplinary practice of the accomplished living cheyenne artist (b. 1954), anthes must answer to a vast image archive predicated on the opposite meanings of “indigenous” and “contemporary,” narrate a tide of dispossession without resorting to victimisation, foreground native epistemology while critiquing cultural essentialism, craft sentences to satisfy tribal elders, biennial curators, and academic reviewers, and cast an art historical net wide enough to include barbara kruger and the bighorn medicine wheel. while anthes does justice to the overt political dimensions of heap of birds’s oeuvre, more surprising is his treatment of its subtle ceremonial grounding. while spiritual practices linked to sacred homelands are a central concern in interdisciplinary native studies, “ceremony” has no comparable standing in conversations about global contemporary art. in selecting it as a key theoretical term and organising principle for the text, anthes invites consideration of how an embodied cheyenne understanding of renewal may enter and alter the sprawling and largely secular institutions of contemporary art, even—or especially—when it goes unseen. indeed, a quick scan across four decades of heap of birds’ practice does not immediately reveal the sacred as a priority. the artist is best known for his outdoor installations of metal signs that mimic the spare and authoritative aesthetics of government bureaucracies. anthes opens with the controversy surrounding beyond the chief, a public artwork that heap of birds temporarily installed on the university of illinois, urbana-champaign campus in 2009. two years earlier, the university retired a stereotypical indian mascot, chief illiniwek, from their sports fields in response to mounting criticism from native activists and peer institutions, while retaining their teams’ name, the fighting ilini. twelve commercially printed steel panels greeted visitors with “fighting illini” in disorienting backward-facing type, followed by the affirmative “today your host is” and the name of a tribal nation. while the peoria, kickapoo, meskwaki, and nine others listed by heap of birds were displaced from their traditional illinois territories by colonisation, the signs highlight ongoing native claims to this cleared ground and in doing so, unsettle the foundations of us property and law. as anthes emphasises, beyond the chief characteristically makes hidden histories of dispossession visible in order to generate public debate, while asserting a symbolic form of indigenous sovereignty in the present tense. while the installation is but one instance of the artist’s repetitive use of signs—it belongs to the native hosts series begun in 1988—anthes takes care to underscore the distinctive formal qualities and historical engagements of individual works, as well as the unique contexts in which they are erected and received. in the case of beyond the chief, instances of vandalism and theft indicate the particular potency of heap of birds’ intervention on a divided campus and alert us to audiences’ roles in constructing and contesting meaning. analogous methods of detailed description, contextualisation, and attention to the dialogical nature of artworks characterise all high-level art criticism today. nonetheless, art historian jane blocker’s endorsement on the back of the book rings true: “so often we fail to look carefully at or describe the works of native jessica l. horton review of edgar heap of birds   191   american artists in depth, but tend instead to look through them to some plane of political meaning to which they presumably grant passage.” anthes effectively reverses this approach by unpacking heap of birds’ practice at the directive of the artworks, rather than usurping their specificity within catch-all truisms about colonial injustice and reconciliation. this task is made easier by how loudly and clearly the signs proclaim their political commitments, bolstered by the artist’s own eloquent commentary. anthes takes additional steps to position heap of birds’s practice in distinction to other artists’ and critics’ tendency to value “relational” artworks for initiating open-ended and nonhierarchical dialogue with audiences presumed to be “equals.” especially instructive is a comparison of heap of birds’s admonishments to “remember” and “honor” with the passive voice and inclusive “we” of lawrence weiner’s (b. 1942) well-known sign works, embodying the latter artist’s conviction to use the imperative amounts to a form of linguistic tyranny. likening heap of birds’s work to “sharp rocks,” anthes argues that they reconfigure a cheyenne warrior’s responsibility to protect his community by engaging in semiotic, rather than physical, warfare—an approach that reasserts indigenous social and political priorities in the face of colonial assimilation. here and elsewhere, anthes makes good on his promise to emphasise heap of birds’s challenge to the discourses and institutions of contemporary art in a manner allied with the strongest feminist and decolonial work, rather than “lobbying for [his] inclusion in a familiar history” (127). even more could be done to unpack the relationship of this warrior tradition—one that could easily slide into popular stereotypes about plains masculinity—to the presumed moral authority of the “artist-as-outsider” that scholars such as grant kester, claire bishop, and others have discussed within broader debates about contemporary relational art.1 beyond mapping the artworks’ clear political preoccupations, the book’s deeper argument centres on the role of cheyenne ceremony in quietly shaping heap of birds approach to the contested ownership of land and history. anthes anchors this thread of inquiry in a succinct yet moving description of his attendance, at heap of birds’s invitation, of an earth renewal ceremony (popularly known as the sun dance) on the artist’s home cheyenne-arapaho reservation in oklahoma. during the four-day-long ceremony at midsummer, heap of birds and other participants sacrifice themselves through feats of physical endurance in order to “make the world new again each year” (19). yet the earth renewal is rarely referenced in any direct manner in the artist’s work. following anthes description of this event, which occupies a mere two-and-a-half pages of the introduction, he engages with ceremony less as content than as a theoretical preoccupation and an organising principle for the text. ceremony, we might conclude, is not an object in heap of bird’s practice—nor anthes’ book—so much as a structuring logic that remains for the most part invisible. (one notable exception is heap of birds’s wheel, an outdoor sculpture that takes the form of a plains medicine wheel addressing the trauma of the sand creek massacre, which was permanently installed at the denver art museum in 2005 and discussed at length in chapter three). anthes focuses on the non-progressive temporal-spatial order of the earth renewal, which takes the form of a “spiral that reaches outward and back to the center simultaneously” (28). he argues that returning to an oklahoma hilltop each summer grants heap of birds a unique vantage point on the much-debated “temporal turn” in global contemporary art. the latter is sometimes discussed as the critical cancellation of canonical modernists’ preoccupations with progressive transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   192   forward movement, or as the sense of a perpetual present engendered by the spread of neoliberalism and the promise of technological instantaneity. heap of birds’s practice rather attests to the uneasy coexistence of pluralistic “habits of thought” that refuse to resolve into a singular, shared cosmology—a possibility theorised by scholars such as terry smith and keith moxey, who anthes names as allies. the artist’s use of the present-tense to access indigenous histories unique to particular places, patterning of words and forms according to the ceremonially significant number four, and use of global travel as an opportunity to symbolically repatriate the stories of indigenous travelers before him, are examples that locate particular times, places, and peoples along the spiral formation introduced in the first pages of the book. subsequently, anthes eschews a chronological structure in favor of four distinct yet interconnected essays. respectively titled “land,” “words,” “histories,” and “generations,” each chapter takes a journey that ultimately circles back to the enduring themes of heap of birds’s life work. the “spiral” approach shared between artist and author is subtly transformative. as many before me have noted, the reduction of indigenous spirituality to symbols and objects renders it divisible, exchangeable, and hence, commodifiable. likewise, sacred materials can become severed from political and historical forces and pushed into the premodern mist. these dual processes have informed an enduring cultural complex in which antimodernists, new age religionists, fashionistas, and many a non-native artist have sought access to indigenous secrets in search of “universal” truths, redemption from capitalist alienation, saleable symbols of the exotic, or sympathetic associations with the oppressed (as was the case when french-moroccan artist latifa laâbissi recently performed self portrait camouflage at moma ps1 wearing only a faux plains-style headdress, drawing outrage from native critics).2 it would be all too easy for heap of birds to use his own heritage to reclaim profit from the circulation of ceremonial signifiers—and who would blame him, given the vast history of cultural appropriation? anthes, for his part, might adopt a classic ethnographic approach, offering cultural interpretations of this or that symbol or event. such an approach might secure the superficial acceptance of artist and author in the annuls of contemporary art (which boasts an “anthropological turn” among others), but would leave its basic institutions untouched. it does not follow that heap of birds—or for that matter, anyone writing about him—can avoid participating in the cultural and economic logic of capitalism, given how thoroughly this system has permeated the history of colonisation and the globalisation of contemporary art alike. there are no “outsiders” here. yet by treating ceremony as a model for intellectual and embodied ways of inhabiting the world, making art, and producing allied scholarship, rather than announcing it as consumable content, heap of birds and anthes join forces to demonstrate that the muchdiscussed market is not the only logic structuring relationships between subjects and objects, places and histories. capitalist cosmologies sit alongside, and in irreducible entanglement with, surviving and adaptive indigenous worldviews. in the uneasy dance between them we find “the crux of [heap of birds’s] contemporaneity” (21). jessica l. horton, university of delaware                                                                                                                   notes jessica l. horton review of edgar heap of birds   193                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         1 for a succinct summary and critique of this literature, see john byrnes, “the yes men: art and the culture of corporate capitalism” in keep it slick: infiltrating capitalism with the yes men, edited by astria suparak, miller gallery at carnegie mellon university, 2009, pp. 19–22. 2 the literature on appropriations of native spirituality and culture is vast. see, for example, michael brown, who owns native culture? harvard university press, 2004. see also native appropriations, a popular blog by indigenous scholar adrienne keene, focused on contemporary popular culture and the fashion industry, http://nativeappropriations.com/. for detailed analyses of the controversy surrounding latifa laâbissi’s performance, see christopher green, “against a feathered headdress: a tale of two performance festivals and native american voices,” hyperallergic, jan. 17, 2017, https://hyperallergic.com/352026/against-a-feathered-headdresstwo-performance-festivals-native-american-voices/; crystal migwans, “the violence of cultural appropriation,” canadian art, feb. 7, 2017, http://canadianart.ca/features/violence-culturalappropriation/. microsoft word editorial.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) i editorial we pen our greeting to you on the day before that feasty, yeasty american november holiday of “horrorshow buffet,” the one full of myths of friendship and sacrifice, of journeys, bounty, and loss, and of sanctuary and exile. cathy coevell waegner leads us through an intense and welcome consumption of selected works of vizenor and stephen graham jones, a posthalloween pre-thanksgiving discussion of incarceration and interstates, complete with cannibals, clowns, and wiindigoo. in anticipation of the upcoming season, here read “blockbuster releases,” we offer olena mclaughlin’s essay that looks at the influence of star wars in the works of a variety of artists from susan folwell to ryan singer and andy everson, among others, and focuses in particular on the pop art and insights of bunky echo-hawk and steven paul judd. karen poremski gifts us a careful consideration of a trevino brings plenty poem from his collection wakpá wanáǧi. “little, cultural, teapot curio exposes people” is a poem of woven creation and other containers, stained with blood and history and the theft of culture and celebration of conquest. within a basket though, brings plenty reminds us is a weaving of links and dna in other kinds of captivity, the ones no nagpra act can loosen. with those bonds unbound however, outside of laws and policy, poremski shows family and relatives moving beyond the confines of museums. moving from notions of history to imagining ourselves into the future, deborah madsen provides an analysis of “indigenously-determined” gaming and “the mechanics of survivance,” eloquently building on what she sees as an oft-overlooked nuance of survivance, reminding us that is “not a static object or method but a dynamic, active condition of historical and cultural survival and also of political resistance.” her incisive read of never alone / kisima inŋitchuŋa through this particular lens of survivance and projection resonates in a quote she provides from ishmael angaluuk hope, who “’remarks that the game story is about how to be the kind of person who can bring about a return to “true living in the community.’” for a contribution to and as a community of scholars, we provide in this issue “red pens, white paper: wider implications of coulthard’s call to sovereignty,” a roundtable discussion of glen s. coulthard’s red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition, which descends from a plenary session at the native american literature symposium in 2016. the membership of the panel, carol edelman warrior, brian burkhart, billy j. stratton, david j. carlson, and theodore c. van alst, jr. is made up of specialists in literature, english, philosophy, and native american studies, and provides a lively and multi-faceted discussion of this seminal work in indigenous political science. finally, our creative section in this issue provides us with world views that move us through a cycle, and the incidental structure of this volume bookends itself in this regard. echoing coevell waegner’s initial work here and its use of carceral theory, david groulx via praxis gives us a look at “the world” from the inside out, one set in a different kind of tomb; a sort of easter yet concluded. crisosto apache writes of a world contained in “this specific moment and time / no different than the odious big bang,” and we wonder at the mark made on the universe when that moment in an “envelopment of toiling flame engulfing in transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) ii combustion” meets ice and snow as winter in season (and increasingly in spirit) approaches. we are grateful that carter meland provides us with a critical reflection on wiindigoo “presence” in the world even as we recognize winter’s necessity, though we perhaps already wait for spring in season (and spirit) to return. until then, enjoy. theodore c. van alst november 2017 david j. carlson james mackay david stirrup microsoft word proof.doc transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 161 lockbolted letters to turbo david groulx i hope your enjoying spring. i know i’d be enjoying it much more if i was with you. happy belated easter, you know i ain’t much of a christian. i got your card today, it was wonderful i read it over and over again. i sure do miss you guys, i’ve been doing crosswords, i’m getting better at them. there’s this song in my head, you wouldn’t like it baby/ you wouldn’t like it her/ there ain’t no entertainment and the judgements are severe. i’m sure leonard cohen was singing about this place because nobody likes it here. even the guards. i’m trying to relax, trying to recapture the dream i had about you last night, but the guards came and woke me up for work it’s a perverted sense of humor that runs through this place; (they will be reading this of course) sometimes i can’t wait for lights out, that i might get the chance to dream of you again. i hoping to get a book change, this week i’ve read arthur miller’s play all my sons three times, i guess it’s his opinion on modern society, the family living in a military industrial complex. other than that, the kitchen is hard work, we’re always busy, david groulx “lockbolted letters to turbo” 162 i mean always; but most of the crew pull their own weight and we’re always joking around. the cooks don’t mind as long as the work gets done. this place is run around meal time. i forgotten how lonely i was staying at home alone those weekdays. all the time. turbo is great company, as you and he both know, but the conversation was all one sided. i’m not good at making friends, but i am good at kidding around, if presented with the opportunity. i will almost always walk through that door. don’t worry. i’m being optimistic, i’d rather be with turbo, listening to him burp, than here. i’m happy you called last night, i was tired, this place is exhausting. i would have stayed up till lights out to talk with you, i would walk naked through a snowstorm to a pay phone to talk with you, with the quarter between my butt cheeks. i saw this guard today he looks like zach, he looks friendly enough with a baby face and very big. the strange thing is, that there is an inmate that looks like jake. their mom would laugh her ass off. the radio is on all day, classic rock ugh, that song is on white hoti need you to complete me/i’m white hot/ i can’t take it anymore/ i’m white hot and i’m running to your door/ i need rain/i need rain. as for songs that make me think about turbo, i’d don’t know i’d have to leave that up to him. what would turbo sing. i know he likes that tape, solitudes: songs of the loon. and probably that nelly songhey baby do you wanna ride with me/we’ll listen to mtv. i remember when we heard that song and started singing the do you wanna ride part. turbo would go crazy and we laughed. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 163 i guess some of the other inmates think i’m unfriendly cause i don’t say much, but the talk here is always the same, how you got here? how long you got to get out? how much good time you lost? who makes the biggest deal? big deal. i hear the same conversation over and over again. it’s like that movie, groundhog day or run lola run, except there is no way to change the outcome. i hear “meds up” and most all of the inmates rush to the door for whatever pills the doctor has them on. the nurse comes by twice a day for that, but she’s not the head nurse, i looked at her knees. i’m glad i have you to talk to and i’m happy that the future is so full of possibilities for us, together. i know it is not easy to be apart like this, but this is what makes it matter, if it didn’t matter, it would be easy. i’m excited about seeing you and turbo and frustrated at how i cannot express how much i miss the two of you. i miss the two of you so much. it is impossible for me to speak of. i suppose there are words, perhaps not, perhaps not in english to tell you how much i want to be with you, how much i miss, how much i need you. you complete me. david groulx “lockbolted letters to turbo” 164 i got some good news. that two-faced fucker who worked in the kitchen got knuckled in the card room. the guy was spreading a rumor that i was pissing in the food, when actually he was the one doing it. someone told me what was being said. so i went straight to the range boss and told him it wasn’t me and if he was going to beat me to do it there in front of the whole range, (fuck i was scared) but i wasn’t going to fuckin wait around to catch a beating. the range boss found out the truth and the next morning, two-faced fucker was gone to pc and the card room was covered in blood. its hellishly boring and dangerous as hell here. and order must be kept because the place is always on the verge of going under lockdown and order is the range boss’s responsibility. i was happy he got it. i really don’t want to lose my good time. i could get out and be with you and turbo sooner. i try to keep to myself and try to hide it when i am happy or sad. i can’t stand hypocrites and there seems to be so many. i don’t understand how people can be cruel or why they like to see each other in misery. i admit i’m glad that guy got it. it was just. he wanted to go to stony, where his dad is, how fucking ambitious. i’m here without you, that i deserve i suppose. and sometimes when i’m lonely for you, i think the sentence is too severe. when i get that lonely; i can’t eat, i just want to be left alone, sometimes i wish i could request to go to the hole, just for a bit of peace and quiet. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 165 i get lonely here but the strange thing is you are never alone, there is always people talking, even in their sleep and the fucking radio is always on. sometimes a man needs that, needs to think about things. i only got to the gym three times this week. the easter holiday really fucked up the routine, there weren’t enough guards so we couldn’t go. there is a french show on in the other room there is a man, a woman, and a dog all sitting together and i don’t understand a word of it. next week the movie is billy jack, we’ll probably watch it, since there only three white guys in here. i like the movie, it was the first time i saw an indian character as a hero instead of a villain, or a white guys lackey, but in the end, billy jack goes to jail, just like most of the guys here, including me. life here is desperately boring. the inmates like to watch sitcoms i hate and there is absolutely nothing good to read. even the magazines available, cars and trucks. this place is a desert for me. i hope to work on my play this weekend, since i got some fresh pencils now. the kitchen today was chaos, they are already short of guys and they gave some of the others the day off. that’s ok though, all i have to do is think of you and i start to feel better. i remember when we first met, you were drunk, but i found you enchanting. i believe you make me want to be something more, i want to be better when i’m around you. in the past few months you’ve become the marrow of my body. you have become someone more, become part of me, you complete me. last night things were pretty tense around here because one inmate got bounced out. the screws shut off the tv because they get nervous, but that only increases the tension. nobody likes it because things can get really volatile really fast. nobody sleeps and everyone is exhausted, couple that with the mentally ill inmates and the predators, it’s like living in a mental institution. everyone is insane, the guards too. david groulx “lockbolted letters to turbo” 166 emotions run really high here, they are in overdrive all of the time. people get punched out for the smallest things, bumping into someone accidently gets you punched out and bounced out, one guy got knuckled because he said he wanted to go to penetang. the rules around getting bounced are still kind of vague. i’ve seen guys get punched out for not doing their chores, annoying other inmates. mostly though i think it’s just respecting yourself and other inmates, privacy and property; making noise after lights out, snoring is another one that might get you punched out. who gets bounced is entirely up to the inmates. most though get into trouble over favours, nobody does anything for free, same as out there, but here it is much more straight forward, karma comes quickly. for me, no favours asked, none owed. some of the inmates think that our dorm is treated worse than the others because we’ve only got three white guys. at first i didn’t buy that shit, but now i am starting to believe it. our tv gets shut off once a week, the other dorms; not once. and there are more white guys on the other dorms, although the entire jail is mostly native, we got the least amount of white guys (i guess we haven’t met our quota). the jail is full of aboriginal people, but the screws are all white. i have not seen one indian working here and it really bothers me. i see it everyday, a reminder of us and them. i know this place ain’t full of indians cause we’re all criminals, something is wrong in this country. statistically indians get more time and more often than whites. i’m not looking for an excuse, but a reason, racism runs deep in this country. i see it every day here. this place runs on emotion, reason would not make any sense here. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 167 here there is nothing, no past, but that which we run from, no future, except that which we await. this place is purgatory, you are neither alive or dead, it’s living in the shadow of a real life a surreal existence. i hate this place. here i feel dead, like the world has forgotten about me and for the most part it has. your calls make me feel happy for a while and happiness is a rarity here as is anything else of value. here maslow's pyramid is built on food, drugs and respect. who has it, who gets it the only thing that seems to matter here are the basest of appetites, masturbation, fisticuffs and food. we never go outside, i guess they don’t have enough guards. i go days without a breathe of fresh air. even walking was taken for granted while on the outside. i won’t take either for granted again. i mostly try to stay to myself, count the weeks and know that one day i’ll look back on this and it will be so long and short ago and i’ll be beside you saying “the past can’t hurt us anymore” and i’ll be holding you from the day i see you until the mountains fall into the sea. yeah, yeah and the dog too. i love you guys, i miss you guys. and i can’t wait to see you guys. from the manuscript always a broken sleep in the days i was known as papillon microsoft word 1140-article text-6400-1-6-20230128.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 151 a conversation with stephen graham jones: horror, weird fiction and the way of slashers, with sopapillas for dessert billy j. stratton & stephen graham jones while i initially planned for this to be an interview, it was really a conversation, and one that occurred at a pretty cool mexican joint in denver near du’s campus before stephen visited one of my classes to talk about ledfeather. be sure to check out el tejado if you’re ever in the area— they make a mean michelada! the transcript included here follows the conversation as it took place—minus the food orders and background conversation, which any postmodern writer would usually revel in, as well as the divvying of sopapillas—while being faithful to the cadence of language. only a few minor changes were made for clarity and context. given the occasion for the meeting and visit, the focus touches on ledfeather, and then moves on to a discussion of jones’s more recent works. my primary interests were in the turn towards the genre of horror since mongrels—a subject he is always eager to discuss, while also delving into other related matters such a weird fiction, the publishing industry, the function of literature, and as always, the future of humanity. you know, as blink 182 calls it, “all the small things.” anyway, enough of my blathering, so let’s get on to the reason you are here and reading this: the incomparable stephen graham jones. stratton & jones “a conversation with stephen graham jones” 152 stratton: i want to talk about the trajectory of your work from mongrels to the present, but also through demon theory, how do you see the horror stories you’ve written as developing from your own point of view? jones: well, demon theory was the second novel i ever wrote. i wrote the fast red road and then demon theory, so i’ve been doing horror forever, but didn’t get demon theory published until 2006. and then, even before 2006 i felt like i had been forced, but it was really my own response to the response to my books. . . for a lot of years i became like two writers on two different tracks. demon theory was the beginning of the horror track, and i went on to it came from del rio, zombie bake off, the last final girl, all that stuff. so, for a lot of years it was tricky to maintain, being on two, like, separate tracks, if that makes sense. stratton: yes, for readers too, there seemed to be a strange dividing line between those two groups of novels where readers of one set were often not all that aware or experienced with the other. jones: it almost made me feel like i should be like brian evenson, be like him and his real name for some readers and then bk evenson for other projects, or . . . iain banks and iain m. banks, right? i never did that because i was afraid i would do my good work under one name and my so-so work under another name. i don’t know if i trusted myself, i mean. but, you’re right, mongrels was the point where i was able to knit myself back together, be one writer instead of two. it felt good. stratton: definitely, you were able to be the whole ‘you‘ as a writer. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 153 jones: with that, i was able to use horror in a . . . i don’t know, a less “normal” way, the werewolf, i mean, but mongrels was really about family, just, through this weird delivery method—stories mixed with flash fiction to create a novel, and things not necessarily moving in a casual way. more associative, i guess. but, ever since mongrels i felt like i was one writer again. so, from there i wrote mapping the interior, the only good indians, night of the mannequins and my heart is a chainsaw, so those are all works i’ve done as a single writer. stratton: that’s where there is a key difference from a book like ledfeather, which is very literary, challenging and postmodern in a sense, to mongrels which really opened your work up to a whole new set of readers. jones: oftentimes, in literary fiction the stakes can be kind of low, too, dealing with questions like ‘will i not get over my parent’s divorce from fourteen years ago,’ stuff like that. but in my work, like when my wife reads it after we’ve been together for thirty-one years, she recognizes all the little parts of biography i put in there and she says it gets hard to tell where the real stuff stops and the make-believe starts. stratton: that could be especially disconcerting with your horror stuff. because you do a lot of first-person narration in horror as any good crafter of horror does, as that’s among the core things a horror writer must be able to do. but the question almost becomes, well, how do they know how to do these things, in some uncomfortable sense? jones: yeah, the person writing this sure does seem to know a lot about hiding bodies . . . stratton & jones “a conversation with stephen graham jones” 154 stratton: [laughs] that’s the craft. and you watch a lot of horror movies, but i don’t feel like your early readers were always aware of that. i did want to go back to your references to weirdness, though, so how do you think your latest writing fits with or challenges the writing being put forth under the banner of weird fiction? jones: you know, i like to read weird fiction, but i don’t know if i can write weird fiction all that well. probably the closest weird fiction story i’ve come up with was “brushdogs.” stratton: hmm, i kinda feel like mapping the interior fits into that category too, in some ways. jones: it’s possible with weird fiction—it’s possible i’m making one subgenre such as “cosmic horror” stand in for the whole genre, here. but weird fiction to me, the story pattern, it’s somebody finds an old book or artifact or whatever the thing is, and because of that brush with this whatever, they peel up a corner of the wallpaper of their life and look behind to see the vast terribleness of everything, but all they can do is try to close it back. you can’t fight cthulhu; you can’t fight these cosmic entities. and so, the story is, ‘i now know my own insignificance in the universe, and i have to live the rest of my life knowing how little i matter.’ the horror i usually write, and prefer, i guess, is the horror that ends with “i made it.” there’s hope in the world. stratton: survivance. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 155 jones: exactly, weird fiction doesn’t have the same kind of hope to me. but? if all fiction on the horror shelves was hopeful, that’d actually be kind of a bummer, i think. what’s fun about horror is that you never know if it’s going to end up, down, or in the middle. takes all kinds to round the genre out, let it keep on living. stratton: that’s right, it’s more the acceptance that there is no hope. the world is absurd and has no meaning or worse, but it’s not that one doesn’t have agency. it’s more that we are caught up in a larger web of processes [jones: yeah, correct] so much greater than us that it limits our agency and becomes the source of terror. jones: exactly, i think that kind of stuff is fun to read but i don’t think i can write it ‘cause i don’t want my fiction to bring people down, if that makes sense? stratton: thinking about it in that way, this takes me back to the fast red road and the goliards. that’s similar, but instead of peeling the corner back on something supernatural or from the beyond, you’re finding something in the world that you never knew about before. [jones: yeah, that’s true]. and then there’s a kind of shock like we also see in pynchon’s the crying of lot 49 with oedipa maas trying to figure out what waste and the trystero might be. jones: that’s totally right, i never thought about it like that. so yeah, the fast red road really does conform to that story arc. stratton: yeah, and the bird is gone and ledfeather, too. stratton & jones “a conversation with stephen graham jones” 156 jones: if we look at the fast red road, the bird is gone and ledfeather as three books in a series, i do see the first two as more in the realm of weird fiction, but ledfeather is where i was . . . well, let’s go back to 2005. when i’d written those first two, i was just working at an instinctual level and hadn’t really thought through the differences between weird fiction and horror. i feel like by 2007, and ledfeather, i was starting to get more of a sense that i wanted to end with an up-ending rather than just bleakness, you know. “bleak” is easy, i think. staging an up-ending is a lot more difficult. at least to me. stratton: what you were just saying seems also to reflect a similar distinction between general readers and academic readers. in the former, you’re just in it; you’re just reading the story in the moment without trying to attach all sorts of theoretical models or philosophical ideas to it. and while you may be engaging with the weird, it’s more on a visceral level, you’re not thinking about the parameters of weird fiction or whatever defines it. you’re liberated from that apparatus when you can be a reader who reads without a pen in your hand, underlining or writing notes in the margins. there’s a liberation in that, i think. jones: that’s right; there is. i don’t know how to do it, but it must be great. stratton: [laughs] i don’t really know how either. but connected to that, so for those familiar with your earlier works there is a natural development in the trajectory of your writing that can been seen over transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 157 time. but can you share your insights on this theme for those who may be less familiar with your body of work and haven’t read a lot of your earlier novels or for those who found you later through novels such as mongrels, night of the mannequins, the only good indians, my heart is a chainsaw, and who discovered your works after that? jones: yeah, i always feel like the readers who came to me after mongrels, the only good indians, chainsaw, or whatever, i’m always worried when they’re going back to my earlier stuff, especially the fast red road—which ,my whole heart is still in those books and i love them and i don’t wish to dismiss or diminish them—but i do always wonder if i am ever going to hear from those people again. because those books, they’re not the same at all. to me they’re totally different. stratton: they are, but that’s because there was a particular thing you were trying to do in those works, i think. with ledfeather you were able to say i’ve done that kind of narrative how i wanted to and now i can move forward to other interests. jones: yeah, definitely, with ledfeather in 2007, i had a two-and-a-half-year dry period after that. i don’t think i had another book come out until 2010. stratton: it was a little while, and then you started cranking out with a lot of horror that sort of presaged mongrels, but the difference was through that you were able to get the attention of bigger presses, and then land deals with tor and morrow. i’d like to hear you talk about what that shift has done for you career, but also your writing process in which your books started getting into the hands of so many more readers. stratton & jones “a conversation with stephen graham jones” 158 jones: well, you’re right. i started hitting hard and heavy between 2010 and 2014, with a lot of books in that period. the indie press scene and the commercial publishers, well, it’s the same and different, i guess. the commercial presses have marketing and distribution, and it’s amazing and wonderful and you really need that. what i like about all the indie stuff i did, and i really recommend that to all writers, i got to figure out what kind of writer i was. there was nobody saying don’t do this, or even if they did, i just went to another publisher. so, i got to try crazy stuff like the long trial of nolan dugatti, that’s a ridiculous, wild book. and zombie sharks with metal teeth, i couldn’t have done that with a commercial press. i see so many writers who their first book is a big hit and then they are on that career path, but they can never play. and play is where we learn how to do stuff. stratton: are you still able to sneak “playing” into your current works? you seem to be a master of that process now [the sopapillas arrive], but in a way that maybe you couldn’t have done if you had written mongrels at the beginning of your career, in say, 2004. jones: yeah, if mongrels had caught on with a readership that early, i think i would have gotten locked in. since 2016, all my book contracts have been for horror novels, which is fine with me as i love writing horror, but i wonder if i would’ve been in that corner in 2005 or 2006 and by 2015 i would’ve been trying to break out and push out of those walls. stratton: it’s clear that you love writing, just writing in its purest form, do you see those lines of division? or, is it all a cohesive development—from your perspective? transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 159 jones: yeah, to me it’s cohesive. even if it’s not cohesive content-wise, they all have the same amount of heart. they all come from the same place. content doesn’t really matter; genre doesn’t matter. stratton: that’s interesting when you apply that to the category of native/ indigenous literatures, as there are critics and scholars for whom content is the most important thing. almost as if writers are being read to see what list of boxes are being checked, whether that be sovereignty, treaties, or land. but if you think about something that’s far from that kind of thing, whether growing up dead in texas or mapping, the whole story about where those characters are in the world is itself a commentary on the processes of displacement, the nature of sovereignty, or the lack thereof. can you comment on that? jones: when growing up dead in texas was about to come out, i did one final read of it. not for the publisher but for me. and i was asking myself—like to me, everything that i had written before growing up dead in texas was native whether it was explicitly stated or not, but i was wondering about growing up dead in texas. so, i went back and reread it, and to me it’s really the same as mongrels, which deals with pressing native issues all the way through. stratton: and you always have the shadow of palo duro canyon in your west texas novels. jones: hopefully, by the time this comes out we can talk about my next west texas novel . . . i was a teenage slasher. stratton & jones “a conversation with stephen graham jones” 160 stratton: hopefully! so, for the last question, no rules and you have complete freedom, what novel would you write. jones: i was a teenage slasher is my dream novel. stratton: wow, so you’ve done it. jones: yeah! it’s written very much in the voice of growing up dead in texas, but it’s got bodies left and right. stratton: well, and as you know, that’s the foundation of america, really, bodies left and right. but those bodies, unlike the bodies we find strewn about in horror, are swept under the rug and hidden in history. jones: but they come back in all the horror stories. stratton: for someone who is such a prodigious writer, especially as we talked about all the books you wrote from 2010 and 2015, how has the process been different since you started working with morrow, tor and simon & schuster, but also since getting all these awards and accolades? jones: i mean, it’s changed in that there’s more deadlines. and it’s changed in that—at the indie level when an editor tells you to ‘change this,’ you can always put down your flag and say, ‘literary integrity, i’m leaving it in.’ with a commercial press, i can plant that same flag if i want, but i’ve got to understand that i’m planting it through the foot of somebody who’s got to argue with marketing, production, distributors and transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 161 salespeople, so they might fight less hard for me at those meetings if they’ve got a flag stabbed down though their foot. i’m lucky enough to work with an editor who never tells me to do something. he just tells me how he thinks it should be. he’ll always qualify it by saying, “you don’t have to do this, but i think the story’s better if you do this.” and so, i’m always like, i’m not going to do it and then i try it out two or three weeks later and it’s better [laughs]. it’s nice to work with somebody like him. because, i think, if i were working with the kind of editor who says, “it’s got to be this way,” i would probably just go somewhere else, you know. i react poorly to people telling me how something should be, rather than saying that there might be another way, and that other way might be better. what if i just give it a try, see if it works? stratton: let’s return to that previous question. why is this upcoming novel, the one with bodies everywhere, i was a teenage slasher, the quintessential jones novel? jones: first, it’s set in west texas, which is fast red road territory and where i started out. and it’s high school, for some reason—and maybe it’s a failing on my part—but it’s an era and age that i write well from. also, it’s west texas, it’s high school, set in 1989, and i know 1989 pretty well. and it’s the slasher genre, but i’m not just enacting the slasher genre. it’s, and i don’t know, but meta is the wrong word and i hate to call everything that . . . stratton: self-reflective? jones: maybe, that’s it yeah. stratton & jones “a conversation with stephen graham jones” 162 stratton: or self-aware? jones: it is self-aware, yeah. stratton: self-referencing? jones: a little bit, but there’s no movie titles in it. i use . . . like in chainsaw where i use titles on every page, there’s not a single title in this one. stratton: so, are those titles the map? and if so, maybe you don’t want to give that map to readers in this one. jones: yeah, well there’s characters who know all the slashers. there’s two characters who do, anyway. and then everybody else has to learn the slasher as well. just, not in the way they would have chosen, were they given a choice. stratton: final question, what is your world, the world stephen graham jones is trying to recreate is his fiction? jones: i dream of a world that’s fair. evil is a dangerous word, i think, but a world where bad stuff is punished, and where kids don’t go hungry. i can’t do that in the real world. i can’t seem to change things so that’s going to be the case, and maybe that’s for the best, nobody should have that power, or you end up with a thanos. and, too, i worry sometimes that if everything was a star trek future, we’d just stop growing and moving. because we’re not actually as good and sterling as those star trek people. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 163 stratton: something that gives hope through the bleakness, like you were saying about ledfeather earlier. but a hope that has to come out of suffering and loss. jones: it does, but the trick is, you have to remain receptive to it. like in the end ledfeather when the side of doby’s hand touches the side of claire’s hand. he’s had a lot of terrible stuff happen to him, but he hasn’t given up. that’s one of my favorite endings i’ve ever done, and i sort of think all my endings before and after are some version or take on that. i want to believe in good things, i mean. in possibility. in “maybe.” without “maybe,” i don’t know . . . why even try, right? microsoft word ziarkowska_final.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 74 cherishing the impaired land: traditional knowledge and the anthropocene in the poetry of gwen westerman. joanna ziarkowska in the first chapter of a historical narrative about the dakota homeland, sisseton wahpeton oyate poet and artist, gwen westerman and bruce white, emphasize the centrality of land in dakota cosmologies: mni sota makoce. the land where the waters are so clear they reflect the clouds. this land is where our grandmothers’ grandmothers’ grandmothers played as children. carried in our collective memories are stories of this place that reach beyond recorded history… no matter how far we go, we journey back home through language and songs and in stories our grandparents told us to share with our children. (mni sota makoce 23) not only do the stories affirm the significance of dakota places but they also explain complex and reciprocal relationships among human and non-human beings, originating from environmental conditions and rendered in the dakota. similarly, the connection between the land and all beings features prominently in westerman’s poetry. in “morning song” from the 2013 collection follow the blackbirds, a blackbird summons spring with his song and celebrates the seasonal return of all his relatives, human and non-human alike. “waŋna mitakuye hdipi” [now my relatives are coming home] (53, 70), rejoices the bird. while the world conceived in westerman’s poetry is governed by the principles of harmonious multispecies relationality, it also includes joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 75 images of damage and contamination caused by industrialization, its resulting environmental pollution, and climate change, all identified with the anthropocene. however, westerman’s lyrical world is not one of destruction either. rather, westerman acknowledges the changes brought about firstly by settler colonialism and secondly by industrialization and capitalism, and she traces possibilities for a continuation of harmonious coexistence in which human beings occupy neither central nor superior position in relation to their environment. what facilitates the continuation of the relationship with the land is the tribal knowledge built up over centuries about how to respectfully and responsibly interact with the environment. in this essay i am interested in the value that gwen westerman’s poetry ascribes to indigenous knowledge (ik) as a way to understand and react to environmental changes and preserve dakota values in these new contexts. as numerous indigenous scholars emphasize—winona laduke (anishinaabe), leanne betasamosake simpson (michi saagiig nishnaabeg), and gregory cajete (tewa) among them—traditional indigenous knowledge (tk), place-based and attentive to all forms of being, emphasizes adaptability to transformation as a framework to think about climate change and the resultant decrease in biodiversity. i believe that the most significant consequence of addressing the ecological state of the twenty-first-century world with indigenous knowledge is a disruption of the anthropocene narratives which identify humankind as the sole agent of change, the sole author of its scientific explanation, and finally, the possible solution to the problem. instead, westerman relies on a more nuanced model, which draws attention to the relational character of interactions with other species and beings (those which biology would refer to as nonlife) and thus decenters man in the enlightenment narrative of progress. moreover, westerman rejects the debilitating language of the anthropocene which describes affected lands transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 76 as “damaged,” contaminated,” and “impaired.” it is this last qualifier that is of special interest to me. following an illuminating presentation by disability studies scholar sunaura taylor, “disabled ecologies: living with impaired landscapes,” given at the university of california, berkeley, on march 5, 2019, i would like to draw attention to how definitions and descriptions of well-functioning ecosystems depend on how useful they are for human beings. these inherently anthropocentric perspectives introduce hierarchies in which landscapes severely affected by human activity are no longer viewed as ecologically or societally significant. taylor’s research on the hughes aircraft lagoon in tucson, arizona and the tucson aquifer led her to explore heavily loaded terminology used in environmental discourse. for instance, according to a definition provided by the environmental protection agency, waters are impaired when there is “detrimental effect on the biological integrity of a water body caused by an impact that prevents obtainment of the designated use” (qtd. in taylor). similarly, in the field of ecological risk assessment, an ecosystem is impaired not when it ceases to form meaningful and biologically efficient relations with other ecosystems and beings but when it is no longer significant for human consumption. the significance of the metaphor taken from disability studies is certainly not lost on taylor, who emphasizes how such language perpetuates the idea that impairment is a serious deficiency that needs to be cured or attended to. taylor draws attention to the fact that indigenous epistemologies do not sustain such human-oriented perspectives. instead, they “have long understood the environment as kin or as an extension of one’s body” (taylor). indigenous scholars have demonstrated this repeatedly and incessantly. nishnaabeg artist and activist leanne betasamosake simpson, quoted by taylor, commenting on the pollution on her tribal lands, explicitly articulates her commitment to land: “i can connect myself to every piece of my territory no matter what shape it is in, because we joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 77 cannot abandon our mother because she is sick” (“i am not;” my emphasis). this act of caring for kin, the mother, and all relatives, human and non-human is extensively described in the indigenous body of knowledge about environments and changes that they undergo. indigenous knowledge offers a perspective on the environment that disrupts anthropocentric narratives, with human agents as the makers and transformers of ecosystems. while the concept of indigenous knowledge or traditional environmental knowledge has recently gained a lot of attention in academic circles, it is by no means a new idea in native communities. as anishinaabe scholar deborah mcgregor asserts, ik is not an invention of non-indigenous people nor an academic discipline to be studied and approached in theoretical terms. instead, ik is a foundational element of indigenous epistemologies: it is regarded as a gift from the creator and provides instructions for appropriate conduct to all of creation and its beings. it not only instructs humanity but assigns roles and responsibilities to all of creation as well. indigenous knowledge comes from our relationship with creation. in an indigenous context, ik is by nature also environmental knowledge. (389)1 since it is passed on in the oral tradition and community practices, indigenous knowledge is often conceived as an accumulated experience and wisdom unique to native cultures and the environments in which they live. as melissa k. nelson (anishinaabe/metis) asserts, indigenous knowledge is a system of “local knowledges of specific places, geographies, and homelands. they are site-specific, place-based, in situ knowledges. local knowledge is about persistence in place and orientation. this orientation operates on a spatial level with both vertical and horizontal dimensions, among others” (198; emphasis in original). indigenous knowledge is hence understood as process rather than content. it is a way of life, manifested in actions rather than transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 78 theorized about (berkes 4-5). moreover, it is directly related to tribal sovereignty and decision-making processes on a community level and involves diverse areas of tribal governance such as food security, education, human and animal health, management of natural resources, and environmental justice (settee 61). if indigenous knowledge is a process, it needs to be responsive to changes, be they societal, technological, or environmental. as eugene hunn explains, the fact that indigenous knowledge is embedded in traditional practices, passed on for generations, does not preclude its ability to adapt to the changing world: “new ideas and techniques may be incorporated into a given tradition, but only if they fit into the complex fabric of existing traditional practices and understandings. thus traditions are enduring adaptations to specific places” (qtd. in berkes 3-4). faced with the effects of climate change, such as declining runs of fish (e.g., salmon and steelhead), declining populations of wildlife and game, loss of water supplies and many others, indigenous people are addressing regional environmental problems and developing responses based on a thorough knowledge and understanding of environments in which they live (marchand et al. 179-84). in the context of climate destabilization and its effects, it is not surprising that indigenous knowledge has been appropriated by academia and non-native scholars and researchers as a reservoir of observations about climate patterns (williams and hardison 532) and possible solutions to environmental problems. simpson draws attention to the political significance of this trend. what is very often forgotten or strategically glossed over is the fact that, although people now look to indigenous knowledge for solutions to the detrimental effects of environmental disasters, it had long been the target of assimilationist policies in the us and canada and discredited as superstition by western scientists. ik survived only thanks to joint communal efforts and perseverance (“traditional” 134-35). moreover, as simpson emphasizes, western joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 79 scientists are primarily interested in those aspects of indigenous knowledge that promise solutions to environmental problems afflicting the modern world, “while the spiritual foundations of ik and the indigenous values and worldviews that support it are of less interest often because they exist in opposition to the worldview and values of the dominating societies” (“anticolonial” 374). potawatomi biologist robin wall kimmerer emphasizes western scholars’ propensity for dismissing indigenous knowledge systems as unscientific and superstitious. “getting scientists to consider the validity of indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold, cold water,” writes kimmerer. “they’ve been so conditioned to be skeptical of even the hardest of hard data that bending their minds toward theories that are verified without the expected graphs or equations is tough” (160). this indiscriminate approach to indigenous knowledge mirrors the anthropocene narratives constructed from the perspective of “an unmarked masculine species deriving from the global north” (deloughrey 12) and dominating “what is an undeniably white intellectual space of the euro-western academy” (todd 247-48; emphasis in original). this euro-western orientation of the anthropocene discourse is signaled by the gesture of locating its beginnings in the mid-twentieth century, in itself a politically significant act, as heather davis and zoe todd (métis/otipemisiw) observe. rather than relying solely on data from geological strata, davis and todd draw attention to the power structure inherent in narratives about progress and the ensuing environmental transformation, and suggest the rise of settler colonialism as the starting date of changes that today result in, among others, climate destabilization. with the emphasis thus shifted, the discussion concerning political implications is expanded to include non-western epistemologies and societies. more importantly, however, to use a date that coincides with colonialism in the americas allows us to understand the current state of ecological crisis as inherently invested in a transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 80 specific ideology defined by proto-capitalist logics based on extraction and accumulation through dispossession—logics that continue to shape the world we live in and that have produced our current era. (davis and todd 764) analyzing the rhetoric of the original essay in which paul crutzen and eugene stoermer introduced the term, davis and todd assert that the anthropocene “replicates a eurowestern division of mind/thought from land when it is framed as the business of ‘research and engineering’” (768). such a framework stands in sharp contrast to many indigenous ontologies which reject the view of man as the center and agent of the world. thus, similarly, the anthropocene is an extension of a colonial logic of erasing difference, of brutally imposing “the right way of life” through genocide, forced assimilation, dispossession, relocation, and violent transformation of nature. “[f]orcing a landscape, climate, flora, and fauna into an idealized version of the world modelled on sameness and replication of the homeland” (769) was an integral part of the colonialist project and today is understood as one of the reasons for climate destabilization and the loss of biodiversity. indeed, in the united states, canada, and other settler states (e.g., new zealand and australia), indigenous people were forced to reckon with anthropogenic transformations long before the word “anthropocene” entered academic discourse. as potawatomi scholar kyle powys whyte observes, for native people, this highly disruptive moment occurred not in the twentieth century but with the coming of settlers, when many native communities were forced to discontinue their relationships with plants, animals, and ecosystems. therefore, if indigenous people experience the anthropocene in a different way, it is because after centuries of land dispossession, forced relocation, assimilation, and the loss and/or disruption of cultural continuity, they need to focus “their energies also on adapting to another kind of anthropogenic joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 81 environmental change: climate destabilization” (“our” 207; emphasis in original). moreover, not only did the anthropogenic change dramatically alter the environment through deforestation, industrialization, overharvesting, and pollution, but it also “obstructed indigenous peoples’ capacities to adapt to the changes” (whyte 208). and change, as pointed out earlier, has always been an integral part of indigenous knowledge which, based on centuries of observation and interaction with the surrounding world, instructs people how to react to transformations in ecosystems. gwen westerman’s follow the blackbirds features a world that is affected by environmental, cultural, and socio-economic changes. the collected poems portray a landscape of highways, asphalted roads, walgreens, and wired fences. it is a world transformed by the rule of the capitalocene, “a way of organizing… a nature in which human organizations (classes, empires, markets etc.) not only make environments, but are simultaneously made by the historical flux and flow of the web of life” (moore 7). however, it is also a world of blackbirds and the buffalo following their ancient migration routes. the lyrical voice carefully observes the new contexts and offers insightful and often ironic comments which reveal the short-sightedness of projects constructed around the desire to control nature. a responsible and reciprocal relationship with the environment is displaced by consumerism, unchecked extraction of natural resources, and settler colonial practices of land grabbing. yet, what the poems communicate, imparting indigenous knowledge, is that regardless of this violence perpetrated on the land and its inhabitants, environments—following the ancient cycles of destruction and renewal—find a way to seek balance and restoration. in “innocent captives,” westerman pointedly illustrates the scale and scope of changes introduced by capitalist industrialization. the poem traces the extent to which the capitalist economy is responsible for mass transformation of the landscape and the rupture in the natural balance. moreover, submitting nature to the rules of profit motive transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 82 displaces non-human beings that have lived in the area for centuries. the titular “innocent captives” are blackbirds that abundantly populate central and southern parts of north america. among the most commonly observed species are “red-winged blackbirds (agelaius phoeniceus), common grackles (quiscalus quiscula), yellowheaded blackbirds (xantbocephalus xanthocephalus), and brown-headed cowbirds (molotbrus ater)” (werner et al., 251-52). the poem emphasizes how blackbirds have been natural and rightful inhabitants of the area, taking advantage of the land’s seasonal abundance: “ancient memory guides them each spring and fall / along river valleys and wetlands” (westerman 10). however, in the capitalocene, marshes that feed blackbirds and other beings are “drained and fertilized for increased yield / and prized cash crops and condos grew” (10). the birds are greeted not by sustainable ecosystems but by agricultural fields, artificially enhanced for maximum production. the function of the intervention into the environment is not to counter the effects of earlier interference in ecosystems but to maximize profits. indeed, the blackbirds’ ancient home has become a site of mass-scale agricultural production whose logic displaces blackbirds and reevaluates their presence in the area. since the 1960s, north and south dakota have become the main regions of commercial sunflower cultivation, producing approximately 73% of the total 1.95 billion kg (national agricultural statistics service qtd. in blackwell et al 818). as expected, the plant “with oil-laden seeds” (westerman 10) attracts blackbirds, which appear in the area in spring. from the business-oriented angle, it is estimated that the losses caused by the birds’ activities in the sunflower fields (red-winged blackbirds are identified as the most prevalent and dangerous to crops) can amount to $2.8 million annually (blackwell et al 819). to prevent damage, the industry runs programs of baiting during spring with drc-1339 (3-choloro-4methalalanine)-treated rice: lured by a treat, the birds ingest the toxin and die (blackwell et al 818).2 the rationale behind joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 83 the practice is the focus on efficient production, which redefines the birds’ ontological status: from rightful seasonal inhabitants of the area, they are turned into a risk to an otherwise economically successful operation. the language used to describe the practice is striking. justifying the reasons for the use of lethal toxins and their potential effects on non-targeted species, bradley f. blackwell and colleagues thus describe the situation: “concurrent with the growth of the sunflower industry in the great plains have been increased conflicts associated with bird (primarily red-winged blackbird. . .) depredation of unharvested crops in late summer” (818; my emphasis). the apparently military imagery used to describe birds’ natural behavior endows them with agency oriented at calculated deceit. the term “depredation” inevitably evokes images of looting, plundering, and destruction, again associated with the disorder characteristic of war zones. thus the red-winged blackbird, rather than a natural element of the ecosystem, is redefined as an adversary. not only does the logic of the capitalocene intervene in a previously sustainable ecosystem but also it dictates which species are allowed to function in inherently altered landscapes. in the poem, westerman focuses on the very act of poisoning the birds and offers an acutely painful description of their death. moreover, she emphasizes the improvement of the baiting method: next to trays with poisoned rice, farmers place caged blackbirds, “innocent captives” of the poem’s title, whose role is to attract freeflying birds: “captured blackbirds call their unsuspecting relatives / to a feast placed away from fields of ripening sunflowers” (10). the cruelty of this practice concerns the ways in which caged birds are implicated in their kin’s demise. their presence is supposed to signal safety whereas in reality, the blackbirds invite their free-flying relatives to a feast of toxins: “on top of cages, brown rice glitters in toxic trays, / a tempting easy meal. / poisoned” (10). in dakota cosmologies, all living and non-living beings are intimately interrelated. in view of this, using captured blackbirds as bait is a transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 84 violent act that disrupts the reciprocal relationships in the ecosystem and among the species, not only by eliminating animals the industry deems dangerous but also by destroying intraspecies trust. the scene of the blackbirds’ death strongly resonates with the image of human violation of natural laws that regulate the presence of all beings in an ecosystem. the blackbirds need food to build muscles for their future migration and therefore, motivated by the instinct of survival, easily fall prey to poisoned rice. interestingly, in texts describing dcr-1339’s efficacy, the birds’ death is presented as quick and painless and the language employed is focused on the reliability of the chemical: “it has been noted that birds may be thirsty and seek water prior to death (a consequence of renal failure; . . .), but this is the only adverse effect recorded. birds that ingested a lethal dose of the compound died a quiet death; there was no flapping, convulsing, vocalisation or any other indication of pain or distress” (dawes 1). the impersonal passive voice implies an absence of anyone’s culpability; the absence of wing flapping and vocalizing is supposed to reassure the reader that no pain is felt. these deaths are supposed to be silent and invisible. this discourse of efficacy is contrasted with westerman’s closing stanza in which the birds’ death, though silent, is by no means without impact: “husks drop and rice scatters, as darkness falls / blackbirds roost / in a flash of black and red / and they fall / silent / among the blooms” (10). the contrast between blooming sunflowers and dying birds is striking. the abundance, “the blooming flowers,” is artificially produced and protected at the price of other beings’ lives, all to ensure profits in a capitalist economy. the birds, defined as a danger to profit optimalization practices, are judged expendable and thus killed. a similar critique of the capitalist discourse is found in “skin essentials.” here, westerman mocks the language of advertisements in which everything can be transformed into a product and become sellable: “shelves, endcaps, bins spill / over joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 85 with essences of everything—/ essential fragrances, essential products, / essential needs. . . ./ available for a limited time only / at a special introductory price. . . . / skin essentials—free after rebate!” (48). the discursively produced state of urgency urges the reader to purchase products that most likely are useless but are represented as indispensable. the second stanza of the poem focuses on the ambiguity of the word “essence” and its use in relation to definitions of identity. westerman emphasizes that some concepts are not subject to the rules of capitalist transactions. what constitutes indianness is connected with active “being” rather than accumulating objects: “prayers. / relatives. / ceremonies. / connections to what is real. / there is an essence to who we are. / and a coupon from walgreens / cannot be redeemed here” (49). hence westerman demonstrates the existence of contexts in which the logic of the capitalocene does not apply. while westerman’s poems do indeed document anthropogenic violence and destruction, they consistently draw attention to the way ecosystems seek to heal themselves and preserve the original balance, all of it meticulously described in indigenous knowledge. many blackbirds are killed with a man-made toxin but there are other species that resist capitalist-oriented transformation of the land. “where the buffalo roam” is a characteristic example of westerman’s insistence on depicting the perseverance of natural processes. the title already announces two important images that the poem intends to project: that of the buffalo, one of the fundamental species in cosmologies of the plains indians, and the idea of “roaming” that evokes associations with free, unobstructed movement of human and non-human beings across the land. as julia hobson haggerty and colleagues observe, “in traditional assiniboine and sioux belief systems, buffalo and humans are related through ancestral heritage. in this relational cosmology buffalo can communicate, act and relate with human beings” (23). this intimate relationship was disturbed and almost completely destroyed by the arrival transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 86 of europeans. overhunting and, later, slaughter of the buffalo calculated to disrupt native economies and ways of sustenance nearly obliterated the entire species. “the buffalo were killed to near extinction,” writes historian roxanne dunbar-ortiz, “tens of millions of dead within a few decades and only a few hundred left by the 1880s” (142).3 it is precisely the kind of anthropogenic change that whyte identifies with settler colonialism that long preceded the invention of the anthropocene. in the twentieth century, numerous preservation and restoration efforts on the part of native tribes have brought positive effects in an environmental and cultural sense, reintroducing the buffalo to their original habitats.4 in the poem, the buffalo return to the area of the great plains, now transformed and artificially divided by interstates, highways, and barbed wire fences. those travelling along these man-made lines are unaware of the land’s ancient heartbeat; they are “hypnotized by lines, lost without maps” (westerman 33). as if awoken by instinct, a small herd escapes from a minnesota ranch and is unmoved by human attempts to control its movement. the local press announces: “buffalo refuse to go home” (32). but what exactly is home? the lyrical voice asserts that the buffalo instinctively return home, which clearly is not an area of the ranch with fence posts, barbed wire, and pens. the buffalo know which direction to go, relying on a reservoir of knowledge, imprinted in their bodies, in the land, and in memories: “pulled by the tide / they return to the / bluestem grass and coneflowers” (32). evoking the metaphor of the body, the poem compares ancient routes of animal migrations to a pattern of veins that carry blood: “filled with life, / the ancient trails vein / through the tallgrass prairie / from valley to valley, age to age” (32). home and routes that lead to it are imprinted on the land, encoded in moon cycles, and remembered in the body. describing the buffalo’s journey home, the speaker juxtaposes the ancient geography remembered in the animals’ bodies with the industrial transformations of joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 87 the land. the buffalo cross states, “race across kansas highways and history,” indifferent to artificially constructed borders, and at sunset reach “okla humma” (32, 33). the invocation of the choctaw name of the area acknowledges the indigenous presence on the land and the time when the buffalo, rather than being “managed” and captured in pens, roamed freely. the concept of nature running its course is contrasted with images of land transformations conducted according to capitalist rationality. “acres for sale, prime development, master plan” (33) read the billboards that the buffalo pass on their way. while the speaker does not underestimate the scale of the environmental change, she asserts the significance of natural processes that govern the life of non-human beings and demonstrate the power of regeneration: “from the edge of extinction, the buffalo know by heart / the tracks laid down by the millions / who passed in a dream, on an ocean, on a highway / and they watch over those held back by fences / just waiting, waiting, / waiting” (33). the group of escapees seems to be waiting for their fellow-buffalo to join them on the journey to their traditional lands and thus rebuild a connection severed by settler colonialism. the dynamic and changing relationship with the land and its inhabitants is an important part of indigenous knowledge and is similarly stressed in westerman’s poetry. marie battiste (mi’kmaq) and james henderson (chickasaw/cheyenne) explain that knowledge is the expression of the vibrant relationships between people, their ecosystems, and other living beings and spirits that share their lands… to the indigenous ways of knowing, the self exists within a world that is subject to flux. the purpose of these ways of knowing is to reunify the world or at least to reconcile the world to itself. indigenous knowledge is the way of living within contexts of flux, paradox, and tension. (42) transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 88 the preservation of unity with the world has become even more instrumental and challenging in the context of the anthropogenic transformations which profoundly affect ecosystems. in “delisted” westerman asserts the continuity of the dakota people’s relationship with the land and non-human beings despite the harm done to ecosystems. more importantly, however, she reveals the arbitrariness of anthropocene logic. the poem retells one of many anthropocene-oriented stories about extinction or near-extinction of species due to industrialization and environmental pollution. in 1940, congress, alarmed by the dropping population, placed the bald eagle (haliaeetus leucocephalus) on the endangered species list (“history”). in 2007, after considerable preservation efforts and the reluctantly introduced reduction in the use of persistent organochlorine pesticides (such as ddt), the eagle was delisted and is now no longer under federal protection (“endangered”). thus, the criteria which define a species as endangered are arbitrarily constructed and reveal the political underpinnings of addressing ecological transformations and crises. sadly, they are rarely aimed to directly address preserving natural balance. according to whyte, the same logic, driven by the desire to manage ideological content, is detectable in anthropocene discourse. “epistemologies of crisis,” as he refers to the philosophical building blocks of the anthropocene, address climate change on a linear time frame as an unprecedented and imminent crisis, which obviously is a premise constructed from the euro-western perspective. “in thinking through the implications of unprecedentedness and urgency,” whyte asserts, climate change, as a concept, is a rhetorical device that people invoke so they can believe they are addressing a crisis without having to talk about colonial power. epistemologies of crisis are presentist in their narrative orientation… epistemologies of crisis then mask numerous forms of joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 89 power, including colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and industrialisation. (57) in other words, like davis and todd before him, whyte draws attention to the euro and anthropocentric orientation of discussing climate change and environmental transformations in terms of crisis only. the immediate questions that such a framework raises about the criteria used to identify a crisis and who is counted as a victim are conveniently ignored. therefore, he juxtaposes epistemologies of crisis with elements of indigenous knowledge, here called “epistemologies of coordination.” “different from crisis, coordination refers to ways of knowing the world that emphasise the importance of moral bonds—or kinship relationships—for generating the (responsible) capacity to respond to constant change in the world. epistemologies of coordination are conducive to responding to mundane and expected change without validating harm or violence,” writes whyte (53). thus, the relationship with the environment involves continuous nurturing of responsible and reciprocal connections, not only in a moment of a subjectively defined crisis but over generations. in portraying euro-western and dakota approaches to the environment, “delisted” evokes whytes’s epistemologies of crisis and coordination. the poem begins with placing of the eagle on the endangered species list and then its removal. while saving the bird from extinction appears to be a noble gesture, the speaker is quick to remind us that the reasons it is in danger are anthropogenic and directly result from settler colonialism and its practices: “forty years later, / the bald eagle has recovered / from loss of habitat, deliberate / killing, and ddt poisoning” (westerman 39; my emphasis). moreover, by referencing rachel carson’s 1962 silent spring, the poem emphasizes that the toxic effects of pesticides were known long before the book was published (lutts 211-12). despite vocal outcries, nothing or very little had been done to ban or limit the use of pesticides by 1962, as silent spring eloquently argued. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 90 it was only when the bald eagle population dropped dramatically, leading to a situation that could be classified as a “crisis,” that appropriate legislation was introduced. in other words, what triggers action is a rupture in continuity rather than a concern for continuity itself. by contrast, the dakota relationship with the eagle is based on the epistemology of coordination, which organizes “knowledge through the vector of kinship relationships” (whyte, “against” 62). the intimate connection between humans and the eagle is forged on spiritual and emotional levels. for instance, as david c. posthumus reports, bald eagle feathers are often used in rituals and ceremonies and when attached to a person’s body the individual “embodies the characteristic attributes and bodily apparatus of the eagle and hence temporarily becomes an eagle” (194-5; emphasis in original). dakota cherish and revere the animal for its beauty and power and in return they receive protection. thus, the relationship is one of respect and reciprocity, illustrating the relationality of all beings: “for longer than time, / the eagle has been sacred / and in our songs we have / asked it to protect us” (39). the bald eagle is approached as kin rather than a part of the environment that needs to be managed due to pollution. moreover, each stanza concludes with the dakota words which celebrate the eagle and acknowledge his significance in the times predating settler colonialism: “ake wambdi kiŋ hdi” [again the eagle returns]; “wambdi kiŋ uŋkicidowaŋpi” [we sing for the eagle] (39, 69). thereby, the speaker demonstrates the continuity of the relationship between the dakota people and the eagle, which has been disrupted but not completely broken. thus, this connection is not established as a response to a crisis but instead accompanies and evolves with the changes induced by settler colonialism. despite the changes triggered by settler colonialism, the reciprocal relationships among all beings are encoded in the land, its geography, ecology, in every molecule joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 91 and in dna. in “quantum theory,” the speaker observes blood oozing from her finger cut by paper. the red liquid contains past generations as well as the promise of the future. most importantly, “blood carries stories of our origins from / beyond the stars,” thus validating the dakota people’s claim to the land as home. in “below the surface,” the dakota land is transformed by human intervention but it never ceases telling stories of its inhabitants. therefore, the speaker recognizes the blackbirds’ song, migration routes, and names of creeks and bluffs, now renamed with english terms. they may be changed but nevertheless they remain the same and retell the story about relational responsibilities of human and non-human beings. this message, located “below the surface” of what is visible, defines the speaker’s place in the world and her ontological status of a being that understands the non-verbal language of the land. “i am thirsty and / i know the way home” (65), she announces. this body of knowledge about the land and its inhabitants, indigenous knowledge, lies at the core of dakota culture and identity. it connects people, nonhumans and other beings in a network of interdependencies, which, while not necessarily hierarchical, create a balanced and sustainable system. the longevity and perseverance of this body of knowledge relies on intergenerational transmission. in “follow the blackbirds,” the poem opening the collection, the speaker recalls the last moments of her grandmother, confined to a hospital bed on the reservation. her grandmother describes the feeling of discomfort at the realization that death is approaching with an image of drought. the speaker elaborates on this image, referring to her grandmother’s body as “evaporating” (3). it is an important comparison: lack of water means death for all organisms, not only humans, which clearly signals an antianthropocentric perspective on the surrounding world. the grandmother’s message to her granddaughter is an example of how one’s survival depends on and is inextricably linked with understanding the environment and transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 92 its inhabitants. it is also a lesson in an epistemology of coordination (and cooperation), which “come to know the world through the state of kinship relationships” (whyte, “against” 59). “grandma told us / to look for / blackbirds, / she said, / that they always / go to the water. / you won’t ever / be lost / or thirsty / if / you follow / the blackbirds” (3), reports the speaker. the short, dynamic lines emphasize the urgency of the message as it ensures not only survival in a dry landscape but cultural survival as well. the speaker recognizes the significance of her grandmother’s words rendered in the continuation of the water/thirst imagery: “i drink in her fluttering voice / trying to quench / the imminent drought” (3; my emphasis). considering westerman’s consistent return to the theme of colonization and forced assimilation in boarding schools, the “drought” may also imply a threat to the life of dakota culture. thus, remembering that blackbirds will always lead the speaker to water constitutes a celebration of ik. in another poem, “this is my explaining ceremony,” the speaker again recalls the grandmother’s teachings: “a grandma’s words that can fill a rain barrel or wash away fences and / fields like a flood. / sounds that bring life ticking on a tin roof, that sting / bare legs and hearts. sounds of water flowing. sounds of water falling. / sounds of water filling” (27). words about water sustain life, in a physical and cultural sense. the speaker’s insistence on repeating her grandmother’s words is in turn an act of resisting the absence of indigenous ontologies in the euro-american context, which, according to sisseton wahpeton oyate scholar, kim tallbear, is a denial of native people’s vibrancy, survival, and endurance. “it is a denial of ongoing intimate relations between indigenous peoples,” writes tallbear, “as well as between us and nonhumans in these lands” (198). thus the ik that is contained in the speaker’s grandmother’s seemingly insignificant words in fact communicates a message about all life’s survival on the planet through relational responsibilities. joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 93 gwen westerman’s collection follow the blackbirds, with sunaura taylor’s illuminating presentation and leanne simpson’s powerful call about polluted tribal lands in mind, is an important reaction to the climate and environmental transformations we are facing today. westerman’s poems communicate indigenous knowledge about ecology, interactions between human and non-human, and ways of adapting to change, thus offering a different narrative than that of crisis. while undoubtedly the era of the anthropocene is a moment of irreversible loss, it cannot be forgotten, as westerman reminds us that there are still well-functioning connections in the environment. they provide instructions on how to deal effectively with anthropogenic transformations and need to be cherished. this body of knowledge constitutes a part of indigenous epistemologies, for so long dismissed by euro-western science. secondly, as taylor asserts, human activities that have produced the anthropocene and disabled environments are not only related to the rise of capitalism and technological advancement but are also related to systemic racism and injustice, and other manifestations of settler colonialism. westerman’s poetry is attentive to all these issues. on the one hand, the prevalent theme is the environment, mimed, impaired, but nevertheless, loved, appreciated and preserved in traditional stories, and thus becoming a building block of dakota identity. on the other hand, there is settler colonialism and its myriad practices aimed at the elimination of indigenous knowledges and people. yet, despite all these genocidal efforts, westerman demonstrates how the land remembers its people and how the people revere the land in a kinship-oriented ecology. notes 1 in certain contexts, the terms indigenous knowledge(s) and traditional ecological knowledge are used interchangeably, while some see tek as a part of ik. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 94 2 on the question of whether the use of drc-1339 constitutes humane killing see joan dawes, “is the use of dcr-1339 humane? pestsmart.org.au, https://pestsmart.org.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/06/drc1339.pdf. 3 a more complex history of the demise of the buffalo can be found in andrew c. isenberg, the destruction of the bison: an environmental history, 1750-1920 (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2000). 4 for more on buffalo restoration see e.g., ken zontek, buffalo nation: american indian efforts to restore the bison (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2007). works cited battiste, marie, and james henderson. protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage. saskatoon sk: purich publishing, 2000. berkes, fikret. sacred ecology. 1999. new york and london: routledge, 2008. blackwell, bradley f., eric huszar et al. “lethal control of red-winged blackbirds to manage damage to sunflower: an economic evaluation.” the journal of wildlife management vol. 67, no. 4, oct., 2003) pp. 818-28. crutzen, paul, and eugene stoermer. “the anthropocene.” global change newsletter vol. 41, 2000, pp. 17-18. davis, heather, and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international journal for critical geographies vol. 16, no. 5, 2017, pp. 761-780 dawes, joan. “is the use of dcr-1339 humane? pestsmart.org.au, https://pestsmart.org.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/06/drc1339.pdf. accessed march 31, 2021. deloughrey, elizabeth m. allegories of the anthropocene. durham: duke university press, 2019. dunbar-ortiz, roxanne. an indigenous peoples’ history of the united states. boston: beacon press, 2014. joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 95 “endangered and threatened wildlife and plants; removing the bald eagle in the lower 48 states from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife.” 50 cfr part 17. federal register vol. 72, no. 130, 2007. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/fr-2007-07-09/pdf/07-4302.pdf. accessed march 18, 2021. haggerty, julia hobson, elizabeth lynne rink, et al. “restoration and the affective ecologies of healing: buffalo and the fort peck tribes.” conservation & society, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, pp. 21-29. doi: 10.4103/cs.cs_16_90. “history of bald eagle decline, protection and recovery.” us fish & wildlife service. midwest region—bald and golden eagles. https://www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/history/index.html. accessed march 18, 2021. lutts, ralph h. “chemical fallout: rachel carson’s silent spring, radioactive fallout, and the environmental movement.” environmental review vol. 9, no. 3 autumn, 1985, pp. 210-25. marchand, michael e. et al. the medicine wheel: environmental decision-making process of indigenous peoples. east lansing: higher education press / michigan state university press, 2020. mcgregor, deborah. “coming full circle: indigenous knowledge, environment, and our future.” the american indian quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3&4, summer/fall 2004, pp. 385-410. doi: http://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2004.0101. moore, jason w. “introduction.” anthropocene or capitalocene? nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism, edited by jason w. moore. oakland, ca: pm press, 2016, pp. 1-11. nelson, melissa k. “indigenous science and traditional ecological knowledge: persistence in place.” the world of indigenous north america, edited by robert warrior. new york: routledge, 2015, pp. 188-214. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 96 posthumus, david c. all my relatives exploring lakota ontology, belief, and ritual. lincoln: university of nebraska press and the american philosophical society, 2018. settee, priscilla. “indigenous knowledge as the basis for our future.” original instructions: indigenous teachings for a sustainable future, edited by melissa k. nelson. rochester, vt: bear and company, 2008, pp. 59-64. simpson, leanne. “anticolonial strategies for the recovery and maintenance of indigenous knowledge.” american indian quarterly vol. 28, no. 3&4, summer/fall 2004, pp. 373-384. ---. “i am not a nation-state.” unsettling america: decolonization in theory & practice. https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/i-am-not-a-nationstate/. accessed january 24, 2019. ---. “traditional ecological knowledge: marginalization, appropriation and continued disillusion.” usak.ca. indigenous knowledge conference 2001, pp. 132-139. http://iportal.usask.ca/purl/ikc-2001-simpson.pdf. accessed feb 10, 2021. tallbear, kim. “beyond the life/not-life binary: a feminist-indigenous reading of cryopreservation, interspecies thinking, and the new materialisms.” cryopolitics: frozen life in a melting world, edited by joanna radin and emma kowal. cambridge, ma: mit press, 2017, pp. 179-202. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1n2ttqh.13 taylor, sunaura. “disabled ecologies: living with impaired landscapes.” haas institute for a fair and inclusive society. youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ooexlylht4. accessed may 12, 2020. todd, zoe. “indigenizing the anthropocene.” art in the anthropocene: encounters among aesthetics, politics, environments and epistemologies, edited by heather davis and etienne turpin. london: open humanities press, 2015, pp. 241-54. joanna ziarkowska “cherishing the impaired land” 97 wall kimmerer, robin. braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. minneapolis: milkweed editions, 2013. werner, scott j. et al. “evaluation of bird shield™ as a blackbird repellent in ripening rice and sunflower fields.” wildlife society bulletin vol. 33, no. 1, spring, 2005, pp. 251-57. westerman, gwen nell. follow the blackbirds. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2013. whyte, kyle powys. “against crisis epistemology.” routledge handbook of critical indigenous studies, edited by brendan hokowhitu, aileen moreton-robinson, linda tuhiwai-smith et al. new york: routledge, 2021, pp. 52-64. ---. “our ancestors’ dystopia now: indigenous conservation and the anthropocene.” the routledge companion to the environmental humanities, edited by ursula k. heise, jon christensen, and michelle niemann. london: routledge, 2017, pp. 20615. williams, terry, and preston hardison. “culture, law, risk and governance: contexts of traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation.” climatic change vol. 120, no. 3, 2013, pp. 531-44. microsoft word twenter.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 180 lakota emergence. 6-9 may 2015, art exhibit. craig howe, curator, and kayla schubert, assistant curator. dahl arts center, rapid city, sd. lakota emergence art exhibit: http://www.nativecairns.org/cairns/lakota_emergence.html lakota emergence dvd: http://www.nativecairns.org/cairns/dvds.html the opening of the lakota emergence1 art exhibit was uniquely lakota, taking place on a wednesday morning, instead of a friday evening, and the usual pageantry and highbrow attendees were replaced with busloads of school kids and a concert by lakota rapper frank waln. the intention, craig howe, lakota emergence curator, explained, was to “foreground kids, specifically native kids.” the exhibit perpetuates the lakota emergence narrative, passing it along to future generations. in lakota tradition, histories must have purpose and do not truly exist until they have been shared. in this way, lakota emergence, has become a part of the lakota tiyospaye, “community.” all aspects of the exhibit were truly lakota. each participant in the exhibit was from the lakota community: all the artists, curator howe, assistant curator kayla schubert, event coordinator mabel picotte, most of the tour guides, entertainer, frank waln, and special event guest, sean sherman, the sioux chef, are lakota. the four-day event was hosted in a rental space in the dahl art center. in fact, the entire installation took place over eight days, three days of installation, four event days, and a one-day de-installation. while there were no major sponsors, friends, family, and partners from the surrounding area contributed to the project; including, the center for american indian research and native studies (cairns), of which howe is director, richard and lois howe, the rapid city arts council, the sioux indian museum, the rapid city area school district office of indian education, and the dakota charitable foundation, inc. howe, oglala lakota, earned his doctorate at the university of michigan, served as deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the national museum of the american indian, smithsonian institution, and director of the d’arcy mcnickle center for american indian history at the newberry library in chicago, before starting cairns and conceiving lakota emergence. howe considers the installation lakota because “the exhibit was organized around the traditional lakota emergence narrative about how lakotas came onto this world. most exhibits, on the other hand, are organized to showcase a particular artist or group of artists, or some time period, or some tribe, or some idea of a curator. lakotas were in charge of all aspects of the exhibit.” all of the artworks and museum objects were created by lakota artists. the labels, design, catalog, and every other aspect of the exhibit was lakota. in fact, the event itself felt very lakota, people were greeted and welcomed into the exhibit, there was no charge, no alcohol, and families were invited, especially children. there was lots of visiting and hanging out. more than 1,100 people went through the exhibit in those four days la k o t a e m e r g en ceamazing 6-9 may 2015 dahl arts center rapid city culture art history sixteen distinguished and emerging lakota artists living across the country create original artworks that respond expressively to the emergence narrative and lakota identities today. the center for american indian research and native studies, in partnership with the rapid city arts council and the sioux indian museum, presents more information : : www.nativecairns.org : : info@nativecairns.org : : (605) 685-6484 the traditional narrative of how lakotas emerged onto this earth, told in sixteen parts to illustrate that wind cave was and always will remain a landscape of special significance in lakota cosmology. performance by lakota rapper frank waln. rapid city high school students’ lakota emergence artwork exhibition. guided tours each day reception catered by the sioux chef. (tickets for sale) panel discussion with the exhibit artists. may 6 may 7 may 8 may 1-9 lakota objects collected from within the boundaries of the 1868 fort laramie treaty lands, including what is now pine ridge, rosebud, cheyenne river and standing rock reservations, tell the story of lakota creativity and aesthetic achievement. special events free admission brian j. twenter review of lakota emergence 181 in may of 2015, and each guest had the chance to become a part of the lakota emergence history.2 the lakota emergence art exhibit focuses entirely on the short narrative titled, “how the lakota came upon the world.” the narrative was written down by james walker “sometime between 1896, when he first arrived at pine ridge to serve as the agency’s physician, and 1917 when it was published by the american museum of natural history” (“background 6”). researching the original documents was particularly interesting for schubert, an enrolled citizen of the standing rock sioux tribe, who graduated from st. cloud state university in 2013. after participating in the american indian museum fellowship program through the minnesota historical society, she worked for the department of the interior with the indian arts and crafts board at the sioux indian museum in rapid city, before meeting howe and interning at cairns. eventually she became the assistant curator of the lakota emergence project and along with howe researched the history of james r. walker, traveling to denver to visit the history colorado center, the custodians of many of james r. walker’s papers. “we were not interested solely in walker as the author of the narrative, but in the lakota men and women that he was educated by during his time as a physician at pine ridge,” explained schubert, “before the team went to the archive, we had a list of several of these individuals who we could also research through history colorado’s collection. it was phenomenal to have the opportunity to hold and turn the pages of such important and intriguing documents and records, some written in lakota by such significant people.” howe and schubert divided walker’s 1,251-word narrative into sixteen “passages.” each number in the exhibit is an important number for the lakota; in this case, the four sacred directions multiplied again by four to get sixteen, wakan tanka, “powerful, knowledgeable.” each passage was paired with a practical or artistic object from the sioux indian museum (one of the three indian arts and crafts board museums in the u.s.) or the heritage center at red cloud indian school. howe and schubert “selected objects that we felt in some way ‘illustrated’ the passage.” each of the selected objects, more than one for some passages, “span a period of time from before the 1868 fort laramie treaty all the way to the early 1970s. all were created by lakotas and were collected from within the boundaries of the 1868 treaty, including what is now pine ridge, rosebud, cheyenne river, and standing rock reservations, as well as the community of rapid city” (“tanyan yahi”). in addition to the passages and museum objects, original artworks by distinguished and emerging contemporary lakota artists are featured. “after we had objects paired with passages, we invited contemporary lakota artists to create new artworks that were tied to the passages and objects,” howe explains; continuing, he and schubert selected a variety of artists: “eight women and eight men, from reservations and big cities, emerging and established, working in a wide variety of genres and media. we tried to include works from all six federally recognized lakota tribes in the us and the one federally recognized lakota first nation in canada.” each artist creatively interprets one passage and museum object(s) from a contemporary lakota point of view, thereby creating “vignettes.” the sixteen “vignette” artists, a brief description, and links to pictures of their pieces, follow: wanci (one): renelle white buffalo (rosebud sioux tribe) – bold transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 182 nunpa (two): dyani white hawk (rosebud sioux tribe) – anunk ite and iktomi agree yamni (three): roger broer (oglala sioux tribe) – bring the animals topa (four): keith braveheart (oglala sioux tribe) – compassion of the ugly zaptan (five): angela babby (oglala sioux tribe) – bring the people sakpe (six): jhonduane goes in center (oglala sioux tribe) – wolf track sakowin (seven): andrea lekberg (oglala sioux tribe) – man’s fancy shirt with leggings and woman’s dress with chokecherry patties saglogan (eight): michael two bulls (oglala sioux tribe) – “…that night, they dreamt of unknown landscapes,” (comes again) napcinyunka (nine): kevin pourier (oglala sioux tribe) – iktomi’s spoon wikcemna (ten): athena latocha (standing rock sioux tribe) – wikcemna ake wanji (eleven): arthur amiotte (oglala sioux tribe) – vignette i i / vignette i i ake nunpa (twelve): tilda st. pierre (oglala sioux tribe) – ki co ake yamni (thirteen): iris sully-sorensen (rosebud sioux tribe) – iktomi’s moment of delight ake topa (fourteen): richard red owl (oglala sioux tribe) – creation ake zaptan (fifteen): ann-erika white bird (rosebud sioux tribe) – woiktani ake sakpe (sixteen): dwayne wilcox (oglala sioux tribe) – here we are the curators “wanted to create an event that spanned or rather connected the past and present. it incorporated museum objects and contemporary artworks. in fact, it put the object in front of the artist and asked the artist to deal with it in some way. its focus was a timeless narrative, but it also dealt with current issues in the region where that narrative took place.” these vignettes “recount the lakota emergence narrative in written words, museum collections, and contemporary artworks, illustrating that the emergence narrative continues to be a source of creativity, and that the place of emergence” wasun niya, wind cave, in he sapa, “the black hills, was and always will remain a landscape of special significance in lakota cosmology” (“tanyan yahi”). the lakota emergence art exhibit was originally conceived as a short four-day installation. howe describes it as “a very special thing, the type of event you have to change your calendar to attend.” additionally, there were two conceived spin-offs: “an innovative exhibit of high quality that could be hosted by any major museum; the other, a traveling version to be hosted at community spaces in neighborhoods and reservations. the former would consist of the original artworks, but they could be paired with objects from museum collections or private collections.” i visited the south dakota art museum in brookings which paired the original artwork and the passages from walker’s work with a private collector’s extensive collection. howe, who also works in native architectural design, created a conceptual installation that can fit almost any museum, drawing from and showcasing the museum’s collections in relation to the narrative. the traveling community version consists of re-designed panels and focuses on the link between the artworks and the passages. the museum objects are left out and the artworks are all reproduced, so the exhibit can be hosted where security is low, environmental quality is variable, and risk of damage is high. for the month of october 2016, the travelling exhibit was installed in the lobby of the prairie center, a space on the avera hospital campus in sioux falls, sd. howe explains, “we are working to take this version to reservation spaces, such as schools, chambers of commerce, hospitals, clinics, government buildings.” the lakota emergence traveling art brian j. twenter review of lakota emergence 183 exhibit will always be free of charge. the point of the instillation is to pass along lakota history to new generations. each time someone interacts with the art exhibit, they become a part of the emergence narrative. though not as compelling as viewing lakota emergence at one of the installations, an on-line version of the art exhibit is available on the cairns website. i have included links to the on-line exhibit throughout this review, so readers can take part in the lakota emergence history. the online lakota emergence exhibit begins like any of the museum or travelling installations, with tanyan yahi, “welcome, i am glad you have arrived safely,” which briefly explains the creation of the exhibit and its various parts. the introduction is followed by a seven-part background section. “seven” representing the seven nations of the lakota is a sacred number within the lakota community. background one, two, three, four, and five introduce the main characters and the setting for walker’s “how the lakota came upon the world.” background six and seven give a brief history of how walker came to record the lakota emergence narrative. the background section is followed by ake sakpe, “sixteen,” vignettes. each vignette includes an audio pronunciation of the corresponding number, a link to the vignette, the matching artwork, museum piece(s), explanations of each, and the corresponding section of walker’s “how the lakota came upon the world.” for example wanci, vignette one, includes links to the first part of iktomi’s troubles, renelle white buffalo’s painting bold, a brief statement about the artist and the artwork, and a description of the museum pieces associated with the first vignette, in this case two miniature tipis. links to each of the ake sakpe vignettes can be found here. the final section of the on-line experience is the four-part foreground section. again, the number “four” is greatly significant for the lakota tiyospaye. foreground one discusses the formation of the oceti sakowin, seven council fires. foreground two discusses the formation of the seven lakota oyates. foreground three gives a brief history of the white buffalo calf woman bringing the lakota the sacred pipe and the seven sacred ceremonies associated with the pipe. foreground four lists the current reservations where each lakota oyate now reside. each foreground section also includes a map which shows the gradual land reduction of the lakota oyate between emergence and forced relocation to the reservation system. there is also a lakota emergence dvd available for purchase on the cairns website. the film was screened for over eighty people at the northern great plains history conference in st. cloud, minnesota. the 28-minute film highlights the sixteen vignettes created for the lakota emergence exhibit. director christopher a. ives films howe introducing the exhibit and explaining the artwork of each vignette. schubert recites each of the sixteen parts of walker’s “how the lakota came upon the world.” for schubert, “it was a very introspective experience to read aloud the written narrative of our relatives’ emergence through the cave, onto a harsh but beautiful landscape, to become the lakota nation of our generation’s past, present, and future.” the lakota emergence film begins and ends at wasun niya with howe explaining the importance of the project: the purpose of this exhibit was to raise awareness of the lakota emergence narrative, to pass it on to the next generations, educating them about its importance in lakota identity and culture, linking those generations back to the original seven families that emerged at transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 184 wasun niya. a place of genesis for the lakota nation, it is the center, it is the heart, it is the birthplace…it is, in every sense of the word, sacred land. one purpose for the film was to “document the exhibit, to serve as a record of what was,” explains howe. another purpose was to serve as a promotional piece for potential museum hosts. a third purpose was to provide content for cairns “lakota lands and identities” traveling seminars. the final and most important purpose was to reach new audiences, especially classrooms. future plans for the original lakota emergence art exhibit are to find new museum hosts “across the country and beyond.” cairns owns all but one of the artworks which are permanently housed at wingsprings (home to cairns). plans are underway to build a community meeting space within which the exhibit is displayed. other exhibit projects include the great race exhibit, hosted in the spring of 2016, and the upcoming star knowledge exhibit opening in the spring of 2017. i have been lucky enough to view the lakota emergence installation at the south dakota art history museum, visit the traveling exhibit at the prairie center in sioux falls, sd, and bring a group of american indian studies students to the first screening of the film at the northern great plains history conference. each time, i gain a greater appreciation of the depth of the exhibit, and when my students viewed the film they spent hours clicking through the on-line exhibit on the cairns website. as an instructor of native literature and lakota studies, the educational aspects of the lakota emergence art exhibit are, for me, the most appealing; though, each time i visit the exhibit, i too learn something new and exciting. for these reasons, i believe vignette topa, keith braveheart’s, compassion of the ugly is my favorite. i feel the vignette encapsulates the entire lakota emergence project. vignette topa begins with the passage from walker’s “how the lakota came upon the world,” which describes anunke ite, the double faced woman, preparing for the arrival of her relatives, the pte people: “she dried the flesh and tanned the skins, and gathered much meat and many robes and soft tanned skins. she made clothes for a man and for a woman and decked them with colors. then she made a pack of the clothes and choice bits of the meat.” the museum piece chosen for this vignette was a cradle cover made by fearful woman for her granddaughter nellie eagle staff. while the design is beautiful, the piece is also extremely functional like the clothes anunke ite made for her pte relatives. each colored strip of quillwork on the cradle cover is associated with the four “superior gods of lakota cosmology: yellow with inyan, green with maka, blue (or in this case, purple) with skan, and red with wi.” well-constructed, beautiful, and functional, the cradle cover museum piece also tells a story, serving the same purpose as the lakota emergence exhibit. braveheart describes his rendering of anunke ite in compassion of the ugly, “i do not think she was uncaring, or ugly in the way we normally would think about it. i think she loved her relatives, and was very compassionate. i did not want to paint her as an ugly woman.” braveheart’s painting is not of a “horrendously ugly” second face, instead her second face is “supernaturally strange,” perhaps “uncomfortably alluring.” braveheart describes himself as a contemporary artist who wants to “interpret these traditional stories in modern terms. i want to brian j. twenter review of lakota emergence 185 use humor, and irony in my paintings.” braveheart’s depiction of anunke ite fits with his contemporary interpretation of the section of walker’s work to which it corresponds. in modern lakota society, clothes are not made, they are purchased at retail stores, like target, jcpenny, and old navy, labels braveheart embeds in the painting. in the background of braveheart’s compassion of the ugly james walker relaxes in a chair reading a newspaper while wearing a pair of red moccasins, torn between his “western education and his interest in lakota culture.” each person who interacts with braveheart’s work, whether or not she/he is young or old, lakota or non-native, becomes a part of compassion of the ugly and of the ongoing emergence narrative through reflections in the small mirrors placed low on the canvas, so children, in particular, become a part of the instillation. each viewer passes along the emergence history of the lakota tiyospaye to future generations. walker’s story, the museum pieces, braveheart’s compassion of the ugly, and the lakota emergence art instillation are reflected back upon the viewer, making the audience a part of the narrative. in traditional lakota oral narratives, the audience must interact with the story in order for the tale to take on significance. the history of the lakota emergence, the “genesis” of the lakota oyate, may well be the most important story to be passed along through generations. every iteration of lakota emergence takes its place in the narratives of the lakota oyate, and in our “reflections” on the narration, we too take part in lakota history. brian j twenter, university of minnesota, morris notes 1 ed: please note, there are numerous links in this document. these are all active in the html version of the review, so please view that version rather than the pdf if you wish to explore further. as these are all third-party websites, we cannot guarantee that all links will remain “live.” 2 for the full poster, please see: http://www.nativecairns.org/cairns/lakota_emergence_files/lakota%20emergence%20flier %202%20update.pdf works cited howe, craig. center for american indian research and native studies. cairns, 2016, http://www.nativecairns.org/cairns/cairns.html. accessed 1 oct. 2016. ----. personal interview. 28 sept. 2016. lakota emergence. 6-9 may 2015, art exhibit. craig howe and kayla schubert, curators. dahl arts center, rapid city, sd. lakota emergence. written and narrated by craig howe, narration by kayla schubert, center for american indian research and native studies, 2016. schubert, kayla. personal interview 30 sept. 2016. walker, james r. “how the lakota came upon the world.” the sun dance and other ceremonies of the oglala division of the teton dakota. anthropological papers of the american museum of natural history, vol. 16, no. 2, american museum of natural history, 1917, pp. 181-82. microsoft word 1085-article text-6338-1-11-20221206.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 62 w(h)ere there’s a wolf, there’s a way: the lupine gothics of mongrels and where the dead sit talking john gamber “i started looking wider and i realized that everybody … was drawing american indians as some form of wolf. and i thought, what’s the attraction there? why do people do this? and also i was disgusted by it, not that a wolf isn’t a cool animal, but just in the way it’s been memorialized on a thousand truck-stop blankets.” --stephen graham jones in this excerpt from an interview with billy j. stratton, stephen graham jones (blackfeet) muses about the conflation of native america with wolves across mainstream representations. here he’s speaking specifically about why he’s relieved art spiegelman didn’t have any native characters in maus, “because i know he’d draw him or her with a wolf head” (stratton 52). while such tired cliches of indigenous people serve as a source of frustration for jones, his conversation with stratton stems from a discussion of his own werewolf novel, mongrels (2016). jones reclaims the wolf in his own work in ways that trouble facile associations of the lupine with the native. nor is jones alone in this unsettling reclamation; consider for example the recent release of a howl: an indigenous anthology of wolves, werewolves, and rougarou, edited by elizabeth lapensée, which offers stories from the past, present and future. this essay places the lycanthropic representations in jones’ text in conversation with those (and the more broadly lupine) in brandon hobson’s (cherokee) novel, where the dead sit talking (2018, hereafter, wdst). john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 63 these texts may seem, on their face, very different: hobson’s is a realist novel about a cherokee adolescent in foster care living with a white family in rural oklahoma and jones’ is a tale about a boy from a family of werewolves who mainly live on the run.1 yet, the two texts share a number of similarities. specifically, both take the form of southern gothic bildungsromans (narrated by their protagonists); both wield werewolves (in their main texts and epigraphs) as devices for coming-of-age stories about male adolescents who are specifically working to construct their notions about masculinity; both protagonists attempt to configure those masculinities while being raised by people other than their biological parents; and, due to their familial situations, both protagonists are often on the move while longing for a kind of stasis or stability that they deem “normal.”2 in this article, i contend that both novels wield their lupine imagery (of werewolves and wolves) within gothic traditions replete with secrets variously withheld and revealed as devices to interrogate the tensions and overlaps between a series of apparent dichotomies, notably: the (masculine) wild and the (feminine) domestic; solitude and community; and motion and stasis.3 sequoyah, the narrator/protagonist of wdst, lives with the truett family (for the bulk of the novel) in little crow, “near black river, in rural oklahoma” (11). he is estranged from his biological mother because “she finally landed herself in the women’s prison for possession of drug paraphernalia and driving while intoxicated. she got three years since she already had a record” (5).4 sequoyah’s mother remains incarcerated throughout the novel. he explains, “my mother and i were alone, too. my father had left us, packed up his jeep and headed west to find god. i never knew him” (3).5 sequoyah’s mother does appear in the novel in both present scenes and past remembrances, though their relationship is fraught and increasingly emotionally distant. two other foster children are also living in the truett home, “a seventeen-yearold girl named rosemary and a boy who’s thirteen… his name is george” (11). we transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 64 learn that rosemary is kiowa and that she “had attempted suicide, twice,” a fact that becomes important as the novel progresses (105). sequoyah quickly becomes obsessed with rosemary, but while she is initially quite interested in getting to know him, she grows decreasingly so over the course of the text (to his consternation). mongrels’ unnamed narrator (who i will refer to as the nephew, the last persona he adopts over the course of the novel) lives with his deceased mother’s sister libby and brother darren, his aunt and uncle, both portrayed throughout the majority of the novel as werewolves, albeit mostly in human, not wolf, form.6 while libby does the bulk of the raising of the nephew, he idolizes his uncle, explaining, “every boy who never had a dad, he comes to worship his uncle” (20), and later, “i wanted to be him so bad (38). by contrast, the nephew contends that libby “wanted me to be the one who got to have a normal life, in town. / we’re werewolves, though” (35).7 the nephew reflects on his years between the ages of eight and sixteen as he and his aunt and uncle crisscross the southern tier of the united states between new mexico and florida. the nephew waits (impatiently) to discover whether he will ever turn into a werewolf (like his aunt, uncle, grandfather, and, we learn, father), or if he will not (like his mother).8 both texts demonstrate their attention to were/wolves from their very beginnings, and i offer readings of their respective epigraphs to frame the contexts into which each situates itself. the context of these other texts, i argue, mirrors the ways the young protagonists emplace themselves either in physical space or within their relationships and/as responsibilities. mongrels begins with an epigraph attributed to james blish: “eventually i went to america. there no one believes in werewolves” (np). jones frames his southern werewolf story within this broadly us national context, but it requires a bit of a tweak of blish’s original, which reads, “and then i came to this country. here no one believes in the werewolf” (45). blish’s “there shall be no john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 65 darkness,” from which this epigraph obliquely derives, however, is set, not in the us, but scotland—jones’ epigraph, like the nephew’s narrative itself (as we will see), tells the truth, but tells it slant. jones recasts the nation that, in gothic tradition, denies the ghouls and ghosts that haunt its landscape. moreover, like “there shall be no darkness,” mongrels also deals with the science behind werewolves—it theorizes both their history and evolution as a mode of fleshing out issues of belonging in both community and in place. in blish’s text, lycanthropy is regarded as a disease and a mutation (specifically of the pineal gland), and, as such, a possible evolutionary step toward something new. jarmoskowski, the werewolf in the story, opines just prior to his demise, “someday the pineal will come into better use and all men will be able to modify their forms without this terrible madness as a penalty. for us, the lycanthropes, the failures, nothing is left” (44). werewolves then represent a potential hope for a kind of transforming humanity which comes with a maddened bloodlust, which represents too great a curse.9 that curse, likewise, takes the form of isolation—and it is this isolation that leads jarmoskowski to “come to this country.” he laments, “it is not good for a man to wander from country to country, knowing that he is a monster to his fellow-men…i went through europe, playing the piano and giving pleasure, meeting people, making friends—and always, sooner or later, there were whisperings, and strange looks and dawning horror” (45). much like the protagonists of mongrels and wdst, jarmoskowski is always on the move, longing for but never finding, never even really hopeful for, a sense of community or belonging. to that end, joshua t. anderson notes that in mongrels, “traveling from ‘state to state’ across geographical borders is a necessity, and … transforming from ‘state to state’ across the lines of species (human and wolf) and monstrosity (human and werewolf) is a condition of lycanthrope life” (127). similarly, jarmoskowski continues, “sometimes, i could spend several months without incident in transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 66 some one place and my life would take on a veneer of normality. i could attend to my music and have people about me that i liked and be—human” (45). in each of these novels, as in blish’s story, this unfulfilled longing to remain in one place and/or find belonging with/in community is likened to human normalcy, while those who cannot attain that stasis, for whatever reason, become excluded from humanness (and aligned with the lupine). of course, such a phrase as “human normalcy” requires its own canon of stories by which to contextualize it (as its meaning will vary wildly across different histories, locations, trajectories, and intersections). as daniel heath justice explains in his chapter “how do we learn to be human?” from why do indigenous literatures matter “although we are born into human bodies, it’s our teaching—and our stories— that make us human” (33). both mongrels and wdst are stories about the importance of stories, particularly stories about home and community, in shaping the kinds of humans we become.10 justice continues, “the role of experience, of teaching, and of story [is] to help us find ways of meaningful being in whatever worlds we inhabit, whatever contexts we’ve inherited” (34).11 such, then, i argue, are mongrels and wdst: stories about characters becoming human and navigating the spaces between humanness and inhumanness that wield lupine images as symbols of both the dangers and possibilities of those seemingly disparate states. these are not, however, how-to guides; they are stories about pitfalls and dangers, messy tales about the incompleteness and the contingent nature of that becoming and of very human fallibilities.12 hobson’s novel likewise begins with a pair of epigraphs replete with (were)wolf references or allusions. the first reads, “‘a starving man will eat with the wolf.’ –native american proverb.” those of us who work in native american studies are apt to read the provenance hobson provides for this aphorism with some distrust, of course; the john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 67 phrase “native american proverb” is dicey. we regularly encounter memes, for example, like this, vaguely interspecies inspirational quotes associated with particular creatures—wolves, eagles, and buffalo—that seemingly can’t be traced to any particular native nation or community. it’s hard not to read some tongue-in-cheek play from hobson here. the jones passage i use as the epigraph to this essay wields this pairing, as jones continues, “it gets so annoying to see. i get so tired of that stuff—and i say that, but if you keep getting tired of every little thing like that you’re going to spend your life fatigued, so you finally just allow yourself to be amused by it” (stratton 52). hobson’s epigraph conjures this wolf/native american pairing, and we can picture it emblazoned across the “truck stop blankets” jones mentions above. yet, this rendition relies on a peculiar manifestation that maligns the wolf, suggesting that eating with them could only come about because of starvation (we might contrast such a negative reading of this canid with jones’ “not that a wolf isn’t a cool animal”). this alleged proverb certainly parallels settler constructions of wolves as dangers to be eliminated across north america.13 and, as such, the wolf qua indian qua wolf motif further reminds us of settler elimination of indigenous peoples.14 in contrast to these defaming and violent views toward wolves, though, hobson elsewhere asserts, “though hunting was a profession, a cherokee would not kill a wolf, as wolves were messengers to the spirit world (“how tsala” 22).15 all of this to say: we might read an irony in hobson’s epigraph and attribution, but each also signals a bit toward understanding the text’s protagonist and his tendencies to lupine ideation, as i will demonstrate below. hobson follows this broadly attributed proverb with something far more particular; the second epigraph to wdst reads, “‘poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.’ –shirley jackson” (np). in this instance, as with jones’s epigraph, we encounter a passage by a specific author, though without the text from which that transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 68 passage comes. hobson lifts this quote from jackson’s gothic novel, we have always lived in the castle, which his text in some ways mirrors.16 jackson’s novel famously and richly begins, “my name is mary katherine blackwood. i am eighteen years old, and i live with my sister constance. i have often thought that with any luck at all i could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but i have had to be content with what i had” (1).17 the protagonist/narrator of jackson’s novel, called merricat by most of its characters, laments having not been born a werewolf, displaying a longing that both sequoyah and the nephew mirror (and contrasting jarmoskowski’s portrayal of lycanthropy as a curse).18 the blackwood family in jackson’s novel is collectively reclusive, and the townspeople mock and jeer merricat when she takes her biweekly trips from their isolated house to town to buy groceries and to get books from the library (merricat is particular to “fairy tales and books of history” (2). she explains, “the people of the village have always hated us” (4). in order to drive out a newly arrived relative who is attempting to attain the family’s wealth, merricat sets fire to the house. the fire department puts out the fire, but the townspeople proceed to loot and smash the remains of the house. thereafter, constance and merricat remain in the relatively undamaged ground floor of the house, visited only by occasional townspeople who, out of guilt or fear (the young women are imagined to be witches), leave food for them. in the final vignette of the novel, a young boy, spurred by his friends, makes his way to the porch and calls out, “shakily,” a taunt the townspeople had earlier directed at merricat (146).19 that night the sisters find “on the doorsill a basket of fresh eggs and a note reading, ‘he didn’t mean it, please.’” in response, merricat, in the third to last line of the novel, states, “poor strangers…they have so much to be afraid of” (146). similarities abound between hobson’s novel and jackson’s: in both we encounter odd and maudlin young people, similarly odd adult caretakers, a town full of creepy people, john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 69 a family living in relative isolation out in the woods, family stories of dubious veracity, and deaths that may or may not have been accidents. adding layers of referentiality to hobson’s epigraph, merricat explains that she likes three things in particular: “my sister constance, and richard plantagenet, and amanita phalloides, the death cup mushroom” (1). richard plantagenet might refer to any of a number of people, but likely gestures to the great-grandson of king edward iii of england. as jamil mustafa contends, “the inclusion of richard iii among merricat’s favorites is…illuminating…because richard was supposedly guilty of the same crime that merricat commits, the murder of blood relations—in particular, of male heirs” (135). while constance is found to have killed the family, she is not convicted of any crime. the reader later learns that it was in fact merricat who killed the family, and quite intentionally—like hobson’s novel (as we will see), jackson’s opens with a death foretold, and possibly, with the protagonist/narrator, a murderer.20 wdst includes its own specifically werewolf narrative of sorts, constructed, like that of mongrels, as a fiction within the larger fiction of the novel. sequoyah explains to george, “i once got a boy to believe i was a werewolf” (205). he explains that the other boy was in a shelter with him and had asked him about the burn scars on his face: “i told him i was attacked by a wolf in the woods in the middle of the night” (205). the reader is well aware that sequoyah received these burn marks from his mother; he explains very early in the novel, “i was burned by hot grease once when i was eleven. my mother was drunk, but it was an accident…hot grease stung my cheek and neck…the scars are small but noticeable enough” (4). we read multiple layers of storytelling in this passage. within this work of fiction, sequoyah, named for the creator of the cherokee syllabary, crafts another fiction. nonetheless, we see a kind of wish fulfillment in this werewolf tale. rather than explaining the true source of his scars, he decides for a less domestic, and a much more wild, injury.21 instead of being scarred by transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 70 his mother in a kitchen, he opts to claim a wolf attack. outwardly, sequoyah parallels the nephew’s rejection of the feminized domestic space as the foregrounding element of his autobiography. yet, sequoyah, as i discuss further below, will ultimately embrace both his own feminine elements and an idealized, if individualized, notion of domesticity. the trick here is that sequoyah gets this other boy to believe him. he creates a story about himself to make himself seem dangerous, to protect himself from a variety of encroachments: intimate, physical, violent. as jones notes, “truth is in the rhetoric of me convincing you and you saying, ‘i believe that. i feel that to be true’” (“observations” 24). but, this entire novel is really working to do similar work. it’s a story about a character telling a story about himself that doesn’t quite add up and seeing who is going to buy it. throughout the text, the reader occupies a position similar to that of both the other boy and of george in this vignette. sequoyah is telling a story about having told someone a story that was meant to create distance and fear, and that in this case is also meant to generate intimacy and respect, if not trust. furthermore, sequoyah sexualizes his werewolf self-fashioning. he asserts, “i told him sometimes i wake up in the mornings naked with scratches and blood and mud all over my body. i told him other wolves gave me a hard-on” (205). sequoya’s wielding of sexual arousal as part of his mythos blends a rough-and-tumble machismo with a bestial sexuality that means to create distance between himself and this other boy. he crafts himself as feral, unbound by the rules of society that disallow these manifestations of wildness. he proceeds to tell the story of telling this same boy a story of stealing a pickup truck and driving to galveston, texas, where he was found and arrested, “i told him they threw me down and handcuffed me just off the freeway. i told him a coyote came out of the brush and started to attack the trooper, ripped into him. bit his leg so that blood sprayed everywhere. the coyote smelled my blood, knew john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 71 i was part wolf. the coyote ripped out the trooper’s organs and we started eating it. the kid believed every word” (205). sequoyah’s story turns on the wild coyote recognizing his wildness and power, where the emblem of authority—masculine but civilized law enforcement—fails to do so, a failure that ends in his death.22 given this tendency toward telling tall tales, sequoyah’s role as a reliable narrator is in doubt throughout the novel.23 indeed, this story and the epigraphs of the text are not the sole references to wolves in the novel. when we first meet george, we learn that “he was reading fairy tales mostly…stories of wolves and children, and also science fiction stories” (26). sequoyah tells us that he had “won honorable mention in a contest at school one year when i’d drawn a cartoon wolf with bandages on his nose and a patch over one eye. the inscription underneath it read: ‘do what’s right! don’t fight!’” (167).24 rosemary explains that as a child, “the stories i liked to read all dealt with children escaping wolves” (190). as sequoyah goes on a bicycle ride that he remembers as one of his “most invigorating experiences” while living with the troutts he recalls, “i imagined wolf tracks under my tires” (193-94). while he waits in a hospital room for a diagnosis after having vomiting spells and headaches, he imagines, “they would tell me i was part animal, part human, some other entity” (263). and, finally, of a meal he consumes after being released from the hospital, he explains, “i devoured everything, wolfing it down with my hands, eating like an animal. i was so sated in that moment, so freshly and newly awake, i didn’t even notice until i got home that all the rooster sauce and ketchup on my shirt looked like blood” (266). these passages might seem to lack a single coherent thread, but the sheer repetition of wolf imagery in the text coupled with its epigraphs begs analysis. beginning with the first epigraph’s starving man, we note the ways sequoyah likens the wolf to voracious and self-concerned feeding. included in the second epigraph lies his longing toward lycanthropy (which he shares transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 72 with merricat). finally, he imagines wolf tracks as part of a liberty he feels on his bike ride. in all of these conjurings, sequoyah, like the nephew, valorizes as imagination of wolves as lone, rather than, for example, as members of a pack. these lycanthropic tendencies point toward ways in which both novels participate in gothic traditions. as eve sedgwick famously contends, the gothic novel is “pervasively conventional. once you know that a novel is of the gothic kind…you can predict its contents with an unnerving certainty” (9). in her thesis, “the indigenous gothic novel,” amy elizabeth gore summarizes sedgwick’s conventions as consisting of “a melodramatic and foreboding setting, a woman in distress, manifestations of the supernatural or uncanny, reference to that which is unspeakable, and a haunting of the past upon the present” (3). both jones’ and hobson’s novels contain each of the elements gore enumerates. moreover, these narratives are littered with monsters, with references to dark magics, with families festering in rural isolations (which is not to say all rurality is such), with brooding, disturbed, and disturbing folks. such modern wielding of the gothic is hardly surprising. while gothic once referred to literature that fits sedgwick’s model and derives specifically from eighteenth and nineteenth-century england, contemporary usage expands its meaning self-consciously as gothic becomes a particular mode for (among other things) contesting narratives that uphold national and nationalist hegemonic norms. in his book-length study of the gothic, fred botting explains, “in the contest for the meaning of ‘gothic’ more than a single word was at stake. at issue were the differently constructed and valued meanings of the enlightenment, culture, nation and government as well as contingent, but no less contentious, significances of the family, nature, individuality and representation” (43). in short, gothic has always served as an artistic mode for the contestation of fixed, often mainstream, values. botting continues, john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 73 the contest for a coherent and stable account of the past…produced an ambivalence that was not resolved. the complex and often contradictory attempts either to make the past barbaric in contrast to an enlightened present or to find in it a continuity that gave english culture a stable history had the effect of bringing to the fore and transforming the way in which both past and present depended on modes of representation. (23) if the gothic represents a counter-response to or problematized wielding of the enlightenment—replete with its scientific rationalism and positivism—and one that specifically calls into question the hierarchical or progressivist dyad of civilized/barbaric, then indigenous communities and communities of color (among others) possess a vested interest in wielding it.25 indeed, this move to (re)claim gothic traditions and aesthetics manifest in native american literary critical approaches specifically. louis owens, a key figure in such conversations, writes against the united states’ constructions of the “frontier gothic,” offering instead modes by which, “the gothic indian, that imagined construct imprisoned in an absolute, untouchable past, is deconstructed, and the contemporary indian is granted both freedom to imagine him/herself in new and radical ways, as well as responsibility for that self-definition” (77). owens recalls faulkner’s chief doom character as a clear example of the frontier gothic indian to be deconstructed. annette trefzer offers a reading of choctaw author leanne howe’s novels shell shaker and miko kings to articulate the ways they “sound gothic resonances and engage with the region’s traumatic wounds as spirits ill at rest point at indigenous dispossession and disrupt official historical narratives” (200).26 trefzer hones in on intersectional representations of indigenous women specifically. meanwhile, michelle burnham likens windigo stories to the gothic as a tradition to be reclaimed, and billy j. stratton terms mongrels a “neo-southern gothic werewolf novel” (1). hobson notes that while he sees transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 74 the capacity to read wdst as a realistic portrayal of a wounded mind, it might also be read as “a horror novel” (brennan).27 hobson’s novel’s setting of little crow itself contributes to the gothic vibe of the text. when sequoyah asks george why the “entire towns seem[s] to have such strange habits,” george replies, “’little crow is just a really weird place…the police promote prostitution. there’s a brothel out by the lake. the police know all about it and they don’t care…you could probably get away with murder here’” (118). we note of course that sequoyah may have done exactly that: he may (like merricat) have gotten away with murder. meanwhile, the high school is abuzz with rumors of teens engaging in “strange sex acts and witchcraft” and “similar adult sex parties, where people dressed like mannequins…and they all wore flesh-colored bodysuits” (117). not all of little crow’s oddities are of overtly sexual natures, though. sequoyah notes, “backyard birthday parties involved a game in which children were blindfolded and had their wrists tied behind their backs. they bobbed for dead snakes from a tub of water”; these same families use snakes in their church (117, 118). in a further manifestation of an anti-positivist uncertainty and general secretkeeping common to the gothic, each story offers a narrative that it, sooner or later, undercuts. while over the course of the novel the reader comes to accept the nephew’s werewolf narrative, mongrels begins, “my grandfather used to tell me he was a werewolf” (1). this opening offers at least a layer of doubt to the grandfather’s story, a layer that remains throughout the first chapter of the text. still in the first chapter, the nephew relates, “none of grandpa’s stories were ever lies. i know that now. they were just true in a different way” (25). the nephew’s grandfather is relating stories that convey messages, values, morals, etc. as such, that the details of the stories may never have happened doesn’t necessarily make them untrue. of course, what the nephew communicates here might just as easily be said of jones’ novel john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 75 itself, or of all fiction, or of all stories. elsewhere, jones explains, “truth isn’t in verifiability. truth is always in the narrative; truth is how well it coheres together and how it makes you feel” (“observations” 24). we are reminded here of a host of canonized native authors (if native american literature can be said to tend toward canonicity). leslie marmon silko’s (laguna pueblo) famous introductory words in ceremony explain, “i will tell you something about stories…they aren’t just entertainment./ don’t be fooled. / they are all we have, you see,/ all we have to fight off/ illness and death” (np). in a scene in chris eyre’s (cheyenne and arapaho) smoke signals, victor asks his mother whether he should bring thomas with him on his journey and she launches into a story about making frybread (the message of the story conveys the importance of community).28 daniel heath justice describes stories that “give shape, substance, and purpose to our existence and help us understand how to uphold our responsibilities to one another and the rest of creation…good stories—not always happy, not always gentle, but good ones nonetheless, because they tell the truths of our presence in the world today, in days past, and in days to come” (why 2). in short, there is a long-established precedent of the ways that native stories carry both power and message, what we might teach in our literature classes as the “theme” of a work. the narrator of mongrels goes on to declare that such a practice runs in the family, stating that his uncle “darren was just like grandpa, telling me one story, meaning another” (100). as such, the werewolf narrative of mongrels takes on a self-consciously metaphorical significance. among the secrets that mongrels keeps from the reader is the racialization of the nephew and his family. one evening at a convenience store, the nephew runs into some kids from his grade, one of whom, gesturing at the nephew asks, “he mexican?” (61). another follows, “what are you really?” (62). jones’ choice of “mexican” in this instance is itself rich. mexico and its denizens are, of course, transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 76 profoundly diverse, and that nation celebrates (rhetorically, at least) its diversity in the form of the mestizaje in ways that counter the us’s historical anxieties over racial mixing. placed in the context of the werewolf narrative, especially one called mongrels, we are reminded of ideas of purity and the ways those ideas fail in the face of the complex mixings that life creates (and requires).29 yet, of course, for many in the united states, the term “mexican” is very specifically racialized. it denotes a particular, but flexible, range of brown skin along with whatever other phenotypic elements happen to exist—or not—in the eye of the beholder. it likewise connotes foreign-ness, and the classmates in this scene echo these stereotypes as they say to the nephew, “still wet…piso mojado, right?” (61). jones turns the joke back on these boys (who our narrator names simply and tellingly “yellow hair” and “john deere hat”), by having them conflate the slur “mojado” with “piso mojado” (wet floor). moreover, yellow hair stands in contrast to werewolves broadly, as we learn later in the novel; libby tells the nephew, “i don’t think there ever has been a blond [werewolf]” (112). “‘the only place you could hide would be a wheatfield, i guess. or a stack of gold.’ this is funny to her. hilarious. werewolves never get the treasure” (112). the fact that werewolves are never blonde offers another potential reading of racialized phenotype, but since people with (naturally) blonde hair make up a tiny fraction of the world’s population (something around two percent), this isn’t as big a tell as one might think. the nephew’s addendum that libby’s laughter stems from the thought of the werewolf getting the treasure returns the reader to a more ambiguous sense of alterity. the nephew further hints but does not reveal, “the same way animals and cops know werewolves, so do security guards and salespeople and clerks. if you asked them why, they might not say ‘werewolves,’ would probably just shrug, say there’s something shady about us, isn’t there?” (90). of course, jones’ narrator expresses the vague sentiments of unconscious bias (or obfuscated conscious bias) in this “something john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 77 shady.” all of this is to say that we can read a racialized marginalization into these werewolves, though one that needn’t necessarily mark them as, say, indigenous. in the same conversation with stratton that i use as my epigraph above, jones explains, “people are always asking me, ‘what’s indian about this’ so i started writing about zombies and aliens to stop getting that question because i hate that question. that question means people are going into this book with their miner lights turned up too bright looking for just one thing (stratton 52-53).30 lycanthropy in mongrels might signal any of a number of forms of alterity (racialized, classed, or based on status within governmental structures of naturalization to name a few), but whatever it is standing in for in whatever reading someone has, it is clear that to be a werewolf in this novel is to fall outside of the mainstream. it’s to come from a population whose story is not told.31 paul tremblay refers to such moments in jones’s work as his “beautiful sentences that both tell and keep secrets” (357). and that telling, or not telling, of werewolf stories or secrets lies central to jones’ novel. significantly later in the text, the nephew explains the family’s lack of connection, community, and concomitantly, history: “the reason we don’t know where we come from, it’s that werewolves aren’t big on writing things down. on leaving bread crumbs” (215). there might be any number of reasons why this family has either been elided from official and unofficial record keeping or has obfuscated itself therein, as is true with many marginalized communities. the grandfather tells a story of his participation as a soldier in world war ii during which he learns the history of werewolves (the novel offers multiple, sometimes complementary and sometimes competing—if not contradictory—werewolf origin stories). the nephew contends, “maybe grandpa did go to war, and he did make it back…but those years in between, those years between shipping out and straggling back home, those are story years. years without any photographs or paperwork or newspaper articles to prove them” transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 78 (216). again, the record of this family and their ilk is sparse, both in terms of personal memorabilia (photographs) and official and historical documentation (paperwork or newspaper articles). what they have instead, what all communities maintain, are their stories. these secrets represent a classic gothic mystery that the nephew intends to unveil and chronicle. but, in so doing, he also ultimately explains that werewolves are an image, a device, or an allegory. libby tells him, “i know you’ve been writing it all down in that shoe box you keep in that old blue backpack…about us” (292). in reply, the nephew explains, “‘we never had a camera,’ he says. it’s his only excuse” (292).32 but, as with all the stories in the family tradition, he explains, “‘it’s all different anyway,’ the nephew tells her. ‘the way i did it, i mean. nobody would know anything, if they found it’” (292). he continues, “you may have fought a bear,” referring to a moment earlier in the novel when libby-turned-wolf does exactly that. it is at this point—in the final pages of the novel—that the reader is reminded that this isn’t really a werewolf novel at all. werewolves are a cover, a disguise, for something else that this family is.33 mysteries likewise abound particularly in the vexing and unresolved endings in wdst, as we realize that the story we are reading might not be exactly what happened. the final sentences of wdst create a new kind of doubt in the reader as sequoyah concludes, “as the weather grew warmer, harold [sequoyah’s foster father] helped me build a tepee in the backyard, where i spent most of my time….i started writing my own stories, about indians and monsters, about brainwashed killers, about mysterious deaths in a mythical oklahoma town” (273). of course, we wonder if wdst is one of those stories about a mysterious death in a mythical town (particularly since little crow seems to not actually exist). but, more than that, the novel’s treatment of its own dramatic conclusion, rosemary’s death, is deeply ambiguous. as sedgwick reminds us of the gothic, “the story does get through, but in a muffled form” (14). john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 79 of course, for the reader to be aware that secrets exist in a text, the narrative must both reveal and withhold certain details. to that end, wdst establishes itself as a chronicle of a death foretold; as carnes notes, hobson’s novel is “retrospective” (239). the third sentence informs the reader of the details we will soon encounter, “the period of my life of which i am about to tell involves a late night in the winter of 1989, when i was fifteen years old and a certain girl died in front of me. her name was rosemary blackwell” (1). from the beginning, the reader knows the novel’s ending, or at least, the story’s dramatic height.34 what is left is the slow unveiling of how these events came to transpire. we know the narrator’s age; we know the year. and yet, while the novel’s outset begins with this foreshadowed denouement, the as-yet unnamed narrator denies the reader any mystery or revelation, continuing, “i’m alive and she’s dead. i should tell you this is not a confession, nor is it a way to untangle the roots and find meaning. rosemary is dead. people live and die. people kill themselves or they get killed. the rest of us live on, burdened by what is inescapable” (1). and, yet, untangling the roots and finding meaning are certainly what the reader finds themself doing. such a quest seems precisely among the burdens of what is inescapable—indeed the quest to make meaning of this story might be precisely what is inescapable, it might be exactly what stories demand, and what readers do. moreover, returning to the passage above, i want to examine two key elements: the assertion that this is “not a confession” and sequoya’s note that “people kill themselves or they get killed,” because while rosemary’s death is ruled a suicide, the novel leaves it quite unclear whether that is the case (did she kill herself or did she “get killed”—a phrasing rich in its passivity). wdst is not only, as hobson notes, a horror story, but also potentially, a murder mystery, though one that remains unsolved. the central mystery of wdst takes the form of the specific mechanics of rosemary’s foretold death. she tells sequoyah that “there’re taking me out of here. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 80 they’re sending me back to rehab,” and then tells him “just leave me alone. i don’t like you any more” (245). finally, sequoyah narrates: “you never listen,” she said, and these were her final words. in the dimly-lit room i couldn’t tell if she was laughing or sobbing. a surge of anger struck me. it stopped me cold, seeing her standing there. i noticed the gun in her hand. beyond that, i remember hearing a slight hum that seemed to vibrate from somewhere in the room. the vibration moved across the floor and entered me, my body, my mind. the vibration was its own malicious presence, some isolated entity that existed only in that moment. i knew i was not myself, and it felt stimulating and good. i was someone furious, someone hurt, someone blighted by infectious rage. a split second later i could not contain myself and sprang from the bed and placed my empty hand on her gun-gripping hand, my hand on her hand, and we held on, both confronting ourselves, both relentless. (246) thus ends the chapter, as the reader grapples with what has happened. early in the next chapter, sequoyah recalls, “they found rosemary’s suicide note…it was her handwriting, there was no question…nobody even suspected murder” (247-48). between sequoyah’s implanting of the possibility of (unsuspected) murder, his rage, his understanding that he was “not himself,” and the malicious presence of the vibration he sometimes thinks he hears and feels in stressful situations, the reader encounters much uncertainty as to how rosemary died. when we read the gendered nature of these dark revelations of possible, even likely violence and sequoyah’s feelings of entitlement to rosemary’s interest alongside the nephew’s rejections of libby, we note the cautionary elements of these stories in regard to certain brands of isolationist masculinities, particularly in terms of these disassociated adolescent boys who long to flee, whether in the form of running—a theme repeated throughout mongrels, or flying—a theme repeated throughout wdst. john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 81 after all, the specific masculinities of these two adolescents are central to these novels. the nephew seeks out a particular brand of machismo that he mimics from his uncle. sequoyah, on the other hand, pairs a hyper-masculine and violent self-narrating with androgyny. he likes to wear rosemary’s clothes and make-up, for example. hobson reminds the reader of the temporal setting of his novel to underscore these elements of sequoyah’s character. he explains that sequoyah is “exploring identity issues with his gender and with this overall appearance. in 1989 not many boys wear eyeliner to school…sequoyah is a little more androgynous” (michal).35 with these tendencies in mind, we must recognize the lionization of darren and rosemary, respectively in these texts. both novels frame the domestic sphere as feminine. that is, the nephew spends the majority of mongrels rejecting the domestic and what he frames as its feminization, as well as his female role model, libby, while sequoyah longs for the domestic, replete with specifically, but also not entirely gendered elements, embracing it, along with his female role model, rosemary, albeit to an unhealthy degree. the nephew comes around to the importance of his aunt and the dangers and harm of the brand of masculinity he has been privileging, but i argue that both texts tell of fraught formations of marginalized masculinities. the nephew gradually reveals the damage of his individuated ideology and ideation to both the reader and to himself. he ponders, for example, what he would do if his family were to stay in one place long enough for him to have what he describes as a normal life, staying at a single school long enough to graduate. he declares, “i liked reading enough, but what was i supposed to do with a diploma? getting a degree would be like i was deciding to trade in my heritage, my blood” (56). for this boy, formal or institutional education represents a betrayal of family and community, a trade-in of marginalized sub-culture for hegemonic over-culture. but it is also more than that. for him, it’s about foregoing ever truly being a part of that community, never transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 82 coming of age. he continues, “and if i started making those kinds of gestures, then that was the same as asking to never change, to just stay like this forever, not need all darren’s advice” (56). the fraught and interstitial masculinity that the nephew craves exists always and only on the run. to stay in one place means to never become the kind of man he, as a boy, hopes to be. moreover, it means that his bonds with his beloved and idealized uncle would come to naught. the nephew, then, at the same time he declines certain kinds of community, privileges his homosocial and homofamilial ones. these masculinist relationships are further underscored by the novel’s contextualization of this particular passage. namely, in privileging darren’s advice, he simultaneously negates libby’s advice. this negation glares in light of the fact that libby has just given the nephew a multi-page and, within the narrative, ten hour long “werewolf version of the talk,” covering topics ranging from the dangers of driving-while-werewolf, eating from garbage cans, the delicious but addicting and always human-related smell of french fries, pantyhose and stretch pants, and, of course, silver poisoning (37-46). libby’s advice takes the form of “ways to not die”; these are all critically important tips for the protagonist. but, because of his gendered priorities, he undervalues them, and, in truth, libby as well, despite the fact that she serves as his primary caregiver and the only steady and stable figure in his life. the nephew’s revelation regarding masculinist ideology becomes pinpointed by the matriarchal libby. specifically, the nephew realizes that when members of the family leave, that means that the rest of the family is being left, being abandoned. when it seems as if darren has left the family, the nephew asks, “do werewolves do that, just leave?” (250). it is telling that this question arises from a protagonist who has been emphasizing the fact that werewolves do that, just leave, for over eighty percent of the novel at this point. the nephew realizes he might not be the one who leaves, but the one who is left; he is realizing what it means to be a member of a community john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 83 that another member opts out of, and he doesn’t much like it. in her response, libby clarifies the gendered nature of the nephew’s approach to glorifying running as he has done throughout the novel. “her eyes when she looked up to me, they were ancient and tired and sad and mad all at once. ‘men do that,’ she said” (250). it turns out that the quality of werewolves that the nephew has been celebrating all along is not a quality of werewolves after all, but rather one of human men. sequoyah, by contrast, reveals a strong longing for home and stasis, seeing his one constant moving as an unheimlich mode of being. he explains, “moving from place to place, from shelter to foster home, almost always took its toll, and at fifteen i’d never gotten over the crippling anxiety of sleeping in a new room, a new bed, living in a whole new environment” (37).36 we note the ways that each character, despite privileging motion and flight, nonetheless feels and communicates the ways they suffer from that motion.37 for sequoyah, moreover, that longing for flight even comes in the form of his relationship to selfhood. he explains, “i recall the desire to become someone else completely” (220). we are reminded of the “shift” that the narrator of mongrels similarly longs for (and of sequoyah’s fantasy diagnosis in the hospital), a fundamental transformation of self that he hopes lurks somewhere within him.38 both protagonists eventually understand the appeal of staying in one specific location, though sequoyah, living as he has on the move but without a sense of community seems to long for it more. he explains, “this was the type of life i always dreamed about living someday, being alone in a house deep in the woods somewhere. to be happy, safe…to live alone, without a wife or kids” (18). we note that while he pines for a house in the woods, he also craves solitude. he describes the troutt homes in idyllic terms, “a house in the country, gleaming in the light that slanted through the trees. i saw a tall oak tree in the front yard with a tire swing” (19). the oak with its tire swing offers both an icon of stability and a welcoming of children and play that belie transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 84 the fact that this house, with its foretold untimely death (among other things) is absolutely haunted.39 the domestic security of the troutt’s rural home comes forth in sequoyah’s imagistic description of their kitchen in particular, a room (as we’ve seen with his burns) with rich significance for his character. he narrates: the kitchen had a white enamel sink and wooden cabinets painted light blue. the wallpaper was light blue with pictures of small baskets of vegetables and fruit. the room gave off a country kitchen feel. it was a reminder i was in a rural area, a few miles outside of town. i’d never lived in the country before, so looking out the kitchen window at night was like looking in a mirror—there was a vast darkness as far as you could see without any porch lights on. (34) the rurality of his setting manifests both inwardly in the country style of the wallpaper and sink, outwardly in the darkness all around, and back inwardly as the window becomes not a thing to be seen through, but a thing by which sequoyah looks upon himself. gazing outward, he gazes inward, or at his own exteriority, burns and all. the reflection he sees is not only of himself, but of himself in this country kitchen, in the most domestic of domestic spaces in this home that mirrors, so to speak, his idealized eventual existence. he longs to be alone in precisely the kind of place where he finds himself. where the nephew rejects such domesticity, sequoyah privileges it—but while the former locates a need for community in other people—regardless of emplaced stasis, the latter longs only for the constancy of place itself. the theme of who belongs and who does not, and where, lies central to these two novels, and both wield specifically gendered constructions of a confounded human/lupine distinction or indistinction to think through that theme. the adolescent male narrators search for a sense of self in community through their respective lupine ideations. both at some points long to emulate the lone wolf of heteromasculinist lore. john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 85 yet, while sequoyah maintains a longing for solitude, he likewise pines for a feminized domestic space that even in his dreams remains an endangered fantasy. the nephew, in glorifying a homosocial idea of community that is forever fleeting, forever on the run, eventually realizes the damage such an approach inflicts. where sequoyah understands the importance of place and the community it can foster, the nephew comes to understand the importance of community as place itself. notes 1 hobson’s follow-up novel, the removed, also features a child in foster care. hobson has noted that, having worked for roughly seven years as a social worker, he is drawn to telling such stories (mcdonnell). 2 the werewolf as metaphor for puberty (gaining body hair, trying to understand new impulses and lusts, etc.) might be a bit on-the-nose. however, jones notes, “the age that i’m most comfortable writing a character is sixteen, and seventeen and a half, or eighteen…what i want to be drawing from somehow is that hopefulness you have at that age. you always keep the future inside like a secret, when you grow up you’re going to be a blue angels pilot or conan, or a superstar. and that’s all still inside you. you haven’t been disabused of those dreams yet. i like to write about characters who are on the cusp like that” (stratton and jones 22-23). this age cusp alongside the potential, but not-yet-realized changes of lycanthropy parallel in mongrels. 3 both novels also, and i don’t think this is as unimportant as it might seem, feature chevrolet el caminos prominently. these neither-car-nor-truck vehicles mirror the inbetweenness of the protagonists. 4 while the town in question seems fictionalized, the novel tells us that broken arrow is “nearby,” which would put it about fifteen miles southeast of tulsa and roughly fiftyfive miles west of tahlequah, the capital of the cherokee nation of oklahoma (163). 5 i read a play on the “him” here, the lack of capitalization notwithstanding, between never having known his father and never having known the specific manifestation of god in question. 6 mongrels alternates longer chapters narrated by the protagonist with shorter ones told in the third person about the protagonist wherein he adopts a persona (vampire, reporter, criminal, biologist, mechanic, hitchhiker, prisoner, villager, and nephew) that transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 86 is mentioned at some point in the previous chapter. while “the nephew” is not capitalized in the novel, i do so here to indicate the specific character. 7 the line break in this passage represents a new paragraph. jones’ novel makes use of these throughout, with many sentence fragments, continued thoughts, and punch lines suspended as paragraphs of their own. these create an effect whereby the novel’s form reflects the kind of frenetic, breathless rush of the family’s life, of the nephew’s adolescence, and of his perception of his uncle darren’s persona. 8 the fact that his mother does not change reemphasizes the gendered nature of the nephew’s perception of lycanthropy. 9 at the same time, though, the narrative offers a counter point, “maybe god is on the side of the werewolves…maybe god had decided that proper humans had made a mess of running the world, had decided to give the nosferatu, the undead, a chance at it. perhaps the human race was on the threshold of that darkness” (42-43). 10 lalonde notes a different work by jones, “the long trial of noaln dugatti is resolutely centered on writing,” a statement that applies to much of his work, including mongrels (230). 11 while i’m placing these texts within southern gothic traditions, justice’s creative work most notably comes in his fantasy trilogy, later combined as the way of thorn and thunder: the kynship chronicles (another example of the excellent “genre fiction” being produced by native authors). 12 this inconclusive nature stands central to the aesthetics of these texts. carnes notes of wdst, “what i find refreshing about this novel is that it does not try to be something it is not. rather than an awakening novel where a young cherokee and a young kiowa become closer to their identities and native individuals, this book focuses on the problems that teenagers face in an especially tumultuous time in their lives” (239). 13 here we might recall aldo leopold’s “thinking like a mountain” from a sand county almanac in which the famed naturalist recalls a moment when he and his cohort see a pack of wolves from above. he recalls, “in those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf” (130). they all open fire, mortally wounding two of the wolves, mother and pup. he further relates, “we reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. i realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes…i was young then…i thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter’s paradise. but after seeing the green fire die, i sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view” (130). 14 patrick wolfe famously demonstrates, “the logic of elimination not only refers to the summary liquidation of indigenous people, though it includes that. in common with genocide…settler colonialism has both negative and positive dimensions. negatively, john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 87 it strives for the dissolution of native societies. positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as i put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event” (390). 15 the story hobson narrates in this piece of a deceased ancestor who learns how to shapeshift from a wolf reappears in the removed (237-45). 16 lee lists jackson among authors whose work jones’s reflects, along with h.p. lovecraft, cornell woolrich, and stephen king (259), while the kirkus review notes of hobson’s text, “as in a shirley jackson story, everything seems perfectly ordinary until it doesn’t” (kirkus). 17 this tie between finger length and lycanthropy also appears in blish’s story. 18 unlike those of vampires and zombies, werewolf narratives, while emphasizing transitions between types of existence, do not always allow for a transition from someone born a human into a full-fledged werewolf. such a move is impossible in jones’ construction. 19 the boy’s taunt is “merricat, said constance, would you like a cup of tea?” the full version continues, “merricat, said constance, would you like to go to sleep?” “oh, no, said merricat, you’ll poison me” (107). 20 moreover, as is the case for the protagonists of mongrels and wdst, as eunju hwang notes, in jackson’s “gothic fiction…home…is not a safe place that secures one’s happiness” (119). 21 we can also read a verisimilitude in a character being tired of explaining such a thing. 22 even the roadside location of this telling reflects the boundary between the tamed road and the wilderness just outside of its reaches, another cusp. 23 as such, we find ourselves wondering if he is truthful about the source and accidental nature of his facial scars. 24 sequoyah continues, explaining that he now “drew landscapes, objects of my desire, things to represent my longing for companionship in my time of sickness. this is how i remember it. i drew buildings on fire. i drew a clown holding a machine gun, and a dog frothing at the mouth. i drew an old man dead in a rocking chair. his head was slumped over and he was bleeding from his chest” (167). these disturbing images are fairly common for sequoyah, who admits to a violent sexual fantasy regarding rosemary as well. to that end, hobson has noted that most [readers and interviewers] just ask how disturbed [sequoyah] is and how dangerous. they tend to think he’s a bad, bad person and that’s he’s a super psychopath” (michal). but, having spent years working with native foster children, hobson explains his complex sentiments for the transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 88 round character he has constructed, “i feel sorry for him at times, but other times not so much” (carroll). 25 jarlath killeen similarly celebrates the “generic openness of the gothic and its ability to migrate and adapt to formal circumstances far removed from its ‘original’ manifestations in the late eighteenth century” (3). 26 kristin squint’s 2018 monograph, leanne howe at the intersections of southern and native american literature, takes a similar regional approach. 27 a great deal of scholarship works to place jones’s work particularly within various genres, though he asserts, “the only genre is fiction” (washburn 79). in discussing jones’s all the beautiful sinners and growing up dead in texas, waegner notes “gothic and postmodern thrusts are profoundly interconnected” (194). quinney avers that demon theory’s “multimedia effect” “explicitly position[s] the novel within a genealogy of gothic literature” (291). lalonde gothically reminds, “one is rarely far from death in the fiction of stephen graham jones” (218). nor are these connections unique to jones’s work. as lush notes, “gothic tropes have long supported the literary representation of native peoples” (306). meanwhile, stratton places “the truly malicious descriptions of native people in the journals and sermons of colonizers and land-takers such as…increase mather” in the context of “pregothic horror” (“come for the icing” 6). 28 the screenplay for this film is written by sherman alexie (spokane/coeur d’alene), and based largely on stories from his collection the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven, particularly “this is what it means to say phoenix, arizona.” 29 we might relate vizenor’s term “crossblood” here, which he offers in lieu of “mixedblood” as well as more pejorative terms like “half-breed.” vizenor contends, “crossbloods hear the bears that roam in trickster stories, and the cranes that trim the seasons close to the ear. crossbloods are a postmodern tribal bloodline, an encounter with racialism, colonial duplicities sentimental monogenism, and generic cultures” (vii). but, i’m also thinking of stacy alaimo’s trans-corporeality. alaimo explains, “imagining human corporeality as trans-corporeality, in which the human is always intermeshed with the more-than-human world, underlines the extent to which the substance of the human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment’” (2). 30 at the same time, van alst asserts, “unless i’m told otherwise, all the characters [in jones’s work] are indian. but best of all, very best of all, they’re incidentally indian” (xiv). similarly, lush avers, jones “does not emphasize the ‘nativeness’ of a character, and that lack of emphasis actually places the reader in a native-centric world” (310). 31 where mongrels offers an awareness of its own narrative as a deflection from something else but leaves that something else unnamed and its racialization obfuscated, wdst provides clear references to its protagonist’s indigeneity. being john gamber “w(h)ere there’s a wolf” 89 cherokee is important to sequoyah, and being native forms much of the bond between himself and rosemary that will drive the narrative. i would go so far as to contend that wdst can be read as an allegory for cherokee relations to the us federal government, particularly growing out of cherokee removal (the much more direct topic of the removed) and the ruling in cherokee v. georgia that imagined the relationship between native nations and the us to be like “that of a ward to his guardian.” in such a reading, we can further place sequoyah’s absent mother at the hands of settler juridical structures as a manifestation of the us’s attempts to undermine indigenous matriarchies broadly (see piatote). that reading lies beyond the scope of this essay, but i hope and trust such a reading of hobson’s novel is forthcoming. here i will simply note that sequoyah places his movements as a foster child as part of a larger history of movement, one that he traces through his mother (2) and the cherokee nation (1). of this tendency to not stay still he ponders, “maybe it was in our cherokee blood” (2). 32 libby tells him this chronicling (or his compulsion to do so) is both “sweet” and “stupid” (292). 33 as baudeman notes, “in jones’s novels, human history is represented as the sum of individual decisions and causal connections that readers can never fully make sense of, but that in fact only surface here and there as nodes in a structure of gaps, breaks, silences, and discontinuities” (151-52). 34 the text tells of two other deaths, those of simeon luxe (103) and of his nemesis “dumb nora drake, who later died on january 19, 2003 of strangulation” (143). sequoyah feels jealous that rosemary chooses to spend time with nora rather than with him. 35 moreover, sequoyah’s sexuality remains somewhat ambiguous, but people in little crow routinely address him with antigay slurs, taunts, and innuendoes. 36 mongrels asserts a similar toll that being a werewolf takes its toll on one’s body. the nephew’s grandfathers tells him “we age like dogs…you can burn up your whole life early if you’re not careful. if you spend too much time out in the trees” (10). later, we learn from a non-werewolf who is married to a werewolf and knows considerably more about werewolf health, “you’re supposed to drink as much water as you can before you shift…if you don’t, your skin—you can start to get old before your time” (266). 37 the concept of belonging in place is central to the removed as well; that novel’s final sentence reads, in its entirety: “home.” 38 interestingly, sequoyah notes, “when i was little i wanted to be someone else” (189). but we have seen throughout the novel that he has this want throughout the entirety of our familiarity with him. as such, the reader comes to understand that sequoyah is transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 90 frequently not an entirely self-conscious or self-aware narrator, an understanding that leads the reader to question key elements of the story of himself that he presents. 39 liz, sequoya’s case worker, explains “how safe it was out here in the country” (23). there’s an irony here, since we know that rosemary is going to die. works cited alaimo, stacy. bodily natures: science, environment, and the material self. bloomington: indiana university press, 2010. alexie, sherman. the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven. grove atlantic, 1993. anderson, joshua t. “mongrel transmotion: the werewolf and the were/wear/where-west in stephen graham jones’s mongrels.” weird westerns: race, gender, genre. kerry fine, et al., eds. university of nebraska press, 2020, pp. 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billy j. and stephen graham jones. “observations on the shadow self: dialogues with stephen graham jones.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. billy j. stratton, ed. university of new mexico press, 2016, pp.14-62. trefzer, annette. “the indigenous uncanny: spectral genealogies in leanne how’s fiction.” undead souths: the gothic and beyond in southern literature and culture. eric gary anderson, et al., eds. lsu press, 2015, pp. 199-210. tremblay, paul. afterward. the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. billy j. stratton, ed. university of new mexico press, 2016, pp. 35758. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 94 van alst. theodore, jr. introduction. the faster redder road: the best unamerican stories of stephen graham jones. ed. theodore van alst, jr. university of new mexico press, 2015, pp. xii-xix. vizenor, gerald. crossbloods: bone courts, bingo, and other reports. university of minnesota press, 1990. washburn, francis. “stephen graham jones’s cosmopolitan literary aesthetic.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. billy j. stratton, ed. university of new mexico press, 2016, pp. 63-81. waegner, cathy covell. “rampaging red demons and lumpy indian burial grounds: (native) gothic-postmodernism in stephen graham jones’s all the beautiful sinners and growing up dead in texas.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. billy j. stratton, ed. university of new mexico press, 2016, pp. 194-217. wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” journal of genocide research, vol. 8, no. 4, dec. 2006, pp. 387–409. untitled document jordan abel is a nisga’a experimental poet whose work with techniques of cut-up, erasure and found text marks him out as an entirely original voice in first nations writing. at the same time, abel’s work engages deeply with both traditional methodologies and contemporary themes of being an indigenous writer in a majority-settler society. abel’s work has recently been recognised in his being awarded the griffin poetry prize. this interview was carried out via zoom on 6th october, 2017. please note that a technical glitch has led to the omission of the first thirty seconds or so of the video – no questions were deleted. microsoft word 1090-article text-6337-1-11-20221219.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 1 photos in transmotion: images of survivance in ledfeather alison turner stephen graham jones’ ledfeather (2008), a semi-epistolary, semi-historical novel, poses questions about how historical knowledge is made and what to do with it. while scholars have studied the novel’s postmodern attributes as methods for subversive critiques of historiography in indigenous colonial contexts, as of yet no study prioritizes the novel’s use of photographs toward these aims. after situating gerald vizenor’s framing of “the indian [as] poselocked in portraiture” in histories of photography and indigenous colonization, i illustrate through postcards archived at the montana historical society how indian images work symbiotically with written text (146). i then examine the rhetorical role of photos in ledfeather, showing how the photos enact vizenor’s sense of transmotion, or “the tease of creation in pictures, memories, and stories” (173). i argue that the photos in ledfeather expand how postmodern historical fiction can push native art beyond the frame of “poselocked portraiture.” early photographs sent east from the american west were feats of tenacity as much as art: photographers hauled heavy equipment in wagons and to the tops of mountains and used snowmelt to clean glass exposure plates. in photographing the frontier (1980), dorothy and thomas hoobler describe how louis daguerre and nicéphore niépce’s 1839 invention was believed to “make permanent images from life,” giving consumers of photographs the possibility that “a moment in history could be permanently recorded, accurate in every detail” (11). this sense of “accuracy” has since been challenged by postmodern theorists: in the words of susan sontag, “a photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen” (106). a snapshot alison turner “photos in transmotion” 2 from a vacation stacked in a shoebox compels a different effect than the same image framed over a mantel or printed in a gift book. it is due to these multiple contexts, sontag suggests, “that the presence and proliferation of all photographs contributes to the erosion of the very notion of meaning” (106). the wide-reaching roots of photographs as a site of “permanence” and accuracy” have not, however, been erased (hoobler 11). to the contrary, photographs continue to support attempts to understand the past as something that is fixed and factual. in stephen graham jones’ ledfeather, photographs contribute to a narrative world in which the past overlays with the present and one narrator’s perspective overlays with a dozen others.’ the novel is set in browning, montana in both the present, through several narrators whose stories loosely circle around a young man named doby saxon, and the years following the starvation winter in the 1880s, from which the letters of a fictional indian agent named francis dalimpere eventually reveal his role in 600 piegan people starving due to colonial conditions. several scholars explore ledfeather’s postmodern aesthetic, which is readily identified by characteristics including multiple and “fractured” storylines (gaudet 23); a structure that contains a “level of signifiers,” such as the use of sous rature to “add a sense of direction, metafiction, and différance” (baudemann 161); polyvocality and a “heteroglossic” narrative that moves “down corridors of event, memory, language itself—english, french, blackfeet” (lee 81-2); and a narrative structure that builds “a relationship between the past and the present that does not center on possession” (pennywark 90). building on these explorations, i trace how photographs contribute to the text’s postmodern aesthetic and epistemology that questions meaning and values uncertainty. photographs contribute to the complex structure of ledfeather as objects in the narrative in three forms: id cards, postcards, and snapshots.1 gerald vizenor describes transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 3 the expectations for permanence and accuracy in photographs as indian images, which can exist in the same space as photos that are in transmotion, moving stories of native survivance.2 indian images, which vizenor also describes as simulations, are produced for viewers who are not native as “public evidence of dominance, not the private stories of survivance” (157). while orienting the novel in contexts of photography’s relationship with colonialism, tourism, and commodification of natives in the american west—an orientation that i supplement with material from postcard collections archived at the montana historical society—i examine how photographs in the novel complicate these historical relationships. just as the narrative itself moves between narrators, time, and protagonists, photographs do not provide “permanence” or “accuracy” but complexity, storytelling, and survivance. i. indian images and the “army of tourists” in fugitive poses (1998), vizenor shows how images have been used since the earliest settler colonies as rhetoric that establishes an idea of indian that erases native presence. spanish and portuguese “narratives of discovery” often included “drawings of natives” that were engraved and reproduced, creating “iconic enactments of the other” that “are seen with no sense of a native presence” (150,146). with the development of photography, vizenor continues, images from drawings and engravings could include “captured countenance and action” (155); vizenor’s word “captured” aligns with how the hooblers describe early excitement around photography as an invention that could “make permanent images from life” (11). indian images are attempts by non-natives to freeze the stories of natives into “permanent” interpretations. alison turner “photos in transmotion” 4 the coinciding development of railroad infrastructure and photographic technology ignited a tourist campaign that fed on indian images. photos of natives in the nineteenth-century show natives as “separated” from community, land, and presence, surrounded instead by objects that make up “the obscure simulations of indianness,” such as beads, leather, pipes, and feathers (vizenor 157, 160). photographs of natives were constructed into indian images through several methods, including photographers paying natives to “pose and . . . revise their ceremonies to provide more photogenic material” (sontag 64) and provision of costumes for any chief who arrived to be photographed in “white man’s clothing” (hoobler 24). it is these strategies, among others, that contribute to vizenor’s claim that “the indian is poselocked in portraiture,” which is a “simulation of dominance” over “native presence” (146). work from photographers such as edward curtis, who produced more than 40,000 images, continues to shape scholarship today, even among researchers (vizenor 160-1). zachary jones shows how what he calls “contrived photos,” which include staged scenes and non-native impersonators, have been used in “academic conferences presentations, publications, and exhibits without knowledge of these images being contrived” (8-9, 13).3 the early understanding of photography as accurate and permanent becomes more ironic over time. as colonial settlers moved west in the united states, indian images contributed to a campaign of tourism promotion and broader forms of white identity building. philip j. deloria explores the complex and paradoxical ways that natives have been implicated in white identity building: “there was . . . no way to conceive an american identity without indians. at the same time, there was no way to make a complete identity while they remained” (37). in see america first: tourism and national identity, 1880-1940 (2001), marguerite shaffer details how this identity-building manifested in the west through what she calls “national tourism” (4), a phenomenon starting in transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 5 western lands newly available by rail. tourism promoters, including railroad owners and hotel builders, “encouraged white, native-born middleand upper-class americans to reaffirm their american-ness by following the footsteps of american history” (shaffer 4). sontag describes the role of the camera during this process as “colonization through photography,” as “an army of tourists,” so “eager for ‘a good shot’ of indian life . . . invaded the indians’ privacy, photographing holy objects and the sacred dances and places” (64). photographs gave potential and active tourists “an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal . . . [helping] people to take possession of space in which they are insecure” (sontag 9). promotional campaigns used photography to sell not only vacations but participation in the formation of national identity.4 this booster campaign relied not only on indian images, but also on indian descriptions. when j.c.h. grabill described one of his photographs as “the great hostile indian camp on river brule near pine ridge, s.d,” for example, the hooblers suggest that the word “hostile” was a deliberate attempt to “stimulate sales of stereo cards in the east” (161). just as indian words like hostile might be added, so could native words be taken away: morgan bell shows how photographers deliberately erased native names, replacing them with titles such as “an unidentified comanche woman delegate to washington, d.c." when the photographed person’s name was known (88). this relationship between indian images and text is particularly visible on postcards, which were one of the most successful devices of booster campaigns. by the late 1890s postcards emerged as one of the most popular categories of souvenirs, “allowing tourists to document and preserve a visual record of their journey and send personal messages to friends and relatives back home” (shaffer 266-7). later versions of similar postcards are archived in the montana postcard collection and among the thomas mulvaney real-photo postcard collection at the montana historical society. alison turner “photos in transmotion” 6 the written messages on many of the postcards in these collections show how indian images furthered indian rhetoric. for example, the text accompanying a postcard of chief eagle calf explains, among other information, that “many of these native americans spend their summers in the park and add much interest through their colorful tribal dress” (“chief eagle calf”). the phrase “spend their summer” is an indian description of hotels employing natives to entertain tourists. or, on the back of an image titled “blackfoot chief, last star or weasel feather,” the postcard explains that “blackfoot chief, last star or weasel feather, proudly displays his elaborately fringed and beaded buckskin tribal dress” (“blackfoot chief”). the word “proudly” is an indian simulation, inserting characteristics that will be consumed by recipients. postcards also reveal the perpetuation of indian rhetoric by consumers: text is produced not only by publishers creating the product but by the tourists who purchase the images. while many of the cards in these collections do not have writing on the back (they were perhaps purchased with similar intents as ledfeather’s fictional tourist, not to send but to keep, a desire i explore below) several of those that are marked show text responding to indian images.5 below i share four examples of indian images on postcards and the corresponding note on the back, transcribed from the handwritten text.6 “blackfeet squaw and papoose”: a woman with her back to the camera, her head turned over her shoulder as she carries a baby on her back in a cradleboard. “untitled”: a white man in a tuxedo stands between two chiefs. a sticker labels the image: “glacier nat’l park jul, 1930: chief two guns white calf at left.” transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 7 partial transcription: “this baby seems to enjoy his queer carriage + is quite comfortable. wish you could be with me to enjoy the beautiful flowers etc.” partial transcription: what do you think about our being right around these indians? they wanted us to dance with him last night; but we thought it more fun to watch the others do it. we are having the grandest time.” “blackfeet indians, glacier national park, montana.” six blackfeet people pose in front of a teepee: the men wear feather headdresses and the women wear long dresses. “a council of the blackfeet indians in glacier national park” six blackfeet people gather in front of teepees in front of snow-capped mountains: one man stands in a headdress pointing at the others who sit on the ground. partial transcription: “we have seen quite a few indians. have had a very nice time and the weather has been fair. love grandma”. partial transcription: “here is a bunch of wild indians i [licked?] they all had guns and bows and arrows but i [skipped?] up and took the guns away from them, then i beat them up. i got all the guns if you want one. write and i will send one to you.” alison turner “photos in transmotion” 8 these notes range from trivial comments about the picture to violent indian fantasies. both forms of commentary respond to and extend the indian images on the front. the tourist-author of “blackfeet squaw and papoose” suggests that the baby is “quite comfortable” alongside the words “enjoy” and “beautiful flowers,” portraying an idyllic experience. or, in the postcard signed “grandma,” this woman includes having “seen quite a few indians” alongside polite notes about having a “very nice time” with “fair” weather: everything, she seems to say, is going how they had hoped. no less dependent on indian images but more aggressive in the extension of indian rhetoric, the authors of the two postcards in the right column invent interactions with the people photographed. in the untitled image, the author conflates “these indians” in the image with people who wanted them to “dance last night”; the question “what do you think about our being right around these indians?” suggests that this proximity is both an event that is (literally) worth writing home about and an event the author expects to put him or her in high esteem with their audience. finally, the last image puts into words violent fantasies that emerge without incitement, as the image itself portrays no hostility or guns. this last photo shows how quickly indian rhetoric can accelerate from image to text. native peoples resisted, and continue to resist, indian images through a variety of methods. the hooblers list among the most insistent resistors red cloud and crazy horse: the first was “reported to have chased away a photographer who tried to take his picture” and was not “captured” by a photograph until visiting d.c. in 1870; and the second “always resisted capture” by photographers, so that “no authentic photograph of him is known to exist” (122, 133). vizenor argues that indian images themselves show resistance: “watch the eyes and hands in fugitive poses to see the motion of natives, and hear the apophatic narratives of a continuous presence” (165). while costumes and poses can be directed, eyes and hands are a person’s own. bell transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 9 explores how native photographers such as benjamin haldane (1874-1941) and jennie ross cobb (1882-1958) contributed to early movements of photography in the american west (95-6), and kimberly blaeser explores techniques used by contemporary photographers to “re-vision . . . early colonized representations” (164). blaeser identifies collections of “alter-native” photos as those using multi-temporal and sometimes multi-spacial compositions as a form of “humanizing” rather than “museumizing” people in the photos (164). the three materialized photos in ledfeather are not revisionist in their own compositions but add to dimensions of the “alter-native” composition of the novel at large. ii. “his own”: id cards and naming colonization the first photos that the reader encounters in ledfeather are not described but are implied as images on a spread of id cards. an unnamed narrator drives doby saxon, the protagonist of the contemporary half of the novel, to the casino and watches how doby “spread all his id cards out on the dash of my car, then picked out his own” (20). the narrator explains that the rest were for the liquor store, for videos, for off-rez, for wherever one indian was the same as all the rest. the casino’s different, though. if their shiny new gambling license gets pulled, then fifty or a hundred people lose their jobs like that, come looking for whoever let that minor in the door. and then they go looking for that minor. (20) these documents narrow doby’s age to over 18 but under 21: he uses “his own” license to enter the casino, where the legal age is 18 and over, but needs a fake id to buy alcohol. while using fake ids is perhaps an american pastime for young adults on alison turner “photos in transmotion” 10 and off-rez, this passage emphasizes how the colonial context of the reservation shapes doby’s practice. he leverages his invisibility off-rez, where people will not distinguish him from other indians; this invisibility is countered by the hypervisibility of the “shiny new” casino where a license can be pulled by an off-rez authority. doby’s age range is framed by legal categories determined by off-rez laws; id cards negotiate this framing and his identity within it. though this short scene is the only place in the novel in which id cards are physical objects in the narrative, they engage with the power systems surrounding doby and his community. sontag explores how photographs became “enrolled in the service of important institutions of control . . . [i]n the bureaucratic cataloguing of the world, many important documents are not valid unless they have, affixed to them, a photograph-token of the citizen’s face” (21-2). further, that the id cards are shown to the reader in front of the casino is no coincidence. the casino is next door to a museum that is described later in the novel as “the one that’s shut down most of the time now, since the casino opened, like they can’t be that close to each other” (89). in her exploration of how gaming functions in contemporary native american literature, becca gercken interprets this relationship between museum and casino as indicating that “the museum’s . . . version of blackfeet history is not available for those who might choose to learn on their own. the energy and funds that could be supporting the museum have been diverted to the casino” (9). after doby enters the casino, he goes on an early winning streak at the blackjack table and then loses everything before starting a fight. his mother, malory sainte, appears and physically defends him. gercken suggests that “while malory is indeed protecting her son, she is failing as an elder: she is encouraging doby to escape the consequences of the gambling habit he learned from her” (8). while malory’s role as an “elder” is complex, interpreting the scene in the framework of doby’s many ids emphasizes not the “failure” of blackfeet transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 11 elders but a misalignment between the blackfeet community and government-imposed systems. iii. “achingly beautiful”: postcards of the glacier park indian after doby enters the casino with “his own” id, the perspective switches to that of an unnamed, middle-aged tourist who witnesses doby’s rise and fall at the gambling table. soon after the fight between doby’s mother and a security guard, the tourist retreats to the casino gift shop. she narrates, i finally bought. . . a pack of postcards made from old brown and white pictures. each one had a little history entry on back. it was the least i could do. the girl smiled when she gave me my change, and her teeth weren’t perfect, no, but they were achingly beautiful, gave her just such personality. i hope she never fixes them. (26) the phrases “the least i could do” and “achingly beautiful” (in the context of “imperfection”) expose the tourist’s perspective as not only an outsider, but an outsider who patronizes and commodifies locals. sontag writes that “photographic seeing meant an aptitude for discovering beauty in what everybody sees but neglects as too ordinary” (89). the gaze of a tourist can share the gaze of a photographer, both perspectives seeking the feeling of capturing beauty in what is “ordinary.” further, the tourist has specific plans for the postcards she has purchased, and her detailed description of these plans reveals their emotional role. she explains: i wasn’t going to send any of them, i’d decided. instead i was going to leave them on the coffee table so charlene’s kids could find them, carry them to me, ask if i really went there, their little voices so pure and so hopeful. what i’d do then . . . would be to let the children look at each photograph while i read them alison turner “photos in transmotion” 12 the historical entry from the back. that way the indian on the front could look back at them, and they could know his story a little bit. the good one, i mean. (26-7) these postcards, depicting what vizenor would describe as natives “poselocked in portraiture” offer the narrator a way to engage with her grandchildren (146). the striking phrase “the good one, i mean,” is both a postmodern acknowledgment that there is more than one story to tell about history as much as it is an attempted erasure of the stories behind the postcards. the tourist’s idea of a “good story” likely differs from one that the person on the postcard would tell, just as it would have one hundred years earlier. after the tourist’s purchase of indian postcards, she encounters doby in the parking lot. he startles her and she drops her postcards; as she stoops to pick them up, he offers for sale what she describes as “just a bundle of crunchy animal skin tied together with rawhide” and “black with age” (27, 31). the scene continues: “i--i--” i said, lowering myself all at once to the postcards. he helped . . . when we stood again, the bundle was on the ground between us. he understood, nodded to himself about this and handed me the cards back, just stopping at the last instant to look at the top one, laugh a little. . . . “if you-if you want i can…” i started, digging in my purse for the money anyway, for all of my money, but the boy was already shaking his head no, backing away, into the night. (32) though the reader does not know it yet, this “bundle” is an object that doby has stolen from the neighboring museum of blackfeet artifacts; in this bundle are letters written in the 1880s by the fictional indian agent dalimpere, whose pages compose transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 13 nearly half of the ledfeather novel. the reader also learns later that the postcard on top of the pile that makes doby “laugh a little” is an image of yellow tail, doby’s ancestor. between them, then, are the indian postcards of blackfeet chiefs and a bundle that has been stolen from a museum of blackfeet history and artifacts. that the tourist desires the postcards and not the bundle—indeed, she would rather give doby money than take the bundle when he offers it—emphasizes the desire for indian images as “possessory” (vizenor 16). she desires something beautiful to remember her trip to blackfeet territory, in the sense of the salesclerk’s “imperfect” teeth that the tourist hopes never change, rather than something “crunchy” and “black with age.” she wants to possess memories of this trip that will contribute to her own imagined identity as someone who is surrounded by her grandchildren, telling the “good stories” instead of the stories of the starvation winter, or about how doby’s mom will go to jail for defending him when he lost her money at the casino. however, history in this novel is superimposed with the present, so that this tourist brings with her alternatives to the “good stories,” too. as she and her husband drive their rv out of the parking lot, her desires are rejected. she looks down at the postcards on her lap: on top was one of the old time indians, his skin brown and greasy, the fingers of his right hand wrapped around some spear or staff. what he was doing was staring hard into the camera like he knew what i’d done, what i hadn’t done. the sign at his feet said glacier park indian. scratched into the print beside it like they used to do, his name, yellow tail. i had to turn that postcard over. (32-3) the tourist’s reaction to this postcard enacts vizenor’s emphasis on the eyes as “the secret mirrors of a private presence . . . [that] hold the presence of the photographer alison turner “photos in transmotion” 14 on the other side of the aperture” (158). more directly for the reader of the novel, the image “staring hard” at the tourist anticipates the way that yellow tail stares at indian agent dalimpere, as described in his letters: “he watches me even as i write this”; he “is still watching”; “then yellow tail was watching me” (48, 50). though the tourist participates in national tourism that depends on indian others, her purchase will not sit still with the “good stories” that she expects: the indian images are pasted over native stories, and after her experience with doby, the edges of the image begin to curl. iv. “i had to say yes”: the photo from kalispell the third photograph that appears in the novel is taken by a white couple with a blackfeet character called only “the boy” (who can later be identified as robbie cut nose, a friend of doby’s).7 the boy recalls being taken to kalispell as a child with an adult woman he didn’t know: his mom’s boyfriend left him with an ex-girlfriend, who had to go to kalispell “for some reason” so took the boy with her (125-6). sixteen years later, after what appears to be an attempted suicide that puts the boy in the hospital, the boy’s nurse is the very woman who took him to kalispell. this chain of relationships is confusing, and it is tempting to dismiss the connections; however, when the photo appears in the narrative, this list of peripheral characters and their relationships to one another is a form of storied presence behind an indian image. when the nurse recognizes the boy in the hospital, she explains to him that her brother was dating a girl and that her brother “came back from her place once with this smelly old bundle, and hid it in my room”; but he owed her money, she continues, so “i took that pack, that bundle thing...and sold it in kalispell. forty dollars, yeah?” (1367). this “bundle thing” is likely the same bundle that doby tries to sell to the tourist outside of the casino, going by the bundle’s index card listing it as “reclaimed from pwnshp [sic] (kal)” as well as the parallel price of forty dollars offered to the nurse back f i g u r e : l e t t e r t o t h e b r o w n i n g m e r c a n t i l e c o m p a transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 15 in kalispell and forty dollars asked by doby from the tourist (31). the nurse says, “we used to sell all that stuff back then . . .. it was in every closet, yeah? oh, and some people wanted to take a picture with you too . . .. a white couple . . .. i had to say yes. they thought you were mine, i mean. it was all like a joke” (137). this moment brings the history of tourism and commodification through indian images to the present. more specifically, it implicates the photo from kalispell in various indian economies, including white appropriation of indian images for their own identity building, and, more locally, commodification of blackfeet objects in exploitative and coercive contexts. though it is not made explicit, it is likely that the white couple were tourists, so excited to see indian people that they want to take a photo. their desire for this photo re-enacts shaffer’s notion of “national tourism.” this kind of tourism, shaffer observes, “allowed white, native-born middle-and upper-class americans to escape the social and cultural confines of everyday life to liminal space where they could temporarily reimagine themselves as heroic or authentic figures” (5).8 one imagines the white couple flipping through photos from their trip to montana, pointing out, and here we are with some indians…. a photo taken with local indians provides tourists proof of their presence in foreign space, a frontier that remains wild and unknown in the u.s. white imagination. though the nurse says that “it was like a joke” for the white couple to take a picture with her and the boy, she also says that she “had to say yes,” attaching this interaction to a century of coercive collecting of blackfeet objects by white collectors. bob scriver’s gift book the blackfeet: artists of the northern plains (1990) illustrates not only his family collection of blackfeet objects but also the historical relationship in montana between white and indigenous communities. scriver explains: alison turner “photos in transmotion” 16 artifacts that museums and collectors of today deem extremely desirable were thought of in my dad’s day as worthless ‘old’ things by the indians themselves and were discarded in exchange for newer items . . . as this evolution occurred, there came to be many indian items on the reservation that could be acquired. (xv) hugh dempsey, author of the foreword to the book of the scriver collection, frames colonial-settlers as saviors of blackfeet artifacts who are now wrongfully charged with taking these objects. he writes that in the 1960s, “indians suddenly became aware that their culture was rapidly disappearing and a whole era of spiritual renewal began,” so that some began to “object” to scriver’s collection of artifacts (vi). dempsey’s word “suddenly” stands out, as does his final presumption that “as time passes, more and more blackfoot will come to appreciate what [scriver] has done in seeing that their artifacts are preserved in a museum for the benefit of future generations” (vi). the dismissed status of the museum in ledfeather suggests otherwise. the white couple’s sense of entitlement to a photo with local indians emerges from these systems and impacts the boy’s relationship to the photo. the boy had no memory of the photo before the nurse told him of it; yet, when a few days later he wakes up in his hospital bed with “two crisp twenties folded into his hand,” the narrator confides that “what he really wanted was the picture” (137). for the boy, this photo is a form of evidence in the sense that sontag proposes: “something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it” (5). though the trip to kalispell is seemingly small in the boy’s life, his knowledge of the photo emerges sixteen years after the photo was taken, so that his memory comes only from the photo. sontag writes that “to photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 17 it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed” (14). this visiting white couple has information about the boy that he does not have. a few pages later, the boy’s desire for this photo clarifies: “what if that white family in kalispell had just taken him, back then? he hated himself for even thinking it, but thought it all the same, on accident” (139-40). because this thought occurs while the boy is in the hospital after attempting suicide, his desire for the photo is connected to his suffering; it also reverts the tradition of white appropriation of indigenous identities. while the white couple desires an indian image and the nurse senses that she “had to say yes,” the boy desires the photo to understand his own stories. before the scene with the nurse, the boy remembers a man in town whose face is disfigured by the boy’s father: “the way that he was broken meant that the boy’s dad loved him, the boy. that he’d been mad the kid had gone to kalispell that day. that he was protecting the boy, just after the fact, as best he could, the only way he knew” (130). though the photo from kalispell may no longer exist, it is part of the story of the boy’s trip to kalispell, which in itself is part of the story of how his “dad loved him.” the snapshot is not only evidence of coercive historical relationships but also a detail in the story of how a boy understands his own identity. v. “posterity”: native photos of survivance by the end of ledfeather, characters continue to be affected by the forms of colonialization explored above, among others; but the final photo in the novel reclaims the history of photography and dis-embeds it from colonialist systems. the novel ends back with doby on the side of the road trying to get hit by a car, a scene that is related by several narrators, first by gina (43) and later by twice (193), who drives around with alison turner “photos in transmotion” 18 two other young men. near the end, twice describes how luther and dally propose that he, twice, takes a picture next time they try to hit doby. luther drives: ‘posterity,’ dally said . . .. ‘his or ours?’ luther said. dally shook his head at this, smiled, and said ‘a camera, man. twice can push the button just right before--” he finished with his hands, so that doby saxon exploded against the front of the caprice. luther smiled, liked it, and we cut back to browning for a camera, but never could find one that worked, until luther remembered chris. she’d bought one special for the game, had had it in her purse all week. (195) the reader has already met chris from gina’s section, when chris ran after doby trying to get him out of the road. now, when luther, dally, and twice find chris, she rides in the back of their car, initially unaware of their intentions. after the car almost hits doby, chris becomes upset. luther is also upset, because twice, who holds chris’s camera, did not take a photo of this attempt, as tasked. luther says, “tim would have [taken the picture]”, evoking twice’s dead brother; twice responds “i can take the picture” (197). for these boys, taking the photo is an act of bravery that compels twice to prove to the others that he is as brave as his brother was. unlike the other images in the novel, the photo that the boys desire is outside of commodification—but not outside of violence. their desire to record hitting doby anticipates what might come after they hit doby: evidence that they hit him. bell writes that “photographs . . . do not simply represent history; they are themselves historical objects. the way we perceive the world is shaped largely by not only personal experience but also . . . by our experience of, and our exposure to, visual images” transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 19 (102). when dally has the idea to take a picture of this moment, he says “posterity”; he does not answer luther’s question “his or our own?” (195). their desire for this photograph is a desire for power in the present and a power that can inform how the future understands the past. but chris will not let them have that power. after twice assures the others that he “can take the picture,” chris takes the camera and runs with it, “flitt[ing] away into the night like a deer, cutting across the pasture back to browning, maybe” (197). chris is soon seen by the reader again through the perspective of junior, who narrates the next section and drives the daughter of his former love home from a basketball game. he and his ex’s daughter see chris running with the camera after she has left the boys in the previous scene. junior describes seeing a flashing out in the pasture. like somebody was taking a picture out there. of us? i let my foot off the gas, said it: ‘what the hell?’ twenty seconds later it was a girl, the cut nose girl who’s a sainte, too, and so can run forever. she had a camera in her hand, was holding it ahead of her. i stopped and she popped the passenger door open, fell in, nodded ahead, fast. ‘get my good side,’ i told her holding my chin up for the next picture, and she looked over to me for a long time then finally smiled, let herself start breathing hard like she needed to. (203-4) chris runs to prevent boys from taking a picture of hitting doby and, in a sense, from hitting doby; junior’s joke that follows her run does not make light of the young men’s alison turner “photos in transmotion” 20 desires but responds to it. vizenor writes, “how should we now respond to the photographs that have violated the privacy of the natives? cover the eyes? whose eyes should be covered?” (163). it is as if the novel asks a similar question: how should we respond to the possibility of a photograph that would record one suicide in a narrative world that is saturated with suicide attempts? chris refuses the history that leads vizenor to describe photographs as “possessory, neither cultural evidence nor the shadows of lost traditions,” and cameras as “the instruments of institutive discoveries and predatory surveillance” (154). chris’s camera flashing through the pasture documents not possession or lost tradition, but doby not being hit by a car; her camera is not a tool of predatory surveillance but of native survivance. the novel’s final narrator is chris’s mom, recalling her conversation with doby’s mom, who is in jail following the event at the casino. in a chain of discourse that recalls the link of actors involved when “the boy” is taken to kalispell, chris’s mom describes to doby’s mom what chris told her about the night with doby on the side of the road and the camera: what i told her was just cut and dried, pretty much the way chris told it to me when i picked up her film for her, asked her if that was who i thought it was? at first she pretended like she didn’t know what i was talking about, but i used to be fifteen too. (206) the reader cannot be certain who chris did and did not photograph, though the likely candidates are the young woman who turns out to be claire, or junior, as her mom might find it strange that she was driving with junior. further, the reader does not know how much time has passed (it is however much time it took for chris to turn in her film to be developed, plus however long it took for her mom to pick it up). at this point in the novel, the reader is practiced in proceeding with uncertainty. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 21 chris’s mom then describes the last photograph on the developed roll of film, as chris has described it to her. chris took the photo from the front seat of junior’s car, looking back at doby and junior’s ex’s daughter in the backseat: in the picture . . . the girl’s sitting close enough to doby in the backseat that the sides of their hands are touching like they know each other, like it was a date they were on, and what she was saying to him about the elk right then was that he was going to shoot them all, wasn’t he? bam, bam, bam. doby smiled his dad’s smile, that he was caught but didn’t care either, and looked over to her, careful not to move his hand that was touching hers, and asked how she knew that? (210) this scene recalls vizenor’s argument that the stories of natives, despite appropriative photographs, “are in the eyes and hands” (156); doby and claire’s hands tell a story of what will happen. seamlessly, chris’s mom continues to describe the scene, so that the reader feels that they are there, in the story that the photo tells rather than with chris’s mom describing the photo to doby’s mom in jail. the image in the photo exceeds the photograph, spilling into the final paragraphs of the novel with only one last reminder that chris’s mom speaks (“and what i told malory happened next is that when he looked at her . . ..”), until doby speaks claire’s name for the first time and their hands touch again (211).9 the photos on chris’s roll of film do not document doby’s suicide attempt as they might have; what they do document is not easily known to the reader, i.e. “is that who i thought it was?” the photos on the roll of film are not permanent but dynamic, not stillness but stories, not suicide but survivance. many of the major themes in ledfeather can be traced by the photos in the narrative, but it is what surrounds and connects these photos—writing—that employs the photos as objects that incite movement toward native stories. counter to tourists’ alison turner “photos in transmotion” 22 written responses to indian images on the front of archived postcards, photos in the novel are written into survivance. it is only fitting then, that ledfeather was inspired by a photograph. in the author note following the novel, jones shares two source-origins for the story: first, a report about the blackfeet reservation; and second, a photo pinned to the bulletin board at a game office, an “old yellowy snapshot of a moose skeleton and a human skeleton mixed together. and there was no story for it. it had just shown up in some old file. but there was a story – is a story” (214). sontag writes that contrary to the early expectations for “accuracy” in photographs, “photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects. although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are” (6-7). just as photographers interpret their subjects, so do authors writing with, to, or from images interpret the photographer’s interpretation. in ledfeather, describing photos through words prevents a stopping on images: to see them better the reader must keep moving, keep reading, stay in motion. acknowledgements i am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for significantly improving the structure of this chapter. i am also grateful to heather hultman, senior photography archivist at the montana historical society, for assisting with access to the real postcard collection that i reference in this chapter. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 23 notes: 1 in addition to employing photographs as physical objects, the novel occasionally alludes to photographs and photography metaphorically, a compelling use of language that i do not have the space to explore here. for example, doby pieces together his fraught and complex memories of his father like a “slideshow” (83). 2 in this chapter, i follow vizenor’s use of indian as distinguished from native. he writes, “natives are the presence, and indians are simulations, a derivative noun that means an absence” (15). 3 zachary jones posits that many archivists are “not trained to address the complexities of these types of historical photographs” (13). he suggests that archivists provide “historical transparency” by identifying such photos as contrived, providing context, and engaging in “constructive dialogs” with tribes (18). 4 this need for a distinct american identity was advertised by images, but also embodied for tourists. promoters of tourism produced performances of indians, such as the promoter who arranged for a “mock raid” of pawnee natives so that early and wealthy railroad travelers could witness the promoter “pacify” indians with small gifts; “unbeknownst to the admiring travelers,” the hooblers write, this promoter had paid the pawnees an advance of one hundred dollars in gold for the show (48). more explicit was the employment of “show indians” such as sitting bull, who toured with buffalo bill cody’s wild west show (hoobler 135). 5 there are postcards on which the author does not pick up on the objectified image and extend it, though these are rare and the sender nevertheless participants in systems of indian commodification. for example, on one postcard labelled “blackfeet indian encampment, st. mary lake,” whose note on the back is co-authored, neither author discusses natives from the image. one author asks, “doesn’t this make you a wee bit homesick for st. mary’s?” a second author adds, “the mosquitos aren’t so bad this summer, but the tourists are worse than ever. come to help us answer their ridiculous questions.” 6 rather than showing the indian images of these four examples, i follow morgan bell’s practice of refraining from “reinforcing the already prolific stereotypes” (88). this practice also emphasizes scrutiny of the author’s comments over indian images. 7 it is arguable that “the boy” is robbie cut nose. i continue to call him “the boy,” as he is called in this section of the novel. 8 shaffer emphasizes that the roots of this “detached tourist gaze” that helped tourists to shape their own new identities by distinguishing them from others that they encountered during their travels was not limited to natives: african americans, mexican alison turner “photos in transmotion” 24 americans, chinese americans, and mormons were also subject to this “gaze,” so that many groups of “social others became an extension of the tourist spectacle, further allowing tourists to define and distinguish their social status” (280). 9 this scene spills out of the photograph much like blaeser describes happening in the photograph “mabel mahseet, comanche” by the irwin brothers. mahseet’s head is placed within a picture frame—within the composition of the photo—and her hair and forearm “spill into another dimension” when they exceed this frame, “breaking the illusion of illusion” (170). blaeser suggests that this “clearly intends to disrupt the boundary between image and reality,” a statement that might easily be made about the world of ledfeather, not to mention jones’ oeuvre in general (170). works cited: baudemann, kristina. “characters sous rature: death by writing and shadow survivance in stephen graham jones’s ledfeather.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion, ed. billy j. stratton. u of new mexico p, 2016, pp. 151-173. bell, morgan f. "some thoughts on "taking" pictures imaging "indians" and the counter-narratives of visual sovereignty." great plains quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2, 2011, pp. 85-104. blaeser, kimberly. “refraction and helio-tropes: native photography and visions of light.” mediating indianness, ed. cathy covell waegner. michigan state up, 2015, p. 163–195. https://doi.org/10.14321/j.ctt14bs0zq.13. deloria, philip j. playing indian. yale up, 1998. dempsey, hugh a. “foreword,” the blackfeet: artists of the northern plains. the lowell press, 1990. gaudet, joseph. “i remember you: postironic belief and settler colonialism in stephen graham jones’s ledfeather.” studies in american indian literature, spring 2016, pp. 21-44. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 25 gercken, becca. “raised stakes: writing on/and the new game of chance.” gambling on authenticity: gaming, the noble savage, and the not-so-new indian, edited by becca gercken and julie pelletier. michigan state up, 2017, pp. 1–21. hoobler, dorothy and thomas hoobler. photographing the frontier. g.p. putnam’s sons, 1980. jones, stephen graham. ledfeather. u of alabama p, 2008. jones, zachary r. “image of the surreal: contrived photographs of native american indians in archives and suggested best practice.” journal of western archives, vol. 8 issue 1, article 6, 1-18. lee, robert a. “native postmodern? remediating history in the fiction of stephen graham jones and d.l. birchfield.” mediating indianness, edited by cathy covell waegner, michigan state up, 2015, pp. 73-89. pennywark, leah. "narrative possession in stephen graham jones's ledfeather." studies in american indian literatures, vol. 29 no. 3, 2017, p. 89-110. project muse muse.jhu.edu/article/682448. scriver, bob. the blackfeet: artists of the northern plains. the lowell press, 1990. sontag, susan. on photography. first anchor books, 1990. vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. u of nebraska p, 1998. postcards referenced: “a council of the blackfeet,” no. 2000. real-photo postcard. thomas mulvaney collection. pac 2013-50. montana historical society, helena, mt. alison turner “photos in transmotion” 26 “blackfeet indian encampment, st. mary lake,” postcard. date unknown. montana postcard collection, 1893-2008. subject series pc001, box 17. montana historical society, helena, mt. “blackfeet indians, glacier national park, montana.” postcard. date unknown. montana postcard collection, 1893-2008. subject series pc001, box 17. montana historical society, helena, mt. “blackfeet squaw and papoose,” no. 1324. real-photo postcard. thomas mulvaney collection. pac 2013-50. montana historical society, helena, mt. “blackfoot chief, last star or weasel feather.” postcard. date unknown. montana postcard collection, 1893-2008. subject series pc001, box 17. montana historical society, helena, mt. “chief eagle calf, glacier national park.” postcard. date unknown. montana postcard collection, 1893-2008. subject series pc001, box 17. montana historical society, helena, mt. “untitled,” no. 1362. real-photo postcard. thomas mulvaney collection. pac 2013-50. montana historical society, helena, mt. microsoft word 365-2739-2-ce (1).docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 1 the red wall-paper: reservation policy, the dawes act, and gilman’s literature of argument becca gercken charlotte perkins gilman’s short story “the yellow wall-paper,” which follows the deterioration of its nameless narrator as she descends into madness while undergoing the “rest cure,” perhaps as a result of post-partum depression, has been interpreted both as a ghost story and as a feminist story. and while feminists have claimed this story as part of their canon and gilman herself declared that the story was written “not… to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy” (820) by the rest cure, i suggest that it is time we consider other sources of inspiration for gilman’s masterpiece of realism and the literature of argument. the inspiration for my analysis is a red reading, which, as scott andrews notes in his introduction to this issue, “produces an interpretation of a non-native text from a native perspective” (i). this “imaginative and playful” (andrews ii) methodology allows me to ground my reading in federal indian policy broadly and the dawes act of 1887 specifically. what new meanings might be produced if we engage with this canonical euro-american feminist text from a native, “red reading” perspective? how might questions about america’s indian policies be answered if rendered through the literature of argument of the late 19th century that took class and gender inequities to task but neglected america’s first people? “the yellow wall-paper” was published in 1892, more than a decade into the reservation period and five years after the passage of the dawes act. this policy, known as the general allotment act, was designed to force indians to adopt a euro-american concept of individual land ownership through the allotment of communally possessed reservation land. a red reading appropriation of gilman’s short story reveals a harsh critique of reservation policy and the dawes act; it also invokes america’s federal indian policy in broad strokes, with references to both the marshall trilogy and the indian removal act. in this red reading, the wallpaper’s pattern represents the dawes land allotments and their devastating effect on indigenous peoples and their communities while the country manor setting signifies both the removal and reservation policies that circumscribed indian existence as the 19th century drew to a close. becca gercken “the red wall-paper” 2 as the story opens, the narrator, our proxy indian, has been “removed” to a country house, her “reservation,” to recuperate from what her doctors—including her husband—term a “temporary nervous depression” (808). her treatment, called the “rest cure,” requires that she stay on the removal site with no interaction from the outside, just as indians were required to stay on their reservations. moreover, those in charge of her treatment insist that it is for her own safety, just as federal policy addressing removal and reservations characterized the segregation of indians as being for their benefit rather than the benefit of whites. for example, the indian removal act of 1830 states that “it shall and may be lawful for the president to cause such tribe or nation to be protected, at their new residence, against all interruption of disturbance from any other tribe or nation of indians, or from any other person or persons whatever” (qtd. in prucha 52 emphasis added). this issue of contact was still an issue almost 3 decades later in 1858 when commissioner of indian affairs charles e. mix wrote in his annual report that “great care should be taken in the selection of the reservations, so as to isolate the indians for a time from contact and interference from the whites… no white persons should be suffered to go upon the reservations” (qtd. in prucha 94). this point is made explicit in gilman’s text when the main character and her husband discuss the possibility of visitors: “john says we will ask cousin henry and julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillowcase as to let me have those stimulating people about me now” (811). gilman’s protagonist, like indians in the removal and reservation eras, is being told that her isolation is for her own protection rather than the protection of others. the control shown over the main character extends to her physical location, with the limited space of the reservation being too broad to ensure the government’s goal of assimilation, characterized here by gilman as the “rest cure.” thus, even within the “reservation” space of the house, the narrator is not given a choice of where she will spend her time: i wanted [a room] downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but john would not hear of it. he said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another. (809) john, her husband, functions as the story’s indian agent. reservation agents and “special agents” were vital to the implementation and enforcement of the dawes act: “the allotments provided for in this act shall be made by special agents appointed by the president for such purpose, and the transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 3 agents in charge of the respective reservations on which the allotments are directed to be made… shall be certified by such agents to the commissioner of indian affairs” (171). in john’s determination to keep a close eye on his subject, he follows the rules established by reservation and dawes policy, rules that demand his constant presence to facilitate the surveillance of his wife. he thus insists that she occupy the nursery at the top of the house, choosing her “allotment,” although the dawes act declares that “all allotments set apart under the provisions of this act shall be selected by the indians” (qtd. in prucha 170). gilman writes that “it is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. it was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, i should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (809). the fact that the windows are barred “for little children” reminds readers of cherokee nation v georgia (1831), the second case of the marshall trilogy in which chief justice marshall writes that indians’ “relation to the united states resembles that of a ward to his guardian” (qtd. in prucha 59). additionally, the windows that look in all directions suggest the increasingly panopticon-like surveillance of reservation life as the dawes act was implemented. the narrator later realizes that the bed in the nursery is fixed to the floor—“it is nailed down, i believe” (812)—and thus further constrains her movement and her desire to determine the layout of her increasingly small “allotment” in the house. thus, by the end of the opening sequence, gilman establishes the narrator as a victim of removal and reservation policies who is under surveillance by someone who deems her to be child-like, just as indians had been removed in the 1830s and confined to reservations by the 1880s, treated as children by a federal government that attempted to control all aspects of their lives. the narrator’s interaction with the few people in the house, her husband john, her sisterin-law and caretaker jane, and her nanny mary, reinforces gilman’s red reading argument against the oppressive nature of federal indian policy and the legacy of the marshall trilogy in particular. john, the indian agent watching over his tribe of two, repeatedly refers to his wife as child-like. he calls her “a blessed little goose” (810) and “little girl” (814); the narrator also tells us that john “gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head” (813). john expects the narrator to trust in him implicitly—“can you not trust me as a physician when i tell you so?” (814)—and tells her that becca gercken “the red wall-paper” 4 her own ideas are dangerous to her health: “there is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating… [as]… a temperament like yours” (814). indians cannot be left alone with their dangerous and fascinating temperaments; they must follow the guidelines established by federal indian policy and enforced by indian agents. as the supreme court observed in the first case of the marshall trilogy, johnson and graham’s lessee v william mcintosh (1823), to leave [indians] in possession of their country, was to leave the country a wilderness; to govern them as a distinct people, was impossible, because they were as brave and as high spirited as they were fierce, and were ready to repel by arms every attempt on their independence. (qtd. in prucha 36) readers familiar with the end of gilman’s tale recognize how well the words “high spirited” and “fierce” describe the nature of her protagonist as the story comes to a close. and who is in charge on a reservation when the agent is absent? the most egregious enforcer of federal indian policy—the indian policeman or, in gilman’s case, the indian policewoman. jane, by virtue of her gender, is identified with the narrator; in the context of a red reading, then, she should be read as indian. jane supervises the protagonist while john is away at work, making sure that she is not allowing her own temperament to take over. the narrator is aware of jane’s role and sees her surveillance as much more despicable than john’s, likely due to the women’s shared origins. jane even goes so far as to try to supervise the narrator while she sleeps, but the protagonist escapes her influence: “jennie wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing! but i told her i should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone” (818). like many indians in the reservation period, the protagonist is hiding her actions, her efforts to preserve her way of life, from those who are trying to assimilate her through the dawes act. it is only through this subversive strategy that the narrator can hope to overcome the crushing weight of allotment policy and the government’s broader assimilationist agenda. gilman saves her harshest critique for the dawes act itself, represented here as the wallpaper that pushes the narrator into madness. the wall-paper and its effects are foreshadowed by the gardens outside the house. when the protagonist first arrives at the manor, she is intrigued by the beauty of the gardens, which she describes as “delicious!” (809 emphasis in original). she goes on to say that she has never seen “such a garden—large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them” (809). this europeanamerican style garden appeals to the narrator because of its newness, its separateness from her transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 5 experience. she does not yet understand that its patterns will be forced upon her, although she hints at some of the estate’s more ominous qualities: it is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. it makes me think of english places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people… there was some legal trouble i believe, something about the heirs and coheirs. (809) the house’s “removal” from the village and the main road echoes the country’s removal of indians, first to indian territory and later to reservations. moreover, the “little houses” suggest allotments while the “legal trouble” with “heirs and coheirs” suggest the devastating dawes practice of dividing allotments among heirs, leaving families and individuals with ever-smaller parcels of land. but the narrator seems largely unaware of the problems the garden foretells and it is not until she grapples with the wallpaper that she fully understands the implications of the general land allotment act of 1887. in her description of the wall-paper, gilman invokes the legal intricacies of the dawes act, revealing its contradictions and foreshadowing its disastrous impact on native americans’ lifeways and their land base. the narrator tells us that “i never saw a worse paper in my life” (809) and says that it is one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. it is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. (809-10) the pattern is indeed deadly; the dawes act, represented here by the wall-paper, will lead to the loss of 90 million acres of indian land (iltf.org). moreover, the pattern is a “constant irritation” because there was no escaping dawes policy for most indians. the legislation decreed that in all cases where any tribe or band of indians has been, or shall hereafter be, located upon any reservation created for their use either by treaty stipulation or by virtue of an act of congress or executive order setting apart the same for their use, the president of the united states be, and he hereby is authorized… to allot the becca gercken “the red wall-paper” 6 lands in said reservation in severalty to an indian located thereon. (qtd. in prucha 170) the legislation helps readers understand gilman’s attention to the details of the wall-paper, which here are read as the allotment maps showing individual parcels as well as land taken for development at the hands of the government or private industry and land lost to euroamerican farmers. the “lame uncertain curves” (809-10) and the “outrageous angles” (810) suggest the checkerboarding of the indian land base under dawes policy, a federal strategy that would be reinforced in the coming decades through the dead indian act of 1902 and the burke act of 1906; it would not end until the indian reorganization act of 1934 finally put an end to federally sanctioned land theft (and federal land theft itself). even though the narrator does not initially grasp the wallpaper’s meaning, she quickly recognizes that the wall-paper is about surveillance and is affecting her agency. she says that the “paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!” (811)—shades of teddy roosevelt describing dawes as the “mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass” (digitalhistory.uh.edu)—and describes part of the pattern as “two bulbous eyes” that “stare at you” (811)—the eyes of the indian agents and the dawes commission, working to force indian assimilation to western lifeways. as the story progresses, the narrator begins to fear that the paper will outlast her: “i get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness” (811). she also becomes increasingly aware of the paper’s violent capabilities, observing that “you think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a backsomersault and there you are. it slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. it is like a bad dream” (815). this passage speaks to american indians’ feelings of futility in fighting the dawes act, which they could not escape, a notion gilman reinforces with the paper’s odor. the paper not only visually dominates the narrator and leaves marks on her clothes, it also permeates the house with its smell: “i noticed it [the smell] the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here” (816). as the narrative—and thus allotment policy progresses—its effects become inescapable. even when one is not confronted with a visual representation of the land lost via the wallpaper’s pattern, one is forced into awareness of allotment, which “creeps all over the house… hovering… skulking… hiding” (816). it stays with the narrator even on the rare occasions that she is allowed to leave the transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 7 reservation of the ancestral mansion: “even when i got to ride, if i turn my head suddenly and surprise it—there is that smell!” (816). like many indians who at first may have not understood the potential catastrophic effect of dawes, the narrator initially finds the smell of the paper annoying but of little concern: “it is not bad—at first—and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor i ever met” (816). however, as she starts to understand the power of allotment policy, she also recognizes the danger of the paper’s odor, commenting that she “wake[s] up in the night and find[s] it hanging over” her (816) and that while she “thought seriously of burning the house—to reach the smell,” (816), she is now “used to it” (816). but her familiarity does not signify her willingness to comply with the dawes act; rather, it sets the stage for her resistance to it. and while the narrator does overcome the paper and her indian agent, gilman’s story remains ambivalent about the fate of american indians and their homelands. one reading of the story’s ending suggests that gilman falls prey to the vanishing indian stereotype, giving her protagonist a hollow victory that affirms america’s belief in the inevitably of dawes, the government’s assimilationist doctrine, and the decline of american indian civilizations. while the narrator “frees” the woman she sees trapped behind the wallpaper— freeing natives from allotment policy—and crawls over her husband, the indian agent, who has collapsed in the face of indian resistance, readers may feel that this victory is not only shortlived, but self-defeating, as the narrator seems to have descended into madness. but the fact remains that the narrator has in fact stripped the room of many of its “allotments”—giant swathes of wallpaper—and she, not her indian agent husband or her tribal policewoman caretaker, is in control of the scene. the protagonist’s final act thus suggests the persistence of native americans even in the face of federal indian policy that worked to strip them of their cultures. it is not the indians who have been stripped of their culture at the end of the story; it is the room that has been stripped of its wall-paper. you may be asking yourself “but what about the narrator’s baby?” after all, in the feminist reading of this story, the baby plays an important part and contemporary readers are likely to understand the protagonist’s illness as post-partum depression. in this red reading, the baby is largely missing—as it is in the text of the story, appearing in only three brief mentions— becca gercken “the red wall-paper” 8 because an indian child would be removed from its mother and sent off to boarding school to endure a different assimilationist model from that which its mother fights here. if only “the yellow wall-paper” were about the plight of the native american. but what few sympathizers there were for the indian in late 19th century were misguided, hoping only to offer a less traumatic transition to a western way of life. perhaps if they had read gilman’s story as “the red wall-paper,” they would have had a change of heart. *** why i wrote “the red wall-paper”1 many and many a conference goer has asked that. when i first read the paper at the native american literature symposium in albuquerque in 2015, the reading got appreciative laughs as i transformed this canonical american short story through a red reading. the laughter ended, however, when i explained why the narrator’s baby was not mentioned in my paper, and the audience was reminded of the seriousness of the subject matter and the lasting historical trauma of the dawes act and other federal indian policies. gilman grounds her reasons for writing “the yellow wallpaper” in her personal experience, observing that she was subjected to the rest cure “for some three months” and that she “came so near the border line of utter mental ruin that [she] could see over” (820). like many of her literary realist peers, gilman used the literature of argument in an effort to create social change and sought to secure a safer method of treatment for women and also grant them agency over their own bodies and wellness. in constructing this reading, i asked myself what change might have been precipitated had more authors used their literary skills to effect change for america’s indigenous people. and while one might think of an example or two, such as helen hunt jackson’s non-fiction study a century of dishonor: a sketch of the united states government’s dealings with some of the indian tribes (1881) and her novel ramona (1884), scholars of american literature know that american literary realism focused on gender and class and the urban experience while overlooking federal indian policies that transformed indian life in ways that are still felt today. as this reading suggests, the experience of american indians in the 19th century, particularly in the dawes era, was ripe for the kind of analysis found in stories like “the yellow transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 9 wallpaper” and perhaps offers us a lesson. the absence of american indians from the literature of argument mirrors decades-old concerns with the absence of women of color in the american feminist movement while the relative ease with which this canonical white feminist text can be transformed into a red text offers a model for alliance. what empathy might be gained and new sites of literary resistance found through red readings like the one modeled here? towards the close of her expository essay on the origins of “the yellow wallpaper,” gilman notes that “the best result [of her story] is this. many years later i was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading ‘the yellow wall-paper’” (820). this red reading of gilman’s story cannot influence any of the policymakers long dead who enacted removal or reservation policy, the dawes act, or even the indian reorganization act. but it can make a space—an allotment, if you will—in the american literary canon for literature that echoes the experience of american indians a full 76 years before the american indian renaissance. this red reading was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save scholars of indigenous literature from being driven crazy at the absence of indians in american literary realism, and i hope it works. notes 1 the opening and closing language of this section mirrors gilman’s in “why i wrote “the yellow wall-paper.”” works cited “cherokee nation v. georgia (1831).” documents of united states indian policy, edited by franics paul prucha, 3rd ed., u of nebraska p, 2000, pp. 57-59. dole, william p. “annual report of the commissioner of indian affairs.” documents of united states indian policy, edited by franics paul prucha, 3rd ed., u of nebraska p, 2000, pp. 94-95. gilman, charlotte perkins. “the yellow wall-paper.” the norton anthology of american literature, edited by nina baym, jeanne campbell reesman, and arnold krupat, 7th ed., volume c, norton, 2007, pp. 808-819. ---. “why i wrote ‘the yellow wall-paper.” the norton anthology of american becca gercken “the red wall-paper” 10 literature, edited by nina baym, jeanne campbell reesman, and arnold krupat, seventh edition, volume c, norton, 2007, p. 820. “indian removal act (1830).” documents of united states indian policy, edited by franics paul prucha, 3rd ed., u of nebraska p, 2000, pp. 52-53. “johnson and graham’s lessee v william mcinotsh (1823).” documents of united states indian policy, edited by franics paul prucha, 3rd ed., u of nebraska p, 2000, pp. 35-37. “land loss.” iltf.org. indian land tenure foundation, 2017, iltf.org. accessed 31 march 2017. “the dawes act (1887).” documents of united states indian policy, edited by franics paul prucha, 3rd ed., u of nebraska p, 2000, pp. 170 73). “the struggle for self-determination.” digitalhistory.uh.edu. digital history, digitalhistory.uh.edu. accessed 6 april 2017. microsoft word greymorning.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 142 andrew cowell, alonzo moss, sr. and william j. c’hair eds. arapaho stories, songs, and prayers: a bilingual anthology. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2015. pp. x + 521 pp. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/1891/arapaho%20stories%20%20song s%20%20and%20prayers arapaho stories, songs, and prayers continues the collaborative work of linguist andrew cowell and arapaho scholar alonzo moss along with the added knowledge and language skills of william c’hair. in cowell and moss’ previous work, the arapaho language, i noted that while the utility of that work would be of particular benefit to linguists, the authors could have been a bit more informative with their discussions about the arapaho language in ways that could serve the language interests of non-linguist. arapaho stories, songs and prayers has accomplished this and more, making this an exceptional work that will serve the interests of linguist, students of arapaho and the arapaho people themselves. arapaho stories, songs and prayers, has been divided into several sections that cross cut important aspects of arapaho culture and society through various examples, analysis and discussions of creation stories, lessons derived from nih’oo3oo (trickster) stories, legends and anecdotal stories, speeches, prayers, and songs. cowell, moss and c’hair’s work marks a major contribution to the field of linguistics by virtue of the linguistic richness of these stories, songs and prayers, and because the time period that many of these were collected was prior to the 1900s. a striking feature about these older stories is how the storytellers use the language in ways that is not commonly used by contemporary speakers, a fact noted by alonzo moss that i also marveled at when teaching the narrative of a monolingual southern arapaho speaker who was born in the late 1800s. a notable part of this work is the introduction of each of the creation account stories where the authors discuss the morphological and symbolic relevance of how certain words and phrases are used. one such example is in “the arapaho migration across the missouri river…” (p. 55) when the authors explain how the statement, “wo’uu3ee3ein” could have multiple meanings as well as being used by a speaker to express exasperation and condemnation. such valued discussion is continued in the introduction of the second section, “trickster (nih’oo3oo/white man”) stories.” an example of this can be found when the authors discuss the use of the morpheme “cécih” to denote “soft.” in the story this is expressed as céciheinóón, and occurs when nih’oo3oo hears a drum making a soft drumming sound. in the story of céboh’oowunííhou’oo’(“pemmican floating downstream” (p. 92)), told by cleaver warden in 1899, cowell relates that a particular aspect of this story comes with the use of word forms that communicate insults, derogatory statements, as well as a speaker’s particular view of a situation. in the introduction of “nih’oo3oo pursued by the rolling skull” (p. 102) within this same section, cowell points out the manner in which the verb for rolling has been modified to elaborate on a variety of situations, such as; toyoni’oxuunotii’wo’oo – to smoothly roll along, no’otiiwo’oo – to reach a place by neyooxet greymorning review of arapaho stories, songs, and prayers 143 rolling, and kohkotiiwo’oo – to penetrate something by rolling. all of these nih’oo3oo stories are rife with such elements of arapaho that would have been normally understood when the language was used daily by all arapaho speaking age groups. the authors bringing to light of the subtle meanings of such words will be of great benefit to both scholars of algonquian languages and students seeking to learn arapaho. the third section of the book is devoted to “legends/myths,” many of which have implications for ceremonies. the majority of these are all quite long to tell, covering over 180 pages of text between sixteen stories, and were primarily collected from cleaver warden by alfred kroeber. while all of these stories provide a variety of linguistic diversity, of particular note is “the white dog and the woman” (p. 225), as it is within this story that a variety of old arapaho terms for egotism, pride, and stubbornness, that for the most part have fallen out of use by contemporary speakers, is provided. another story worth noting is “open brain or tangled hair” (p. 241) due to detailed explanations being given that are symbolically linked to culture heroes found-in-the-grass and thunderbird, as well as to sweat lodge and sun dance lodge ceremonies. the section on “animal stories” begins with a familiar tale of a race between “the turtle and the rabbit” (p. 389), which is then followed by a tale of “the skunk and the rabbit” (p. 392). while all of stories within this section are filled with wonderful situational uses of arapaho, i’ll comment on the race between skunk and the rabbit. it is within this story that one finds polysynthetic words that create very comical expression that i also remember jim warden using while telling humorous stories to the delight of elder listeners during sun dance. an example from the story is when skunk quickly stops, turns around, and using a command form tells/insists that rabbit carefully look right in here, cihbébiisnei’oohóótoo. of course nih’oo3oo does and gets sprayed by skunk. this story, as cowell explains, also gives reference to traditional medicinal practices at the end. in the section on “prayers and ceremonial speeches,” of particular note are speeches composed by cleaver warden of a father for a son and daughter’s wedding. i am sure that the inclusion of these speeches will find use by a number of arapaho fathers at the weddings of their sons and daughters, which essentially will honor cleaver warden and the authors for including it in this collection. following the last section of the book that includes songs sung as lullabies, love songs, songs for age-grade society, crow dance, ghost dance, sun dance, hand games, and war is an appendices section. this will be particularly useful for learners of arapaho as it lists common prefixes, suffixes, particles and nouns. the combined efforts of andrew cowell, alonzo moss and william c’hair have produced an exceptional work on the arapaho language. as i progressed through the book i thought how cowell’s gaining the combined guidance and knowledge of moss and c’hair has resulted in the perfect team to discuss and bring to light the complex subtleties of arapaho, and found myself looking ahead in anticipation for their next collaborative work on arapaho. it is thus with extreme sadness that on june 2, 2015 the arapaho transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 144 people mourned the passing of alonzo moss sr. and i felt the sadness that comes with the passing of a person i deeply admired and respected, and whose humor and company i immensely enjoyed. may arapaho stories, songs, and prayers stand as a lasting tribute to a man who spent the better part of his life as a true scholar of arapaho working tirelessly in the interest of keeping arapaho alive. neyooxet greymorning, university of montana microsoft word 115-710-1-ce.doc transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 48 vizenor and beckett: postmodern identifications paul stewart “the danger is in the neatness of identifications.” samuel beckett, “dante… bruno. vico.. joyce” although epigraphs may be amongst the final things an author considers, they are one of the first things that the reader encounters. gerald vizenor’s epigraphs at the beginning of dead voices— as taken from samuel beckett, john neihardt and maurice blanchot—seem to prepare the reader for a confluence of european postmodernism and native american literature in the pages that follow. as such, the epigraphs function to provide a framework through which the novel can be viewed; they may even go so far as to recommend an appropriate framework through which the novel should be viewed. however, how does the epigraph gain signification? what exactly is meant by the signifier “samuel beckett” in this context? where to place beckett’s name has long been a source of contention, with the competing claims of modernism and postmodernism, or irishness as opposed to a general (european) humanity, played out across some sixty years of beckett scholarship. the question that vizenor’s use of beckett as an epigraph for dead voices raises is exactly which beckett is being invoked? in turn, what does vizenor’s relation with this beckett mean for the novel itself? one immediate answer to the question of which beckett is at play may be deduced from the inclusion of maurice blanchot amongst the epigraphs. blanchot was one of the first french critics to recognise the importance of the novels of beckett. in “where now? who now?”, a 1959 essay in the evergreen review, blanchot delineated a beckett that would be influential on initially the french and subsequently the anglophone reception of the works. crucially, the beckett that was delineated was one in whom delineation was precisely at issue, as was the supposed security of the name “beckett.” asking “who is this ‘i’ condemned to speak without respite” in the unnamable, blanchot claimed that “by a reassuring convention, we answer: it is samuel beckett” (143). such reassurance is short-lived for although we “try to recover the paul stewart “vizenor and beckett” 49 security of a name, to situate the book’s ‘content’ at the stable level of a person,” the focus of the novel undermines such attempts as “the man who writes is already no longer samuel beckett but the necessity that has displaced him, dispossessed and dis-seized him, which has made him surrender to whatever is outside himself, which has made him a nameless being” (144). ultimately, the voice of the unnamable is one that inhabits “that neutral region where the self surrenders in order to speak, henceforth subject to words, fallen into the absence of time where it must die an endless death” (148). the beckett that blanchot gestures towards is one in which identity—however one might have characterised it—has been attenuated in the act of writing to such a degree that words take precedence over subjectivity; indeed the subject is only of words and in words or, as the unnamable puts it “i’m in words, made of words” (104). blanchot’s account can be seen as sketching out the case for a postmodern beckett: a sketch that has now been fully rendered, if not entirely accepted. the stress on dispossession, displacement and the dis-seized also foreshadows blanchot’s later contemplation on the prefix “dis” (dé) that runs throughout l’ecriture du désastre and which provides the final epigraph of dead voices. the writing of the disaster recognises the “horror—and the honor—of the name, which always threatens to become a title” (7). (“title” is the translation given of sur-nom, which blanchot delicately balances with sur-vie, survival.) naming may be attractive given a certain nostalgia for certainty, but it is ultimately a containment against which a literature of fragmentation must be deployed. yet, in its oppositional structure, fragmentation may itself inadvertently provide a means of coherence. hence, blanchot warns: “the fragmentary promises not instability (the opposition of fixity) so much as disarray, confusion.” the fragmentary, which blanchot recognised in beckett, is always shadowed by the possibility of giving credit to its opposite; fixity. even the dispossessed, displaced and dis-seized can fade into possession, placement and the seized. the beckett-blanchot axis of the epigraphs suggests that it is in a certain postmodern tradition that dead voices should be situated. given beckett’s and blanchot’s “horror” at the name, it is ironic that their names are given such a position of authority within vizenor’s work, but this might only be to yet further recognise the complexity of maintaining a discourse free of a restrictive subjectification. this is, of course, very much in keeping with vizenor’s contention that “postmodernism liberates imagination” and that the “trickster is postmodern” (narrative transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 50 chance 9). however, one wonders if the postmodern is a single entity in and of itself, or a multiple site in which vizenor and beckett engage, or fail to do so. the site of that engagement is marked by the traces of beckett’s the unnamable throughout dead voices. the most obvious relation between the two novels that the epigraph commends is the fragmentary nature of the stories that bagese tells and through which she embodies a series of tribal personas: bears, fleas, crows, beavers and so on. the unnamable’s central consciousness—who necessarily remains unnamed—momentarily adopts, or is forced to adopt, a series of “avatars” or “vice-existers” whose stories are then related. at times he appears to be the creator of these “puppets” and at other times the victim of their narrative attempts to say him into existence. the novel moves between first and third person narration and the question of appropriate pronouns is as crucial to the text as it is in dead voices, as shall be seen. hence, the unnamable “is” basil and then the decrepit tramp mahood, who is later found limbless and stuck in a jar outside a chop-house near the shambles, and then the more enigmatic worm whose precise nature is radically at issue. we are told that previous avatars include major figures from beckett’s prior fiction, including molloy, malone, and murphy from the novels molloy, malone dies and murphy respectively. initially, this relation between the unnamable and his viceexisters bears some similarity to bagese’s identities within the wanaki game. just as the unnamable is mahood “for the space of an instant” (27), so bagese “is” bear or praying mantis for the duration of their tales. when the wanaki game is described, the question of agency and responsibility seems untroubled: the player rises at dawn, turns one of the seven cards, meditates on the picture, and imagines he has become the animal, bird, or insect on the card of the day. then stories are told about the picture and the plural pronoun we is used to be sure nature is not separated from humans in the wanaki game. (dead voices 28) to enter into the game is a willing act of the imagination in which one adopts the identity of the animal on the card, in an attempt, as kimberly m. blaeser has put it, to make a “reconnection with life through imaginative story” (192). the self is effectively suspended as the player adopts a position of mediation, reinforced by the choice of “we” as the governing pronoun which plays across strict boundaries of discrete identities. as such, there is a momentary dislocation of identity in the hope of a shared, beneficial experience. paul stewart “vizenor and beckett” 51 when one considers the problems the unnamable has with pronouns, a very different tone and set of concerns emerge. at one stage, he abandons the first person as being “too farcical” (69), yet is unable to keep his resolve, realising that “...it’s the fault of the pronouns, there is no name for me, no pronoun for me, all the trouble comes from that, that, it’s a kind of pronoun too, it isn’t that either, i’m not that either, let us leave all that, forget about all that” (123). rather than an acceptance of a voluntary “we,” the unnamable rails against the inability of language to coalesce with his condition (one hesitates to say “identity”) coupled with the inevitability of language asserting some form of identity, even if it is merely a “that.” indeed, his relation with his avatars is at times one in which he is coerced into accepting that he is they; a form of enforced “we” along the path of becoming an indissoluble “i.” in this sense the “we” of the unnamable would also be a mediating position, but the effects of this mediation are repeatedly rejected throughout the novel. so, the unnamable claims that all “these murphys, molloys and malones do not fool me. they have made me waste my time, suffer for nothing, speak of them when, in order to stop speaking, i should have spoken of me and me alone” (14). in order to be brought into existence, the unnamable must adhere to one of the stories of his delegates, accepting their words as his, or “pronouncing my own words, words pronouncing me alive, since that’s how they want me to be” (48). the stories of the delegates adopt a principle of degeneration to tempt the unnamable into adherence, but he maintains his indifference, claiming that they “could clap an artificial anus in the hollow of my hand and still i wouldn’t be there, alive with their life, not far short of man, just barely a man, sufficiently a man to have hopes one day of being one, my avatars behind me” (27). although the unnamable claims from the outset to be alone, the discourse quickly posits not only the avatars who foist their stories and identities upon him, but also a mysterious “they” who are intent on bringing the unnamable into being, usually with suffering functioning as a guarantee of existence. the “[t]hey say they, speaking of them, to make me think it is i whom am speaking” (86). this dialectical approach is one through which the unnamable is coerced into taking up a subjective position—indeed, to become a subject as such—when he desires nothing more than to stop speaking: “ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which prevents you from being nothing…” (87). rather than the beneficial, communal “we” of dead voices, beckett’s unnamable is harried by a (possibly transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 52 imaginary) “they” intent on coercing the voice of the protagonist into an identity which can then be assimilated into a “we.” however, dead voices is also aware of the coercive possibilities of exterior voices. in opposition to the wanaki “we” as employed in the “war with loneliness and with human separations from the natural world” (29), bagese fears the “they” in the form of “the dead voices of civilization” (16). throughout the novel, these dead voices threaten the immediacy of the wanaki game’s series of identities and the plural pronoun they promote. the “wordies” who wield these dead voices are inimical to the living voices of survivance and threaten to fracture the “we” of the game. for blaeser, the “[t]rickster’s identity is itself a subversion of the western mode of classification, resisting singularity…” (138), and, as such, a singular identity is to be resisted as being amenable to appropriation. so, bagese as bear claims that “wordies held our name in isolation, even caged us on the page. we are bears not cold separations in the wilderness of dead voices” (31). to seize the name is to reify the fluidity of identity into one readily definable subjectivity that can then be studied, manipulated or (possibly most dangerously) dismissed. this claiming of the name is, of course, a question of power, as the metaphor of the hunter and prey makes clear: “we remember the world with stories that wordies would rush to discover, hunt, and capture in a name. the hunters pretend to own the world with names” (42). in narrative chance, vizenor identifies these dead voices as those of the disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences: “the narrow teleologies deduced from social science monologues and the ideologies that arise from structuralism have reduced tribal literatures to an ‘objective’ collection of consumable cultural artifacts” (5-6). the teleological aspect is crucial here. the drive towards an end-point from which something can be judged effectively curtails any form of continuance. hence, in “bears,” the narrator’s “mouth moves with dead voices. how can he be so young and so dead? […] how can he go on? he has no stories to remember because he asks us about our stories” (dead voices 31). nicknamed the laundry boy because of the dead voice that is modern fastidious cleanliness, the narrator is unable to go on as his own stories have been subjected to the deadening effect of “civilized” voices and his querying of the wanaki stories suggests that the same deadening effect threatens their survival. in the matter of the dead voices, two related aspects of beckett’s work can be discerned: remaining unnameable as a form of resistance to subjectification, and the question of paul stewart “vizenor and beckett” 53 continuance. the first aspect unearths a facet of beckett that has often been downplayed: the political dimension. beckett’s interventions in public political discourse were few and far between, and rarely unambiguous. a concern for the direction of travel of the irish free state in the 1930s led to some essays—such as “censorship in the saorstat” which condemned the wideranging censorship law of the free state—that combined a hope for literary freedom with wider social, religious and political freedoms. when the left review canvassed writers and artists for their opinions regarding the spanish civil war in 1937, beckett submitted only “¡uptherepublic!” [sic]; quite a departure from the earnest submissions of ford madox ford, aldous huxley and w.h. auden and others in favour of the republican government. after fighting with the resistance in word war ii, beckett again seems to have made few overt political statements, although his private abhorrence of apartheid and other oppressive regimes has been attested to widely. the exception which one might say proves the rule would be the dedication of catastrophe to the then dissident author, vaclav havel. in part because of the apparent lack of any obvious engagement with the wider political world, until the late 1990s it was almost a critical consensus that beckett was an apolitical writer. indeed, peter boxall has argued that up until that point beckett’s cultural capital in the west has been amassed on the back of his apoliticism. his value as a writer is directly related to his widely perceived ability to give aesthetic expression to a condition that precedes and underlies being in the socio-political world. […] that he seems to offer a writing which can reach the limits of nonspecificity, which can speak so generally about the preor trans-cultural truths of being, has been read as confirmation that art can do something that isn’t political, that transcends the political, that puts the political in its place. (208) the apolitical view of beckett could not be further removed from the deeply politically engaged work of vizenor, in, for example, his framing of the constitution for the white earth nation. the activist vizenor would appear to be some distance from the aesthetic beckett. however, one should not forget that before such activism, vizenor was often criticised for not being sufficiently engaged in practical political struggles. craig womack, for example, argues that practical political intervention might be marred by the style of writing adopted by figures such as vizenor. womack questions the “relevance of an inaccessible prose style toward intervening in transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 54 the real world” in which injustices towards native peoples are rife. for womack, the fluidity of identity within a book such as dead voices fails to realise that “native literature […] is a part of sovereignty” (red on red 72). as such, womack argues that postmodern style is a barrier to political action in the name of sovereignty. however, one could counter that for vizenor and beckett, style is precisely political, as david carlson has argued for vizenor: “debates about whether political concerns should trump aesthetic ones in critical assessments of vizenor are, in fact, misguided; his aesthetic is […] deeply political” (14). indeed, it is in the frame of style and the political that beckett’s importance for vizenor might ultimately lie, and it is a frame bound together with a notion of resistance. michel foucault, writing in the foreword for deleuze and guattari’s anti-oedipus, in which beckett is frequently referenced, argues that “the strategic adversary is fascism. […] and not only historical fascism, the fascism of hitler and mussolini […] but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (xiii). in order to counter such a fascistic love of power, beckett—whose work is repeatedly marked by impotence and failure—struggled with the basis of such a love; the process of subjectification itself. terry eagleton has argued that “in a world after fascism, self-affirmation has too sinister an infinity with mass murder. it is as though all action after auschwitz is garbage. better to suffer the pains of self-dispossession than court the perils of dominion” (xxiv), and that, for beckett, “the word ‘perhaps’ is an anti-fascist weapon” (xxv). such a fear of becoming a subject can be seen in the unnamable’s refusal to be seized by any of the narratives and identities that are told of him, thus allowing him to retain his unnameable status as something proper to him but which cannot be defined as a subject. this refusal to enter into the name and thereby assume an identity is maintained throughout the novel, leaving the unnamable still “on the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be i, it will be the silence, where i am…” (134). such a refusal is double in nature: firstly, the unnamable will not be subjected to violent appropriation and, secondly, he will not be responsible for the violent appropriation of another. “all these murphys, molloys and malones” are imagined as a distraction from supposedly speaking of the self, yet it is clear that the unnamable is also responsible for the suffering of his avatars in his capacity as their creator: “i thought i was right in enlisting these sufferers of my paul stewart “vizenor and beckett” 55 pains. i was wrong. they never suffered my pains, their pains are nothing, compared to mine, a mere tittle of mine, the tittle i thought i could put from me, in order to witness it” (14). so the unnamable foists suffering on to his characters in order to better assess that suffering, yet that process of witnessing indicates a return of the suffering to its source, as if getting to know the suffering of the avatars will lead the unnamable to a better understanding of his own condition. crucially, the unnamable denies this return and throughout the novel the lines of relation are fraught and often highly ambiguous, if not improbable. rather than accepting identification based on a shared suffering, no matter to what degree, the unnamable denies such an identification through an assertion of difference. this refusal to give assent might, as anthony uhlmann has argued, be “one way in which […] processes of subjection and enslavement might be resisted” (66). similar aspects to beckett’s ethical and political aesthetic can be heard to echo throughout vizenor’s novel and can be seen to coalesce in a single paragraph in the chapter entitled “voices”: there are more bears at the tables in the town than there are on the reservation. our animals and stories have been hunted down to the last sanctuaries in the cities. the choice is between the chance of tricksters and the drone of cultural pride on reservations. the tribes were invented by these word demons who hunted our animals and buried our voices. the tribes are dead voices. we must go on, but there is nothing to be done. (136) the final sentence is an amalgam of beckett texts: “we must go on” echoes the “i can’t go on, i’ll go on” which closes the unnamable, whilst “nothing to be done” is a refrain from waiting for godot, initially made in reference to estragon’s ill-fitting boots, but also later used in reference to vladimir’s hat. less obvious is the passage’s beckettian fear of the reification of subjectivity. in keeping with vizenor’s comment that “social science monologues and the ideologies that arise from structuralism have reduced tribal literatures to an ‘objective’ collection of consumable cultural artifacts” (narrative chance 5-6), the tribe itself is here seen as an imposition of restrictive subjectivity. the tribe is circumscribed by some supposed essence— hence vizenor’s claim that this arises from structuralism—which, whilst recognising the existence of the tribe as such, thereby condemns the tribe to a bound, locatable identity. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 56 the question of location is an important one. writing against a form of “blurry and limp hybridity” (205) in theoretical readings of tricksters figures, daniel morley johnson has highlighted the emphasis of place in vizenor’s use of trickster stories, arguing that vizenor repeatedly allies trickster hermeneutics to “the tribal-national, the situated-ness of indigenous knowledges in nations, homelands—in anishinaabe people” (207). in contrast, blaeser has emphasised the key to vizenor’s trickster consciousness as “vitality, adaptability, continuance” (143), and “the creation of the place they will call home” (148 my emphasis), suggesting that location is achieved through the stories rather than a fixed resource from which the stories arise. in dead voices, rather than identifying the tribe with a specific, supposedly ancestral space, the stories of the novel are dislocated: they are both fragmentary and displaced into the modern city which one naively might have thought would have been inimical to the continuance of the tribal stories themselves. however, the alternative of a preservation of the stories within the reservation might only signal the decline of those stories into the dead cultural artefacts that vizenor deplores. by displacing the stories onto the city, the deadening links to a culturally restricted locale are broken. a similar sense of displacement and dislocation also permeates the unnamable. in order for identity to take hold of the unnamable, he must be situated. he speculates that “since to me too i must attribute a beginning, if i could relate it to that of my abode” his beginning, and therefore identity, would be more assured (6). one notices that origin is as much a question of location as it is of chronology. similarly, location is given due prominence in the series of questions which open the novel: “where now? who now? when now?” (1). “who” cannot be answered unless the “where” is identifiable. unsurprisingly, then, the specifics of place within the novel seem contradictory as it combines recognisably irish landscapes linked to molloy with specific indicators of a french setting, such as the citing of the rue de brancion in the midst of mahood’s tale. just as the identity of the unnamable cannot be seized, so the question of location is necessarily unanswerable as one is a facet of the other. this relation between beckett and vizenor on the issue of location and identity suggests vizenor intuited that what many regard as beckett’s almost exemplary post-modernity needs to be viewed within a post-colonial context. to recognize beckett’s irishness—and in particular his protestant minority status within an emerging catholic inflected free state—is not to limit him to a geographical, ethnic and social identity, but to assess how those limits informed his repeated paul stewart “vizenor and beckett” 57 attempts to undo such impositions in his works. writing of murphy, which sees the eponymous irish protagonist undergoing voluntary exile in london as beckett himself had done during 1934 and 1935, patrick bixby has argued that: the signs of a nomadic, unsettled, and decentred subjectivity, murphy’s perambulations transform his life story into an extended narrative of displacement that belies any grounded notions of personal or national identity and denies any passive victimization by the structures of socio-political power. (104) beckett, who was in london to pursue a course of psychoanalysis under wilfred bion, appears to have experienced the very imposition of identity that his texts would later scrupulously undo. james knowlson reports that beckett “hated london and was infuriated by the patronising english habit of addressing him in the pubs and shops as ‘pat’ or ‘paddy’” (186). in the letters, he laments the countryside around dublin—although not dublin itself—and a week-long sense of “relief and vitality” on returning to london in 1935 is rapidly replaced: “now i feel beyond description worthless, sordid and incapacitated” (245). beckett’s escape from dublin into an irish-diaspora boarding house does not so much mean an escape from irishness as a reaffirmation of irishness; a reaffirmation which might be all the more irksome because it is imposed from the outside. all this is reflected in murphy, not least when murphy applies for a job as a chandler’s smart youth. the cockney chandlers comment that “’e don’t look rightly human to me […] not rightly” (50). one should hesitate here to compare the experiences of an individual to those of a collective, abstract notion such as native peoples. however, such a hesitancy indicates the complex of problems associated with the imposition of a communal identity upon the individual which does not account for the particularities of that individual. moreover, beckett’s experience of classification as a stereotypical irish “paddy” is the experience of being classified according to an abstract notion of national identity that one does not recognise oneself. certainly, the particularities of irish and native peoples’ experiences of imposed identity vary widely (both in comparison to each other and within the groups designated as irish or native peoples), yet the underlying structures of such an imposition remain to be read in similar terms in beckett’s and vizenor’s works and not least in the strategies to undo or avoid restrictive subjectivities in the unnamable and dead voices. it is perhaps in this sense that we should treat vizenor’s claim that transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 58 he is “a hybrid document, unnamable on delivery” (native liberty 15); a claim that already puts beckett’s sense of the unnamable within a post-colonial frame of reference. if vizenor’s and beckett’s forms of resistance function to escape the imposition of coercive, subjectifying forces, one wonders why vizenor claims in the very same paragraph that there is “nothing to be done”. if resistance is at stake, surely something must be done? of course, one could define “nothing” as a positive, as a form of radical passivity towards those forces ranged against one. alternatively, and more in keeping with the strategies of resisting restrictive subjectivities, one might ask from whose perspective nothing is indeed nothing? the mantis story, which includes a wanaki-camouflaged bid for freedom through revolt, would seem to suggest that some form of physical resistance is necessary, yet the success of that revolt depends on the mantises being nothing in the mind of the female scientist they rebel against. using the wanaki to access the flea and then the bear, the mantises succeed in being unidentifiable to the rational categorisations upon which the scientist depends: “she was so rational that if we were not wordies, or could not be seen in printed words, then we were not there at the end of the world” (86). from a rational perspective, the mantis-as-flea-as-bear is so multiple as to be no one thing, and so not amenable to appreciation and appropriation. on the level of the tribe, the drive towards categorisation entailed a further discipline of the dead voices; history. hence, the rational anthropological history of the tribe that provides the mark of definition and makes the multiple into a single thing is to be feared. two pasts are therefore played against each other in the novel; one of “history” and the other an alternative form of living continuance of stories as voices in the blood. “the past, not death, is our silence, because the past is the end of the war, the deception of peace. there is no past in the mirror, no past in stones or stories” (138-9). of course, for a peace to be signed the warring parties must be indentified: one makes a treaty with a tribe or nation, not a multiple, complex identity which, quite literally, cannot be brought to book. to do nothing, in this sense, is to not do something which is definable by the very dominant discourses and ideologies that are ranged against one. even accepting that we are the one against which such discourses are ranged is to accept a dangerous, identifiable position. with reference to a radical kenosis or “self-emptying” within his works, eagleton argues that, for beckett, one cannot react against the crimes of stalinism and fascism “with vigorous actions of paul stewart “vizenor and beckett” 59 your own […], since to do so would be to remain within the same noxious frame of reference, make a move within the same lethal game” (xxiv). as with vizenor’s form of resistance, there is a refusal of the dubious solace of adopting an oppositional position to what is being fought; instead, a strategic evasion of the terms of the conflict as such is adopted. in a similar fashion to vizenor’s mistrust of the languages of the social sciences, so the unnamable is ultimately not amenable to the application of reason and the rhetoric of reasonableness. if he were to adopt an identity as “they” wish, it would be to enter into the world on their terms and perhaps for their benefit: “ah a nice state they have me in, but still i’m not their creature, not quite, not yet. to testify to them, until i die, […] that’s what they’ve sworn they’ll bring me too” (37). to become something on these terms would merely bolster the power of “they” and so the unnamable trusts that “my inability to absorb, my genius for forgetting, [will be] more than they reckoned with. dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you i’ll be myself, in the end. nothing will remain of the lies they have glutted me with. and i’ll be myself at last” (37). this evasion is given its most vivid, and one might argue most poststructuralist, form when the unnamable “is” a tympanum: “i’m neither one side nor the other, i’m in the middle, i’m the partition, i’ve two surfaces and no thickness, […] on one hand the mind, on the other the world, i don’t belong to either” (100). this shared form of resistance between beckett and vizenor is, however, not as neat an identification as one might wish. the corollary of resistance is some form of continuance and as the unnamable and dead voices move towards their ends the imperative to “go on” becomes evermore in evidence. there is, though, a difference in pronouns: “i can’t go on, i’ll go on” has become “we must go on.” as has been repeatedly shown, the “we” of vizenor is a crucial aspect in the resistance to modes of subjectification. it is the “we” within the wanaki game that acts as a form of mediation to the natural world and to the voices in the blood that have been threatened by the dead voices. it is a refusal to be captured by a singularity. it is, however, also a commitment to a form of the communal, to a social entity, even if that entity is not to be identified as a tribe, or a nation. “i can’t go on” is very different. with the first person, two possible alternatives emerge: to enter into a social relation (to become a “we”) or to utterly sever any such relation and to “be” a not i. the same alternatives do not apply to vizenor; already “we,” the alternatives are to become a “they”—the very thing being resisted—or the disappearance of the communal, for the social relation itself to collapse. for the unnamable this transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 60 is a threshold of absolute aporia: in order to be a non-subject he must adopt an imposed subjectivity for an instant in order for it to be then negated; but even that negation would be a recognition of its opposite. as such, he is condemned within the space between the i and the noti. he may reject the game of identity, but there is no alternative to that game. ultimately, the unnamable is left in a neither/nor space, unable to go on and yet with no other possibility but to do so. this may be beckett’s final ethical sense of what is possible as resistance: only by an utter denial of affirmation can one slip the strictures of restrictive subjectivity. that this entails a sacrifice of the social may be the regrettable price beckett is willing to pay. in contrast, vizenor’s imperative to “go on” is by definition already social as a call to the “we.” thus, for vizenor, the “postindian warriors create a new tribal presence in stories (manifest manners 12, my emphasis) and “trickster consciousness […] creates the possibility for discourse that’s communal and comic” (qtd. in blaeser 162, my emphasis). here might be the difference, then, in beckett’s and vizenor’s postmodernity. both deploy a literature of dislocation and fragmentation as tools to avoid the restrictive imposition of subjectivity but, for vizenor, this is part of a process, whereas, for beckett, this is a point of aporetic impasse. against the “simulations [that] are the absence of the tribal real” vizenor deploys a strategic literature of fragmentation out of which can arise “new stories of survivance over dominance” (manifest manners 4), in what blaeser has characterised as a deconstructive act with a view to a subsequent reconstruction (145). the unnamable, in contrast, is left before the threshold of his story that is not passed, and reconstruction is left in abeyance, quite possibly because any reconstruction would merely replicate the structures by which a restrictive identity had previously been imposed. beckett’s ethical response is, then, one of withdrawal and denial; vizenor’s one of continued creativity with a view to an ultimately communal affirmation. maintaining a sense of the social whilst undoing forms of restrictive identity is perhaps vizenor’s most difficult but most important task. beckett’s work suggests that, for him at least, such a task might not be possible. these differences of an asocial beckett and a social vizenor might account in the end for the very different tones of dead voices and the unnamable. for vizenor, alongside a serious ethical commitment to social continuance, there is a certain joy to be had in the free-play of fluid identities. the cards of the wanaki are, amongst other things, a game to be freely played within paul stewart “vizenor and beckett” 61 an almost ritualistic set of rules; not as in beckett, a game one is condemned to play and for which the rules are indecipherable. the breathless frenzy of the close of the unnamable is one of desperation that the threshold to the story will not be crossed and the unnamable will not stop talking and fall into the silence he never stops desiring. in contrast, silence is feared in dead voices, for “our death would be silence” (137). bagese may be harassed by the dead voices within modernity, but the game remains to be played as a possible means of joyously surviving those deadening influences and preserving the “stories in the blood” against silence (47). in vizenor’s postmodernity jouissance is a possibility; in beckett’s it is just a bad joke told too often. works cited beckett, samuel. “censorship in the saorstat.” disjecta. ed. ruby cohn. london: calder, 1983. 84-9. print. ----. “dante… bruno. vico.. joyce”. disjecta. ed. ruby cohn. london: calder, 1983. 19-34. print. ----. the letters of samuel beckett, vol.1, 1929-1940. eds. martha dow fehsenfeld and lois more overbeck. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2009. print. ----. murphy. london: faber and faber, 2009. print. ----. the unnamable. london: faber and faber, 2010. print. ----. waiting for godot. the complete dramatic works. london: faber and faber, 1990. 7-88. print. bixby, patrick. samuel beckett and the postcolonial novel. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2009. print. blaeser, kimberly m. gerald vizenor: writing in the oral tradition. norman and london: oklahoma university press, 1996. print. blanchot, maurice. “when now? who now?” on beckett: essays and criticism. ed. s. e. gontarski. new york: grove press, 1986. 141-149. print. ----. the writing of the disaster. trans. ann smock. lincoln, n.e.: university of nebraska press, 1995. print. transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015) 62 boxall, peter. “introduction to beckett/aesthetics/politics.” samuel beckett today / aujourd’hui beckett and religion; beckett/aesthetics/politics. eds. marius bunning, matthijs and onnon kosters. amsterdam: rodopi, 2000. 207-214. print. carlson, david j. “trickster hermeneutics and the postindian reader: gerald vizenor’s constitutional praxis.” studies in american indian literatures, 23.4 (winter 2011): 1345. print. cunard, nancy, et.al (eds) authors take sides on the spanish civil war. london: left review, 1937. print. deleuze, gilles and felix guattari. anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. trans. robert hurley, mark seem, and helen r. lane. london: athlone press, 1984. print. eagleton, terry. “foreword: nothing new.” beckett and nothing: trying to understand beckett. ed. daniela caselli. manchester: manchester university press, 2010. xiv-xxvi. print. johnson, daniel morley. “(re)nationalizing naanabozho: anishinaabe sacred stories, nationalist literary criticism, and scholarly responsibility.” troubling tricksters: revisioning critical conversations. eds. deanna reder and linda m. morra. waterloo, ontario: wilfred laurier university press, 2010. 199-220. print. knowlson, james. damned to fame: the life of samuel beckett. london: bloomsbury, 1996. print. uhlmann, anthony. “withholding assent: beckett in the light of stoic ethics.” beckett and ethics. ed. russell smith. london: continuum, 2008. 57-67. print. vizenor, gerald. dead voices. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1992. print. ----. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln n.e. and london: university of nebraska press, 1999. print. ----. narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american literatures. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1993. print. ----. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln, n.e.: university of nebraska press, 2009. print. womack, craig s. red on red: native american literary separatism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1999. print. microsoft word contributors 2_1_2.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   189   contributor biographies andrea carlson andrea carlson (born 1979) is a chicago, illinois based painter. her career took root in minneapolis, minnesota where she earned a ba from the university of minnesota in 2003 in art and american indian studies and an mfa in visual studies from the minneapolis college of art and design in 2005. her work has exhibited widely while gaining support through several fellowships including the minnesota state arts board (2006, 2014) and mcknight/mcad foundation fellowship (2007–08). her work also belongs to prominent collections, including those of the weisman art museum, the british museum, and the national gallery of canada. pallas erdrich says: “i've spent most of my life learning how to do stuff. after attending hampshire college for half a minute, i went to london for film school and then skipped on to los angeles where i jumped straight headfirst into the moving pictures industry.” for more see her website at http://pallaserdrich.com/about/ john gamber, an assistant professor at columbia university, received his ph.d. from u.c. santa barbara. his research interests include ecocriticism, american indian, asian american, african american, and chicana/o and latina/o literatures. his book positive pollutions and cultural toxins (university of nebraska press, 2012), examines the role of waste and contamination in late-twentieth century u.s. ethnic and indigenous literatures. he has co-edited transnational asian american literature: sites and transits, and published articles about the works of gerald vizenor, louise erdrich, sherman alexie, and craig womack, among others in several edited collections and journals including pmla, and melus. diane glancy is professor emerita at macalester college. her 2014-15 books are fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education, creative nonfiction, university of nebraska press, report to the department of the interior, poetry, university of new mexico press, and three novels, one of us, uprising of goats, and ironic witness, wipf & stock. stephen graham jones is the author of 16 novels and 6 collections so far. most recent is mongrels (william morrow). stephen lives in boulder, colorado. find him @sgj72. emily johnson is an american dancer, writer, and choreographer of yup'ik descent. she is based in minneapolis, where she is artistic director of her performance company, emily johnson/catalyst. see more about emily’s work on her website http://www.catalystdance.com/ terese marie mailhot is from seabird island band. her work has been featured in carve, the offing, and yellow medicine review. she studies at the institute of american indian arts and writes for indian country today. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   190   deborah root is a cultural critic and writer whose arts writing has focused on the relationship between visual art and cultural politics. her catalog work includes substantive essays on sarindar dhaliwal, jorge lozano, ximena cuevas and annie pootoogook, and her arts writing has appeared in art papers, prefix photo, public, c magazine, the contact photography and bienal de sao paulo catalogs, other canadian and international journals, and most recently in arc magazine of contemporary caribbean visual art. she is the author of cannibal culture: art, appropriation and the commodification of difference, and has taught visual art and cultural politics at ontario college of art and design, university of guelph, and bilkent university in turkey. allan j. ryan is an associate professor of canadian studies and art history, and holds the new sun chair in aboriginal art and culture at carleton university in ottawa, canada. since 2002 he has hosted an annual interdisciplinary conference on indigenous arts at carleton. among his publications is the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art (1999), recipient of an american book award for its contribution to multicultural literature. he was also co-curator, with zena pearlstone, of the exhibition about face: selfportraits by native american, first nations and inuit artists, at the wheelwright museum of the american indian in santa fe, new mexico, in 2005-2006. more recently he has lectured on indigenous art and cinema in china and brazil, and is currently writing an online book on ojibway artist carl beam for the art canada institute. other interests include the foregrounding of indigenous pedagogical principles in the classroom and rollerblading alongside ottawa’s rideau canal. in former lives he worked as a graphic designer, television satirist, singer-songwriter and recording artist. in 2015 he received the inaugural alumni of influence award for distinguished educator from the ontario college of art and design university, his first alma mater, and in 2016 he was honored with the distinguished alumni award for career achievement from brandon university, his second alma mater. miriam c. brown spiers is a lecturer in the writing program at the university of california merced. her work has appeared in studies in american indian literatures and studies in comics, and her current project examines the intersections of indigenous knowledge and science fiction theory in native science fiction. tammy wahpeconiah is an enrolled member of the sac & fox nation of missouri and an associate professor of english teaching courses in american, american indian and ethnic american literatures at appalachian state university. she earned her b.a. from the university of miami and her m.a. from michigan state university. she received her ph.d. in american literature from michigan state university. her research interests include early american indian writers and contemporary american indian literature. she has published a book entitled this once savage heart of mine: rhetorical strategies of survival in early native american writing focusing on the writings of joseph johnson and hendrick aupaumut, as well as articles on sherman alexie and william s. penn. an enrolled member of the sicangu lakota oyate (rosebud sioux tribe), and associate professor at the metropolitan state university of denver, david heska wanbli weiden specializes in tribal law and courts, comparative justice systems, the united transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   191   states supreme court, and american indian literature. he teaches courses in native american studies, american politics, and law and courts. a native of denver, weiden received his undergraduate degree from the university of colorado at boulder, his law degree from the university of denver college of law, and his ph.d. from the university of texas at austin. he is a licensed attorney and is the co-author of sorcerers’ apprentices: 100 years of law clerks at the united states supreme court (nyu press, 2007). he has also published articles and presented papers on the supreme court of canada, high court of australia, and the rosebud sioux tribe supreme court. he is currently conducting research on the first empirical, comparative study of american indian court systems in the field of political science. weiden also studies creative writing and native literature at the institute of american indian arts under the supervision of the novelist sherman alexie. his ongoing research project in this area is entitled, “red noir: examining the possibilities for indigenous crime literature.” rhiana yazzie is a navajo playwright, producer, director, artistic director, and actor based in minnesota. she is a 2016/2017 playwrights’ center mcknight fellow, a twotime playwrights’ center jerome fellow (2010/11 and 2006/07) and was a playwrights’ center core member for three years. she was a playwright in residence at the william inge center in independence, kansas, fall 2014 and is currently working on a play commission for the inge center. other recent projects include a joint commission from the oregon shakespeare festival and the public theater to write a play for american revolutions: the united states history cycle and a new book of short stories. microsoft word fletcher.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   154   david j. carlson. imagining sovereignty: self-determination in american indian law and literature. norman, university of oklahoma press, 2016. 242pp. sovereignty is an odd, even foreign notion in a free democracy. david carlson’s imagining sovereignty concludes with a call for direct action to combat nations like the united states and canada that continue to assert sovereignty over indigenous peoples, perhaps, dr. carlson suggests, along the lines of idle no more. perhaps the standing rock sioux tribe’s stand against the dakota access pipeline is an answer to his call. these are actions against a sovereign, represented by the united states army corps of engineers, acts of self-determination. the “sovereign” traditionally is a single person, say a queen or an emperor, or perhaps an allpowerful religious figure. sovereignty is also an ancient, terrifying notion. witness hobbes’ monstrous leviathan. the sovereign, almost by definition, can do no wrong. the sovereign may not always be correct, but is always too powerful or too perfect to be wrong. self-determination, in contrast, is normal. it is the american way of individualism, and has been from the moment the declaration of independence reached the colonial streets. self-determination is the theoretical counterpoint to the sovereign, with the diffuse masses overriding their master and proclaiming, “don’t tread on me.” the people are the sovereign, and government is stunted by checks and balances and separation of powers. and yet americans embrace the notion of sovereignty in order to claim strength as a unified whole. united, americans stand. divided, americans fall. instead of the weak, flailing united states government under the articles of confederation, we have the towering supremacy of the federal government under the constitution. this sovereign prevailed in a horrifically bloody civil war and in multiple world wars. this sovereign imposed human rights norms in the deep south from on high, presides over the entire world as an economic and military superpower, and administers the world’s only multi-trillion dollar national budget. even the most radical libertarians chant “usa! usa! usa!” when the national women’s soccer team takes the pitch in the world cup. that modern american indian nations claim sovereignty and self-determination in the same breath in this political atmosphere should be unsurprising given the benefits of asserting both. but some americans shake their heads and wonder how such a weak and dependent group of lower class people could be so audacious as to claim sovereignty, or to effectively govern themselves or anyone else. similarly, indian people who are citizens or members of the tribes that assert sovereignty and claim the power of self-determination sometimes are not convinced, either. historically, tribal leaders claiming sovereignty more often than not found themselves talking to an empty longhouse, or worse, dead. consider hole-in-the-day (the younger), a minnesota ojibwe leader assassinated by his own people. modern tribal leaders spending too much time testifying before the senate committee on indian affairs on tribal self-determination or giving speeches for the national congress of american indians in conferences at tribal resorts are routinely voted out of office. david carlson’s work dives into this contradiction between tribal sovereignty and selfdetermination, highlighting how assertions of illiberal tribal sovereignty—in political, legal, and literary domains—do important work toward establishing tribal self-determination within the matthew l.m. fletcher review of imagining sovereignties   155   polity governed by the american leviathan. mid-twentieth century indian people divided their attention between saving tribal governments or asserting individual civil rights. d'arcy mcnickle’s professional and literary career, as described by dr. carlson, is a bridge between the bad old days of indian dependency on the federal government and the rise of tribal sovereignty talk (and, later, action) by tribal leaders. dr. carlson’s historical tale of how sovereignty came to be the touchstone of american indian activism in the twentieth century leans heavily on mcnickle. the federal government again and again targeted indian tribes for termination, and drew multitudes of indian people away from indian country to the cities through the indian adoption project and the urban relocation project. mcnickle’s work proved that indian people retained their tribalism in the face of these american efforts to destroy it. mcnickle’s work laid a framework for contemporaries like vine deloria, jr. to advocate tribal nationalism in the framework of indian individualism. with congress finally getting something right in indian law and policy by enacting the first of several self-determination acts in the 1970s, there finally arose a focus on indian tribes instead of individual indian activism. in some ways, the cultural indians gave way to the political indians, and the bureau of indian affairs hired all the anthropologists to advise the federal government how to make policy. indians started going to college in greater numbers, and many returned home to contribute to a tribal nationhood. in larger numbers every generation, indian people have returned to the tribal government and to their home territories, hedging their bets in favor of sovereignty. in short, indian people have embraced self-determination through the sovereign rather than self-determination through individualism—no different than the founders of the american republic. there are significant advantages to embracing a tribal sovereignty. dr. carlson’s historical road trip through the rise of tribal governments tells part of the story. powerful people listened when a tribal leader audaciously declared tribal sovereignty. invocation of sovereignty is invocation of power. tribal sovereigns defend their people, providing for child welfare, health care, law enforcement. tribal sovereigns fight legal and political wars in federal courthouses and in the senate committee on indian affairs. tribal sovereigns employ thousands of non-indians to clean rooms at tribal resorts and test water samples for tribal conservation departments. all of this, of course, is accomplished through self-determination. with some tribal nations, the individualistic character of self-determination has eroded. sovereignty arose in other areas, too, in invocations of cultural sovereignty, literary sovereignty, linguistic sovereignty. dr. carlson narrates the stories of the literary nationalists craig womack and jace weaver and the cultural nationalist elizabeth cook-lynn. now when indians read materials on indian literature or indian culture, they expect the authors to be indians. more and more, indian people learn about their cultures not from academic research of non-indians, but from indian writers and scholars—and their elders and cultural teachers. this, too, is selfdetermination, protected and cultivated in the shadow of tribal sovereignty’s powerful penumbra. still, there can be significant downsides to embracing self-determination through sovereignty. tribal leaders will sometimes say that tribal sovereignty means the tribal power to make tribal mistakes, and to learn from those mistakes and correct them with tribal solutions. but transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   156   sovereignty too often means the learning comes slow, if at all. a couple dozen tribes are mired in disenrollment debacles and holdover councils that create intractable political disputes. tribal sovereignty strips away potential federal remedies, leaving human rights abuses unresolved. sovereignty hasn’t solved poverty or hopelessness on many reservations, either. the obamas visit with pine ridge schoolchildren who told them they each knew several schoolmates who had committed suicide somehow underscores the need for tribal sovereignty, and the limitations of tribal sovereignty. is literary nationalism susceptible to parallel abuses and failures? probably not. governance and scholarship have different aims and apply different tools. dr. carlson’s survey of this literature helpfully shows that indian literary scholars are engaged in the process of introducing indigenous philosophies and histories into the scholarship. but there’s a risk, however small, that cultural sovereignty could be used in efforts to bar access and engagement to tribal cultures. the centerpiece of dr. carlson’s work is the controversial white earth nation’s constitutional reform. this is an ongoing project that seeks to undo a tribal organic document adopted decades ago by a tribal government under the deep influence, if not control, of the federal government. tribal citizenship criteria based purely on ancestry—blood quantum—is perhaps the most critical question in this controversy. the proposed constitution (one voted on and approved in a tribal election but somehow still not tribal law) would look beyond mere blood quantum and employ indigenous community standards to determine citizenship. dr. carlson sees this work as a tool to move toward tribal sovereignty and self-determination, the ultimate goal being decolonization. it’s an admirable objective. and dr. carlson’s analytical methodology depends on tribal solutions, not federal or non-indian solutions. more times than one might expect, the mere process of self-determination is enough to enhance tribal sovereignty. dr. carlson’s work gives us much to think about in relation to the algebra of tribal sovereignty and self-determination. there is comfort, usually, in tribal sovereignty through actions rooted in self-determination. the diffusion of tribal sovereignty authority is real. externally, one might see a tribal sovereign, a relatively powerful unified whole. internally, one sees constant acts of tribal self-determination in the form of modern tribal democracy. the anti-pipeline movement might be evidence of tribal self-determination flowing into the greater american world, perhaps infusing american citizens with the forward-thinking “don’t tread on me” tradition of selfdetermination and sovereignty. matthew l.m. fletcher, michigan state university microsoft word ebeid.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     204   diane glancy and linda rodriguez, eds. the world is one place: native american poets visit the middle east. university of missouri-kansas city, 2016. 128 pp. isbn 978-1943491-07-0. http://www.newletters.org/bkmk-books/the-world-is-one-place editor diane glancy commences her foreword by stating “the earth is language. the land essentially is story” (11). glancy’s statements provide a road map for the collection. language, land, and story intertwine and permeate the assorted poems. indigenous poets of diverse tribal affiliations embark on individual projects exploring questions of language, land, story, and indigeneity within a global context. the realm of the poetic allows for the exploration of cultural and linguistic boundaries and how they function on individual and collective levels. the collection expresses the journeys of the diverse poets who visited different regions of the middle east. the collection is thus itself a journey across the pages, transferring readers (and poets) through time and space to turkey, syria, jordan, and other places. the collection will prove useful in a number of contexts and learning environments: in particular i would highly recommend it be taught in american indian studies classes, middle eastern classes, and comparative and world literature classes. three sections comprise the text: “place, “people,” and “spirit.” this division might be misleading, as the three concepts pervade the collection. one of the unique aspects of this text is the inclusion of work notes by the poets, preceding their poems. the work notes contextualize the creative pieces and act as road maps for how properly to read and absorb the words. mvskoke creek poet and musician joy harjo opens the first section, “place,” with her piece refugee. the poem is set in the palestinian city of bethlehem, a city famous as the birthplace of jesus, and indeed the speaker provides a brief summary of the nativity. harjo mentions that “jesus became a healer. walked far to help others, and to show that we, too, are healers” (19). we move from the historic and religious past to the harsh contemporary reality of palestinians living in refugee camps. harjo ends up staying with the palestinian students “in a home that could have been my grandparents’ house…” (20). the speaker laments the violence against the people and the land, forging connections with her tribal land in the united states, thereby affirming the oneness between all peoples and lands. navajo poet bojan louis connects the armenian genocide with the navajo long walk through his depiction of an ethnically armenian band in “system of a down.” he attempts to reconcile these connections during his time in turkey and the turkish regime’s adamant refusal to acknowledge the genocide. while in turkey, louis states “every town i visit beyond the city, i’m tempted to ask, what’s with armenia? everyone’s forgotten, yeah?” (27). silence blankets turkey in regard to the armenians who were massacred. the wordplay in “everyone’s forgotten” connotes the people who have forgotten, as well as the forgotten, murdered armenians. his mind transports him to philadelphia, where the same propensity to forget the atrocities committed against native peoples also lingers. the speaker gives advice on the suitable ways to bury dalia ebeid review of the world is one place     205   genocides and become complicit: “help snip the thread of sewn-shut lips…don’t forget to say, thank you, always” (28). silence, complicity, and forgetfulness plague both turkey and the united states, rendering the people accessory to the crimes. in the section entitled “people,” mohawk writer james thomas stevens tells the story of an illfated trip to jordan which witnessed the cancelling of an all-natives poetry festival. he and other poets decide to salvage the trip. his poem, we are, captures the hospitality of jordanians and the beauty of the country. stevens speaks of attempts by jordanians to identify him and native poets of other tribal affiliations: where from? who? yes. america, but no. the only way to signify--a feather at the back of the head. sauvagi! we register displeasure-a yes, but no. a third offers, al honood al humr. explains, red indians (56) the efforts to identify their origins convey the power and dominance of mainstream western cultural exports of native peoples. the jordanians they are speaking with recognize them as “savages” and “red indians.” stevens and his group manage to enjoy the people and the place despite this earlier misstep. the speaker says they “[read] poems in people’s homes, in deserts, in cafés…you have no family here, so we are your family” (57). words bring people together, salvaging the failed conference, and allowing stevens to convey his fascination and connection with jordan. the final section of the book, “spirit,” includes an imagined poetic experience of afghanistan. fort mojave writer and language activist natalie diaz creates fictional experiences of a made-up version of her brother who served in the u.s. military. she labels the poem the elephants in reference to the quranic surah (section) named al-fil (the elephant), and as a metaphor for the army tanks. diaz’s fictional brother remains haunted by the horrific war experiences he encountered. the speaker begins the poem “my brother still hears the tanks when he is angry-they rumble like a herd of hot green elephants…” (94). the poem addresses the fluidity of time and space. the brother cannot escape the war, internalizing the landscape with all the events he witnessed. both countries bleed into each other as a manifestation of her brother’s ptsd. the speaker comments “the heat from guns he’ll never let go-rises up from his fists like a desert mirage…” (95). the speaker employs imagery from the afghani desert to convey her brother’s trauma. it serves as further proof of the interrelation between the disparate landscapes and their convergence in her brother’s psyche. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     206   as someone from egypt, i consider the arab world (and by extension) the middle east to be my home. in light of this, my only qualms with this collection are the unfortunate orientalizing and fetishizing tendencies. the same stereotypical images reproduced in literatures in the west on the middle east are recurrent here. some of these examples include “veiled” and “unveiled” women, “the call to prayer,” references to wars, terrorists, scheherazade, and other images and motifs. the “othering” perpetuated by western intellectuals and writers is reproduced in the collection. editor linda rodriguez closes the collection with an article titled “are our hands clean? a meditation on the middle east and the united states.” rodriguez addresses american interference in the middle east, including policy-making, land exploitation, invading middle eastern countries, and other forms of interference. the essay reads as a confessional and an attempt to acknowledge the vicarious guilt felt by americans who disagree with u.s. foreign policy. she writes “as a person of indigenous heritage and an american citizen and taxpayer, i weep at what is being done in my name and with my money” (107). she acknowledges the wrongs committed by the united states against middle easterners. i do think there are generalizing and stereotyping tendencies here as well. people from the middle east are never given names or faces. rodriguez mentions specific countries by name, however, the region is still regarded as a monolithic entity (an unfortunate trend in western discourse). rodriguez raises a call to action against injustices everywhere and to change the world for the better. she posits that in the face of overwhelming helplessness, the only recourse is to “sing,” referring to the present collection as “our song” (108). “singing” might be the only resort, but in response to rordiguez’s question of whether “our hands can be clean,” the unfortunate answer is “no.” dalia ebeid, university of arizona / cairo university microsoft word galley main.doc transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 120 this paper was delivered on a panel, honoring gerald vizenor, post-indian poses, at the 2016 mla conference in austin, texas. i presented with david carlson and margaret noodin. the panel was chaired by alan velie. the paper is sur-scholarship (outside scholarship) because vizenor is a sur-writer. it is an abstraction of vizenor’s work. a distillation. somewhat of a spoofery. but stable nonetheless. it is an exploration of the peripheral fields in vizenor’s work. i consider vizenor instrumental to native imagination. his work is propagatory. i can’t read vizenor without wanting to start into something of my own. (creating words, rearranging text, reversing sentences, making forays into that subconscious steam that moves beyond the conscious reading of vizenor.) the paper is a totemization, an amalgamate experience of reading vizenor over the years. ______________________________________________________________________________ totem: a subjective and creative interpretation of gerald vizenor’s trickery diane glancy there are many worlds in vizenor’s writing— visual scenes of recounted memories from various perspectives [vizenor’s chair of tears]. or recounted perspectives from various memories. taking into account the communal variations of perception. a migration from one-point-of-view to another. to see from an adjusted way. the adjustments seeing the way. vizenor’s term, survivance, is a version of that stasis of circumstance until the flux of thought is transmoted by sound. [mote as in [e]mote, making large by sound] [not the mote of a small speck, but an enlargement of—or going the other way in size]. the [e] removed from emote making it mote—which is the charge that memory has with its many perspectives imbedded in the one memory—making memory motational. or [e]motational if you will. the variants of moting—the levels and ranges of [e]moting. but the [e] afterwhich will be omitted. therefore, survivance is reclarifying mis-stories mis-told about the indigenous, which vizenor does. moting is transportational—taking to other places by the vehicle of sound in its solid, written form. words in other words. the blocks of language that can be made to turn sideways and go through a space between fences. it’s where horses lead. and we find them in another diane glancy “totem” 121 field. a transmotation from the field that is theirs into one that isn’t. or from other memory, from one field that isn’t theirs, into one that is. likewise, native migration is traced by the movement of a sideways kind. and the indian is a new being somewhat squeezed by the passage. revelation of the american indian with the up-squeak of motal intent. not wanting in other words, the happenings that happened nonetheless. but speaking up their stories of who what when they are. and how. nonetheless is an interesting word. a fact given to refute the previous fact. therefore, another fact has taken precedence. a [trans]precedence, in other words. transfixed as horses when the oats are connected to them. their nose in the feed bucket. because of minimal grass in a winter field. who can write about being overtaken by another—without inflicting a bite? there is reciprocity in the offsetting. the nature of nature in an understanding of the crumbled. an oppressor of oppression. a given binomial lifting oppressiveness in a series of oppressionals that negate the slippage from the pasture. but where would they go? the interstates are not condusive to hooves. it was not a given that erasure would be given. but hidden in the folds of interrelationships of layers between. loss embedded in language. get over it, vizenor says. of the past world we know much. remembered by the rememberers. something remains of what was. in the field of horses. in the clouds that pass. in grief that burrows in the holes on the edge of the pasture by the creek by whatever small animals burrow in them. the poseurs of winter trees. a rickety chance at meaning. branching trees without leaves as they are in winter. the grasses flat, fallen down, set up again between the folds of fields after snow in its polarities. i tell them, stay on the land. show photos i took of the photos. making syrup of what is otherwise tree sap. it always is performance of wind on the fields. the pluralities of weather. it is weathery—would it be all right to say? the full moon a large flash-light. a flash-flight. a hyper-text of a hydro-plant over hoover dam. bustling cattle across the plateau. pulled back into an out-lier. an escarpment away from the wind. vizenor’s writing is a correctional facility for transgressions against native sovereignty. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 122 the artifice of what constructs the idea of memory—or the memory of idea. recounted from different perspectives. the doubling of meaning in the use of trickery to get at truth. tribal stresses and victimry as victimization of assimilation. the captured of the captors. tactically re-dactive. un-tube the representation as an act of resistance. the moving herds of language over the continent. clarified as they are signified in the undertext as well as overtext. the unintentional amalgamation of the disparate. indian absence and presence neither coming or going. it will surprise no one. vizenor uses his text to recount the counting of coup for the re-couping. there is interiority. intentionality. a story within a story that transposes the story it is within—and without. a visual understanding of assimilation. an artifice. an artificer making recovering from it. a totem pole i bought as a child on a trip to california. a force forceful in its own field. a totem pole is the caricature of a tree, upsetting for vizenor the perceived nativeness and reclaiming the origin of meaning. it is alone but not alone. what storytelling is and how it was taken from the land overtaken by others. the languish uplifted in binoculars to forest, grasslands, winding creek. something remains of what was. the native world turns with hurt. distortion. poverty. taxation. to which vizenor overplaces transcendence by rightly naming the heretofore unnamed. or at least mis-named. overmoting the moting out of natural range. which often happens when angry. being put all into one box, vizenor now calling the boxes, which being opened, spill into one another, each talking with their interchangeable, transmotational parts. a section of travel that has to be surpassed when another car is oncoming on the narrow road or one-lane bridge of meaning. the swag of road during what have been my travels through vizenor’s work. the skewed pieces holding changes of transmotational translingering on the land. a usurpation in appropriation in the act of mapping native identity. diane glancy “totem” 123 how does the land remain in a reconceptualized, linear rationale to the still non-linear post-academic indian? when not fixed, but transfixed. each evening i walk. the land speaks of disruption and survivance. the discovered rhetoric of transgenerative indiginuity. the conflation of tricksters in the act of carving. the remembering of land and what transpressed upon it. lineage, history, legend. of those who came to take it, to change it, to rename it, to carve it as their own. but vizenor chops the poses not indigenous to the indigenous. filling in history the parts of it that seem to be missing. following the resonances in the fields of consciousness aligning voice to the imaged voices that haunt. in the long driving away from the wounding. no, the long travel on long roads brings up the wounding. but it is not the wound. according to vizenor, it is the journey through. microsoft word proof.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 137 it consumes what it forgets carter meland wiindigoo1 is more than just a character in the stories of anishinaabe indian people; it is a presence in the world and so powerful that in uttering its name we risk calling it into our lives. it storms through the wintry woods and frozen swamps of the anishinaabe homeland, as tall as the trees through which it hunts and monstrously gaunt as well, its lips chewed to shreds as it gnaws on itself in the absence of tender prey. wiindigoo may have been a person once, someone who fell victim to the enticement of the cannibal spirit in the deep winter of the northern woodlands and who, lacking other food, turned on those family and community members with whom they lived for sustenance. eating the ones they loved and lived with, who they once supported and by whom they were once supported, such a person becomes a monster, ever on the hunt, always hungry: they become the spirit that possessed them. instead of living for and with others, wiindigoo lives only to meet its own needs. it consumes families and communities, yet no matter how much it eats, it always wants more and cannot stop its destructive impulses unless it is put to death. in speaking its name, we risk calling it into our lives, but naming it, calling it forward, may also be an act of love if the intent is to heal those the spirit has wounded. # “wiindigoo.” # stories of this malevolent presence provide insight into anishinaabe values concerning how people ought to relate to one another; they also provide insight into what happens when those values are perverted. wiindigoo has a heart of ice; it cannot assess human relations with any sort of compassion. it is cold; unwilling or unable to see the pain others might feel, it is driven only to feed its own never satisfied appetite; it has forgotten the proper way of living with others in the world. forgetting seems to be part of what makes a wiindigoo a wiindigoo. it forgets the relationships that others cultivate and by which they are, in turn, cultivated. it forgets its bonds to the human and other-than-human relations that shape each of our lives, the interconnections with kin, clan, tribe, and lived environment by which we come to find out who we are and what we carter meland “it consumes what it forgets” 138 will do for these relations. it forgets that it is part of something larger than any one person. it forgets the stories that make us who we are, regardless of tribe or nation. it forgets its embeddedness in a whole living complex of nurturing, sorrowful, banal, and joyful experiences; it forgets its humanity—these feelings and the ability to experience them—focusing solely on its hunger; it forgets to yearn for anything other than human flesh. it forgets to resist the temptation to indulge its appetite. it is tempted by those it should love. it forgets to love and consumes what it forgets. wiindigoo lives for itself. # unable to ever get enough to eat, wiindigoo walks at the grim edge of starvation, its bones pushing against the thin layer of skin that stretches over them. its skin is the pallid gray of death and papery dry. its hunger has drained it of life, and though rank with the stench of death because it is rotting from the inside out, it is not dead. when we die, the water of our bodies—our lives—is absorbed into the earth, but for wiindigoo the water of its life turns to a heart of ice; frozen, its heart is life suspended. it embodies the worst part of winter in the deep north: the scarcity of food which leads to hunger and which might lead some to the desperate thought of eating their kin, of putting their own needs ahead of those with whom they live. it embodies selfishness, in other words, an idea that the anishinaabe scholar basil johnston finds in the etymology of the word itself. wiindigoo breaks down into ween and dagoh, which johnston tells us means “solely for the self” (222). in a community where the needs of the group as a whole are more important than an individual’s needs, this kind of selfishness is horrific enough, and when that selfishness is fed by a hunger for human flesh, that horror is multiplied and stretches into a towering monster that sweeps down out of the cold north and threatens to pervert the lives of those in a stricken community. though found in anishinaabe sacred stories, the wiindigoo is more than a spirit whose misdeeds are recounted from a mythic time before time. what is fearsome about the wiindigoo is the very real threat that someone may turn into one, that the spirit may come to possess a man or woman, corrupt their appetite, and with it their humanity. in thinking solely of the self, a person becoming wiindigoo forgets what it means to be a good anishinaabe, forgets to think of others. its notions of community, family, and love are perverted by its selfish hunger. # transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 139 in 1823 george nelson was in charge of the hudson’s bay company outpost near lac la ronge, saskatchewan. he had been in the fur trade for more than twenty years, living almost always alongside anishinaabe communities, and it was here he set down stories of his experience with the anishinaabeg as well as offering his observations concerning the manidoog, the spirits that people the anishinaabe homeland and the cosmos it is seated within. in 1988, the anthropologists jennifer s.h. brown and robert brightman edited and annotated nelson’s work from this era into the book “the orders of the dreamed”. in the nearly hundred page long letterjournal that is the centerpiece of the book, nelson spends much time describing the wiindigoo and offers his ideas about the causes of the condition. “i look upon this,” he wrote, “as a sort of mania, or fever, or distemper of the brain.” he describes seeing the eyes of those afflicted with this distemper as “wild and uncommonly clear—they seem as if they glistened.” he recounts other symptoms as well: they are generally rational except at short, sudden intervals when the paroxysms cease [seize] them: their motions then are various and diametrically contrary at one time to what they are the next—sullen, thoughtful, wild look, and perfectly mute: staring, in sudden convulsions, wild incoherent and extravagant language. (91) nelson tells a story about one wiindigoo case from “a few years back” during his time at lake winnipeg. evidence of the affliction started to present in late december of 1811 when a man “began staring at his [adult] daughter with an extraordinary intenseness.” he gave voice to his feelings in an extravagant manner. he told her: “‘my daughter! i am fond of thee! i love thee extremely.’ “‘i know thou dost,’ replied the woman abashed, for she was then very young. “‘yes! i love thee—i think i could eat a piece of thee, i love thee so much’” (91). nelson reports that the young woman cried out at her father’s “rashness,” distressed by words that suggested he was forgetting what love meant. we can only wonder at the fear she and her husband must have felt when night fell and her father “stark-naked and uttering a strong tremulous noise, and his teeth chattering in his head as if thro’ cold, rose up and walked out of the tent and laid himself as a dog in a heap upon the wood that his daughter had that day bro’t to the door” (91-92). in the morning he came inside, but that night he returned again to the woodpile. # carter meland “it consumes what it forgets” 140 some irrational force masked as love seized this poor man and left his teeth chattering in his head. imagine his “wild, uncommonly clear” eyes glistening as he tells his daughter he loves her so much he “could eat a piece of thee.” the coldness that gripped him in the tent and allowed him to survive what had to have been freezing nights sleeping on a woodpile is a common symptom of the wiindigoo disease. one who is becoming wiindigoo feels a strong pull to cannibalism and if they don’t feel the ice forming in their chest, others in their community find evidence of it in their actions, moods, and behavior. the father in nelson’s story is cold enough deep in his body that he does not freeze to death when sleeping out in the canadian winter. perhaps his kin found this indicative of the ice forming. becoming wiindigoo often means that the afflicted person begins to hallucinate, to see their loved ones as an animal normally hunted for food. nathan carlson reports that in 1896 an anishinaabe man, shuddering with the fear of his own thoughts, told his wife that one of their children looked to him like a “spring moose,” which he wanted to kill and eat. rather than let the man suffer, members of the community engage in ceremonial cures in an attempt to call him back to his life as an anishinaabe man, but their interventions are overmatched by the spirit. the man’s frenzy grows and during one particular outburst, the men who had been attempting to restrain him, fearing what he would do if he got loose, struck four blows to his head with an axe. bullets from a rifle could not pierce a wiindigoo. after his death, carlson tells us that the man’s body was buried under a woodpile in order “to stop—or stall—his perceived impending resurrection” as the towering monster that would continue to stalk the anishinaabe (369).2 while many western scholars identify the wiindigoo condition as a psychosis, carlson asks us to consider the condition as more of an anxiety about engaging in cannibalism than it is a psychotic break that causes someone to act on those destructive, self-serving impulses. the worry about turning cannibal becomes obsessive and all consuming (so to speak), disquieting to both the afflicted person and those around them. at the point in history that carlson discusses, the late 19th century, the anishinaabe lived in small camps and family groups during the long winters. in light of that isolation from others and living in close quarters with a limited number of kin and community, we can understand how, if one of the group began to exhibit wiindigoo symptoms, the anxiety would swell not just in the chest of the stricken one, but would grow throughout the group. even if the afflicted one were dead, the group would need to worry about transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 141 what carlson called the “impending resurrection” of the person, that is, their transformation into the roaming spirit of unending hunger and self-indulgence predicted by anishinaabe cosmology. we can imagine the anxiety about this resurrection growing in such a group, stretching as tall as the trees, its skin pulling taut over its bones, its humanity forgotten. the worry over becoming wiindigoo must surely have been a source of further anxiety— imagine what it must feel like to lose your sense of anishinaabe selfhood and become this reviled creature. brightman notes that most, if not all, “windigos were once human beings, transformed, usually irreversibly, into their monstrous condition” (337). loosed from the bounds of their personhood by the craving for human flesh and loosed from their graves if not properly disposed of, wiindigoo is ever in motion out in the bush, and in the stories and minds of community members. the wiindigoo forgets its humanity, but the anishinaabe anxiously remember its presence. for those afflicted with wiindigoo impulses, the idea swells to monstrous proportions, intensifying certain negative aspects of the human character. the infection distorts the human spirit into a malevolent form that, though perverse and destructive, is useful to think with. the wiindigoo experience is horrifying, but wiindigoo stories are instructive engagements in cultural teaching. in this light, the wiindigoo is a cautionary figure. basil johnston tells us that his mother warned him when he was young that there were wiindigoog in the woods that would grab and carry off children who failed to listen to their parents, but he also makes it clear that stories about the wiindigoo spirit should not be reduced to mere bogeyman tales. like all stories about the manidoo, wiindigoo stories offer powerful tools to advance one’s understanding of the world. wiindigoo is more than a childhood fear. as one grows and matures, so does one’s understanding of the nuances and layers within the stories. a wiindigoo tale to keep children from wandering off becomes something else when an adult uses it to look at the world. when scholars of native studies like johnston and jack forbes turn the lens of these stories on the contemporary world they see evidence that the spirit has possessed modern institutions like corporations and drives political/economic ideologies like capitalist colonialism and imperialism.3 in taking these forms, wiindigoo has “renounced” eating human flesh, as johnston puts it, and instead now consumes human lives through economic exploitation or by eating the environments from which humans make their lives. corporations clear-cut forests, for carter meland “it consumes what it forgets” 142 instance, displacing their human and other-than-human inhabitants, making it impossible for those who relied on that environment to make a life there. they indulge their selfish hunger with the profit to be found in timber, insatiably moving from one stand of woods to the next and they feed their hunger for power over others, by forgetting the lives of those who call the forest home. they forget their relations in favor of self-interest. they forget they are part of a community. riven with gullies and washouts, clear-cut landscapes reflect the erosion of principles that the wiindigoo embodies. logging companies today even employ machines with massive jaws that grasp trees at their base and bite them off. these masticators, as they are called, literally chew their way through the forest. i cannot help being reminded that wiindigoo eats the flesh of its kin or that, in the absence of other food, it chews off its own lips: it is a tireless, obsessive masticator. # johnston and forbes point out that a society’s institutions can become wiindigoo; institutions can forget their relations to their human and other-than-human communities, and can forget the principles and values which allow communities to develop and flourish in partnership with particular environments. wiindigoo feeds on its power over others, whether those others are the felled trees of a clear-cut forest or the humans that live in anxious fear of what it might do— those who live in anxious fear of forgetting what it means to be anishinaabe, to be a good relative. the u.s. government instituted the federal indian boarding school system in the late 1800s, based on the model of the carlisle indian industrial school, established by an army officer named richard pratt in 1879. the schools were an immersion experience, with native children removed from their families and taken off reservation to be instructed in the standards of euro-american life. there they were given uniforms, had their hair cut, and were forbidden to speak their native languages. the schools were an alternative to the heavy costs of war, but one with the same end in mind. the goal in bringing a native child to the schools was, as pratt infamously put it, to “kill the indian in him, and save the man.” less well known, is another description of his concerning how the schools should operate: “we make our greatest mistake in feeding our civilization to the indians instead of feeding the indians to our civilization” (qtd. in king 108, emphasis added). transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 143 recall nelson’s description of those seized by the wiindigoo distemper. their eyes he said were “uncommonly clear” and “glistened,” perhaps in anticipation of the feast. he describes them as speaking with “wild incoherent and extravagant language.” i see pratt’s eyes glistening as he speaks extravagantly of killing the indian “in” these children and feeding them to “our” civilization. from a humanistic point of view, his words, while clear, are incoherent. killing children to save them, feeding them to civilization until, as he also said, “all the indian there is in the race should be dead” (“kill the indian”) only makes sense within a desiccated value system. wiindigoo indulges in its power over others, pretending, as the father did with his daughter, that it is acting with love. it forgets the intrinsic value of others, and sees only that which will feed its own selfish ends. boarding schools were cheaper than war. # ella martineau was a woman i never knew, nor did i know her son, but her grandson is my dad. we never had contact with ella or her son after he, to keep the story short, abandoned my dad, uncle, and grandma when my dad was not yet two and my uncle was not yet born. while my dad and uncle rightly have nothing but hard feelings for their father (to quote my fellow minneapolitan, paul westerberg: “he might be a father/but he sure ain’t a dad”), they also regard their grandmother ella with indifference (in my dad’s case) and with suspicions that she was a pathological liar (in my uncle’s case). perhaps coming from a later generation i am insulated from these raw feelings because i have found a different story in what i know of her experience. ella was born in 1895 in isle, minnesota on the mille lacs indian reservation in the northern part of central minnesota. she was born to an anishinaabe mother and a white father. sometime between 1895 and 1910 the family moved to the white earth reservation. in that same time period ella also attended the morris indian industrial school for three years where, according to an interview she gave to the crow wing county (minnesota) historical society, she was “taught english, sewing, and cooking.” as far as i can tell her entire adult life was spent off-reservation. in the 1910 u.s. census her race is listed as “indian.” in the 1920 census she is listed as “white,” as is her son, my dad’s father. what had she forgotten in ten years? “we make our greatest mistake,” pratt claimed, “in feeding our civilization to the indians instead of feeding the indians to our civilization.” it was customary back in the treaty-making carter meland “it consumes what it forgets” 144 days of the 19th century for native people to refer to the president, with whom they were ultimately treating, as the “great white father.” i am reminded of the father who loved his daughter so much that he exclaimed, “yes! i love thee—i think i could eat a piece of thee.” i am reminded that the great white father created boarding schools. my dad did not raise my sister, brother, or i as anishinaabe because no one remembered that part of our story. it is too much to say we forgot it because we knew nothing of it until the early 1990s. in some sense, wiindigoo ate that part of us. “i love thee so much,” said the stricken father to his child. # the goal of wiindigoo stories, like so many anishinaabe stories, is to direct us towards healing. they seek to restore the afflicted to a healthy way of living in the world—and with the world. wiindigoo stories are not fairy tales or yarns told around the campfire that capture the exotic and chilling strangeness of native culture. they are instructions. they are alive and relevant when they are used to keep children from wandering off into the woods, which is, after all, preserving the coming generation from potential destruction, and the stories are alive and relevant when they are used to gain insight into ways to understand the destructive events unfolding in the world around us. they are alive and relevant when they are shared with the purpose of reviving values that may have become eroded over time. along with a mythic and cultural life, anishinaabe stories have a social life. they live in the world, not just the world of words and stories, but the world of social experience as well. wiindigoo is not an abstraction, a symbol, or a metaphor; it is a presence. wiindigoo stories help us remember the importance of nurturing our relations to both the human and other-than-human world and by other-than-human i mean both the spiritual and natural world. they help me make some sense of the experience of my anishinaabe ancestors (who are now all spirits) as they were fed to “our” civilization. they help me understand the distemper of an american mindset that thought it best to “kill the indian” and clear-cut forests, which is, in my part of the world, a direct assault on the health of the woodland homelands of the anishinaabe. just as critically, clear-cutting, whether in minnesota, amazonia, or thailand, is an assault on each one of us. there is a loss of beauty as forests are masticated and a loss of homeland for our human and other-than-human relatives that live there, of course, but there is a loss of a physical connection as well. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 145 what the trees exhale, i inhale; what i exhale, the trees inhale. we are bound together in a positive feedback loop that is just one of billions of similar loops by which our other-than-human relations, our environments, and we create life for one another. wiindigoo, though, wants to steal our breath. wiindigoo breaks the symbiotic loop, eroding the value of life, of creation, by forgetting its interdependence with others. once felled, the trees it consumes cannot scrub the air of carbon dioxide that comes from burning the strip-mined, fracked, and deep ocean drilled coal and oil that our economy feeds on. climate change, driven in great part by the burning of fossil fuels, indicates a deeper distemper. recall that one of the leading symptoms indicating that someone was becoming wiindigoo was the formation of ice in the person’s chest or heart. climate scientists regard the polar vortex that swept over north america in the winter of 2013-2014 and plunged most of the united states and canada into one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record as an indicator—a symptom—of global climate change. in anishinaabe teachings, wiindigoo storms out of the north bent on feeding its never satisfied hunger, utterly indifferent to the pain it brings its prey, and utterly indifferent to the fact that its actions threaten to destroy the communities with which it should have lived, suffering when they suffered, loving when they loved, remembering what they remembered: how to be good anishinaabe, good people, living with others rather than off of others. instead, we see: forests falling. fuels burning. vortexes spinning. winter deepening. we see: a father who loves his daughter. a great father who loves his children. indian children fed to a hungry civilization. a never known indian grandmother becoming white. we see: wiindigoo forgetting its relations are not food. we see it sleeping stark naked in the freezing night. we see it mistaking its heart for the ice all around it. carter meland “it consumes what it forgets” 146 we see it stretch and grow, getting bigger, hungry for more, destroying more, thoughtless in its pain. we see a threat to be sure, but one that still demands our compassion. as long as we remember the anishinaabe understandings of the stories, we will never be hopeless when facing the wiindigoo. # wiindigoo stories come out of the social and cultural experiences of anishinaabe people, but the insight and understanding they provide into the world are available to everyone. native teachers and medicine people, scholars and writers, have been sharing stories like these with colonists and settlers since the earliest days of contact, and before that, they shared them among tribes that were as distinct from one another as the european nations were from one another. (tribal nations continue to be distinct in this way, of course, and the sharing of knowledge across tribal cultures continues in the present as well.) too often in the modern west tribal stories have been reduced to objects, evidence that native people were different, that they were superstitious, that they believed odd things. stories that were shared with the intent of providing healing to the settlers, of helping them, were too often lifted out of that context by europeans and americans and put into a box marked “other.” thus reified, wiindigoo became a representation of incommensurable difference, rather than a presence we can learn from. while wiindigoo stories (in this case) may be most relevant to anishinaabe communities, those who shared the stories must have felt it imperative to help other people learn to reflect on the need to think with anishinaabe cultural and social teachings, of remembering indigenous values in a world that thought to destroy them—to make them forgotten. wiindigoo stories are more than simple monster tales or reports of potentially horrifying historical events. they are a complex means of thinking about and addressing injustices that storm through our world. rather than a way to think about native people, they are a means of thinking with anishinaabe people. they are, in the context i lay out here, a means of recognizing a relationship between peoples, one that emerges from indigenous knowledge and nurtures a way of seeing that helps all who engage with it. # the father of the young woman, the one who loved his daughter so much that he wanted to eat a piece of her, slept naked on a pile of wood. nelson writes, “thus he did every night for about a month and every time slept out naked; nor would he eat, excepting at times a little raw transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 147 flesh” (by which i suppose that nelson means the meat of some game animal, not that of his daughter; still, he was eating raw meat). “in the day time,” nelson tells us that the man “was more composed, but his face & c, bore the appearance of one possessed of the devil.” still, nelson is able to report that the man “recovered and became as usual, composed, and good natured.” he ends the story: “i knew them all well” (92). the young woman and her husband, though no doubt disturbed and distraught at his behavior, do not lash out at her father. rather, we can gather by implication that they wait to see what will happen, caring for him in the mean time, letting him eat raw meat if that is what will help him, but they do not allow him the human flesh that would complete his transformation. since nelson’s record of the incident is so brief, i can only suppose they did this out of concern and compassion, and i can only suppose that their love melted that which had grown cold within him. they healed with compassion what the wiindigoo tried to take with its corrupted notion of love. nelson remembers their story for us. # before 1970, u.s. census takers determined the race of the people they enumerated based on their observations. they may have asked a person about their racial identity, but they might just as well have made note of what they saw—or thought they saw. in the 1920 census, ella martineau and her children are counted as “white.” in 1930, they are listed as “indian.” i do not know what happened between 1920 and 1930 that altered the opinion of the enumerators as to the race of ella and her children. ella’s mother, who ella describes as a “chippewa squaw” in that interview with the historical society, was living with the family in 1930 and perhaps her presence in the household shifted the perception of the person taking the census. regardless of what happened, ella was no longer “officially” white. whatever the wiindigoo of boarding school assimilation attempted, her transformation was suspended—at least in the story i am telling. like the man who came inside from the woodpile, she remembered that good anishinaabe make and maintain relations. she became indian again in the 1930s. sometime after my dad was born in 1938, ella borrowed his birth records from my grandma and enrolled him as a member of the minnesota chippewa tribe, a son and grandson of white earth anishinaabe people. she never really had any contact with my dad after that. in the 1940 census she is enumerated as “white.” carter meland “it consumes what it forgets” 148 # wiindigoo is a powerful spirit moving through the northern woodland, stalking through stories of mythic and historic events; it lives as an anxiety that seizes an anishinaabe person in winter; it also lives in the words that expressed the mission of the boarding schools and in the economic logic that forgives (and celebrates) the clear cutting of anishinaabe homelands and the fracking of the earth, the homeground of all of us. it swirls about our lives in a whirling vortex of mind-numbing cold. wiindigoo has a heart of ice, but a daughter who loves her father doesn’t forget to love. she remembers what the wiindigoo wishes her father would forget: love cares, never destroys. just as the daughter remembers to love so does a grandmother who enrolls her grandson at white earth because, i can only assume, it was important to her. even though she was never an active presence in my dad’s life, she wanted him—and us too, i suppose, her descendants—to be remembered by the anishinaabe; she did not forget that she, her son, and my dad were anishinaabe. hers was only a love on paper as it turns out, but paper is warmer than ice—and paper remembers. wiindigoo stories are ways to remember what compassion means by asking us to look at what happens if we forsake that impulse. the stories are useless if we forget that they exist to help us heal the wounds we suffer in our lives and those we visit on a world that loved us enough to breathe us into life. notes 1 i am using the double vowel orthography to spell ojibwe words like wiindigoo in this essay. not all scholars or writers use this system and so wiindigoo may also be spelled “windigo” or “wendigo.” these variant spellings will only be used when quoting the works of other writers. in ojibwemowin, words become plural when a –g is added to the end and so wiindigoo becomes wiindigoog. 2 my summary of this story is drawn from pages 359-369 of nathan carlson’s excellent article, “reviving witiko (windigo).” 3 johnston explicitly identifies contemporary corporations as wiindigoo on p. 235 of the manitous. jack forbes’s columbus and other cannibals: the wétiko disease of exploitation, imperialism, and terrorism is a lengthy polemic that identifies the cannibalistic tendencies of colonialism and capitalist corporatism. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 149 works cited brightman, robert. “the windigo in the material world.” ethnohistory, vol. 35, no. 4, 1988, pp. 337-379. carlson, nathan d. “reviving witiko (windigo): an ethnohistory of ‘cannibal monsters’ in the athabasca district of northern alberta, 1878-1910.” ethnohistory, vol. 56, no. 3, 2009, pp. 355-394. forbes, jack d. columbus and other cannibals: the wétiko disease of exploitation, imperialism, and terrorism. autonomedia, 1992. johnston, basil. the manitous: the supernatural world of the ojibway. harper perennial, 1995. “’kill the indian, and save the man’: capt. richard h. pratt on the education of native americans.” history matters: the u.s. history course on the web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929. accessed 13 march 2017. king, thomas. the inconvenient indian: a curious account of native people in north america. u of minnesota p, 2012. nelson, george. "the orders of the dreamed": george nelson on cree and northern ojibwa religion and myth, 1823. ed. jennifer s.h. brown and robert brightman. minnesota historical society press, 1988. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 194 sy hoahwah. ancestral demon of a grieving bride. university of new mexico press, 2021. 64 pp. isbn: 9780826362216. https://unmpress.com/books/ancestral-demon-grieving-bride/9780826362216 in a poem aptly named “biography,” sy hoahwah writes, “as a child, father told me i hatched out of a pearl partially dissolved in wine. // mother always reminded me, i reminded her of father, / and i made the milk curdle in the stomach of other newborns” (2). here, we find the troubling combination of the inherited and the unfamiliar. like hoahwah’s previous collection velroy and the madischie mafia (2009), the speaker in ancestral demon of a grieving bride maintains multiplicitous identities—indigenous, southern, monstrous. in this place-oriented collection, hoahwah forces the reader to reconcile the blurring of assumed borders between natural and unnatural, life and death, and more as he defines the hybrid body/bodies of the speaker against and within liminal landscapes: “i sat here long enough / to become an altar / where the abandoned monsters come to pray” (24). pulling from epic and gothic traditions, hoahwah’s new collection of poetry allows us brief visions of an impossibly shifting narrator—one we must trust fully as we follow the speaker to the outskirts of town, down a logging trail, and into hell itself. threaded through this collection is the juxtaposition and blending of un/natural spaces and objects. disturbing boundaries we often perceive as concrete, hoahwah creates the uncanny: in these lands, there is no difference between a star and thrown car keys. chicken nuggets hatch from the eggs of eagles. i grow dirty while bathing in bottled water. (12) the land here—beside a fort in the “hinterlands” as the poem’s title tells us—forces reader discomfort. these hybridities contrast land-alternating human products and supposedly natural objects, and the landscape becomes monstrous in its indefinable form. but, as hoahwah notes in the collection’s first lines, the mountains where he so often sets these poems, the ozarks, “are where defeated assassins, the unholy, / and monsters come to retire” (1). these poems, just like the mountains, contain the undesirable and the rejected. “the more one cries the more one prospers… / o ancestral demon,” the speaker calls out, “may my lamentation become verbal sorcery” (12). hoahwah’s speaker claims a purpose when speaking to the ancestral demon, undermining another boundary while offering a “tone between poetry and backward prayer” (2). the language itself in this poem resists strict definition, much like hoahwah’s uncanny objects. https://unmpress.com/books/ancestral-demon-grieving-bride/9780826362216 hannah v warren review of ancestral demon of a grieving bride 195 hoahwah’s preoccupation with liminality starts with physical space in these poems. often centering landscapes with a long history of american-sanctioned violence against and the genocide of indigenous peoples, as with the ozarks, hoahwah’s poems are transgressive in their boundary-crossing: line of barbed wire marks the boundary between this world and the next. (3) “this world,” acting as both realism and metaphor, contains the multiplicities that firmly ground this collection in speculative genres. in the epic tradition of alice notley’s descent of alette (1996), hoahwah’s ancestral demon of a grieving bride evokes dante’s inferno; similar to alette’s and dante’s descent into their versions of hell, hoahwah’s poetry collection centers landscape, transcendent objects, and an afterlife journey. hoahwah writes, “i’m a dazed underworld hero fleshed and rubbed down / with my own tongue and brains” (11). liminal landscape plays a pivotal role in this recreation of epic narration, both in the hellscape and hoahwah’s description of semi-familiar earthspace where a demon can be “steeped in cornbread philosophy […] as he kneels down to the priest and holy water” (1). much like dante’s exploration of hell, hoahwah’s speaker looks back to known dead: “i don’t even have ashes of dead saints / to rub into my eyes” (11). virgil guides dante, and a skeleton who “got scared and held my hand” (42) acts as a semi-guide for hoahwah’s speaker. there’s something more, though, than linked narrative content to this form in hoahwah’s collection. epic poetry has a long history of hybridizing historical information. the mayan popol vuh combines and treats as equal quiché mythologies about the earth’s formation and their recorded history under spanish colonization. in the lusiads, luís vaz de camões attempts to cement portugal’s status as an imperial powerhouse by calling on both catholic and roman deities, an unusual move in which he compares his country’s power to that of ancient rome, hoping to solidify nationalism for portuguese readers. hoahwah’s ancestral demon of a grieving bride is similarly working to establish a complicated identity and cultural memory: “there is no sanctuary in the subdivisions we edge closer to / with our bowstrings cut” (9). hoahwah’s collective we reappears across poems to establish the contemporary memory of indigenous voices while critiquing american suppression of indigenous culture. hoahwah’s speaker—the repeating i and collective we—is part of this tumultuous liminality, this shifting landscape, appearing often as one of the many objects placed in the natural versus synthetic existence. hoahwah writes, “we’ve all been chased to this transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 196 genocidal beauty once or twice, / surrendering at a fast-food table with free wi-fi” (9). in these two lines, hoahwah twists together the inevitable capitalist value of the space alongside historical stamps on the physical land—specifically fort hill, an oklahoma military post known for its currently operating artillery school, but more importantly as the site of violence against indigenous peoples before, during, and after the plains wars. among it all, of course, is the speaker, witness to the genocide and the restaurant chain. this spatial awareness is reminiscent of rachel zolf’s new poetic/theoretic book, no one’s witness: a monstrous poetics (2021), which theorizes the poetics of witnessing excess from the position of the oppressed, the non-subject, no one. citing paul celan’s famous line, “no one / bears witness for the / witness” (62), zolf’s work cites the im/possibilities of witnessing. hoahwah’s poetry attempts to do just this: ancestral demon of a grieving bride calls attention to the witnessed blending of collected memory, history, and current realities. this witnessing strikes me as indicative of hoahwah’s intensive and extraordinary genre play. merging gothic tropes of madness, hybridity, and haunted landscapes, hoahwah speaks to the purpose of writing monstrosity: to reveal the cultural value of the monstrous body. in her blurb for ancestral demon of a grieving bride, heid e. erdrich writes, “sy hoahwah has perhaps invented comanche goth.” i see the truth of this claim in hoahwah’s integration of human and nonhuman elements, heightening the uncanny experience for the reader. the speaker recalls a “decapitated head” with natural, nonhuman matter attached: “lightning / tied to its hair, / / jagged teeth glow” (hoahwah 7). hoahwah’s blending of the body with natural imagery, especially lightning, is reminiscent of natalie diaz’s “the first water is the body” from postcolonial love poem (2020). diaz writes, “the colorado river is the most endangered river in the united states— / also, it is a part of my body” (46). this nonmimetic bodily description encompasses hoahwah’s and diaz’s work, cementing the speakers as parts of the landscape and firmly defining the body as an object in the scenery, as both a critique of abject oppression and a method of reclamation. so often, landscapes in gothic literature include unwanted “monsters” (hoahwah 1), who are always under threat of ejection. working within this genre’s lineage, hoahwah’s speaker, a character defined by multiple identities, is both invisible and hypervisible against the landscape, reflecting and critiquing the way america has historically attempted to conceal indigenous peoples, physically and culturally—and hoahwah clearly reports on the im/possibility of this blurring and his own witnessing. hoahwah’s poetry collection promises a continuance of this liminality—this combined hypervisibility and invisibility against both natural and synthetic landscapes. he describes hannah v warren review of ancestral demon of a grieving bride 197 the collection’s speaker as a “christian, oklahoma-shaped and melancholic, / caught at the entrance of a ditch / as the best breath of me tornadoes into the next county” (28). not only is the proposed afterlife a place of undeniable liminality but so are the gaps between human-created land divisions. this collection imposes an unbelonging that forces movement, a movement that forces unbelonging. the body in hoahwah’s work eventually becomes liminal itself, an object inciting unexpected fear it its sudden visibility: “monsters,” hoahwah writes, “hatch fully grown from their eggs” (28). hannah v warren, university of georgia works cited celan, paul. breathturn into timestead: the collected later poetry, a bilingual edition. translated by pierre joris. farrar, straus, and giroux, 2014. diaz, natalie. postcolonial love poem. graywolf press, 2020. hoahwah, sy. velroy and the madischie mafia. university of new mexico press, 2009. notley, alice. descent of alette. penguin, 1992. zolf, rachel. no one’s witness: a monstrous poetics. duke university press, 2021. microsoft word 1139-article text-6394-1-18-20230128.docx transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) i on the fictions of stephen graham jones and the stories that made him, and well, us too billy j. stratton since being honored in 2017 with a bram stoker award for superior achievement in mapping the interior—his 17th novel—by the horror writer’s association, the work of stephen graham jones has exploded onto the national scene as so many of his readers have long anticipated. jones has gone on to amass an impressive number of additional awards and honors, including three more bram stoker awards, along with three shirley jackson awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of horror, the dark fantastic, and psychological suspense, and a ray bradbury award by the la times festival of books for science fiction, fantasy & speculative fiction. given such impressive accomplishments, one can only wonder about what he might come up with and put down on paper next. the sheer number of awards jones has received since 2017 is itself remarkable, but what makes these accomplishments even more impressive is the diverse range of genres and literary categories for which the excellence of jones’ work has been recognized. for those who have been following the trajectory of jones’s writing, however, the wide-ranging nature of his writing across so many disparate landscapes, themes, forms and genres, marks the continuation of the steady thrust of innovation, innate fearlessness on the page and seemingly limitless imagination that typify his fiction. and as the most recent cluster of works indicate, it seems clear that he will only continue to push and prod at the boundaries of his literary potential, while continuing to revolutionize and enliven native and indigenous storytelling forms.1 thus, whatever shape jones’s next novels may take, we can expect them to be bold experiments in billy j. stratton “on the fictions of stephen graham jones” ii fiction presented in the same uncompromising style that has become his signature— and powered by a language that burns like a white-hot flame through the stagnant expectations and fugitive poses that some readers and critics just can’t seem to relinquish. in another way, jones has also done more than any other writer to take up the call first articulated by gerald vizenor, through the cackle of a clown crow beseeching readers to “listen ha ha ha haaa” for the voices that lead out of the darkness of oblivion and victimry to a world defined in native terms, and then, “laughing, ha ha ha haaa,” within his own boldly experimental novel of apocalypse and survivance in darkness in st. louis: bearheart (vii-ix). this is a function and a motive that pours from the page, regardless of where one had the good fortune to first stumble into jones’s storied world. odds and chances that emerge from the span of a career that has produced around thirty books and more than three-hundred short stories, beginning with a set of stories in the mid-90s including “the parrot man,” “the ballad of stacy dunn” and “paleogenesis, circa 1970.” these are interesting works in their own right, but ones that only hinted at what was to come and that burst onto the literary scene in novel form with the phantasmagoric speed trip of the fast red road. from here one was free to choose their own adventure between a tornado-tracking slasher imprinted with the land of oz, or the spiraling narrative labyrinths meticulously constructed in demon theory. or perhaps, it might have been a renegade father’s uncanny return to his daughter in the riotous form of a bunny-headed lord of the chupacabras, wreaking havoc along the southern borderlands of texas that drew you in. to these peerless works establishing the boldness of jones’s literary explorations and experimentations early on, writing as if channeling the energies and spirit of gilgamesh and dr. frankenstein, we can add the blurred temporalities transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) iii collapsing back upon themselves in ledfeather and the cartographic escapes playing out on different planes of reality in mongrels and mapping the interior. and, more recently to the sublime and phantasmagoric mingling of slasher and survivance, guilt and comeuppance dispensed to us in the intertwined stories of four blackfeet friends that make up the core of the story contained in the only good indians, or in the unsinkable character of jade daniels in my heart is a chainsaw and the soon-to-be second novel of his jade trilogy, don’t fear the reaper. one of the great things about jones that is reflected in this sampling of works, and what has helped him build such a large, diverse and loyal readership, is that the pathways and portals are voluminous while the routes to get there are many. and even with the consideration of such a dazzling body of texts, just as we’ve all seen rehashed in innumerable powerpoint presentations including that stock titanicsinking image, these works represent merely the tip of the iceberg of jones’s everexpanding body of work. given this extraordinary archive, i would wager that jones has his sights set on at least thirty more novels and hundreds more additional short stories—lovers of story can dream too, right? and who knows, in a world that seems on the verge of being overtaken by the soullessness of ai writing from programs like chatgpt, or are they entities?, who better to have on our side fighting it out terminator 2 style for the future of human stories than dr. jones? as i’ve always been taught that it is important to acknowledge and honor with a generosity of spirit those who came before us to create or make possible the spaces and opportunities we enjoy, whether ancestors, mentors or colleagues, i’d be remiss if i didn’t mention the roles of those who were so influential in helping to shape me into the teacher, writer and scholar, but also the person, i am today. these include luci tapahonso who taught me the ways of poetry and how the past can be made present through story and that places remain alive so long as there are memories to hold them. billy j. stratton “on the fictions of stephen graham jones” iv with vital relevance to this current work, my first encounter with the writing of stephen graham jones was in a graduate course i took on native fiction around 2004. it was a class taught by a newly-hired professor who would go on to produce some deeply affecting novels in her own right, franci washburn—a lakota woman i am honored to call hankasi—that highlighted the work of “lesser-known” native writers. while that theme may now seem odd, few in that class or reading literature during that time had read anything in the realm of native fiction besides maybe a few stories by that writer who, i guess, has since become an astronaut or something. whatever the case, the subtitle imparted the class with an added sheen, while promising to lead us down some literary paths not taken into what were still largely unexplored territories of form and genre. what graduate student, especially at the start of one’s studies, wouldn’t want to take a class like that, right? in addition to novels from mourning dove, zitkala-sa, john joseph mathews, and gerald vizenor, stephen graham jones’s 2000 novel, the fast red road, was also included on the reading list. i’d be lying if i were to say i was able to appreciate the innovations and narrative risks jones was taking at the time, as i was soon lost in the circuitous plot and complex relations between characters that drives the story. but, as i read and struggled to finish the novel, i felt as though some extraordinary and magical world had been revealed, a narrative realm charged with what i would later hear one of my colleagues, selah saterstrom, call “alchemical effects,” which were activated both on the page and in those ethereal spaces in the imagination where stories take shape and form. still today, the fast red road remains one of the most challenging and exhilarating books i’ve ever experienced as a reader, and the spiraling of narratives jones conjures there will never cease to call me back in search of the storied treasures that remain unnoticed in each previous reading. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) v from a review of the articles included in this special issue, i get the distinct feeling that something similar is afoot in the hearts and minds of this esteemed group of scholars, both in the process of writing and the enthusiasm for jones’s works that inspired them. for each contributor displays their own unique passions for story in the ideas and insights they offer us in their literary uncoverings, while invigorated by the determination to share this common passion with others. the keen perceptions offered in the five articles making up this feature take us back to ledfeather, and, from there, explore a range of jones’s more recent works including mongrels, mapping the interior and the only good indians, while highlighting the wealth of scholarly interests and disciplinary knowledge of our contributors. then we close with a conversation i had with stephen focused on his experiences as a writer and insights on contemporary publishing organized around his latest fictions and the turn to horror displayed in his work since mongrels. beyond what we might learn from this writing, my hope is also that the more elemental and instinctual passion for stories and their capacity to change the world which jones has often spoken of shines through. afterall, and as scholars especially, it is critical to remember that regardless of how vital our work may be to our careers, our sense of professional or personal identity, or even our livelihoods, at the purest and most fundamental of levels, everything always goes back to story—as the origin and source of all of these matters and concerns, and not only that, but so too the material out of which of our very lives are animated. notes 1 in following gerald vizenor’s conventions on the use of capitalization in reference to the terms indian and native, but more importantly what this usage signifies in terms of billy j. stratton “on the fictions of stephen graham jones” vi colonial representation and simulation, “native” and “indigenous” are rendered in lowercase throughout this essay. works cited vizenor, gerald, darkness in saint louis: bearheart. truck press, 1978. microsoft word 248-2110-1-pb (2).docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 70 “please mom? can you please download it at home?”: video games as a symbol of linguistic survivance david dennison lacho & aaron leon recently, there has been an increase in video games that are made by or in collaboration with indigenous people, for example elizabeth lapensée’s survivance, chelsea vowel’s idle no more: blockade, minority media’s spirits of spring, and upper one games’ kisima inŋitchuŋa (never alone). indigenous people’s direct involvement in the development of these video games exemplifies how indigenous people are in control of digital media that represents their own communities and identities. for example, survivance asks players to create an expression of their own indigeneity through lessons and quests. idle no more is an rpg game that stresses cultural relevance and highlights issues that many indigenous communities face, such as land expropriation and cultural stereotyping. spirits of spring explores an indigenous boy’s experiences of bullying. kisima inŋitchuŋa invites players to explore iñupiaq stories and life in the arctic. within the context of the growing movement of indigenous video games, the splatsin tsm7aksaltn (splatsin teaching centre) of the splatsin first nation have decided to create a video game in order to revitalize their language and culture. we are part of a research team including community members and academics who are working towards developing this video game. the video game is being developed as a platformer game that is based on splatsin’s oral stories. as part of the game’s development, a community meeting was held to discuss and play a wide range of video games in order to get the community’s opinion on what makes a good video game. this meeting highlighted the importance of traditional storytelling in the community as well as the strength of story in videogames. in this paper, we examine indigenous storytelling through the medium of video games, specifically through the game kisima inŋitchuŋa. kisima inŋitchuŋa exemplifies an impactful reimagining of indigenous oral storytelling through the medium of video games. also, using comments from the community meeting, we examine how david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 71 indigenous video games support relationality and how technology is implicated in shaping, or shifting, iterations of traditional and ancestral ways of being of indigenous communities, such as splatsin. at the community meeting, the stsmamlt (children) and parents were engaged in the immersive iñupiaq narrative of the video game kisima inŋitchuŋa. during the meeting, stsmamlt, who were the players, played through the iñupiaq narrative and interacted with the game world, while parents, who were observers, engaged with their stsmamlt and commented on the game’s narrative and the reality it presented. since the stsmamlt and parents came together and identified strongly with representations of an indigenous group’s language and culture in a videogame, we discuss how games can be a tool that supports cultural and language revitalization. in this way, a community developed video game for language revitalization can stand as a symbol of, as leisy thornton wyman describes, linguistic survivance, which is “the use of language and/or translanguaging to creatively express, adapt and maintain identities under difficult or hostile circumstances” (2). kisima inŋitchuŋa and storytelling kisima inŋitchuŋa is a game made by upper one games, an indigenous-owned game studio of the cook-inlet tribal council. several alaska elders contributed to building the video game. the game has single-player and cooperative functions. throughout the gameplay, the player plays as nuna, a young iñupiaq girl, and also fox, a creature that can communicate with spirits in the arctic of alaska. nuna and fox must overcome many challenges together to save nuna’s village from a terrible winter storm. players must either switch between nuna and fox or play cooperatively, embodying both characters to overcome various puzzles and challenges. together, the player(s), nuna, and the fox encounter characters from iñupiaq stories. the game is narrated in the iñupiaq language with subtitles in english. throughout the game, nuna and fox unlock cultural insights, which add intricate detail to the game world, and to the player(s)’ understanding of iñupiaq language, culture, and way of life. the narration of kisima inŋitchuŋa is in the iñupiaq language and recounted by james (mumiġan) nageak. the player enters the world of the iñupiaq people through nageak’s words; a world that may be different from their own (gaertner; longboat, “never alone homepage”). in his analysis of kisima inŋitchuŋa, warren cariou brings to light the similarities between video games and indigenous storytelling: transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 72 i had often thought that indigenous stories would make amazing video games, since they are filled with such drama, transformations, unseen dangers and unexpected gifts. they also contain teachings that tell us about how to survive in our contemporary world by giving us the wisdom of the generations that have come before. while video games don’t necessarily undertake the pedagogical task that traditional oral stories do, there is definitely a potential for such teaching within the medium of gaming. (cariou) video games in this sense are viewed for their potential to teach skills that are livable and pertinent to a community’s survivance. cariou sees video games as a medium for cultural transmission through storytelling and through the game’s interactivity: i don’t believe that video games can entirely replace storytelling as a means of cultural transmission and resurgence, but i do think they can supplement the work of oral stories in many ways, and i feel they can do so particularly through their staging of the player’s performance within the world of the game. what is labeled as the “interactivity” of gaming is, for me, very similar to the relational aspects of storytelling. (cariou) cariou sees the importance of storytelling as existing within lived human experience, and relinquishes the concept that video games can outright replace storytelling in communities. he understands video games, just like storytelling, as a medium that is “disruptive, sustaining, knowledge producing, and theory-in-action” (sium and ritskes 2). cariou makes the link that cultural knowledge within communities can be transmitted across time and generations in mediums that are sometimes deemed less traditional. cariou is correct in saying that video games can take on the role of teaching and learning as frans mäyrä argues that playing games can lead to teachings and finding commonalities between the player and the messages in games. he argues that: playing is a form of understanding. we can decode messages that carry information in unconventional forms by simple trial-and-error behaviors, as the feedback we derive from our interaction tells us whether we have understood each other or not. (mäyrä 14) while playing through the video game, the player encounters the way of life of the iñupiaq. the video game “contains the teachings within an experience that is active, reciprocal (the technological term for this being ‘interactive’), embodied and repeatable” (cariou). these david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 73 repeatable actions are similar to how indigenous stories exist through time and space. as stories are embodied and repeated through the act of storytelling they are transformed in present contexts. video games, for example, could be considered one of these present contexts. david gaertner sees video gaming as a way for indigenous storytellers to “shift and adapt traditional narratives in new contexts and mediums without sacrificing meaning or faithfulness to the past.” although the medium between storytelling differs greatly, storytellers have always shifted between the “diverse memories of the visual past into the experiences and metaphors of the present” (vizenor 7). indigenous storytelling can be laden with nuanced teachings that must be interpreted by the listener and requires the listener to displace their current position in time and space. in many indigenous communities, a “story is a living thing, an organic process, a way of life” (graveline 66). video games, as a medium of indigenous storytelling, can exist as a way to tell stories that are “inclusive of the past, present, and future, as well as the current or contemporary moment and the story reality, without losing context and coherence while maintaining the drama” (armstrong 194). in kisima inŋitchuŋa, the player discovers temporal and spatial aspects of storytelling, and through continuous gameplay (re)lives the community’s stories. by playing the game, the story is reflected upon the player’s non-digital world and in the player’s present context. with kisima inŋitchuŋa, storytelling is presented through a new medium while the faithfulness to the iñupiaq story is maintained. relationality, survivance, and linguistic survivance the use of technology in indigenous communities is often tied to processes of reclaiming identity, decolonization, and self-determination. technology is also implicated in shaping, or shifting, iterations of traditional and ancestral ways of being. in many communities elders continue to teach cultural knowledge, and technology is complementing education and knowledge transfer. use of technology is often aligned with these communities’ goals of selfdetermination (monroe 290-294). in canada, indigenous peoples are often “[drawing] on their resources as members of politically autonomous nations to assert control over digital infrastructure development” (mcmahon 2003). to do so, indigenous people must have a say in how media represents not only images of themselves but also ideological constructs that are rooted in indigenous ways of knowing. for example, in his discussion of kisima inŋitchuŋa, maize longboat highlights how the iñupiaq community has taken control over digital transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 74 infrastructure that represents their community and “love for life in all of its forms”, specifically in a medium that has historically portrayed indigenous people negatively: the game is one of the most recent, movement-leading examples of how indigenous communities are currently deconstructing the mainstream gaming industry’s negative stereotypes to serve their own purposes of cultural revitalization, intra community education for younger generations, and the reeducation of the global gaming public… considering the fact that the iñupiat community has utilized the video game medium that is foreign to indigenous community practices in many ways, their desire to represent themselves within a genre that has done so much to erase indigenous peoples as a whole communicates how never alone has the capability of subverting dominant narratives in meaningful ways. (longboat) longboat’s comments are especially important considering the fact that many video games today reflect imperialistic attitudes that contribute to the othering of indigenous people and represent territorial conquest in a positive way (patel). considering longboat’s statements, a video game can include an indigenous community’s values, which transforms the landscapes that are still dominated by colonial powers. shawn wilson describes the importance of the relationships that lie “at the heart of what it means to be indigenous” (80). specifically, wilson highlights the concept of relationality as the complex connections between people, land, the cosmos, and ideas. these relationships are sacred and critical to indigenous knowledge production and acquisition, for informing other relationships, pedagogical approaches to sharing knowledges, methods of connecting people to place, understanding humanity, and understanding that knowledge is cultural (86-96). in a canadian context, this relationality has been damaged by assimilation practices such as indian residential schools and the sixties scoop.1 in line with various conventions and declarations such as the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as the canada’s truth and reconciliation final calls to action, education is positioned as a critical site of resistance, reconciliation, and of transcending the past and present marginalization of indigenous peoples through physically and culturally violent colonial processes. the canadian charter of rights and freedoms aims to grant indigenous people of canada the right to the use of their language, yet imperial colonial understandings of education “deny the use and development of [indigenous peoples’] own world views and thought through the suppression of david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 75 indigenous languages and cultures in schools, and confine education to western methodologies and approaches” (battiste 142). many indigenous peoples are struggling to negotiate a space for indigenous pedagogical strategies, cultural education, and knowledge protection within a hostile social, political, and economic system founded on colonization. this negotiation is changing what it means to be indigenous in canada: being indigenous today means struggling to reclaim and regenerate one’s relational, place-based existence by challenging the ongoing, destructive forces of colonization. whether through ceremony or through other ways that indigenous peoples (re)connect to the natural world, processes of resurgence are often contentious and reflect the spiritual, cultural, economic, social and political scope of the struggle. (corntassel 88) resurgence, reclaiming relationality, and renewing connection to language and culture are all part of the process that gerald vizenor termed survivance (survival and resistance). survivance reflects “an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories, not a mere reaction, however pertinent” (vizenor, “aesthetics of survivance” 1). this process foregrounds indigenous ways of knowing and embodies lived resistance to colonial ideologies that privilege western paradigms, epistemologies, and ontological constructs (vizenor, manifest manners). extending on vizenor’s concept, leisly thornton wyman terms linguistic survivance as the presence and continual use of a community’s ancestral language despite oppressing colonial measures that contribute to its endangerment (54). these movements and resurgences are spiritual and are “a culturally rooted social movement that transforms the whole society and a political action that seeks to remake the entire landscape of power and relationship to reflect a truly liberated post-imperial vision” (alfred 30). video games can be a medium for teaching and can be used for fostering individual and collective action, as a demonstration of survivance, and can be a space for the acknowledgement and discussion of social issues. video games can be used to introduce players to differing, unfamiliar worldviews in a safe environment, where the risk, and price, of failure is low. for example, in kisima inŋitchuŋa, the risk of taking an action, such as confronting a polar bear head-on, is low since a player’s death will revive them in a location nearby. the player learns that the only way to defeat the polar bear is to work cooperatively. players are not discouraged by defeat but rather encouraged to try again by adopting novel strategies to defeating an enemy transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 76 or overcoming a challenge in a world that may seem unfamiliar. mitigating the risk that might accompany these types of experiences in ‘real-world’ contexts allows players to learn new ways to look at the world and to explore ideas about the construction of identity, and potential to reimagine themselves in relation to the challenges presented in-game (stokes et al. 4-7). games also allow players to experiment with different ideologies and explore and challenge their own moral and ethical framework (swain 806). for example, elizabeth lapensée’s game survivance allows players to represent themselves and create meaningful change in their life through their own acts: survivance is a game in which indigenous players are given the space to represent themselves as they see fit and to explore the representations that other players put out into the world in the form of acts of survivance. the quests encourage ethical behaviors in a way that is intrinsic—the game does not literally tell players “make ethical choices,” but rather walks players through a process of exploring their communal wellbeing in a way that leads to culturally relevant ethics. this inherent design is what makes true change possible. (27) a player’s demonstration of survivance gives power to their own voices by creating their own change, as the player decides how to best represent themselves. video games that incorporate indigenous narratives, a game such as kisima inŋitchuŋa, stand as a rupture of the ideas and values of colonial understandings of time and space. just like oral stories, indigenous narratives in video games “work to not only regenerate indigenous traditions and knowledge production, but also work against the colonial epistemic frame to subvert and recreate possibilities and space for resistance” (sium and ritskes 2). likewise, indigenous stories stand as a form of colonial resistance and as acts of survivance, since they “affirm that the subjectivity of indigenous peoples is both politically and intellectually valid. indigenous stories also proclaim that indigenous peoples still exist, that the colonial project has ultimately been unsuccessful in erasing indigenous existence” (4). splatsin first nation and language endangerment the splatsin first nation is the southernmost member of the secwepemc (shuswap) nation. some of the earliest ethnographic accounts of the splatsin people can be found in the publication the shuswap, published by james alexander teit in 1909 as part of the jesup north pacific david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 77 expedition (jnpe) directed by anthropologist franz boas. the splatsin live along the eagle, salmon, and shuswap rivers, and today practice traditional hunting, fishing, and often hold culture camps for sharing traditional knowledge along these waterways (cooperman; morrison). their reserve lands are located next to enderby, british columbia, and along the shuswap river (shuswap nation tribal council). the shuswap river is central to the community members’ lives as it: forms a splatsin social hub during many months of the year. splatsin people gather at the enderby bridge, on river beaches, and at camps along the river. the river is a travel corridor, a place of spiritual activities and cleansing rituals, and where horses are watered. the shuswap river is the aesthetic centre of splatsin culture for it forms a central component of traditional stories and oral histories. (mcilwraith 173) the language of the splatsin people is an eastern dialect of the secwepemctsín (shuswap) language of the interior salish language family. the secwepemctsín dialects are endangered as a whole and have 1,190 semi-speakers (ethnologue), although splatsin’s secwepemctsín dialect is significantly more endangered. less than 1% of over 800 band members are speakers (firstvoices). according to the language needs assessment of the first peoples’ heritage language & culture council, in 2014 there were 8 speakers that understood secwepemctsín fluently, all of whom are over the age of 65. there were 14 speakers that understood and/or spoke secwepemctsín somewhat, and there were 63 people that were learning secwepemctsín. 835 band members at the time of the report did not speak or understand secwepemctsín (first peoples’ heritage language & culture council). since this report, some elders who were fluent speakers of the language have passed away. although not the only criteria for assessing endangered languages, language researchers have suggested that in order for a language to be considered safe, it would require between 20,000 and 100,000 speakers (ottenheimer; krauss). in order to increase the number of fluent speakers, the splatsin community has been in the process of revitalizing secwepemctsín since the 1970s (firstvoices). the splatsin community has been affected greatly by the indian residential school act, as well as the sixties scoop (as mentioned above), and this has greatly accelerated the endangerment of the splatsin’s language and culture. in order to mitigate the age discrepancy between fluent speakers of the language and youth, the community has put in place initiatives to revitalize their language, such as a language nest at the splatsin tsm7aksaltn (cook transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 78 and williams 6). a language nest program involves learning a language in immersion preschools. internationally, these programs have been implemented within other indigenous communities, such as maori and manx gaelic (wilson; king). the splatsin child care facility and the kikia7as (grandmothers) participate in immersion programs with the stsmamlt with the goals of teaching and documenting secwepemctsín (cook and williams 6-8). language learning in immersion occurs three days per week and there are programs that teach language and culture across age groups, such as singing, dancing, and drumming (williams 2). the concentration on early childhood development is also an effort to heal and decolonize by supporting the secwepemc culture and language from the beginning of a child’s education (legacy of hope foundation). in view of secwepemctsín’s endangerment, we are participating in a hyperlocal project to develop a video game for the splatsin first nation community. we are engaging in dialogue, improving the livelihood of the local area, and fostering and reinforcing a sense of, and connection to, place and community at a grassroots level (baines; dungen and genest; hu et al.; radcliffe). the grassroots approach and locality are also enabling us to foster language learning that is specific to the needs of the community. as such, we are considering the entire way of life of secwepemctsín speakers, as indigenous languages carry multiplicities of importance for those who speak them. they are the foundation of spiritual and cultural values: indigenous peoples view their languages as forms of spiritual identity. indigenous languages are thus sacred to indigenous peoples. they provide the deep cognitive bonds that affect all aspects of indigenous life. through their shared language, indigenous people create a shared belief in how the world works and what constitutes proper action. (battiste and henderson 49) the goal of increasing the number of secwepemctsín speakers is not only part of the efforts to minimize endangerment, but it also constitutes a shift in re-understanding the deeply rooted cultural and spiritual life of splatsin. the goal of the video game is to be accessible on the most used devices in the community, and aims at revitalizing the secwepemctsín language amongst youth. as brittain and mackenzie have written, youth “are the primary users and developers of technology. the language should be available in forms that are accessible and appealing to everyone, but the focus… should be on young people” (441). video game development that aims david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 79 to teach the language and culture of secwepemctsín, and that is aimed towards a younger audience, fits well within the goals of the tsm7aksaltn immersion programs. playing video games and community meeting a major part of our research project involves engaging with the community and ensuring that community members have a say in how the video game will be designed. the research team is doing this to ensure that the community retains control over the representation of their language and culture. jason edward lewis points out that such a level of collaboration and engagement is important so that indigenous people have a say in how new media is shaped and formed: by engaging in the conversation that is shaping new media systems and structures, native people can claim an agency in how that shaping carries forward and, by acting as agents, not only can we help to expand the epistemological assumptions upon which those systems and structures are based but we can stake out our own territory in a common future. (63) on april 11th 2016, we held a community meeting with gamer stsmamlt and parents. we placed three computers, a playstation 4, and a nintendo entertainment system (nes) around the splatsin tsm7aksaltn for the gamers to play. we had various types of games, such as mortal kombat, super mario 3, and kisima inŋitchuŋa for the gamers to play. we avoided overly violent games and first-person shooters because we felt as though these games were not appropriate and conducive to the learning environment of the splatsin tsm7aksaltn. we provided pizza, pop, and healthy snacks to contribute to an atmosphere similar to a local area network (lan) party common in video game culture. parents and their gamer stsmamlt took turns playing games, sharing strategies, and commenting on their favorite games past and present. having several generations of consoles around the room provided an opportunity for parents to comment on how video games have changed and for gamers to question the graphics and mechanics of video games that they take for granted in modern consoles. as the gamers played, we asked questions about some of their favorite games. parents also got involved in asking their gamer stsmamlt questions pertaining to the games that were being played. parents would often question their gamer stsmamlt in-game decisions, and would have the gamers reflect on their gaming experience. parents were often very surprised and impressed with how well their gamer stsmamlt adapted to the game mechanics and customization. gamer stsmamlt were also transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 80 surprised that their parents knew how to play video games. gamers stsmamlt would turn to their parents for in-game advice and opinions, such as which avatar would best represent their parents, who their favorite characters are, and for help to get through very difficult levels. overall, the evening was inspiring for community members and researchers and it encouraged the gamer stsmamlt and parents to talk about the value of video games, video game culture over time, and indigenous languages and culture. parents were excited by the prospect of our project, and they were very happy with how we have engaged the community thus far, and the amount of responses we received for the community meeting. parents commented on how video game nights were a good opportunity for the community to come together and share food and do something engaging, and that we should continue engaging the community in this way.2 for example, one parent said, these kind of nights are really good for the kids and the families… sometimes space is kind of a problem, and for communities to get together, this was a really nice night. (so more nights like this in general?) yeah, that would be really good. (18:15) after an hour of gameplay, we broke off into a sharing circle to talk about our experiences with video games. many of the gamers said that kisima inŋitchuŋa was one of their favorite games: i know my favorite game (what game is that?) never alone. (never alone is your favorite game? why’s that?) it actually shows what happens in the arctic. it’s like you have to learn about how the [iñupiaq] live and getting chased by a polar bear or something like that (so you like the cultural stuff in video games?) mhm. (do you wish you could see more cultural stuff in video games?) yeah. (14:45) gamers commented that learning about the iñupiaq people reflected what they were learning in school about the inuit people: i’m starting to learn about the inuit, and we’re also reading a book about the inuit [in school]. (20:35) the players celebrated victories in the game, such as receiving the bola, the weapon that is used throughout the game: me and quintessa just got a weapon! some blue thing! (2:30) kisima inŋitchuŋa was very popular during the community meeting and gamer stsmamlt wanted to play the game at home: david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 81 (talking about never alone) mom? (you can play that again sometime?) can you download it at home? (we will have to get it but yeah, probably.) please mom? mommy? can you please download it at home? (22:50) towards the end of the community meeting we projected kisima inŋitchuŋa on a screen in the center of the room while the other gamers took turns playing the game. parents and the other gamers watched, shared strategies, and even teased each other during a challenge where players had to defeat a polar bear. the players and the spectators embodied both characters of nuna and fox while overcoming a difficult part of the game: you have to jump over him! how do you attack? you gotta go the other way! where’s the other way? run, run! there you go! you gotta go the other way! woah! oh, i want to play. well i know, you gotta wait until the fox comes [to play co-op mode]. i can probably play on that one. you’ve got to wait until the fox comes. can me and you take turns?... i thought you understood it! go go! quick! duck! oh no you drowned! (32:55) kisima inŋitchuŋa’s co-operative play, whether it is players taking turns playing as the iñupiaq girl, nuna, or two players co-operatively playing both nuna and fox, encourages players to see themselves in relation to the reciprocal values of the iñupiaq culture (longboat). stsmamlt understood this component of the game, and one stsmamlt commented on how it was her favorite part: (what’s your favorite part of [kisima inŋitchuŋa]?) there’s teamwork, you never just leave someone alone. (11:10) the stsmamlt understood that the game is played cooperatively, and that the game requires the player to switch between two characters, nuna and the fox, to complete the game: that fox right there, he’s going to help you! (31:50) the community members took notice of how the game reflected the iñupiaq language and culture and community members commented on how that contributed to the aesthetics of the game. two parents discussed this fact: you can hear the wind, and then when the language comes on it’s [in iñupiaq] and it has video clips too (oh really?) yeah (cool, oh yeah okay). (3:25) the community meeting was an opportunity for community members to play together and have fun. jeroen jansz and lonneke martens have examined player engagement with video transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 82 games at lan parties. their research found that lan parties are social in nature and allowed participants to find out more about gaming and gaming culture. they found that gaming as a group is more enjoyable and rewarding than gaming in solitude. they show that video games are not just an “activity enjoyed by an isolated adolescent” (350). similarly, garry crawford and jason rutter found that gaming serves many social functions including transmission of knowledge, which may have positive effects on the player beyond the video game interface. crawford and rutter argue: gameplay can also act as a resource for social performances that are not based exclusively on gaming. in particular, knowledge and information gained from digital gaming can be used to inform conversations or social interactions based around other subject matter (279). the conversations that were had at the community meeting demonstrate this level of engagement, and how video games can play a role in bringing the community together in a positive way while teaching important values such as reciprocity. playing a video game such as kisima inŋitchuŋa, one that represents an indigenous group’s language and culture, engaged the splatsin first nation community. gamers were happy to see indigenous culture and language reflected in a game. although the language and culture of the iñupiaq people differs greatly from splatsin’s secwepemc language and culture, gamers and their parents reflected on the potential to see representations of themselves in video games. throughout the meeting, they offered suggestions that we should use traditional stories for the game that our team will develop. we will consider these suggestions and ask other community members for their input on how this could be done. throughout gameplay, all attendees of the community meeting participated in the narrative of kisima inŋitchuŋa; the stories of the iñupiaq were retold in the context of the community meeting, and the community members displayed agency in the game world through playing, observing, and commenting on the game. the community meeting was critical in understanding how to best represent the values of the splatsin community in a video game. it was also critical in understanding how a community may come together and learn about language and culture through a video game. the research team plans on hosting more meetings and these meetings will play a crucial role as the game itself is developed. conclusion david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 83 from the engagement of splatsin first nation community members with the video game kisima inŋitchuŋa, we found that by playing a video game, those that are engaged with video games are not only players, but also those that are watching the gameplay. in terms of the community-based project of developing a video game for splatsin first nation, we must consider the potential for a video game to be played in a group setting. our observations confirm that when played in groups, games can create an environment for sharing language while talking about the game (baltra 447). the video game we are developing for splatsin first nation and the secwepemctsín language is in the early stages of development. the goal of the video game is to teach secwepemctsín and will reflect values that are important to the community just as kisima inŋitchuŋa does. it was first and foremost the community’s choice to develop a game to teach the language. the video game, once developed, will have engaged as many community members as possible. its development will stand as a community project, and as a symbol of how secwepemctsín can occupy areas that have, in the past, represented indigenous people poorly. despite the colonial processes that have endangered splatsin’s secwepemctsín dialect, the community is coming together to work on a project that represents their language and culture in a way that is relevant to the community’s understandings and needs. they are building a game that will foster the relationships that are sacred and critical to the continuance of splatsin’s language and culture. leisly thornton wyman builds on vizenor’s concept of survivance to claim that linguistic survivance is the continuous use and presence of language in light of processes of globalization (54). survivance of a community through language and cultural revitalization focuses not on “loss but renewal and continuity into the future rather than memorializing the past” (kroeber 25). in this sense, the video game will stand as a symbol of both survivance and linguistic survivance. the video game will exist for current generations and generations to come and will demonstrate how a community has come together and determined how digital infrastructure represents their language and community. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 84 acknowledgements we would like to thank the staff and community members of the splatsin tsm7aksaltn for their involvement in this community-based project. we would like to acknowledge the hard work of the kikia7as, the grandmothers and speakers, who work hard to teach secwepemctsín to the stsmamlt. we are also thankful to rosalind williams and to future co-researchers who will join the video game project as it grows. we would also like to thank the participants of the community meeting, who were erica seymour, harmony killman-williams, justiz beaudryduteau, laurie anderson, logan christian, logan twin, orin cardinal, phoenix cardinal, quintessa christian, silas christian, stephanie killman, and vanessa cardinal. we would also like to thank ryan le roux, karolina bialkowska, and dr. christine schreyer. david dennison lacho & aaron leon “please mom?” 85 notes 1 the sixties scoop is a term first used by johnston in native children and the child welfare system to describe the government process of forcibly removing aboriginal children from their families and communities and placing them in the child welfare system and in the foster care of white families. the splatsin community was particularly affected by this process and has launched a lawsuit in 2015 against the bc government for not upholding a community child welfare bylaw. this bylaw was passed in response to the sixties scoop to ensure that the splatsin first nation retains jurisdiction over the welfare of the community’s children (helston). 2 the researchers decided to record the community meeting and consent was obtained from all participants. the evening was very exciting and it was difficult to discern the speakers of these quotes. however, all participants in the video game night participated and had a very enjoyable evening. video games in this article kisima inŋitchuŋa (never alone) – upper one games, http://neveralonegame.com/ survivance – elizabeth lapensée, http://survivance.org/ idle no more: blockade – chelsea vowel, http://apihtawikosisan.com/tag/idle-no-more-game/ spirits of spring – minority media, http://www.weareminority.com/spirits-of-spring/ mortal kombat – midway games super mario 3 – nintendo works cited alfred, gerald r. wasase. indigenous pathways of action and freedom. broadview press, 2005. armstrong, jeanette. “land speaking.” speaking for the generations: native writers on writing, ed. simon j. ortiz. u of arizona p. 1998, pp. 175–194. baines, david. “hyper-local news: a glue to hold rural communities together?” local economy, vol. 27, no. 2, 2012, pp. 152–166. baltra, armando. “language learning through computer adventure games.” simulation & gaming, vol. 21, no. 4, 1990, pp. 445–452. battiste, marie. decolonizing education: nourishing the learning spirit. purich publishing limited, 2013. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 86 ---. and james youngblood henderson. 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reflections, 26 may 2016, https://ilsaneveralone.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/performance-kinaesthetic-memory-andoral-traditions-in-never-alone/. accessed 26 may 2016. williams, rosalind. “grandmothers, babies, and immersion.” growing together: news and resources for bc first nations head start on-reserve programme, vol. 21, fall 2007, pp. 1–4. wilson, gary n. “but the language has got children now.” shima: the international journal of research into island cultures, vol. 3, no. 21, 2009, pp. 15–31. wyman, leisy thornton. youth culture, language endangerment and linguistic survivance. multilingual matters, 2012. microsoft word kroes.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     180 steve friesen, with franҫois chladiuk, lakota performers in europe: their culture and the artefacts they left behind. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2017. 304 pp. isbn 9780806156965. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/2199/lakota%20performers%20in%20eur ope buffalo bill, his name and his legend, live on until the present day. he keeps re-appearing across a wide range of media in the united states as well as in europe, in history books, in film (notably robert altman’s buffalo bill and the indians: or sitting bull’s history lesson), in novels (like french novelist eric vuillard’s tristesse de la terre: une histoire de buffalo bill cody). in the manner of so many stars of the international stage, he seems unable to take leave from the adulation of audiences who flocked to see his show in their millions in its heyday, roughly from the 1880s to the 1910s. not even the trifling detail of his death prevented him from entering a long and successful afterlife. during his life as a showman he had set the parameters for the translation of the history of the american west into myth, turning recent history into the quintessential american narrative of “how the west was won,” and how the americans found their national destiny. through the re-enactment of heroic high points in this narrative the message of “manifest destiny” and of the indians as a vanishing race, where anglo-saxon whites kept winning and indians kept losing battles, was hammered home to audiences that themselves were caught in the process of becoming americans. not only that: buffalo bill’s wild west went on tour internationally, to england first, in 1887 on the occasion of the golden jubilee of queen victoria’s rule, to other european countries in following decades. rival shows, such as pawnee bill’s great wild west, were cut of the same cloth and vied for the same audiences. they all combined to disseminate the story of the american west as spectacle and entertainment. nor were they the only carriers of this information. countries like germany and france had a long infatuation with the romance of the american west and the american indian. in france we can trace this back to the popularity of what is arguably the first “western” in literature, chateaubriand’s atala, or to later french fiction by gustave aimard. in germany a similar long-standing sentimental involvement with the american indian spurred initially by translations of james fennimore cooper’s frontier tales, was being fed by karl may’s stories of white-indian male bonding in the pristine open spaces of the american west. in addition, local entrepreneurs blended the appeal of the untamed “wild”, whether animals or human beings, in what became known as “human zoos.” people from the far reaches of the world, explored in the frantic competition for colonial expansion, were put on display in european countries and the u.s. for local publics to gaze at in a blend of anthropological and prurient interests. they could hail from the pacific, from africa, but american indians were a prominent presence. thus, in these varied ways, european publics were exposed to forms of mass entertainment as these had recently been shaped, particularly in the united states. at the same time, they may have taken in the many implied readings of contemporary civilization. the rank order of human cultures as projected through these pageants and spectacles was from primitive and un-civilized to high, with white civilization at its pinnacle. it was a view that confirmed white audiences, on both sides of the atlantic, in their sense of global mission, what the french called their mission civilisatrice. this particular blend of entertainment and indoctrination led rob kroes review of “lakota performers in europe”     181   american author mark twain, centrally involved in the production of an american cultural vernacular, to re-assure buffalo bill, on the eve of his first european tour, that he would be offering europeans a sample of something truly and authentically american, not – as had been the case all too often before – something at best derivative of european culture. the role the indians were given to play in the wild west show formed part of the larger message of american pre-eminence in the world order of civilizations. most of them were lakota and kept performing in the wild west show even after images of the massacre at wounded knee, in particular of lakota chief spotted elk’s frozen body left out in the open following the carnage, had reached a larger public. one is left wondering how a man like mark twain, a powerful voice in the international protest against belgian king leopold’s reign of terror in his congo colony, could at the same time ignore domestic atrocity visited upon native american indians. clearly a matter of selective observation and indignation. yet there they were, lakota performers in traveling wild west shows. why did they get themselves involved? this is the central question that the book under review tries to answer. toward the end of the 19th century american indians had a limited number of options: a miserable life on reservations, forced americanization imposed on indian children at indian schools, or the chance to earn money and keep their own culture alive through its continuing re-enactment before eager publics. this may have made sense for those involved, although only limited numbers could avail themselves of this option. much of the story that the book under review tells has been told before. there is no original research for this book to report. in fact, although published by a university press, this is not an academic, or scholarly, book. it is a coffee table book, gorgeously produced. it is a fan’s product in two ways. it lovingly orders and reproduces in beautiful color a collection of cultural artefacts that go back to what lakota performers had left behind or had sold to a belgian “collectionneur” after their last stay in brussels. that, we might say, was the first fan’s critical intervention. subsequently, re-discovering this cultural hoard, cataloguing it and making it accessible to a larger public is important cultural work in its own right, and we have to thank the instigators for it. local fans have found a way of sharing their enthusiasm with the wider world. it is a triumphal act of resistance against the forces of entropy and oblivion. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 201 contributor biographies gwen benaway is of anishinaabe and métis descent. her first collection of poetry, ceremonies for the dead, was published in 2013 and her second collection of poetry, passage, was published by kegedonce press in fall 2016. as emerging twospirited trans poet, she has been described as the spiritual love child of tomson highway and anne sexton. in 2015, she was the recipient of the inaugural speaker’s award for a young author and in 2016 she received a dayne ogilvie honour of distinction for emerging queer authors from the writer's trust of canada. her work has been published and anthologized internationally. she and her many vintage dresses can be found on instagram @gwenbenaway michelle lee brown is a doctoral student in the subfields of indigenous politics and futures within the political science department at the university of hawai'i at mānoa. her areas of focus are indigenous video games and oceanic mobility. euskaldun, her ancestral land/waters region is lapurdi, the bidart/plage dʻerretegia area. currently in hawaiʻi nei, she strives to uphold her relational commitments to ʻohana and the ʻāina that supports them. jeanette bushnell, is a semi-retired anishinaabe university professor who has played games for nearly six decades. her gaming interests have followed the technology trajectory beginning in the 1950’s with card games, board games, role-playing, puzzles, neighborhood games such as kick the can, and pick-up ball games. video gaming moved through pong, asteroids, tetris, zelda, mario, carmen sandiego, prince of persia, and gizmos. she entered the mmorpg world when wow came out of beta to spend time with her children who are gamers. by the time first person shooters on contemporary consoles made it big, her physical response times had aged beyond competitive play ability. since her phd years, game playing for entertainment has diminished while it has increased as an academic interest. stephen graham jones is the author of sixteen novels and six story collections. most recent are mapping the interior, from tor.com and the comic book my hero, from hex publishers, and stephen lives and teaches in boulder, colorado. david dennison lacho is a unity 3d ar developer. he has a research background that looks at understanding the relationships that people have towards technology, including software, hardware, and social media. his research focus is on using emerging technology for learning and promoting minority/endangered languages within communities. aaron leon grew up in armstrong/ enderby, in rural british columbia and is a proud member of the splatsin band. leon graduated from concordia university in 2013 with a bachelor’s of fine arts, major in photography. leon focuses on two separate trains of thought in his work: the first is exploring his identity and splatsin first nations background, and the second involves explorations of perception and colour. https://kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/2-ceremonies-for-the-dead.html https://kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/81-passage.html transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 202 elizabeth lapensee, ph.d. is an award-winning writer, designer, and artist of games, comics, transmedia, and animation. she is anishinaabe, métis, and irish, living near the great lakes as an assistant professor of media & information and writing, rhetoric & american cultures at michigan state university. most recently, she designed and created art for manoominike (2016), a motion game about practices of wild ricing, as well as honour water (2016), an anishinaabe singing game for healing the water. she designed and programmed invaders (2015), a remix of the arcade classic space invaders. she also designed the gift of food (2014), a board game about northwest native traditional foods. she is currently working on thunderbird strike, a side-scrolling lightning-searing attack on oil operations. early on, she was a research assistant for aboriginal territories in cyberspace and continues to contribute as a research affiliate in the initiative for indigenous futures. her dissertation in interactive arts and technology from simon fraser university in british columbia shares experiences from the indigenous social impact game survivance (2011). soon after, she was a postdoctoral associate for the university of minnesota's research for indigenous community health center. her ongoing work was recognized with the serious games community leadership award (2017). katherine meloche is a settler from eastern canada who is now a guest in treaty 6 territory in edmonton alberta. she is a phd candidate in english and film studies at the university of alberta. her dissertation is on indigenous crime fiction in canada focusing on the intersections between indigenous legal structures, storytelling, and genre fiction. tylor prather has a ba in american indian studies from the university of washington. he writes: “first and foremost, i am a geek, i have gamed on consoles that are older than me and have played d&d since i was 6. my geek family spans generations from trading card enthusiasts, to tabletop, miniature wargaming, to playing on consoles and pcs. i am interested in all things that surround gaming, from play and creating worlds from nothing but imagination with some pens and paper, to constructing both arms and armor. second, after discovering the joy of research, i have also become an academic. it is with this joy that i have developed an eye to critically analyze games and gamification. in addition, i have worked in minority outreach under the banner of m.e.s.a (mathematics engineering science achievement) at the university of washington as program assistant for 6 years and 3 years before that as a math tutor. my work in outreach brought me to the conclusion that creativity especially in stem cannot be given room to grow if it is not explored. in that exposure of the sciences and the activities that go beyond textbook reading reveal to students an interest that may have never been explored without that initial exposure.” jonathan tomhave is a lecturer in american indian studies at the university of washington. while his work has focused on issues of identity, power relationships and acts of performative resistance by indigenous actors in both mainstream and alternative productions, he has always held a deep, passionate interest in games. it is this passion that http://survivance.org/invaders/ http://analoggamestudies.org/2016/03/indigenous-board-game-design-in-the-gift-of-food/ http://www.survivance.org/ transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 203 has led him to my current work, both in game development and gamification of communication practices. microsoft word delgado.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     192   joshua whitehead. full-metal indigiqueer. vancouver: talon books, 2017. 128 pp. isbn 9781772011876 http://talonbooks.com/books/full-metal-indigiqueer in full-metal indigiqueer, joshua whitehead broadens the reach of indigenous culture by linking trickster and cyber discourses though the figure of zoa, who defies any reductive take on subjectivity or culture: “though i am machine / you cannot download me / when you enter me / do not decode my dna / as an html story” (whitehead 76). although cyborg discourse, as well as the posthumanism that it is often associated with, do not immediately seem relevant to concerns about indigenous sovereignty and language revitalization, whitehead’s work shows that cyborg and trickster discourses are not only compatible but are in fact perfectly matched. indeed, both the trickster figure and the cyborg are intended to show us the limits of our ideologies by blurring the boundaries between what is and what is not possible. this liminal role has long been ascribed to indigenous peoples, who scholars like lindsey clare smith and susan scheckel, among others, have pointed out were often used as oppositional figures against which the united states and canada could develop national identities. such is also the case with cyborg figures, who often highlight questions about the nature (and scope) of humanity. speaking directly to this similarity in the poem, “full-metal oji-cree,” zoa states, “robotics have always been poc” (112). the collection begins with the genesis of zoa: readers turn through the first few pages, each comprised of a mostly-black background, approaching a slowly-growing small circle of light, which soon reveals the message “h3r314m” or “here i am.” but who is this “i” in this passage? is this our first introduction to zoa or perhaps the author himself? true to the spirit of trickster polemics, the speaker of these poems is often hard to determine. in “can you be my fulltime daddy:white&gold [questionmark],” a poem in which zoa is the presumed speaker due to the installation of music software that occurs at the beginning of it, elusiveness in fact undergirds zoa’s sense of self: “my mother told me i had a tricksters soul / no moral compass pointing north / no fixed personality, gender / just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide / as wavering as smouldering sweetgrass / on the horizon, blind” (whitehead 54). this “tricksters soul” seems to relate to zoa’s two-spiritedness, which the cyborg “ndn” actively and painstakingly expresses through experiences steeped in rejection, hurt, and ultimately acceptance (both by the self and the community). this collection also shows how the trickster’s job is not simply to resist and upset the status quo, just because, but rather that their actions are designed to help their communities: “there is shame here / but there is family too / there is indigeneity / there is truth / & i need all to survive: / hereiamhereiamhereiamhereiam” (whitehead 88). the enjambment of words at the end of this passage illustrates the collection’s ambivalence towards language. at times defamiliarized through crowding and at other times merged with numbers (“h3r314m”), the english language remains a constant source of anxiety: “why am i always adapting your words / from latin tongues & french theorists / ive mastered my masters language / ill need a tic tac after this poem” (whitehead 68). the author desperately strives to make the colonial english language his own – and succeeds in doing so, so that he can illustrate its limitations and challenge us to think beyond it. english is no longer just the “masters language” but the speaker’s, as well (whitehead 68). the poems’ anxiety towards english also explains their conscious use of cree, whitehead’s indigenous language, such as in references to “nikawiy” (mother), “kokum” (grandmother), and “kisâkihitin” (i love you). in one of the francisco delgado review of full metal indigiqueer     193   collection’s better-known poems, “mihkokwaniy” (meaning “rose”), winner of canada’s history award for aboriginal arts and stories (for writers aged 19–29), whitehead writes about his “kokum,” who went by “many names: / the ndn woman / the whitehead lady / a saskatoon female / [and] the beauty queen” (99). in its telling of the grandmother’s story, the poem illustrates how white settlers and other non-indigenous people can use the english language to dehumanize indigenous persons: recalling how his grandmother was often described as beautiful, the speaker explains, “what they meant by beauty was: / cheapdirtybrownprostitutedrugaddictalcoholicfirewaterslut” (99). the power of language is underlined by the ensuing headlines about the grandmother’s death, which the speaker points out read “woman found strangled” instead of “the ‘strangulation death / of the whitehead woman’” (100). the grandmother is secondary to what happened to her; she is even seen as secondary to her murderer, who is punished with only “six years and fifty words” (101) no doubt on account of “his whiteness [which] is his weakness [which] is his innocence” (100). the loss of the grandmother is felt through the generations, made manifest in the speaker’s estrangement from the cree language: “would you teach me what it means to be 2s / tell me i can be a beautiful brown boy in love [questionmark] / make me say niizh-manitoag – feel the power of the tongue” (102). here, the collection speaks to the struggle for language revitalization across most indigenous communities: the speaker can only “feel the power of the tongue” when they speak their two-spirit identity in cree. the fierce retrieval of cree upends colonialist thinking that indigenous languages are nonsensical and irrelevant in today’s world. the collection’s anxiety towards the english language extends to other pillars of western knowledge: zoa, for instance, downloads naming software to lay claim to “thisbodywhichisrightfullymine” before others may attempt to do so (22). similarly, by downloading the “disneysoftware,” zoa answers the old question of “what makes a red man red?” posed in the 1953 film peter pan: “shame makes the red|man| red / makes him injun; makes him feel / makes him real in pictures & in the mirror” (86). zoa also downloads and learns shakespeare (39) and dickens (47) programs to ultimately unand re-learn them and make them their own: passages like “i am the ghost of natives past;/ the ghost of colonialism present;/ the ghost of settlers yet to come” (whitehead 48), inspired by dickens, or “to be or not to be: am i gay is the question” (whitehead 39), gesturing to shakespeare, transfer these canonical works into a context much more relevant to the indigenous, two-spirit experiences that this collection chronicles. in the acknowledgements section, whitehead proclaims, “this is an honour song, this is a survivance song, / this is your song; lets sing the skin back to our bones [period] hereiam: / indigiqueer [period]” (115). these poems do not simply deconstruct language and knowledge; they create an opportunity for readers to create new knowledges, new definitions of self and community, and to “sing the skin back to [their] bones.” whitehead seamlessly weaves discourses on cyborgs, tricksters, and “2s” persons. upsetting how we define these terminologies, as well as how we use the english language, this collection will be of interest to readers and scholars actively seeking a collection of poetry that forges new modes of understanding and expression and that relentlessly and unapologetically builds towards an indigenous future. these are poems of affirmation, resilience, and resistance. francisco delgado, university of new haven microsoft word rasmussen.docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   194   reading the wampum: essays on hodinöhsö:ni’ visual code and epistemological recovery. penelope myrtle kelsey. syracuse, ny: syracuse university press, 2014. 152 pp. 978-08156-3366-2. http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/fall-2014/reading-the-wampum.html in the summer of 2013, the hodinöhsö:ni’ confederacy celebrated the 400th anniversary of the two row wampum, the first treaty belt marking a precedent-setting agreement between the iroquois and the dutch. many subsequent treaties cite that foundational wampum belt as it provides legally binding terms for the relationship between the confederacy and settlers along with a process for future negotiations. travelling by canoe from albany to new york city, descendants came together in 2013 as part of the two row wampum campaign to reaffirm the historial, political, cultural, and philosophical importance of the two row. the significance of this particular belt cannot be overstated. like the magna carta it is “a great humanitarian document because it recognizes equality in spite of the small size of the white colony and insures safety, peace, and friendship forever, and sets up the process for all of our ensuing treaties up to this moment” (3). yet few political scientists and legal scholars have ever heard of the two row and other wampum belts, literary scholars remain largely ignorant about wampum literacy, and post-colonialist are mostly unaware of the relevance and resurgence of wampum theory. penelope myrtle kelsey’s new book reading the wampum: essays on hodinöhsö:ni’ visual code and epistemological recovery could be a game changer. kelsey’s groundbreaking book answers the call of scholars like craig womack to center tribal literatures, languages, stories, and theories in native american studies. despite her seneca descent, kelsey explicitly locates herself outside the longhouse, noting that she stands “outside this circle of tribal sovereignty, as a non-hodinöhsö:ni’ citizen” (xxvi). her methodology is informed by linda tuhiwai smith’s influential treatise decolonizing methodologies which calls for scholarship that is useful and accountable to indigenous communities. for non-native scholars who stand at a far greater distance in these concentric circles, kelsey’s words evoke the possibility of a ripple effect. her innovative analysis demonstrates how scholars can engage the relationship between alphabetism, new media, visual culture, and indigenous literacies like wampum, pictography, and quipus in order to understand the transformative potential of these indigenous bodies of knowledge. focusing on four contemporary iroquois intellectuals, james thomas stevens, eric gansworth, shelley niro, and tracey deer, reading the wampum is the first book-length study of hodinöhsö:ni’ visual, material, print, and multimedia culture through the lens of wampum imagery and narrative. it begins by grounding readers in the literary and political history of wampum and then explicating six classic and influential belts. the two row wampum, the canandaigua treaty belt, and the wolf belt record political agreements while the three sisters belt, the everlasting tree belt, and the adoption belt transmit cultural knowledge. in the chapters that follow, kelsey offers innovative critical readings of the ways in which these belts inform contemporary literature, film, and visual art and in the process “extends the rafters in our epistemological practices to bring forth the coming generations of hodinöhsö:ni’ citizens and descendants” and, possibly, their allies (xii). birgit brander rasmussen review of reading the wampum   195   the introduction usefully situates the project in relation to kelsey’s first book, tribal theory in native american literature, as another sustained inquiry into “wampum’s centrality in hodinöhsö:ni’ intellectual practices” (105). while her first book offers a comparative study of dakota and hodinöhsö:ni’ writing, reading the wampum offers the “first study of hodinöhsö:ni’ visuality, aesthetics, material culture, and print culture to focus on these subjects through the lens of wampum imagery in the literary and creative works of four contemporary iroqois intellectuals” (xviii). while investigating the relationship between wampum and hodinöhsö:ni’ epistemology, narrative, political history, aesthetics, philosophy, and of course treaty rights, kelsey notes that hodinöhsö:ni’ visual code is part of a larger literacy repertoire that includes traditional and new media such as beadwork, pottery, sculpture, film, photography. leaving aside the spiritual properties of wampum as the domain of properly appointed faithkeepers, kelsey offers a secular analysis of wampum teachings in classic belts and contemporary narrative, nothing that “wampum belts are fundamentally related to other records of iroquois visual code, and they have an intrinsically politically-charged content, as wampum belts were the method that hodinöhsö:ni’ chiefs and clan mothers used to record international diplomacy and treaty agreements initially with tribal nations and thereafter with settler governments as well” (xiii). aimed first and foremost at the hodinöhsö:ni’ themselves, kelsey’s book assumes some knowledge from her readers, yet offers an accessible grounding in hodinöhsö:ni’ wampum culture, history, and philosophy along with a brief history of the destruction and theft of wampum by settler-colonists. reading the wampum appropriately locates this history in the context of spanish destruction of indigenous literacies in mexico, central america, and the andes during the early colonial era and also in the context of cultural genocide targeting languages, knowledges, and literacies with the aim of destroying indigenous intellectual traditions and their transmission. museums and archives, residential and boarding schools in the us and canada have played a historic role in this epistemic warfare and kelsey makes a vital argument for the importance of rematriation of wampum belts and other cultural patrimony, seeing “the engagement of wampum imagery and narrative by contemporary hodinöhsö:ni’ authors” as part of the movement to repatriate “their wisdom and their epistemic record” (xvii). the first chapter of reading the wampum focuses on the two row belt, or gaswënta’, the first treaty belt recording a groundbreaking and precedent-setting agreement between the iroquois and the dutch in 1613. as kelsey notes, “nearly every treaty proceeding from the seventeenth century until the late nineteentch century begins with the european and six nations delegates reciting the principles of the two row” (4). the two row carries not only legally binding international agreements, but also the knowledge, the epistemology, the history, the philosophy, and the literary theory of the hodinöhsö:ni’ into the present. despite sustained campaigns of destruction, theft, and repression, wampum and other indigenous literary forms remain and persist. as kelsey demonstrates convincingly, hodinöhsö:ni’ intellectuals continue to explore and revitalize this tradition and the work of contemporary artists and activists become her methodological entry point enabling scholars outside the longhouse to engage this important, centuries-old, medium collaboratively and respectfully. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   196   kelsey opens with an explication of the two row by leroy (jock) hill, cayuga nation subchief of the bear clan. the chapter then analyses the intertextual relationship between the two row and the poetry of james thomas stevens (akwesasne mohawk) in two collections: a bridge dead in the water and tokinish. kelsey approaches stevens as a poet-intellectual who effectively (dis)orients readers from western episteme and then (re)orients them towards hodinöhsö:ni’ “political thought and wampum teachings” (7). of particular interest to kelsey is stevens’ use of a “lgbtq2 lens to lay bare the colonial epistemic impulses that contest hodinöhsö:ni’ peoples’ ability to enforce this treaty” (8). she argues that stevens explorations of sexuality and ethnicity instantiate a two row episteme that can explore sameness, difference, and equality in contemporary lived experience and thus speak to decolonization movements more broadly, despite its insider address to a mohawk audience. kelsey’s readings of stevens’ stunning poetic intertwining of english and mohawk language, words, records, and concepts as a violation of the principles of side-by-side existence embodied in the two row convinces this reader that not only kelsey, but also stevens deserves a broad and global audience. kelsey’s second chapter, “the covenant chain in eric gansworth’s fiction, poetry, memoir, and paintings: the canandaigua treaty belt as critical indigenous economic critique” explores the 1794 treaty in relationship to gansworth’s poetry, prose, and visual artwork. here, as in other chapters, kelsey offers clues to the ways in which wampum iconography operates so that readers gain a real sense of the ways in which this medium records and signifies, without losing sight of its unique nature. the canandaigua treaty, like other wampum belts, “participates as a living entity and agent in an ongoing process of indigenous-settler alliance and diplomacy” but “unlike alphabetic writing, wampum belts do not reproduce speech, rather they signal a different set of communicative values rooted in community. for the message of a wampum belt to continue, that message must be remembered in living, human community” (33). kelsey’s readings of gansworth’s use of wampum imagery (in artwork that accompanies his written alphabetic words) reveal a stunning, intriguing, and vital system of signification across media, substantiating her early claim that wampum is part of a hodinöhsö:ni’ visual code that links and traverses wampum belts, literature, painting, beadwork, sculpture, pottery, photography, multimedia works, film and more. she argues convincingly that “gansworth’s renditions of the canandaigua treaty belt provide a map for navigating this new ecogeospatial relationship between settler and indigene” by offering a transformative “cartography in which a hodinöhsö:ni’ worldview is still normative” (63). following these queer and political economy analyses of alphabetic texts and visual art, kelsey moves to consider tribal feminism in contemporary film. her third chapter focuses on shelley niro’s work in multiple media including photography, film, beadwork, painting, sculpture, and storytelling” with an emphasis on niro’s film kissed by lightning from 1992. this chapter explores the ways in which the three sisters belt informs niro’s work and returns to the healing capacities of wampum for those who are griving and for a world that needs to recover the balanced embodied by the three sisters corn, squash, and beans which balance the nitrogen count of the soil when planted together. central to the chapter is the women’s nomination belt, which “records the clanmothers’ authority to select, install, and dehorn chiefs” (71). the colonial clash between native and settler populations targeted not only indigenous literacies and birgit brander rasmussen review of reading the wampum   197   knowledges, but also the authority of women which is central to hodinöhsö:ni’ political culture. women owned the land and women appointed the chiefs. according to kelsey, there is “little one could say to overestimate the importance of clan-mothers in hodinöhsö:ni’ society” (69). her beautiful reading of niro’s contemporary retelling of the establishment of the great peace and her reaffirmation of the role of clanmothers and the women’s council sets the stage for the final chapter on “kahnawake’s reclamation of adoption practices in tracey deer’s documentary and fiction films: reading the adoption belt in a post-indian act era.” the final chapter in this eminently readably study focuses on the fraught issue of identity in kahnawake, offering the adoption belt as a foundational text that can supersede colonizing and heteropatriarchal legislation like the indian act. enacted in 1876, this law revoked legal status from women who married non-mohawk men and conferred legal status on white women who married mohawk men. like other colonial measures of native identity such as blood quantum, this law has caused internal conflict and displaced indigenous ways of understanding identity with devastating consequences for women in particular. chapter four explores how award-winning filmmaker tracey deer’s 2008 film, club native, confronts this legacy and its contemporary complications. according to kelsey, the film instantiates a decolonizing collective reading of the adoption belt as “a record of the process by which hodinöhsö:ni’ people determine what constitutes individual community membership and national identity” in contrast to the “euro-canadian principles of separation and exclusion as embodied in the indian act, which first worked to detribalize first nations women on patriarchal grounds, and the kahnawake membership law, which as rearticulated some of those same philosophies” (83-4). at this point, the reader has benefitted from successive readings of belts, texts, images, and film, along with a well-paced historical and philosophical explication of wampum and hodinöhsö:ni’ history and political structures. although each chapter stands alone and can be read and assigned as such, the sum is vastly greater than the parts because it allows kelsey to chart a vibrant field of wampum knowledge and theory. kelsey’s also makes a powerful, if subtle, case for the urgency of “rematriation,” a term she uses alternately with “repatriation” to refer to the return of all wampum belts to hodinöhsö:ni’ communities and those properly trained to read and care for the belts. despite the alluring title, reading the wampum will not teach readers how to “read wampum” although it explores the iconography and visual code of wampum at length. what audra simpson has called “ethnographic refusal” here functions to block colonial appropriation, even as kelsey offers her readers a sophisticated understanding of “the ways in which wampum teachings are still relevant to the challenges faced by hodinöhsö:ni’ peoples in the present” and to “larger decolonization movements” (106). indeed, reading the wampum, and the work of stevens, gansworth, niro and deer, deserves the careful attention of literary, media, rhetoric, post-colonial and theory scholars around the world. birgit brander rasmussen, binghampton university microsoft word gamber.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 155 robert alexander innes and kim alexander, eds. indigenous men and masculinities: legacies, identities, regeneration. winnipeg: university of manitoba press, 2015. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-33ed#.vxrmvj-wdei sam mckegney. masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2014. https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/masculindians “it’s a relatively new thing in indian country, patriarchy. we forget because it’s such a dominant system in the world. we forget that it really isn’t everything and everywhere. our people weren’t living this way, even in recent history.” kim anderson, masculindians (93). when we hear people discussing masculinity studies, we might be tempted to dismiss the topic as some outgrowth of the “men’s rights” movement, a misguided and wrongheaded conglomeration that believes men are an increasingly oppressed population in a sissifying world. or maybe that was just my concern when i first heard about masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood and indigenous men and masculinities: legacies, identities, regeneration. once one sees the scholars involved in these projects, one’s fears will likely and rightly abate. each of these collections recognizes that academic discussions of specifically indigenous masculinities require intersectional attention that much scholarship has yet to pay. mckegney notes that we have had many discussions of indigenous womanhood and two-spirit practices, positions, and identities, but hardly any of indigenous masculinity, especially those that are celebratory of indigenous masculinity (7-8). we might first point out that we haven’t had many of these discussions in print because indigenous masculinity is often the assumption for discussions of indigenous issues. that said, and it is a point largely absent in these collections, such assumptions, even when they are tacit, invoke the need for an attentive and self-conscious study of these intersectional positions. innes and anderson note in their introductory essay, “there is little activism or political will to address indigenous men’s issues, and as a result there are very few policies or social programs designed for indigenous men, including those who are trans-identified, as well as women who identify with indigenous masculinities” (3). they continue with a discussion of statistics regarding the incarceration, murder, and suicide rates for indigenous men, noting that all of these are higher than their equivalents not only for indigenous women in canada, but also those of white women—a population whose imagined lack of safety drives so much of the “law and order” discourse with which we are all familiar. they are also quick to point out that there may be a number of factors that lead to not only the underreporting, but also the miscategorization of violence against indigenous women. that is, while this text engages with masculinity primarily, it never turns its back on the ways masculinity cannot be understood outside of or apart from gendered issues for indigenous people broadly and collectively. in other words, toxic masculinity damages all people, including men, on a number of fronts. innes and anderson continue, “a significant outcome of these biases is that indigenous men are more often viewed as victimizers, not as victims; as protectors rather than those who need protection; or as supporters, but not ones who need support (9). this is not to say that this collection discounts the asymmetrical damage john gamber review of indigenous men and masculindians 156 of toxic masculinity. rather, they overtly assert that “indigenous men do benefit from male privilege,” and (not but) “the oppression suffered by both [indigenous men and women] is tied to the colonization and acquisition of indigenous lands” (11). innes and anderson divide their collection of sixteen pieces into four sections, detailing “theoretical considerations,” “representations in art and literature,” “living indigenous masculinities and indigenous manhood,” and “conversations,” this last comprised of interviews, discussions, and roundtables covering a variety of matters relating to the collection’s topic. the sections work well as a framework for the essays, as the reader first encounters pieces that offer the theoretical underpinnings that will inform each of the essays that follow. moreover, because the essays in this collection were circulated among the contributors, they frequently refer to one another, increasing the centrality of these preliminary essays. i focus on these four essays from this first section that offer theoretical lenses through which to read the rest of the collection. the first of these, bob antone’s essay, offers a specifically haudenosaunee perspective grounded within their “creation stories” (21). he begins by demonstrating a key difference between western and indigenous traditions, the former devoted to dominance and the latter to peace and community. he continues, “the other significant cultural difference is the allencompassing matrifocal or women-centered foundation of haudenosaunee culture rooted in the constructs of mother earth, grandmother moon, three sisters’ foods, and clan mothers who select the leadership and identity based on who your mother is” (23). this matrifocal organizing principle establishes that masculinity is always understood as complimentary to the whole. as such, antone emphasizes that the “masculine energy of our communities has a greater responsibility to self-examine and rebuild a sense of manhood that works with women to create a world free of violence. the journey to understanding decolonization in the context of masculinity requires letting go of power and control behaviors” (36). such a decolonizing of masculinity requires an active opposition to hegemonic patriarchy and its concomitant toxic masculinity. scott l. morgensen’s essay likewise takes a historical tack, focusing on the roots and rise of this colonial masculinity. he begins by denaturalizing the gender binaries and constructs that have come to dominate the americas, noting, “colonial masculinities arose to violently control and replace distinctive gender systems among indigenous peoples” (38). morgensen’s approach understands that “colonial subjectivities exist to dominate another” (39), and, moreover, “for colonial masculinity to achieve dominance, it had to be invented” (39). thus, colonial masculinity is not some a priori identity, but one formed in relation to that which it was attempting to colonize—it is a process of self formation requiring an outsider to set itself not only against, but above (the reader might be reminded of said’s work, which morgensen indeed draws upon later in the piece). moreover, because the formation of colonial masculinity has always been in process, it is not, even to this day, fixed. that said, morgensen’s hope is not that colonial masculinity should be changed, as “criticism of it may only cause it to take new forms and persist,” but rather that it might be brought to its end (39-40). his examination strives to analyze the modes by which european masculinities (especially spanish, portuguese, french, british, and dutch) transform during the early modern period in their relationships to indigenous peoples and their own colonial motivations. certainly, such a survey is by necessity abbreviated; whole books could devote their attentions to such a topic without being exhaustive. nonetheless, this essay offers an excellent primer, and as such, serves as an extremely valuable hub for this transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 157 collection. it traces a specific strain of settler colonial heteropatriarchy as it works to define itself in relation (and to imagine itself in contradistinction) to indigenous matrifocal structures, gender fluidities, gender definitions, and conceptions of sexualities, among others. morgensen’s essay then goes on to examine colonial masculinity in the modern era. he traces educational practices (boarding schools), geographic isolations (reservations) that “taught white settlers that other indigenous territories were emptied and theirs to inhabit,” and legal structures (canada’s indian act—as a tactic of weakening indigenous communities geographically as well as culturally, particularly with the imposition of patrilineality) as modes by which settler masculinity applied itself to indigenous communities. all of these continue trends begun in the early modern period but with an emphasis on their own changing nature—the adaptability of colonizers—which stands in contrast to indigenous people’s imagined inability to adapt and change, rendering them further excluded from the modern man—the primitive obverse of settler civilization. finally, as the result of these hegemonic efforts, indigenous communities inherit the very notions of combative masculinities with which colonialism targeted them, “turning them into policing agents for a partriarchal and heteronormative settler society” (53). “put differently,” morgensen concludes, “colonial masculinity sustains both colonial and heteropatriarchal power by presenting its victims as the cause and proper recipients of its own violations” (55). leah sneider, like antone, demonstrates that “central to…an understanding of social balance [common to indigenous epistemologies] lies an ethic of complementarity between individuals and the community to which they belong, an ethic that is shared amongst many communitycentred indigenous cultures” (62). this focus on the complementary nature of masculinity recurs throughout both collections reviewed here. sneider continues, “indigenous feminism and indigenous masculinity studies must maintain a complementary relationship to fully understand colonial impacts on indigenous communities and work together to decolonize” (70). that is, the study of masculinity must never be divorced from the complementary (rather than hierarchical, for example) relationships that have always informed it—indeed, upon which it relies as a structure. furthermore, sneider, demonstrating a need to recognize these understandings of complementarity across other categorizations as well, notes, “race and gender ideologies are intimately and equally connected to national identity.” like morgensen, brendan hokowhitu draws heavily on foucault’s work to frame his examination of settler impositions of masculinity. whereas morgensen seeks to establish a history of those constructions, hokowhitu focuses instead on their wielding within indigenous constructions. he “starts from the premise that what we call ‘traditional indigenous masculinity’ is in actuality a particular masculinity that has developed since colonization; in part, at least, mimicked on dominant forms of invader masculinity” (87). this is not to say the roots of this adoption are benign; hokowhitu notes this adoption has historically come in the form of “mimicry at gunpoint” (87). he goes on to clarify some of the philosophical underpinnings of these masculinities, explaining, “the liberal humanist appeal to the individual is, more succinctly, an appeal to an idealized universal european masculinity, where european bourgeois heterosexual masculinity came to represent humanity” (84). because of its hegemonic functions, this universalizing element of liberal humanist philosophy and the settler states so heavily influenced by them has imposed a one-size-fits-all masculinity to everyone. in new zealand, hokowhitu contends, this “has led to ritual displays of physical manliness and hypermasculinity, john gamber review of indigenous men and masculindians 158 along with the traditionalization of heterosexuality, homophobia, and patriarchy” (88). hokowhitu expresses an anxiety about discourses of authenticity, noting how frequently these are used as methods to delegitimize indigenous people and peoples (by forces both within and without). he explains, “this dialectic between reverence for the past and discontent in the present…remains in the binary where the purity of the pre-colonial past is lamented in the polluted present” (91). in place of such proscriptive constructs of indigenous masculinity, he offers, paraphrasing homi bhabha, it “is not what indigenous sexuality is, but what indigenous sexuality does, or what is done in its name, that is of political and cultural significance” (93). that is, he hopes to do away with the forces that “exclude and limit indigenous men to heteropatriarchal, hypermasculine, stoical, staunch, and violent discursive formations” (94). the collection then tacks toward artistic criticism, with essays touching on paintings of and by mandan chief mató-tópe, the performance art of terrance houle and adrian stimson, female masculinities in native american literature, particularly erdrich’s the beet queen, and a creative piece by niigaanwewidam james sinclair detailing relationships between generations of anishinaabe men, but which begins, “this story is in the words of a grandmother’s gift to her grandsons” (145). the latter two of these essays seem especially strong to me, but that may have more to do with my primary focus on literature than the quality of the pieces themselves. the text moves next to social science essays addressing sport in new zealand, indigenous gangs in canada, imprisoned men in canada, and diné masculinities. these chapters, informed as they are by the subjects they investigate, occasionally offer less nuanced readings of masculinity than those that have come before. that certainly doesn’t make them any less valuable to understanding the subject; quite the opposite. they speak to the realities of a number indigenous men themselves. this pattern carries over a bit to the following section, in the conversations regarding hawaiian warriorhood and with the crazy indian brotherhood. this latter piece is, nonetheless particularly interesting for its inclusion of six distinct points of view. the remaining two chapters—one a roundtable discussion between five indigenous writers and scholars, the other, a co-authored piece from alexander, innes, and john swift reporting findings from a series of focus groups— return to a more academic voice, though one never attempting to move away from material issues and lived experiences, even in their theorizations. of these groups the authors find a “picture that shows how the vicious cycle of toxic indigenous masculinity is externally imposed on indigenous men and then internalized and passed on to other men, while at the same time being reinfornced by society” (300). the roundtable between mckegney, van camp, cariou, scofield, and justice offers wonderful, brilliant, and heart-felt insights. even in this conversation, notions of strength and warriorhood get bandied about somewhat loosely—without a clear idea of what such things would mean. that said, this conversation’s informality and candor makes that slippage work. i’m particularly drawn to justice’s thoughts on the breadth of meanings that masculinity can carry, “the vulnerability, the gentleness, the confusion, the uncertainty. all of those are also sources of strength; all of those are also powerful ways of revealing our humanity” (249). mckegney’s role in this discussion offers a convenient transition into his text—these two inform and are informed by one another throughout. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 159 mckegney divides his collection into three parts, each titled “wisdom, knowledge, imagination,” with one of those three words highlighted in each version. these are bookended by his introductory essay and a final conversation with niigaanwewidam james sinclair. mckegney explains the genesis of his portmanteau: “the term draws attention to the settler north american appetite for depictions of indigenous men that rehearse hypermasculine stereotypes of the noble savage and the bloodthirsty warrior (as well as their ideological progeny—the ecological medicine man, the corrupt band councilor, and the drunken absentee)” (1). he then draws on taiaiake alfred’s notion that, in terms of this settler construction of indigenous masculinity, “there’s no living with it because it’s not meant to be lived with; it’s meant to be killed, every single time” (1). there is nothing sustainable about these stereotypes or their allotment by settler mandates and constructions. thereafter, the introduction lays out the contingency, if not the impossibility, of determining what something like indigenous masculinity might mean (especially in the singular). he explains that the “’arbitrary process’ of masculinity is, of course, complicated in contemporary indigenous contexts by the layering of racialized, patriarchal gender systems over preexisting, tribally specific cosmologies of gender—impositions conducted through colonial technologies like the residential and boarding school systems, legislative alterations to indigenous structures of governance by the indian act in canada and the bureau of indian affairs in the u.s., and the forced removal of indigenous communities from traditional hunting and fishing grounds to reserves and reservations” (2). could a term like masculindian possibly hope to encompass, this breadth of communities, the detailed and nuanced histories, the geographic and economic disparities? certainly not. tribal specificity must always be kept in mind, as the interviews constantly remind the reader. that said, all of the indigenous communities of what has become the united states, canada, australia, and new zealand share in common the experiences of settler colonialism, the violence and genocide of settler elimination. mckegney’s book hopes “to restore senses of rootedness and balance that might overturn the insidious normalization of settler heteropatriarchy on turtle island” (3). he conducts interviews (between 2010 and 2013) with women and men, elders, social workers and counselors, activists and organizers, educators, academics, artists of a variety of stripes (authors, musicians, storytellers, comedians, visual artists, and dancers to name a few), politicos, residential school survivors, trappers, and hunters, many of whom fit into a number of these positions. this collection, in part because it is conducted entirely in conversation, can serve to reach a wider audience than the alexander and innes collection does. its layout does so as well, to the point where it feels almost like a coffee table book, and the cover carries a vivid visual that pops in a way that feels less coldly academic. its size differs from most academic texts and the margins contain information about the conversants, as well as selected quotes from the conversations, set off as in more popular journalism. the interviews cover a range of issues including religion, violence against women, homophobia, forgiveness, trauma and healing, sexual assaults of men and boys, boarding schools, sensuality, gangs, family, two spirit people; we even get a yoda reference. they also return, again and again, to the construct of warriorhood, as do some of the essays and especially conversations in the innes and anderson collection. among the most interesting and insightful interviews for me is that with alfred. there, he traces, in a manner somewhat akin to morgensen in indian men and masculinities, the history of the construct of the indigenous male as warrior. this and other pieces query the term warrior, as john gamber review of indigenous men and masculindians 160 well as its various connotations and translations in different indigenous contexts and languages. he notes, “for the violence of conquest you needed a violent opponent, so you created this image of the native as a violent warrior… the way to confront that and to defeat it and to recover something meaningful for natives is to put the image of the native male back into its proper context, which is in the family” (79). he continues, averring that the “image of the native male” should be “defined in the context of a family with responsibilities to the family—to the parents, to the spouse, to the children (or nephews, nieces, or whatever, or even just youth in general)” (79). alfred describes this warrior image, as do others, as a fiction created by settlers to justify their own violence (recall morgensen’s observation that colonization is violence). indigenous masculinity is defined by relationships across genders and generations—these relationships are family. we also note alfred’s avoidance of heteronormativity in his gender-neutral “spouse.” furthermore, mckegney reminds the reader (echoing alfred’s other work) that the term warrior is not one that a person takes on for themself, but rather one with which a person is bestowed (85). along similar lines, kim anderson wonders, “what does courage and bravery mean? does that mean facing your fears, going down into the deepest parts of yourself, in those dark places that we don’t want to work with? that’s courage. that is being a warrior” (95). beyond those with alfred and anderson, the interviews with hokowhitu, danforth, justice, and arnott especially stand out. the concluding interview with sinclair takes place after the rest of the collection has been completed, and serves as an excellent capstone to the project. mckegney and sinclair reflect on the process of the collection’s formation as well as the trends that now appear. sinclair comments on the recurrent imagery of warriorhood, and pushes back a bit against this trope as potentially acquiescing to the very stereotypes imposed upon men by settler hegemony. he notes, “many interviews identified protection as an element of warriorism, fatherhood, or some notion of virility, but i think the way men support, secure, and bring health to community is what most were really talking about” (225). he continues, “one of the legacies of colonization has been the separation of men from their roles within families, communities, and nations. what’s replaced these are the hegemonic forms of corporate, neo-liberal individualist identities that ossify cultures” (225). the image of man as warrior that recurs throughout these collections often replicates rather than opposes the structures that mckegney hopes his collection will tear down. sinclair adroitly calls these out not only as problematically individualistic, but also as hegemonic, existing within the subconscious strata of our lives as common sense. undoing hegemony is not as easy as pointing out that indigenous men have been narrowly categorized. this critical step must be followed by a self-consciousness and commitment to rooting it out in ourselves. that difficult work is undertaken unevenly throughout these collections. these texts, especially when read alongside one another, offer a strong beginning to the work of critical studies of indigenous masculinities, particularly in canada (their primary focus). their implications ripple out far wider than that, though, and we note so many clear parallels to the united states, for example. ultimately, all of these texts combine to emphasize the importance of opening up these conversations. these are not meant to be the last words on the subject. john gamber, columbia university microsoft word tatonettifinal.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 10 joyful embodiment: felt theory and indigenous trans perspectives in the work of max wolf valerio lisa tatonetti as i enter my new life, i realize with awakening joy that the ground underneath me has shifted, and finally i am free—to dream and love and to become. —max wolf valerio, “the enemy is me” in this epigraph, blackfoot/latinx writer max wolf valerio speaks a story of possibility, a story of becoming. throughout valerio’s body of work, the knowledge of what it means to become who you are, become who you have always been, is marked as a particular type of joy that is held in the body. numerous indigenous writers and filmmakers share literary and documentary evidence of somatic exchange serving as possibility, as transformative conduit: they show how indigenous people create and extend survivance practices through bodily encounter—in singing, in drumming, in praying, in fishing, in fasting, in walking, in writing, in dreaming, in dancing, in making films, in making art, in making out, in making love, and in the felt theory that arises from those embodied avenues of intellectual exchange. these artists return, again and again, how indigenous knowledges are archived in the body. tanana athabascan scholar dian million offers a particularly fruitful articulation of these exchanges when she argues for affect theory as an important paradigm for engaging indigenous politics and literatures. in therapeutic nations, she explains: “i find it immensely important to put an analysis of affect and emotion, a felt theory, back lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 11 into our quest to understand both classic colonialism and our present in neoliberal governance” (30). importantly, million connects felt theory to indigenous people’s creative output. she maintains “imagination, that effort to see the future in the present,” like activism and “good social analysis,” has “the ability to incite, as in arouse, as in feel, to make relations” (31). here, then, the affective interactions that generate felt theory are active processes rather than singular disconnected entities or one-time activities, and they are, as well, tied to relationality. cherokee theorist daniel heath justice explains that to claim and form kinship—or “to make relations” in million’s terms—is integral to indigenous literatures, which encompass particular “ways of thinking about indigenous belonging, identities and relationships” (why indigenous literatures matter 27). these felt knowledges and affective relations, as i argue elsewhere, present a useful framework for indigenous narrative, offering a grammar for the ways in which bodily knowledges are experienced and shared among indigenous people and within indigenous cosmologies.1 and, while affective knowledges exist widely across indigenous texts and contexts, i turn in this special issue to how, when used to read valerio’s essay and autobiography, felt theory reveals embodied ruptures and cultural dislocation/disavowal, or what million terms “colonialism as a felt, affective relationship” (therapeutic nations 46). at the same time, this essay highlights the ways, in valerio’s stories, felt knowledges offer a map of becoming and a lived route to survivance, healing, and joy. one of the earliest trans indigenous people writing in english, max wolf valerio, across all of his texts, represents his experiences of—and others’ reactions to—his sex and gender presentations as relational, highly affective processes. valerio’s published works range from pre-transition meditations on indigenous butch identity in the landmark 1981 collection this bridge called my back to two books of experimental poetry—animal magnetism (1984) and the criminal (2019)—to discussions of his posttransmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 12 transition experiences in documentaries like monika treut’s short max (1991)—which was incorporated into treut’s full-length female misbehavior (1992)—bestor cram and candice schermerhorn’s you don’t know dick: courageous hearts of transsexual men (1996), treut’s gendernauts: a journey through shifting identities (1999), and, more recently, chase joynt’s framing agnes (2019).2 valerio’s best-known work is undoubtedly his lambda-nominated memoir, the testosterone files: my hormonal and social transformation from female to male (2006), which reid lodge situates as part of a small group of early twenty-first century trans autobiographies that “offer radical alternatives to medical discourses of trans identity that denied trans agency and self-interpretation” (“trans sites of self exploration”).3 the first book by a trans indigenous person, the testosterone files, as i’ll show, chronicles the affective resonance of valerio’s movement to and through transition as a felt experience of both colonialism and joy. while valerio has since had other publications, films, and artistic projects, of particular interest to readers of this special issue would be “exile: vision quest at the edge of identity,” a piece that directly engages intersections of indigeneity and trans experiences in relation to his return to the kainai nation reserve in 2008 after a 22-year absence.4 an excerpt of “exile” was published in the 2010 “international queer indigenous voices” special issue of yellow medicine river, a publication that was one of a cluster that marked the contemporary rise of scholarly work in two-spirit and queer indigenous studies (2sqi) in the first decade of the twenty-first century and the beginning of the second. notably, valerio published in landmark texts that serve as bookmarks for queer indigenous literatures and theories—this bridge marking the era in which some of the first overtly queer indigenous literature was published, and “international queer indigenous voices” marking the twenty-first century rise of queer indigenous studies and proliferation of 2sqi artistic production.5 yet, surprisingly, lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 13 valerio’s work has received sparse critical attention: a handful of essays consider his poetry, essay, or autobiography and, among, these, his place as an indigenous author often goes unrecognized. with this in mind, i want to acknowledge the import of valerio’s work—the testosterone files particularly—to 2sqi studies in terms of both his publication history and his engagement with what we can now term felt theory. valerio directly engages the felt experience of colonialism by highlighting how, despite their subversion of cishet gender regimes, trans masculinities can be interpolated into settler understandings of sex and gender by both native and non-native people. embodied knowledge in “my mother’s voice, the way i sweat” valerio’s writing and film work spans a time of radical change in expressions of queer of color and trans identifications in literature, film, memoir, and the public sphere. valerio came out as a lesbian in 1975 at the age of eighteen and began reading poetry in the lesbian feminist scene in the mid-1970s at the university of colorado. he explains in an interview with trans studies scholar/poet trace peterson, “there was a lesbian caucus and women’s liberation coalition, and so that’s how i first connected” (qtd. in peterson, “becoming a trans poet,” 532) he then moved to san francisco where he studied at the naropa institute with allen ginsberg. it was in the vibrant arts community of san francisco that he met gloria anzaldúa. valerio began publishing in the 1980s, during a crucial period of political and literary visibility for queer folks of color. anzaldúa, a major figure in that movement, invited him to contribute to this bridge called my back (1981). this first collection of literature by woman of color, which anzaldúa co-edited with cherríe moraga, included five openly queer indigenous writers. valerio’s essay in this bridge, “my mother’s voice, the way i sweat,” is a precursor of his later autobiographical work: in both his memoir and his preand post-transition essays, he bluntly speaks his mind, challenges transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 14 romanticized images of queer and/or indigenous cultures, and consistently pushes against tacitly accepted gender expectations, both cis and non-cis, both settler and indigenous.6 in a period where many queer indigenous artists were writing about the importance of reclaiming the place of queer peoples within their nations, and at times sometimes romanticizing indigeneity in the process, valerio instead poses a strongly worded critique about how gender circulates on his reserve. more specifically, valerio offers a lesbian feminist perspective that overtly challenges the gender expectations of his kainai community, writing as someone who grew up returning to the reserve with his family yearly, inheriting his mother’s ties to land, family, and community: ties that he marks as particularly affective. valerio explains that his mother’s first language was blackfoot and that his great-grandfather was a holy man named makwyiapi, or wolf old man (“‘it’s in my blood, my face’” 42-43). specifically, he narrates lines of kinship and speaks to the relevance indigenous tradition had to him as he came of age. he describes the overwhelming experience of his first sweat at sixteen as “so miraculous . . . it was as though god appeared before me and walked about and danced” (43). as a young activist, valerio joined the american indian movement and visited wounded knee during the 1968 siege. he explains, “there was a time . . . when i was so angry so proud i wanted so much to reclaim my language the symbols and sacred gestures the land” (“‘it’s in my blood, my face’” 41, italics/spacing in original). the doubtful “but now?” that follows this statement signals his troubled response to the normative behavioral expectations he encountered during a several-month stay on his reserve in southern alberta in his early twenties. valerio bluntly frames this 1977 trip as a moment of troubling realization: “i went back to the reserve for two months traditional cultures are conservative and this one is patriarchal” (“‘it’s in my blood, my face’” 41). discussing how gender expectations lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 15 can be used to constrain, valerio problematizes interpretations of tradition, using the sundance as a point of entry. he recounts a discussion with his mother in which she noted the holy woman had been chosen to open the ceremony because “she has only been with her husband and never any other man and it makes her a virgin of sorts” (41). of this, valerio asks, “what does it mean that it’s a holy woman that sets up the okan [sun dance]? and why does it make her holy that only one man has touched her?” (41). he questions whether the woman is holy because of her fealty to her husband—“because she has been a good little piece of property to that one man”—or because of women’s power in kainai culture—“a hearkening back to earlier matriarchal times (41)? by citing two potentially contradictory readings, valerio alludes to the fact that gendered hierarchies—as opposed to gender complementarity—can arise in certain spaces deemed “traditional.” moreover, valerio’s questions suggest that heteropatriarchal norms can be instantiated and regulated under the guise of tradition, a fact highlighted by contemporary scholars in 2sqi studies. two-spirit métis/anishinaabe scholar kai pyle notes that “while it is admirable that people are concerned with addressing gendered colonization, we must take care to question where tropes [about indigenous gender roles] come from and what purposes they serve” (“reclaiming traditional gender roles” 111). in addition, driftpile cree poet/theorist billy-ray belcourt comments that tradition: is a sort of affective glue that sticks some objects together, sticks us to bodies and to ideas we often do not know—conversion points that make something or someone traditional through proximity or performance. here, a politics of tradition refers to the ways tradition produces and deproduces some corporeal forms, how some bodies pass below and beyond the aegis of the senses and, in this, sidestep theory’s ocular reach and thus disturb the traditional itself. (“a poltergeist manifesto” 29) transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 16 when experiencing the reserve as a butch lesbian, valerio locates the queer body as a disruption of the sort belcourt describes—a fact evident in his description of standing outside gender expectations. this fissure aligns, as well, with what justice terms a relational “rupture, a word that invariably refers to violence to bodies: human, geological, political” (why indigenous literature matter 186). ruptures sever relationship and deny kinship, a fracture mirrored in valerio’s discussion of the silence he felt compelled to keep about his queerness. he comments, “i am gay. perhaps in the old days, in some way or other, i could have fit in there. but today, my lesbianism has become a barrier between myself and my people. . . . it is hard to be around other people talking about their lives and not be able to talk about your own in the same way. it causes a false and painful separateness” (“‘it’s in my blood, my face’” 39). at this moment in valerio’s life, “tradition” serves as a boundary rather than a teaching, and the gender expectations of his nation a potential barrier to his full inclusion in his blackfoot community. as such, valerio refuses a vision of indigeneity in which being queer, trans, and/or what many people ten-plus-years later would term two spirit, allows for a seamless integration of gendered, sexual, and/or indigenous identifications at a particularly early moment in indigenous literary history. this contrasts distinctly with work from writers like maurice kenny (mohawk) who, along with other queer indigenous poets and fiction writers of the period, was trying to recoup a queer indigenous history and reclaim that space in the present.7 with this in mind, we can look toward how the text overtly wrestles with the ways the author’s perception of settler gender norms impact the felt experience of queer indigeneity. valerio depicts gender disparities and cishet normativity as factors that potentially splinter his identification with blackfoot culture: “that is why i sometimes don’t want to think about being indian why i sometimes could really care less these days it’s sad” (“‘it’s in my blood, my face’” 41). as pyle asserts, the point lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 17 is not whether or not something is “traditional,” but whether gender practices are harmful in the present. pyle explain, “regardless of the fact that these may have been part of indigenous gender roles in the past . . . they are contiguous with heteropatriarchy to the extent that they may be complicit in its perpetuation” (“reclaiming traditional gender roles” 115). faced with just such damaging heteropatriarchal narratives, valerio describes his pre-transition queerness, not as joy, but as “one of the barriers between myself and the reserve” (“‘it’s in my blood, my face’” 44). this forthright conversation gestures to the complexities of queer indigenous experiences and markedly undercuts the idealized visions of indigeneity that were (and sometimes still are) being cited in white queer culture as a way to authorize dominant iterations of queerness.8 while this is not a comfortable stance, valerio bears witness to a common experience of the period and, as such, uses his platform in this bridge to narrate what million calls “the social violence that was and is colonialism’s heart” (therapeutic nations 59). notably, while valerio’s earliest autobiographical piece interrogates normative cishet gender expectations, in the same essay he depicts indigeneity as inherently relational, a felt and even precognitive recognition of being. this affective knowledge is situated in the body. valerio explains, “i cannot forget and i don’t want to. it’s in my blood, my face my mother’s voice it’s in my voice. my speech rhythms my dreams and memories it’s the shape of my legs and though i am light skinned it is my features. . .” (“‘it’s in my blood, my face’” 41). further, valerio joins such corporeal realities to his felt experience of his grandfather’s home and its surrounds. celebrating the reserve as a site of embodied pleasure, he recalls “standing on the porch and smelling morning blue sky rolling hills . . . there seemed to be balance then before i knew the meaning of the word” (41-42). the physical, psychic, and emotional experience of landscape is expressed as a deeply held delight. thus, while he critiques transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 18 potential heteropatriarchal aspects of his culture, valerio describes his experience of indigeneity as felt knowledge, archived in the body and tied to specific experiences of place. the writing and film projects valerio creates and participates in for the next thirty years suggest the seemingly irrefutable embodied knowledge of indigenous relationship to self, family, and land described in “‘it’s in my blood, my face’” can be short circuited by cis-normative gender demands that, in their respond to trans indigeneity, create a narrative rupture—what justice termed a “violence.” in nonnative contexts, valerio describes how certain feminists and queer folks read his masculinity as necessarily white; in indigenous contexts, he describes a trans masculinity written out of indigenous relationality. in both cases, as we’ll see, different types of transphobia hinder valerio’s ability “to make relations” (million 31) when others question his felt knowledge of what it means to be a blackfoot/latinx transman. the weight of masculinity, or, “‘now that you’re a white man’” in the 2002 follow-up to this bridge called my back, gloria anzaldúa and analouise keating’s this bridge we call home, valerio, now max wolf valerio, discusses his transition and returns to autobiography. in his contribution to the collection, “‘now that you’re a white man’: changing sex in a postmodern world—being, becoming, and borders,” valerio considers how perceptions of masculinity shape the way his gender behaviors and indigenous identity become legible to others. though the piece deals in binaries at times, implying, for example, that medical transition is a more authentic version of trans identity than others, it simultaneously presents a valuable window into the potential concerns and confrontations experienced by some indigenous trans folx. lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 19 valerio describes how the intersections of trans indigeneity can become a tightrope. his title alludes to this experience in its suggestion that his blackfoot heritage is, according to his interlocutor, erased by his maleness. he writes: “how did i get . . . to where i am today? an ostensibly ‘straight’ man who is often asked (usually by lesbian or feminist-identified women who met me for the first time), ‘now that you’re a white man, and have all that male privilege—how does it feel?’” (240, bold in original). while previously valerio suggested his blackfoot ancestry was written on the body, perceptions of masculinity appear to disrupt that embodied narrative. valerio’s bolding of the question itself speaks to the sharp impact these words hold for an indigenous person. like a slap, they imply his movement into the space of masculinity and, concurrently, heterosexuality, carries with it the weight of whiteness. as such, his male embodiment becomes intelligible only through the all-encompassing lens of settler privilege. along with depicting a jarring experience of racialized erasure in “‘now that you’re a white man,’” valerio also discusses his transition. he begins by citing a key passage from “‘it’s in my blood, my face’” in which he related a childhood story of dreaming to be a boy. using those memories as a touchstone, valerio describes early moments of longing: “i yearn for my body to have the texture, smell, and look of a man’s body. to possess a physicality i don’t comprehend, but at that moment, i instinctively know this physical self is male” (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 242, italics in original). though this passage ruminates on the physical body, it is affective meaning—what million terms felt knowledge—that serves as the central concern. thinking about valerio’s previous claims, while indigeneity was read on his body, the felt knowledge of gender is archived in the body—depicted here as a lived, precognitive understanding. valerio returns to this idea in the testosterone files, commenting, “knowledge is rooted in the body, without cognition, yet articulate. not transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 20 only expressed on the body as in self-expression or self control, but emanating from the body itself. an effortless and driven knowing . . .” (valerio 143). across his writing, valerio depicts the assumptions he encounters—whether in his pre-transition years as a young lesbian feminist or in his later life as a transsexual person—as tying masculinity and men to a negatively inflected sense of transgression and, more specifically, to damaging settler understandings of male identities.9 in this configuration, masculinity, indexing both whiteness and privilege, stands in direct opposition to lesbianism. for example, in his community of lesbian feminists, “maleness became ‘bad,’ the ‘other,’ the ‘oppressor’” (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 242). trans two-spirit writer daniel brittany chávez describes a similar experience, saying, “within this feminist framework, my masculine physical presentation is made to represent patriarchy, violence, machismo, ‘wanting to be a man,’ succumbing to the enemy, and much more” (“transmasculine insurgency” 59). in light of such perceptions, valerio attributes a heavy weight to his decision to transition: “to take this leap, to become part of a class of people i had once believed were in some sense the ‘enemy’ was an enormous risk— like stepping into the path of an oncoming tornado” (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 242). and that fear was not without merit given that, in the largely white world valerio describes, he repeatedly encounters the imposed weight of a hegemonic masculinity that relies on settler paradigms. in both “‘now that you’re a white man’” and the testosterone files, published four years later, valerio critiques feminist and genderqueer folks precisely because of the frequency of his encounters with transphobic attitudes that flatten all masculinities into a monolithic norm. feminists, ciswomen, and even other non-trans gendernonconforming people are not exempt from holding such ideologies; instead, he argues, queer-identified folks often “have strong expectations about what my behavior and attitudes should be” (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 244). one such example lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 21 arises in questions from a class that viewed monica treut’s 1992 short film max in which, at one point, valerio boxes the camera. the students’ questions, as valerio perceives them, critique his performance of masculinity precisely because it meets normative measures of masculinity: his masculinity is not “sensitive” enough, not feminist enough, not queer enough. while valerio sees the boxing scene as a moment of masculine energy and embodied joy, the students imply that it involves the enactment of a hegemonic masculinity. valerio humorously quips, “i know everyone would be much happier if i was knitting” (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 245). that comment works together with valerio’s later observation that “before, these gender role expressions were charming and rebellious; now they might seem ‘sexist’ or ‘macho.’ in other words, if i’d boxed the camera while i was still anita, most of the class would have been delighted” (245). these contrasting examples read the same action as, on one hand, resistance, on another, complicity. thus, just as when he addressed the racialized dynamics in questions about his trans masculinity, valerio again suggests a settler binary is instantiated. in this equation, butch performance threatens cis-het masculinity; trans masculinity conforms to it. among the reactions valerio describes, there’s little differentiation between attitudes toward cis and non-cis masculinities. whether trans or not, masculinity is threat rather than protection, individual mandate rather than reciprocal responsibility. such readings elide understandings of indigenous masculinity, which have, in many cases, centered issues of communal responsibility and protection.10 for valerio, relational spaces therefore become fraught, a circuit in which his gender performance and sex are frequently disavowed. he narrates his experience at a san francisco lesbian bar, francine’s, which he visited regularly pre-transition. after his physical shifts manifest and he enters francine’s as a man valerio comments, “these women will abide my presence, but they will no longer welcome me” (the transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 22 testosterone files 150). he greets this slow-blooming realization with equanimity; it is, he suggests, a sign he has passed over into maleness. concomitantly, he sees longtime acquaintances like “spike, a strapping butch punk dyke” abruptly turn heel and walk away upon discovering that valerio’s not only trans but “a straight man” (the testosterone files 166). this clear rejection places valerio outside the queer community to which he’d long belonged and erases trans realities beneath a perceived position of heteronormativity. to consider just the two examples offered here—the previously referenced responses from the students to whom valerio spoke and his experience at francine’s—we can see how these oppositional approaches to trans masculinity cause him to defend a male identification that has been hard won, gained at significant financial and personal cost. and, painfully, in both examples, feminist and queer folks translate trans masculinity as hegemonic, thereby foreclosing relationship, foreclosing kinship. driving gender into the realm of settler desires, such readings of masculinity enact hegemonic masculinity’s power to segregate, to isolate. afforded the authority to erase and contain, the specter of white, cishet masculinity fragments relationship—wielding influence even in its absence. what does it mean, then, that settler masculinity looms so large in these encounters? or perhaps we can use c. riley snorton’s question from black on both sides, “what does it mean to have a body that has been made into a grammar for whole worlds of meaning?” (11). this question is especially fitting given that in each of the described interactions, valerio’s interlocutors are acutely aware that he is non-cis man; thus, it is his trans masculinity, particularly, that is put to question and found lacking. in many ways, valerio describes a zero-sum equation in which all masculinities are perceived as toxic, a charge folks in indigenous masculinities studies have been working against in their examination of and calls for responsive, culturally informed, and accountable masculinities. what does it mean to write every masculinity as toxic? lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 23 scott morgensen argues that such erasures are inherently tied to settler ideologies. in an analysis that addresses the presence of indigenous resurgence in trans contexts, he comments that “the imperial power of universal gender discourses . . . become geopolitically settler-colonial when they naturalize western thought on indigenous lands as evidence of their own universality” (“conditions of critique” 198). such readings of trans masculinity place a normative whiteness at the center of understanding leaving no space for the trans indigenous. furthermore, among the feminists valerio describes there concomitantly seems to be a negative reaction to the sheer joy he finds in masculinity—an embodied joy his audience, as he depicts them, would prefer to be a more palatable shame. his reaction to those attitudes is worth quoting at length as it both addresses such negative responses and also provides a window into how valerio’s representation of his felt experience can evoke discomfort. he comments: i understand the enormous suspicion and seething resentment beneath these questions [about privilege]. rigid sex role expectations have hurt women and damaged men. we all want to reinvent our lives free from gender stereotypes’ binding constraints. however, real life always intervenes in utopian landscapes. the truth hurts. i wasn’t knitting, and i would rather be boxing the camera. my sex drive did go up when i took testosterone, as did my energy level. i experienced great changes in my emotional volatility, my sense of smell, even an alteration in my visual sense. the stereotyped differences between the sexes that i’ve resisted my entire life do make more sense to me now. (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 245) the valerio who in this bridge in 1981 condemned gender binaries, in 2002 describes finding himself at home in such structures post transition. he further decries expectations that because he is trans, he must necessarily be genderqueer or gaytransmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 24 identified or “above or beyond expressing traditional male sex roles” (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 245). there’s no doubt that valerio rejects the socially constructed view of masculinity he held as a lesbian feminist. further, though valerio still professes feminism (with some reservations), he often portrays feminists, and especially lesbian feminists, as shrill attackers, killjoys who disavow his lived experience of his male body and psyche.11 lesbians and genderqueer folks routinely take the brunt of the criticism in his work since valerio feels condemned by lesbian feminists who perceive him as a gender “traitor.” valerio’s experiences highlight the pressing weight of settler masculinity as the felt experience of colonialism while also challenging any sense that non-cis masculinities must always transgress, that non-cis masculinities are always already queer. to use valerio’s words, “i’m so straight in such an absolutely twisted—paradoxical and trickster-like way—that i am way too far gone. so are other transsexual men . . . we soar in an arena defying easy interpolation or assimilation by a nontransexual-originated ‘queer’ label” (“‘now that you’re a white man’” 252). in these ways, valerio offers a stark window into divisions between and among those in the queer and/or feminist communities that become visible precisely because of varying interpretations of masculinity. concomitantly, just as we saw in “‘it’s in my blood, my face,’” valerio’s later work also troubles the seams of racialized and gendered expectations and highlights moments of rupture. in fact, as trans journalist and author jacob anderson-minshall comments in his review of the testosterone files, valerio is not afraid to look at “the dark sides of masculinity” (“changing sex, changing mind”). for example, in valerio’s detailed observations about his experience of psychological, physical, and, eventually medical transformation from a butch lesbian woman, to a transgender person, to a transsexual man, he argues for a hormonally driven gender/sex binary. he presents masculinity as a biological shift in which buoyant energy, a high sex drive, and defined lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 25 masculine behaviors are bound to testosterone and male-identified bodies. valerio comments, “let me emphasize, i have nothing against anyone exploring any identity. although i don’t actually believe gender is ‘fluid’” (“now that i’m a white man” 244). further, valerio critiques noted queer theorists like jack halberstam and leslie feinberg, who, in his estimation, get the experience of transition, masculinity, and trans realities wrong in their work. as a whole, valerio’s autobiographical writing and his responses bring up a weighty question—do non-cis masculinities necessarily subvert what settler scholar sam mckegney terms the “socially engineered hypermasculinity” (masculindians 4) of indigenous men simply because they are not cishet structures?12 embodiment, joy, and affective anger in the testosterone files in the first decade of the 2000s, a period in which trans narratives became more visible, valerio served as a significant voice for trans experiences. yet, mirroring the gap he described in “now that you’re a white man,” his own writing and film appearances during this period often leave little room for intersectional concerns. a paradigmatic example of this absence is his brief appearance in tyler erlendson’s 2011 documentary straight white male. in it, valerio’s comments about transition and masculinity include no mention of his tribal affiliation or latinx heritage, which, if discussed, ended up on the cutting room floor. consequently, given the topic and documentary title, there is an inherent assumption that he and the rest of those interviewed in the film, refer to trans experiences in the context of white masculinity. such erasure is all too common. morgensen notes in his discussion of trans scholarship that “a plethora of published and online commentary on trans and feminism still makes no mention of race or nation as conditions of their debates” (“conditions of critique” 193-194). likewise, the testosterone files takes the experience of transition as its central concern and the few scholars who address the text follow that lead. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 26 one of a handful of scenes in which the testosterone files engages indigeneity is in relation to valerio’s chosen name. he describes mulling over possibilities, talking with friends, and trying ideas out until he lands on “maximilian wolf valerio.” valerio first cites his own familial connection to a maximiliano, his great-uncle on his father’s side who he recalls with fondness. he then continues: a middle name came effortlessly. wolf. on the american indian side of my family, many of the names of my male blackfoot ancestors contained some variation of “wolf”: big wolf, wolf old man. big wolf was my great-greatgrandfather, a well-known warrior and the owner of a sacred medicine-pipe bundle. wolf old man was my great-great-grandfather. one of the last traditional medicine men on the reserve, he’d been a weather dancer in the okan, or sun dance and a well-known healer. he could hold live coals in his mouth without getting burned. i would honor these ancestors and the blackfoot side of my family by taking wolf as my second name. (the testosterone files 126-127) with this description, valerio ties masculinity to both familial history and kanai iterations of spirituality, thereby linking trans formation to a sense of the sacred. yet while this story hinges on the familial, in accordance with his mother’s wishes, as i’ll discuss in this essay’s final section, valerio does not return home during this period. the sort of felt knowledge of indigeneity and land narrated in this bridge is therefore markedly absent from the memoir. yet while what we might call a sort of an intersectional fragmentation recurs in valerio’s texts and film, there is more to his narrative than tragedy. in fact, in many ways valerio’s descriptions offer an ode to masculinity. he writes: lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 27 when i dance, the energy is phenomenal. power surges through my body. i feel like i can jump through the ceiling! this energy is vigorous—it feels organic, not speedy, as though rooted inside my muscles and bones. when i go out running, i feel as though an invisible hand is pushing me. the joy of it! (the testosterone files 154) such productive aspects of masculine performance align with the sort of recognitions proponents of indigenous masculinities studies forward in which masculinity has (and must have) constructive possibility. for example, kanaka 'ōiwi scholar ty p. kāwika tengan’s work in native men remade describes the strong connections kanaka maoli men make through sharing “joyful experiences of brotherhood, fellowship and camaraderie” (188). in a world that aligns indigenous masculinities with violence and loss as a rationale for colonialism, the act of naming and reclaiming such spaces is essential.13 valerio’s descriptions of his body and his affective experience of testosterone—his ongoing transformations—are daily processes in which masculinity becomes a cause for deeply felt celebration. “taking testosterone,” he notes with exhilaration, “is like having rock and roll injected into my body” (the testosterone files 154). his physical changes are met with wonder and a heady exuberance as valerio becomes the man he knew himself to be. valerio’s joy in this transition often arises in relation to the chemical awakening he experiences as seismic shift. he jokes about getting acne and undergoing a second adolescence. he describes “feelings of liberation and exuberance” (173) and a visceral elation as his body thickens in places, becomes thinner in others, and his muscles become more defined. even “peeing becomes more visual, more complex—possibly more fun” (186). the body becomes his object of study, and, in the process, an avenue of delight. this deeply embodied pleasure is something long denied indigenous men, who are taught by the media and hegemonic cultural expectations that, depending on transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 28 the context, their bodies are dangerous and/or disposable. through such dominant cultural narratives indigenous men are primed to feel shame about rather than joy in their bodies. shame is, in fact, a long-standing affective colonial technology, what million in her discussion of felt theory calls a “debilitating force” (therapeutic nations 56). considering the affective power of shame and masculinity, specifically, sam mckegney explains: “shame” manifests as a tool of erasure cutting [boys] off from the pleasures of the body, enacting a symbolic amputation—or one might even say a symbolic beheading—that denies integrated, embodied experience through the coercive imposition of a form of cartesian dualism. the mind is forced to treat the body as that which is other than self, creating conditions in which . . . the body can become a weapon. (“pain, pleasure, shame. shame” 14) in light of such troubled and troubling histories, justice argues, “we need to see the body—the male body—as being a giver of pleasure, not just a recipient of somebody else’s acts, but a source of pleasure for the self and others” (“fighting shame through love,” masculindians, 144). it is here, then, that valerio stakes a much-needed intervention into conversations about masculinity—the testosterone files shows readers, again and again, what it looks like to love a masculine body becoming. and to claim love for a trans indigenous male body, in particular, is a valuable lesson indeed in a world where trans bodies are attacked and legislated against daily and where, statistically, indigenous trans folks are especially at risk. coming home: “exile: vision quest at the edge of identity” in this final section, i return to this essay’s opening, where i argued that, along with detailing the roadblocks he encountered as a trans man, valerio described his felt knowledge of his identity as a map of becoming, an atlas that charts a route to lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 29 survivance, healing, and, joy, ultimately showing that non-cis genders can, at times, serve as medicine.14 to consider this possibility, i turn briefly to “exile: vision quest at the end of identity,” in which valerio shares a new chapter of his life, combining poetry, fiction, and memoir to reflect on what it means to return, as a trans man, to indigenous community. valerio performed “exile” in a number of venues including the 2009 queer arts festival, where he collaborated with timothy o’neill, who created a soundscape background of ambient music that includes “sounds of nature and samples of traditional blackfoot music” (“performance description”). in the published excerpt, readers encounter a multi-genre piece in which voice, tone, and genre shift rapidly. the excerpt begins with a poem, which is followed by an italicized monologue narrated by the blackfoot trickster, napi or old man, as told through valerio, and concludes with a narrative in which valerio first describes napi’s travels and then segues to a personal reverie on his own homecoming, when he returns to the kainai reserve for the first time since 1986. the opening poem in “exile” outlines a journey, in which a human or otherthan-human being is “traveling on / . . . midnight roads” (93). when the light dawns, valerio invokes blackfoot cosmology with “natosi / sun, who was creator . . . and napi—the trickster” (93). the piece is imagistic, beautiful, and includes classic indigenous iconography—drums, dances, and more. yet moments later, the next section (marked by a line separation and switch to italics) pulls the rug from under readers’ feet. enter our narrator, napi, who, “talking to you through this guy max here” (94), mocks both the opening and the assumed reader expectations that go along with it: so is that indian enuf for ya? is that native american eco-shaman spiritual enuf? am i a real indian? am i a tv western indian circling the wagons? listening with transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 30 my ear on the ground for enemy? or am i a militant—transgressive native american fighting against neocolonialism and litter? or maybe i’m just me, a guy who happens to be a mixed-blood blackfoot indian and, incidentally, as you know, also a transsexual man. (93, italics in original) “exile” highlights the specific collisions that occur in the intersections of valerio’s life as a trans blackfoot/latinx man. and while valerio describes how non-native onlookers erased his indigeneity in “now that you’re a white man,” here he vehemently rebuffs not only that settler masculinity, but also hegemonic expectations of indigeneity more broadly: he challenges correlations between his blackfoot identity and shallow ecological discourse and a confrontational red power masculinity. thus, in his classic forthright fashion, valerio takes what he thinks his audience expects of him and smacks it out of contention. with this deployment of a trickster narrator, valerio joins a host of other 2sqi writers who have used such figures to engage gender play and queerness. like beth brant’s and deborah miranda’s coyotes, valerio’s napi, too, subverts gender expectations—in this case joining “the pride parade” in “a shimmering gown and high heels” (95). as trickster stories trade in sexual puns, gender reversals, and humor across many indigenous nations, valerio, like brant and miranda, riffs off classic indigenous storytelling traditions. further, valerio’s trickster narrator offers a buffer of sorts as they recount valerio’s very real exile from home in the third person: max’s mother, agatha, she’s from the blood reserve and she forbade him to ever return after he transitioned to become a transsexual shaman. . . . now, max reminded his mother one day on a long-distance phone call, in the old days, people who lived as the sex opposite to their birth were inspired to do so by dreams, and these people were often honored and respected. max waited through a long silence on the other end of the phone. finally, agatha spoke lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 31 with a chill in her voice, saying, “that was a long time ago.” (94, italics in original) while the story is painful, valerio’s trickster uses humor to defuse the weight of relational rupture by suggesting max’s identity as a trans man comes with “newly acquired shamanic trans power” (93). though tongue-in-cheek, this statement situates trans identity in a space of productivity that flies in the face of agatha’s damning reaction as napi turns trans positionality into spiritual power. at the same time, the piece addresses transphobia in indigenous contexts head-on. to this point in valerio’s essays and memoir, settler masculinity was the product of onlookers and editors, the outcome of non-native desires and expectations. by contrast, “exile” speaks directly to the ruptures created when settler ideologies infiltrate native communities as seen when, invoking a settler temporality, valerio’s mother assigns the expansiveness of indigenous gender traditions to the dust bin of history. if some non-native folks read valerio as holding a seemingly unavoidable white male privilege after his transition, thereby construing masculinity as an a priori marker of whiteness, here the character of valerio’s mother sees trans masculinity as incommensurable with ties to home and to the affective relationships with family, land, and nation the blackfoot community represents.15 to be trans, in this logic, is to give up ceremony, to give up the embodied experience of the reserve, to lose access to a path of return. in other words, to be trans, in such an estimation, is to be forced into a space outside indigeneity. cree poet arielle twist similarly writes about the painful experience in which some family members deny and dead name her in “what it’s like to be a native trans woman on thanksgiving,” saying, “funny how colonization touches all things, from the beauty of my being to the way family can no longer see it” (2013). cree-métis-saulteaux writer/theorist/curator jas morgan situates such experiences as a site of recurring contradiction, saying, “after all these years, i still transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 32 don’t know how to talk about homophobia and transphobia on the rez. i’m not supposed to say the truth and give in to settler desire to consume my trauma. . . . i don’t know how to deal with the tension between respecting my elders and not accepting homophobic behavior” (nîtisânak 50.) valerio’s story likewise highlights the intersections of settler ideologies and iterations of transphobia, which he experiences from both non-native and native communities presenting one side of the affective coin, or what million, as we’ve seen, terms a “felt experience of colonialism.” at its heart, though, “exile” is not a meditation on rupture, but a story of return. and just as valerio writes his physical transformation and masculinity as a space of pleasure, so too does he imbue this sometimes-painful narrative with embodied delight. his homecoming involves his relatives, who, he explains, greeted him with “joy” and “appeared to be very accepting of me as i am now, a man” (97). and, together with that familial welcome, valerio meditates again, some thirty years after this bridge, on the affective meaning of the reserve, crafting his embodied tie to his family and the land as a relationship that has “the ability to incite, as in arouse, as in feel, to make relations” (million 31). homecoming, as an affective process, involves place as well as people. to that end, valerio offers a detailed description of his journey back—seeing “the land . . . still wild with spirits,” where his grandfather’s house, corral, and barn are “deeply familiar.” they are, he explains, “one of my oldest memories of belonging and family and magic . . . . the container of so much more emotion . . . than any other place in my life” (“exile” 96-97). despite valerio’s long absence, “the north end of the blood reserve is the closest place to a remembered and cherished home and place of origin” (97). ultimately, in writing “exile,” valerio denies the cultural, physical, and psychic separation of settler dispossession and the legacy of gendercide that accompanies it.16 if felt knowledge is also theory, here valerio posits an lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 33 understanding that refutes transphobia and cultural amnesia, heals past ruptures, and forges new iterations of kinship. i close by thinking more broadly of valerio’s place in 2sqi literatures. from his first published essays to his most recent, valerio confronts the relational fractures experienced by many queer indigenous people. moreover, his essays and autobiography make visible the violence of settler masculinity, highlighting the ways it can be wielded like a weapon, even between and among queer folx. valerio suggests that when such damaging masculinities are read as the standard for all masculinities, trans, indigenous, and trans indigenous experiences are elided. further, valerio’s insistence that masculinity equals joy rather than shame is a claim with powerful implications in indigenous contexts. collectively, max wolf valerio’s work, while sometimes challenging, has much to contribute to indigenous, queer of color, and trans studies by forwarding joyful embodiment as trans indigenous possibility. notes 1 building on dian million’s work, i use “felt theory” and “felt knowledge” interchangeably here. in her chapter “felt theory,” million speaks of and with indigenous women, noting, “we seek to present our histories as affective, felt, intuited as well as thought” (therapeutic nations 57). in this analysis, million explains that though often not recognized as such in academia, embodied, or felt knowledges, are theory. for more, see tatonetti, written by the body. 2 this list represents only a selection of the documentaries in which valerio has been a commentator/interviewee. 3 https://lambdaliterary.org/2006/04/lambda-literary-awards-2006-2/ 4 valerio was born in 1957 in heidelberg, germany into a military family. his latinx father, steve valerio, is descended from sephardic jews and from generations of farmers and sheepherders of ranchos de taos, new mexico, while his mother, margo, is from the blood or kainai nation reserve in what is currently alberta, canada. 5 mohawk author maurice kenny published in queer zines in the 1970s; outside kenny’s work, early queer indigenous literature was first published in the mid to late 1980s. see tatonetti, the queerness of native american literature for more. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 34 6 the frank writing in valerio’s personal essays and memoir differs radically from his fascinating, but often opaque experimental poetry. see peterson, “becoming a trans poet,” for a reading of valerio’s first chapbook, animal magnetism. 7 i’m thinking here of pieces like kenny’s well-known poem “winkte,” which was first published in the 1970s and claimed a “special” place for queer indigenous people. i want to be clear, as well, that i’m not holding one of these approaches above another. instead, i’m highlighting how unique valerio’s work is in its frankness at this particular moment in queer indigenous literary history. 8 see scott morgensen, spaces between us. 9 in the essays “now that i’m a white man” and “why i’m not transgender,” valerio vehemently disavows the term “transgender” as a potential erasure. in the latter piece, valerio explains that transgender “desexes and defangs the term ‘transsexual.’” he further comments, “transgender is now used to describe everyone . . . people who might actually have very little in common with me. while i’m not against these people expressing their gender, i do have a real fear: the word transgender has the potential to entirely erase who i am” (valerio, “why i’m not transgender”). 10 see innes and anderson’s indigenous men and masculinities, ty p. kāwika tengan’s native men remade, and sam mckegney’s masculindians and carrying the burden of peace. 11 there are many examples of this rhetoric in the testosterone files, as well as scenes in which women are objectified or female sexuality is cast as dangerous. at the same time, valerio makes comments that imply he recognizes the dangers of toxic masculinity. in an online interview, for instance, he states: “because testosterone drives masculinity, in a sense, does not excuse sexism. there is never an excuse for bad behavior. certainly, i came to empathize with men’s experiences, and understand more where they were coming from, however, bad behavior is not excused. people misunderstand this i think, and are afraid that if men are primed biologically in a different way from women, that bad male behavior is excusable. bad male behavior, like any bad behavior, is never excusable” (valerio, “five questions with max wolf valerio”). 12 i think here of jas morgan’s comments: “a toxic trans bro is still a toxic bro. . . . like with any other form of toxic masculinity, there’s a difference between the consciousness-raised, tender trans masculinities, and trans masculinities that reinforce dangerous colonial scripts. . .” (nîtisânak 30). 13 tengan’s comment to mckegney resonates here: “i think all those stereotypes were instrumental to someone else’s agenda. for the violence of conquest you needed a violent opponent, so you created this image of the native as a violent warrior” (“reimagining warriorhood,” masculindians, 79) lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 35 14 here, i riff on two-spirit oji-cree writer/theorist joshua whitehead’s words, in which he considers the transformative power, of non-cis genders as “medicine” (jonny appleseed, 80; whitehead, “why i’m withdrawing from my lambda literary award nomination”). 15 in monika treut’s short film max, valerio briefly discusses coming out as trans to his mother, who had noticed his voice changing after he began taking testosterone. to this point in the documentary valerio has laughed often, reveling in his discussion of the physical shifts of transition--energy, high sex drive, facial hair. in this conversation, valerio joked about his mother noticing his voice changing: “i didn’t know what to say. finally, i told her, you know, that yes, there is something different about my voice, you’re right.” in response, an off-camera treut asks: “and she wasn’t shocked?” valerio noticeably sobers, saying, “she was totally in shock.” following valerio’s subsequent pause, treut queries: “did you tell her the whole thing, right away, on the phone?” to which valerio responds: “well, let me tell you, it was one of the most difficult things i’ve ever done. and i would have preferred to have never had to do it. but one has to do it.” 16 i refer here to deborah a miranda’s theory of gendercide as detailed in “extermination of the joyas.” transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 36 works cited anderson-minshall, jacob. “changing sex, changing mind.” the women’s review of books vol. 24, no. 4, 2007, n.p. anzaldúa. gloria and cherríe moraga, editors. this bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color. kitchen table press, 1981. belcourt, billy-ray. “a poltergeist manifesto.” feral feminisms: an open access feminist online journal, vol. 6, 2016, pp. 22-32. chávez, daniel brittany. “transmasculine insurgency: masculinity and dissidence in feminist movements in méxico.” transgender studies quarterly, vol 3, no. 1-2, 2016, pp. 58-64. female misbehavior: exploring the limits of female misbehavior. directed by monika treut, first run features, 1992. framing agnes. directed by chase joynt, 2019. gendernauts: a journey through shifting identities. directed by monika treut, hyena films, 1999. halberstam, jack. female masculinity. duke university press, 1998. innes, robert alexander and kim anderson, editors. indigenous men and masculinities: legacies, identities, and masculinities. university of manitoba press, 2015. justice, daniel heath. “fighting shame through love.” masculindians, mckegney, pp. 134-145. ---. why indigenous literatures matter. wilfred laurier university press, 2019. kenny, maurice. “winkte.” manroot vol. 11, 1977, pp. 26. rpt. in only as far as brooklyn: poems. good gay poets, 1979, pp. 10-11. lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 37 lodge, reid. “trans sites of self-exploration: from print autobiographies to blogs.” queer studies in media & popular culture, vol. 2, no.1, 2017, pp. 49-70. max. directed by monika treut, first run features, 1991. mckegney, sam. carrying the burden of peace: reimagining indigenous masculinities through story. university of arizona press, 2021. ---. “into the full grace of the blood in men: an introduction.” masculindians, mckegney, pp. 1-11. ---., editor, masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood. michigan state university press, 2014. ---. “pain, pleasure, shame. shame: masculine embodiment, kinship, and indigenous reterritorialization.” canadian literature, vol. 216, 2013, pp. 12-33. million, dian. therapeutic nations. university of arizona press, 2013. miranda, deborah a. “extermination of the joyas: gendercide in spanish california.” glq: a journal of lesbian and gay studies, vol. 16, no. 1-2, 2010, pp. 253-284. morgensen, scott l. “conditions of critique: responding to indigenous resurgence within gender studies.” transgender studies quarterly, vol. 3, nos. 1-2, 2016, pp. 192-201. ---. spaces between us: queer settler colonialism and indigenous decolonization. university of minnesota press, 2011. nixon, lindsay. nîtisânak. montreal, qc: metonymy press, 2018. “performance description,” national queer arts festival, 2009. http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/pages/qfest09/exile.html peterson, trace. “becoming a trans poet: samuel ace, max wolf valerio, and kari edwards.” trans studies quarterly, vol. 1, no. 4, 2014, pp. 523-538. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 38 pyle, kai. “reclaiming traditional gender roles: a two-spirit critique.” in good relation: history,gender, and kinship in indigenous feminisms, edited by sarah nickle and amanda fehr, university of manitoba press, 2020, pp. 109-122. snorton, c. riley. black on both sides: a racial history of trans identity. university of minnesota press, 2017. straight white male. directed by tyler erlendson, culture unplugged, 2011. tatonetti, lisa. the queerness of native american literature. university of minnesota press, 2014. ---. written by the body: gender expansiveness and indigenous non-cis masculinities. university of minnesota press, 2021. tengan, ty p. kāwika. native men remade: gender and nation in contemporary hawai’i. duke university press, 2008. twist, ariel. “what it’s like to be a native trans woman on thanksgiving.” them. november 23, 2017, www.them.us. you don’t know dick: courageous hearts of transsexual men, directed by bestor cram and candice schermerhorn, northern lights film production, 1996. valerio, max wolf. animal magnetism, e.g. press, 1984. ---. “five questions with max wolf valerio.” (en)gender: helen boyd kramer’s journal on gender and stuff, november 29, 2006. myhusbandbetty.com. ---. “exile: vision quest at the edge of identity.” yellow medicine river, fall 2010, pp. 93-97. ---. “it’s in my blood, it’s in my face.” anzaldúa and moraga, pp. 41-45. ---. “now that you’re a white man: changing sex in a postmodern world--being, becoming, and borders.”” this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation, edited by gloria anzaldúa and analouise keating, routledge, 2002, pp. 239-254. lisa tatonetti “joyful embodiment” 39 ---. the criminal: the invisibility of parallel forces. eoagh books, 2019. ---. the testosterone files: my hormonal and social transformation from female to male. seal press, 2006. ---. “the enemy is me: becoming a man inside a feminist world.” the right side of history:100 years of lgbtqi activism. cleis press, 2015, pp. 143-149. ---. “why i’m not transgender.” manning up: transsexual men on finding brotherhood, family and themselves, edited by zander keig and mitch kellaway, transgress press, 2014, pp. 211-215. whitehead, joshua. jonny appleseed. arsenal pulp press, 2018. ---. “why i’m withdrawing from my lambda literary award nomination.” the insurgent architects’ house for creative writing, march 14, 2018. www.tiahouse.ca. microsoft word carlson.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     202   greg sarris. how a mountain was made: stories. berkeley: heyday, 2017. 303 pp. isbn: 978-1-59714-414-8. https://heydaybooks.com/book/how-a-mountain-was-made/ greg sarris’s new collection, comprised of pieces originally published in the tribal newsletter of the federated indians of graton rancheria (of which he has been the long-time chairman), is a somewhat difficult volume to categorize. the book brings together a series of retellings of miwok stories about their traditional homeland on and around sonoma mountain in northern california. each of its sixteen chapters is framed and introduced by conversations between question woman and answer woman, twin crows and daughters of coyote, who engage in the on-going work of co-creation through their deeply reciprocal relationship. question woman can remember nothing, and thus finds herself compelled to constantly interrogate her companion. answer woman knows everything but is unable to call that knowledge to mind without being asked. together, then, these twins jointly recall and reproduce the place-specific knowledge of the coastal miwok. they do so in a book that, stylistically and structurally, initially presents itself as a work targeted toward young adults. beneath its relatively simple façade, however, how a mountain was made explores the complexities and depth of the miwok episteme in a manner that will reward multiple readings on a number of levels. sarris’s book resists conventional marketing categories, then, but it does so precisely because of how effectively it translates the power of traditional storytelling into a contemporary idiom. not unlike his earlier non-fiction work, mabel mckay: weaving the dream, this work challenges preconceptions about where knowledge lives and how it becomes, and remains, active in the world. the very first story in the collection, “the pretty woman and the necklace,” offers an excellent example of the subtleties of sarris’s work in his retellings. on the one hand, this is a simple didactic tale about vanity, the story of a miwok woman who, in search of a way to stand out to a potential suitor, recruits the help of bear, cooper’s hawk, and fly to craft a necklace of colored stones taken from the slopes of sonoma mountain. as one might expect, this project proves to be her undoing, alienating her from her own people and herself as she becomes increasingly obsessed with adornment, regardless of the cost to her relations or to the land. but as is generally the case with traditional stories, sarris’s tale contains a number of other elements within it— elements echoed by the brilliant stones embedded on the mountain side in the narrative itself. (this type of symbolic reinforcement of theme appears throughout the collection, reminding us of sarris’s literary training and background as a wonderful novelist and short story writer; when question woman and answer woman sit on a fence to talk, in other words, we are generally aware that this is both a literal and a metaphorical space.) in the story of “the pretty woman,” readers will encounter implicit lessons regarding the appropriate and respectful manner of asking for help in need, as opposed to the use of manipulation and flattery to achieve self-serving ends. sarris’s characters directly model appropriate and inappropriate behavior in other words. sarris also incorporates numerous songs into the tale, reminding readers that each being of creation has its own power that should be respected and understood (in non-appropriative ways). he offers a compelling narrative account, as well, of how the relatively benign self-centeredness of youth (a phase through which all people pass) can transform into an ethos of domination. and he engages david j. carlson review of how a mountain was made     203   in the vital work of place-making, tying all these narrative elements to their discrete localities. sarris’s writing is littered with place names, and in this respect his book invites readers to develop an awareness of how closely miwok identity is connected to the geography of northern california. it is noteworthy too, considering the contemporary political context in which tribal communities operate and sarris’ own experiences as tribal chairman, that how a mountain was made includes several stories that deal explicitly with the nature and challenges of leadership. coyote is a central figure in a number of tales, and one of the most striking aspects of his appearance in those contexts is his imperfection--as well as his ability to grow through experience to compensate for those imperfections. in “coyote creates a costume fit for a chief,” our protagonist’s insecurity and egotism cause him to turn away from the centering wisdom offered by his wife, frog woman, a dreamer whose visions guide the people in such vital pursuits as the gathering of food and recognition of when and where to hunt. misunderstanding the importance for all members of the community to play their particular roles for the collective good, coyote grows unhappy at what he sees as the people’s lack of appreciation for him. this propels him in his misguided desire for an elaborate costume that will draw attention back to himself. of particular note in this story, however, is the fact that while those members of the community he enlists to help him in his quest recognize his folly and disapprove, they allow him to make his own missteps and learn from those mistakes. by the end of the tale, coyote’s actions have inadvertently changed the world (transforming lizard, rattlesnake, quail, and dragonfly into their present forms). he has also learned that that all he truly needed to be an effective leader was his “chief’s song.” but while it initially appears that coyote’s folly has led to the loss of that song, what his nephew chicken hawk and wife frog woman reveal is that his actions have merely served to disperse it into all of the “secret objects” he requested for his costume. in this respect, we realize, coyote’s folly and subsequent growth ushers in new forms of ceremony, while also serving to reinforce the idea that wise leadership diffuses throughout the people rather than residing with a single dominant figure. if coyote still howls in shame at night in remembering his errors, then, that memory has no negative impact on the community’s overall safety and happiness. indeed, sarris ends this story by noting that “the ceremony turned out beautifully” (118). it has been almost twenty years since we’ve had a new book from greg sarris. how a mountain was made is, perhaps, not what readers might have expected from him in his return to print. however, long-time readers of his work will easily discern in the book the narrative gifts and the careful depiction of key themes (particularly regarding the relationship between song, power, place and being) that run throughout his ouevre. and new readers should appreciate his skillful ventriloquism of question woman and answer woman and the great care he has taken to highlight the profundity that resides in the stories that continue to create and map the miwok homeland. david j. carlson, california state university, san bernardino transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 30 native pop: bunky echo-hawk and steven paul judd subvert star wars olena mclaughlin most representations of american indians in american culture confine indigenous peoples to the stereotypical roles of the savage, the environmentally friendly, the sidekick, the vanishing race, and other derogatory and diminishing portrayals. philip j. deloria (playing indian, 1998), elizabeth s. bird (dressing in feathers: the construction of the indian in american culture, 1996), peter c. rollins and john e. o’connor (hollywood’s indians: the portrayal of the native american in film, 2003), louis owens (mixedblood messages, 1998), jacquelyn kilpatrick (celluloid indians, 1999), and others have generated provocative discussions concerning portrayals of american indians in media, press, and film. the relationships between whitestream society and native american nations have largely been guided by cultural appropriation. peter kulchyski points out that “the culture field is a critical domain of intellectual and social struggle” (606) and argues that “we are in an era in which appropriation has become the dominant cultural tendency informing all relations between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples in the americas” (615). according to bruce ziff and pratima v. rao, cultural appropriation is often viewed as an ambiguous term by the dominant cultural groups, as something that happens naturally when different cultural groups come into contact. yet to the minority groups and the indigenous peoples, cultural appropriation poses a threat not only to their material goods and subsistence, but also sovereignty and cultural integrity. the misrepresentation of the heritage of a people may have detrimental impact on their cultural identity (9). yet, as cynthia l. landrum and john w. troutman point out, appropriation can be a two-way street. native americans have not been silent and complacent in cultural appropriation. kulchyski identifies appropriation and subversion as two sides of the same coin: appropriation implies the use of the cultural texts of the dominated group by the dominant group for its own interests; subversion, on the other hand, involves employment of the cultural texts of the dominant group by the marginal group as a means of cultural resistance. such resistance is opposition to the commodification that is the essence of appropriation. dean rader further explains that indigenous nations have been participating in cultural “engaged resistance,” which olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 31 can be used to expand the notion of indigenous subversion. rader defines “engaged resistance” as indigenous acts of communication and expression through written, spoken, or visual language, which control the depiction of identity and creation of native image and destiny by linking them to native cultures, beliefs, and histories (179). to the definition of subversion provided above, i also find it necessary to add that native artists aim to often engage in subversion in order to undermine the mainstream power and its claimed authority over native identities and cultures. native artists engage in subversion in all aspects of popular culture including music, film, performance, fashion, comic books, and literature. in this article, i will explore the work of two contemporary indigenous artists, bunky echo-hawk (pawnee/yakama) and steven paul judd (kiowa/choctaw), who employ the diverse sources of their backgrounds to practise subversion. they subvert iconic images of star wars as a means to address dominant american culture’s understanding of indigenous identities and histories, thus engaging in contemporary art and political conversations. their works re-imagine what it means to be indigenous in the 21st century and create affirmative visuals for indigenous peoples. here, i will examine echo-hawk’s painting if yoda was an indian (2007) and judd’s piece hopi princess leia. through humorous and clever mashups of iconic star wars characters and indigenous visual languages in these works, the artists explore the complex relationship between indigenous peoples and the film industry. at the same time, while engaging subject matter that is not perceived as “traditionally native,“ they defy stereotypical expectations of the mainstream audience about native art and create images that represent their personal experiences with contemporaneity. by merging american pop culture with native experiences, echo-hawk and judd encourage their audiences to reconsider native american history and position indigenous peoples as active participants in the present. although one might argue that employing star wars imagery is a response to market demand and the large fan base of the franchise (which is true to an extent), such moves also allow echo-hawk and judd to draw attention, with humor and wit, to social criticism and make the non-native audience question stereotypes, as well as raise issues of self-representation and visual sovereignty. in the process of subversion, images of popular culture the artists use become props for native discourse. while exploring native comic books, for instance, c. richard king refers to such process as reclamation projects that aim both “to interrupt imperial idioms” and create space “to reimagine themselves and reclaim their cultures” (220). transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 32 bunky echo-hawk and steven paul judd are not the only indigenous artists utilizing star wars in their works to make the popular franchise imagery serve an indigenous purpose. wanting to critique the state of current affairs in an easily accessible form that would reach a wider audience seems to have led to a recent trend among indigenous artists to subvert star wars imagery. one might wonder why native american artists chose to employ star wars in their work. indian country today asks the same question: “why do american indians like star wars so much?” (“the native”). the number of works and artists who use star wars imagery and motifs seems to be growing. some examples are susan folwell’s (santa clara pueblo) jar star wars (2013); ben pease’s (crow/northern cheyenne) paintings buckskin storm troopers (n.d.) and honor your elders (n.d.); ryan singer’s (navajo) the new ambassadors (2015) and tuba city spaceport (2012); andy everson’s (k’ómoks first nation) star wars (2011, 2012) series which he uses to criticize the treaty process; nicholas galanin’s (tlingit/aleut) things are looking native, natives are looking whiter (2012) and many others. indian country today argues that star wars is “a huge race-crossing, culture-crossing phenomenon” and many groups enjoy working with star wars imagery (“the native”). they point out that in their fascination with star wars, native americans are no different from any other group of people, “hip hop fans, millennials, and irish americans,” who grew up participating in the contemporary world. it seems the stereotype of the american indian stagnating in the past prevents many from seeing them as part of contemporary american culture. after all, many native artists such as andy everson admit to being huge fans of star wars simply because it is the popular culture in which they grew up. william lempert argues that star wars resonates with a variety of audiences, both western and indigenous (169). it is worth mentioning that in 2013, the navajo nation museum in collaboration with lucasfilm, fox home entertainment and walmart released star wars, episode iv – a new hope dubbed in the navajo language as part of the language revitalization project. jeana francis and nigel r. long soldier’s sci-fi film future warrior (2007), meanwhile, draws its bunky echo-hawk. if yoda was an indian, acrylic on canvas, 2007 olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 33 inspiration directly from star wars. the plot resembles that of the epic: the protagonist is the last hope of his culture and has to learn and train with the last surviving elder because other elders were killed by a masked man. lempert argues that the film both parallels and subverts star wars by introducing indigenous and culturally specific elements (169). in his piece if yoda was an indian, echo-hawk indigenizes one of the most prominent star wars characters to make him celebrate pawnee culture, affirm its values, and provide a new vision of pawnee identity. the painting depicts yoda against the background of ocher land and starry sky, and he is dressed like an indian. however, it is not the stereotypical pan-indian image that usually portrays plains indians clothing. his outfit is specifically pawnee. by choosing to depict yoda in pawnee attire, echo-hawk is expressing his own cultural heritage. yoda's clothing is decorated with geometric designs; he is wearing a pawnee roach headdress; he is adorned with multiple earrings and a necklace of bear claws and holds a feather fan. all of these attributes reference the traditional pawnee dress. the roach headdresses are not as widespread in popular culture as feather warbonnets; however, they were the most common headdress worn by a variety of tribes in the us. they also generally did not have a particular spiritual significance such as the warbonnet headdresses. roaches were mostly worn by warriors into battle or by dancers. so, on the one hand, by dressing yoda in a roach, echo-hawk positions him as a warrior. yet, on the other hand, the roach can also be viewed as a reference to contemporary native american cultures, and even more specifically to pow-wows, where roaches are often an integral part of the dancers’ regalia. similarly, the bear claw necklace on yoda signifies a strong leader and a powerful warrior. it was worn by pawnee men as a symbol of honor and accomplishments (hansen). the bear claw necklace often acknowledges the men’s roles as leaders. the claws on the necklace are attached to an otter hide. according to emma hansen, “while the claws represent the bear’s strength and courage, the otter hide signifies power over both land and water. both animals’ qualities guided the wearer during warfare, treaty negotiations, and other important events” (hansen). hansen also points out that pawnee men believed that the necklace would protect its owner from bullets and arrows in battle. other small pawnee regalia details depicting yoda as a warrior and a chief are the earrings and the feather fan. in echo-hawk’s painting, yoda has multiple piercings on both ears with many hoop earrings. among the pawnee, earrings were worn in abundance by men and transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 34 frequently signified war honors. according to brian frejo (skiri pawnee, seminole), a dj and culture shock camp1 founder, the pawnee “wore earrings in both ears traditionally, not just one piercing, but many in both ears for war and decorations. each chief and warrior had his own unique style and flair. there has always been a balance in all things, so earrings in both sides!” (manning). according to paterek, the feather fan, which yoda also flaunts, would usually point to a special status in the tribe as only men of distinction carried fans with turkey or goose feathers (130). the quill-work choker and celestial designs on yoda’s clothing also add authenticity to his dress (paterek 130-1). by detailing yoda’s regalia, echo-hawk encourages his non-native audience to reconsider the pan-indian stereotype of the plains warrior reinforced in every western film; yet, most importantly, he creates a positive pawnee image for pawnee youth while celebrating his pawnee heritage. the image discussed here belongs to echo-hawk’s series weapons of mass media and is not the only work that employs yoda’s character. echo-hawk’s other interpretations of yoda include if yoda was an indian, he’d be a chief; peyoda; and if yoda was an indian, he would dance the tail every time. every painting draws attention to one of the native realities such as dancing the tail or ceremonial use of peyote. if yoda was an indian, he’d be a chief is likely the most recognizable and well-known piece out of the four. in this piece, yoda is wearing a feathered headdress, which seems somewhat more pan-indian. at first glance, such depiction also seems to cater more to non-native audiences. in this piece, echo-hawk uses the stereotype of the ‘indian chief’ and simultaneously plays on it. while exploring the use of stereotypes by american indian movement activists, maureen trudelle schwarz discusses the occurrences when activists dressed in native attire for meetings with media and played on the stereotypical understandings of american indians by reusing common stereotypes and drawing attention to the particularities associated with them. in other words, they subverted “red-face performances” by embodying “both the stereotype and its critique so integrally that no safe barrier [could] be erected between the two” (16). the activists used the stereotypical indian icons to support and further their cause. schwarz insists that such images can be potent in social and political critiques because they are easily recognizable by the mainstream and do not require additional explanations. she urges that “in the absence of lobbying power or economic influence, the ‘symbolic capital’ of cultural identity is one of american indians’ most valuable political resources” (25). similarly to aim activists’ performances of stereotypical images to draw olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 35 attention to their cause, if yoda was an indian, he’d be a chief uses the stereotypical envisioning of an indian, namely the pan-indian image in plains indian attire, to point out native american contemporaneity, persisting presence, and participation in american mainstream culture. nevertheless, if one considers echo-hawk’s cultural identity and the details of the painting, it is possible that in if yoda was an indian, he’d be a chief, like in the other three pieces depicting yoda, echo-hawk is referencing his own heritage. while the piece in focus in this paper explores the artist’s pawnee heritage, if yoda was an indian, he’d be a chief concerns his yakama heritage. although originally yakama men did not wear headdresses, with time they were influenced by the plains style of dress, like the sioux dress, and borrowed the headdress for ceremonial purposes. thus, this piece can be both pan-indian and tribally specific. according to schwarz, it is possible for native americans to combine both tribal and pan-indian identity without contradiction (16). if yoda was an indian, he’d be a chief is readily available not only to the yakama audiences, but native americans in general, as well as non-natives. while the native audiences might recognize the details that the non-native audience will overlook, the latter will be able to acknowledge the association of native americans with the jedi, the light, the force, i.e. the ‘good guys,’ for which yoda stands. in other words, echo-hawk subverts one of the star wars hero characters, with which both native and non-native audiences tend to identify themselves. echo-hawk’s painting darth custer comes into play with if yoda was an indian, relying on the narrative logic of star wars to encourage audiences to rethink the history of federal-tribal relations. the painting portrays general custer, instrumental in indian wars, as darth vader. the word play of the title is not lost upon the viewer. anyone even slightly familiar with the star wars epic will recognize the parallel drawn in the painting: general custer relates to native americans the same way darth vader relates to the imaginary universe of star wars. the reference is obvious visually as well in the way elements of the two characters are combined into one image. the character is portrayed wearing the darth vader mask and breastplate, yet also has auburn hair and mustache. the outfit is navy-blue, typical of the union army officer, with stars on the shoulders of the cape representing the rank. he is also outfitted with light brown fringed gloves in which custer is often pictured. the only missing object of custer's typical outfit is his non-regulation red scarf. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 36 darth custer disrupts the artificially constructed myth of the heroic general custer, which persisted in the american historic narrative for some time, and presents the native vision of the historic figure. echo-hawk subverts the star wars narrative to engage the american myth of indian wars. yoda and the rebel forces represent resistance to the empire, while darth vader with storm troopers are the face of oppression and erasure. this logic translates to federal-tribal relations. native audiences will easily catch the historic reference; yet, the non-native audiences will be able to recognize the message and criticism as well because they also seek to identify with the jedi and the rebels while acknowledging the evil of the empire and darth vader. although it is within the stream of native pop, echo-hawk’s work leans more towards pop surrealism or lowbrow, a movement that emerged in the 1970s after pop art. it engages popular culture, but in a more concrete story-telling way with slightly less ambiguity. matt dukes jordan identifies cartoons and satire as some of the most prominent features of lowbrow: lowbrow is inspired and powerfully influenced by cartoon art, which serves as its philosophical and stylistic base with “a carnivalesque sense of satire and humor” at its center (11). jordan explains that artists working in lowbrow “revel in the ribald, love the lurid, and turn the everyday world upside down” (11). lowbrow was also inspired by the spirit of romanticism, which led artists to explore emotional extremes and often turn to the grotesque and the decadent. according to jordan, the outsider and underground subcultures of the twentieth century also had an impact on development of the lowbrow. he explains that many defining images of lowbrow first appeared as graffiti, skate, hot-rod and other subcultures (12). yet the most defining feature of lowbrow is the narrative. lowbrow paintings usually tell a story which may rely on comic books or movie scenes (jordan 12). such reliance on the narrative adds representational quality to lowbrow; the paintings represent particular places and people and are mostly not abstract (jordan 12). echohawk’s art borrows quite a few elements from lowbrow and often tends to exhibit a cartoon-like bunky echo-hawk. darth custer, acrylic on canvas olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 37 nature, but most importantly it usually speaks to contemporary people with urgent issues (for example, consider his series gas masks as medicine, which, according to the artist, explores “environmental racism and injustice in indian country” (bunkyechohawk.com), and carries a narrative. in his if yoda was an indian, echo-hawk relies on the audience recognizing yoda’s story and its significance. it is important that in if yoda was an indian, yoda, a jedi elder and warrior, becomes a pawnee elder, an acknowledged leader, and an honored warrior who evokes respect and reverence. although echo-hawk means to include all possible audiences in his art, who are willing to listen (hence the easily-recognizable character of star wars), he wants, first and foremost, to “paint for the advancement of [his] people… with a positive message” (longhousemedia4). he considers his ties to the community in all of his work. echo-hawk suggests that he works to make empowering and healing art for the community (wbez). having a dialogue with his community and his audience is vital for the artist; he stresses the reciprocating relationship that serves as the basis for his art. while he produces traditional fine art for galleries and exhibits, he also does live art or live painting, which, according to echohawk, is a modernized form of the traditional winter tribal recounting of significant events that took place throughout the year. in the latter, the artist would capture the most important stories on a hide painting that would also serve as a memory site for the community (wbez). in a similar manner, in his live painting performances, echo-hawk engages in a conversation with his audience to create a unique piece that is rooted in the comments and ideas derived from the viewers. he asks the audience to imagine that they are creating their story and they need to consider what they want it to say. the resulting piece is then auctioned at an affordable price to the audience. many of the audience members claim that the paintings which come out of such dialogue between the artist and his audience are highly relatable. susan froyd calls echo-hawk's art “community-building art-oeuvre” (froyd). as in the case of his live paintings, echo-hawk carefully considers the story he wants to tell in if yoda was an indian. the artist draws a parallel between the wisdom of yoda, who, in episodes iv, v, and vi, is the only remaining keeper of the knowledge about the magical force of the jedi and the last representative of these people, and the cultural knowledge of the elders of the pawnee tribe who are also tasked with preserving and continuing the tribal culture into the future. echo-hawk’s comparison of the pawnee culture to the jedi culture is empowering for the transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 38 native communities. it references sacred knowledge that can be healing both for the community in particular and society in general. this parallel is also productive because the jedi are considered a dying culture that makes a comeback with the newly regained “force.” it is able not only to withstand the attack of the empire, but also to defeat it and persevere. in addition, star wars portrays the jedi culture as advanced and spiritually developed, and although its primary focus is on development of the mind and connection to the universe, there is no hint of primitivism which is often stereotypically ascribed to many indigenous cultures that are believed to be “close to nature.” quite a few indigenous peoples of the star wars universe are portrayed as primitive. for instance, the ewoks, the fictional race of the star wars universe indigenous to the moon of endor, whose name resembles miwok, the name of a native american tribe, whose village, according to george lucas, was just outside his office (miller 146), are a simplistic and gullible hunter-gatherer society living in the wilderness (for a full description of the race see wookieepedia). although george lucas intended to stress the advantages of such a race that defeats the technologically advanced society, its simple-mindedness and primitivism are what stands out the most. some might draw parallels between ewoks and native americans because of the belief spread across the internet that the name of the race is derived from the miwok (which lucas indicates only as coincidental) and the fact that the endor scenes were shot in the california redwood forests to which the tribe is indigenous (mcmillan). another example of the primitive indigenous people of the original trilogy are the tusken raiders or the sand people native to tatooine located in the outer rim territories of the galaxy. these nomadic warrior people are portrayed as uncivilized savages who attack small settlements of colonists. echohawk works against such stereotypical comparisons by creating a positive image in if yoda was an indian that both younger and older generations of pawnee can relate to. he conjures an interpretation of star wars iconography that lifts the indigenous peoples to the status of heroes. such affirmations of indigenous values are important especially to native youth as they create inspirational images and models that counter the absence of positive native imagery in american popular culture. many native artists, echo-hawk and judd among them, define the purpose of their art as educating the public about contemporary native american issues, but most importantly they want to remedy the lack of positive representation of native peoples in popular culture and create experiences native youth can relate to. alaka wali, anthropologist and co-curator of the olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 39 exhibit bunky echo hawk – modern warrior, which took place in field museum, chicago, illinois2, notes that echo-hawk “sees himself as fighting for the dignity and wellbeing of his people” (wbez). one of the ways he pursues this purpose is by creating inspiring images for younger generations. kathryn shanley argues that images of native americans in popular culture have an enormous influence on “determining the quality of the lived experience of american indians” (29). dean rader points out the negative effects of stereotypes in media on indigenous populations: where place names and laws and raids robbed indians of cultural identity 100 years ago, so too have westerns, team mascots, comics, tonto and other caricatures stolen native cultural identity and sovereignty. contemporary visual culture—movies and television in particular—have erected identities for them. so effective have the modern media been in altering how indians see themselves that many native writers talk about growing up sympathizing with cowboys and ridiculing the cheyenne and arapaho. (183) rader encourages and praises native american artists’ resistance to harmful stereotypes through their works. such resistance is the discourse of today’s reality in their works, the reality that is shaped by “popular culture, politics, current events, and the changing social mores of the 21st century” (baker at al. 7). explaining his artwork, steven judd points out, for instance, that he is indeed native american, and he went to an all-native college, and he is inspired by his “native stuff”; yet he is also a part of the larger american culture and likes “cool pop stuff,” movies, and music (mormann). in an interview with santa fe reporter, judd elaborates: i live in the same world that other people live in, and i just found that there wasn’t what i felt was cool, pop culture stuff made for me—stickers, toys, action figures—i didn’t feel like they were necessarily speaking to things that i saw or that my family saw, so i decided to do my best to try to make my own. (limón) judd creates alternative images to those with which he had to grow up such as iron eyes cody, who was italian and whose commercials romanticized the “noble savage” stereotype. judd expresses the sentiment familiar to many indigenous artists and points to the lack of positive and accurate representations of native americans that could have served as role models in his childhood. tonto and any other native americans in hollywood westerns certainly did not serve as good examples in american popular culture. that is why judd’s images often incorporate transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 40 superheroes from comic books and portraits of famous native americans. one of his projects is his series lego my land (2015) which transforms lego figures into american indians. steven paul judd’s works are different in style from those of echo-hawk. although he has some works that are similar to lowbrow, the artist created his piece hopi princess leia, like many of his other works, in a style more common for american neo-pop of the 1980s, which in its turn was a rebirth of american pop art that emerged in the 1960’s as a reaction to the elitist abstract expressionist scene. its aesthetic reacted to the cultural and industrial changes, centered on contemporaneity, and strived to be socially relevant (osterwold 7). pop art served as a reflection of the capitalist consumer culture that arose in the us in the 1950s and 1960s. this art movement was largely characterized by the images derived from popular culture and consumerism. it relied on and reflected the power of television and borrowed its images from comic strips, celebrities, advertisements, everyday objects, and consumer products. it was interested in mass culture and mass production. according to david katz, pop art “appropriated and transmuted traditionally commercial and ‘low’ art into ‘fine’ art that was instantly recognizable, archly self-referencing, clever and witty, and yet easily understood, since it sprang from common images” (21). its characteristics made it highly marketable and quickly accepted by both collectors and critics. katz notes american pop art’s “apolitical, non-confrontational content… its irony, its coolness and the hip detachment with which it mirrored the youth culture of the early sixties” (21). it played with the surfaces and expressed ambivalence. artists avoided making clear statements in their works. judd jokingly calls himself “andy warrior-hol” (murg) because his use of pop iconography is similar to andy warhol’s, one of the most iconic pop-artists of the steven paul judd. hopi princess leia olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 41 20th century. similarly to warhol, who challenged boundaries between media and merged together printmaking and photography, as well as objects of mass-production to create new meanings (museum of modern art), judd often employs film celebrities and movie scenes, uses bold block colors, creates multiples, and experiments with combining media. although hopi princess leia lacks some of the prominent elements of pop art and neo-pop aesthetic, it is conceptually pop. in this piece, judd brings together edward curtis’s 1921 photograph “pulini and koyame-walpi” from his multivolume collection the north american indian, volume 12: “the hopi,” and a still shot from star wars of princess leia pointing a gun. it is a photoshop piece depicting two hopi maidens in their traditional dress with the squash blossom hairdo that was typical for unmarried women in a sepia photograph. princess leia is photoshopped in front of the two maidens. she is pointing a gun at someone who is not in the picture, but who obviously poses a threat. hopi princess leia may invite different interpretations from native and non-native audiences. due to the nature of pop art, it might merely be pointing to one thing only—the resemblance between leia’s costume and hopi girls’ outfits. the non-native viewer may notice the witty play of the piece, but not go any further in her attempts to scrutinize its underlying political logic. at times, it is difficult for the non-native audience to decide whether the artist intends to initiate political discussion. judd’s piece is such a case. in his seminal work the trickster shift: humor and irony in contemporary native art (1999), allan j. ryan discusses the art of bill powless, grand river mohawk, whose attitude seems to be similar to judd’s. he points out that bill powless takes “definite delight in pure play and juxtaposition, with seemingly little interest in provoking political debate” (14). the artist enjoys the look of bewilderment on the faces of his non-native viewers who are uncertain whether they are expected to smile and laugh, and whether the piece in front of them is meant to be humorous. ryan explains that powless’s beach blanket brave and home of the brave (1984) mean to depict “native participation in contemporary consumer society and possibly their bewilderment with it;” yet, both pieces also highlight stereotypes about native americans, which, engrained in the minds of the non-native audience, prevent them from recognizing native participation in contemporaneity, which the author intends (15). similarly, it is difficult to say what judd’s intention is in hopi princess leia as he might be merely pointing to and playing with the striking resemblance between the maidens and leia. like powless, he might not intend a political transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 42 conversation, but wants to observe the reactions of his audience to an image they did not anticipate. yet, on the other hand, the native audience may refer to the narrative logic of star wars and see the hopi women as participants in the rebellion alongside princess leia. in such a way this piece manages to write hopi women into the star wars narrative, working against the narrative of erasure by affirming indigenous presence and identity. in such interpretation, judd’s choice to modify curtis’s photograph is not coincidental. edward curtis’s photographs were instrumental in their time in establishing stereotypes about native americans, especially the “vanishing indian” stereotype. the latter presupposes that all indians are objects of the past that need to be captured before they disappear completely; their knowledge, traditions, ceremonies, and land “should” be passed down to the whites in order to preserve them. judd’s insertion of princess leia into curtis’s photograph counters the idea of the indian of the past as he is consciously placing a character of contemporary popular culture into the image of native americans as opposed to curtis’s editing out of any objects and signs of contemporaneity from his photographs of the indigenous peoples. in such a way, hopi princess leia questions authenticity of curtis’s photographs. by manipulating curtis’ photograph, judd draws the viewer’s attention to the history of representations or rather misrepresentations of native americans in media. the artist has a number of works where he alters curtis’s photographs in some way to portray indians depicted in them not as artifacts, but as contemporary human beings. judd adds color to some of the photographs and photoshops images of popular culture into others. as gyasi ross puts it, judd creates positive images and healthy images instead of ranting about the mainstream imagery of native americans. ross exclaims: “that’s powerful, my friends. that’s self-determination. that is the power to influence generations of native people. instead of angrily protesting popular images of natives, he’s consistently showing the many ways native life is beautiful” (ross). in such ways, judd reclaims representational agency. rader further argues that such works are “both a measure and a means of indian sovereignty” (180) and hold the key to resistance by participating in contemporaneity and subverting the imagery of erasure into imagery of presence: [c]ontemporary writers, directors, and painters battle against the near-totalizing forces of american cultural inscription and misrepresentation. the most provocative practitioners of native discourses resist the imperial colonizing thrust of contemporary olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 43 culture through participation in it. their inventive use of the lyric poem, the collage, and the movie transforms both public and private discourses and allows them not only to counter prevailing establishments of identity but also to tell who they are in their own languages. they resist cultural erasure by attacking those armaments designed to annihilate their ability to speak themselves into being. yet, through art they recoup the performative energies of enactment, ritual, and oration and engage both anglo and native discourse. (180) rader’s argument supports the claim that by engaging popular culture in a way which addresses cultural erasure and the stereotype of the vanishing indian, native artists rewrite representations of indianness and whiteness by simultaneously subverting traditional pop-cultural icons and images that have become an embodiment of the american spirit. in the spirit of cynthia landrum’s discussion of native artists as countercultures, rader stresses that native artists undermine the authoritative voice of the mainstream society, the colonizer, by exposing the mechanisms of “how a culture thinks about itself” (182). rader argues that collaboration with stereotypes, idioms, and images of the colonizer is meant to push for change (184). such sites of engaged resistance involve issues of sovereignty, self-portrayal, image, and identity. the caption judd provides on his facebook page for the piece suggests another interpretation of hopi princess leia, which makes it offer multiple readings that do not necessarily agree with each other, yet also do not deconstruct the piece. the caption declares the following: “for the last time, my great, great, great-grandmother was a hopi indian princess, that's what makes me a princess! princess leia” (judd, “hopi princess leia”). it seems difficult not to notice the issues of cultural appropriation and self-representation underlying hopi princess leia. in this piece, judd makes leia representative of “imperialist nostalgia,” which according to renato rosaldo “uses a pose of ‘innocent yearning’ both to capture people’s imagination and to conceal its complicity with often brutal domination” (70). judd is evoking the concept of a “wannabe” and critiquing the white man’s desire to “play indian,” which according to shanley has become “an american pastime” (28). in this piece, judd makes princess leia seem a “wannabe” wrongfully appropriating everything native including the dress and the hairstyle. according to neil diamond, a cree filmmaker, hollywood has created a mythological appeal around indians placing them in a magical land desired by everyone (reel injun). this desire to “occupy” indianness reflected and intensified in the new age movement, which turned transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 44 sacred indigenous ceremonies and traditions into commodities available for mass consumption, and led to an appearance of a tribe of “wannabes.” although there are multiple theories where george lucas got his inspiration for some of leia’s most iconic hairstyles and outfits, in judd’s piece, there is a striking resemblance of leia’s look to that of the hopi maidens including the world famous side buns. some have observed before that it is possible to assume that some characters, ideas, and even scenery of the star wars drew inspiration from native american nations. appropriations and influences from different cultures are abundant in star wars. for example, the jedi costumes were inspired by the japanese samurai, the stormtroopers by medieval armor in costume and world war ii german nazi troops in name; and queen amidala’s throne room gown was influenced by the chinese imperial court dress (rebel, jedi, princess, queen; henderson 123-161; for detailed discussion of star wars costumes see brandon alinger’s star wars costumes: the original trilogy, 2014). some of these influences are acknowledged in the new travelling exhibit of the smithsonian rebel, jedi, princess, queen: star wars and the power of costume; others, however, remain a conjecture of fans (geek in heels; barder). judd’s piece seems to suggest that appropriation of the hopi fashion took place. although there is plenty of speculation that the sidebuns were inspired by “cootie garages” hair style of 1920’s; sci-fi and fantasy comic book portrayals of women; or the scientist barnes wallis’ wife’s hairdo in the 1955 film the dam busters, it is difficult to deny the resemblance with the hopi squash blossom buns (mcrobbie). the buns padme amidala flaunts in her senate landing gown look even more like the hopi hairstyle, thus bridging the prequels with the trilogy through fashion (star wars: fit for a queen). in addition, judd is toying with the widespread stereotype of the indian princess grandmother so often employed by white people attempting to pass for indians. his hopi princess leia vehemently calls for critical thinking and opposes settler-colonial desire to “play indian.” it is a theme that can be traced through many of his works. recently, an atari-like game “invaders” was developed based on the art he designed for t-shirts with the ntvs clothing company. he comments that this is his way of “countin’ coup,” and “it’s the only acceptable way to play indian!” (luger). both echo-hawk and judd explore indigenous experiences of contemporaneity in their works. their two pieces discussed here cleverly join indigenous imagery with pop-cultural icons, which situates them as participants in contemporary art and popular culture. as wilhelm murg olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 45 notes, in many of his works, “the pop culture references give an immediacy to judd’s seemingly simple statements” (“andy warriorhol” 34). echo-hawk, judd, and multiple contemporary native american artists work in the genre of native pop, borrowing images from popular culture as it lends itself well to reaching a wider audience in a language familiar to many. if one goes to a native american art market of any kind, the majority of works that one will find are what is deemed “traditionally” native. yet, native pop is becoming more prominent and draws more attention in the contemporary art world. in his blog post “pop go the indians,” scott andrews notices that there are more native artists working in this genre that engages the themes and images of everyday life every year. speaking about indigenous art and pop art, he notes that there is: a growing trend in contemporary american indian art that combines visual vocabularies from two fields generally thought of as distinct from each other (at least in the art marketplace and mainstream art criticism).  they combine the signs and symbols from american indian representational traditions that predate contact with europeans with signs and symbols that came after that contact. (andrews) it is worth noting that such categorization into pure “authentic” native art that is rooted in precontact tradition and post-contact native art “modified“ by european influences is artificially constructed, mostly representing the collectors’ belief in the vanishing race stereotype. works of native artists and craftsmen have been informed by environment, trade, contact with other tribes, and later contact with europeans since time immemorial and have always reflected changes taking place in the community. however, historically, multiple “patrons” of native arts such as dorothy dunn have imposed the idea of pre-contact authenticity on indigenous artists who have been attempting to escape limitations of said authenticity ever since. the growing number of exhibits and critics who focus on contemporary indigenous art that re-thinks and even deconstructs the notion of “traditionally native” speaks to native artists’ ever more successful attempts to re-imagine native art as a category. museums (although with caution) start exhibiting a trend to incorporate indigenous artists’ works engaging in the native pop conversation. for instance, the heard museum held an exhibition “pop! popular culture in american indian art” in 2010 highlighting the work of ryan singer and lisa telford, who can hardly be classified as traditionalists, among others. the philbrook museum of art can boast several pieces of native pop such as beaded bracelets “lone ranger and tonto” by marcus transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 46 amerman. the 2012 santa fe group art show of native artists working in pop surrealism “lowrez: the native american lowbrow” deserves a mention as well. the press release for the art show speaks of the native pop movement with its focal point in santa fe, in which artists use pop imagery to explode non-native fantasies of indians such as the timeless “noble savage” and to establish entry points for audiences who might not be familiar with tribal histories or imagery. the subversive humor of native pop and lowbrow art provides a perfect vehicle for social commentary without becoming preachy or propagandist. (low-rez) as mentioned earlier, indigenous artists are concerned with issues of sovereignty and selfrepresentation. they defy the mainstream collectors’ expectations of native american art with value in authenticity and limited to primitivism and studio style. it is not merely about aesthetics, but about activism and making the viewer aware of contemporary indigenous issues. frank h. goodyear, jr., director of the heard museum, suggests that “there is a commitment by the younger generation of artists… to get beyond the traditional artistic obsession with native identity and tribal customs. their commitment is to a “post-indian world”—without the limitations or expectations of earlier times” (baker at al. 7). contemporary indigenous artists reference world art movements and speak of their identity as shaped not only by tribal traditions, but also film, music and popular culture. their works explore their indigenous identity as in flux and influenced by the multicultural globalized world; their art finds crossings and intersections of the tribal customary and traditional and the contemporary. robert jahnke (māori) defines contemporary indigenous art as “trans-customary” which exhibits “visual empathy with customary practice,” but is neither hybrid nor somewhere in-between customary and non-customary (48). jahnke stresses empathy with traditionally accepted forms, but not strict correspondence to them. such empathy may reveal itself either in “customary” art genres with “non-customary” materials (such as shan goshorn’s traditionally woven baskets made from a variety of documents pertaining to federal indian policies) or vice versa. april holder asserts that “if native americans live in two worlds, then native pop is the bridge between those two worlds. native pop art is the combination of the essence of traditional identity and the embrace of the ever changing world around us” (as qtd. in low rez). in this vein, both echo-hawk and judd focus on expressing contemporary issues in contemporary media. while echo-hawk acknowledges the importance of tradition, he also olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 47 points out the importance of defying the stereotypical expectations of what native american art should be. he creates art that is not about “buffalos, and buffalo robes, and sunsets, and the indian slumped over on his horse at the end of the trail” (siwatson), the topics that dominate the mainstream society's view of native art, but about native americans and cell-phones, skateboards, and nike shoes. judd is also known for producing images for subcultures. eleanor heartney discusses how the myths and stereotypes popularized by hollywood and popular culture limit indigenous artists. she insists that such kinds of generalization have the potential to freeze native artists into what james clifford terms the “ethnographic present,” “a state that fixes ethnographic groups within the traditions that existed before the disruptions caused by the incursions of modernity” (baker et al., 37). she explains that “such romanticized formulations ignore or diminish the adjustments native americans have made and the transformations they have undergone in partaking of the complexities of contemporary american society. it also threatens to strip native identity from those who have moved too far from native traditions” (baker et al., 37). echo-hawk and judd work with the themes that position the native american as contemporary, with a vision of a future. wali rightly points out that echo-hawk supports the vision that “indians are not about the past; they are about the present and the future” (wbez). native pop borrows from american pop art, neo-pop, and lowbrow, but it is distinctly indigenous as it voices indigenous concerns with visual sovereignty. it incorporates the everyday life and the subcultures. it is gaining momentum with collectors and galleries due to its ironic mashups of native experiences and mass culture and is often seen as “cool” due to its refreshing and “out-of-the-box” exploration of indigenous identities. native pop is also often political and anchored to reality. its purpose is to re-examine native american history, federal indian policies, and stereotypical non-native representations of american indians. yet, first and foremost, it aims to forge positive self-imagery for native nations. native pop focuses on resistance and cultural perseverance and aims to counter the stereotypical beliefs about and images of native americans in the us. adrienne keene curated the native re-appropriations: contemporary indigenous artists (2015-2016) exhibit at brown’s center for the study of race and ethnicity in america that featured five native american artists with judd among them. she noted lack of exposure of the general public to american indians and contemporary issues in indian country, as well as absence of images countering stereotypical portrayals that the mainstream could draw upon (mormann). according to keene, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 48 artists like judd create pieces that “offer a critique through humor, bold statements, and the reimaging of recognizable images in pop culture, which… gives… a better sense of contemporary native identities” (mormann). landrum asserts that “native people have historically used popular culture as a means to contest stereotypical notions of “indianness” and to define their identities on their own terms” (185). through native pop, which defies expectations of traditional native art, artists like echohawk and judd engage in visual sovereignty and subvert stereotypical representations of native americans in media, which to this day largely inform the mainstream audience about indigenous nations. by tackling american popular culture in their works, such artists establish their engaged presence in contemporaneity. c. richard king urges “[to] push toward embodied individuals in indian country who actively engage with modernity, often resisting and reworking its projects, and that demand recognizing the centrality of (cultural) imperialism to popular culture and the need to decolonize it” (216). echo-hawk and judd are such artists who rework the projects of popular culture to make them serve native communities by creating “powerful and positive alternatives to dominant media image” (king 219). simultaneously, their use of pop-cultural imagery, star wars iconography in particular, invites non-native audiences to reconsider their assumptions about native americans. notes 1 culture shock camp or created 4 greatness provides entertainment and educational services to native american communities to promote healthy lifestyles, leadership, and artistic expression. see http://www.brianfrejo.com/. 2 the choice of place for one of echo-hawk's exhibits, the chicago filed museum of natural history, is simultaneously ironic and representative of the artist's desire to reach wider audience. his presence in the museum speaks to the long history of museum misrepresentations of native americans in general and native american artists in particular. echo-hawk's exhibit in a natural history museum asserts his indigenous representational sovereignty. it also counters the longstanding tradition of exhibits about native americans in natural history museums which portrayed indigenous peoples as an obsolete part of the natural world, i.e. "vanishing" species. works cited alinger, brandon. star wars costumes: the original trilogy. chronicle books, 2014. olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 49 andrews, scott. “pop go the indians.” seeing things. blogger, 19 november 2013. http://scottseesthings.blogspot.com/2013/11/pop-go-indians.html. accessed 28 august 2015. baker, joe, et al. remix: new modernities in a post-indian world. 1st ed. national museum of the american indian editions, 2007. barder, ollie. “understanding the japanese influences behind ‘star wars’.” forbes, 21 dec. 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/12/21/understanding-the-japaneseinfluences-behind-star-wars/#384f6917517b. accessed 20 jul. 2016. echo-hawk, bunky. “darth custer.” bunky echo-hawk. 10 jul. 2016. ---.“if yoda was an indian.” facebook. 21 oct. 2015. ---. bunky echo-hawk. http://bunkyechohawk.com/. accessed 10 jul. 2016. froyd, susan. “q&a: bunky echo-hawk on sharing art and ideas with the people.” westword, 15 feb. 2012. http://www.westword.com/arts/qanda-bunky-echo-hawk-on-sharing-artand-ideas-with-the-people-5802563. accessed 20 sept. 2015. geek in heels. “top 5 star wars designs and what inspired them.” geek in heels, 6 aug. 2008. http://www.geekinheels.com/2008/08/06/top-5-star-wars-designs-and-whatinspired-them.html. accessed 21 jul. 2016. henderson, mary s. star wars: the magic of myth. bantam books, 1997. hansen, emma. “a pawnee bear claw necklace.” buffalo bill center of the west. buffalo bill center of the west, 19 march 2014. http://centerofthewest.org/2014/03/19/pawnee-bearclaw-necklace-2/. accessed 20 nov. 2015. ictmn staff. “native humor! 10 funny paintings by steven judd and bunky echo-hawk.” indian country today media network. indian country today media network, llc, 21 aug. 2015. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/08/21/native-humor-10funny-paintings-steven-judd-and-bunky-echo-hawk-161481. accessed 31 aug. 2015. ---. “the native-'star wars' connection: bunky echo hawk and steven judd.” indian country today media network. indian country today media network, llc, 3 may 2013. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/gallery/photo/native-star-wars-connectionbunky-echo-hawk-and-steven-judd-149190. accessed 31 aug. 2015. jahnke, robert. “maori art towards the millennium.” state of the māori nation: twenty first century issues in aotearoa, edited by malcolm mulholland. reed, 2006, pp.41-51. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 50 jordan, matt dukes. weirdo deluxe: the wild world of pop surrealism and lowbrow art. chronicle books, 2005. judd, steven paul. “hopi princess leia.” photograph. facebook. 21 oct. 2015. katz, david. “the artist as provocateur.” jewish quarterly, vol. 52, no. 3, 2005, pp.21-26. kilpatrick, jacquelyn. celluloid indians: native americans and film. u of nebraska p, 1999. king, c. richard. “alter/native heroes: native americans, comic books, and the struggle for self-definition.“ cultural studies ↔ critical methodologies, vol. 9, no. 2, 2009, pp.21423. kulchyski, peter. “from appropriation to subversion: aboriginal cultural production in the age of postmodernism.“ american indian quarterly, vol. 21, no. 4, 1997, pp.605-20. landrum, cynthia l. “kicking bear, john trudell, and anthony kiedis (of the red hot chili peppers). ‘show indians’ and pop-cultural colonialism.” american indian quarterly, vol. 36, no. 2, 2012, pp.182-214. lempert, william. “decolonizing encounters of the third kind: alternative futuring in native science fiction film.” visual anthropology 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network, llc, 20 nov. 2015. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/10/20/labor-love-value-earringsnative-americans-162154. accessed 25 nov. 2015. olena mclaughlin “native pop art” 51 mcmillan, graeme. “30 things you didn’t know about return of the jedi.” wired. wired, 24 may 2013. mcrobbie, linda roriguez. “a brief history of princess leia’s buns.” mental floss, 22 apr. 2015. http://mentalfloss.com/article/63284/brief-history-princess-leias-buns. accessed 20 jul. 2016. miller, jeffrey. where there's life, there's lawsuits: not altogether serious ruminations on law and life. ecw press, 2003. mormann, nicole. “5 artists who illustrate today’s native american culture.” takepart. takepart, 20 sept. 2015. http://www.takepart.com/photos/native-re-appropriation-gallery. accessed 25 oct. 2015. murg, wilhelm. “andy warriorhol.” oklahoma gazette, 25 nov. 2015. ---. “steven judd, renaissance native.” indian country today media network. indian country today media network, llc, 27 dec. 2011. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/gallery/photo/steven-judd-renaissancenative-69284. accessed 31 sept. 2015. museum of modern art. “pop art.” moma, n.d. 20 july 2016. osterwold, tilman. pop art. taschen, 2003. paterek, josephine. encyclopedia of american indian costume. w.w. norton & company, 1996. rader, dean. “engaged resistance in american indian art, literature and film.“ peace review, vol. 15, no. 2, 2003, pp.179-86. rebel, jedi, princess, queen: star wars and the power of costume. smithsonian institution traveling exhibition service, 2015. http://www.powerofcostume.si.edu/. accessed 20 july 2016. reel injun: videorecording. dir. diamond, neil (filmmaker), christina fon, catherine bainbridge, et al. rezolution pictures, 2010. rosaldo, renato. culture and truth: the remaking of social analysis. beacon, 1989. ross, gyasi, “man crush monday: the audacious genius art of steve judd, kiowa love machine.” indian country today, indian country today, 26 may 2014. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/05/26/man-crush-monday-audaciousgenius-art-steve-judd-kiowa-love-machine-155033. accessed 20 july 2016. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 52 ryan, allan j. the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art. u of washington p, 1999. schwarz, maureen trudelle. fighting colonialism with hegemonic culture: native american appropriation of indian stereotypes. suny press, 2013. shanley, kathryn. “the indian america loves to love and read.” native american representations: first encounters, distorted images, and literary appropriations, edited by gretchen m. bataille. u of nebraska p, 2001, pp.26-51. siwatson. “bunky echo-hawk.“ online video clip. youtube. youtube, 26 oct. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etzofjoilg0. accessed 28 oct. 2015. star wars: fit for a queen. “the ‘leia buns’ cloak.” star wars: fit for a queen, n.d. http://www.rebelshaven.com/swffaq/leia.php. accessed 20 jul. 2016. troutman, john w. “indian blues: the indigenization of american popular music.” world literature today, vol. 83, no. 3, 2009, pp.42-6. wbez. “bunky echo hawk – modern warrior.” youtube. youtube, 3 oct. 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1a3wwdjwco. accessed 20 sept. 2015. wookieepedia. “ewoks.” wookieepedia, fandom. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/ewok. accessed 10 june 2017. ziff, bruce, and rao, pratima v. “introduction to cultural appropriation: a framework for analysis.” borrowed power: essays on cultural appropriation, edited by bruce ziff and pratima v. rao. rutgers up, 1997, pp.1-30. microsoft word weaver.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018)   176   sarah marie wiebe. everyday exposure: indigenous mobilization and environmental justice in canada’s chemical valley. vancouver: ubc press, 2017. 280pp. isbn 9780774832649. https://www.ubcpress.ca/everyday-exposure aamjiwnaang first nation, home to 850 anishinaabek people, is in a perpetual state of alert. for the native people on this reserve, leaks, spills, and evacuation are normal, every-day events. wiebe grounds her review of the contemporary issues on aamjiwnaang reserve within the context of first nations-settler relations. she makes clear connections between historical events and current circumstances. the principle of terre nullius that justified the original colonial displacement of indigenous peoples now justifies the placement of toxic waste in the “empty spaces” that are home to contemporary native peoples. aamjiwnaang first nation is surrounded by chemical valley, canada’s densest concentration of petrochemical plants. land is intertwined with culture and identity for native people. by definition, being indigenous means being connected to and defined by a particular place. for the anishinaabek and other first nations peoples land is an animate being; a relative to be cared for. conversely, many members of settler societies think of land as a resource or commodity to be exploited. defining land as a resource rather than a relative makes the toxic environment of chemical valley possible. wiebe describes how aamjiwnaang first nation and surrounding territories have become a sacrifice zone; a place where noise pollution and test sirens compound toxic emissions. as wiebe notes, “sounds mask the silence with which chemicals penetrate bodies” (11). wiebe describes the state-sanctioned slow violence perpetrated on the health of humans and the environment. she provides numerous examples that document the expendability of this area and population such as a time when the warning siren system failed due to a dead battery and a communication breakdown where evacuated residents were sent home prematurely before the “all clear.” such scenarios depicting indifference to public safety are normal around aamjiwnaang. this is a place where children play a game where they scoop up mercury. in a particularly haunting example, wiebe describes how black soot covered children’s clothes at the tribal daycare center as well as other areas of the community. in 2011, the world health organization documented that, sarnia, the town that surrounds the reserve, has the worst air quality in canada. native people in aamjiwnaang first nation must monitor their own wellbeing in a climate of state withdrawal of responsibility. they become first responders to spills, accidents, and releases as responsible environmental citizens and stewards to the polluted landscape. a maze of jurisdictional ambiguity has led to shifting the weight of responsibility for environmental issues onto individuals, in spite of the fact that environmental risks are generated elsewhere. the story she tells of barrels of waste that fell off a truck almost sounds comical if it wasn’t so tragic. she describes various entities trying to justify shirking responsibility for clean-up based on precisely where the truck was, which way the barrels rolled, where the waste came from, and where it was going. meanwhile, as this dance to avoid responsibility played out, the wellbeing of the anishinaabek people and territory was virtually ignored. this has led native people to become activists with a “heightened sense of commitment, hilary noel weaver review of everyday exposure   177   mobilization, and engagement in order to hold their industrial and government neighbors to account” (81). as might be expected, living in chemical valley has significant health consequences. cancer, respiratory maladies, and premature death rates are high. among many challenges for the people living within this toxic area, wiebe has identified the importance of environmental reproductive justice. notably, the anishinaabek people of aamjiwnaang first nation have experienced a sharp decline in male births. this book details the experiences of the community in trying to hold someone accountable for the environmental risks associated with living within this territory. the preface describes the book as “a collection of stories that travel through time, this book aims to engage diverse knowedges, insight critical thought, inspire reflection.” the author contrasts indigenous understandings of land, culture, and environment with non-relational forms of being and knowing that characterize dominant society understandings. this book is based on doctoral research and provides a detailed description of how the author/researcher approached the project. this includes theoretical and research underpinnings as well as how the author approached and engaged the indigenous community. at times the book is heavily immersed in the author’s theoretical analysis. for example, she highlights and dissects the meaning of terms such as citizen and citizenship. she identifies her work as being grounded within a reproductive justice framework of inquiry. this in-depth discussion of her theoretical positioning lends transparency to her approach but may feel tedious to some readers. likewise, some points are made multiple times and may feel redundant. on the other hand, storytellers often repeat their points with slight variations, both for emphasis and to get the attention of different listeners. wiebe tells this important story well. her words are powerful and her analysis insightful. she also uses black and white photographs that juxtapose reserve residents and chemical plants. in this instance, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. she includes a map of the reserve surrounded by industry. poetry of band members is included so readers hear their perspectives in their own words. documenting this community’s struggle is crucial. people around the world need to be informed about the situation of aamjiwnaang first nation and similar challenges faced by indigenous peoples in other areas. wiebe tells the story of a community fighting for justice. she describes their situation and advocacy efforts in detail as well as the many barriers that they face in seeking accountability and justice. she reminds us, however, that the story isn’t over yet. community members and allies continue to fight for environmental justice and human dignity. in this sense, she leave us with a glimmer of hope and the possibility for justice, albeit within an overwhelmingly indifferent and often hostile context. readers interested in indigenous issues and environmental justice will find this a worthwhile read. it is a poignant case example that illustrates power relations, colonialism, and environmental degradation, as well as hope, resilience, and the importance of place for native people. hilary noel weaver, suny buffalo microsoft word schweninger.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)     186   native women and land: narratives of dispossession and resurgence. by stephanie j. fitzgerald. university of new mexico press, 2015. pp. 163. $45.00 everything in united states history is about the land. everything. and as its subtitle informs us, stephanie fitzgerald's book is about native women's narratives concerning the loss of land. the author makes the important point that “to establish an american indian ecocritical and environmental literary practice is to recognize the inextricability of land tenure, federal indian law, and environmental issues from the seventeenth century to the present” (8). in making her argument, fitzgerald considers primary texts by, among others, navajo poet lucy tapahonso, cherokee novelist dianne glancy, ojibwa novelist louise erdrich, chickasaw writer linda hogan, and crow creek sioux writer elizabeth cook-lynn. in addition to discussions of literary works (poems, novels, essays) by these relatively well-known native writers, fitzgerald also looks beyond conventional literary texts. she considers, for example, a youtube video and in other contexts she looks at brief accounts of reports by different houma people in louisiana as well as people in the alaskan native villages of kivalina and shishmaref, and finally to tweets in response to a twitter hashtag. in these instances fitzgerald's argument can be seen to become much more about personal responses to the loss of land and about environmental degradation generally in the context of native americans and less about the critiquing of native-authored texts, written or oral. the book thus makes for an interesting mix of the studies of canonical native american literature, relating of oral narratives, and the mapping of historical-political contexts for that literature and other texts. the critique moves somewhat chronologically from discussion of ojibwa creation accounts, nineteenth-century removals, allotment, dam building, and the adverse effects of global warming and governmental action (or inaction) on native peoples in the twenty-first century. in her discussion of nineteenth-century indian removals, fitzgerald offers at one point a brief discussion of an oral narrative of hwééldi, the 1864 long walk of the navajo “published” as a youtube video. she describes the presentation by a navajo woman identified only as margaret, about “her family's story of the walk to hwééldi [told] entirely in the navajo language, with no english translation.” fitzgerald then acknowledges that she “understand[s] only two words.” she thus bases her own—necessarily subjective—interpretation of the story on the narrator's gestures and on comments by viewers of the video who “provide insight into grandma margaret's oral narrative” (42). there is no question that the very existence of the video is significant, and it is also important to recognize that the long walk is remembered and still holds meaning in the twenty-first century. it is one of many shameful instances of the united states government's treatment of indigenous peoples, and, in order that it have meaning for the reader, this particular moment in the book begs for more detailed explication. also in the context of removals are fitzgerald's discussions of works by contemporary writers, tapahonso's poem, “in 1864,” also recounting the long walk, and glancy's novel of the cherokee removal, pushing the bear. these are all accounts “of survival and sacrifice for future generations, of relying on the 'old stories' and incorporating new ones into the land narrative repertoire” (41). fitzgerald rightly insists that the implications and ramifications of these past injustices continue through and beyond the present day. by treaty and by broken treaty the united states federal government, sometimes in collusion with state governments—as is the case with the cherokee removal in the 1830s—has managed to lee schweninger review of native women and land     187   rob indigenous americans of roughly 98 percent of their land base, limiting the their holdings to remaining reservations. one of many different means of dispossession was the general allotment act of 1887, through which the established reservation land was actually parceled out by the assigning of limited acreage to heads of household and others, leaving unassigned lands open to non-indian purchase and settlement. in a chapter devoted to several of the interlaced, interlinked novels of louise erdrich, fitzgerald makes the valuable point that “when read in narrative sequence… these novels define the stakes involved for native people living in the contested spaces of the postallotment reservation” (47). these novels all have land and dispossession at their centers. tracks especially concerns itself with the disastrous consequences of the allotment in severalty policies between the passage of the dawes act in 1887 and 1934 with the indian reorganization act. but as fitzgerald aptly argues, erdrich's novels demonstrate that the consequences of allotment constitute an ongoing process, lasting into the twenty-first century. the language of allotment “masks realities—of the loss of land, and of what the land represents culturally, environmentally, economically, and politically to native people” (47). fitzgerald does a solid job of linking erdrich's fiction to the historical reality of allotment: “the authors and agents of the [allotment] act essentially rewrote the narrative between the anishinaabeg and their land” (52), and the novel tracks catalogues the results of this rewriting. there is loss not only of the literal land but also of the idea of a communal land base and the social and kinship systems that accompany such an idea. in the chapter devoted to a linda hogan novel, fitzgerald argues that “there is a large body of ecocritical and environmental scholarship on solar storms, but i read it as an activist and environmental justice-oriented text” (71), and furthermore she maintains, “reading the text through an activist and environmental justice lens diffuses some of the critical tensions that arise with the creation of a fictional tribe” (73). the scholar's challenge in such a context is to demonstrate just how an activist lens helps the reader appreciate hogan's use of a fictional tribe. hogan presents actual historical problems such as dam building in solar storms (or loss of endangered panther habitat, power; or killing grey whales, people of the whale; or exploitation and graft concerning the “osage” during the 1920s and 30s, mean spirit), but she then often seems to retreat (or have her characters retreat) into a fictional realm to circumvent the problems she presents at the center of her novels. as the character dora-rouge points out, “protest against the dams was their only hope” (quoted in fitzgerald 79), yet the novel concludes with descriptions of the flooding that results from the dam construction. it is thus not clear how protest has helped except in the most abstract of senses. nor is it clear how an activist reading pertains particularly to hogan's novel. fitzgerald does aptly conclude that the novel “is not a story of nature, but of man's manipulation of nature, which changes the pact between the people and the land” (80). elizabeth cook-lynn's novel from the river's edge has at its center the devastation wrought by the building of a dam. the literal loss of land under the backed-up waters causes the loss of homes, fuel sources, food, grazing land, and even, ironically enough, water resources. the lake resulting from the dam destroys the economic base of the crow creek community and of course, as the novel makes painfully clear, threatens the social structures that depend on that land base. the novel contains “images evoking the environmental and spiritual devastation on the crow creek reservation, damage that is likely not quantifiable” (83). interestingly, fitzgerald makes no mention of seeing cook-lynn's novel through an activist lens, though her novel, like hogan's, can be seen as an environmental justice-oriented text. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)     188   in a chapter on the united houma nation of louisiana and two alaskan native villages, fitzgerald changes method, and in a sense changes direction. after her chapters devoted primarily to published canonical texts by native women, she turns to oral accounts and testimonies by some male spokespersons. she looks, for example, at principal chief thomas mayheart dardar, jr.'s testimony before the u.s. senate committee on indian affairs in 2012 in the context of the degradation of the coastal lands in southern louisiana. in this context the book offers an environmental history of the houma's homeland at the mouth of the mississippi river. as a result of land degradation, “relocation is a consequence of climate change… and [other] man-made disasters” (101), rather than overtly forced removals of previous centuries. the devastation of the wetlands and the resulting loss of land to an encroaching sea, combined with the oil industry's mishaps, have made the area much more susceptible to destructive hurricanes than ever before—as evident after katrina and rita in 2005. however inadvertently the potential for this type of removal has come about, the result is that once again native communities suffer land loss and are potentially forced to relocate. climate change is also an important issue for the kivalina people living in the alaskan coastal arctic region. here fitzgerald turns to comments by village elder enoch adams as spokesperson for the kivalina community. the formerly active removals have now become removals or relocations due to governmental inaction: “power relations have been constructed in such a manner that the communities are left outside the margin” (109). in the conclusion, fitzgerald completes her turn away from literary analysis of texts by native women. here she presents a discussion of the “idle no more” movement, started by four canadian women (three of whom are native) as a twitter hashtag. this grassroots movement began in opposition to proposed legislation in canada that would have detrimental effects on not only indigenous populations but on canadians in general. the idle no more movement contests bills before harper's administration that threaten to remove environmental protections on an unprecedented 99 percent of canadian waters: “the majority of these lakes and waterways are in first nations land or unceded territory” (112). fitzgerald makes the point that this form of communication could indeed have a wide reach and could have the potential to inspire change at the federal level. analysis in these final chapters, following chapters devoted to literary analysis, demonstrates that it can be profitable to look to community and social media texts as well as conventional literary texts to recognize and appreciate that, as fitzgerald maintains, “land dispossession, environmental crises, and federal indian law are deeply entwined” (21). recognizing and acknowledging these interrelationships and articulating them again in various contexts marks yet another step in a native environmentally focused scholarship. lee schweninger, university of north carolina wilmington microsoft word barnes_final.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 98 critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’ through kaona in mary kawena pūku’i’s mo’olelo, “the pounded water of kekela” emma barnes as nicole george notes in climate hazards, disasters, and gender ramifications, pacific islanders are “the first communities to be negatively impacted as we enter an era known as the anthropocene” (113). for indigenous peoples of the pacific, environmental change is not part of an “impending climate crisis” (whyte, “indigenous science” 225) or “doomed” future (mcnamara and farbotko 18) but is a lived reality. having endured and survived changing environmental conditions for centuries, pacific islanders possess a host of traditional, ancestral knowledges that enable not only survival, but the ability to thrive amidst extreme weather events, one of which is drought. due to the colonial conditions that have created climate change and inform its mitigation strategies, however, global powers frequently dismiss pacific islanders as ‘vulnerable’, and, i argue, use this logic of ‘vulnerability’ to exclude indigenous peoples and indigenous knowledges from climate change responses. this article aligns itself with scholarship that asserts that climate change and the conditions that produce climate change vulnerability are a direct result of colonialism (whyte “indigenous climate change studies” 153; robinson 312). kyle whyte encapsulates this relationship in his statement, “climate change is an intensification of environmental change imposed on indigenous peoples by colonialism” (“indigenous climate change studies” 153), and similarly, angela robinson makes the case that “climate change functions in many ways as an affective regime of colonialism” (312). this is particularly pertinent when considering the relationship between colonial emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 99 powers and indigenous nations in the pacific, as robinson explains: “insofar as the united states has been the primary contributor to climate change and its effects, it is therefore largely implicated in and responsible for the environmental devastation occurring in oceania” (320). this article builds upon this scholarship by foregrounding the gendered components of this “affective regime” (robinson 312) and the ways in which it disproportionately impacts indigenous women. as a structure, settler colonialism does not exist in isolation, but intersects with heteropatriarchy and capitalism. it is the triangulation of these structures that has produced our current climate crisis and continues to monopolise mitigation strategies. as maile arvin, eve tuck, and angie morrill explain, “settler colonialism has been and continues to be a gendered process” (9), and it is the gendered elements of settler colonialism and its use of “vulnerability” that this article seeks to explore in relation to climate change responses. i argue that the colonial and “masculinised nature of contemporary climate change governance” (george 115) now weaponises gendered vulnerability to climate change to perpetuate the colonial myth that indigenous women need to be “instructed, led and managed” (fordham et al 8) and prevents pacific island women from leading adaptation strategies to drought and disaster management. as robinson suggests, “attempts to delay solutions that effectively address climate change can thus be framed within the larger regime of us colonialism and imperialism” (320), and it is for this reason that the concept of climate change “vulnerability” needs to be analysed within the context of the pacific’s settler-colonial history. building upon recent efforts to foreground the political utility of pacific literature (oh; robinson), this article turns to a hawaiian story, or mo’olelo, “the pounded water of kekela”, to challenge the colonial and patriarchal conceptions of indigenous vulnerability. as jenny bryant-tokalau states, “islanders and their countries are not always as vulnerable as they may appear, and had, in the past, the ability to survive in transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 100 the face of environmental changes without a large amount of assistance from donors” (3). hawaiian mo’olelo, or stories, make visible this long-standing ability to respond and adapt, and thus offer counter-narratives to contemporary discourses of climate change vulnerability. through this first analysis of mary kawena pūkui’s fiction, i make the case that this vulnerability does not prevent indigenous women from being central to the recovery and reparation of the environment. i examine pūku’i’s depiction of mana wahine, or “feminine spiritual power” (mcdougall, “wondering and laughing” 27), to emphasise how hawaiian women or wahine ‘ōiwi are agents of change in forming responses to environmental change globally. i demonstrate how the navigation and combatting of environmental disaster is conceptualised through kaona, or metaphor, relating to the female body. it demonstrates how this mo’olelo at once provides a narrative of indigenous, female adaptability, and also demonstrates how the lessons of the past (ka wā mamua that which is in front of us) can guide native hawaiians in the wake of an unknowable future (ka wā mahope). critiquing the deployment of ‘vulnerability’ in climate change discourse in its original usage within climate change discourse, vulnerability encapsulates two circumstantial contexts: the initial propensity to anticipate or be harmed by environmental disaster, and the ability to recover from, or adapt to, the consequences of an environmental disaster (wisner et al. 11; kelman et al. 130; kelman 8). in terms of exposure to risk, the hawaiian islands, along with other pacific islands and territories (picts),1 are indeed vulnerable to effects of climate change including rising sea levels, coastal erosion and drought due to their geographical location and extensive littoral zones. it is the latter that this article, and pūku’i’s mo’olelo, are primarily concerned with, as hawai’i’s climate variability and reduced rainfall results in wide-spread droughts of various forms: meteorological, hydrological, ecological and agricultural emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 101 (frazier et al. 96). the impacts of drought extend well beyond limited access to drinking water, as water scarcity then impacts diverse ecosystems across the archipelago as well as agricultural productivity (100). reduced moisture in the soil can cause “plant stress” (96) as well as an increase in wildfires. under these conditions, the vulnerability of pacific island women to drought is well documented (showalter, lόpez-carr and ervin 60; alston 41; aipira et al. 227). prior to colonialism, however, pacific islander women possessed the ability to recover from and adapt to drought and its ongoing effects. writing about native women from fiji and the marshall islands specifically, george explains that: ”women have played key leadership roles in their communities and on the international stage to build awareness of and respond to the damaging impacts of climate change phenomena” (125). elizabeth mcleod et al. also state that pacific islander women “hold valuable traditional knowledge gained from their individual experiences adapting to environmental changes over generations” (179) and are “implementing climate-smart agriculture [and] revitalizing traditional practices that utilize drought-tolerant species and the benefits of nature” (2). like pūku’i, george and mcleod et al. (“lessons”; “raising”) demonstrate that pacific islander women are not vulnerable to drought due to an inability to respond, as it is clear that indigenous women have been responding for centuries. rather, their research reveals that the vulnerability of wahine ‘ōiwi is a result of the poverty, violence, and limited access to resources, the conditions of which are result of settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy. recent scholarship outlines how female vulnerability to drought and the inability to adapt and respond to drought is the result of systemic oppression, and as kirsten vinyeta, kyle whyte and kathy lyn note: “native hawaiians have endured intersecting layers of oppression” at the level of colonial, racial and gendered oppression (2). hawai’i, alongside other pacific islands, has for centuries existed under the transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 102 triangulation of settler colonialism, capitalism and heteropatriarchy. as j. kēhaulani kauanui explains: “the u.s. occupation in hawai’i was founded on gendered oppression” (285), evident in the ways that “processes of colonialism eroded hawaiian women’s status” (282). as well as divesting hawaiian women of political power and voting rights, the logics of settler colonialism, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy have sought to either restrict or invisiblise women’s cultural, social and spiritual responsibilities to the land. lisa kahaleole hall explains that “colonialism takes place through gendered and sexualized forms that reconstitute both individual and communal indigenous identities in stigmatized and disempowering ways” (15). hall goes onto explain that “the legacy of colonial conquest and hyper-commodification has made hawaiian women’s experiences invisible or unintelligible within both dominant and counter-hegemonic discourses” (16). this disempowerment and invisiblisation of hawaiian women is evident in relation to the role of wahine ‘ōiwi in responses to drought, as patriarchal and colonial structures have prevented native hawaiian women from possessing leadership roles within their communities. it is the triangulation of settler colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy that has created the conditions of female vulnerability to drought, and perpetuated the notion that indigenous women are in need of assistance. the colonial and patriarchal conditions that have produced this gendered vulnerability are the same conditions that continue to prevent pacific island women from being given platforms to implement indigenous knowledge and respond to climate disaster in ways that are culturally appropriate. as haunani-kay trask explains: “the relationship between ourselves [indigenous peoples] and those who want control of us and our resources is not a formerly colonial relationship, but an ongoing colonial relationship” (from a native daughter 103). the ongoing nature of this relationship is visible within the exclusionary nature of contemporary climate change governance. emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 103 whyte explains that although “[c]limate change impacts affect indigenous women more acutely [...] colonial policies for addressing climate change devalue the leadership of indigenous women” (“indigenous climate change studies” 155). the continued invisiblisation of pacific island women from climate change strategies is particularly pertinent, as mcleod et al. note that “the perspectives of pacific island women are not included in the extensive literature on climate change” (“raising the voices” 179). mcleod et al. explain that “the lack of attention to the voices of pacific island women in climate research reflects a broader pattern of underrepresenting the importance of indigenous people, gender, and traditional knowledge” (“raising the voices” 179). it is these circumstances that lead me to argue that settler-colonial rhetoric deploys the notion of indigenous, female “vulnerability” to limit indigenous women’s involvement in climate change responses. the colonial and “masculinised nature of contemporary climate change governance” (george 115) is using the notion of “vulnerability” as another “gendered barrier” (116) that prevents pacific island women from being included within disaster management and responses to climate change. mo’olelo and mana wahine to begin to remedy this exclusion of pacific island women and indigenous knowledge within climate change responses and foreground the resilient and adaptive capabilities, this article turns to a traditional form of hawaiian storytelling, the mo’olelo. mo’olelo are a form of hawaiian intellectual production that “directly linked the kānaka to their land and spirituality” (de silva and hunter 1932), and thus preserve traditional, ancestral knowledges (ike kupuna). as well as encapsulating hawaiian epistemologies and ontologies, mo’olelo demonstrate the significant social, cultural and spiritual roles and resilient capacities of hawaiian women. as de silva and hunter explain, such stories “are crucial to understanding the power behind the voices of the women, transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 104 whose resiliency has survived millennia against many colonizing and assimilationist forces” (1935). the most famous mo’olelo, “moolelo no hiiakaikapoliopele” (18611863), tells of the akua wahine, or female deities, pele and hi’iaka, and encapsulates the power of these hawaiian goddesses that has been passed down through genealogies. in ‘ōlelo hawai’i (hawaiian language), this feminine power is referred to as mana wahine, which is a “strength” that is inherent, inherited from genealogies and ancestors such as earth mother papahānaumoku and the volcano goddess pele (ho‘omanawanui 209). turning to mo’olelo to access mana wahine in climate change contexts is necessary because as ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui explains, “mana wahine is exemplified through our mo‘olelo because it is valued in our culture” (209). in their encapsulation of land-based epistemologies and ontologies, and female power, mo’olelo can destabilise rhetoric that presents pacific islanders, particularly women, as “vulnerable”, and therefore unable to respond to climate change. building on the work of brandy nālani mcdougall, who makes the case that mo‘olelo and mana wahine “enable strong social, political, economic, and cultural critiques that subvert colonialism, support ancestrally informed decolonial movements, and inspire people to act” (“wondering and laughing” 27), this paper demonstrates how mo’olelo and mana wahine continue to subvert the settler-colonial view that vulnerability to drought is synonymous with inability to respond to drought, and instead present hawaiian women as integral to environmental recovery. native hawaiian mary kawena pūku’i played a central role in the collection of hawaiian mo’olelo and traditions by interviewing kanaka maoli across various localities and transcribing mo’olelo and cultural knowledge (maly and maly 40). “the pounded water of kekela” is one mo’olelo that pūku’i recorded that conveys two simultaneous realities: that wahine ‘ōiwi (hawaiian women) are disproportionately impacted by the effects of drought, but that wahine ‘ōiwi are central to the recovery and reparation of emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 105 the environment. this mo’olelo was initially told to pūku’i “by an old man of kona” (pūku’i 66), however, it is important to note that “authors of the many mo’olelo wrote their own versions, using both mnemonic devices from the oral tradition and literary devices that developed over time” (silva 160). pūku’i first published her retelling of “the pounded water of kekela” in english in the magazine paradise of the pacific in 1933, a monthly magazine “replete with stories by writers who live in the islands” (1922 april issue 35 32).2 it was then compiled in pīkoi and other legends of the island of hawai’i by pūku’i and caroline curtis in 1949 and republished as hawai’i island legends: pīkoi, pele and others in 1996. it is this later version that this article examines. kaona, kupuna, and menopause i argue that in “the pounded water of kekela”, pūku’i deploys kaona, an intellectual, rhetorical and literary practice, to represent the response to drought as a female practice informed by female, ancestral knowledges. in its simplest form, kaona is a “hidden meaning” expressed through allusion, symbolism, pun, and metaphor (mcdougall, “putting feathers on our words” 3). more than a literary aesthetic, however, kaona “draws on the collective knowledges and experiences of hawaiians” (3) and it therefore also an expression of hawaiian epistemologies. pūkui herself describes kaona as the “spirit” of the text, and in “the pounded water of kekela”, i argue that this “spirit” is distinctly feminine. throughout the narrative, three women a kupuna, or “old woman”, pele, the hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and creator of land, and chiefess kekela, after whom the mo’olelo is named play a central role in recovering water for the village of kona. this discovery of water is a communal effort between the women, as pele leads the kupuna to the water source, and then the kupuna informs chiefess kekela of this hidden body of water. it is then through the transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 106 chiefess’s leadership that the village gain access to this water, and the impact of the drought is ameliorated. these wahine ‘ōiwi synecdochally represent women of all ages, positions of power and social statuses, and thus convey how wahine ‘ōiwi more broadly are central to forming strategies that help communities recover from the effects of drought. the mo’olelo centres upon a native woman existing within a colonial space, as it takes place when “the people of hawai’i had learned from the missionaries about the god of the christians” (pūku’i, “the pounded” 61). the subsequent sentence links this colonial presence with environmental decline, as pūku’i writes that “this was a time of drought in south kona. had it not been for a few deep wells everyone would have had to leave or die” (61). from the opening of the story, pūku’i deploys kaona in the form of a pun or playfulness with ʻōlelo hawaiʻi (hawaiian language) to convey the role of hawaiian women in this colonial and environmentally-compromised space. as mcdougall explains: “kaona may also be made using the hawaiian language, which is accessible only to some and emphasizes both the untranslatability of certain hawaiian concepts and the multiple meanings that are inherent to the flexibility of ʻōlelo hawaiʻi” (“putting feathers on our words” 4). in english, the protagonist is repeatedly referred to as “an old woman”, however, a hawaiian audience would understand the woman to be a “kupuna”, a word used in one context to refer to grandparents or elders (craighill handy and pūku’i 18). within traditional hawaiian culture, elders or kupuna play an essential role in the continuance of knowledges relating to the environment. as leilani holmes explains: “stories of the kupuna contain historic discourses about knowledge, memory, land and social change” (49). pūku’i deploys kaona in this narrative by drawing upon the multiplicity of meanings associated with the word “kupuna”. as well as referring to a grandparent or elder, kupuna also refers to “a starting point” or “source” (kagawa-viviani et al. 2). pūku’i uses kaona in the form of a pun to convey that the emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 107 kupuna is the source of knowledge relating to reciprocal relationships with the environment, knowledge that is “intended to incite humans to act in such ways as to ensure the protection and reproduction of all creatures in the universe” (holmes 37). pūku’i also implies to kanaka maoli readers that this woman will also locate a new “source” of water during the drought, and thus uses kaona to depict the kupuna as enabling the people in her village to adapt to the lack of rainfall. through her playfulness with the hawaiian language, pūku’i foreshadows how indigenous women will be pivotal to tackling the issues of water scarcity despite their status as a vulnerable group under colonial conditions. pūku’i intertwines the kupuna and the declining state of the environment, and in doing so mobilises the needs of the environment through her female protagonist. as holmes explains: “the kupuna speak of the earth/human relationship”, so much so that they “articulate the voice of the land” (38-46). pūku’i does this through a hawaiian concept that mcdougall refers to as “island-human relationality” (“what the island provides” 203). island-human relationality is “approaching every part of the island as sacred and as ancestor. doing so entails seeing humans as part of and not separate from the island” (203). in particular, pūku’i conveys a gendered notion of island-human relationality, as the vulnerability of the archipelago and the vulnerability of wahine ‘ōiwi to drought are intertwined through imagery that connects the infertile environment with the aging female body. repeatedly referring to her as “the old woman”, pūku’i presents a woman who is likely to be post-menopausal. pūku’i expresses island-human relationality by reflecting this sense of aging and infertility in the barren landscape around the woman: “dry grass, dry ferns and withering lehua trees—that was all she saw” (61). stating that these dying plants are “all she saw”, pūku’i conveys the reflexive nature in which the woman views the scorched earth. here, her perception of self is reflected in the way she perceives the environment. within the context of hawaiian transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 108 epistemologies, referring to the lehua trees as “withering” also conveys a “hidden meaning” or allusion to the aging female body (mcdougall, “putting feathers on our words” 3). in the hawaiian language there exists a euphemism, “ke kulu waimaka lehua”, which translates to “the flowing of the red lehua blossom tears” and refers to menstrual flow (kame’eleihiwa 75).3 by referring to the lehua trees as “withering”, pūku’i invokes this hawaiian phrase to allude to the end of a fertile period, both in terms of the female body and the landscape that is deteriorating due to the lack of rainfall. as mcdougall suggests, however, the perception of the land as ancestor is also visible here, as “lehua trees” are an allusion (kaona), to the ancestor and goddess pele.4 in some representations, pele “adorned herself extravagantly with wreaths of lehua blossoms” (ho‘oulumāhiehie 5). kaona in the form of an allusion foreshadows how the female ancestors will be central to guiding the protagonist in her responses to the drought. after observing the kupuna has observed the lehua trees, pele appears to her and her dog. despite not taking her usual form of an old woman herself, pele is immediately recognisable to the kupuna, as she exclaims: “‘pele!’ she whispered under her breath. ‘i have seen pele!’” (pūku’i, “the pounded”63). when considering the first interaction between the goddess pele and the old woman or kupuna, i argue that their relationship evocative of the relationship between a haka and an akua (god). a haka, which “means literally ‘a bird’s perch, or a rack to hang things on’” functions as “the medium for a chosen spirit” and a mouth through which the spirit speaks (craighill handy and pūku’i 123). what is significant about a haka is the notion that, as craighill handy and pūku’i state, “[a] woman could become a haka only after menopause” and that “[n]o menstruating person might come there” (124). whilst pele does not physically take control of the woman’s body, the idea that pūku’i’s protagonist is pele’s chosen haka stems from the fact that the old woman becomes the mouthpiece through emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 109 which the water is discovered, and thus is a metaphorical haka. at the end of the narrative, pūku’i also writes that “[t]o the old people and their dog the people gave great honour, saying ‘they are the chosen of pele and she always chooses the best’” (“the pounded” 66), highlighting that their encounter was not coincidence, but that the woman was chosen by pele. in her depiction of the meeting between the kupuna and pele, pūku’i emphasises the central role of ancestral guidance and hawaiian genealogies in the empowerment of women and their ability to adapt to changing environments. as kame’eleihiwa explains, goddesses such as pele “are our ancestors, they are our inspiration, they live in us” (72). indicative of how the akua metaphorically “live” inside the wahine ‘ōiwi, pūku’i uses the metaphorical haka to convey how pele “lives” inside the woman and empowers her in saving her village from the ongoing drought (kame’eleihiwa 72). as pele is “the most important kupuna”, who guides another kupuna, who then guides the chiefess, this trajectory is a form of kaona that demonstrates how women’s actions in relation to the environment are indicative of the collective action in which indigenous women partake (craighill handy and pūku’i 38). menstruation and regeneration in the same way that the deterioration of the environment is depicted through kaona and the aging female body, the replenishment of the landscape is also signified through kaona relating to youthfulness, menstruation and regeneration. this is first represented through the inclusion of pele.5 whilst her role in creating land contributes to the construction of land as feminine, her femininity is not a means of imagining the landscape as passive and conquerable as is typical of imperialist rhetoric wherein the hawaiian islands are constructed as female (trask, “lovely hula lands” 23; kauanui 285). as mcdougall suggests, pele’s “passionate nature and her emotions drive her to both violence and love, which are demonstrated through the flow and eruptions of transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 110 kı¯lauea”, the volcano (“wondering and laughing” 28). through her ability to take the form of human woman as well as lehua and lava, the figure of pele presents the feminine nature of the land as dynamic, powerful and dangerous with the potential for disruption and eruption. similarly, ho’omanawanui explains that pele “garners respect from the male gods and conquers men” (209). pele thus poses a challenge to the western, patriarchal, and imperialist modes of thought that construct indigenous women as vulnerable to the changing conditions of the environment as pele is one of the central agents of change upon the archipelago and is therefore representative of mana wahine. like many hawaiian mo’olelo that use kaona through symbols and imagery associated with the female body, this narrative uses kaona or metaphors associated with pele and menstrual flow to represent the beginning of a new cycle. analysing pūku’i’s depiction of pele as a metaphor for menstruation, and the beginning of a new environmental cycle, stems from how pele is understood within kanaka legends and the concept of kino lau, or “many forms” (bray 13). john dvorak explains that “native hawaiians traditionally regarded an eruption as the menstruation of the goddess pele” (8), and carolyn bray similarly states that: “[h]er sacred life-giving form, from the menstrual blood that courses through the body/earth, flows from the mouth of the volcano as hot lava” (13). this association between pele, lava and menstruation is visible as when pele appears, the kupuna observes that: “[h]er bare feet trod the rough lava road as lightly as if it had been a smooth floor” (pūku’i, “the pounded” 61). as well as the lava being associated with a menstrual cycle, in this mo’olelo it is representative of the beginning of a new, environmental cycle that is gendered and therefore functions as an expression of mana wahine. as bray suggests, “[o]ver time, when the lava-drenched soil is soaked with rain, flora and fauna thrive. when pele’s sacred liquid reaches the sea, new land is formed” (13). it must be noted that as well as emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 111 lava being associated with growth through kaona, its association with growth also is representative of pedological findings wherein soils formed by volcanic ash are known to be particularly fertile grounds. evaristo haulle and delphine njewele explain that in hawai’i “it is believed that the eruption of volcanic ash greatly enriches the soil, giving better crops” (22). within these epistemological and pedological contexts then, pūku’i uses kaona associated with the female body to represent women as central to restoring environmental balance and promoting growth, a notion which contrasts the association of vulnerability with passivity. this life-giving force associated with pele is another way mana wahine can be understood, as the female body is central to the renewal and growth of the environment. pūku’i also draws upon pele’s other bodily forms to symbolise menstruation and regeneration: the end of an infertile period, in terms of drought, and the beginning of a period of growth for the environment. i argue that the first sign of rejuvenation, or the beginning of a new cycle, is seen through this link between the “withering lehua trees” and pele’s appearance as a “young woman” (pūku’i , “the pounded” 61). this is due to the fact that, as mcdougall explains, one of pele’s bodily forms is lehua groves (“wondering and laughing” 38). this means that the opening “withering lehua trees that was all [the old woman] saw” depicts one form of pele in decline, before she reappears in youthful, human form. after seeing these “withering lehua trees”, the protagonist looks up to see “a young woman approaching, tall and beautiful, dressed in a red holoku’” (pūku’i 61). this description is atypical of pele’s kino-lau as her “dominant form” is volcanic activity or an “old hag” (bray 13). whilst not implying that pele transformed from those particular lehua trees into “a young woman”, i read the inclusion of the “withering lehua” before pele’s arrival as a form of kaona that signals the end of life, before pele appears in human form, a metaphor for her new beginning. this unusual and youthful appearance of pele and her meeting with the “old woman” transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 112 are the first ways in which pūku’i signals a form of re-birth or rejuvenation, and a foreshadowing of how wahine ‘ōiwi will provide a solution to the drought. within the context of pele legends and this drought narrative, the lehua and pele’s red dress take on a new significance regarding the menstrual cycle. h. arlo nimmo summarises pūku’i’s writings on pele, stating that “[a]ccording to pūku’i, when pele appears, the colour of her clothes are significant” (50). pūku’i herself writes that: “pele in white has traditionally been interpreted as a warning of sickness; pele in red as a coming volcanic eruption” (pūku’i, haertig and lee 13). despite pūku’i’s statement, within this narrative, pele’s arrival in the “red holokū’” heeds no volcanic eruption, but the opposite: the discovery of water and the ending of a drought. i argue that this inconsistency and anomaly in terms of pele’s appearance and significance is due to the overarching use of kaona relating to the environment and the female body. in evoking pele firstly through the “withering lehua”, and then through a “red holokū’”, pūku’i demonstrates how, in a metaphorical sense, the lehua have once again become red, and thus invokes once again the euphemism relating to menstruation: “the flowing of the red lehua blossom tears” (kame’eleihiwa 75). due to the fact that within this narrative, pele’s “red holokū’” does not foreshadow a volcanic eruption, the colour gains a new significance. as kame’eleihiwa explains, in hawaiian epistemologies red is “the colour of sanctity, as well as the colour of menstrual blood” (75), again supporting the notion that pele’s youthful and vibrant appearance within this barren space can be read a form of rejuvenation and the beginning of a new cycle. the “red holokū’” emphasises pele’s sacredness and embodiment of ongoing fertility in contrast to ‘the old woman’ and the ongoing drought in kona, and foreshadows how the restoration of the environment is a specifically gendered act. this embodiment of pele, beautiful and youthful, represents the hope of recreating a fertile world, as it is pele’s appearance that leads the old woman to have emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 113 hope of finding water: “pele loves kona and has brought us water,”; “pele has shown kindness to her thirsty people”’; ‘“pele has brought water for her people” (pūku’i, “the pounded” 63-65). here, pele embodies mana wahine as the discovery of water is owed to pele. understanding pele as central to the regeneration of the environment contributes to existing discussions surrounding pele’s role within hawaiian mo’olelo by placing her regenerative qualities within the context of drought. whilst pele is, as aforementioned, the creator of land, her association with volcanic eruption and fire in other mo’olelo places pele in a cycle of growth and destruction within hawaiian mythologies. pūku’i herself rejected the view that pele was a goddess only of destruction and a deity to be feared. together with craighill handy, she writes: it is profoundly significant that the hawaiians of ka-’u did not fear or cringe before, or hate, the power and destructive violence of mauna loa [the volcano] [...] they loved pele, whose home was their land: they endured her furies, and celebrated the drama of creation with which they lived. (22) celebrating pele’s power to destroy, as well as her power to create, demonstrates a respect for the diversity of mana wahine, and for the cycles of which the environment is part. pualani kanaka‘ole kanahele supports this idea of regeneration, and explains how pele and her sister hi‘iakaikapoliopele are “necessary in the cycle of destruction and regeneration that gives life to the hawaiian islands. both are necessary for the growth of the land” (xii). kanahele addresses the regenerative role that pele plays within this narrative, transforming kona from a place of drought and destruction to a rejuvenated land: “it is the gift of pele [...] she loves kona and remembers her people when no rain falls” (pūku’i, “the pounded” 66). mcdougall and nordstrom continue this notion, stating that “[b]ecause the mo‘olelo and the undeniable forces associated with pele and hi‘iaka are so well known by kanaka maoli, all mo‘olelo relating to the sisters work as transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 114 powerful metaphors for the potential of life after destruction” (98). through this use of kaona, which engenders associations of women with growth after destruction, pūku’i emphasises how wahine ‘ōiwi are essential in the regrowth and rebuilding of the environment after environmental disasters. (re-)birth the final expression of mana wahine in this mo’olelo is the metaphorical re-birth of kona, as the discovery of water signals the end of the drought and a new beginning. in a continuation of kaona, imagery of the female body is continued through the repeated images of womb-like spaces from which new beginnings can be metaphorically ‘birthed’.6 rather than depicted as one single event, images of birthing and rebirth appear throughout the short narrative through recurring motifs of womb-like spaces, specifically that of caves and wells. when pūku’i first introduces the “old woman” she is “sat in her cave”, partaking in the tradition of kapa making. she also “gazes out of her cave” and her dog huelani lies “beside her on the cool floor of the cave” (pūku’i, “the pounded” 61), until pele appears and beckons the dog away to find water, before he returns and “[capers] proudly about the cave” (63).7 as well as caves, wells are represented as a source of hope and sustainability: “had it not been for a few deep wells everyone would have had to leave or die” (61). the central image of birth and the giving of life is the final moment in the story, as water is discovered within a cave. “‘the cave!’ she thought. ‘there is a cave near here’. she found it and stooped down to peer in. water! a great pool of water disappearing in the darkness of the cave!” (64). associating these images of birthing with mana wahine is significant as kame’eleihiwa states that “[w]omen are powerful because they give birth” and explains that the existence of land is due to the birthing capacities of women (73). kame’eleihiwa explains that it is papahanaumoku who “gives birth to islands” and haumea, the emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 115 goddess of fertility and childbirth who is the guardian goddess of the island of hawai’i (76).8 it is women’s fertility and ability to reproduce that that nicole alice salis reyes et al. explains “reminds us of the mana (power) hawaiian women possess [...] and the mana to nurture potential” (242). through considering pregnancy and motherhood as forms of power, hawaiian ontologies associate wāhine ʻōiwi with the protection and nurturing of the future. this becomes particularly significant within this mo’olelo as it is this womb-like imagery that conveys the power of wāhine ʻōiwi in creating solutions to the drought and nurturing new relationships with the environment. in representing mana wahine through kaona relating to women’s reproductive abilities, pūku’i expresses the hawaiian belief relating to genealogies and the continuance of power and knowledge through the generative capacities of women. the idea that the solution to the drought is ”birthed” by women is expressed through the fact that the water is discovered in this cave, as pūku’i describes the water as being “of kekela” the “of” often being used to denote when someone is a child “of” a person (“the pounded” 66). in this sense, the water has metaphorically been birthed by kekela through her leadership and creativity that allows the water to be accessed. this association between water and pregnancy is outlined by kim anderson who explains “women carry water during pregnancy, and the first part of giving birth involves the release of that water” (9). anderson’s interviewees also express this relationship between birth, water, and the environment, as anderson explains that “[a] number of grandmothers drew the equation between life-giving waters carried by women and what occurs with mother earth in her life-giving cycles and abilities” (11). through using these repeated motifs of caves and wells, pūku’i draws upon native hawaiian knowledge to reveal the centrality of wahine ‘ōiwi to the birthing of generations who can continue to care for the environment, and to the birthing of ‘āina—love of the land. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 116 this continuance of ‘āina through women and genealogies is fully encapsulated at the end of the mo’olelo when the water is ‘birthed’ or released from the cave. in the same way that pele is associated with the destructive power of fire and the generative life cycles, the ending of “the pounded water of kekela” continues these associations through mortal women. pele is the generative life force through which the women are able to mitigate the effects of the drought. upon locating the water inside the caves, the “old woman” informs the chiefess kekela of the discovery. the old woman and her husband “started at once to kekela’s home on the shore” to tell her that “pele has brought water for her people” (pūku’i, “the pounded” 65). upon hearing the news, kekela “called the servants, directed them to the cave, and bade them take water gourds to fill” and “commanded that people gather kuikui nuts for torches to light the cave while others gathered vines with which to measure the pool’s size and the cave’s roof” (66). when arriving at the cave, however, they realise that the water is difficult to access as “the roof is very low and the cave dark” (65). faced with this obstacle, chiefess kekela turns to the element associated with pele and powerful femininity: fire. the chiefess first suggests that the people “gather kukui nuts for torches to light” before commanding that people “bring wood” with which to “[make] a fire” (65). this turn to fire is symbolic of mana wahine, as kame’eleihiwa explains: “it is woman who has the secret of fire. it is mana wahine” (3). pūku’i depicts how, in order to ensure her people access the water, kekela turns to the element of her powerful ancestor, pele, and thus uses ancestral knowledge to resolve the environmental disaster. in relation to pele and her role in cycles of destruction and regeneration, the fire is used to destroy the cave so that water can be accessed: [w]hen the fire died men chipped away at the hot rock [...] another fire was built and more rock chipped away. after days of work a emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 117 section of the cave roof had been removed and the pool was easy for thirsty folks to reach. (66) through depicting the use of fire, which is symbolic of pele, and the evocation of the cycle of destruction and regeneration, pūku’i demonstrates the necessity of ancestral knowledge in the resolution of environmental disasters. as kame’eleihiwa explains, “[i]t is the female akua [gods] that empower hawaiian women” (72). that the solution to the drought begins with pele, then passes to the kupuna, and then to kekela demonstrates a genealogical empowerment; a metaphorical passing on of knowledge from ancestors that is emblematic of mana wahine. as mcdougall explains, mana wahine is “the power of women to bring forth new generations” (“wondering and laughing” 30). mana wahine is expressed through the way that pele, the kupuna, and the chiefess kekela work to discover the water and end the drought, as it is through the actions of all these women that “[t]here was water enough to last throughout the drought!” (pūku’i, “the pounded” 66). whilst pele leads huelani to the water, it is the two mortal women that facilitate accessing the water and sharing it with the community.9 in this mo’olelo, pūku’i presents the possibility of powerful women bringing forth new generations of environmental healers who have the ability to restore aloha ‘āina: “love for land and all who dwell upon it; the kind of love that affirms the importance of independence and interdependence; the kind of love that demands action, ingenuity, creativity, and memory” (yamashiro and goodyear-ka‘ōpua 5). reyes et al.’s statement “wāhine ‘ōiwi hold the potential of our lāhui (nation) in our bodies and birth them; we create hei (nets, webs) of potential to raise our future leaders, and we also serve as fierce protectors of these hei” (242) also bolsters the notion that hawaiian women have a generative capability to foster environmentally conscious generations. in using kaona to portray the generative power and invocation of ancestral knowledge, this mo’olelo transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 118 conveys how the empowerment of indigenous women is not reliant upon introducing settler-colonial strategies that marginalise indigenous voices. the empowerment of indigenous women to lead and engender change that can restore human and morethan-human relationships is already existent in knowledges gained and shared through ancestors, and a cultural responsibility towards the environment. conclusion as robinson asserts: “in order to begin effectively and affectively addressing climate change, indigenous peoples and our knowledges must be front and center” (334). in analysing mo’olelo, this article decentres western knowledges relating to the recovery of the environment, and instead centres ‘ike kupuna, or ancestral, land-based knowledges. given that mo’olelo at once preserve ‘ike kupuna, and encapsulate mana wahine, mo’olelo emphasise the integral role of hawaiian women in sustaining productive relationships with the environment, and thus in the continuance of aloha ‘āina. similar to how j. uluwehi hopkins asserts that mo’olelo were “used as a form of resistance to the influences of westernization” during the nineteenth century (231), this article highlights the ongoing capacity of mo’olelo to resist contemporary hegemonic discourses that privilege western global powers over the experience of indigenous communities. as a literary and rhetorical practice, mo’olelo function as counternarratives against the colonial and patriarchal narratives that reconstitute indigenous women as needing to be “instructed, led and managed” (fordham et al. 8). examining kaona as both a representational strategy and as a way of knowing highlights the political and decolonial utility of this literary and rhetorical practice. through weaving into the narrative pun, allusion and metaphor, pūku’i uses kaona to represent how cycles relating to the female body—birth, menstruation and menopause—are symbiotic with the environment, and thus reveals how restorative emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 119 environmental relationships are intricately intertwined with women. using these bodily functions to convey the mutually constitutive nature of wahine ‘ōiwi and the environment reveals how indigenous women are a necessary part of the environment’s survival, particularly within the context of its exploitation, degradation and destruction under capitalist, imperialist and patriarchal systems. as mcdougall explains: because of the colonial context of hawaiʻi, contemporary practices of kaona, however, must also be viewed as decolonial assertions— they are both actions (doing something with a particular aim) and enactments (acting something out) reinforcing ancestral knowledge. this reinforcement of ancestral knowledge, in turn, provides a foundation to guide us within contemporary colonial contexts to overturn colonial narratives and to actualize claims to ʻāina (literally ‘that which feeds,’ our word for land), sovereignty, and governance. (3) in our contemporary moment, kaona can thus serve to “overturn” colonial and patriarchal narratives that perpetuate indigenous, female incapability to effectively respond to climate change disasters under the guise of ‘vulnerability’. to counter these narratives that use discourses of vulnerability to justify the ongoing intervention and governance of imperial powers in the pacific islands, kaona reinforces not only competence and knowledgeability, but claims to sovereignty that are based upon genealogies and land-based knowledges. beyond its representation of knowledge transmission across generations, “the pounded water of kekela” itself is an embodiment of transgenerational knowledge. from its oral origins, to its publication in paradise of the pacific, and finally to its resurgence in mo’olelo collections, this mo’olelo evidences the communication of native stories and knowledges across generations. this, in itself, is representative of transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 120 the hawaiian worldview “ka wā mamua”, or “the time in front”, which “acknowledges all that has come before ourselves” (wilson hokowhitu and alului meyer 17). by turning to ka wā mamua, native hawaiians can “[seek] historical answers for present-day dilemmas” (kame’eleihiwa 28). the contemporary, colonial and patriarchal rhetoric of indigenous, female vulnerability is a present-day dilemma for which mo’olelo can hope to provide answers, and guide wahine ‘ōiwi in the move towards ka wa mahope—or an environmentally sound and decolonial future. notes 1 i use this term in lieu of u.s-affiliated pacific islands (usapi), which continues the colonised status of hawai’i and denies the existence of any hawaiian sovereignty. 2 paradise of the pacific was launched in 1888 and changed its name to honolulu press in 1966. 3 the inclusion of lehua could also function as an allusion to pele’s fury, as in the mo’olelo “moolelo no hiiakaikapoliopele”, pele “overreacts with volcanic fury, destroying the lehua grove and the person that her sister loves best” (silva 165). 4 this connection between fertility and water, or infertility and lack of water, is expressed throughout pacific islander epistemologies. the intertwining of women, fertility and the environment can also be seen within other pacific islander epistemologies more broadly, for example, among maori tribes of aotearoa (new zealand). jade sophia le grice and virginia braun explain that: “[w]ithin traditional mätauranga mäori, the process of human reproduction is interwoven with biological, social, spiritual and ecological elements […] for mäori, within traditional mätauranga, reproduction and human growth activities are likened to the process of growth in other natural phenomena, incorporating biological and spiritual development” (153). what le grice and braun outline here is that ecological growth, and thus the fertility of the ground does not exist in isolation but is also connected to human reproduction and the continuance of genealogical lines that are central to hawaiian lifeways. this interconnection between humans and land in terms of fertility is epitomised in the maori language, as the word for land, whenua, also means placenta (le grice and braun 154). 5 pūku’i’s representations of pele gain further significance when considering pūku’i’s full name, mary abigail kawenaʻulaokalani (the-rosy-glow of the heavens) ahiʻiakaikapoliopele (of hi’iaka [youngest sister of pele] in-the-bosom-of-pele) emma barnes “critiquing settler-colonial conceptions of ‘vulnerability’“ 121 naleilehuaapele (wearing the crimson lehua wreaths of the volcano goddess) (craighill handy and pūku’i 13). her name reveals that she shares her genealogies with pele. 6 whilst not unique to hawaiian literature, these motifs relating to the female body are often deployed through kaona. beyond literature, however, imagery relating to the female reproductive system is used to explain the topographical features of hawai’i: “lualualei is the birth center of oahu, hence the female, hina’s womb or cave” (enos qtd. in fujikane 45). using kaona to represent the power of the female body is consistent with the idea that kaona was used as a tool of colonial resistance as it provided as way to obscure sexual images from missionaries. mcdougall and nordstrom explain that “it was through the printing of mele, or songs, and mo‘olelo during this time period that it was realized that sexual kaona was especially difficult for missionary/haole audiences to read and understand” (98). 7 naming the dog huelani also creates an intertextual significance, particularly regarding narratives concerning water and drought. pūku’i’s contemporary, samuel h. elbert, with whom she published place names of hawaii (1974), hawaiian grammar and several dictionaries, published a poem “the waters of huelani”, that also depicts drought on the hawaiian islands (see cabacungan 1). it is likely a reference to huelani drive on which elbert lived. this narrative, like “the pounded water of kekela”, ends with the discovery of water. pūku’i’s decision to name the protagonist’s dog ‘huelani’ therefore allows her to speak across texts wherein droughts have been overcome. 8 haumea is often referred to as “haumea of the wondrous births” (kameʻeleihiwa 7) due to her ability to “give birth from multiple parts of her body” (reyes et al. 242) 9 reading the use of fire as a gendered way of sourcing water becomes even more significant when considering the way water is located in another mo’olelo about the god kane. kane acquired water in ways associated with penetrative and phallic imagery, as kane “thrust his staff into the pali near at hand, and out flowed a stream of pure water that has continued to the present day” (maly and maly 19). works cited aipira, cecilia, allanah kidd, and kate morioka. 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"raising the voices of pacific island women to inform climate adaptation policies." marine policy, vol. 93, 2018, pp. 178-85. https://www-sciencedirectcom.salford.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/s0308597x18300344 mcnamara, karen e., and carol farbotko. "resisting a ‘doomed’ fate: an analysis of the pacific climate warriors." australian geographer, vol. 48, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1726. https://www-tandfonlinecom.salford.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1080/00049182.2016.1266631 nimmo, h. arlo. pele, volcano goddess of hawai'i: a history. mcfarland, 2011. norton-smith, kathryn, et al. 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(2022) 172 louise erdrich. the sentence. harpercollins, 2021. 386 pp. isbn: 978147215699. https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/louise-erdrich/the-sentence/9781472156990/ cracking open a novel by louise erdrich has always meant entering a rich world populated with complicated characters who share witty banter as they build, explore, test, and cultivate their communities. achieving justice, exploring indigenous identity, and finding one’s way as a mixedblood individual are common themes of erdrich’s novels, and the sentence (2021) is no exception. what sets the sentence apart from erdrich’s other novels, however, is its relative temporal immediacy to the atrocities – and the haunting histories they expose – that erdrich depicts and centres as the tension of her work. set in 2019-2020 minneapolis, minnesota, the sentence follows bookseller tookie, her husband pollux, stepdaughter hetta, and tookie’s friends and co-workers from birchbark books, louise erdrich’s real-life independent bookstore. together, they navigate the explosion of social, economic, political, and racial tensions that erupted with the rise of the pandemic and then the murder of george floyd by police officer derek chauvin, sparking protests nationwide against police brutality. amidst all this external chaos, tookie is also being haunted by the ghost of a ‘wannabe indian’ bookstore customer, flora, who suddenly died after reading a particular sentence from a hand-written diary entitled: “the sentence, an indian captivity, 1862 – 1883” (71). thus, the mystery of why flora died haunts birchbark books, and tookie in particular, underpins all the material chaos of the pandemic and the reaction against police brutality in tookie’s life. in fact, the inadequate governmental response to the pandemic and the horrors of police brutality are framed as manifestations of minneapolis’ haunting history of colonialism. in this way, the entire novel is a ghost story, not just about an individual haunting, but the haunting quality of colonialism in mainstream american discourse. imagining the potential identities of the indigenous woman who wrote the eponymous diary, “the sentence,” and the number of atrocities she could have encountered, tookie reflects: like every state in our country, minnesota began with blood and dispossession and enslavement […] our history makes us. sometimes i think our state’s beginning years haunt everything: the city’s attempts to graft progressive ideas madelyn schoonover review of the sentence 173 onto its racist origins, the fact that we can’t undo history but are forced to either confront or repeat it. (72) the sentence, then, is clearly interested in the material effects of colonial haunting and how they manifest in the american justice system as police brutality, vigilante justice, indigenous resistance, or carceral punishment. building on the theme of justice is erdrich’s choice of the title, the sentence. the title takes on a trickster quality, resistant as it is to singular, absolute definition. there is, of course, the diary “the sentence”; there is also the sentence which killed flora within “the sentence.” there are watchword phrases chanted as part of the police protests, like “i can’t breathe” and “abolish the police” (253 – 254). there is also “sentence” in the sense of a punishment for person convicted by the us court system – a meaning to which tookie has intimate connection as she spent ten years in prison. there is also the love of sentences and books in general, which tookie discovers while in prison. when reading a dictionary, she looks up the definition of the word “sentence” and finds as examples “the door is open. go! they were the most beautiful sentences ever written” (24). like the haunting history of colonialism, the myriad meanings of “sentence” affect tookie’s self-understanding and identity as she is forced to grapple with her own memories of incarceration. furthermore, tookie’s husband, pollux, is an ex-tribal cop and is, in fact, the person who arrested her, leading to her decade-long incarceration, most of which was in solitary confinement. a fascination with justice and memory is, unsurprisingly, found over and over again in indigenous literature. hauntings and the memories they invoke of lived colonial atrocities illuminate and complicate understandings of identity and “what it means to be indian.” the intersection of memory, haunting, and justice are central pillars in erdrich’s justice trilogy (2008, 2012, 2016) and tracks (1988), as well as leslie marmon silko’s almanac of the dead: a novel (1991), sherman alexie’s indian killer (1996), martin cruz smith’s nightwing (1977), and stephen graham jones’ mapping the interior (2017), to name just a few examples. in these stories, it is common for ghosts to be both materially and psychologically manifested. for example, mooshum in the plague of doves serves as a living reminder of the three other anishinaabeg men who were murdered by a lynch mob when he was a young man; their ghosts follow him, and it is impossible for him to fully escape his association with these dead men. similarly, the killer in indian killer retains both corporeal and incorporeal qualities that allow transmotion vol. 8, no. 2. (2022) 174 them to commit and then escape from murders that are committed ostensibly in revenge for colonisation. the hauntings in the sentence share these psychological-yet-material qualities. on the one hand, ghosts like flora can influence the physical world which leads to a psychological reckoning and change at the individual level. at the same time, the haunting memories of colonial violence manifest in the figure of derek chauvin-asmurderer, so, while george floyd is not a ghost in the same manner as flora, his memory influences the masses to enact – or try to enact – material change in the form of protests for police reform. the multiple layers of haunting, like the multiple layers of the meaning of the title, keep erdrich’s exploration of how the past influences the future fresh in the mind of the reader. one is left with the impression that if flora was missing from the narrative, the novel could come off as moralistic or even exploitative of the george floyd tragedy, while if the novel was set in a time period that did not include the mayhem of 2020 minneapolis, it would risk becoming a stale restatement of erdrich’s previous works that also are concerned with justice and identity. therefore, while erdrich’s use of ghostliness and its connection to injustice in 21st-century united states is not new, the sentence remains relevant and fresh. in an interview with neal bowers and charles l. p. silet, gerald vizenor described the process of survivance as being akin to balancing in a canoe: “i don’t mean balance in a political sense, but balance in a symbolic healing sense […] you have to stay alive, and if you’re tipping in your goddamn canoe, you seek the balance. you don’t know in advance what structure works: you have to seek balance that’ll keep the thing afloat” (49). ultimately, the sentence is a ghost story about how, after experiencing and confronting trauma, tookie and her loved ones find empowerment and self-discovery through this process of seeking balance. as is also common in erdrich’s works, indigenous identity is not prescriptive, and every character comes to find their peace in different ways: pollux through traditional arts and ceremony; hetta through participating in protests; asema the bookkeeper through protest but also through academic research into history; and louise erdrich, who is a character herself, through writing. the sentence continues the common thread in erdrich’s works that memory and the confrontation of the past is the key to finding this balance. tookie, however, resists memory at first, largely because of the trauma of her childhood and incarceration. as the turmoil in minneapolis grows, however, so too madelyn schoonover review of the sentence 175 does flora’s power, forcing tookie to confront that which she would prefer remains buried. once again connecting the material to interiority, the narrative voice reflects, “something in the diseased air, something in the trauma of the greater conversation, something in the ache of the unknown […] was giving her [flora] more power” (188). erdrich connects the individual haunting of the fictional tookie by the fictional flora to the greater haunting of the real united states and to the need to remember in order to find balance. again, confronting the past and making peace with it in order to find happiness as a colonised individual is a common outcome of erdrich’s novels. however, that these characters are able to find a balance in one of the most chaotic and uncertain times in modern american history – and that their peace is hopeful rather than gimmicky – is remarkable in and of itself. this is a great strength of the sentence. although it tackles some of the most polarising cultural moments of our times, it is not prescriptive or didactic in its response to these moments. erdrich’s characters experience real pain in response to the traumas of 2020 minneapolis, and all the characters’ disparate responses to these traumas are given the complex space they need in order articulate their places within this trauma. for example, pollux is an ex-tribal cop and complicit in tookie’s incarceration. however, in addition to being tookie’s husband and her strongest support for the majority of the novel, he also volunteers to help his community by participating in food drives and helping to defend against looters during the riots in minneapolis. pollux is also haunted by what he calls a “crooked thing,” which are the memories of some of the horrible events he saw and experienced during his time on the force (283). the narrator observes, “pollux had known good people, seen lives saved by his fellow patrol officers. so who was doing the beating […] how was it that protests against police violence showed how violence police really were?” (284). in raising questions, rather than providing answers, erdrich shows the complexities of finding the balance of which vizenor speaks when an indigenous person has participated in a colonial arm of the state. unlike, say, silko’s almanac of the dead which can read as totalising and essentialist regarding indigenous participation in colonialism, erdrich resists painting pollux as a reactionary symbol of the evils of the police, and therefore avoids prescriptive answers to difficult and life-altering socio-political problems. this is just one example of how erdrich capably reflects what it means to be haunted, materially and psychologically, by the effects of colonisation in the 21st century. for this reason, readers for whom erdrich’s historical works are just a bit too temporally distant transmotion vol. 8, no. 2. (2022) 176 to be explicitly linked to more contemporary discourses, like the movement to abolish police and the reaction against the rise of the far-right in mainstream american politics, will likely find the sentence a relevant and engaging read. at the same time, readers who enjoy how erdrich engages with questions of injustice and identity will find nothing new in the philosophical underpinnings of the sentence but will still be able to enjoy the rich characters and communal landscapes for which erdrich is known. in essence, while not ground-breaking in its use of ghosts to highlight colonial trauma or the ways in which her characters confront this trauma, it is difficult not to be spellbound by erdrich’s prose and nigh impossible to not fall in love with tookie, pollux, and their tightly knit, deeply devoted community. madelyn schoonover, university of stirling works cited: alexie, sherman. indian killer, secker & warburg, 1997. bowers, neal, charles l. p. silet and gerald vizenor. “an interview with gerald vizenor.” melus, vol. 8, no. 1, 1981, pp. 41 – 49. erdrich, louise. tracks, picador, 1988. –––. the plague of doves, harper perennial, 2008. –––. the round house, harpercollins, 2012. –––. larose, harpercollins, 2016. jones, stephen graham. mapping the interior, tor.com books, 2017. silko, leslie marmon. almanac of the dead: a novel, penguin, 1991. smith, martin cruz. nightwing, pan books, 1977. microsoft word proof.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 111 red pens, white paper: wider implications of coulthard’s call to sovereignty brian burkhart, david j. carlson, billy j. stratton, theodore c. van alst, carol edelman warrior the following began as a plenary roundtable at the native american literature symposium at the isleta resort and casino in albuquerque, nm, on thursday march 17, 2016. participating were theo (ted) van alst (uof montana), carol edelman warrior (cornell university), brian burkhart (california state university, northridge), billy stratton (uof denver) and david j. carlson (california state university, san bernardino). the material printed here consists of revised versions of the remarks made by the panelists at nals, reflecting ongoing conversation that continued, over email, after the conference ended. van alst: it’s such an honor to be here, and to be assembled with these amazing scholars. i’d like to thank them all for being part of this panel. the publication of glen sean coulthard’s red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition on new year’s day in 2014 (arriving little more than a year after the recognized beginning of the idle no more movement) gave many scholars a longer than usual pause at the addition of another book that might fall into the growing canon/canyon of native sovereignty approaches. however, the text itself provides a number of moments that question the legitimacy of settler states’ sovereignty, and we naturally apply that question of legitimacy and legitimation to native literary production—who or what decides that “native american literature” is a genre, a subheading, a college course, an exceedingly small shelf or two in most bookstores? this ultimately liberating text makes me see through the fallacy of colonial structures, and rage at the fact of their existence, while the colonial state’s recognition of my animosity only brings a smile to the face of the settler society that realizes far better than i that my undying enmity is necessary for its survival, my baleful recognition of them and theirs cementing their malignant place in the order of things. but that dance is the easiest one. so then, how to extricate, expand, elude, or elide? coulthard’s work makes plain the ephemeral nature of the colonial superstructure, and calls us to, in effect, change the base. how burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 112 do we do this via artistic production, for many of us then, via writing, and particularly for those of us who write in english? coulthard says, “at the heart of hegel’s master/slave dialectic is the idea that both parties engaged in the struggle for recognition are dependent on the other’s acknowledgement for their freedom and self-worth. moreover, hegel asserts that this dependency is even more crucial for the master in the relationship, for unlike the slave he or she is unable to achieve independence and objective self-certainty through the object of his or her own labor.” (39) the fact aside that without us, without this hemisphere, there is no modernity, only a backwater province of the ottoman empire, who are these arbiters of genre/label/consumption, and do we recognize their position when we write “native lit” and in “native studies” that we publish with “native pes” for distribution onto “native shelves” in “native sections” of libraries and the few remaining bookstores? do we dispossess ourselves of artistic/literary sovereignty in acquiescing to the requirements of the publishing world? (might it be useful to ask, “what if white people wrote books and no one read them?” what would they do? do we do what they do? should we / could we do what they do?) coulthard continues: “fanon’s position challenges colonized peoples to transcend the fantasy that the settler-state apparatus—as a structure of domination predicated on our ongoing dispossession—is somehow capable of producing liberatory effects.” (23) one of those disingenuous liberatory effects is the belief that indigenous empowerment via literary production is somehow a stage, a phase even—that leads to what? we ask. grown up big boy/big girl status as literature that can stand on its own two feet? or that the indigenous cultural worker can or should make the leap into a non-native world and find fame and fortune? coulthard addresses these questions in part, saying: “indigenous peoples tend to view their resurgent practices of cultural self-recognition and empowerment as permanent features of our decolonial political projects, not transitional ones.” (23) here then, we move to apply constructions of “nativeness” to literature, arguably one of our permanent features of decolonialism in the current realm. to be sure, fanon’s discussion of “culture” encompasses much more than merely literature, but importantly for its producers, coulthard tells us, “one of fanon’s lingering concerns is that the cultural forms and traditions exuberantly reclaimed and affirmed by the colonized no longer reflect the dynamic systems that existed prior to the encounter: rather, ‘this culture, once living and open to the future, [has transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 113 become] closed, fixed in the colonial status.’” (147) do we do this? are we beholden to ready semiotic devices, to “corn pollen and feathers,” to relentless mentions of ndness, of native things, of cloddy authorial reminders that this is a story written by an indian? are there certain calcifying tropes that absolutely must be retained in the service of authenticity, of clear indigenous literary demarcation? coulthard answers, albeit from a more generalized position, saying: “the problem here is that the cultural practices that the colonized passionately cling to as a source of pride and empowerment can easily become a cluster of antiquated attachments that divert attention away from the present and future needs of the indigenous population.” we turn then to a brief look at the function of this colonial recognition. the discussion of hegelian dialectics in this passage from the first chapter, “the politics of recognition in colonial contexts” is particularly germane to our colonial literary conversation: “thus, rather than leading to a condition of reciprocity the dialectic either breaks down with the explicit nonrecognition of the equal status of the colonized population, or with the strategic “domestication” of the terms of recognition leaving the foundation of the colonial relationship undisturbed.” (40) and while literary domestication is our contemporary concern, i think (aptly enough) it is worth noting that “domestication” in all sorts of interpretations has underpinned almost every single colonial project concerning the indigenous nations of this hemisphere from the moment of contact to, say, any meeting likely taking place right now between a native student union and a college administrator somewhere in this country. to begin to close our discussion then, coulthard tells us that by chapter 4 of “red skins” the futility of “hegelian or liberal politics of recognition” applied to colonial situations will be evident in its absence from fanon’s discourse, though of whom he says while not rejecting outright either of those approaches, he did in fact work to focus our attention on “the host of selfaffirmative cultural practices that colonized peoples often critically engage in to empower themselves, as opposed to relying too heavily on the subjectifying apparatus of the state or other dominant institutions of power to do this for them (23).” and here, for literary, theoretical, and critical production, we name the museums, the pes, the media, and the academy, among others, and i’m hopeful that the role of those institutions will be continuously questioned, starting this morning. related to such, i have some questions: burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 114 have we been domesticated, has our written production been domesticated? despite our efforts, are our colonial foundations “relatively undisturbed?” what might an absence of colonization have done to and for native literary production? would native literature have absorbed english? what impact would native writers have on global literature? what might true sovereignty do for native literary production? how does native literature offer insights into "reevaluating, reconstructing, and redeploying indigenous cultural forms" and presenting "radical alternatives" to colonial domination? (48-49). finally, what are the book’s implications for u.s. tribal sovereignty, for policy, for literary theory, for nation formation? does native literature offer models of indigenous praxis and present "radical alternatives" to colonial domination? if so, how? i would like to end my segment with what i see as the beginning of our conversation, that of coulthard’s main argument, which is: “the liberal recognition-based approach to indigenous self-determination in canada that began to consolidate itself after the demise of the 1969 white paper (note*abolishment of the indian act) has not only failed, but now serves to reproduce the very forms of colonial power which our original demands for recognition sought to transcend. this argument will undoubtedly be controversial to many indigenous scholars and aboriginal organization leaders insofar as it suggest that much of our efforts over the last four decades to attain settler-state recognition of our rights to land and selfgovernment have in fact encouraged the opposite—the continued dispossession of our homelands and the ongoing usurpation of our self-determining authority.” (23-24) where is our self-determining authority in our literary and artistic production, and what does it mean? who defines it, and how? i look forward to everyone’s answers to these and other questions. carlson: the particular topic that i wanted to throw into the mix for discussion is coulthard’s engagement with karl marx. the marxist concept that matters most to coulthard in red skins, white masks is that of primitive accumulation. in marx’s usage, primitive transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 115 accumulation refers to the historical processes of violent dispossession whereby the “commons” possessed by non-capitalist producers are transformed and privatized in ways that facilitate the emergence of capitalist society. for coulthard, the full utility of the concept in understanding and critiquing settler-colonial society can only be realized through its dialectical reinterpretation. marx’s insights must be revised in light of indigenous experience and critique. doing so leads to abandoning certain problematic aspects of marx’s theory. these would include: (1) the idea that primitive accumulation took place and ended in the historical past; (2) the idea that primitive accumulation is part of an inevitable evolution towards communism through industrial capitalism; and (3) the idea that primitive accumulation only takes place through overtly coercive means. indigenizing “primitive accumulation” suggests, instead, that the co-optation of the commons (in the form of land, in particular) is an ongoing, and often more insidious process, one that should not be accepted as a historical inevitability. for coulthard, this insight stands at the heart of the theory and practice of the idle no more movement, among other examples of recent activism. in picking up and re-purposing a key marxist concept, it seems to me that red skin, white masks productively re-starts a conversation about the relationship between indigenous epistemologies and the marxist and post-marxist left, one that has been rather dormant for the last twenty or thirty years. the fact that coulthard does so in a work that is so clearly critical of the dangers involved in superficial or overly conciliatory engagements with discourses emerging from settler-colonial societies is equally striking. as i read it, red skin, white masks picks up a debate that largely dead-ended with ward churchill’s 1983 collection marxism and native americans and tries to breathe new life into it. it does so by suggesting that a truly dialectical relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous “theory” can yield both new critical concepts and new forms of political praxis. personally, i think this insight derives from the fact that (many) indigenous epistemologies are extremely dialectical, in ways, quite frankly, that western theories often only aspire to be (despite their pretensions). in my own work on gerald vizenor, i’ve regularly tried to suggest that what vizenor calls “natural reason” is, in many respects, a form of dialectics that is arguably consistent with marx’s methods of inquiry. frank black elk’s contribution to churchill’s volume, “marxism and lakota tradition” makes a similar argument in picking up on the centrality of the concept of “relation” in both systems of thought. burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 116 the first suggestion i’d like to throw out here, then, is that coulthard’s book reminds readers of how far many of us in the field of native studies are from truly taking tribal epistemologies seriously as philosophical systems and sources of critical activity. while his explicit focus is on the concept of “primitive accumulation,” the deeper connection he points out between marxist and indigenous thought is at the level of method. if we build on that insight, i think red skin, white masks further suggests that western theory can itself be dialectically transformed when brought into contact with indigenous experiences and knowledge. we need to dispense with bering strait models of theoretical transmission, in other words. this was a point made thirty years ago by some of the contributors to churchill’s book, and it is an insight that is relevant to all forms of theory, including literary theory. this leads me to the second suggestion. as some of you may know, my own critical work tries to focus on the ways that literature intersects and interacts with politics and activism, and on the manner in which indigenous ways of thinking, writing, and telling represent meaningful forms of resistance to settler colonialism. as such, i am someone who feels a degree of sadness and anxiety as i watch the ways in which native studies recently seems to be turning its back on literature and literary studies in favor of the social sciences. ask yourself what the big books in the field are in recent years. you are likely to call to mind titles like red skin, white masks or audra simpson’s mohawk interruptus (innovative works of political science and anthropology). i don’t want to let the fact that i am part of a panel discussing the first of these at nals suggest that i am throwing in the towel. what i would suggest instead is that there is great value for us, as literary scholars, in wrestling with a book like red skins, white masks at the level of method. read in that way, coulthard’s book reminds us that native literary study benefits from deep, sustained efforts to interrogate and transform its very language and methods. for all its flaws, i admire much of craig womack’s work for his efforts along these lines. to the extent that we here are doing that kind of work, we need to tell the story better, and encourage younger scholars in the field to experiment boldly. and to the extent that we aren’t satisfied with our efforts along these lines, we might, perhaps, try to take inspiration from the way coulthard revisits and sublates an old concept from marx to make new thought. i’m eager to see more and more of this transformative work coming out of nals. i want to see us experiment more boldly with our own concepts—with ideas like symbolism, or the reader, or the book. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 117 recently, i was considering some examples of the potential that can be released through the dialectical transformation of literary, legal, and political concepts. i’ll just mention a few here, as a vehicle for spurring further discussion. consider, for example, how both vine deloria and john mohawk, in different works, draw attention to the political power of reimagining what is meant by “the people.” deloria develops this idea in terms of u.s. constitutionalism in we talk, you listen. mohawk’s essays on the nature of haudenosaunee political life (most readily accessible in the john mohawk reader) make interesting points about how the nature of political authority and the sense of how it is exercised is shaped by our sense of the relationship between individuals and the broader polity, mediated through the concept of peoplehood. there are further points of connection here with the work of mark rifkin and kevin bruyneel, all of which, taken together, reveal interesting ways that literature, storytelling, and political theory can come together. for a second example of the importance of the dialectical transformation of concepts, we might consider a term like “claims” (i think this ties in with some of carol’s thoughts. maybe “resentment” is also a key element underlying dialectical change in the present moment?) in his recent book on the federal indian claims process in the u.s., hollow justice, david wilkins offers up an interesting definition of a claim. “a claim is neither a request, nor a demand,” he notes. “it is an appeal to a standard of justice, but also an assertion of willingness to back that appeal up with action.” that’s clearly not exactly the way the u.s. court of indian claims has defined the term, of course, for there, it is more or less a form of tort (the payment of compensation). this, of course, calls to mind much of what coulthard dislikes about the discourse of reconciliation in a canadian context. wilkins’ counter-definition represents an interesting and important provocation, though, in a spirit that i think coulthard would appreciate. in places, hollow justice seems to call for the start of a dialectical transformation of the concept of the claim, a process that literature and literary study can certainly play a role in, in part at least by advancing different types of narratives that underpin “appeals to standards of justice.” there are other examples i could throw out here. what about the concept of “reading” when that act is understood in dialogue with the oral tradition? might native studies offer ways of thinking about text/reader that potentially transforms reader-response paradigms? what about figures like gerald vizenor, or n. scott momaday, or george morrison, whose work suggests how indigenous writing, art, and theory can redefine modernism, and by extension “modernity,” burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 118 an important topic indeed for indigenous peoples who continue to be disadvantaged by the discourses of western temporality. i’ll stop here, though, with the hope that some of these points will strike others as worth picking up for further discussion. warrior: my responses are to the chapter called “seeing red,” in which coulthard writes about the relationship between the politics of recognition and the trend of nation states to offer official apologies to surviving victims of state violence and other systemic abuses. the goal is to elicit forgiveness from the survivors—ostensibly, to foster “healing” between the parties, so that the nation can “move forward,” and of course, moving forward in this case means to proceed to control a population, but with more willing subjects. it’s like an abusive spouse who, after knocking their partner around, says, “i’m sorry, honey, i’ll never do that again. please forgive me.” what if the partner were to say “no”? the apology is accompanied by a demand, rather than a request. and, like an abused spouse, the colonized population is expected to acquiesce— to forgive, and to forget—and they risk retaliation if they don’t comply. using the discourse of reconciliation, settler colonial states pure indigenous peoples to accept conciliatory overtures, but only on the states’ terms. these demands are underpinned by what thomas brudholm, writing on transitional justice, and quoted by coulthard calls, the “logic of forgiveness”—which is the “normative assumption”— that forgiveness is “good,” and anger is not only “bad,” but is something that is sure to fester, preventing the wounds from healing (107). of course, the roots of the “logic of forgiveness” are also familiar in everything from christian dogma, to nietzsche’s genealogy of morals, as coulthard points out to both medical psychiatry and pop psychology. individuals and collectives who won’t or can’t forgive are seen as being backward, reactive, and irrational—or, to trace it further, childlike and primitive (111). it’s the source of the judgmental comment that we’ve all heard, “why can’t you people just get over it and move on?” but coulthard is an advocate of resentment as a necessary, transformative step toward decolonization. he differentiates resentment from anger, explaining that there are any number of things that a person or a people can be angry about, but resentment is a particular kind of anger that’s always political—that is, it is concerned with power, and is generated in response to a perceived injustice (110). transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 119 like fanon, coulthard thinks that resentment on the part of colonized people has a powerful “transformative potential,” that “can help prompt the very forms of self-affirmative praxis that generate rehabilitated indigenous subjectivities and decolonized forms of life in ways that the combined politics of recognition and reconciliation has so far proven itself incapable of doing” (109). though coulthard doesn’t present a rosy picture of indigenous resentment that is in any way immune from turning inward to self-hate and lateral violence—in fact, he explicitly warns that resentment can get stuck at this stage—he also demonstrates that resentment in response to injustice “represent[s]” a “coming-to-consciousness of the colonized,” allowing the colonized to exorcise internal colonization. he writes that resentment, then, is the externalization of that which was previously internalized: a purging,” of what the colonized had formerly accepted as “one’s own deficiencies” (114). so—what does this have to do with native literature? well, coulthard is interested in the resurgence of indigenous transformative praxis, and i would argue that indigenous literary “traditions” play an important role in that process, first, because they depict ways to be in respectful place-based relationships, or, they depict the devastation that occurs when those relationships are disrespected. in an earlier chapter, coulthard also explains that, “indigenous struggles against capitalist imperialism are best understood as struggles oriented around the question of land—struggles not only for land, but also deeply informed by what the land as a mode of reciprocal relationships […] ought to teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and our surroundings in a respectful, nondominating and nonexploitative way. the ethical framework provided by these place-based practices and associated forms of knowledge is [called] ‘grounded normativity’ (60).” second, in many cases—from origin stories to contemporary indigenous fiction—coming to a place of “grounded normativity” is something indigenous storytellers have their characters perform, in something like an indigenized bildungsroman. such characters also go through transformations from colonized subjectivities to decolonized subjectivities. they pass through a phase of internal colonization, which then, through the movement of the plot, becomes externalized—and the resulting resentment that the character bears is, not always, but often enough, depicted as a righteous, slow-burning rage that’s prevented from being turned against the self through experience, and through training. eventually, we see characters enact that thing that coulthard refers to: place-based “grounded normativity.” these characters’ transformations burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 120 occasionally precede their participation in “direct action” against colonization. reading a character’s transformation through resentment can actually be inspirational, opening up the readers’ conception of a possible self or possible selves as decolonized subjects. native literatures draw clear connections between settler colonial praxis and indigenous suffering, and thus the literatures participate in consciousness-raising of native readers. indigenous readers experience an affective response when learning, through literature, that the subjection they (or we) experience isn’t limited to our own family or our own tribe. when learning through such literatures that the abuse is systemic and systematic, readers respond in ways that line up precisely with what coulthard calls an “externalization of that which was previously internalized.” most of us have experienced this process ourselves, and as i look out in this audience, i bet all of us repeatedly witness this same consciousness blossoming in our students as well. in this way, indigenous creative works inspire indigenous readers and audiences to produce and sustain justifiable, and hopefully utilizable resentment against stateor settler inflicted dispossession and colonial abuses, and such literature can thus prepare and arm people to resist narratives that pure indigenous peoples to forgive and reconcile before material change in the structures of colonial dominance is secured. after becoming conscious of this clear connection between indigenous literature and the transformation coulthard elucidates in “seeing red,” the question that i’m left grappling with, is how, exactly, does native literature offer insights into “reevaluating, reconstructing, and redeploying indigenous cultural forms,” and present “radical alternatives” to colonial domination without redeploying the romantic tropes of being “children of nature,” or, as ted has said, without reminding the reader every twelve lines that “this is an indian book” (48-49). burkhart: the indigenous struggle for decolonial liberation has become increasingly a struggle for recognition by settler states, which of course ironically are the source of continued colonization. in red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition coulthard argues that “the liberal recognition-based approach of indigenous self-determination in canada” not only fails but actually “serves to reproduce the very forms of colonial power which the original demands for recognition sought to transcend” (23-24). coulthard conceptualizes the liberation from this vitiating circle of domination of colonial power through the politics of transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 121 recognition as beginning by bracketing the legitimacy of the settler state and its power to recognize indigenous nations as itself a function of settler colonial power. through this bracketing of the legitimacy of the settler state and settler state power, one can perhaps analyze the manner in which the settler state is able to reproduce the very colonial power that is supposed to be renegotiated in the process of recognizing the legitimacy of indigenous nations. one might come to see how the process of recognition redirects indigenous liberation strategies into movements that reproduce settler power rather than liberate indigenous people from it. as mohawk philosopher taiaiake alfred puts it, “our nations have been co-opted into movements of “self-government” and “land claim settlements,” which are goals defined by the colonial state and which are in stark opposition to our original objectives… large-scale statist solutions like self-government and land claims are not so much lies as they are irrelevant to the root problems. for a long time now, we have been on a quest for governmental power and money; somewhere along the journey from the past to the future, we forgot that our goal was to reconnect with our lands and to preserve our harmonious cultures and ways of life” (2005, 31). coulthard also recognizes the origin of indigenous liberation in the land. as he puts it, “[t]he theory and practice of indigenous anticolonialism is best understood as a struggle primarily inspired by and oriented around the question of land—a struggle not only for land in the material sense, but also deeply informed by what the land as system of reciprocal relations and obligations can teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondominating and nonexploitative terms” (13). coulthard calls “this place-based foundation of indigenous decolonial thought and practice grounded normativity,” or “the modalities of indigenous land-connected practices and longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others over time” (13). this foundation of indigenous liberation in the indigenous meaning of land is transformed into a foundation of indigenous liberation as a struggle for land itself, which is a conception of land fundamentally at odds with the indigenous meaning of land that was at the foundation of indigenous liberation in the first place. thus by the end of coulthard’s chapter on his own indigenous nation’s (the dene) struggle regarding land he shows that “the meaning of self-determination” for many indigenous people has “reoriented from indigenous struggle that was once deeply informed by the land as a system of reciprocal relations and obligations (grounded normativity) to a struggle now increasingly for land” (78). the burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 122 problem with coulthard’s position regarding the transformation of the foundation of indigenous liberation in the indigenous relationship with land into a struggle for land is that it only looks for the source of this transformation in the colonial power of the settler state itself. it is my claim that the nature of the transformation is not housed in the power of the settler state but in the very conceptions of land and being in the western philosophical imagination. it is only through an engagement with the philosophical concepts of land and being that one can grasp the nature of indigenous liberation through the land and the manner in which coloniality operates to transform that liberation into settler power. coulthard uses fanon to challenge “colonized people to transcend the fantasy that the settler-state apparatus is somehow capable of producing liberatory effects” (23). in fanon’s conception, without a break from the structure of colonial power, the best the colonized can hope for is “white liberty and white justice” (black skin, white masks, 221). fanon claims that without establishing themselves as the creators of their own values and conceptions of their identity and its political relationship to the colonial state, colonized peoples will eventually be subtly shaped by the “seep” of colonial values that will undermine the possibilities of their liberation (the wretched of the earth, 9). the problem is that the recognition-based subjectivity is founded in a fundamental irrationality in the first place. the “seep” of colonial values and concepts happens at the level of the very concept of being human, of being a human subject in the first place. enrique dussel details in a number of his works the foundation of the modern human subject in the ego conquiro (i conquer) that is a prototype of the cartesian ego cogito (i think). descartes’ ego cogito appears as a mere rational principle that attempts to defeat skepticism regarding knowledge of the external world. but as nelson maldonado-torres argues the ego cogito arises from the ego conquiro as responses to “manichean misanthropic skepticism,” which “is not skeptical about the existence of the world or the normative status of logics and mathematics,” but is “a form of questioning the very humanity of colonized peoples” (2007, 245). the ego conquiro and ego cogito overcome this skepticism of the humanity of the other through the creation of an ego that is undoubtable or unquestionable. the manichean other to this undoubtable or unquestionable ego is relegated to the savage state. the savage other is no longer doubtable or questionable (as he or she is in the inquisition) but is completely known as the dominated other. the domination of the savage other solidifies the claim to confidence that is transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 123 placed in the undoubtable and unquestionable ego. this domination is what brings the unquestionable ego into being. its logical unquestionableness is manifested into an actual unquestionableness through the initial and continual domination of the savage other. it is through colonial domination that the ego of european humanness is fully actualized and the skepticism regarding the humanity of the indigenous other is fully determined in the oppositional savage or non-human, dominatable other. the irrationality of the indigenous being becoming recognized as fully human is here exposed. the ego of european humanness exists only in relation to the non-human other. thus, indigenous being can only become human by becoming what it is not: european. alternatively, indigenous being can become an approximation of what it is not through the approximation of european being by approximating the ego conquiro. this is why even though hegel’s recognition-based subjectivity seeks to situate human subjectivity, in contrast to the seemingly solipsistic ego cogito, in relations of recognition that are constitutive of human subjectivity, the ego conquiro is maintained in recognition-based subjectivity and politics of recognition. dialectically the colonizer/colonized relationship is supposed to move beyond the ego conquiro through mutual relations of recognition. relations of recognition must move beyond the master and slave, “beyond the patterns of domination” (williams, 16), a seemingly impossible task even in concept. hegel’s dominating subjectivity cannot move beyond this domination in relation to the savage other, i would argue. the savage other has become essentially savage and so can only become the kind of subjectivity that can recognize the colonizer in so far as he or she becomes something she is not. the only way the savage can hope to even approximate the kind of being that could give the colonizer the mutual recognition that hegel claims he or she desires is to approximate the subjectivity of the colonizer, the ego conquiro. fanon sees the trap of the master/slave or colonizer/colonized through a lens of struggle. the liberation of colonized people through hegel’s dialectical progression to mutual recognition is undermined by the lack of struggle in present colonial contexts. unlike hegel’s master/slave story, colonizer and colonized are not locked in a life or death struggle. in colonized societies, “the white master, without conflict, recognize[s] the negro slave” (fanon, 1952, 217). “the black man,” he writes is “acted upon.” values “not created by his actions” or “born of the systolic tide of his blood” are thrown upon him from without. thus being set free by the master here means nothing to the slave. the slave goes “from one way of life to another, but not from burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 124 one life to another” (220). for fanon, it is through struggle and conflict, which he understands as often necessarily violent, that colonized peoples can shrug off the coloniality of their being. this kind of conflict is necessary on fanon’s account in order for recognition to achieve selftransformation for the colonized subject, for her to achieve the “inner differentiation” at the level of her colonized being that is necessary to achieve the realization of freedom (turner, 146). this is what fanon understands as the break that is necessary for colonial struggles for “liberty and justice” to not merely be struggles for “white liberty and white justice,” a non-alienated identification with the recognition conferred upon the slave by the master (fanon, 1952, 221) coulthard rightly questions fanon’s instrumental view of the decolonial struggle. coulthard points out that this view of colonial resistance does not match the views and practices of indigenous people in their decolonial liberation strategies, particularly in the context of first nations in canada. fanon does not see a deeper indigenous resistance that already exists in the indigenous relationship to land. fanon thinks struggle is necessary for the colonized to differentiate, to begin to become aware of the deepest manners in which his being is colonized. but from the perspective of indigeneity and its ontological connection to land, fanon’s claim is not true. what creates the alienation from the coloniality of being that is necessary to manifest true acts of decolonial resistance is our ontological kinship, as indigenous people, with the land. in this way, our being is never colonized to the point at which we do not experience the alienation of coloniality that fanon thinks often requires a life or death struggle with the colonizer to achieve. no matter how powerful the colonial operation on human subjectivity through the ego conquiro, there is always a remainder of our indigenous being that quite literally is in the land. being is itself, in the context of indigeneity, an orginary and continual manifestation out of the land. it is thus this core of our being as indigenous people that originates out of and continues to exist in the land, that provides the differentiation necessary to begin decolonial resistance—and not, as fanon says, the struggle itself. because of this lack of understanding of the intersection of indigeneity and land that both creates the capacity of coloniality in the first place and means that colonialism will necessarily always be incomplete, fanon cannot see the scope of the possibilities of decolonial resistance that can exist outside and transcend the vitiation circle of human subjectivity, the politics of recognition, and the life or death struggle between the colonizer and the colonized. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 125 stratton: glen coulthard’s red skin, white masks serves as an especially prescient elaboration of the concern that louis owens expressed in his essay “as if an indian were really an indian: native voices and postcolonial theory” (adapted from a chapter of the same name in his 2001 book i hear the train: reflections, inventions, refractions), which appears in gretchen bataille’s edited collection, native american representations: first encounters, distorted images, and literary appropriations. writing on the inherent challenges of being a scholar or teacher whose work focuses on native american literature he states: we are very properly expected to have and exhibit a crucial knowledge of canonical european and euro-american literature; if we fail to be familiar with shakespeare, chaucer, proust, flaubert, dickinson, faulkner, eliot, joyce, pound, yeats, keats, woolf, tolstoy, tennyson, and so forth—not to mention the latest poststructuralist theory—we are simply not taken seriously and probably will not earn a degree in the first place. that, it is presumed, is the foundational knowledge, the ‘‘grand narrative of legitimation’’ in our particular field. (12) red skins, white masks is a work that not only addresses the theory and praxis of decolonization and postcolonial theory, but also articulates a critical stance that is self-reflexively positioned as an intervention that grapples with the dynamic valences that exist between global indigenous studies and continental philosophy. in chapter one, for example, coulthard interrogates charles taylor’s widely influential essay “the politics of recognition,” published in amy gutman’s edited volume, multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition (1995). coulthard utilizes a deconstructive approach in his analysis to show that taylor’s conception of identity formation is “shaped not only by recognition, but also its absence, often by the misrecognition of others” (30). one of coulthard’s primary concerns extends from the observation that structures of explicit colonial domination cannot be eliminated through the vehicle of “state recognition and accommodation,” and are, in fact only transformed in the process (32). this insight is offered as the provocation for his challenge to oppressive epistemologies that function to reduce “a man among men” to “an object [among] other objects” (32). while this critique is deeply informed by indigenous knowledge, giving substance to coulthard’s commitment to the praxis of first nations/native sovereignty his broader claims are bolstered by support drawn from the work of taiaiake alfred. in alfred’s peace, power, burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 126 righteousness: an indigenous manifesto (1999), self-determination is conceived as the “asset of values that challenges the homogenizing force of western liberalism and free-market capitalism,” while “honor[ing] the autonomy of individual conscience, non-coercive authority, and the deep interconnection between human beings and other elements of creation” (quoted in coulthard). seeking to address the resistance to such ideas on a wide plane of political, social, and philosophical fronts, coulthard also explores the work of continental philosophers and cultural critics such as georg wilhelm friedrich hegel, michel foucault, friedrich nietzsche, and louis althusser while drawing on franz fanon’s critique of “psycho-affective attachments” to “master-sanctioned forms of recognition” to help formulate an essential foundation for his ideas (26). for coulthard’s more sophisticated readers, especially those working within the fields of native american/indigenous studies, this philosophically engaged approach raises some complex questions about the relationship between indigenous knowledge and western knowledge, as well as the relevance and applicability of the latter for native/indigenous scholars, activists and communities. representing a provocative incursion into these discursive fields it seems that coulthard’s deep and sustained engagement with such discourse, which is both transhistoric and transcultural, could, perhaps, be seen as the philosophical equivalent of what gloria bird and joy harjo have termed “reinventing the enemy’s language.” furthermore, coulthard’s text can also be seen as a call for the unification of anticolonial and de-colonial knowledge in the form of classic marxist theory, as well as neo-marxist and structuralist orientations that have tended to be overlooked, or under-utilized in native/indigenous studies as it has thus far been formulated and applied. the reliance upon these western forms of knowledge by critics such as taylor, nancy fraser, and others, demands coulthard’s engagement and offers a particularly fertile opportunity to return them to their origins, as it were. in terms of postcolonial theory, coulthard likewise extends the critiques offered by other native/indigenous and indigenous studies scholars such as elizabeth cook-lynn, louis owens, jodi bryd, chadwick allen, and dale turner who have addressed the long history and aftereffects of colonialism in ways that have inexplicably escaped the notice of critics such as edward said, homi bhabha and gayatri spivak, while being conspicuously overlooked in ashcroft, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 127 griffiths and tiffin’s seminal postcolonial text the empire writes back (1989). louis owens was among the first native american critics to address the perplexing absence of native/indigenous historical experience and literary perspectives from the growing body of postcolonial theory. returning again to his observations on the absence of native perspectives in this discourse, owens provocatively states: “it is difficult to take seriously any cultural or critical theorist who is ignorant of this rapidly growing body of work, or who, if he or she is aware of it, clearly relegates it to a ‘minor,’ ‘subjugated,’ or ‘deterritorialized’ knowledge worthy of only silence or erasure” (13-14). as a rejoinder to this, coulthard reminds us that “colonial powers will only recognize the collective rights and identities of indigenous peoples insofar as this recognition does not throw into question the background legal, political, and economic framework of the colonial relationship itself” (red skins 41). these points of contact, of course, offer particularly fruitful avenues for the consideration of native storytelling/literature as an essential domain for the manifestation of collective selfrecognition through “the establishment of relationships within and between peoples and the natural world built on principles of reciprocity and respectful coexistence” (red skins 48). works such as gerald vizenor’s blue ravens, gordon henry’s the light people, franci washburn’s elsie’s business, as well as the poetry of luci tapahonso, as typified by her work, “that american flag” and “in 1864,” and many others, bespeak the capacity of native writers and scholars to reflect on the postcolonial experience in significant ways. at the same time, such work highlights the foundational role that native american/first nation and indigenous storytelling, in all of its previous and modern forms, plays in the continuation of such discourse. works cited alfred, taiaike. peace, power, and righteousness: an indigenous manifesto. oxford up, 2009. ----. wasase: indigenous pathways of action and freedom. toronto: broadview p. 2005. bataille, gretchen, ed. native american representations: first encounters, distorted images, and literary appropriations. u of nebraska p, 2001. churchill, ward, ed. marxism and native americans. south end press, 1983. coulthard, glen. red skins, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. u of minnesota p, 2014. burkhart et al “red pens, white paper” 128 deloria, vine. we talk, you listen: new tribes, new turf. u of nebraska p, 2007. dussel, enrique. “anti-cartesian meditations: on the origin of the philosophical anti-discourse of modernity.” human architecture: journal of the sociology of self-knowledge, vol. 11, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1-40. ----. “europe, modernity, and eurocentrism”. nepantla: views from south, vol. 1, no. 3, 2000, pp. 465-478. frantz fanon. black skin, white masks. trans. r. philcox. grove press, 1952. ----. the wretched of the earth. trans. r. philcox. grove press, 1963. hegel, g. w. phenomenology of spirit. trans. a. miller. oxford up. 1977. maldonado-torres, nelson. maldonado-torres, nelson.“on the coloniality of being.” cultural studies, vol. 22, no.2, 2007, pp. 240-270. mohawk, john. thinking in indian: a john mohawk reader. ed. josé barreiro. fulcrum publishing, 2010. simpson, audra. mohawk interruptus: political life across the borders of settler states. duke up, 2014. turner, lou. "on the difference between the hegelian and fanonion dialectic of lordship and bondage." in fanon: a critical reader, edited by lewis r. gordan, t. denean sharpleywhiting and renee t. white, blackwell, 1996, pp. 134-51. wilkins, david. hollow justice: a history of indigenous claims in the united states. yale up, 2013. williams, robert. “hegel and nietzsche: recognition and master/slave.” philosophy today, vol. 45, no. 5, 2001, pp. 164-179. microsoft word galley main.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   76   “an evening’s curiosity”: image and indianness in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk tammy wahpeconiah “in order to be recognized, to claim authenticity in the world—in order to be seen at all—the indian must conform to an identity imposed from the outside.” ---louis owens some of the most important and challenging questions in american indian literature scholarship are those that deal with authenticity. how do writers construct images of indianness? is it possible to avoid stereotyping, and if not, how does one resist reducing characters to tropes or types? how does one assimilate—and i am using this term provocatively—self-identity and imposed identity? what makes a character, a writer, a scholar “indian enough” for inclusion in native studies? questions such as these are not easily answered, nor are they comfortable to address. i would argue that american indian identity brings with it a special set of concerns that are not as prevalent in other fields of ethnic studies. for example, hertha d. sweet wong, lauren muller, and jana magdaleno address the issue of identity in the introduction to their anthology of american indian women writers entitled reckonings: “in selecting the writers to include . . . we chose not to require tribal enrollment, a decision that risks judgments of ‘inauthenticity’” (xxiv). the editors’ decision succinctly illustrates that “who and how is an indian is an ongoing contest of stories in north america” (xxiv, emphasis mine). as we can see in the introduction, the editors of reckonings had to define indianness before they could determine whose works they could include in their collection, even when their very definition is far from definitive. defining indian identity seems to be an inherent part of american indian studies. i include in this category both critical and creative work. thus, we see scholars such as elizabeth cook-lynn, hilary n. weaver and sean teuton, writing about authenticity, focusing on those of us working in the field as well as those whose works we study and, more importantly, how we read those works. in addition, american indian novelists, poets, etc., deal with issues of identity and authenticity in many, if not all, of their works. tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   77   in “literary and political questions of transformation: american indian fiction writers,” elizabeth cook-lynn takes issue with the use of western literary theory in american indian studies. she argues that there are two issues surrounding the study of contemporary native american novels: cosmopolitanism and nationalism. reading a novel through the lens of cosmopolitanism means that the scholar “explores the tastes and interests of the dominant culture,” while one who reads through the lens of nationalism is interested in “nation-specific creativity and political unification in the development, continuation, and defense of a coherent national mythos” (46). because cosmopolitanism is de rigueur, literary criticism focuses on questions of “identity, authenticity, and purpose,” and in asking these questions, claims authority over the native voice (47). to continue asking these questions, cook-lynn argues, is to continue to hold captive native american literature by forcing scholars to analyze it using western literary theory (51) and writers to comply “with metropolitan literary tastes” that function, erroneously, as “native american literary expression” (49). sean teuton, in his analysis of identity in james welch’s novel winter in the blood, lays out the debates over the concept of identity with which many native studies scholars are engaged. he begins in the 1980s with paula gunn allen and ward churchill’s essentialist views of identity, which do not allow for “the continued development of persons and communities” (628). he then moves into the 1990s, discussing the postmodernist theories of gerald vizenor, louis owens, and kimberly blaeser. although teuton has a more positive view for postmodernist theory, especially vizenor’s, he argues “the postmodern diffuses the political force of identity by detaching identity from social location” (632, his emphasis). he argues that the theoretical approach defined as “realist,” formulated from the works of major analytic philosophers such as charles s. peirce and w.v.o. quine, allows us to “evaluate various identity constructions according to their ability to interpret experiences accurately” (632). thus, teuton concludes that claiming identity as an “indigenous exile” is more “real” than the identity “native american” because one’s experience can better explain one’s collective and individual idea of the self rather than a government-designated racial marker. i would agree with elizabeth cook-lynn that questions of identity come out of cosmopolitanism (50); however, i would argue that the issue of identity is grounded in a variety of mythologies surrounding indians. because these mythologies are so embedded in the american cultural consciousness, it is difficult for writers and scholars to turn away from transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   78   questions surrounding authenticity and identity. the myth of the indian is so prevalent that by the end of the nineteenth century, americans’ perception of indians was, as l.g. moses points out, as carved statues that adorned shop entrances or as heads in profile on coins that jingled in their pockets or purses. in their thoughts about the west and its original inhabitants, americans variously imagined an indian to be a noble savage, a rapacious killer, a reservation idler, the vanishing american, or a war-bonneted equestrian raider of the plains. (4) such perceptions have continued well into the twenty-first century. for example, in stephen graham jones’ 2008 novel ledfeather, a white couple visiting the blackfeet casino insultingly calls their waiter “kemosabe” and has similar views of indians as moses recounts above. according to the varied aspects of this enduring myth, indians were (and are) to exist as the vanishing savage while simultaneously exhibiting their barbarism and savagery through war whoops and unprovoked violence, performing their unholy misdeeds in face paint and feathers. to further complicate this paradigm, indian performance is only to take place under white control, i.e., the reservation, and for white pleasure in shows like buffalo bill’s wild west show. the protagonist in james welch’s novel, the heartsong of charging elk, must bear the repercussions of such inflated and farcical mythologies. in a world devoid of an accurate conception of the american indian, charging elk is paradoxically both esteemed and castigated based upon his level and locality of conformity to the paradigm of indianness. the heartsong of charging elk provides a fictional example of a mythology that still permeates euroamerican beliefs about the indian. yet we see welch’s protagonist negotiating a constantly changing cultural landscape that moves beyond a simple assimilation into western (specifically french) society. instead, charging elk’s negotiations with this new culture illustrate strategic action, choice, and an attempt to turn the performative nature of “indianness” into “an effective means of self-representation” (maddox 9). welch’s novel follows the titular character from his home in the black hills to europe as a member of buffalo bill’s wild west show. left behind in marseille, he is mistaken for featherman, another show indian who dies from influenza. because of a bureaucratic mix-up (the doctor identifies the dead featherman as charging elk), the american consulate is unable to tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   79   send him either home or to italy to rejoin the show. in addition, charging elk is not a united states citizen and thus the french government labels him sans papier avant la lettre. ironically, this label comes to benefit him after he is charged with murdering a man who attempts to rape him and is sentenced to life in prison in france’s notorious la tombe. the french see his tribal status as citizenship in the sioux nation and, therefore, because no legal agreement exists between the two nations, he is released from prison. both arising from and contributing to the paradigm of indianness is the concept of “playing indian,” which factors heavily in the plot and themes of welch’s novel. in his book playing indian, philip j. deloria argues that playing indian is an act in which americans have engaged in an attempt to create both a personal and national identity. deloria contends “savage indians served americans as oppositional figures against whom one might imagine a civilized national self” (3). playing indian, however, is not limited to non-natives, as indians have also taken part in this act, both voluntarily and involuntarily. according to deloria, “as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries unfolded, increasing numbers of indians participated in white people’s indian play, assisting, confirming, co-opting, challenging, and legitimating the performative tradition of aboriginal american identity” (8). in the act of performing the idea of the indian, by embodying those fictions in their actions, indians who participate in “white people’s indian play,” make those artificial conventions appear to be natural and necessary. in an article entitled “the tribe called wannabee: playing indian in america and europe,” rayna green writes, “the wild west shows, with the sequelae, cemented roles for indians who play indian, or as indians will later call them, ‘show’ indians” (38). for charging elk, playing indian as a participant in buffalo bill cody’s wild west show is the result of an impossible standard imposed by a society that prohibits him from being anything but a hyperbolic caricature of himself and his people. as such, he is at the mercy of a system that simultaneously allows and disallows entrance to that system based upon the single criterion of indianness, a “static view,” where the indian, “in order to remain authentic, must camp forever in the eighteenth, seventeenth, or sixteenth century. . . .” or in this case, the nineteenth century (moore 45). throughout the novel, charging elk is haunted by this ever-present paradigm imposed on him by a society that “desired indianness, not indians” (deloria 90). he and his friend, strikes plenty, audition for the wild west show in order to escape the only other choice allowed them: a transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   80   demeaning life on the reservation. strikes plenty, however, is denied a place in the wild west show because “he is not indian enough for [the] white bosses . . . [who] think they know what an indian should look like. he should be tall and lean. he should have nice clothes. he should look only in the distance and act as though his head is in the clouds (34). strikes plenty “did not fit [the] white men’s vision” (34), both literally and figuratively. the other indians vying for performative positions with the show “wore their best clothes, beaded and fringed buckskins, blue felt leggings, calico blouses, some even full headdresses. they painted their faces and their horses and they rode their woolly saddles with a practiced recklessness” (34). found early in the text, the indians’ behavior and appearance is an example of the myth of indianness that reverberates throughout the novel in many forms. however, the paradigm is perhaps most succinctly expressed by the french newspaper reporter martin st-cyr, whose expectation of indianness is evidenced by the following queries: “would [charging elk] be dressed in feathers and fur, in war paint? would he have a fierce scowl? more important, would he be dangerous, a wild savage from the american frontier?” (93). st-cyr’s ludicrously exaggerated estimation of indianness is a perfectly preserved reflection of the contemporary societal viewpoint. in her book slippery characters: ethnic impersonators and american identities, laura browder explains the fascination with ethnic performance in general and wild west shows in particular: “cody’s display of native americans reenacting the battles they had lost softened the brutal history of conquest and made it palatable for audiences” (58). according to browder, white society craves the display of indianness because of the alleviation of guilt that it provides for them. as a result, she contends that “cody’s shows depended for their success on authenticity” (58). thus, “everything genuine” became cody’s trademark promotion. by offering audiences alleged authenticity, cody was essentially assuring them that history unfolded in this less offensive manner. moreover, by using indians in the performance, he implied their acceptance, and even endorsement, of his scripted version of events. furthermore, many americans in the nineteenth century believed the indians to be entirely disappearing from the continent and considered wild west shows to be of great historical significance, a valuable opportunity to behold the vanishing race. browder states, “most of the spectators at a wild west show in the 1880s had never seen an indian; in the public imagination, indians were passing out of existence” (58). in welch’s novel, franklin bell, the american vice-consul to france, shares this belief viewing indians “as still attempting to live in tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   81   the past with their feathers and beads” (82). he concludes that their attempts are only natural “since they had no future to speak of. . . . they were a pitiful people in their present state and the sooner they vanished or joined america the better off they would be” (82). for this and many other reasons, the tenets of the show so resonated with american and european audiences that “within two years of its [cody’s wild west show] first appearance in omaha, nearly fifty circuses, medicine shows and rival wild west shows had incorporated, and in some instances copied, many of its features (moses 23). browder explains this phenomenon of popularity, partially attributing it to society’s obsession with the myth asserting, “cody offered the public an iconic view of the native american. he recruited only from the plains tribes, particularly the sioux, and offered the public the same images—over and over again—of indian clothing, indian dwellings, and indian behavior” (65). in addition, the wild west show, “helped to create ‘the indian’ and thus literally removed american indians into the american and european imagination as ‘first citizens’ of the nation, securely conquered within and tied to this nation’s creation myth” (optiz 165). charging elk, unlike strikes plenty, is considered indian enough by buffalo bill’s show scouts, his appearance and performance lending him to perfect correspondence with the myth. first, charging elk is considered “dark even for an oglala” (welch 42). second, he thrills the audiences with his display of indian dress, performing in “his father’s hairpipe breastplate [and] his own badger-claw necklace” (133). he wears “brass armbands, earrings, and the two eagle feathers in his hair” (133). dressed in his “finest clothes,” charging elk “knew he was quite a sight” (49). finally, he performs the various elements of the show with enthusiasm, his “recklessness” suggesting, “a life lived the old way” (34). in fact, he is a self-avowed “seasoned performer” (51). for him, playing indian includes “burning the settler’s cabin, chasing the deadwood stage, [and] fighting with the soldiers in the big show of custer’s last fight” (15), all of which contribute to the amplified paradigm of indianness. in choosing to be part of the myth, charging elk is also choosing to conform to the myth, making “him an accomplice in the erasure of history as [it is] embedded in the tribe’s collective memory and the construction of a revised and officially sanctioned historical american memory” (bak 110). leaving behind his cherished horse, charging elk “rode [a] painted horse in the procession” (51), catering to the myth at its most hyperbolic level by mounting the proverbial spotted steed. in addition, charging elk is aware that the “excitement and danger of the event” transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   82   (47) felt by the audience is as staged as the show’s buffalo hunt. his performative indianness is foiled by the “cowboys, soldiers, vaqueros, and wagons filled with elk, deer, and buffaloes” (49), as representatives of every significant western myth ride side by side in contrived and historically inaccurate harmony. despite the contradictions presented, engaging in performance also has some notable benefits. on a practical level, playing indian affords charging elk access to more food, money, and opportunities than are available to the lakota on the reservation. welch’s narrator contends that “the indians were treated well, they got enough to eat, they saw curious things, they got to show off before thousands of people, and they made more of the white man’s money than they could spend” (33). more importantly to charging elk, as is evidenced by his repetition of the fact throughout the novel, much of his pay is sent home to his parents, which will help to somewhat lessen their dependence on the government commodities he so despises. in addition to the financial advantages, it is through this controlled showmanship that charging elk attains the temporary and precarious status of being appropriately indian. in a society that distrusts and degrades native americans, playing indian becomes a rare opportunity for charging elk to experience any measure of social affirmation. he and his friends relish “the spectacle of themselves reflected in the astonished eyes of the french people” (welch 22). as a participant in a show established for white entertainment, charging elk is subject to awe and admiration for his mythic indianness. performing provides charging elk with a sense of safety and comfort, “the only time charging elk had been at ease among the wasichus” (welch 167). ulla haselstein notes that “[t]he nostalgic image of the warrior provides protection and identity but also turns charging elk into an allegorical character in a past constructed to provide an image of the american nation” (96). however, once he leaves the show, his true indianness earns him only scorn and malevolence. according to the narrator, “charging elk had entered [marseille] in triumph and the people had welcomed him. now they looked at him with suspicion, even with hostility, just as the americans did” (52). on his own, without the artifice of the performance arena, “charging elk’s wildness counted for nothing now” (130), showing that indianness is measured by both quality of and context for adherence to the paradigm. this concept of acceptance only within the confines of the myth is also expressed in d’arcy mcnickle’s novel the surrounded. george moser, a white storeowner living on a reservation, offers the following description of his wife, sara: tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   83   she was a girl from his own little village in pennsylvania and she was good and sick of the noble red man as a neighbor. she liked him in a wild west show, but his smell invaded her parlor and caused her to keep linen covers on her horsehair furniture the year round; even with that precaution she was not sure she would dare return to civilization with such contaminated belongings. (32) in mrs. moser’s estimation, indianness is an acceptable, even desired quality within the performance arena but is unwelcome outside of it. similar attitudes surround charging elk. as long as he exercises his indianness within the confines of the paradigm, he is revered and appreciated. thus, playing indian affords him a few moments of limited and conditional acceptance by a society that controls the myth. playing indian also provides him a fleeting connection with his lakota life. according to moses, “the only place to be an indian—and defiantly so—and still remain relatively free from the interference of missionaries, teachers, agents, humanitarians, and politicians was in the wild west show” (278). to some degree, charging elk could tap into centuries of hunts, traditions, and ceremonies by playing indian. he could relive the history of his ancestors, albeit in an exaggerated way. playing indian also allowed him an opportunity to showcase the venerable characteristics of the lakota, who “encouraged self-control, generosity, tact, wisdom, and responsibility toward the poor or helpless as well as courage and prowess in battle” (moses 84). indeed, in playing indian, charging elk strives for dignity because he, like his friends and fellow performers, “wished to be thought of as wichsa yatapika, men whom all praise, men who quietly demonstrate courage, wisdom, and generosity—like the old-time leaders” (welch 51). for charging elk, playing indian is an attempt to resist being “tamed by the white bosses” (34) and rediscover the legacy of dignified leadership that he so admires. indian removal had confined native americans to reservations, and strict regulations severely hindered the continuation of many tribal ceremonies and customs. for example, chiefs were now subject to american governmental authority. in fact, when charging elk recalls red cloud, he surmises that the man “had been a great war chief. now he was a reservation indian and had been one for ten years. now he took his orders from white chiefs . . .” (2, emphasis mine). charging elk thinks of red cloud’s leadership in past tense because it is no longer effective. before they arrive in europe, charging elk and the other performers hope that since european audiences “had never seen indians . . . they would treat the indians like important chiefs” (32). charging transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   84   elk wants to believe that europeans would respect him and the others, allowing the indians to regain the dignity he knows they should have. playing indian also provides charging elk with a degree of control over the evolution of the myth. american indian author and activist vine deloria acknowledges that indian performers in the wild west shows were offering exaggerated reenactments of their earlier years but suggests, “perhaps they realized in the deepest sense, that even a caricature of their youth was preferable to a complete surrender to the homogenization that was overtaking american society” (56). by engaging in performance, charging elk can, to a limited extent, influence the paradigm rather than simply be overtaken by it. in his article, “methodological approaches to native american narrative and the role of the performance,” randall hill writes, “since performance provides the means through which people negotiate cultural boundaries, performance makes a difference in whether cultures survive or die” (113). charging elk realizes that “next to buffalo bill, the audiences wanted to see the indians most” (welch 50) and it is estimated that in one year, the wild west show had been performed for a total audience of more than one million people (moses 30). his participation guarantees survival for his people in the sense that through the myth, their image, although skewed, will be projected far into the future. as a result, because he is “proud of being a lakota,” charging elk is also “proud of being in the show, proud of his appearance. he [is] eager to put on a show for these new wasichus that they [will] talk about long after he [is] gone” (welch 147). although charging elk’s performance in the wild west show is voluntary, his conformity to the mythic paradigm is mandatory. as previously stated, his indianness is desired, even encouraged, but only within the confines of the show, as the only other place where adherence to the myth is allowed, albeit with limitations, is the reservation. therefore, charging elk must either play indian, essentially parading a caricature of himself before white audiences, or go to the reservation, surrendering what he regards as the last vestiges of true freedom. as browder points out, “officials considered participation in the shows a good way of keeping potential troublemakers off the reservations and safely involved in performance. what they did onstage they could not, thus, enact in real life” (59). similarly, archilde, the protagonist of the surrounded, assumes that “he would wind up like every other reservation boy—in prison, or hiding in the mountains” (150). like charging elk, archilde recognizes the limiting nature of the reservation and the likelihood that indian boys with few outlets for their frustration, tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   85   disappointment, and desire to exhibit true indianness will find themselves in compromising situations. indeed, reservations were so strictly regulated that charging elk considers his people little more than prisoners (welch 3). choosing instead to live on their own at the stronghold, charging elk and strikes plenty “laughed and mocked those indians who had given up and lived in the wooden houses at the agency, collecting their meager commodities, their spoiled meat, learning to worship the white man’s god, [and] learning to talk the strange tongue” (20). he fondly recounts the days before the oglala were forced onto the reservation, remembering the “women picking berries, men coming back with meat, the dogs and horses, the sudden laughter or tears of children, the quiet ease of lying in the sunny lodge with the skins rolled up to catch a breeze” (11). perhaps because he was so young at the time of indian removal and does not—or does not want to—fully comprehend its mandatory nature, charging elk views reservation life as a dismal liminal space between the old way and a distant future, a holding pen for passive indians who have voluntarily surrendered their autonomy to the government. as a result, he willfully plays indian, glad to be “dressed in his finest clothes, riding a strong horse, [and] preparing himself to thrill the crowds with a display of the old ways” (52) rather than being confined to the parameters of the reservation. while adherence to the paradigm provides a degree of immediate and short-lived benefits, the myth is overwhelmingly destructive in nature, prompting undeserved aversion based solely on ethnicity. charging elk illustrates that once indians step outside the paradigm, their image becomes increasingly marred and distorted, subject to fallacies that are even more egregious. for instance, because she is so schooled in the myth of indianness, when madeleine soulas meets charging elk for the first time, “she was quite surprised to see how calm and benign [he] looked” (welch 115). the hyperbolic indian is engrained on her mind to the extent that she is unable to recognize a true indian. therefore, her confusion and misunderstanding is manifested by undue fear and dislike. as madeleine prepares for his arrival, she calculates the risk charging elk poses to her children, erroneously assuming that young chloe and mathias will be plagued by nightmares of “painted, screaming savages chasing the monstrous bison, or worse, the brave pioneers,” and “was surprised and angry to see a tear fall into the batter” she is stirring (151). madeleine’s inability to see beyond the myth produces a genuine fear that only her repeated and positive exposure to charging elk alleviates. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   86   in addition to provoking undue fear, the myth contributes to the dehumanization and over simplification of indians as individuals. moses argues, “because wild west shows created stereotypes about indians . . . [they] have been treated as artless victims, dismissed as irrelevant, or worse, simply ignored. with only a few conspicuous exceptions, nothing is known about their experiences. they have remained merely caricatures, as wooden and artificial as supposedly the images they created” (7). for example, rene soulas describes charging elk as a “simple soul” (welch 74) pacified by the occasional offer of tobacco and sweets. as such, while he does evidence a desire to be of assistance to charging elk, rene primarily seems to consider the indian an adult-sized toy created solely for his entertainment and amusement. moreover, as charging elk moves outside of the myth, he ceases to exist for the american ambassadors archibald atkins and franklin bell. although they are annoyed by the mistaken issuance of a death certificate for charging elk instead of featherman, atkinson and bell choose comfortable complacency over the preservation of charging elk’s individuality, willing to view him as “dead, plain and simple” (157-58). bell states, “i don’t think the french care which indian lived and which died. i hate to say this, but one indian is as good as another to them—no insult intended” (160). his casual estimation of the french regard for indians is actually a thinly veiled account of his own view of the matter. bell is discomfited by the situation and perhaps even feels a modicum of sympathy for charging elk, yet he accepts the tenet of the myth that relegates indians to interchangeable characters in a play, performers who can simply be recast when necessary. as rene similarly asserts, “one could almost forget that [charging elk] had been a celebrity with buffalo bill” (174) and thus forget that he even existed at all. charging elk also illustrates the relationally limiting nature of the myth in that attempts to step outside of the paradigm and into everyday life are met with, at the least, unease and uncertainty. for example, his coworkers at the soap factory exhibit the following reactions to him: “some of the men made jokes about him; others made what they thought were war whoops when he was out of hearing range; still others watched him with a wary awe, some with hatred because he was different” (261). throughout the novel, the responses charging elk’s ethnicity elicits consistently correspond to this catalog of attitudes. while a performer in the wild west show, his indianness incites admiration and praise. by contrast, as a member of society and not as a performer, his indianness garners ridicule, fear, and disdain. one exception is the temporary positive attention he receives from protestors at his trial. while charging elk is imprisoned and tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   87   awaiting sentencing, st-cyr uses his article to stimulate interest in the indian’s dilemma. as a result, “the persecution of ‘the vanishing american’ (as st-cyr himself termed the plight of the american indian) was more than they could bear” (welch 335). the french people organize rallies and protests, but their defense is short-lived. since their support is not necessarily for him, but an emotional response to yet another tenet of the myth, they quickly move on to something or someone else. only those who are unschooled in the myth are able to accept charging elk as an individual rather than as a stereotype. because they have very little prior knowledge of the societal conception of indianness, mathias and chloe soulas quickly become attached to him, exhibiting none of the undue fear their mother, madeline, experiences. later in the novel, nathalie, slightly more influenced by preconceived notions of indianness than the soulas children, does at first distance herself from charging elk. however, this hesitation is as much due to their differing ages, unexpressed physical and emotional attraction, and levels of maturity as anything else. because her prejudices are minimal and not deeply ingrained, she is able to separate her expectations of charging elk from those that the myth outlines. interestingly, while incarcerated in la tombe, charging elk is able to disprove his adherence to the myth and thus gain the respect of the wardens and his fellow inmates. his ability to do so is directly related to the fact that for this one time in his life, his identity is defined first by his sentence and social status as a convicted felon instead of by his ethnicity. his categorization primarily as an inmate and secondarily as an indian affords him the brief opportunity to manipulate the application of the myth and showcase positive qualities such as respect for authority and an impressive work ethic. despite these rare opportunities for manipulating the myth, it is apparent that the power of the paradigm supersedes that of charging elk to overcome it. for example, once mathias soulas becomes exposed to the myth, the friendship he and charging elk share quickly disintegrates. after the trial in which charging elk is declared a savage incapable of adhering to the laws of civilization, he encounters the young man and sees “the large brown eyes of mathias looking at him without a hint of expression” (welch 412). as a result of unfair assumptions and unwillingness to consider charging elk’s side of the situation, mathias loses respect for his former friend and the bond between them is severed. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   88   furthermore, the myth even tempers the friendliness the brothel owner, olivier, shows to charging elk. because he does not realize charging elk is an american indian, olivier allows him to frequent the salon alongside his fashionable and wealthy clients. he surmises that charging elk must be “a prince of the orient” (222) and sees him as “an evening’s curiosity” (225). olivier has had no exposure to anyone who looks like charging elk, as “the only indiens he had seen had been illustrated tabloids and they had worn feathers and war paint” (223). he considers them “a most disagreeable race of savages” (223). if olivier were aware of charging elk’s true ethnicity, he would never have allowed the indian entrance into the salon, demonstrating that it is the mythic paradigm that negatively influences charging elk’s social interactions and not necessarily his heritage. in addition to affecting his relationships with others, the myth erodes charging elk’s estimation of himself. despite his determination to cling to the old ways and his respect for his culture, charging elk cannot help but internalize some of the continual social strife between the white and indian worlds. as he beholds his future wife, young, graceful, white nathalie, “he suddenly felt unworthy” because he considers himself “a savage that didn’t deserve much beauty” (welch 401). for a moment, he subconsciously accepts the mindset that has been forced upon him and that has dictated almost every aspect of his life. rather than deriving a sense of pride from his ethnicity, charging elk has no one with whom he can identify and “[thinks] of himself as one who [has] no color, [is] in fact almost a ghost even though his large dark presence always attracted attention from both light and dark people” (198). at one point, looking at himself in the mirror, he “almost liked the dark, chiseled face” (214, emphasis mine). ironically, his appearance, which affords him such personal pride within the performance arena, is a source of ambivalence outside of it. while he is very much accustomed to the social ramifications of being an indian, charging elk nonetheless struggles to comprehend the justice of a system which ranks worth based upon skin color and makes additional deductions for being indian. he understands why the white miners in the united states from whom he and his friends stole would dislike him but he questions the source of hatred shown by the american sailors he encounters in a marseille restaurant. he marvels in dismay that although “he had spent the past three winters making himself invisible, . . . they knew him right away” (200). it is only after he fully reverts to lakota ceremony and sings his death song before the sailors that he feels, once again, like a “man to be tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   89   reckoned with” (202). when charging elk first enters the restaurant, he feels “that he was part of the festive crowd” and his french is good enough to converse with his waiter (197). but he begins to feel a separation as he looks around at his fellow diners and realizes “that they were all wasichus” (198). this separation is further exacerbated by the sailors’ response to his presence— “he is a goddamn ignorant blanket-ass”; “ask him to give us a war whoop”—which reflects not only their anger but also their adherence to the myth of “indianness” (199). yet, when he begins to sing his death song, “the accordion player [squeezes] his box in a hushed, toneless accompaniment” (201) and charging elk leaves the restaurant to make a prayer while the “moon of black cherries [glares] above the old port” (202). charging elk’s perception of himself, when seen through the lens of the myth, is one of deficiency, yet welch uses this scene to illustrate a complex process of transculturation. we see charging elk move from feeling “happy” (197), to feeling “uneasy” (198), to feeling “confused” (199), and finally, to feeling “strong” and “light” (202). the scene in the marseille restaurant illustrates charging elk’s mediation of the performative nature of “indianness” through strategic self-representation. because the paradigm of indianness is so distorted charging elk has difficulty recognizing himself, or more accurately, what he is expected to be, within the myth. a prime example is the account of the teacher in the government school who attempts to teach charging elk the word “indian.” [the teacher] pointed directly at him, then at the board, and said “indian.” she made all the children say “indian.” then she showed them a picture of a man they could not recognize. he had sharp toes, big thighs, and narrow shoulders; he wore a crown of blue and green and yellow feathers and an animal skin with dark spots. his eyes were large and round; his lips tiny and pursed. the white woman said “indian.” (56) the mythic indian is so exaggerated that the caricature retains few original or accurate qualities. as opitz states, what is constructed here is the figure of prehistoric and fantastic “indianness,” the racist fantasy that needs to project the “indian” as artifact, as fetish, and as other. the fantasy operates on three assumptions: that this “indian” is a stable object of representation, that he is in some strange way identical with the sign, and that he identifies himself with it. . . .the lesson of the indian is not merely transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   90   meant to teach the other children what a creature the indian is, but by identifying charging elk with this picture, the teacher means to suggest that he is this—and nothing else—unless he assimilates and relinquishes the particularity of his experience and cultural identity. (174) unfortunately, the power to change the paradigm is withheld from those upon whom it is based. charging elk, although he does not recognize the corresponding description, must learn the denoted title, since it will be applied to him whether he offers an endorsement or not. ironically, it is the myth of indianness that saves charging elk from immediate execution for killing bretuil. according to the procureur general, he cannot be held responsible for his actions because he is a “savage who could never comprehend the rules and obligations of a civilized society” (welch 315). moreover, a french doctor ludicrously testifies that it is “common knowledge” that indians’ brains were smaller than that of the average individual, rendering them “less capable of making sound decisions” (320). thus, instead of receiving the death penalty, as was the norm, charging elk is sentenced to life in prison because, according to the magistrate, “he simply cannot conform to even the most elementary code of conduct—and therefore will always remain a threat to society” (341). because of this misrepresentation, charging elk is labeled “a threat to society” (341) for responding in self-defense to unsolicited sexual acts performed upon him by another man. the public, on the other hand, mourns breteuil, who shake their heads in dismay that a lawless savage brutally and senselessly murders such a fine, upstanding gentleman. a contemporary manifestation of this concept is found in smoke signals, the film based on a sherman alexie screenplay within which alexie frequently satirizes the paradigm of indianness. the character thomas builds-the-fire, a coeur d’alene indian, tells the story of his uncle’s involvement in a fight, saying, “arnold got arrested, you know, but he got lucky. at first, they charged him with attempted murder, but they plea-bargained that down to assault with a deadly weapon. and then they plea bargained that down to being an indian in the twentieth century, and he got two years in walla walla” (smoke signals). although contrastingly humorous in nature, the premise of thomas’s scenario parallels that of charging elk’s court experience. in both instances, the indians are given lighter sentences based on the false assertion that they are unable to adhere to the rules of civilized society, not as a result of justice being served. charging elk is spared the death penalty not because he acts in self-defense, but because tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   91   he is erroneously perceived to be incapable of anything else. likewise, arnold evades the charge of attempted murder not because his actions are considered justifiable but because it is assumed that his inherent tendencies to violence have naturally surfaced. when viewed through the myth, charging elk and arnold become cardboard characters measured solely by their actions rather than their respective contexts. in a bittersweet trade, they receive lighter sentences at the cost of their reputation and dignity. strangely enough, very few characters in the heartsong of charging elk seem to realize their culpability in crafting or contributing to the myth. although franklin bell reflects upon his mismanagement of the incorrectly issued death certificate and the havoc wreaked upon charging elk thereby, he seems more concerned with the effect it has upon his own career. he admits, “it had been so easy to lose the big indian, to let him disappear into marseille, to forget about him” (welch 286). charging elk’s troubles are an afterthought when compared to bell’s preoccupation with advancement and personal success. interestingly, when bell does pause to consider the plight in which he has thrust charging elk, even his thoughts are tainted by the myth. his “fear of discovery of his blunder” (286) prompts him to envision charging elk standing at his door, blood dripping from a tomahawk and staining his expensive persian carpet. rather than connecting charging elk to the natural responses of anger, frustration, discouragement, or disappointment, bell subconsciously attaches to him a mythic and violent reaction involving invasion and bloodshed. only martin st-cyr seems to evidence authentic concern about his role in the dissemination and perpetuation of the myth. in various instances throughout the novel, charging elk’s story becomes an opportunity for st-cyr to advance his fledgling career. despite his initial genuine concern for charging elk’s well being, st-cyr primarily defends the indian not out of sympathy or solidarity, but because he recognizes an opportunity to exploit a newsworthy subject. when he reads that charging elk has been charged with the murder of breteuil, st-cyr “had the feeling that he had read this article before, perhaps even had something to do with it” (welch 282). reflecting on his personal advancement under the guise of helping the indian, stcyr realizes that “his small triumphs had been as hollow and empty as they now felt. he had betrayed charging elk” (343). while st-cyr perpetuates the myth by referring to charging elk as a savage, he also demonstrates an ability at least to recognize the effect of the paradigm on the indian. he establishes culpability of society in general and himself in particular by writing, “may transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   92   his god forgive us all” (343). unfortunately, the narrator leaves it unclear as to whether this sentiment is the product of spontaneous personal free writing or if it was actually meditated upon, polished, and published for st-cyr’s audience to read. despite his strides toward autonomy from the myth and the limited assistance from others such as rene and st-cyr, charging elk remains engulfed by the paradigm, his actions and attitudes continually assessed within its context. as browder points out, “with his insistence on authenticity, cody encouraged audiences to take the staged behavior he presented in his show as reality, and he created stereotypes of indians that persist to this day. the stereotypes, like all stereotypes, locked indians into a prefabricated image” (65). for charging elk, the “prefabricated image,” although overwhelmingly beyond his control, dictates all aspects of his life, from his interaction with others to his estimation of himself. the basic premise of the stereotype browder discusses is the overly generalized and highly simplified concept that all “real indians, as the public came to believe, lived in tribes, slept in tipis, wore feather bonnets, rode painted ponies, hunted the buffalo, skirmished with the u.s. cavalry, and spoke in signs” (moses 1). further exploring the tenets of the myth, rayna green asserts, the wild west shows, with their remnant sioux and crow, traveled america and europe to enormous success. these warriors, lords of the plains, forever mounted on their ponies, forever attacking wagon trains and hunting buffalo, become the indian in the american imagination. (38, her emphasis) because of this paradigm, with each person he encounters, charging elk can only attempt to overcome the myth by breaking it down and rebuilding it over an extended period of time in order to experience any degree of satisfactory social interaction. according to philip deloria, “the only culture allowed to define real indian people was a traditional culture that came from the past rather than the present” (91). for charging elk, being indian is both a matter of birth and a myth imposed on him by society. he voluntarily engages in performance, essentially playing indian before white audiences, because it provides him temporary approval, financial gain, and opportunity to showcase the old ways, and a degree of control over the myth. he shows that within the confines of the wild west show, society values and accepts indianness. however, once charging elk steps outside the arena of performance, his indianness is the subject of, among many things, suspicion, scorn, and ridicule. because he is indeed lakota, an american indian, he is unable to tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   93   escape the disproportionate myth of indianness and is subject to social and emotional repercussions. in many ways, charging elk’s identity is at the mercy of a society that simultaneously allows and disallows entrance based upon a single standard, a hyperbolic paradigm within the context of performance. charging elk is ultimately able to resist the caricature of the indian that western society has invented creating a transcultural identity that encompasses characteristics of both lakota and french culture. at the end of the novel, he attends a performance of the wild west show, which has returned to marseille. when the show is over, charging elk visits the indian camp hoping to speak with someone who may have news of his family. he finds andrew little ring, his wife, sarah, and little ring’s nephew, joseph, who tell charging elk that his father has died, but his mother is still alive. he learns of the forced assimilation of his people: boarding school for the young, where they learn english and are forbidden to speak lakota as well as the denial of their freedom to worship wakan tanka or perform any ceremonies. charging elk also learns of the ghost dance and the massacre at wounded knee. even with such heartbreaking news, he knows the lakota have survived and will continue to do so “because we are strong people, we lakotas” (435). and though he is finally presented with the chance to return to the united states, he refuses because of the strong connections he now has to his life and home. he tells joseph, “this is my home now. . . .i have a wife. soon i will have a child. . . .i speak the language of these people. my wife is one of them and my heart is her heart. she is my life now and soon we’ll have another life and the same heart will sing in all of us” (437). although he has changed significantly over the past sixteen years, especially in his clothing and his ability to speak french, the lakota performers still recognize charging elk as one of them. andrew little ring tells him, “you are not a stranger. you are lakota, wherever you might go. you are one of us always” (436). charging elk is able to create an identity that contains significant elements of french culture without sacrificing any elements of lakota identity. as he returns home to his wife and unborn child, charging elk walks away from the show grounds “past the sideshows, dark now and the empty arena, while the “moon of the falling leaves . . . [lights] his way” (438). as james j. donahue puts it, charging elk’s use of the lakota way to mark the cycles of the moon “signifies both that he has retained his native american worldview and that it will ‘continue to light his way’” (70). yet, welch’s final paragraph shows something much more complex. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   94   charging elk’s movement away from the show grounds and towards his wife and child represent the continuum of the self as he refuses to “play indian” any longer, while his reference to the lakota calendar along with his final words to joseph beautifully illustrate charging elk’s transcultural identity. the “same heart” that will sing in his child is the definition of survivance; the child will be “an active sense of presence, the continuation of native stories” (vizenor vii). charging elk, along with his descendants, illustrates and embodies what vizenor terms the “postindian” because he (and they) renounce “dominance, tragedy, and victimry” through his ultimate resistance to the western representation of the indian (vii). works cited alexie, sherman. smoke signals. dir. chris eyre. perf. adam beach, evan adams, irene bedard, gary farmer, and tantoo cardinal. miramax, 1998. bak, hans. “tribal or transnational? memory, history, and identity in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk.” transnational american memories. ed. udo j. hebel. berlin: walter de gruyter, 2009. 105-127. print. browder, laura. “staged ethnicities: laying the groundwork for ethnic impersonator autobiographies.” slippery characters: ethnic impersonators and american identities.” chapel hill: u of north carolina press, 2000. 47-74. print. cook-lynn, elizabeth. “literary and political questions of transformation: american indian fiction writers.” wicazo-sa review 11.1 (1995): 46-51. print. deloria, philip. playing indian. new haven: yale up, 1998. print. deloria, vine jr. god is red: a native view of religion. golden, co.: fulcrum publishing, 1994. print. donahue, james j. “’a world away from his people’: james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk and the indian historical novel.” studies in american indian literature 18.2 (2006): 54-81. green, rayna. “the tribe called wannabee: playing indian in america and europe.” folklore 99 (1988): 30-55. print. haselstein, ulla. “ghost dance literature: spectrality in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk.” companion to james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk. ed. arnold krupat. lincoln: u of nebraska press, 2015. 88-110. rpt. of “ghost dance tammy wahpeconiah “an evening’s curiosity”   95   literature: spectrality in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk.” the pathos of authenticity: american passions of the real. ed. ulla haselstein, andrew gross, maryann snyder-körber. heidelberg: universitätsverlag winter, 2010. 179-98. print. hill, randall t.g. “methodological approaches to native american narrative and the role of performance.” american indian quarterly 21 (1997): 111-147. print. jones, stephen graham. ledfeather. tuscaloosa: fiction collective 2, 2008. print. maddox, lucy. “politics, performance, and indian identity.” american studies 40.2 (2002): 736. print mcnickle, darcy. the surrounded. albuquerque: u of new mexico press, 1994. print. moore, david l. “cycles of selfhood, cycles of nationhood in native american literature: authenticity, identity, community, sovereignty.” native authenticity: transnational perspectives on native american literary studies. ed. deborah l. madsen. albany: suny press, 2010. 39-67. print. moses, l.g. wild west shows and images of american indians, 1883-1943. albuquerque: u of new mexico press, 1999. print. opitz, andrea. “a haunted nation: cultural narratives and the persistence of the indigenous subject in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk.” all our stories are here: critical perspectives on montana literature. ed. brady harrison. lincoln: u of nebraska press, 2009. 160-179. print. owens, louis. mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place. norman: u of oklahoma press, 1998. print. teuton, sean and james welch. “placing the ancestors: postmodernism, ‘realism’, and american indian identity in james welch’s winter in the blood.” american indian quarterly 25.4 (2001): 626-650. print. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners: postindian warriors of survivance. hanover: wesleyan up, 1994. print. welch, james. the heartsong of charging elk. new york: anchor books, 2000. print. wong, hertha dawn, lauren muller, and jane sequoya magdaleno. “introduction.” reckonings: contemporary short fiction by native american women. oxford: oxford up, 2008. xiiixxix. print. microsoft word 409-2637-6-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 11 nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag: tender buttons unfastened margaret noodin gertrude stein’s signature line, “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” first appeared in her poem “sacred emily” in 1913 and was used by her throughout her life, becoming a red signature of repetition and linguistic machination. her writing is often a circuitous exploration of the play between sound and meaning in language that disrupts the standard use of words, allowing alternate connections to be made. stein once explained: when i said. a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. and then later made that into a ring i made poetry and what did i do i caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun (stein 1985, 231). the idea of nouns caressed and addressed is sensual and evocative. stein does not offer romantic realism; she sketches a monologue of fragments. she uses sound and meaning the way a kaleidoscope uses refraction and reflection to create new patterns with familiar objects. her method of taking language apart in order to understand it better is useful in the work of language revitalization. she demonstrates how to fall in love with language as it falls apart and is reconstructed each time we speak. stein spun phrases into being in order to question the very nature of writing, representation, and interpretation, which speakers of all languages do. these operations are the fundamental defense of linguistic diversity. variety in linguistic engineering makes the potential of the entire system greater. and while language is focused first on the work of assisting survival, it is through pleasure, play and manipulation that languages come to life. the more different ways different languages can reflect the human experience, the more we are able to appreciate our shared and complex existence. this essay is a digression gertrude stein might have enjoyed if an anishinaabe poet had joined her saturday salons in paris with pablo picasso, ezra pound, mildred aldrich and others who practiced modern ways of fastening and unfastening words and images. the act of translating stein’s english into anishinaabemowin serves as a method of linguistic and artistic analysis. the anishinaabemowin lines offered here are experimental word play in response to the spirit of her work, not definitive equivalents. stein evokes the senses in writing to center margaret noodin “nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag” 12 identity on angles and dimensions not often included in verse. she offers social commentary in the form of images that can benefit from a range of diverse readings. anishinaabe-based explorations of the way she combines sensation, location, and history are not lessons in grammar or explication; they are ventures into a territory co-created by stein’s imagination and the overarching aesthetics of anishinaabemowin. consider the following an example of nindinendaamin izhitwaawinan epiichi gaawiin zagaakwa’igaadesinoog gaye geyabi zagaakwa’igaazoyaang, unbuttoning and rebuttoning ideas across traditions. oginiwi – being a rose when stein’s signature rose-phrase moves from english into anishinaabemowin the definition of a rose and the purpose of repetition can be called into question by speakers willing to bend and stretch the common rules of anishinaabemowin. a rose / oginigaade (the idea of roseness) is a rose / oginiwi (is to be a rose) is a rose / ogininaan (to rose something) is a rose. / oginimaa. (to rose someone) in english, stein’s repetition of “rose” without change is a matter of meter and a lack of adjectives. her unnatural redundancy calls for an unnatural focus on the noun. from an anishinaabe perspective, repetition often shifts identity creating a spiral of contrasting relationships with an object. one option for an anishinaabemowin translation, which achieves a similar level of unnatural, or forced, focus on the rose, might allow the rose to move through all of the various states of animacy foundational to anishinaabemowin but not available in english. as the rose is re-imagined through different verb forms, the symbolic nature of the rose becomes an action and a potential point of re-interpretation. experimental wordplay with repetition allows the rose to take different endings, indicating different levels of animacy. animacy, it should be noted, is a difficult term, not explained. more than something that is simply living or non-living, or in motion versus still, the term is used to differentiate noun classifications and the four major types of verbs in anishinaabemowin. something “inanimate” is an event not defined by or viewed as being in an active relationship with other beings or objects. as the “animacy” of a person, place, thing, idea, or observable state shifts, it enters into more complex relationships transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 13 with other animate and inanimate nouns. returning to the repetition of the rose, in anishinaabemowin a rose can be described as inanimate, an oginigaade, the essence of rose identity. or the rose could be described as an animate noun, opening up the possible ways the rose can be in the world. you or i could oginiwi, become a rose, which is similar to, but not the same as, oginikaazo, pretending to become a rose. this play with the “rose” is strange in both languages and does not follow the rules of vernacular conversation. just as a student of english would be told to replace repetition with adjectives, a student of anishinaabemowin would be told, “those words have not been used before.” yet in both cases the speaker or writer uses recognizable language and attention is unquestionably focused on the nature of a rose. patterns of repetition and word construction can lead to an expansion of meaning and perspective. stein’s english reframes linguistic experimentation and any translation and alternate reading of her work must do the same, which is why contemplation of a creative response to her writing is a worthwhile exercise. all translations call both sides of the equation into question. ezhi-gikendamaazoyaang sensation one of stein’s most iconic poetic texts, tender buttons, was published in 1914. while it may seem rooted in a specific parisian expatriate moment, there are instances where its content is surprisingly aligned with a north american indigenous perspective, as when she writes, “a canoe is orderly” (29) or “a white hunter is nearly crazy” (16). an anishinaabe poet might also appreciate the statement, “a feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. it is surely cohesive” because it speaks of something animate “trimmed” or decorated and specially recognized (14). the text is primarily viewed as aesthetic experimentation and has been read many ways including as extra-textual exploration, linguistic cubism, feminist sound poetry, and experiments in somatic writing (poetzsch, dubnick, marchiselli, bruner). it is certainly some of that for some readers, but it is not much of that for a reader using an anishinaabe frame of reference for whom the world cubed is a not-new concept; the gender signals “he, him, she and her” are not articulated the same way; a “modernist” break from the past was navigated through assimilative resistance, and automatic writing echoes the very familiar practice of listening margaret noodin “nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag” 14 beyond the plane of human understanding. for anishinaabe readers tender buttons is a rewarding challenge in translation and an affirmation of a shifting, sensory, spatial aesthetic. tender buttons is organized around sections featuring objects, food and rooms, but the assembly of words reveals the “centre” to be anything but the nouns. speaking about her own work in the context of what artists were doing at the time, stein said: “the painters were looking… and they too had to be certain that looking was not confusing itself with remembering… i began to make portraits of things and enclosures that is rooms and places because i needed to completely face the difficulty of how to include what is seen with hearing and listening” (stein, portraits). as cubism on the canvas is a refraction of multiple visual viewpoints, tender buttons is an attempt to create multiple sensory perspectives in poetry. she uses language in layers, which is, of course, appealing to speakers of agglutinative languages which by definition are constructed of multisyllabic layers of meaning with words that begin in the center and radiate description in multiple directions through meaning and inflection. for example, one translation of “cubism” might be “dawimazinbiige” to clear space, or make space while using lines to create an image. to say pablo picasso, george braques and gertrude stein all did this well becomes a single variation of the verb: ogii-nitaadawimazinbiigewag. stein creates a system of perceiving nouns from many visual directions. her writing is at times transformational, aanjisemagad. objects can move between states of inanimacy and animacy. in one case, “a carafe, this is a blind glass… an arrangement in a system to pointing” suggests an unseeing water vessel, which in english is an awkward and unusual phrase with one word originating in french (3). anishinaabemowin has a tendency to not absorb words from other languages and has a mutable approach to nominalization. thus, the fancy “blind carafe,” could be described as: a zhaabwaate omooday, an inanimate bottle seen through; a gagiibiingweminikwaajigan, an object used for drinking that is unable to see; or part of an izhinoobii’igan, a system of pointing. in stein’s writing things come apart and are reassembled in new forms from various alternate angles. this same transformation is easy to echo in anishinaabemowin due to the way objects can be animate or inanimate depending on how speakers wish to represent them. stein speaks of: “four choices and there are four choices in a difference, the time when there are four choices there is a kind and there is a kind” (23). stein and other modernists were often transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 15 inspired by global indigenous art and ideas, often taking “primitive” art as inspiration for cubist abstraction. techniques considered “modern” from a 20th century post-industrial perspective can be reconsidered from an indigenous angle as a continuation and affirmation of traditional semiotics. although new and unusual to stein’s contemporary audience, this cubed approach is not avant-garde, forward advancing, niigaani-minisinoog, for anishinaabe readers; it is precisely what one should do, move between two word classes and four verb types to represent reality as precisely as possible within the realm of anishinaabe science and epistemology. an anishinaabe reading of tender buttons involves analysis of topics and translation. stein focuses primarily on the waves and elements of the universe as she experiments with the syntax and structure of her sentences. she explores color, light, sound, air, water and celestial bodies as a way of being in the universe. in anishinaabemowin, speakers often create their own descriptive terms for color based on personal experience and perspective. this is precisely what stein does. for example, a common word for “gray” in anishinaabemowin is akakanzhewaande, meaning “coal-colored” matching exactly with stein’s line: “color is in coal. coal is outlasting roasting and a spoonful, a whole spoon that is full is not spilling.” (23). in translation this could become: akakanzhewaande akakanzhe, literally, “coal is coal-colored,” which capitalizes on the coincidence that the word for the color of coals is already commonly used as a color in anishinaabemowin. the morphemes “akak” and “aanzhe” in the word “coal-colored” call to mind edges on fire leading to the further play on words akakanzhewaanzhe akakanzhe, which is a stein-like instance of repetition. meanwhile, the second line about coal might become, “wenda-abwaadaan, akakanzhe-emikwaanens, mooshkine emikwaanens gaawiin ziigwebinigaadesiinoon.” (completely roasted, the coal spoon is a full spoon that is not spilling.) as with many parts of stein’s texts, staying true to the assonance and consonance of the original sometimes leads to the meanings taking a slight turn. the idea of outlasting slips to completeness in order to allow several consonants to repeat. as tender buttons continues, stein’s overall use of color decreases and several specific colors dominate the visual conversation. the summary below shows which colors appear most often. margaret noodin “nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag” 16 color objects food rooms total red 33 25 15 73 white 20 14 9 43 green 10 8 2 20 yellow 7 5 3 15 black 8 1 2 11 blue 8 0 1 9 brown 5 1 0 6 orange 0 3 0 3 total 91 57 32 180 with no obvious explanations for the focus on miskwaa (red) and waabishkaa (white) readers are left with supposition. one interpretation might view the focus on miskwaa as a gesture toward miskwaa (red), the color of a rose. an anishinaabe cultural analysis might interpret the focus on miskwaa (red) as a reference to miskwaabik (copper), a metal prominent in the culture, common in the great lakes, and found in both miskwi (blood) and okan (bone). the emphasis on waabishkaa pulls into the conversation concepts of waabi (sight), waaban (the light of dawn) and waabanong (the east). in some cultures, white is purity and privilege, in others it is viewed more scientifically as waves of color combined and reflected, and specifically in anishinaabe words that contain “waabi” are tied to light and heat energy as well as the ability to see. the act of translation shifts possible interpretations. stein writes of color as something to be traded and exchanged between object and observer. more than purity she implies the need to perceive the mixing. she declares, “an ordinary color, a color is that strange mixture which makes, which does not make a ripe juice” (bagakisin enaandeg, mayagiginigawinigaadeg gaawiin aditewabookesii) (27 – 28). a translation of the phrase requires use of the prefix mayagi, which is close in meaning to “strange” but can also mean “unusual.” in english one can more easily label and separate nouns, while in anishinaabemowin one can be clear about ginigawinan and ginigawin, the nature of what is being mixed and by whom. whether each language offers clarity or obfuscation relates to the information organizing priorities of each culture. stein’s tender buttons are unusual in english because buttons are not typically described as tender. tender buttons are unusual in transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 17 anishinaabemowin because buttons, zagaakwa’onag, are animate but nearly the same as zagaakwa’iganan, nails, which are not, and furthermore the act of buttoning zagaakwa’ is just one sound separate from zagaa’oozo, to be entangled. this incorporation of images and meaning is a logical response to reading stein, who works to broaden the range of description in her work. this practice also makes great sense to speakers of anishinaabemowin, which rarely imposes strict rules for description and places value on including all possible angles in a word or interpretation. for example, on the one hand, ozhaawashkwaande is all the blue-green between the sea and the sky while ozaawaande is the full spectrum of yellow-brown from yolk to earth. on the other hand, any highly specific item can be transformed into a color, as noted with coal becoming the standard for “gray.” stein’s desire to expand options for description occurs naturally in anishinaabemowin. she affirms the belief that every whole can be described as made of many parts when she asks: “why is there a single piece of any color, why is there that sensible silence, why is there resistance in a mixture…” (aaniin dash enaandeg, aaniin dash mikigaade bizaanayaan, aaniin dash nanaakonaan ginigawinigaadeg…) (47). after mixtures of color in tender buttons, stein turns to sound. as the focus moves from objects to rooms, sound begins to take up space. for readers who are also singers this representation of sound is reminiscent of the world’s great improvisation traditions. for anishinaabe readers specifically, this move from patterns of meaning to patterns of sound is familiar as part of the drum and rattle tradition. some of the oldest songs and healing lyrics are heavily dependent on repetition marked by subtle variation. as stein uses the familiar global tradition of sensory disruption to create new rhythms, her line, “cadences, real cadences, real cadences and a quiet color” (madwe mii wenda-madwe mii sa wenda-madwe gaye bizaanenaandeg) harmonizes with her sentiment, “should there be a call there would be a voice” (giishpin ganoozhaad, ganoondiwaad) (48). it is a simple equation. sounds are measured and cut like objects or lines of text. stein echoes the patterns of oral traditions based on observation. her technique is familiar to many cultures in which repetition is used to record reality, aid memory, and alter states of being. as with healing chants, her verse moves from literal data to a musical mantra and can easily flow between languages: “a no, a no since, a no since when, a no since when since…” (gaawiin mii gaawiin mii igo gaawiin apii sa gaawiin apii) (38). discourse markers mii, sa and igo parse the oral narrative tradition in the way commas and other punctuation are used in english to provide in anishinaabemowin what is often provided by margaret noodin “nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag” 18 punctuation and word stress in english. these little words are often literally translated as “so,” “then” or “really,” but the lesson learned through the experience of translation is one of the ways in which sound adds to meaning. english is a language that bends now toward literature while anishinaabemowin still retains much of its oral past. stein was breaking english “rules” but acting in ways that conform to anishinaabe expectations. omaa aayaayaang location related to the subjects of color and sound found in tender buttons is a discussion of wiikwiiwin, a form of energy that crosses distance, such as a wavelength or current. when stein asks, “what is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle… what is this current, what is the wind, what is it” (8), she draws important correlations to anishinaabe epistemology. stein connects currents to machinery drawing a connection between science and society but does not explore those connections any further than to simply gesture toward crackle, control and the need to understand our physical environment. wind in anishinaabemowin is noodin and can be found as part of many words including: waasnoode (the northern lights), ganoodan and ganoozh (to speak to something or someone) and noodenim (to flirt with someone). embedded in an anishinaabemowin translation, stein’s questions of connections and control are more visible. not the same kind of current, water is also a thread through the text. she writes: “water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow” (nibi maamakaanendaagwad gaye zanagag ezhi-omashkosiwibiigeyang) (12). water is powerful and can shape the land. translating this phrase into anishinaabemowin it is possible to emphasize the way a meadow is written onto the landscape. the nature of water, nibi, when separated is both ni (there) and bi (here), which a poet might read as location and perception. certainly an anishinaabe reading would highlight her phrase “water, water is a mountain and it is selected and it is so practical that there is no use in money” (nibi, nibi aawan wajiw miinawaa nawaj aapiich zhooniyaa) (28). in stein’s text water is climate, geography, and a base for artistic innovation. water and weather become music. “a climate, a single climate, all the time there is a single climate, any time there is a doubt, any time there is music” (izhiwebad agwajing da madwechige) (49). water can be a symbol for systems of transfer, “cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting… a transfer, a large transfer” (24), all of which could be reduced to two words transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 19 aanjisemigad aanakwadoon, the way clouds change, if the translation aims for a core equivalency and a relative amount of initial and internal alliteration. at times, stein’s repetition does lead to a distillation of meaning, which works well with an anishinaabe reading. for life on earth, water is the center of being as stein agrees when she writes “any little thing is water” (46), which can be echoed as the common anishinaabe phrase, nibi aawiyang (we are water). water is life. stein writes as if she is familiar with this phenomenology based on relationships between both human and nonhuman elements and actors. although she was not overtly working from this perspective, an anishinaabe reading highlights the ways in which she shifts human and nonhuman relationships on earth to align within a more complex network than one where humans are necessarily the center. her ability to situate her subjects in a network of knowledge beyond the human is another reason to read stein. tender buttons includes several references to the way scientific, seasonal, astrological, and meteorological ways of knowing influence the human world. stein asks and then answers: “star-light, what is star-light, star-light is a little light that is not always mentioned with the sun, it is mentioned with the moon and the sun, it is mixed up with the rest of the time” (anangaazhe, aanii abiskaakonesed, ezhi-zaagiiaasiged gaawiin apane dibaajimaasiiwangid miinawaa giizis gaye dibiki-giizis, mii ginigawinangwaa daso-diba’iganeg) (48). to represent the possibility only alluded to in english, an anishinaabemowin translator must account for the fact that anangoog (stars), giizis (the sun), and dibiki-giizis (the night-sun, or moon) are all animate, which changes the way a reader might view the possibility that they influence perceptions of time. many anishinaabe readers will recognize the ways the universe is pulled into human lives. for instance, they might read into stein’s discussion of virgins the relationship between elders and youth who are coming of age. stein writes: “a virgin a whole virgin is judged made and so between curves and outlines and real seasons” (14). one direct translation could be: oshkiniigikwe, gigi-oshkiniigikwe, dibaakonaanaan mii ge-waagishkaaged, izhibii’amawaanaan epiichii aandakiiwang (a new woman, a whole new woman, she is judged by them as she curves and is written by them as the seasons change). stein describes a young woman as changing, like the seasons, in a way that could be part of an anishinaabe vision quest, berry fast, or simply a portent of what she calls “a peaceful life to arise her, noon and moon and moon”, literally translated as “bizaanibimaadizi, ombishkaa, naawakweg gaye dibiki-giizis, margaret noodin “nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag” 20 dibiki-giizis” (15). in stein’s writing and an anishinaabe interpretation, a young woman becomes a part of moontime and an eternal system of cycles that define experience as more than civility. connections between the human and non-human elements continue in tender buttons as stein writes of immovable clouds and thunder bridges: this cloud does change with the movements of the moon and the narrow the quite narrow suggestion of the building (o’o aanakwad anjisemigad apii giizis gaye dibiki-giizis mamaajisewaad miinawaa idamang agaasadeyaagamig)… a bridge a very small bridge in a location and thunder, any thunder, this is the capture of reversible sizing and more indeed more can be cautious (aazhogaans endaazhianimikiikaang gakina aanjisemagad) (51). affixing the gathering on narrow crossings in space and time not measured by clock or calendar is reminiscent of annual gatherings dictated by the relationship of earth to sky and is not as random to anishinaabe readers as it might have appeared to early industrial capitalists. gaa-ezhiwebag – history in many ways tender buttons can be read as a means of undoing of assimilation, which, according to stein, and many anishinaabe readers, might be a sensible decision. the sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even notwithstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, notwithstanding europe and asia and being overbearing, not even notwithstanding an elephant and a strict occasion… not even with drowning and with the ocean being encircling, not even with more likeness and any cloud, not even with terrific sacrifice of pedestrianism and a special resolution, not even more likely to be pleasing. (52). is she writing against society or exploring the beauty of communal anarchy as led by a troupe of tricksters? to translate these sentiments possibly interpreted as an interrogation of cultural dominance, names for nations are needed along with a word for “notwithstanding.” it is a problem that the words for europe, “waabishkiiwed odakiim” (white ones’ homeland) or “agaaming gichigami” (the other side of the sea), are both simply indicators of distant shores. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 21 just as the terms “eastern” and “western” are not the global cultural and philosophical binary they are sometimes used to imply, the anishinaabe use of gaming (the sea) and bodies of water larger and smaller to locate other cultures does not do justice to actual national variation. this lack of cultural specificity reveals a gap in contemporary anishinaabemowin that will need to be filled by new descriptions for nations based on their actual history and self-declared identity if a full translation of stein’s work is ever attempted. the term “notwithstanding” is a bit easier; both zhaagooch and booch igo imply an air of diffidence in spite of any reasoning. in her meandering metaphor of assimilation, stein celebrates the ability of perception to vary infinitely. she leans toward the encircling oceans notwithstanding. many of stein’s culturally specific passages highlight this challenge of finding ways to accurately name nouns not a part of anishinaabe culture and identify meaningful terms for a number of english prepositions. but challenges in translation should not be considered reasons to avoid the task. as an expatriate poet living in paris, stein understood the meaning of dislocation and relocation. born in 1874 to jewish american parents, emigration and migration held a particular meaning for stein, but as she disassembles the term it can be read in many ways. her line in the passage based on a room, preceded by reflection on cardinal directions and followed by rhetorical discourse focused on seduction asks: “giving it away, not giving it away, is there any difference?” (47). this phrase could productively be read as a post-constitutional, post-treaty critique about the shape and nature of gifts and what and why specific acts are defined as giving. in anishinaabemowin, there is no way to speak of giving without clarifying what is given, who is giving, who is receiving. there is no gift followed by the idiomatic fragment “thanks” used in english. instead, the word “miigwe” (the act of giving) is used to reflect a relationship based on “miizh” (giving to someone) often followed by “miigwechiwi” (thanks). a speaker of anishinaabemowin must determine: does “we” includes the listener or not (gimiizhaanaanig or nimiizhaanaanig)? are we are giving to them or they are giving to us (nimiizhaanaanig or nimiizhigoonaanig)? are the giving and not giving always parallel with us giving to them and then not giving to them (nimiizhaanaanig mii gaawiin miizhaasiiwangidwaa) or are we sometimes giving to them and they are not giving to us (nimiizhaanaanig mii gaawiin miizhaasiiyangidwaa)? margaret noodin “nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag” 22 native nations were deconstructed through warfare, treaty-making and legislation. when the dawes act of 1887 used accounting as a means of erasure, who was doing the giving and whose land it was to give? translating the facts of history can be as difficult as verb paradigms. those who survived the giving often became forced and voluntary immigrants in a home rapidly becoming unfamiliar. stein’s tender buttons offers ways to think about nationhood and identity. oginiig – the roses this essay began by noting stein’s desire to use alternate means of expression to deconstruct perception and find the “center” of an object or idea. an indigenous reading of her work might identify the search for a center as a post-national enterprise. as stein moved to new angles to discern different truths she exchanged one view for another. first color, then sound, then wavelengths and dimensions led to new views. she composed strings of syllables as simultaneously readable and unreadable as picasso’s woman in a blue hat, eyes bulging, shapeshifting, trapped in two dimensions. the polysyllabic nature of anishinaabemowin easily lends itself to such a practice. the verb as the center of most words, is surrounded by prefixes, suffixes, tenses and other various possible additions radiating outward in both directions changing the meaning ever so slightly with each addition. stein’s system for reflecting on reality mirrors the economy and precision of perception long practiced by anishinaabe people, as well as many other indigenous groups, where there is no definite binary, no unidirectional chronology, but rather a living center of knowledge that is maintained through continual reinterpretation. the reason for holding fast to ceremony and tradition is not one of savage simplicity but rather sophisticated understanding of an everevolving universe. sustainability is not a romantic relationship to nature; it is a scientific response to shifts in space and time. perhaps stein was writing about a feast, some buttons and a roast, but in her words we can find the metamorphosis of mountains, the light of stars, and the sound of ideas. we find a center that defines better than edges. she sums it up well when she states, “what is the custom, the custom is in the centre” (izhitwaayang naawayi'iing) (26). and in this center, wrapped in phenomenology and physics is spiritual tradition and the insistence that change is inevitable and survival depends on embracing it. her writing is dense and rambling perhaps, but so is life and the methods of healing and persistence. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 23 a religion, almost a religion, any religion, a quintal in religion, a relying and a surface and a service in indecision and a creature and a question and a syllable in answer and more counting and no quarrel and a single scientific statement and no darkness and no question and an earned administration and a single set of sisters and an outline and no blisters and the section seeing yellow and the centre having spelling and no solitude and no quaintness and yet solid quite so solid and the single surface centred and the question in the placard and the singularity, is there a singularity, and the singularity, why is there a question and the singularity why is the surface outrageous, why is it beautiful why is it not when there is no doubt, why is anything vacant, why is not disturbing a centre no virtue, why is it when it is and why is it when it is and there is no doubt, there is no doubt that the singularity shows. (49) in the deconstruction of morphemes and translation of ideas, meanings do not always align and cannot always be tied to etymological history, but the structure and content of tender buttons can still cause questions to arise, new alignments to be realized, centers to be rebuilt. as stein writes of sensation, location and history, her words hold additional meaning for readers familiar with anishinaabe language and culture. this attempt at translation and anishinaabe reading, this bakonaan dibaajimowin, a skinning of the story, is not the only, or even the most productive method for reading stein, but it does produce new cross-cultural linguistic and literary comparisons. her atomic disassembly questions standard ways of perceiving nouns, actions, and relationships. her words render obvious the way patterns of language lead to different interpretations. tender buttons can be a source of cross-cultural inspiration. stein had her own dance in mind when she wrote: “dance a clean dream and an extravagant turn up, secure the steady rights and translate more than translate the authority, show the choice and make no more mistakes than yesterday” (51). i will, gertrude, i will: biinishimoyaan bawaajimoyaan gaye maamakanendaagoziyaan, zhaabwitooyaan gweyakonakoniigeyaan, aanikanootamaan, aanikanootawagwaa, ayaangwaamendamaan gaye gaawiin waa awashme wanichigesiiyaan. works cited margaret noodin “nokaa-zagaakwa’on gaawiin zagaakwasiiaag” 24 agnes smedley. race in north america: origin and evolution of a worldview. westview press, 1999. bruner, belinda. "a recipe for modernism and the somatic intellect in the alice b. toklas cook book and gertrude stein's tender buttons." papers on language & literature 45.4 (2009): 411. dubnick, randa k. the structure of obscurity : gertrude stein, language, and cubism / randa dubnick. 1984. marchiselli, chani anine. "queer sonorities: sound as persuasion in gertrude stein’s tender buttons." women's studies in communication 39.1 (2016): 69-85. poetzsch, markus. "presence, deixis, and the making of meaning in gertrude stein's tender buttons." university of toronto quarterly 75.4 (2006): 946-56 stein, gertrude. "poetry and grammar," lectures in america. beacon press, 1985. ----. “portraits and repetition.” collected in gertrude stein: writings and lectures by patricia meyerowitz ed. penguin books, 1971. ----. tender buttons. dover publications, 1997. microsoft word 465-3380-3-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 63 chasms and collisions: native american women’s decolonial labor molly mcglennen “i have always felt there is a significant chasm that divides native people from non-natives…that began at first contact and continues to this day.” shan goshorn1 “[my basket narratives] weave old forms of articulation with new forms of iconography to create a collision, which echoes the cultural experience of my life.” sarah sense2 the forced absences within settler-colonial violence in his introduction to native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance, gerald vizenor states, “cultural simulations of natives abound in museums, monuments, commerce, art, cinema, literature, and history. these detractions are the derisive signifiers of manifest manners” (5). one needs only to think of an edward curtis photograph to recall the powerful, metonymic universality of indian iconography created by the settler colonial enterprise. it is mockery, to be sure, as vizenor indicates; it is also a calculated move toward a common goal of securing settler colonial futures. undeniably, the “signifiers of manifest manners” shape and continually signal how non-indigenous north americans imagine themselves to be. as many native american studies scholars have argued, indianness as a symbolic construct has been and continues to be hijacked, perverted, and ultimately performed by non-indigenous westerners throughout a long history of profit from cultural appropriation of native peoples, whether land, practices, or lives. the quotes with which i begin this article address the ways in which two native american visual artists understand and characterize the fallout of the project of “cultural simulations” that preoccupy systems of continued colonial occupation in the americas. each creates indigenous visualities that trouble settler colonial designs of signifying the indian - visualities that are hyper-aware of settler colonial methods of reading native subjects by binding them to metrics of authenticity. what’s more, their works record indigenous subjects not as static representations but as dynamic, living peoples that have complicated relationships to the settler state; each of her “visual records” is not a document of closure but is a decolonizing blueprint molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 64 fortified by the vitality of indigenous lived experience. the “chasm” of misunderstanding about which eastern band cherokee artist shan goshorn argues and the “collision” of cultural expressions about which choctaw/chitimacha artist sarah sense describes provides a way of thinking about artistic renderings of lived experience for native women. i argue that artistic grammars are decolonized expressions that critically and creatively reckon with both the chasm and collision of historical and contemporary genocidal terror. the labor of reckoning which sense and goshorn take on in their works recognizes that the invention of cultural simulations is the specter of white desire – a necessary fiction which protects and projects white innocence from the on-going project of cultural genocide. doing decolonizing labor the logic of settler-colonial efforts and its narratives collapses indigenous bodies and bodies of experience into representative truths, which graft indigenous nations and their histories to stalled-out and fixed branches of human evolution. these distilled, packaged, and symbolic representations of the indian, especially the indian woman, serve as evidence that dominant narratives preoccupy and energize modern historiography and contemporary actions and policies. historical amnesia as a tool of colonial control neutralizes and justifies not only continued violence against native peoples (and theft of land and resources), but also energizes continued aggression through the creation of persistent symbolic violence – that is, discursive dominance. ojibwe scholar scott lyons in x-marks argues how violence stems from what he calls “discursive formations” -ways of speaking and image making “that are traceable to institutions, the state, and dominant cultural understandings, and always associated with power and hierarchies” (24). these ways of dominance rely on amnestic insulation. iconography via films and media, even via u.s. currency (as we will see ahead) has produced some of the most common virulent and debasing depictions of native peoples in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and stand as reminders of long-standing and ongoing state dominance. the works of sense and goshorn, in the form of culturally-specific basketry, intervene in and resist both the progressivist unfolding of white settler colonial history and the violent archiving of its accompanying narrative -a discursive enterprise that wields native peoples as “simulations” of past-ness as it secures its own future. i argue that sense and goshorn present to us what decolonial labor can look like. as i argue this i am also aware of aleut scholar eve transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 65 tuck’s and ethnic studies scholar k. wayne yang’s warning in their article “decolonization is not a metaphor” that “the metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or settler moves to innocence, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity” (1). while tuck and yang are primarily analyzing education studies and activist efforts (mainly the occupy movement), their reminders about the divide between actual decolonizing labor versus settler decolonial desires remain pertinent. tuck and yang stress an “ethic of incommensurability” by arguing that “decolonization as material, not metaphor,” obstructs settler moves to innocence (28). as i will show ahead, the visual narratives sense and goshorn create are important decolonizing materials needed to disarm the hegemony of settler discursive formations in order to safeguard indigenous futures. at the core of this labor, many native american studies scholars suggest, lie the contours of sovereignty. in fact, seneca scholar michelle raheja asserts in native studies key words that “to engage deeply in the process of decolonization, it is critical to insist on a much broader notion of sovereignty that takes seriously the importance of sovereignty as it is expressed intellectually, politically, socially, and individually (i would even add therapeutically) in cultural forms as diverse as dance, film, theater, the plastic arts, literature, and even hip-hop and graffiti” (28). thus, it is quite understandable how contemporary native american artists are, in many ways, leading that essential engagement with decolonization. artists like goshorn and sense express not just wishes or metaphorical desires for decolonization, but rather provide creative models that particularize unburdened material realities of and futures for indigenous peoples. i argue ahead that their works demonstrate a labor of dimensionality, which directly combats the emptied-out and un-bodied nature of settler imaginings of the indian. the deep-rooted binary of the primitive indian versus the civilized euro-american sustains the genealogy of modernity. as we know, modernity’s project of archiving and historicizing the other has served to disassemble indigenous cultural practices and methodologies in various ways. this progressivist ideology, as native american studies scholar joseph bauerkamper states, “authorizes the violence and destruction of colonization [as it] neutralizes historical, social, and legal claims against violence and destruction by willfully and relentlessly forgetting the past.” (135 “videographic sovereignty”). thus, the willful work of settler historical amnesia (erasure) must be coupled with unyielding symbolic violence (invention), or “nominal discoveries,” in order to conceal the more than five centuries of “colonial siege” and molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 66 “virtual exile,” (105-106) as gerald vizenor argues. in x-marks, lyons also understands that recognizing this illogic could be the first step in launching “a counterattack to the genocidal implications that are always inherent in the notion of indian identity as timeless, stable, eternal, but probably in the minds of most people still ‘vanishing’” (60). native women creatively theorizing the array of visual culture that contemporary female native artists produce enlivens the ability to work against colonial control by actively producing unburdened discourses, or in the words of native american studies scholar dean rader, the ability to “tell us [non-natives] what americans have told the world indians can stand for (151 “indigenous semiotics”). by engaging with select woven works from sense and goshorn, my article attempts to unpack the tensed linkages between the histories of self/representation and decolonizing efforts that combat the ongoing processes of genocide. i want to pay special attention to the way the artists create complex, twoand three-dimensional narratives via basketry that resist metonymic settlercolonial constructions, which not only perpetuate fetishized stereotypes but also normalize and rationalize continual violence, especially against native women. basketry weaving, specifically, provides a relevant method of engagement for this type of labor because of what it allows the artists to do and how it allows them to do it. in their own unique ways, both artists utilize a double-weaving technique, which radically upends the intentionally planate nature of settler narratives. sense’s and goshorn’s woven works establish not only the “counterattack to genocidal implications” (lyons) of such stereotypes, they also intervene in the colonial enterprise of normalizing such stereotypes that work to insist on native peoples vanishing. indigenous feminists dian million (athabaskan) and mishuana goeman (seneca) have helped me make even deeper sense of the creative ways sense and goshorn resist colonial violences through their work. because of their attention to gender as it intersects with settler colonialism, million and goeman illuminate how native women artists’ visualities prompt imaginative thinking about indigenous histories, realities, and futures. specifically, million’s theory of indigenism and goeman’s analysis of colonial grammars are at the fore of how i am able to read the artists’ visual narratives that emerge through their basketry. million argues that indigeneity “must be understood as a lateral and internal strategy to rebuild indigneous social relations across hemispheres that are not merely reactive to any nation-state’s embrace” (38 transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 67 “there is a river”). goeman asserts that “representations of indian bodies are stagnant, as is the nature of space in a majority of colonial discourses,” (237 “disrupting a grammar of place”). taken together, million and goeman disclose a set of dimensional strategies which -when exercised -stymie the practices of state-determined fixity and violent, gendered naturalization of “cultural simulations.” moreover, i argue, these strategies recognize the importance of theorization through creativity that sense and goshorn practice through their basketry. sense’s and goshorn’s use of the double-weaving technique (an extremely difficult technique where splints are woven bottom to top, over the lip, and back down again) strategically reorients the viewer and exposes him/her/them to imaginative ways of signifying native women’s experiences. i want to say that native women’s visual art produces narratives which work both from the ground up (internally, from tribally-specific knowledges) and in connection to the web of hemispheric indigenous consciousness (laterally), through “a space,” in the words of goeman, “that remains unfinished and unconquered” (237). sense’s work undertakes this by constructing uncompromised indigenous female subjects in direct collision with the colonial imagining and reproduction of the subservient indian princess. goshorn’s work achieves this by fashioning the realities of indigenous women as they are affected by extreme chasms of misunderstanding. if the willful work of settler historical amnesia (erasure) is necessarily coupled with inflexible symbolic violence (invention) for the project of colonialism to continue and spread, then the tribally specific (from the ground up) labor of native artists must also be commensurate with the hemispheric/global indigenous connective tissue (lateral) of native women’s work against all forms of violence and oppression. it seems to me that dimension best addresses the oblate nature of discursive dominance, and it seems to me that sense and goshorn are entirely aware of just that. the cowgirl and indian princess remix http://sarahsense.com/artist.asp?artistid=11571&akey=l6dfm793&ajx=1#!pf22225 chitimacha/choctaw artist sarah sense’s oeuvre3 reveals nearly a dozen powerful series of works over the past two decades that capitalize on her signature practice of weaving photographs by way of traditional chitimacha basketry techniques. in this process of weaving in her 20042012 “cowgirls and indian princess” series, sense provides a complex remixing of u.s. history molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 68 and contemporary pop culture through her “interpretations of hollywood appropriation of the native experience, most simply explained as the real with the fake” (sense’s personal website). much of her work examines and dismantles the gendered and violent construction of u.s. nationbuilding and those accompanying progressivist narratives that perpetuate, legitimize, and sanitize the on-going aggression against native people, and in particular women. sense’s “cowgirls and indian princess” series consists of works that evoke classic hollywood films (thus, “classic” narratives of hetero-male euro-american dominance) through iconic actors such as clint eastwood, john wayne, buffalo bill, rhett butler, gary cooper and ronald reagan, among other prototypical figures. often these symbols of aggression, virility, and superiority are placed adjacent to female figures who symbolically register either a stereotypical indian princess or cowgirl. sense’s works, however, are far from a simple counter-appropriation of that vintage west with which viewers are so acquainted. sense’s series gone with him, the sex is in the mouth, and play dead are not just transforming western visual metonymy and synecdoche into indigenous stage-settings; they are also challenging the inevitability and dominance of those common assumptions about native peoples. moreover, the artist’s creative process and experience of artistic labor are in and of themselves challenging and transforming structures of power. sense relayed to me that while living in los angeles in the early 2000’s she started collecting old movie posters as part of what would become her long-standing project “cowgirls and indian princess” (personal correspondence). through this collecting, sense told me, she began thinking about how one might reclaim depictions of native women despite the history of violence perpetuated against them. it was also around this time she was determined to read everything she could that was written on chitimacha basket weaving—which she found out is overwhelmingly dated and ethnographic and, not surprisingly, sparse. it was over a series of summers on the chitimacha reservation (which is located in what is now southern louisiana) and working with and creating programs for chitimacha youth that she bought a chitimacha basket from an elder. studying the bottom of it and its designs, she taught herself the technique by drawing the patterns. being fully aware of how she has circumvented traditional protocol that would have her learn how to weave by first showing interest in and seeking guidance by the four remaining elder weavers in the community and by harvesting and working with the local sugar cane, she went back to the tribal chair to ask permission to continue to teach herself and the transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 69 chitimacha youth by showing him the drawings she had made. through their conversations together and through his stories and teachings to sense over time, the tribal chair granted permission for her to continue. from here, sense’s series takes off.4 referencing the classic 1930’s gone with the wind film and the famous rhett butler and scarlet o’hara pose, gone with him 6 (2011) showcases sense’s technique of splicing and then interlacing imagery by weaving photographs and movie posters printed on mylar strips with artist tape through chitimacha basketry techniques. gone with him 6 interrupts representations of colonial dominance ordinarily fashioned by female virtue and male misogyny (scarlet and rhett respectively) by inserting female indigenous presence. in her entire series, in fact, the female images are overtly sexualized with exaggerated presence. the indian princess is not a passive, timid victim in gone with him 6, but is the figure wielding the gun. what is more, that indian princess figure, who looks seductively at the viewer with a pistol raised in the air, is the artist herself. rhett and scarlet are mere table dressing in this corrupted fantasy. in gone with him 5 (2008), a cousin work, rhett and scarlett may very well be the target of the female figure’s pistol. sense told me that while in her mfa program at parsons the new school for design in new york she talked over her ideas for her works in the “cowgirls and indian princess” series with her thesis advisors (personal correspondence). one of them asked her why she inserts herself into the pieces by saying “you don’t look indian, so how is the effect of unsettling representations working?” (personal correspondence). sense told me, laughing, that this is probably the best thing he could have told her because from there she began to see and understand how and why she was moved to turn the lens on herself. by inserting herself sometimes as cowgirl (who is native) and sometimes as indian princess (that isn’t necessarily identifiably native), sense creates a resistant discourse about self-representation that works against dominant paradigms that reign supreme in american consciousness. in fact, gone with him 6, like many of her works, exposes the devious short hand that obfuscates settler colonial violence against native peoples. turning the lens on herself, sense incorporates indigenous presence into the visual terrain, which in the words of goeman, creates “lived spaces” which belie the fixity of place that colonial mappings determine, as well as the fixity of “bodies that are made absent in settler-spatial imaginaries” (259). sense’s use of dimensional intervention by molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 70 way of capsizing blueprints for conquest and inserting blueprints for indigenous futures surely compels people (like her thesis advisor) to reckon with their own settler colonial assumptions. sense’s remixing of chitimacha basket weaving onto planar surfaces emulates the traditional practice of “double weaving,” where a basket is woven from its base upwards along the sides, to the lip, and then back down again to the bottom. even though many of sense’s works are expressed two-dimensionally rather than three-dimensionally, the artist is working from fundamental chitimacha techniques. to this point, sense relayed to me that she may not have been fully conscious of this at the very beginnings, but she soon recognized as she was creating the series over the years that she was finding a way for the practice and its protocols to work so that chitimacha weaving would continue. (personal correspondence). while some may critique sense’s actions as bypassing tradition, i have come to view her creative methods as one of the many crucial ways contemporary native peoples ensure indigenous continuance. gesturing laterally toward the connective tissue that spans contemporary indigenous visual culture, sense’s series the sex in the mouth (#’s 2, 3, 5 and 7) showcases a more overtly violent figure, clint eastwood, from the 1976 film the outlaw josey wales.5 here, the figure of clint eastwood quintessentially captured, half screaming, half snarling, wielding two revolvers, is book-ended by what one might read as indian maidens. the figure on the right is sense herself, once again playing indian and playing with the idea of indian, a type of ironic (and hilarious) play of seeing and being double. the figure on the left registers any number of stock indian princesses modeled by white women. in many ways, this “being double,” as represented by sense herself, exposes the fraudulence in playing indian by revealing the superficiality of it, while -at the same time – demonstrating the dimension of actual native women’s existence. as we know, in efforts to subjugate indigenous nations of the americas, the practitioners of colonization and importers of christianity recognized the implicit need to subdue native women through rape and murder in order to secure gendered hierarchies of power. responding to this logic and action, indigenous women’s visual works teach us that seeing the west’s representation of native women is to see the blueprint for conquest and to access the narratives that get contracted to symbolic shorthand. part of the blueprint, indeed, is the way in which colonial imaginings, renderings, and narrations intentionally abrade, flatten, and consume the representation of native women as a practice. seeing actual indigenous women is to see the history of conquest and the targeting of female bodies for extinction. this targeting, however, transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 71 gets adjusted in sense’s work. the literal weaving of narratives necessarily puts settler colonialism in conversation with, interwoven with, indigenous experience. violence is recontextualized. but even more than this, the myth of settler colonial innocence is exposed through sense’s planar baskets because they create new vantage points and orientations to violence. the sex in the mouth series is plainly about violence and the targeting of native women in the violence of conquest. it is also, however, about the u.s.’s move to create the illusion of innocence in that enterprise. josey wales/clint eastwood symbolizes white purity; no matter how rugged his appearance or how vile his actions, his motives are entirely righteous. because what the face/body of clint eastwood symbolizes on the film screen (and therefore in the u.s. imaginary) is so soundly fastened to the onlooker’s notions of white heterosexual masculinity, his image perpetually produces a virtuous representation of settler colonialism. in his essay “the savage mind,” ojibwe scholar david treuer argues that there is no innocence to be found in this land, implying the u.s. “american goodness/innocence” is a fiction we collectively tell ourselves that makes permanent the ongoing, yet always hidden, happenings of violence. and this virtuous american dream, he says, is dependent upon the fear and loathing of the racialized other, particularly the indian. what sense does is expose this symbolism of american innocence to daylight and exhibit not only the virulent nature of conquest, but its continual and present day ramifications. sense’s work expresses the decolonizing labor of denaturalizing the settler colonial logic that works only to sustain settler futures. as the series progresses, the images focus more and more onto the subjects lower half of their faces and the figures become more and more imbricated. thus, by the sex in the mouth 7, with only the mouths of the three figures visible and nearly touching, the basket imagery becomes highly sexualized. yet, the work also seems to suggest the eclipsing of the josey wales/clint eastwood by two women on either side. the scream of white male virility that is read in earlier works in the series could now be taken as a scream of terror in light of impending doom -his literal demise by the hands of two women. it is “the mashup of familiar images that defamiliarizes their signification,” argues lenape scholar joanne barker in her introduction critically sovereign. in her discussion of jemez pueblo/korean artist debra yepa-pappan’s live long and prosper (spock was a half-breed), barker asserts that “[her work] resituates molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 72 indigenous women and their communities in multiple possibilities of the past, present, and future in ways that refuse their foreclosure as historical relics or irrelevant costumes in the services of imperial formations and colonized identities” (30). thus, sense’s autonomous messaging moves indigenous women out of the realm of service to white male violence and the colonial system that is fueled by it. at the same time, she calls our attention to how the practice of playing indian, signaled by the white indian maiden in the work, encumbers that autonomy by naturalizing white indian play. it is not only indigenous bodies to which sense is attentive; it is also indigenous land. in sense’s play dead (#1, 2, 3 and 4) series, the woven planar basket depicts two figures: on the left, gary cooper as the righteous and rugged will kane from the 1952 film high noon, and on the right, the artist herself in the role of contemporary indian cowgirl with a gun. on the original film’s theatrical poster it reads “the story of a man who was too proud to run” foreshadowing the film’s storyline of kane, the marshal in a town in new mexico territory, who remains steadfast in protecting his town and wife from a posse of outlaws who have come to exact revenge on him. sense’s work, however, delivers an ironic twist on the shorthand that gary cooper’s profile provides. will kane signifies the morality of white (male) american character and its righteous and manifest connections to and dominion over indigenous lands. his refusal to be removed, become invisible, or rendered extinct eclipses real native peoples’ and nations’ moral title to their lands, just as it obfuscates real histories of native peoples resistance against colonial and genocidal terror. if in the settler colonial imaginary, as sense alludes to through her title, native people “play dead,” then that extinction opens up free, vacant land for continued expansion as it sanitizes that violent theft. white men, like will kane, become the rightful benefactors of the land. but play dead, which serially zooms in on the arms of the two figures wielding their guns at each other, illustrates the violence imbedded in the ideology and practice of manifest destiny at the same time it reveals the powerful intervention of native women in that autocolonial narrative of inheritance. cooper, in this visual narrative, doesn’t stand a chance. beautiful mashups http://www.shangoshorn.net/baskets/ like sense, shan goshorn6 is another contemporary artist who uses the double weaving technique. eastern band cherokee artist goshorn’s three dimensional baskets interlace text and transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 73 imagery from both native and settler colonial documents which establish a visual storytelling of both tribal and colonial traditions and realities. while sense says that her basket narratives “weave old forms of articulation with new forms of iconography to create a collision,” goshorn says that her baskets reveal indigenous versions of history, which necessarily uncover – rather than enshroud -the chasms of division between native and non-native peoples. goshorn’s work color of conflicting values (2013) addresses a tribally-specific era of terror for cherokee people caused by and represented through the tyranny of andrew jackson. employing the traditional cherokee double-weave technique, goshorn uses reproductions of the indian removal act of 1830 printed onto arches watercolor paper along with gold foil as her splints for the interior. goshorn explains in her artist statement that the “applied gold foil represents how the discovery of gold accelerated the process of cherokee removal.” (goshorn’s personal website). for the exterior, “the imagery combines the [mostly green] forest vegetation of the mountainous cherokee homeland” (personal website), but what emerges from this verdant scenery is the replication of the u.s. twenty-dollar bill with andrew jackson’s face. because, as goshorn found out, she could not digitally scan u.s. currency, she painted by hand the 20-dollar bill that is incorporated into the visual narrative of the basket. goshorn explains some of the meaning of her artistic choices: i can’t think of anything more important to native people than land because it is the very land that links us to our ancestors; consequently, it is what binds us to our families. unlike the prevalent attitude of harnessing the earth’s resources for financial gain, native people consider the earth a relative – our first motherand our relationship to the plants, animals, rocks and soil is familial as well. few, if any, of our government leaders share this outlook but president andrew jackson demonstrated a particularly tyrannical approach to removing indians from their homeland for personal profit, displacing most of the se tribes to lands west of the mississippi so settlers (and he personally) could claim the land. it is galling that his portrait should be on the $20 dollar bill but perhaps this usage best sums up what was valuable to this man. it seems a bitter irony that us currency is the same color of the beautiful lush mountain forests of my people’s rightful homeland. (personal website). goshorn adds that the cherokee consider jackson to be a “traitor of the worst kind.” color of conflicting values decodes the settler colonial logic, which narrates the inveterate story of molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 74 jackson as a great leader worthy of memorialization on the nation’s currency (thus righteous and inculpable), and not as the tyrant who unconstitutionally and vindictively removed native peoples from the southeast to oklahoma territory via the death march known as the trail of tears, among other forced removals of southeast native peoples. more than this, goshorn’s work exposes not only the tyrannical actions of a u.s. president, but the system of violence that permits those actions. what is made explicit by color of conflicting values is that it is not enough to simply understand the truth about settler colonial history (e.g. jackson is not the man that u.s. history lauds him to be); rather, the work steers its non-indigenous viewer to reckon with his/her/their privileged inheritance from state sanctioned genocide. in particular, color of conflicting values reveals how settler idolization of money trumps the care for and life with the land as well as the value of actual indigenous human beings. through its history to this day, the u.s. and its settler inhabitants have demonstrated just that: native peoples and their connections to the land matter very little within in systems bankrolled by greed. thus, the work signals the fiction of white innocence as well as the unsettling of white futures in reckoning with that fiction. goshorn’s work suggests the continuities of settler colonial violences that, if not checked, continue to act as forms of tyranny in indigenous peoples’ lives. the effects of tyranny and terror, as we know, are themselves gendered. goshorn’s extraordinary basket reclaiming our power (2014) weaves the language of sections 904, 905, and 910 of the reauthorization of the violence against women act of 2013 that re-instituted tribal authority to prosecute abusers on tribal lands, especially non-native abusers who until 2013 could act without fear of prosecution7. public testimonies of personal accounts of abuse, goshorn explains, were what convinced the house and senate to pass the vote (personal website). the language of vawa and statistics of high levels of violence are interwoven with a series of images. the images are taken from photographs from over 50 native women across the northern hemisphere, women of all ages, wearing street clothes (rather than, say, powwow regalia) and wrapped in intertribal shawls, indicating how this act may serve to protect native women and “untie the hands of tribal courts to dispense justice.” (personal website). a community project, the basket is a beautiful array of the acts’ text interwoven with dozens of native women, shoulder to shoulder, encircling the work. reclaiming our power shows women united - literally body to body – defending and regenerating their strength and value as indigenous human beings. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 75 here again, goshorn’s work interrogates the violence native women experience as that violence is plainly codified into laws and maintained by official narratives. as a way of keeping present the staggering statistics about native women and violence (one in three native women will be raped in her lifetime, for example), goshorn explains that the splints are made from “the paper text…washed with purple, black and blue paint to emphasize the bruising severity of this violence” (personal website). reclaiming our power’s narrative does not rest on this reality; rather, it foregrounds the immense power in native women’s leadership in addressing these ongoing violences. native women’s cooperation in this piece, from across the hemisphere, speaks to the constant and conscientious coalescing with which native women have always been engaged. her basket narrative makes apparent million’s and goeman’s articulations of native women’s creation of spaces of interaction, based on both tribal, grounded knowledges and lateral networks of coalition. in addition, reclaiming our power illuminates an “active visioning,” (39) as million outlines her theoretical framework. through the visualities of goshorn’s baskets, these creative coalitions produce “the imaginary that indigenous peoples hold to when they attach to a future beyond a present that is increasingly ensconced within a medicalized therapeutic diagnosis of our colonial wounding” (39). interaction and coalition are actions for which native peoples have always recognized and revered native women. goshorn’s 2015 triptych set of cherokee style, single-weave baskets vessel was inspired by lakota writer and activist luther standing bear’s quote “it is the mothers, not the warriors, who create a people and guide their destiny” (personal website). on the outside of the baskets, standing bear’s words are braided with a single image of a young pregnant native mother, stunningly posed in each basket of the triptych. goshorn explains: the interior weaves together words from one of the many emails this young mother and i exchanged during our collaboration, in which she eloquently expresses her gratitude to the creator for choosing her to help grow this child, emphasizing how beautiful and powerful motherhood makes her feel” (personal website). goshorn’s choice of and collaboration with her subject seems essential to her creative process and the ways in which native women’s images are rendered. that she formed a relationship with the subject and includes her words in the baskets lifts her from not only anonymity, but also objectification and the “signifiers of manifest manners.” no euphemism for indian nor surrogate for pocahontas, goshorn’s subject inspires an uncompromised indigenous female presence, with molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 76 the animate promise of indigenous progeny. unlike the unknowable nature of the indian princess figure that occupies so much of the u.s. imaginary, goshorn’s subject is known -and loved. goshorn is not the only contemporary indigenous artist who features the relational aspects of subject choice in his/her/their work. native american studies scholar cynthia fowler, in analyzing the photographs of seminole/creek/navajo artist hulleah tsinhnahjinnie, stresses tsinhnahjinnie’s critical choices for subjects: this shift from a fictionalized model to a real individual [a friend or relative] is a highly significant change….thus, it is through these specific women as models in the photographs …that the viewer experiences beauty” (199). the figure in vessel becomes a critical site to better understand how the white romanticized and often violent notions of the indian princess and her progeny factor into the securing the settler colonial agenda. instead, the contemporary subject in goshorn’s basket, supported by her own voice and in conversation with standing bear’s visionary words within the visual terrain of the work, signals the promise of indigenous continuance. the mother and her unborn child not only communicate a threat to colonial constraint, but they also signify indigenous notions of beauty, which include the sacred responsibility of bringing children into the world. goshorn explains that in addition to the “divine gift of conceiving, loving and guiding [our] children, …men and women alike [as] vessels of this sacred responsibility,” the works also “points to the commitment of native people [treating] our traditions in the same way. our culture requires dedication, respect and devotion to nurture it and keep it alive” (personal website). goshorn ties the literal labor of birthing a child to the labor of cultural continuance. she also ties the continuities of ancestral wisdom to the ways in which present-day native peoples make sense of their lives and realities. it is, to me, a type of decolonial labor that does not remain in the realm of ideas or discourse, but is actualized on a day-to-day basis by native peoples. it is also the type of decolonial labor that centers creative theorization and its methods, which primes the onlooker to engage his/her/their imagination rather than latent assumptions. conclusion the settler colonial utilization of history naturalizes its benign nature while the dominant, monolithic historicization of u.s. history designates the settler as a neutral body. unchecked, this purposeful and ongoing project has always and will always produce settler innocence and transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 77 protect settler futures. as decolonizing methods, rethinking and re-narrating history does more than monitor this project. native women artists intervene in ways that expose the fraudulent claim of settler innocence of indigenous genocide. as revealed by sense and goshorn, this labor of creative intervention is not merely reactive; rather, in the spirit of million’s theory of indigenism, it “is an active doing, the imagining and revisioning…that is never, never static (38), and in the words of goeman is necessarily resisting a gendered settler grammar. cultural simulations are the result of the fixity of colonial definitions and historicization. indigenous creativity provides an antidote to the seemingly impervious logics of settler power. each of the works creates narratives that skillfully generate impedance in the type of cultural collisions and chasms of misunderstanding that both sense and goshorn, respectively, express from their beginnings. the weaving in which each artist invests her time and creative energy brings native women’s histories and realities right up against the violence of colonial narratives. through the process of braiding images and text next to, on top of, beneath, and through representations that have, by themselves, remained motionless and monochromatic (but nonetheless purposeful in the project of settler colonialism), the artists’ tribally-specific labor demonstrates the type of embodied decolonizing work that brings dimensional resistance to erasure. indeed, sense and goshorn make indispensable indigenous women’s centrality in that decolonizing work. through the visual narratives they create, sense and goshorn provoke the viewer to lean into the type of animate reckoning needed to shift the dominant paradigms that would otherwise secure the continuance of indigenous cultural genocide. notes 1 https://kinggalleries.com/woven-creation-shan-goshorns-color-conflicting-values/ 2 http://www.sarahsense.com/ 3 http://www.sarahsense.com/ 4 i thank art collector edward guarino for introducing me to sarah sense’s work. i also thank sarah herself for being so generous with her time, sharing insights about her work, and making a visit to vassar college. 5 the film the outlaw josey wales was based on the 1973 novel by forest carter, a pen-name for asa earl carter who was a segregationist, leader of the white citizens council, a member of the ku klux klan, and an unofficial speech writer for george wallace. under his pseudonym, molly mcglennen “chasms and collisions” 78 carter authored josey wales as well as the education of little tree and posed as a cherokee indian author. 6 http://www.shangoshorn.net/ 7 i thank shan goshorn for being so generous with her comments on an earlier draft of this essay. it was with tremendous sadness i learned of shan’s passing during the final stages of drafting this article. she will be greatly missed. works cited barker, joanne. “introduction: critically sovereign,” in critically sovereign: indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. edited by joanne barker. durham: duke university press, 2017. pp. 1-44. bauerkamper, joseph. “videographic sovereignty: hulleah j. tsinhnahjinnie’s aboriginal world view” in visualities: perspectives on contemporary american indian art and film. edited by denise cummings. michigan states press, 2011. pp. 131-140. fowler, cynthia. “aboriginal beauty and self-determination: hulleah tsinhnahjinnie’s photographic projects” in visualities: perspectives on contemporary american indian art and film. edited by denise cummings. michigan states press, 2011. pp. 189-206. goeman, mishuana. “disrupting a settler-colonial grammar of place: the visual memoir of hulleah tsinhnahjinnie” in theorizing native studies. edited by audra simpson and andrea smith. durham: duke university press, 2014. pp. 235-265. goshorn, shan. personal website. http://www.shangoshorn.net/ lyons, scott. x-marks: native signatures of assent. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2010. million, dian. “there is a river in me: theory from life” in theorizing native studies. edited by audra simpson and andrea smith. durham: duke university press, 2014. pp. 31-42. rader, dean. “indigenous semiotics and shared modernity” in visualities: perspectives on contemporary american indian art and film. edited by denise cummings. michigan states press, 2011. pp. 143-160. raheja, michelle. “visual sovereignty” in native studies key words. edited by stephanie nohelani teves, andrea smith, and michelle raheja. tucson: university of arizona press, 2015. pp. 25-34. sense, sarah. personal correspondence. september, 2012. sense, sarah. personal website. http://www.sarahsense.com/ treuer, david. “the savage mind” (three-part series) in the saturday rumpus essay. april 1, april 8th, and april15th, 2017. http://therumpus.net/ transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 79 tuck, eve and k. wayne yang. “decolonization is not a metaphor.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society. volume 1, issue 1. 2012. pp. 1-40. vizenor, gerald. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009. mergedfile transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 168 two spirit and queer indigenous resurgence through sci-fi futurisms, doubleweaving, and historical re-imaginings: a review essay qwo-li driskill. asegi stories: cherokee queer and two-spirit memory. arizona: the u of arizona p, 2016. 210 pages. isbn: 9780816533640 hope nicholson, ed. love beyond body space and time: an lgbtq sci-fi anthology. canada: bedside press, 2016. 120 pages. isbn: 9780993997075 kisukyukyit, my name is smokii sumac and i am a member of the ktunaxa nation. 1 i am twospirit, which means i carry certain responsibilities within the many communities i am a part of. this term, in my understanding, does not define my sexuality, but is perhaps more closely connected to my gender. while some define this term based on a simplified narrative of both male/female spirits existing in the same body, i believe that we could ask a thousand folks who claim two-spiritedness to define it and we would end up with a thousand different responses. so i can only speak for my own experience. in my life, two-spirit has come to have a spiritual meaning, one that calls on me to be in two places (sometimes at once) while also existing in the “in between.” on that note, there are a great many other terms i identify with as well, which are also important to my positionality. i am queer, nonbinary, transmasculine, and a poet. i am a writer, a phd candidate, and an instructor of indigenous literatures and creative writing. i am cat-dad, an auntie, an uncle, a sibling, and a child. i am hyper-aware that even as i write this, my experience of gender is shifting, changing, and growing. i open this way to give you a sense of the person examining the texts at hand, locating myself as two-spirit, queer, and indigenous as i discuss these two books which hold two-spirit/queer indigenous stories. i also do this to follow protocols of introducing myself, to you, as we enter the relationship of reviewer/reader. in my introductory indigenous literatures class this year, i opened with love beyond body space and time: an indigenous lgbt sci-fi anthology edited by hope nicholson, and including short stories from richard van camp, gwen benaway, cleo keahna, and recent governor general award winner, cherie dimaline. in the discussion following the assigned readings, a self-identified queer and indigenous student spoke in a somewhat awestruck manner about this anthology, saying “i can see myself in these stories.” i share this because it resonates deeply with why i choose to teach indigenous literatures. representation matters. this is argued by many scholars, including adrienne keene in her blog on cultural appropriation, native appropriations, and daniel heath justice in his forthcoming book why indigenous literatures matter. it also becomes clear in thousands of tiny moments, like my own experience teaching love beyond body space and time, where we can see how and why works that re-imagine two-spirit histories – and perhaps more importantly, futures – allow our students a new space to understand themselves, to see themselves within the texts we are teaching, many for the first time. when my student acknowledged their self-recognition, i nodded and held space for that moment in my classroom, remembering the tears in my own eyes as i finished richard van camp’s story from this anthology, “aliens.” with a simple and sweet queer love story, van camp opened up a world for me. in this world where so often queer, trans, two-spirit bodies are told we are wrong, disgusting, and worse, van camp’s story tells us we are beautiful and deserving of love. this alone would be reason for me to recommend the text, though i have to admit it is far from perfect. as one example of this, i find dimaline’s statement that “if you see a white buffalo in a smokii sumac “two spirit and queer indigenous resurgence” 169 dream then you are truly two-spirited” (37) (in her story “legends are made, not born”) troubling in its essentialism, and therefore i choose not to assign this text: however, i believe the anthology remains a worthy way to introduce students to new and exciting ideas that take us away from the stereotypical john wayne “only good indian” days (and let’s face it, a majority of my students don’t actually know who john wayne is anymore), and into re-defining indigeneity. love beyond body space and time imagines indigenous people into futures where blood quantum troubles are explored in a universe of transgender robots and virtual realities (“imposter syndrome” by mari kurisato), where a transwoman is invited into ceremony by her elders (“transitions” by gwen benaway) and where queer boys who face violence in their communities continue to stand up and help transform the world into something beautiful (daniel heath justice’s “the boys who became hummingbirds”). nicholson has done a good job of including important authors of the indigenous literary canon, like justice and van camp, alongside lesserknown writers, like kurisato and cleo keahna, whose haunting story-poem “parallax” closes out the collection. it is perhaps due to this inclusion of emerging writers, mixed with nicholson’s own experience as a crowd-funded publisher, that cause the weaknesses i see in the text; i can imagine someone more familiar with indigenous literatures, or an indigenous editor would have pushed the stories further than their sometimes draft-like current states. that being said, a quick look at nicholson’s publishing website for bedside press shows us that this endeavor was not about being part of the indigenous literary world so much as achieving her goal of, as clearly explained in her “letter from the editor”, sharing “the stories that need to be told” (8). in this way, i admire nicholson’s ability to see a project that deserved publication and get it created and into the hands, especially, of young queer indigenous folks. nicholson’s “letter from the editor” begins with her own clear assertion that “these are not my stories to tell,” (7). which can be very helpful when teaching students about cultural appropriation, a topic we still must spend far too much time on, in my opinion, in the indigenous literature classroom. following this assertion of her positionality, it’s an interesting choice, then, to include authors in the collection who are not lgbtq or two-spirit. i am critical of this choice; just as i question non-indigenous folks telling indigenous stories, i question cis and hetero folks telling lgbtq stories. while i can understand the decision, and to be honest, even appreciate the inclusions from those who i personally know as allies (nicholson does not make the distinction and neither will i), i do hope to see future collections that solely support indigenous lgbtq and two-spirit writers, as these are some of the most marginalized voices within our communities. nicholson doesn’t just give lip service to the idea that she shouldn’t take up too much space. following her brief introduction, she includes two essays by anishinaabe scholars grace dillon and niigaan sinclair, centring indigenous voices to set the tone for the stories that follow. these two essays alone, even in their brevity (just 10 pages together), are worth the minimal cost of this text. dillon’s “beyond the grim dust of what once was to a radiant possibility of what could be: two spirit-survivance stories” gives us insight into the anishinaabe concept of “biskaabiiyang: anishinaabemowin for ‘returning to ourselves,’” (dillon, 9), and how it can be used in examining two-spirit futurisms. dillon goes on to give readers a brief bibliography of the indigenous lgbtq/two-spirit writing tradition, nodding to those who have cleared a path for this kind of collection, speaking of them as forming “a tradition worth remembering and transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 170 recalling: beth brant’s a gathering of the spirit: a collection of writing and art by north american indian women (1984); [and] editor will roscoe’s collaborative offering with the gay american indians (gai) advocacy group, living the spirit: a gay american indigenous anthology (1988)…” (dillon 10). dillon goes on to include scholarly sources by leading queer indigenous studies scholars like daniel heath justice, lisa tatonetti, mark rifkin, and qwo-li driskill. i can envision passing this essay to students who want to learn more about queer indigenous studies, pointing to this paragraph and saying, “start here.” niigaan sinclair’s contribution to the collection, “returning to ourselves: two spirit futures and the now” builds upon dillon’s introduction to the concept of biskaabying through an essay that i would argue illustrates the concept in action. sinclair introduces us to ozawwendib, a historical anishinaabe two-spirit figure, through the use of ethnographic texts from the early eighteen hundreds. while these texts serve as a sort of “proof” of the existence of genders outside the binary in historical anishinaabe contexts, sinclair is careful to point out the flaws of the ethnographic analysis of ozawwendib, instead calling on us to envision and reimagine the possibilities while acknowledging an important truth: “defining an indigenous lgbtq and twospirit tradition is as complicated as describing indigenous people themselves” (14). sinclair draws upon some of the important scholarship that dillon has introduced in her chapter, to introduce, affirm, and validate indigenous lgbtq/two-spirit knowledges, stories, and futures. if you are looking for a way to introduce indigenous queerness and two-spirit gender identities to your class, i believe this book (with the few caveats listed here) is a good place to start. i open my class with love beyond body space and time because it is about imagining. imagining two-spirit futures. moving beyond the trauma narratives and statistics that we must teach, and into exciting new ways of thinking, being, and moving in the world. i believe that indigenous literature is perhaps the most important site of indigenous queer imaginings at the moment. but i also don’t think it should be taught alone. while queer indigenous studies is a rapidly emerging field, there are some incredible scholars who have been doing this work for quite some time now. if you are new to this field, i’d say the top two texts to start with are queer indigenous studies: critical interventions in theory, politics and literature, edited by qwo-li driskill, chris finley, brian joseph gilly and scott lauria morgenson, and sovereign erotics; a collection of two-spirit literatures edited by qwo-li driskill, daniel heath justice, deborah miranda and lisa tatonetti. you’ll notice a name in common there, and while i’m hesitant to make a limiting statement, (i’d prefer you go to dillon’s essay in love beyond body space and time and read all the texts mentioned there rather than only the three i mention here), i’m willing to say that i believe qwo-li driskill’s newest work, asegi stories: cherokee two spirit memory, is one of the most important new works of queer indigenous studies scholarship. “when you weave a basket, you create the world.” in the closing chapter of asegi stories, driskill quotes this phrase from peggy sanders brennan, a cherokee basket weaver. driskill is sharing a moment where the two were weaving together, a moment that i believe sums up driskill’s goals within this book; to create the world through the crafting and connecting of many threads; from historical texts, to stories shared in visiting, to re-imaginings and re-envisionings, driskill creates the world with cherokee two-spirit memory at the centre. the whole of this text centres on driskill’s creation of what i would call a cherokee research methodology; that of the double weaved basket, a type of basket that is essentially two baskets, one inside of the other, attached by the rim at the top. through this theoretical framework, driskill shows us hir methods smokii sumac “two spirit and queer indigenous resurgence” 171 of weaving, illustrating with a beautiful lived metaphor the ways in which we can re-imagine and re-story our lives, as two-spirit folks. i claim this narrative here, as a two-spirit identified person, however, there is also much in this story that i do not know/cannot claim. building on driskill’s methodology and theory of cherokee double-weaving, i want to point to the fact that much of this book is created with a clear acknowledgement, or even an assumption of insider knowledge. that is not to critique driskill, as i believe that hir privileging of cherokee knowledge within this book is done deliberately and pointedly in order to create a sense of not only cherokee intellectual sovereignty, but also as a sort of challenge to the reader: if you don’t know the history driskill is talking about, it is up to you to find it elsewhere. for my own purposes, i was able to glean what i needed from my experience reading and studying daniel heath justice’s kynship texts, which my professor at the time, deanna reder (sfu), paired with a lecture on cherokee history so that we, students at a canadian university, were introduced to the cherokee removal. while this is an extremely limited understanding of cherokee history, i share this limitation to say that i do not think one needs a deep understanding of cherokee knowledges to find this text beneficial, especially if you are reading it for insights into queer indigenous theory. in this way, i think about the many different lenses that each of us will read this book through, depending on our own positionality, history, and knowledges. it’s as if driskill is sitting in a public place, weaving hir basket, and i have been invited to say hello, maybe sit and visit for a while. myself, never having woven a basket, may be intrigued and curious, but i cannot do much more than appreciate the craft, perhaps learn a basic step or two, knowing it would take years and many baskets to get where driskill is now. on the other hand, another skilled basket weaver would feel right at home here with driskill, admiring parts of the creation that i would remain blind to. there are parts of this book that as a ktunaxa person with little knowledge of cherokee history, i remain blind to, though driskill has done much work to, if we are continuing with this metaphor, gather the tools and rivercane necessary for me to be able to learn more. there are parts of this book that as a two-spirit person, feel like home. i am reminded of my students seeing themselves in love beyond body space and time, as tears come to my eyes when i read about driskill learning to “press cedar against the inner wall of the basket and weave over [it]…so that the cedar can’t be seen” (5). driskill’s gift to me, as i recognize that i am the cedar. a recognition that two-spiritedness does not have to be a liminal space; does not need to be a movement from here to there, but instead it is both a presence and an absence. all this gifted to me within the first few pages of the introductory chapter. i believe this book holds many of these gifts for each one of its readers. some of the gifts are given in harder ways than others, of course. driskill calls upon queer studies to recognize indigenous sovereignty and include two-spirit narratives and discussions in every conversation we have, “in short, i am asking all of us engaged in queer studies to remember exactly on whose land it is built” (23), driskill writes in hir chapter “doubleweaving two-spirit critiques.” this chapter follows up with more gifts, tools i believe that can help us in taking up the challenges driskill give us; seven “features of two-spirit critiques” serve as sub-headings throughout the chapter: transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 172 1. two-spirit critiques see two-spirit people and traditions as both integral to and a challenge to nationalist and decolonial struggles 2. two-spirit critiques are rooted in artistic and activist work and remain accountable to overlapping communities 3. two-spirit critiques engage in both intertribal and tribally specific concerns 4. two-spirit critiques are woven into native feminisms by seeing sexism, homophobia, and transphobia as colonial tools 5. two-spirit critiques are informed by and make use of other native activisms, arts, and scholarships, 6. two-spirit critiques see the erotic as a tool in decolonial struggles 7. two-spirit critiques see two-spirit identities in relationship with spirituality and medicine (driskill, 33-7). as with sinclair and dillon’s essays in love beyond body space and time, this chapter “double weaving two-spirit critique” stands as reason enough for this text to be considered an important piece of scholarship in indigenous studies and beyond. it occurs to me as i wrote these critiques out that driskill’s text achieves all of the goals set out here. i say goals rather than features because i am reminded of linda tuhiwai smith’s “25 indigenous projects” in decolonizing methodologies. while these are identifiable features of two-spirit critiques, they also, i think, serve as a challenge to those in the field to ensure they are meeting all of these expectations—and i don’t think this is limited to queer indigenous studies. instead these seven points should be used as tools to bring the decolonizing concepts that two-spirit critiques gift us with into all of our theory, all of our scholarship, and all of our communities. driskill’s text is also important because it gives us new ways to imagine ourselves outside of the sometimes-painful shackles of “tradition.” in academic circles, it may seem that queer indigenous studies is thriving; that there are many of us here creating work and having that work published, and our voices heard. i would argue that for every one of us who is making it there are a hundred out there you don’t see, who have brilliant things to say but are overwhelmed by homophobia, transphobia, racism and lateral violence. our communities, while oft painted as open and welcoming, honouring “traditions” of multiple genders, remain, in many cases, violent places for us to be, where we face discrimination even (or perhaps especially) within ceremonial spaces. this is why these stories matter. driskill’s work challenges those heteronormative colonial ideas by drawing upon, and then “queering,” historical records. s/he introduces us to the possibilities of two-spirit characters like dragonfly having a presence in the creation story of fire (12). s/he spends a lengthy chapter (“the queer lady of cofitachequi”) examining a story of the de soto expedition, introducing us to the “lady of cofitachequi,” rendered “within colonial accounts…as first within a male/female binary and then, as resistant to colonial patriarchal authority as an indigenous non-christian woman” (driskill 55), and then making an argument for a queer reading of this historical figure—not because there is any historical record that illustrates her two-spritedness, but because “there is also no archival evidence that she was not” (55). in this way, driskill gives insights into cherokee stories that may already be well-known to a cherokee reader and takes the time to identify, imagine, and read them as the eponymous “asegi stories.” asegi is a cherokee word meaning “strange” and often read as “queer.” by doing this, driskill shakes up heteronormative practices of reading historical accounts through a binaristic lens that seeks to erase the presence of queer and two-spirit folks. smokii sumac “two spirit and queer indigenous resurgence” 173 while those of us who are not cherokee may not gain the same kind of illumination that a cherokee person would in reading over these re-imagined stories, this work is vital for all twospirit folks who have often searched far and wide, yearning for some sort of record of ourselves pre-contact. driskill creates an imagining where any pre-contact text could be a record of ourselves, and this is a radical and necessary balancing of the historical lenses through which we research and read indigenous stories. this is not to say it’s all easy to read. some of driskill’s work is very hard. historical accounts, perhaps especially when they do explicitly include us, are often violent depictions of genocide and gendercide (a term driskill borrows from deborah miranda). but, like many indigenous scholars, artists, writers and activists, s/he refuses to leave us without hope. indeed, i would argue that any of the traumatic and difficult stories included here are only included in order to create/re-imagine them, and empower not only two-spirit, queer, and/or cherokee folks, but to empower all readers to challenge violent heteropatriarchial norms. driskill illustrates ways to do this through hir third chapter, “unweaving the basket;” an in depth look at “how colonial concepts of gender and sexuality were internalized by cherokee communities as cherokee forms of governance shifted from autonomous, gender-egalitarian townships to a centralized, male-dominated cherokee nation” (101). using the metaphor of the basket that runs throughout asegi stories, this chapter illustrates how the original basket; cherokee pre-contact society, was unwoven by colonization through chapter sections on cherokee law, missionization, and slavery. one important aspect to this chapter, which is also evident throughout the rest of the book, is driskill’s commitment to black/indigenous solidarity throughout hir scholarship. “unweaving the basket” contains a section titled “unweaving splint two: slavery, black bodies, and heteropatriarchy” which examines violence on black bodies in cherokee society as a ‘civilization’ tactic of colonization, and how this lead to other genderbased violence. the final three chapters of driskill’s book continue the re-imagining by calling for celebrations of diverse indigenous bodies. chapter 4, “beautiful as the red rainbow: cherokee two-spirits rebeautifyng erotic memory,” builds on driskill’s previous works with texts like sovereign erotics in lifting up the erotic as a site of decolonization. one perhaps more controversial aspect to this is the inclusion of photos of cherokee pipes, which driskill reads through an erotic lens. as a person who participates in ceremony, myself, i wonder about the inclusion of photographs of pipe relations, which driskill has taken hirself at the peabody museum. this is a fine line, but i often wonder when i see this kind of work whether or not cherokee ceremonial knowledge holders were consulted; should these pipes be photographed, or perhaps left alone and simply described? on that note, i also believe there is an argument to be made that driskill’s reimagining could lead to dangerous places. while it seems from this book driskill has strong ties to the cherokee community through the folks he has visited with throughout his research travels (like the earlier-quoted weaver peggy sanders brennan), there is a part of me that proceeds with caution, not about the well-researched and thought out discussion included here, but instead about the ways in which it might be read. i would hate to see this idea of re-imagining our historical narratives taken too far out of context. in other words, while i believe that there is a resurgence of two-spirit knowledges happening throughout our communities, i do not think that claiming two-spirit gives us license to simply make up our own stories. again, i do not mean to say that driskill does this. s/he is very clear to note that hir hypothetical asegi versions of cherokee stories are but one telling, a re-imagining that allows for more possibilities. it is more how this text could be read as a justification for less responsible work that worries me. of transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 174 course, perhaps especially in indigenous studies, we know that we have little control over what happens to our words once we put them into the world, and i do believe driskill has been cautious, hirself, about opening up too much space for possible make-believe. in closing, this is an important book for indigenous studies, queer studies, settler-colonial studies, for history, anthropology, gender studies, literary studies, and of course, cherokee studies. i honestly believe it could also be useful in countless other disciplines where i would like to see more conversations on gender happening. the “doubleweaving two-spirit critique” chapter, perhaps especially, can be used to give insights into the woefully misunderstood concept of two-spiritedness. one field i think of especially is indigenous environmental sciences, where binary concepts of “mother” earth, male/female plant species (even when plants have so many more asegi/queer methods of reproducing) water as the “women’s” medicine and fire as the “men’s” still seem to carry so much weight. this text allows for a queering of historical records, of “tradition,” and of our bodies, one that celebrates, affirms, and brings lgbtq/two-spirit knowledges to the centre of our futures. the final chapter, “epilogue: doubleweave: an asegi manifesto” explains the importance of this centring, as two-spirit folks “carry memories for our people” (driskill 170). driskill calls on us to remember that asegi space; the third space, the cedar between the walls of the double weaved basket, and i encourage you to answer hir call. both love beyond body space and time, and asegi stories acknowledge and call upon us to pay attention to what queer and two-spirited indigenous folks are doing. in my teachings, we have specific responsibilities within our communities as two-spirit people. and, as leanne betasamosake simpson argues in interview when asked how to stop gender-based violence, our communities have responsibilities to us as well, needing to: center two spirit, queer, and trans people in our nation building, in our movement building and in our world building. we need to collectively build and embody the alternative. build communities and nations [where] interpersonal violence is unthinkable. as i write this it is trans day of remembrance. later i will go to a candlelight vigil and honour all of the trans folks murdered in the past year. mourning is a necessary practice. grief must be felt and honoured. and yet, i call on each of us to do more than mourn and grieve. let’s celebrate and uphold indigenous queer, trans and two-spirit voices. support us while we are living. read/watch/listen/see/support our work. as driskill writes at the close of hir book: “our stories reweave the world.” (driskill 170). i call on you to witness and be a part of this reweaving. smokii sumac, trent university notes 1 kisukyukyit is a greeting in ktunaxa works cited smokii sumac “two spirit and queer indigenous resurgence” 175 beck, abaki. “refusing colonialism: leanne betasamosake simpson’s new book highlights indigenous resistance” bitchmedia.org. 9 oct 2017. web. 27 nov 2017. brant, beth. a gathering of the spirit: a collection of writing and art by north american indian women. toronto: women’s press, 1989. driskill, qwo-li. asegi stories: cherokee queer and two-spirit memory. arizona: the u of arizona p, 2016. driskill, qwo-li et al. eds. queer indigenous studies: critical interventions in theory, politics and literature the u of arizona p, 2011. driskill, qwo-li et al. eds. sovereign erotics; a collection of two-spirit literatures. the u of arizona p, 2011. justice, daniel heath. why indigenous literatures matter. wilfred laurier up, forthcoming keene, adrienne. nativeappropriations.com. blog. nicholson, hope. ed. love beyond body space and time: an lgbtq sci-fi anthology. canada: bedside press, 2016. roscoe, will. ed. living the spirit: a gay american indigenous anthology. new york: st. martin’s press, 1988. smith, linda tuhiwai. decolonizing methodologies. new york: zed books, 2012. microsoft word blaeser.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 144 song buried in the muscle of urgency joy harjo. conflict resolution for holy beings. new york: w.w. norton, 2015. print. casandra lopez. where bullet breaks. little rock, ar: sequoyah national research center, u of arkansas at little rock, 2014. print. kimberly l. becker. words facing east. cincinnati, oh: wordtech editions, 2011. print. kim shuck. clouds running in. petaluma, ca: taurean horn, 2014. print. allison adele hedge coke, effigies ii: an anthology of new indigenous writing. cromer: salt, 2014. print. recently, when chad harbach asked the hard questions about the “two cultures of american fiction,” it awakened the questions i have harbored off and on for years about the evolution of native american poetry(ies). you can find in my own past writing on the subject various ideas including a defense of the possibility of a “native poetics” and descriptions of exactly what that might entail. among those elements i identified early on was a “celebration of influence” (in direct counterpoint to harold bloom’s “anxiety of influence”). cultural continuity with ancestral tribal knowledge, traditional songs, and poetic performances by literary predecessors and contemporary peer poets seemed key components and strengths of the tradition of native american poetry—one the practicing poets were indeed celebrating and building on by conscious intertextuality and various rhetorical gestures. when younger native poets began to speak of difference from older tribal writers, i assured myself they were thinking about thematic concerns and the way their own experiences— sometimes of urban reality rather than reservation life—naturally resulted in different focuses (and therefore metaphors and sometimes formal structures). although i may not have had as much company in my stance this time, i still believed there remained an identifiable poetics, although now i was expanding the circle in my thinking and writing of an “indigenous” aesthetic. this indigeneity also encompasses the tribal nation contexts which have also gained critical attention. now we have arrived at another new era for native poets—that of the mfa, awp, and nyc. recent graduates of prestigious mfa programs (including the recent low-rez iaia— institute of american indian arts—mfa), have begun to amass well-placed publications, gain critical recognition, and win awards the dearth of which had previously seemed a mark of marginalized status for all but a select handful of native writers since the first swoon of notice came in the 1970’s. when n. scott momaday won the pulitzer prize for fiction in 1969 and a pulitzer committee member noted “the arrival on the american literary scene of a matured, sophisticated literary artist,” at least one native writer, louis owens (choctaw), wondered if that phrase rather kimberly m. blaeser review essay “song buried in the muscle of urgency” 145 suggested that “at last an indigenous writer had emerged who could emulate and imitate the discourse of the cultural center—euramerica—so well that he could be accepted, perhaps canonized?”3 we are living in a time when we have publishing native poets such as accomplished chickasaw writer linda hogan who have worked their way onto the literary scene without institutional writing degrees situated alongside those who have a full slate of literary credentials including mfas, phds, and mentors with name recognition and cachet with prominent presses. publishers such as copper canyon showcase the work of young native writers like natalie diaz (mojave) and sherwin bitsui (diné), and many awards come the way of newly minted native mfa degree holders. iñupiaq writer joan naviyuk kane, for example, earned her mfa from columbia university's school of the arts, and her second book hyperboreal was chosen as the winner of both the 2012 awp donald hall prize in poetry and the 2014 american book award. in 2015, creek poet joy harjo (mfa from iowa writer’s workshop) was selected by the academy of american poets to receive the prestigious wallace stevens award, which recognizes “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.” clearly much is afoot in the field of native poetry. in this vital time, should we simply relish the new-found acclaim and attention or need we take a breath to understand the roots and flowering of this rich period? is the idea of a native literary aesthetic or the rhetorical space leanne howe calls “tribalography” more or less viable today in a global society so keenly aware of transnationalism or indeed among the complicated origins of native writers themselves (even when we leave the questionable cdib out of the equation)? how shall we characterize a native poetics in an era when native identities and lifestyles themselves vary so drastically? in an era of mfa-educated writers, what remains native about native poetry? or should we introduce junot díaz’s idea of the poc and ask which mfa, which cohort, which writing community? as i read the several volumes sent to me for this review, these are among the questions i hoped to unravel. ↔↔↔↔ whether writing about the brutal death of a brother, the reclamation of native place, the toxicity of historical representations, or the path for healing conflict, the native women poets whose work i discuss here all sing with their own urgency, but the very urgency of subject that taps a collective experience and hearkens toward a certain polyvocality seems key in marking these works as within an always evolving circle of native literary sensibility that often plays itself off the still intact (largely white) site of supposed literary authority. likewise, each of the writers seems keenly aware of the limits of their craft—of language itself—and equally invested in the relational aspects of both their poetry and the lives there represented. little has been easy or simply defined in the experience of most of the speakers in the poems; neither then is the poetic embodiment of their understanding. just as owens, in his discussion of momaday’s award, went on to suggest, the “sophistication” recognized by the pulitzer judges was “of a different order from that in canonized texts,” one that entailed not just an “undeniable facility with… techniques and tropes… but more significantly, transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 146 the profound awareness of conflicting epistemologies;” from these volumes of poetry, too, arises a poetic epistemology that hearkens back to various native and tribally specific ideas regarding being and knowing. among the several most readily identified are various non-linear understandings of time and history, the concept of lived community and the acknowledged sentience of many elements of our natural world, an investment in various spiritual and ceremonial practices, and a clear awareness of both just practices and the many ironic justifications that continue to create “legal” pathways for undermining basic rights. although the kinds of experience recounted in the present day voice of many of the poems has indeed altered in particulars since the advent of written native poetry, the searching analysis of that experience as originating in colonization remains steady, as does the attempt to expose the many inherent hypocrisies of contemporary u.s. policy and politics. it seems there is still a particular urgency in being an indian even, or particularly, in this supposedly “post-racial” america. the work in these volumes—as much as any that has gone before—gains part of its strength in giving voice to a discourse of what owens called “otherness.” the works and the ways the various authors elect to manifest the reality of the experience of otherness or a rhetorical stance grounded in tribal identity varies—as it always has. in these books by both new and established poets, some works place native reality more to the fore than others, just as some works take an activist stand while others employ understated allusion with little or no actual mention of political expediency. ↔↔↔↔ in conflict resolution for holy beings, in which she writes, “every poem is an effort at ceremony,” joy harjo strikes a balance between the affective and the effective reaches of art, imbuing her poetic performances with philosophical musings and calls to action. as in several of her early books, here too, harjo—who is both musician and writer—weaves together song lyrics, prose, and poetry. some poems such as “for calling the spirit back from wandering the earth in its human feet,” clearly take up the mission of the title of the collection and employ an imperative voice to direct the reader: “call your spirit back. it may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse;” “let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters,” or “help the next person find their way through the dark” (4-6). indeed, the sections of the title poem themselves offer instructions or steps for “conflict resolution,” from setting “ground rules” to using “effective communication skills,” to reducing “defensiveness” (77-80). other poems underscore the role of poetry (and music) in working for healing and change. the poem “no,” for example, claims, “i expected our words might rise up and jam the artillery in the hands of dictators” (11); and “it’s raining in honolulu” declares, “we will plant songs where there were curses” (109). however, the poems don’t only speak about healing, teach, or call for action on the behalf of justice, but harjo would give us to understand, that in coming into being artistically, they actually engender good. of singers, “indian school night song blues” declares, “some heal the kimberly m. blaeser review essay “song buried in the muscle of urgency” 147 sick, some make the dead rise up and dance” (68). of songs, the poem “entering the principality of o’ahu by sky roads” speaks of how they: … lift the most humble spirits to the grass houses of the heavens—“ and … aren’t paid for by the money and influence of rich, fat corporate gods (19). harjo’s own work in the collection traces this aesthetic of artistic healing, with poems describing the persona’s journey from being “indian in a strange pastiche of hurt and rain” seemingly numbered among those in “suicide watch” who see themselves as an “unworthy soul,” to becoming one among those “who know ourselves to be part of mystery” (96, 71, 135). consisting of four movements, the book also attends to the larger destructive forces that have been unleashed on our planet and actions we can take in healing that human breech with earth. prefacing each poem is a short prose piece or prose poem. these seem to narratively trace the speaker’s epic journey as she comes to both personal and communal knowledge. frequently, the passages voice a hunger or longing and center around the inspiration or fulfillment of jazz, poetry, music, the saxophone. then the lyric language almost curves, rising and falling, like a full-voiced horn: for any spark to make a song, it must be transformed by pressure. there must be unspeakable need, muscle of belief, and wild, unknowable elements. i am singing a song that can only be born after losing a country. (7) as in previous collections, much of the beauty in harjo’s poetry comes in its reach toward the unknowable—“that perfect song… just beyond the field of perceptible sound” (95). ↔↔↔↔ an unspeakable need and awareness of the limits of our humanity likewise fuel the search given voice in where bullet breaks, a first chapbook by casandra lopez, a cahuilla, luiseńo, tongva, and chicana writer. as in harjo’s writing, there is lament in lopez’s poetry, but here the origin of the loss explored is more personal. narratively, the chapbook takes us through the brutal death of the speaker’s brother, the reactions of the speaker—through roughly a year of grief and healing—and out the other side to “what remains.” poetically, the collection investigates various manifestations of connection and loss including, in the aftermath, the break-down of language and meaning. lopez cleverly manipulates language to mirror the distance of shock as the poems touch the now seemingly unfamiliar objects—the door, cement, and of course, the bullet. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 148 “words,” the speaker tells us, “are always collapsing;” therefore, she learns “to speak in metaphor” (19, 15). among the many moving poems gathered here is “a new language” in which the narrator longs for “… a new language… with at least / 50 words for grief / / and 50 words for love” (19). lopez’s haunting collection of seventeen poems seems partly tableau, partly palimpsest. she has constructed intricate overlapping narratives that deftly employ repetition of words and image. each new appearance of the voiceless flutter of brother’s lips, for example, become the narrator’s own inability to speak, her search for language. the many fractures created “where bullet breaks” include the speaker’s own disconnection from herself—even her physical body. in “open the door: eye witness,” the narrator laments, “i… think i am living someone else’s life” and she represents herself in pieces: “ear, mouth, and hands” then “arms and legs” and “pinpricked follicles” (9-10). among the few reaches beyond the tableau of family is the poem “an unknown” in which lopez aligns jim thorpe’s loss of his twin brother with her/her persona’s loss of her twin. the perhaps compulsive running of thorpe the speaker likens to her own “always running from something” (27). where bullet breaks renders in carefully crafted poems both the “sweet / rind of history” and the “rib ache of the left behind” (21). indeed, like her narrator, lopez herself has learned efficient use of metaphor. in “those who speak to trees remember,” she recalls her father’s teaching: “trees have ancestors, a lineage, a history” (13). she envisions herself and “brother” “grafted like our citrus trees.” the narrative and images of the rest of the poem call up vivid memories of the lovely globed fruits of her and brother’s mutual childhood, but also the fateful tumbling of the fruit followed by “splats” and “skin splitting,” language and images that, of course, recall the death scene as well as echo words and images from earlier poems: “split,” “fractures,” “break.” in the opening poem, “where bullet breaks,” the speaker and brother, “split into before and after,” just as in “those who speak to trees remember,” the poem itself is divided into memories and aftermath. in the chapbook narratives, the language of metaphor works to create distance, but also to keep the experience close—transformed, but vivid. ↔↔↔↔ language and loss also figures into kimberly becker’s words facing east, a first collection by a writer who identifies herself as “cherokee/celtic/teutonic.” although in this volume, becker’s poems trace a connection to what one poem calls “the cherokee in me” (17), the author does not turn away from a sometimes troubling sense of distance and regress from identification as native as these lines in “bumping up against the stories” demonstrate: i fish my smart phone from my purse and with camera, snap a picture of a picture of my great-grandmother, emma. her face swims behind curved glass as i try to gauge her indianness. blood from her flows down to me, kimberly m. blaeser review essay “song buried in the muscle of urgency” 149 just as hers from full-blood cherokee. stories coagulate, go untold, until such time as when someone picks enough to let them run again. (30) potent loss is in evidence throughout the collection, sometimes suggested through metaphor as in the poem “edges,” which recounts the squeezing out of the wild fox by encroaching civilization. the sympathetic speaker, denied a longed for connection to the wildness of the foxes—“i never could gain entry”—instead pictures them in this lovely image: “… imagine foxes / asleep around cleaned bones, / tails muffed around muzzles” (45). still, despite acknowledging both metaphorical and historic “removal,” the works in the collection voice just the kind of reclamation, “bumping up against the stories” suggests could take place. the poet herself may be the one who makes the stories “run again.” indeed, the book’s proem, “circling the mound,” attests to things that “can never be erased,” and opens with the line: “so this is what it’s like to come home” (13). like linda hogan’s early book calling myself home, becker’s intention in this collection seems partly to claim her cherokee “home.” in the book, this home becomes strongly aligned with the cherokee language as several poems (“language class,” “the catch,” “river of words,” etc.) attend to the speaker’s relearning the language her ancestors “drank at infancy” (18). among the more satisfying of the poems in this vein are “distant, early, warning: lines” and “words as fish.” in the first, in which the narrative is complicated by the simultaneous search for some lost family history through photos and story, the speaker laments, “but all i have are these poor words, / these shards of story, these artifacts, / i sift through, / searching for splinters of bone that connect somehow to mine” (57). in “words as fish,” the author reveals the sweat it takes to make these bone to bone connections. here she employs the cherokee phrase “doadt” (how do you say), and the poem proceeds as a litany of phrases each containing an english word in bold for which the speaker wants the cherokee. the intriguing accumulated phrases show an engaged imagination and promise for poetry to come as in this example: “doadt / how in the violence of [love] you fell free of your knife?” becker’s consistent attention to the tell of language does not mean the collection lacks variety in focus. the author also turns for inspiration to various physical places, to stories like that of anna mae aquash and the mythic selu, to news accounts as well as personal stories, and to cultural critique. throughout the collection, there is a gentle celebration of heritage and inheritance, and there are observations and lines to be prized. for example, “ghost dance dress” showcases both a sensibility that recognizes how “even a poem must keep its distance,” and the memorable line: “some things you don’t defame by cataloguing” (20). walking the cherokee lands with becker we witness discovery and personal investment in forging connection; blessedly, we do not witness an academic cataloguing. ↔↔↔↔ transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 150 if becker’s book is searching for a connection to her cherokee language and heritage, kim shuck’s clouds running in is screaming she has one and telling you the joke about the one that got away. although the focus of these two books is indeed similar (shuck, too, is going “back to cherokee”), the style and voices diverge significantly. from the onset, shuck’s book sets itself apart visually by its use of all caps throughout and the frequent companion landscape drawings to the poems (by collaborator marcer campbell); it sets itself apart aurally through its humor and “north eastern okie terse” style. when the first person narrator in “i always catch the old world diseases,” declares “i am an unlikely / post-columbian ndn / hill billy polish / union agitator and career military dna / inheritance from my grandfathers,” a reader would be correct to assume the various stances of the volume will challenge easy expectations (58). again and again the sassy and smart lines delivered in a clipped understatement provide critique or a new perspective. but most intriguing to me in reading shuck’s collection together with those already discussed, is her constant awareness of language colonization and the related imposition of epistemological foundations. while shuck’s poems voice a kind of outrage and lament about the theft of native languages (here specifically cherokee) and the cultural understandings there embedded, they simultaneously work in various ways towards recovery and indeed enact what vizenor might call survivance. the many engaging ways the poet tackles ideas about language, belief, and resistance convince this reader that the “clouds running in” may be threatening, but the vibrant many-voiced “singing” these poems report and enact might be one bead in the remaking of the community story. “cultural exchange,” for instance, opens with the line, “bring your expectations,” and then seemingly characterizes one of these cultural expectations: “outlaw my language then ask me to speak it / a parlor trick” (6). the lines, of course, allude to historical assimilation policies—here specifically surrounding language, (as well to contemporary stereotyping and commodification of native peoples and cultures). the kind of irony at work here figures significantly in shuck’s playful poetics and her critique, as when she introduces various “foreign” languages including the written and the scientific, and implies the speaker’s troubled relationship to these systems of thinking. “myth of the immigrant,” for example, opens with a stanza about “these straight lines on paper” and the poet figures them as complicit in the colonial enterprise, noting they: “have a kind of magic / bestow authority that / seems to overcome that of / rivers / history before soldiers,” one that is only “an excuse to / fail in sacred responsibilities” (57). the historic failures in acting responsibly have resulted in the offspring of global warming given image in the poem—floods, fires, and risks of skin cancer; as well as in the colonial machismo that disvalues women and “just over the border,” results in “indian women… being murdered daily.” the speaker is “tired of the plausible lies” and offers instead an other language system and, through the imperative voice, calls the reader to the same: “put on your singing clothes / change the names of each cousin we have / unstitch these boundaries.” throughout the volume, shuck’s poems, in answer to the failings of colonial lifestyles, offer songs in many guises and circumstances, offer the recollection of older teachings—from humans kimberly m. blaeser review essay “song buried in the muscle of urgency” 151 and the earth—even suggest small wisdoms through the language of food. and in these various poetic offerings, the gesture is broad enough that we understand their connections to one another and to a different way of being, an other epistemology. the poem “mud and words,” for example, suggests something about the work of the poet, opening with the lines: trying to find the word that can hold off the water hold up a town just one more word another way to ask that people pay attention there is work to be done here (62). the poem closes with the declaration: “you will know the poets by the / dirt under our nails.” here as in other poems, even as the author comes out for poetry, song, tribal teachings, etc. the poems simultaneously contain the possible futility of these tools. in “mud and words” the poem sets troubles like broken levees against the efforts of the poets who, shuck writes, “can try to hold water with a sieve of words.” the trying fills these poems, but as “close,” laments, “no amount of praying / dancing, song / will hold back rain now and / i’m already a marsh” (48). still, this realism is tempered with belief as when shuck writes in “sacred spaces”: … there are some things that you can lose and regain and i’ll stand on any stage you want and say that wonder is one of them wonder and community (23). clouds running in places us in medias res (or perhaps rather in medias rez); the struggle continues with outcome not determined. but the poems offer many moments of humor and grace. the unexpected perspective in the opening poem—“today’s history lesson will be written / by ants / under the bark of a tree / in tilden park. / i won’t know how to read it either.”— should prepare us for the delightful turnabouts and surprises to follow (1). among my favorite poetic aphorisms from the text could be said of the volume itself: “if you aren’t delighted you aren’t paying / attention” (68.) despite the distraction of constant capital letters and my desire to tinker with line breaks, i was delighted by the wit, warmth, and, yes wisdom, of this poet’s work. ↔↔↔↔ if the preceding volumes by harjo, lopez, becker, and shuck range widely in subjects, voice, and style, the final book i examine in this discussion captures a similar variety between the covers of a single volume. effigies ii, edited by allison hedge coke (cherokee/creek/ huron/metis) and following the example of the 2009 effigies by creating a “community” of new poets in one release, presents the debut chapbooks of five different indigenous women poets: transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 152 laura da (eastern shawnee), ungelbah davila (diné), kristi leora (anishinaabe), lara mann (choctaw/cherokee/mohawk), and kateri menominee (chippewa); with their work arising from the pacific northwest to the great lakes, from the eastern woodlands to the desert southwest. two telling lines from the early poems of laura da’s the tecumseh motel can draw us back to the queries with which i opened this essay regarding the possibility of an ongoing indigenous aesthetic in poetry. da writes, “colonialism had children and grand-children too;” and “we have always been the frontier” (4, 7). as imperialism continues to breed or morph into new “honors” such as the wildly inaccurate and stereotypic dramatic representation of tecumseh’s life about which da writes, so too must new poetic responses to these imperial tendencies appear. they do. here. in the work of these talented younger poets, the legacy of writers like harjo and hedgecoke herself continue. but these are not cookie-cutter, paint-by-number copies of what has already been said. each of the writers in this volume adds a unique voice and take on what it means to be indigenous, to write indigenous in the twenty-first century. i look in some depth at the tecumseh motel as a series of poems that together demonstrate the kind of “sophistication” arbitrator’s of the canon-worthy might recognize while they simultaneously enact what owens labeled a certain “otherness.” they achieve a reappraisal of historical accounts and specific cultural conditions through a complex layered poetics praiseworthy among any gallery of critics. at the same time, da’s poetics are still aesthetically and thematically connected to the earlier published or performed work associated with the tradition of native letters. the author opens the collection with lively, shrewd poems, filled with mythic figures, humanized historic and contemporary images, and the breath of gesture. she hands them to the reader like flint and stone. without heavy-handed interpretation, they soon catch fire in our imagination. da describes the focus of her chapbook as “a parallel path of shawnee culture and personal history” (2); but in the complex vision that unfolds, inevitably these distinctly named paths converge. the powerful “american towns” declares: here is the voyage, conjured homeland to conjured homeland, no, not that clawed trajectory of the past, but a fierce conception that quickens and scraps inside just the same. (8) the path—from the “casino jangle,” curated dioramas, and warped educational system in which tribal council members are perceived as “remnants of the once great shawnee tribe,” to boulders with “deep groves in the center / for grinding corn” and the memory of old chillicothe—is both map and palimpsest. chillicothe, for example, is a contemporary place name and “… in the kimberly m. blaeser review essay “song buried in the muscle of urgency” 153 subtle semantics / of shawnee, a tightened fist of connotation: / clan name and principal city, / all human systems working in harmony” (8). through unflinching images of shawnee removal (many given in the story of lazarus shale), da depicts the outcome of the dawes allotment act roosevelt duped “a mighty pulverizing machine” (which becomes another of da’s poem titles). but she also traces the daily heroism of those who made the starvation journey and characterizes the continuance of contemporary descendants. like da’s persona in “wars of attrition,” we are reminded, “a map is not a neutral document” (34). indeed, da’s poems deliver readers from many romantic notions about native americans to which they might have previously clung. in “american towns,” the author reports the wording of a museum plaque which claims: “the ground on which this council house stands is unstained / with blood” (9). throughout the tecumseh motel, da’s well-crafted poems strip down the rhetoric and supposed veracity of such unfounded historic claims, and da closes the poem with lines that could be the raison d’être of the collection: “i want my ink to bellow— / where is this ground unstained with blood?” bellow it does. but note also that to achieve the emphatic here, da employs the question as she does elsewhere to good effect. among the more evocative questions is this one in “no longer”: “what tremor can be measured / in the pale wave of light / that blazes a path of eviction?” (28) through the interrogative and the imperative, through gaps and other poetic gestures, da entrusts her reader to enact the convergence of pathways, and to speak the bellow with their own voice. in continuing the depiction of eviction in “no longer,” for example, she asks the reader to invite the felt experience into their own bodies: to weather that expulsion path— hunch the shoulders into a perpetual wince. look back often. squint in the light that shines on the backs of the knees. (28) the power of the native poetics in this opening chapbook of effigies ii derives from that “song buried in the muscle of urgency”3 and in da’s ability to awaken the sense of that song in a reader. the other authors in effigies ii likewise invest their words with power. the poetic range—from ungelbah davila’s “honkey tonk hymns” to kristi leora’s collective genealogy, lara mann’s sometimes humorous apologia for mixedblood reality to kateri menominee’s revisiting of myth and history—showcases the still perhaps unexpected reach of contemporary native poetry. although the “who’s who” of native writers has included a similarly wide-ranging variety of poetic performances, including carter revard (osage) who draws from the classicists, gerald vizenor (anishinaabe) contemporary haiku writer, allison hedge coke’s effective use of the persona poem, sherman alexie (spokane) who has given the sonnet a new twist, n. scott momaday (kiowa) a formalist in his early work, simon ortiz who drew so powerfully on tribal transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 154 myth, and of course, harjo who incorporates elements of jazz tradition, the poetry of native america has often been conflated and misread as merely confessional or a plain spoken political exercise. as leora writes in her fascinating poem on other voices, “it’s not how you talk, but / how you listen” (133). among the powers of the poems by the nine writers featured here is their ability to show readers new ways to listen to or read the work of native writers, and their ability to pull them into the rhetorical space of tribalography. kimberly m. blaeser, university of wisconsin, milwaukee notes 1. see, for example, kimberly blaeser, “cannons and canonization: native poetries through autonomy, colonization, nationalism, and decolonization,” the columbia guide to american indian literatures of the united states since 1945, ed. eric cheyfitz (new york: columbia university press, 2006) 183-287. 2. louis owens, other destinies: understanding the american indian novel (norman, ok: u of oklahoma p, 1992) 90-92. 3. joy harjo, conflict resolution for holy beings (new york, w.w. norton: 2015), 21. works cited joan naviyuk kane hyperboreal. pittsburgh, penn.: u of pittsburgh, 2013. print. linda hogan, calling myself home. greenfield center, ny: greenfield review, 1978. print microsoft word 366-2408-4-ce (1).docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         25   whitman’s song sung the navajo way kenneth m. roemer i for decades, controversies have roiled over the implications of analyzing indigenous texts, particularly native american texts, with euroamerican critical theories. the winter 2005 issue of the american indian quarterly exposed many of these antagonisms in its review section. there were no less than six reviews (that must be a record) of one book (316-40)—elvira pulitano’s toward a native american critical theory (2003)—and several of those reviews were review-essay length. there is praise for the book. chris teuton thinks pulitano is “at her best” when she examines the critical approaches of greg sarris, louis owens, and gerald vizenor. but the reviewers in general argue that pulitano “privileges a postcolonial theoretical notion of cultural hybridity to the exclusion of ‘separatist’ critical movements” (teuton 336). barbara k. robins speculates that pulitano favors native critics such as sarris, owens, and vizenor because she “seems less threatened” (324) by critics who favor “crosscultural mediation, aimed at embracing differing discourses and world views” (robins 117). james cox proposes that pulitano’s criticism of nationalist/separatist critics such as paula gunn allen, craig womack, and robert warrior, who “foreground native sources in their analyses,” indicates that pulitano “is responding to the repatriation of native authority from the possession of non-native people” (318). as wide-ranging as the arguments are in pulitano’s book and the reviewers’ responses, they don’t include major emphases on some of the many other issues about appropriate theory for studying native texts raised by feminist and transnational scholars, including shari huhndorf and chad allen.1 the american indian quarterly review fest is just one example of the ongoing debates about using non-native interpretive approaches to analyze indigenous oral and written literatures. there has been much less discussion of turning the looking glass in the opposite direction: what might be the implications of using concepts of form and function characteristic of traditional oral texts as theoretical and critical lenses for analyzing canonical non-native texts written in english? there certainly have been american poets and critics who, at least indirectly, championed the use of indigenous concepts of literary form as the true or original american kenneth m. roemer “whitman’s song”       26   literature; for example, in the early 20th century the imagist poets who praised indigenous songs and images, cultural critics like mary austin who imagined indigenous “american rhythms,” and, in the midand late 20th century, the leaders of the ethnopoetics movement.2 and i have made a minor foray into using concepts derived from oral narratives as interpretive tools (roemer, “women and violence” 97-117). but compared to discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of using non-native criticism and theory to interpret native texts, discussions of using indigenous concepts of form and function to interpret non-native literature have been rare. there are obvious reasons for this. not many introductions to theory courses in english departments include native oral narratives or books such as gary witherspoon’s language and art in the navajo universe (1977). even if a critic is attracted to using traditional native forms as a critical lens, there are challenges, especially for a non-native who is not fluent in relevant indigenous languages. if s(he) has to depend on translations, there will always be mediation, even, as robert dale parker argues, if the text is performed and filmed with subtitles, or, i might add, skyped, or performed live in standard or “red english” (97-100). even if the critic is fluent and native, the assimilation process of taking english courses can condition critics to privilege certain questions and emphases that can distort, obscure, or render invisible important characteristics of the indigenous forms and functions. i am aware of these limitations, especially since i do not claim a tribal affiliation, and i am not fluent in any native language, including navajo, the language relevant to this article. but at least i have been fortunate enough to have read extensively about navajo practices, including the observations of the late navajo educator and nightway celebrant (hataalii), andrew natonabah (natonabah, “by this song”); have taught parts of courses and directed an m.a. thesis (lightfoot) that included navajo nightway-whitman comparisons; have been employed by the gallup indian community center, which was run by a navajo and served many navajo; was briefly instructed about the importance of navajo ceremonialism by a navajo, will tsosie, who is fluent, has sung in many nightways and is related to a nightway hataalii; and have been invited to attend parts of several nightway ceremonies that are open to non-navajos (“nightway questions” 819, 828, 829, n. 7, n. 14). these elements of my background and the surface similarities between particular sections of the complex nine-day navajo nightway and walt whitman’s “song of myself” led me to consider the implications of using major elements of the transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         27   nightway’s forms and functions as interpretive lenses for reading “song of myself.” (for a brief introduction to the nightway [tl’ééjí hatáál], see roemer “nightway questions” 819-20).3 first, i need to clarify what this article does not intend to do. it is not an examination of whitman’s contact with native americans or possible influences of indigenous forms and functions on “song of myself.” readers interested in excellent brief introductions to the former should consult the entries entitled “native americans” by ed folsom and “racial attitudes” by george and david drews in walt whitman: an encyclopedia (1998). for a more complete study of the contacts with native americans, see folsom’s walt whitman’s native representations (1994). for an examination of similarities between native oral stylistics and whitman’s poetry, see james nolan’s poet-chief: the native american poetics of walt whitman and pablo neruda (1924), especially his discussions of “repetition, direct address, spells, prayers, antiphony, parallel construction and enumerative and associative organization” (wong 228). my intent is to use significant characteristics of the nightway as critical lenses to interpret the forms and functions of “song of myself.” examining similarities and differences between the two texts invites speculation about how “revolutionary” whitman’s use of repetition was, the impact of intended or implied audiences, the possible curative nature of whitman’s poem, the extent to which innovation and conservation are privileged in criticism and theory, and the degrees to which curative agency and definitions of illness and health are community or individual based. the primary representation of the nightway i use is the most complete english translation, washington matthews’s night chant (1902). i use the version of “song of myself” from the 1881 edition of leaves of grass.4 my foray into comparative criticism is certainly not intended to suggest that the primary reason for studying indigenous literatures is to enhance our understanding of non-native literature. rather, i hope to demonstrate that one of the many ways to expand awareness of the importance of studying native literatures, especially traditional oral literatures, is that they can offer sophisticated ways of representing and seeing reality, within and beyond their cultural origins. of course, this claim is “nothing new.” almost fifty years ago, in we talk, you listen (1970), vine deloria, jr., advocated using indigenous worldviews to evaluate non-native realities. kenneth m. roemer “whitman’s song”       28   ii we certainly don’t need to know the navajo nightway to be aware of the repetition in “song of myself.” according to james woodress, “[s]ome 41% of the 10,500 lines of leaves of grass contain initial reiteration” (320). teachers and scholars typically present whitman’s multiple uses of repetition as innovative, even revolutionary, in comparison to his pre-leaves of grass poetry and to the conventional stanza, meter, and rhyme forms of nineteenth-century poetry in america and england. matthews’s often anthologized translation of one of the four long prayers that precede the first dance of the atsálie yei-be-chai on the final night of the ceremonial exhibits complex progressions of exact repetition, repetition with variation, parallelism, and balance of binary opposites (matthews 143-45). an awareness of this prayer reveals the impact of navajo forms of expression on contemporary native american fiction. for instance, n. scott momaday’s house made of dawn title came from a similar nightway prayer performed earlier in the nightway. but an awareness of this prayer and other songs and prayers in the nightway also demonstrates to readers unfamiliar with native oral texts that, long before whitman wrote “song of myself,” complex uses of repetition were performed in what is now the united states. james c. faris observes that on rock drawings created in the late seventeenth century “in the caches of the san juan drainage,” there is evidence of performance of the nightway (18). within the specific context of written poetic genres in english in the 19th century, whitman’s use of repetition was inventive. but an awareness of the nightway gives us a much broader performance context, one that demonstrates that whitman’s use of repetition was centuries old and quite conventional for the north american continent. a nightway hataalii would, however, consider whitman’s use of various forms of repetition quite untraditional from a traditional navajo ceremonial viewpoint. consider the contrasts, for example, between two sections that both dramatize travel: lines 771-817 from section 33 of “song of myself” (47-48) and lines 15-35 in matthews’s version of the prayer mentioned above (143). the motion in whitman’s poem begins with “through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves” (line 771). “through” begins the next two lines, which are each followed by the specific natural and human environments passed through and include internal repetition of “through”: “…salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs… gymnasium, through the curtain’d saloon, through the office or public hall” (lines 771-73). then whitman drops the initial repetition of “through,” the motion proceeds with a series of unrepeated action transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         29   word lead-ins to the lines: “looking,” “wandering,” “coming home,” “voyaging,” “hurrying,” and “walking” that build to a triple lead-in repetition of “speeding” followed by “carrying” and “storming” lead-ins (lines 779-95). in the navajo prayer, the words of the hataalii move a holy being (diné diyinni) who is one of the four thunder beings traveling from the “house made of dawn” to the earth to bring help (restoration of balance, hózhó) to the one or ones “sung over” (143). this momentous journey takes fewer lines (lines 15-35) than the on-going journey in “song of myself” (which doesn’t stop at line 817). in the holy being’s journey, every line begins with “with your”; the images used to describe the holy being are much less specific than in whitman’s poem; and the motion is expressed in incremental stages in the middle and the ends of the lines. for example, here are lines 15-22: with your moccasins of dark cloud, come to us. with your leggings of dark cloud, come to us. with your shirt of dark cloud, come to us. with your head-dress of dark cloud, come to us. with your mind enveloped in dark cloud, come to us. with the dark thunder above you, come to us soaring. with the far-darkness made of the dark cloud over your head, come to us soaring. (lines 15-22; 143) the prayer continues to build, balancing he-rain (downpour) and she-rain (light rain) and adding, among other images, “zigzag lightning flung out” and “the rainbow hanging high over your head” until the hataalii replaces “far darkness” with “near darkness” (lines 23-35). the journey ends on the earth. with the rainbow hanging high on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring. with the near darkness made of the dark cloud, of the he-rain, of the dark mist and of the she-rain, come to us. with the darkness on the earth, come to us. (lines 33-35; 143) the narrative of the journey of the holy being places much less emphasis on the specificity of what is traveled through than the narrative in “song of myself” and much more on two vertical axes (from lower extremities to upper and above for the holy being’s body and the downward movement from “house” to “far darkness” to “near darkness” to “earth”) and one horizontal axis kenneth m. roemer “whitman’s song”       30   (the appearance of the wings and then their extension to the “ends of your wings”) (lines 1-35; 143). reading the repetitive language of this travel section of “song of myself” through the journey of the holy thunder being invites us to ask significant questions about audience and evokes feelings of expansiveness. whitman’s audience was becoming increasingly diverse; witness the catalogues of different people he enumerates in “song of myself” (for example, see section 15, lines 264-329; 31-33). whitman could not assume that his diverse audience shared common worldviews. they certainly didn’t all share common experiences. in order to create the illusion of grand expansiveness for this particular journey in section 33 and the poem in general, he obviously assumed that he had to shower the readers with a wide variety of specific visual, sound, and tactile images in hopes that some of the images would resonate with some of the readers at least some of the time. the hataalii of the nightway performs before very different sizes of audiences. at some points in the nightway, only the patients and a few helpers attend; at other times there are hundreds attending, particularly on the final night. the nature of these audiences is strikingly different from whitman’s diverse audience. definitely before the forced removal of the “long walk” in 1864 and probably continuing through the boarding school era that extended well into the 20th century and much later for many navajo living on the diné reservation, a substantial portion of these audiences shared and still share common traditional stories and similar worldviews, as well as common language—“navajo is the most widely spoken indigenous language in america” (s. a. p.). compared to the narration of the journey in section 33 of “song of myself,” the holy being’s journey’s brevity and relative vagueness can be explained by an observation offered by the most famous collaborator in a tohono o’odham life narrative, maria chona: “the song is very short because we understand so much” (underhill 51). the traditional navajo audience would know many songs and stories, whole communities of songs and stories or, as t. c. s. langen termed them extensive “collections” (6). the hataalii in a nightway had in the past and still today for traditional navajo, the authority of speaking or singing words given by holy beings and the reassurance of performing before an audience with a shared language, knowledge, and worldview, a worldview that includes the importance of directionality (vertical and horizontal) and motion (“to go” in navajo is in many ways the equivalent of “to be” in transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         31   english5). and of course the rituals, dance, and regalia all give additional meanings to the words. hence, what may seem vague in an english translation on the page in comparison to the travel descriptions offered by whitman’s speaker/singer is full of detail and complex meanings to a traditional navajo audience. reading the traveling lines of section 33 of “song of myself” through the comparative brevity and vagueness of the repetition and parallelism of the traveling section of the thunder beings’ descent to earth can enhance readers’ awareness of the importance of assumed audience; in this case, the impacts of the diversified evolving audiences of whitman’s “song of myself” and the evolving but much less diverse and more culturally traditional audiences of a navajo hataalii. another potential result of reading “song of myself” through the nightway would be to invite readers to rethink the functions of whitman’s poem, specifically the curative functions. i am not straying into an argument that turns whitman into a “shaman,” an approach that nolan in poet-chief was tempted by when he presents whitman as a “shamanic personae” whose poems take him on “shamanic journeys” (184). that could take us down the road of controversies about “white shamans,” a persona attacked with vigor by leslie marmon silko (“old-time indian attack” 213-15). instead, i’m raising the possibility that reading the nightway, even in the highly mediated form of matthews’s translation, invites readers to remember that the origin of poetry was oral performance and many of the performers used their words with an intent to cure people. certainly, this is the case with the navajo nightway’s hundreds of songs and thousands of spoken lines and rituals, which the holy beings gave to the diné to help people whose state of imbalance is manifested in paralysis or illnesses concentrated in the head, for example, eye and ear disorders, headaches, or mental disorders (roemer, “nightway questions” 819-20). whitman’s speaker/singer does not explicitly claim physical curative powers for his song.6 but he does perceive an illness in the reader as s(he) reads the poem and, very early in his performance, claims that he can cure that illness. a crucial part of the illness is the inability of the reader (and by implication most people) to perceive reality directly; all is seen “second or third hand” or “through the eyes of the dead” or through the “specters of books” (line 35; 24). the process of reading his poem will cure this perceptual illness. not only will the reader come to “possess the origin of all poems” (line 33; 42), s(he) will also no longer perceive reality mediated. this transformation of perception is not even sullied by the speaker/singer as an kenneth m. roemer “whitman’s song”       32   intermediary: “you shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, / you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself” (lines 36-37; 24). this curative process, reminiscent of ralph waldo emerson’s experiencing the “transparent eye-ball” epiphany (emerson—texts, nature ch.1), involves surrounding the reader with the speaker/singer’s words. readers of matthews’s translation of the nightway or listeners at a nightway performance may have a heightened awareness of a process that also surrounds listeners with words. many of the powerful songs and prayers conclude with an often anthologized ending similar to the penultimate lines of the prayer spoken before the first dance of the atsálie yei-be-chai on the final night: with beauty before me, i walk. with beauty behind me, i walk. with beauty below me, i walk. with beauty above me, i walk. with beauty all around me, i walk. (lines 92-96; 144) the hataalii surrounds the patient(s) with a form of the powerful word hózhó, which washington translates as “beauty.” again, because of the difference in the audiences and whitman’s love of piling on a pounding of word images, his speaker/singer’s performance of the surrounding with words uses more words and space. but the above, below, and all around is evident, and is placed, as in the nightway, at the conclusion of the poem: i sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world (line 1333, 66) …. i depart as air, i shake my white locks at the runaway sun, i effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift in the lacy jags. i bequeath my self to the dirt to grow from the grass i love, if you want me again look for me under your boot soles. (lines 1337-40, 66) …. failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, missing me one place search another, i stop somewhere waiting for you.” (lines 1344-46; 66) transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         33   an awareness of the nightway also fosters an awareness of significant differences between the agencies “behind” the curing. this awareness can, furthermore, highlight a fundamental difference between navajo, and indeed many indigenous curing performances, and the healing process in “song of myself” and many non-native physical and psychological healing processes: the difference between communityand individual-focused agency. despite the compulsion whitman’s singer/speaker has to enlarge his individual identity by aligning himself with many types of people, including children and women, and despite his claim that “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (line 3; 23)—despite these transcendental creations of a community of selves, the agency of the curing comes from the one ecstatic speaker/singer. the final version of the poem’s title is, after all, “song of myself,” and that self, though capable of denigrating his identity, has the power to cure the readers’ perceptual illness, in part, by the authority of his divinity: “divine i am inside and out, and i make holy whatever i touch or am touch’d from” (line 524; 40). the navajo hataalii’s power comes from communities of people, of holy beings, and of the rituals and words given to the navajo by the holy beings. the hataalii must perform with assistants—singers, sand painters, dancers, hundreds of witnesses during the last night, and the patient(s), since s(he)/they must repeat words and ritual actions in order to be cured. the powers of the words themselves are just as or possibly more important than these visible performers and performances. certainly whitman’s speaker/singer would claim power for his words, and the reader must “perform.” s(he) must read. and it is true that if the performance of the sender and receiver of “song of myself” is done correctly, the reader will, according to the speaker/singer, be cured. but the emphasis is still on the agency of the individual speaker/singer; not hundreds of people, some of whom have highly specialized duties in the nightway. even more important are the differences between the agency of the communities of words and their goals. there is certainly a large community of words in “song of myself”— 1,345 lines of words, and the speaker/singer would claim that these words have power to cure readers. there is an even larger community of words spoken and sung over the nine days of the nightway. but the differences are more profound than suggested by simple contrasts in word counts. as the previous comparison of the traveling in section 33 of “song of myself” and the traveling in the prayer delivered on the last night of the nightway reveals, a knowledge of the assumed audiences of the speaker/singer and of the navajo hataalii invite an awareness of kenneth m. roemer “whitman’s song”       34   difference in the specificity and repetition of the words. during that discussion, i omitted mention of one crucial part of the nightway audience—the holy beings. they gave the navajo the songs and words, but in one sense the words they gave are more powerful than the holy beings. if the hataalii performs the words properly, not only do the holy beings delight in hearing them (natonabah, “by this song”), they must also do what the words say. whereas whitman’s speaker/singer words have the power to describe his travels and those descriptions can help to cure the reader, the prayer words spoken by the navajo hataalii literally move the holy being from his “house” through the “far darkness” to the “near darkness” to the earth. once there the holy being can directly help cure the patient(s) physical and psychological ills. the navajo community of words have direct agency far beyond the power of the individual hataalii. reading “song of myself” through the nightway thus raises awareness of the emphasis on individual agency in whitman’s poem as differentiated from communal human/divine agency in the nightway. the “red reading” of “song of myself” also highlights the privileging of innovation over conservation and restoration as the goal of literary agency. in the tradition of emerson’s liberator poet,7 whitman’s speaker/singer hopes to free the reader from his or her mitigated epistemologies. the ultimate goal of the nightway is to restore the type of balance in the patient(s) that the holy beings created before the creation of the human diné. this difference, highlighted by the comparison of the two curative texts, may help to explain one of the reasons why whitman’s “song of myself” is almost always part of the american literary canon, whereas the nightway and other indigenous songs, narratives, and ceremonial texts are often not. despite the move away from new critical criteria for “great literature,” one of the dominant criteria for most critical scholarly interpretive communities (and by implication for most americans who celebrate america as the land of change and “the new”) remains evidence of innovation, not conservation. becoming aware of the beauty and power of the nightway juxtaposed with the beauty and power of “song of myself” invites students, teachers, and scholars to consider restorative literature as great literature. iii as i conceded at the beginning of this article, we don’t need to read “song of myself” through the nightway to discover its general characteristics of repetitive language, implied transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         35   diversified audience, curative qualities, and concepts of agency. nor is the nightway the only indigenous lens that could invite the types of readings i have offered. we could use many south american, african, asian, or south pacific indigenous performance texts as interpretive lenses. but using the nightway as a critical lens to interpret “song of myself” does suggest that in order to “answer” the criticism of the over-use of euroamerican literary, historical, and anthropological critical approaches to interpret native american literatures, we need to go beyond considering the usefulness of indigenous concepts articulated by, for example, the native american intellectuals examined by robert warrior8 and beyond the concepts offered by contemporary 20thand 21st-century native critics like warrior, weaver, womac, allen, owens, saris, teuton, huhndorf, vizenor, and many others. we need to consider how the aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural concepts articulated by navajo hataalii like andrew natonabah and the concepts imbedded in other indigenous performance texts can help us to understand meanings in non-native texts we might not otherwise have emphasized if we had only seen them through well-known euroamerican critical lenses. another obvious advantage of this comparative approach is that, potentially, it could expand an awareness of the importance of indigenous literatures. native literature is no longer “in the margins” the way it was forty years ago. my website archive of the tables of contents of american literature anthologies and histories demonstrates the significant increase of native texts in the american literary canon during the past three decades (covers, titles, and tables). it is crucial to teach these texts separately in order to place them in relevant historical, legal, and cultural contexts. i have done this many times. but if they are never presented comparatively, they may be relegated in survey courses and histories of literature to separate, historically timebound sections. the worst-case scenario is the “ok-we’ve-done-the-indian-unit-now-we-canmove-on” attitude. if, on the other hand, in our classes and scholarship, we can demonstrate how indigenous concepts can help us to understand and evaluate many types of literature, historical periods, and cultures, then we can expand the appreciation of indigenous literature and do it without undermining crucial concepts of sovereignty and nationalism. again i return to the model offered by deloria’s we talk, you listen. his arguments are firmly grounded in his yankton-standing rock sioux worldviews. but he realized that there was a need (a desperate need) to read/evaluate contemporary american culture through his worldviews. i think we still need to listen to that message. kenneth m. roemer “whitman’s song”       36   notes i would like to thank lucy tapahonso for introducing me to will tsosie, who helped me to understand the nightway. scott andrews and the anonymous reader for transmotion offered valuable suggestions for revising the article. 1 see huhndorf’s mapping the americas (2009) and allen’s blood narratives (2002). one of the first book-length feminist studies was paula gunn allen’s the sacred hoop (1986). 2 see for example, the “indian songs” section in the february 1917 issue of poetry, austin’s the american rhythm (1923), jerome rothenberg’s shaking the pumpkin (1972), and dennis tedlock’s, finding the center (1972). 3 for an intensive study of the nightway, see james faris’s the nightway (1990). john farella’s “forward” to the night chant (1995) provides an excellent introduction. a master’s thesis i directed offers interesting insights about canon formation and “song of myself” and the nightway: kody lightfoot’s “expanding the american literary canon “(2000). 4 the 1881 version i use appears in the ninth edition of the norton edition of american literature 1865-1914, edited by michael elliott (2017), 23-66. 5 see larry evers’ “song and traveling” subsection of by this song i walk with andrew natonabah website: http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/wordsandplace/natonabah_intro.html. 6 i designate whitman’s speaker/singer as male, though arguments can be made for considering the speaker/singer as a voice that transcends gender binaries. 7 see emerson’s essay “the poet” (1844). 8 see, for example, warrior’s tribal secrets (1995). works cited allen, chadwick. blood narrative: indigenous identity in american indian and maori literary and activist texts. durham: duke up. 2002. allen, paula gunn. the sacred hoop: recovering the feminine in american indian traditions. boston: beacon, 1986. austin, mary. the american rhythm. new york: harcourt brace. 1923. cox, james h. review of toward a native american critical theory, by elvira pulitano. american indian quarterly 29. 1 & 2 (2005): 316-21. deloria, vine, jr. we talk, you listen: new tribes, new turf. new york: macmillian, 1970. drews, george, and david drews. “”racial attitudes.” walt whitman: an encyclopedia. eds. j. r. lemaster and donald d. kummings. new york: garland, 1988. http://whitman archive.org.8080/criticism/ current/encyclopedia/entry_44html. emerson, ralph waldo. “the poet.” selected writings of emerson. ed. donald mcquade. new york: modern library, 1981. 303-25. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         37   _______. texts. chapter 1. http://emersoncentral.com/nature.htm. [evers, larry]. “song and traveling” from by this song i walk with andrew natonabah. words and place: native literature from the american southwest. http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/wordsandplace/natonabah_intro.html. farella, john. “forward.” the night chant: a navaho ceremony. washington matthews. salt lake city: u of utah p, 1995. xvi-xlvi. faris, james c. the nightway: a history and a history of documentation of a navajo ceremonial. albuquerque: u of new mexico p, 1990. folsom, ed. “native americans.” walt whitman: an encyclopedia. eds. j. r. lemaster and donald d. kummings. new york: garland, 1988. http://whitman archive.org/criticism/ current/encyclopedia/entry_34html. _______. walt whitman’s native representations. new york: cambridge up, 1997. huhndorf, shari m. mapping the americas: the transnational politics of contemporary native culture. ithaca: cornell up, 2009. “indian songs.” poetry 9.5 (february 1917). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/toc/detail/70370. langen, t. c. s. “estoy-eh-mutt and the morphologists.” studies in american indian literatures, ser. 2. 1.1 (1989): 1-12. lightfoot, kody. “expanding the american literary canon: a comparative analysis of the navajo nightway and walt whitman’s ‘song of myself.’” ma thesis. u of texas at arlington, 2000. momaday, n. scott. house made of dawn. new york: harper, 1968. natonabah, andrew. [transcript of] “by this song i walk with andrew natonabah.” words & place: native literature from the american southwest. parentseyes.ariziona.edu/wordsandplace/natonabah.html. nolan, james. poet-chief: the native american poetics of walt whitman and pablo neruda. albuquerque: u of new mexico p, 1994. owens, louis. other destinies: understanding the american indian novel. norman: u of oklahoma p, 1992. parker, robert dale. the invention of native american literature. ithaca: cornell up, 2002. pulitano, elvira. toward a native american critical theory. lincoln: u of nebraska p, 2003. kenneth m. roemer “whitman’s song”       38   robins, barbara k. review of toward a native american critical theory, by elvira pulitano. american indian quarterly 29. 1 & 2 (2005): 325-30. roemer, kenneth m. “native american women and violence: fiction, critical perspectives, narrative transformations.” journal of contemporary thought 5 (1995): 97-117. _______. “ the nightway questions american literature.” american literature 66 (1994): 81729. _______. “the study of american indian literature can illuminate the classics in new ways.” chronicle of higher education 12 july 1989: b1-b2. _______. covers, titles, and tables: the formations of american literary canons in anthologies. library.uta.edu/ctt. rothenberg, jerome. ed. shaking the pumpkin: traditional poetry of the indian north americas. new york: doubleday, 1972. s. a. p. “johnson/ speaking navajo: minority—language report.” the economist 13 nov. 2014. http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/11/johnson-speaking-navajo. sarris, greg. keeping slug woman alive: a holistic approach to american indian texts. berkeley: u of california p, 1993. silko, leslie marmon. “an old-time indian attack conducted in two parts.” the remembered earth: an anthology of contemporary native american literature. ed. geary hobson. albuquerque: red earth press, 1979. 211-16. teuton, christopher b. deep waters: the textual continuum in american indian literature. lincoln: u of nebraska p, 2010. _______. review of toward a native american critical theory, by elvira pulitano. american indian quarterly 29. 1 & 2 (2005): 334-37. tedlock, dennis, trans. finding the center: narrative poetry of the zuni indians. new york: dial, 1972. underhill, ruth m. papago woman, 1979. new york: waveland, 1985. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners: postindian warriors of survivance. hanover: wesleyan up, 1994. warrior, robert allen. tribal secrets: recovering american indian intellectual traditions. minneapolis: u of minnesota p, 1995. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)         39   weaver, jace. that the people might live. native american literatures and native american community. new york: oxford up, 1997. whitman, walt. “song of myself.” the norton anthology of american literature, vol. c. 18651914, 9th ed. ed. michael a. elliott. new york: norton, 2017. 23-66. witherspoon, gary. language and art in the navajo universe. ann arbor: u of michigan p, 1977. womack, craig s. red on red: native american literary separatism. minneapolis: u of minnesota p, 1999. wong, hertha d. sweet. review of poet-chief: the native poetics of walt whitman and pablo neruda. by james nolan. walt whitman quarterly 16.3 (1999): 226-28. woodress, james. “whitman, walt(er).” american literature to 1900. introd. lewis leary. new york: st. martin’s p, 1980. microsoft word proof4.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 79 the mechanics of survivance in indigenously-determined video-games: invaders and never alone deborah l. madsen survivance as a legal concept names the right to inheritance and more specifically the condition of being qualified to inherit a legacy. in his essay “aesthetics of survivance” (2008), vizenor describes survivance as “the heritable right of succession or reversion of an estate” (1). this aspect of survivance is overlooked by those scholars of vizenor’s work who focus rather on the conjunction of the terms “survival” and “resistance,” terms that are important most fundamentally as they intersect with the capacity to transmit and to accept the inheritance of the past that is itself the intersection of survival and resistance.1 that is to say, acts of resistance and survival form the axiology (or ethical action) of survivance; the preservation of tribal languages, for example, or the transmission of traditional stories, are acts that ensure the continual availability of the tribal values of knowing and being in the world that are encoded in those words and stories. these indigenous lifeways constitute the inheritance that motivates survivance. thus, survivance is not a static object or method but a dynamic, active condition of historical and cultural survival and also of political resistance, practiced in the continual readiness of indigenous communities to accept and continue the inheritance passed on by elders and ancestors. in this sense, claims made by recent indigenous video-game developers to speak to youth through digital media by creating games that transmit tribal legacies of language, stories, ontologies, and ways of knowing and being in the world, speak to the practice of survivance. indeed, the particular capacity of video games to engage active participation in the making of stories offers a powerful means to encourage and sustain survivance. in what game designer elizabeth lapensée (anishinaabe/métis) refers to as “indigenously-determined” videogames, then, survivance is both a substantive dimension of the experience of playing a game and also the underlying structural principle that governs the game mechanics that are determined by indigenous epistemologies.2 this essay focuses on the analysis of game mechanics: the rules of the game that prescribe the opportunities made possible for, and the limitations imposed upon, player interactivity. the term “game mechanics” refers to all the rules or conditions that govern deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 80 interaction with the game. they determine both the means by which the player can act within the game world (for instance, pressing a designated button on a video-game controller to move from one kind of reality to another, or throwing dice in an analogue game) and also the constraints imposed on potential actions by the player (the legitimate movement of various chess pieces around the board, for example). ian schreiber suggests additional questions that can be posed concerning the functions of game mechanics: “what actions can players take, and what effects do those actions have on the game state? when does the game end, and how is a resolution determined?” (n.pag.). these aspects of game mechanics are closely related to the structure of the story or game narrative: most clearly the conditions for an ending but also the intermediate actions that a player can (or cannot) take to advance the story through a succession of episodes towards that final resolution. thus, game mechanics not only control the “rules of the game” but more fundamentally the conditions for a player’s interactivity with the game. this emphasis on interactivity and action characterizes the definition of games and game mechanics offered by robin hunicke, marc leblanc, and robert zubek in their influential 2001 essay, “mda: a formal approach to game design and game research” where they write: “fundamental to this framework is the idea that games are more like artifacts than media. by this we mean that the content of a game is its behavior not the media that streams out of it towards the player. thinking about games as designed artifacts helps frame them as systems that build behavior via interaction” (n.pag.). the “behaviour” of a game is conditioned by its mechanics, which they define as “the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms (inc. actions, behaviors, rules/control mechanisms).” game mechanics work with “dynamics”—“the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others’ outputs over time”—and “aesthetics”—“the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system” (n.pag.)—to produce the total gaming experience. both the player’s experience of interaction with the game environment and the emotional impacts of the game arise from the crafting of the mechanics that control the behaviour of the game system. mechanics are thematized in the context of the game narrative, through a combination of “dynamics” and “aesthetics.” as elizabeth lapensée (whose game invaders is discussed below) told vicki moulder in a 2017 conversation: “ways of knowing and game mechanics always inform one another in anything i work on” (n.pag.). lapensée explains this relation at greater transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 81 length in a contemporaneous interview with patti martinson, in terms of her interest in the interaction between indigenous culture and gaming. lapensée distinguishes games that use representational “pan-indian” characters from those indigenously-determined games that are created from and by the indigenous epistemologies that generate the fundamental game mechanics: i grew up playing games and looking for myself as a player character, but of course an indigenous young woman wasn’t there... i went with the close seconds like nightwolf, which were these pan-indian characters called the “keepers of their people” or “protectors of their people” but not actually represented in relation to land and communities and elders. i first started off critiquing these representations but recognized that if i was ever going to get to play a game that i wanted to play, i’d have to do it myself. i’m interested mostly in how indigenous ways of knowing can be transferred into unique mechanics. that is, i want to go further than simply representing indigenous culture through a game character, i want to see indigenous cultures infused in the gameplay itself. (martinson, n.pag.) the transference of “indigenous ways of knowing” into “unique mechanics” both thematizes game mechanics and goes beyond this content-based relation to encompass the interactivity that characterizes the player’s structural engagement with the game system. in their study of the psychological dynamics of digital games, glued to games (2011), scott rigby and richard m. ryan argue that the degree of agency attributed to a player is enacted by the availability of opportunities to make choices, to act on them, and to see the consequences of those actions in the game-world (7). by emphasizing the creative role of the player, rigby and ryan de-emphasize the fact that player-input is always limited to the potentials for action encoded in the game mechanics by the game designer. this function (action-potential) thematizes player interactivity as one of the ways in which mechanics determines the meaning(s) of the game. further, as lapensée’s remarks suggest, the capacity of interactivity to thematize issues like who has the capacity to assert authority within the game-world, and who is responsible for specific actions and their consequences, has a distinctive valence in indigenous game design.3 rigby and ryan link the concept of player agency with a need for personal autonomy; in contrast, a powerful motif that runs through lapensée’s conversation with vicki moulder (and indeed all of lapensée’s work) is relationship with community: deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 82 • “to me, human-computer interaction and the well-being of all life must be interwoven”; • “another important aspect of indigenous game development involves creating the game and then gifting it to the community fully or partially”; • “choices always come down to making sure i’m meeting the needs of the community i’m collaborating with.” (n.pag.) in these assertions, lapensée crystallizes a recognition of the inseparability of human-digital interaction and “the well-being of all life” or the web of relations that characterizes indigenously-determined games: relations among player agency, interactivity that is shaped by design choices that both enable and limit player-actions, respect for community rights and needs expressed through collaboration, and the orientation of the game design through indigenous ways of knowing. lapensée is essentially talking about survivance as the principle that generates and thematizes indigenous game mechanics. vizenor’s concept of survivance enhances understanding of the powerful decolonizing potential of mechanics in indigenously-determined video-games and these game mechanics illustrate in particularly clear ways the workings of survivance as an active engagement in the politics of what vizenor calls “native presence.” in an interview with jöelle rostkowski, vizenor remarks: “the character of survivance creates a sense of native presence, a critical, active presence and resistance, over absence, historical and cultural absence, nihility and victimry” (xlvii). native presence, then, in the fullness of vizenor’s concept, captures the essence of the tribal inheritance that is passed down as a potential for decolonization, from one generation to the next. in the discussion that follows, i seek to show how the sense of a critical, active indigenous presence is created, by analyzing the mechanics of two very different types of indigenously-determined video-games: the downloadable 2-d fixed shooter casual game invaders (2015 steven paul judd, elizabeth lapensée, trevino brings plenty) and the iñupiaq puzzle platformer video-game never alone (2014 upper one games). the mechanics of these games are designed to compel players to enact survivance, and understanding of this relationship underlines the importance of the decolonizing potential of indigenous video games. invaders (2015): survivance, loss, and resistance transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 83 the aspect of survivance that enacts resistance to “historical and cultural absence, nihility and victimry” (vizenor) is explored through the 2-d fixed-shooter video-game invaders (2015). the artwork is by steven paul judd (kiowa/choctaw), the music by trevino brings plenty (lakota), and the game is designed and coded by elizabeth lapensée based on the unity platform. this free downloadable game is available for a variety of platforms: web, webgl, android, iphone, and ipad.4 in the 2011 interview with vicki moulder cited above, elizabeth lapensée discusses the necessity of making her work available to communities where “access is so limited that i’m focusing mostly on mobile, web, and museum games that i’m sure will reach community members. i’ve been back and forth between living where there’s very limited internet access, so really, why would i make games i can’t even play myself?” (n.pag.) this accessibility locates invaders as an instance of what in the industry is known as a “casual game.” in a casual revolution (2010) game theorist jesper juul identifies several distinctive qualities of casual games: that they are easy to learn to play and can be played in a variety of different situations; they use mimetic interfaces—“the physical activity that the player performs mimics the game activity on the screen” (5)—and they do not require a great deal of time or investment: they “can be played in short time bursts, and generally do not require an intimate knowledge of video game history in order to play (5). the casual game genre of invaders, then, meets precisely lapensée’s need to reach and involve communities in her work of survivance. as the title suggests, invaders is based on the 1978 classic arcade game space invaders, the aim of which is for the player to save the earth by preventing the alien invaders from landing, by shooting them down using a laser base. invaders uses the same basic game mechanics as space invaders but re-thematizes them in axiological ways that express a powerful sense of survivance: indigeneity is inscribed as persistence and resistance to historical erasure, and the subject position of the victim. this re-thematization of mechanics is achieved both through the game’s dynamics (the player’s interface with those algorithms that determine the behavior of the game system) and most obviously through the emotional impact on the player of the game’s visual and musical aesthetics. in a well-designed game like invaders the dynamics and aesthetics work inseparably with game mechanics—and in this game, they create performative relations of survivance. as designer elizabeth lapensée explains, the game is meant to be played in quick bursts for the attainment of a high score, much like the original space invaders. however, in the context of playing as an deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 84 indigenous warrior, the design takes on another meaning—no matter what, the aliens eventually obliterate your character and community. lives are represented not as numbers or even as your own, but instead as the warriors who stand side by side with you. if you get hit, you permanently lose a community member. this mirrors the very real losses experienced as colonizers attacked and decimated indigenous communities during invasion. (“indigenous game design” n.pag.) the evocation of loss as “tragic wisdom” is achieved through the game’s axiological resistance to “victimry,” a feature that is encountered as soon as the game starts. the launch screen offers the player only two options: to play or to quit. after the player fails to stop the alien invasion and is defeated, the only option offered is to “play again,” which returns the player to the launch screen. each time the game is played a conscious ethical decision to engage actively in the scene of conflict and to reject surrender or the position of the defeated victim is demanded. the significance of this demand for survivance-as-resistance is highlighted by the differences in game design between invaders and the original 1978 arcade game. the laser base that in space invaders is used for shooting becomes in invaders a native warrior-avatar, which the player moves horizontally across the bottom of the screen. the impersonal firing of a laser weapon in the original game is replaced by the personalized manipulation of the digital warriorcharacter. the haptic interactivity—literally a “hands-on” relation—between the player and the character (rather than a direct relation between player and weapon) suggests at least a minimal identification through the subject-position of the warrior-avatar. standing behind the active avatar there are three more, which move in succession to take the place of the active warrior when he is “killed”; thus, the player has a total of four “lives” with which to play each game. the significance of the warrior-avatar is explained by lapensée in an interview with chad sapieha to mark the showing of invaders at the 2015 toronto imaginenative film + media arts festival and the digital media art+cade: invaders is inspired by original artwork by steven paul judd that depicts warriors facing off with sprites from the arcade game space invaders. the game calls into question the term “invaders” and what an “alien encounter” can mean for indigenous people. lives in the game are represented by images of community members rather than numbers, hopefully causing players to recognize the real lives lost because of colonization.” (n.pag.) transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 85 the warrior-avatar shoots arrows (not lasers) at the invading spacecraft, which appear in increasing numbers, with each successive level or “wave” moving horizontally across the screen while at the same time advancing towards the bottom of the screen. thus, the basic game mechanic is very simple: using the arrow-keys on the keyboard, the player moves the warrioravatar horizontally across the screen while using the up-arrow to shoot. this mechanic is thematized in the desktop version of the game by the mirroring of the player’s use of keyboard arrows and the avatar’s shooting of arrows. by playing on the double significance of “arrows” the mechanic instantiates the subject position of the player while suggesting a further gesture towards vizenor’s concept of “wordarrows” as discursive weapons in the ongoing struggle for indigenous cultural self-determination.5 invaders uses the same pixelated “vintage” icons for the four varieties of spacecraft, though columbus’s la santa maría makes occasional appearances. the destruction of each type of invader earns the player points, earning more points for destroying the larger spaceships that fire more powerful weapons. as in the original game, different kinds of weapons are used by the invaders but in invaders, rather than moving uniquely, the weapons are increasingly destructive culminating in the rockets, bombs, and super-charged bombs that are fired by the mystery ships. the player controls the warrior-avatar’s shots but the invaders’ shooting is generated randomly by the game system. the “wave” ends when the player has destroyed all the alien spacecraft, thus averting the invasion, but the next wave starts immediately with the appearance of an even greater number of invaders to defeat, in a loop that is endless and relentless. the pace of the game is significantly faster than in space invaders where each of the player’s shots must reach the top of the screen before the next shot can be fired. in invaders there is no limit on the speed of shooting and if the player has received the “rapid fire” bonus then s/he can fire continuously for the duration of that bonus power. adding to the relentless pace of the gameplay in invaders is the absence of the stationary protective shields or bunkers arranged in space invaders along the bottom of the screen, just above the laser base. there is no refuge at all to be had in invaders. the warriors have nowhere to shelter from the bombardments, which become extremely intense in the later waves when many invading spacecraft are firing at the same time. the player’s dexterity is severely tested by the need to move the warrior-avatar in increasingly precise ways to avoid the incoming missiles, with no shelter or shield to offer respite. conditions for ending each game also differ significantly: in space invaders the game deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 86 ends when the invading spacecraft reach the bottom of the screen, indicating that the invasion has been successful; the game also ends when the last of the protective bunkers has been destroyed. invaders, in contrast, ends when all four warrior-avatars have been killed; if an invader reaches the bottom of the screen, the next wave of the invasion continues. unlike space invaders, there is no maximum limit placed on the number of points a player can score: in the original game this was limited to 9,999 because this is the largest number that can be seen on the four-digit arcade display (space invaders manual n.pag.). while there are no “extra lives” to be won as a bonus for acquiring a specified number of points, on the more advanced levels of invaders the power of “rapid fire” is gifted when a ghosted quiver of arrows appears at the top of the screen; the player must move the avatar to “catch” the arrows as they move down the screen, acquiring this temporary power that lasts only a few seconds. the game’s dominant shooting mechanic requires that, in order to survive, the player must balance the winning of points (firing arrows at the invaders) with the need to play defensively (evading the invaders’ weapons). in this way the game mechanic integrates acts of resistance and survival in its performance of survivance. in space invaders, the speed of the invasion and the tempo of the music increase linearly as more alien spacecraft are defeated; in invaders the sheer number of invaders increases while the circularity of the music continues in an infinite loop. such a comparison, however, belies the complexity of trevino brings plenty’s composition for invaders, which represents an intricate reinterpretation of the original game music within the context of survivance. the function of music in the original space invaders significantly advanced the role of sound in subsequent video games, as andrew schartmann argues in maestro mario: how nintendo transformed videogame music into an art (2013): by enhancing player interactivity by providing auditory feedback, by providing stimulus through the continuous four-note loop, and by demonstrating the potential of sound effects so that “[o]ver the years, analogous strategies of variation would be applied to pitch, rhythm, dynamics, form, and a host of other parameters, all with the goal of accommodating the nonlinear aspect of video games.”6 trevino brings plenty’s strategy of variation is based on the indigenizing of the original music. in his fascinating short video, “tutorial on composing music for the game ‘invaders’,” brings plenty describes in detail his method of composition for the game. he started with the various elements of the game mechanics that required different kinds of music and auditory feedback: the launch screen and transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 87 opening/ending sequence music; sound effects for the player’s shooting and player death or invader death; and to signal the appearance of the mystery ship or other invaders. his strategy is based on the layering of musical lines that then play on infinite loop throughout the game. in his account, he began with the set bass-line music that speeds up throughout the game (1:19). the four-note cbass line, he describes as “ominous”—in classical music, he notes, cis the key for death (3:07)—and the tempo of 90 beats per minute based on the hand-drum sound (3:50) emphasizes the sound of “live artifacts” (5:08). to the bass-line and drum beat he added “a soft, almost ethereal harmonic line” to increase depth, and then added a “choppy” electronic beat that alternates with the drum beat. four bars are repeated over and over (10:45), with live music complementing the use of the synthesizer and computer-generated plug-ins to avoid a sound that would be “too electronic.” the drum beat unifies all the musical pieces; the same bass drumming line is deployed throughout but with variations. in the opening/closing sequence he added extra percussion (bass and treble) for emphasis, with handclaps to mark the turn-around of the loop. this “human element” is complemented by the fragmented reverberating “yell” that brings plenty added to the down beat (20:45) and the voiced reverberating “oh” on the offbeat with the drum. the tension that is generated between the chords introduced by the voice and those of the bass line, together with the treble line characterized by a “sci-fi” quality, produces a complex musical experience to which brings plenty modestly refers as: “some stuff happening there that i think is pretty interesting” (22:23). a musical gesture to the extra-terrestrial, science-fictional nature of space invaders is retained in the eerie treble-line, while the base-line and the humanvoiced themes emphasize the indigeneity of invaders. thus, trevino brings plenty creates a musical score that underlines the player’s participation in a game that is, as elizabeth lapensée describes, “a message of reflection, of pointing out that we, as indigenous people, have already experienced the apocalypse. now we survive to thrive.” (“indigenous game design” n.pag.). the musical fusion of the futuristic with the indigenous in invaders works with the game’s artwork to thematize the survivance (“survive to thrive”) “message” of the game mechanics. the game was initially inspired by a t-shirt designed by steven paul judd for the native american rights fund in which the original space invaders alien spacecraft are ranged opposite four indigenous warriors posed to evoke “classic” photographs of “indians,” like those of edward curtis. judd’s sometime collaborator, simon moya-smith, describes judd as “one of a wave of native american artists who use contemporary tools to make salient the modern native deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 88 american experience, from pain to prosperity. his medium of choice: paint and ink (which he refers to as ‘war paint’), as well as graphic design programs in which he will superimpose an image of, say, a flying saucer onto a centuries-old photo of a native american camp.” he quotes judd: “‘i just want to make cool stuff for indians to have, and that gets white people to think,’ said the kiowa and choctaw artist. ‘i want to make the stuff i never got to see as a kid’” (n.pag.). moya-smith’s example of judd’s “war paint” series—images of cans of spray paint labelled “war paint”—is described by wilhelm murg as an “andy warhol-esque blend of pop culture, street art and reverse cultural appropriation” (murg n.pag.). this combination typically generates the visual and aural puns that characterize judd’s work—another instance would be the series “lego my land” that shows “indian” figures in the form of lego dolls, or judd’s characters siouxperman and siouxperwoman. figure 1. steven paul judd, invaders. 2015. [ios]. digital art. screenshot 8 sept. 2016. the visual art of invaders presents a powerful pun on the concept of the frontier, specifically “space as the final frontier,” by juxtaposing two frames of reference: the historical settlercolonial frontier through the warrior-avatars and the futuristic icons of alien space-craft. however, the iconography of the invading aliens is not “futuristic” in the sense that, in terms of the history of video-games, space invaders effectively belongs to the past. thus, there is a dramatic irony at work in the complex image that brings together two sets of “historical” transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 89 symbolism. judd has explained something of this interplay: “with invaders, it is also a two-part thing… i loved space invaders, and the second part is, well, i think you can read into it: someone is trying to invade where you are living, you know, peacefully. i tell people it’s the only time you’re allowed to play indian and not get in trouble” (murg n.pag.). the shift from the past tense in relation to space invaders (“i loved”) to the present continuous tense (“someone is trying to invade”) suggests the same dynamic temporal relation that is achieved in invaders: where space invaders belongs to the past, invaders engages with the continuing present moment of colonial invasions that have never stopped. the iconography used by judd takes the twentiethcentury space-craft of space invaders back to the nineteenth, and brings the nineteenth-century image of “the indian” into the twentieth, to dramatize the ongoing nature of settler-colonialism. indeed, the t-shirt design that inspired the game introduces to this dynamic further historical moments: the native american rights fund design features a “high score” of 1970 (the year when the narf was founded) and in the reissue of this design for “the ntvs,” an online native american clothing company, judd changed the “high score” to 1491. thus, the present reality of settler-colonial invasion is traced not just to the nineteenth century but right back to the first invasion of the fifteenth century. this complex historical point is crystallized by the juxtaposition of resonant visual icons, avoiding an overt statement but creating the potential to interpret the indigenous figures as victims of colonial history.7 the warrior-avatars, however, engage with this inherited history as active, ethical agents of resistance and survival. gyasi ross underlines this quality of survivance in all of judd’s work in the review, “man crush monday: the audacious genius art of steve judd, kiowa love machine” (2014): instead of going the route that many seem to be infatuated with nowadays—constantly protesting and whining about the mainstream imagery of native people (and thereby reaffirming the white supremacist power structure that makes natives the objects that react to the white/male/patriarchal subject), judd goes in the complete opposite direction! he creates his own positive and healthy native images. imagine that— native people can actually create our own healthy (or unhealthy!) images instead of simply crying about what non-natives give us. that’s powerful, my friends. that’s self-determination. that is the power to influence generations of native people. instead of angrily protesting popular images of natives, he’s consistently showing the many ways native life is beautiful. (n.pag.) deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 90 judd’s images substitute agency for reaction and indigenous presence for absence, performing survivance in the sense described by vizenor in “aesthetics of survivance” as “an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories, not a mere reaction, however pertinent” (1, emphasis added). to play invaders is to recognize that settler violence has not ended; that indigenous people still exist with their tribal integrity intact. playing is the active participation in a history of survivance through the interconnectivity of aesthetics (art and music), dynamics (the player’s experience of interacting with the game system), and mechanics (the rules of the game, including the possibilities for winning, losing and ending the game). this is not to deny that the fundamental activity in which the player of invaders participates is losing. the game mechanics dictate that the player will always and inevitably lose; this is a game that cannot be “won” in any straightforward way—and that is the point. in his study of losing in video-games, the art of failure (2013), jesper juul explains: the paradox of failure is unique in that when you fail in a game, it really means that you were in some way inadequate. such a feeling of inadequacy is unpleasant for us, and it is odd that we choose to subject ourselves to it. however, while games uniquely induce such feelings of being inadequate, they also motivate us to play more in order to escape the same inadequacy, and the feeling of escaping failure (often by improving our skills) is central to the enjoyment of games. games promise us a fair chance of redeeming ourselves. this distinguishes game failure from failure in our regular lives: (good) games are designed such that they give us a fair chance, whereas the regular world makes no such promises. (7) in fact, invaders refuses to offer the player “a fair chance.” the game mechanics ensure failure because more and more enemy invaders appear, and they are increasingly powerful, while the player is powerless to control their behaviour. in this respect, and also due to the lack of defensive actions that the player might take, the game itself seems intrinsically unfair. but the injustice built into the game environment through the mechanics is balanced by certain compensations that include, as juul writes, the chance to try to escape the feeling of failure. each wave of invaders challenges the player to improve their response-speed and accuracy of shooting, holding out a promise that the player might perform better next time, both with practice and as the game mechanics become more familiar. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 91 this motivation to improve is enhanced by the implied relation between the fictional world of the game and the extra-diegetic world of the player or what juul calls “the regular world.” as he observes, the frustration of losing can take the form of an emotional bond with the game because “[w]e are motivated to play when something is at stake” (13). what is at stake in invaders is precisely the complex historical homology created by the artwork, musical score, and game mechanics between fictional invasion by alien space-craft and actual settler-colonialism. elizabeth lapensée emphasizes this relation as a fundamental aspect of her design of the game: “in the context of playing as an indigenous warrior, the design takes on another meaning—no matter what, the aliens eventual obliterate your character and community. lives are represented not as numbers or even as your own, but instead as the warriors who stand side by side with you. if you get hit, you permanently lose a community member. this mirrors the very real losses experienced as colonizers attacked and decimated indigenous communities during invasion” (“indigenous game design” n.pag.). playing as an indigenous warrior demands effort to save the community and the other warrior-avatars, as well as to preserve one’s own virtual life. jesper juul describes this in-game experience where “the goals of the player are… aligned with the goals of the protagonist; when the player succeeds, the protagonist succeeds” (27).8 the player-response that is privileged by the game mechanics is not avoidance of loss but awareness of the proper use to which the anger and frustration of losing are directed. in invaders, the player can simply quit the game—when all four warrior-avatars have been killed a screen appears that offers the stark options: quit or play again. since the ostensible goal of the game—to destroy definitively all of the invaders—is impossible to achieve, the effort to “play again” is, in itself, an escape from the feeling of failure and a qualified measure of success. the determination of success is qualified by the causes to which failure are attributed. three possible causes identified by harold k. kelley are: a person, an entity, and circumstances (qtd. juul 15). a person may be held accountable for failure due to inadequate skills (the player’s ability to shoot, for example); an entity can be seen as the cause of the occasion for failure (the power and relentless appearance of more and more invading aliens, in invaders); and circumstances that cause failure, according to kelley, may include bad luck or chance (qtd. juul 16). in invaders, the player’s lack of skill can be improved with persistence but neither the seeming invulnerability-through-numbers of the invading aliens, nor the historical circumstances evoked by the game—through the homology among (first) the diegetic world of the game, (secondly) the deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 92 historical world evoked by the artwork, and (thirdly) the present world of ongoing colonization in which the player is located—can be changed for the better. an ethical act of resistance in the face of overwhelming odds (the axiology of survivance) is the only positive response made available to the player of invaders. this is, as noted above, elizabeth lapensée’s intention for the game; the recognition that, as she says, “we, as indigenous people, have already experienced the apocalypse. now we survive to thrive” (“indigenous game design,” n.pag.). playing this game involves frequent endings and continual experiences of loss that pose the questions of how and why the player has lost. the feedback from the game itself is clear: the player loses because of the superior numbers and firepower of the invaders. this leads directly to juul’s question: “is there a difference between failing inside and failing outside a game?” (10). the answer, in invaders, is clearly “no.” there is no fundamental difference, in historical terms (because indigenous lands have in fact been colonized) or in subjective terms, because the imperative of survivance under which indigenous people have lived since 1491—to resist, to survive, to preserve and continue the cultural inheritance passed on by elders and ancestors to their heirs— has never ended. never alone (kisima ingitchuna, 2014): survivance, indigenous epistemology, and native presence9 like invaders, the iñupiaq puzzle-platformer video game never alone (kisima ingitchuna, 2014 upper one games) enacts survivance as the epistemological practice of a living, tribal presence that is sustained in the past, enacted in the present, and transmitted as the inheritance of the future. simple physical survival in a group environment is not survivance; survivance names a manner of living with indigenous integrity while resisting by transcending the assimilative pressure applied by the dominant settler-colonial community. this is why gerald vizenor calls the relation between indigenous nations and the us federal government “paracolonial” (manifest manners 77). what is left after the onslaught of active territorial colonization is the parallel existence of tribal nations alongside the settler-nation. survivance then is grounded in the cultural and political values that must be passed on in order to sustain an indigenous community that functions on the basis of inherited tribal values. the fundamental cultural values shared by alaska native peoples, which motivate never alone, are described by yupiaq philosopher angayuqaq oscar kawagley in a yupiaq worldview: a pathway to ecology and spirit (1995). transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 93 he identifies four primary values: harmony, responsibility, reciprocity, and learning. harmony he defines as “an intricate subsistence-based worldview, a complex way of life with specific cultural mandates regarding the ways in which the human being is to relate to other human relatives and the natural and spiritual worlds” (8). responsibility as an “attitude was thought to be as important as action; therefore one was to be careful in thought and action so as not to injure another’s mind or offend the spirits of the animals and surrounding environment. for one to have a powerful mind was to be ‘aware of or awake to the surroundings’” (8). reciprocity signifies that “all of life is considered recyclable and therefore requires certain ways of caring in order to maintain the cycle. native people cannot put themselves above other living things because they were all created by raven, and all are considered an essential component of the universe” (9). perhaps even more fundamental than these three principles is the value of learning: “alaska native worldviews are oriented toward the synthesis of information gathered from interaction with the natural and spiritual worlds so as to accommodate and live in harmony with the natural worlds and natural principles and exhibit the values of sharing, cooperation, and respect” (11). these values are taught through an indigenous pedagogy that departs from european understandings of education in almost every respect. both kawagley and tewa philosopher gregory cajete emphasize interactivity or active participation by the learner in a process that is: fundamentally place-based, nature-centered, community-focused, spiritually-oriented, and indebted to the wisdom of the elders. cajete describes the nature of traditional indigenous education as “[t]he cultivation of one’s senses through learning how to listen, observe, and experience holistically by creative exploration… all tribes highly regarded the ability to use language through storytelling, oratory, and song as a primary tool for teaching and learning. this was because the spoken or sung word expressed the spirit and breath of life of the speaker and thus was considered sacred” (32). these forms (storytelling and oratory) and concepts (place, nature, community, spirit, inheritance) of iñupiaq traditional knowledge guide the design of the game-play mechanics in never alone. the fundamental aim of never alone is twofold: the preservation of iñupiaq language, story, and ways of knowing; and the dissemination of iñupiaq values of resiliency and survival, cooperation, intergenerational wisdom, and the interdependence of land, people, and animals. the structure of the game requires the player to perform these values while moving across the computer screen, thus going beyond the static modes of telling made possible via the printed deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 94 word and the passive reception of story through media such as film, video, and television. the game is able to recreate the conditions of oral storytelling, with the additional advantage that the player becomes the active narrative protagonist. the identification between the player and the game avatar is the primary vehicle for empathy, as the player experiences something akin to sam mckegney’s view of community as the sum of culture and politics, where culture is “a lived series of acts within actual political units of community” (56). this emphasis on acts, action, and activism serves an “ethical commitment [to] the survival, enrichment, and eventual selfdetermination of indigenous communities.” and in never alone the player is the active agent of this axiological process of survivance. the objectives of the game—the preservation and dissemination of inherited traditional knowledge—are actions realized through the game narrative, which retells the ancient story “kunuuksaayuk,” recorded by iñupiaq storyteller robert nasruk cleveland who passed it to his daughter, minne aliitchak gray, one of the cultural ambassadors who shaped the video-game. never alone is narrated in iñupiaq (with subtitles available in another ten languages) by james (mumiġan) nageak. the story is about a young boy (though in never alone the protagonist is a young girl, nuna) and his journey to discover the source of a never-ending blizzard that is threatening his village. this is the quest on which the player embarks: the search for the knowledge that will lead to truth is realized through continual ethical action. thus traditional knowledge is experienced as a verb or a set of behaviors rather than a tool or noun. in this respect, the story performs what jace weaver describes as a communal identity-producing role at the same time that the communally-developed story is passed down as cultural inheritance to the next generation within the iñupiat community (and beyond). these qualities of the story are thematized in the game, as ishmael angaluuk hope suggests when he remarks that the game story is about how to be the kind of person who can bring about a return to “true living in the community.” this lesson in survivance is essentially what the game teaches the player. never alone, then, performs important work of cultural inheritance, passing on the key values of a living, thriving iñupiat traditional community. nearly forty iñupiaq elders, storytellers, and community members contributed to the development of the game, working with cook inlet tribal council and the non-native educational publisher e-line media. however, responsibility and accountability for the indigenous direction of the game were firmly located with the traditional tribal custodians of knowledge, who had the power of veto over all aspects of transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 95 the game’s development. sean vesce, the creative director at e-line, describes an incident when the community exercised this power to correct a proposed game mechanic that contradicted traditional values: what was really important for us [was] to portray [the iñupiaq] spiritual worldview within the game, and it’s a really complicated subject… the game designers at the time, we all were in favor of a model… where the player can hit a button and basically move from a regular environment, a regular realm to the spirit realm, and there was a lot of gameplay involved in crossing between those by virtue of the player hitting the button to change modes. and when we showed an initial prototype of that to members of the community, they said, “you’ve got it all wrong… the spiritual world is not something that is on demand. we can’t will that into existence and go back. you have to embody the values. you have to demonstrate a level of competency in order to experience that, and it’s a gift that’s given to you. it’s not something that you control.” so that was a really core mechanic that we were starting down a path of, that was really representative of misunderstanding from us, that comes from being raised in a western ideology. (qtd. scimeca n.pag.) as vesce indicates, the performance of iñupiaq values through the player’s interaction with the game relies primarily on the design of the game mechanics. sean vecse has suggested how the design of the mechanics of never alone had to take careful account of traditional iñupiaq ways of learning, knowing, and acting on the level of physical interaction between the player, the game controller, and the game world. contextualization of the mechanics impacts the game on every level. in terms of the genre of the game: never alone is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer, requiring that the player continually moves the avatars nuna and fox across the screen from left to right, advancing forward in a way that follows the linear narrative of the storytelling. the story is narrated in continual voice-over, with foreign language subtitles appearing on each screen. as the narrator’s voice is heard, the player is performing the story in a combination of passive and active modes of reception that replicate and advance the oral tradition of storytelling. the inheritance of tribal orature is a key element of survivance, counteracting the colonialist erasure of living indigenous cultures. weaver explains: “limiting consideration or admission to the canon to orature is a way of continuing colonialism. it once again keeps american indians from entering the 20th century and deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 96 denies to native literary artists who choose other media any legitimate or “authentic” native identity” (23). if orature is the only expressive form available to “real indians” but orature has become “extinct” then so too must those “authentic” indians have become extinct in the modern world. the orature constitutive of video-game mechanics offers a powerful oppositional response to the myth of indigenous “vanishing.” not only is the oral tradition alive and thriving in a game like never alone but the digital medium of the game contradicts the assumption that “indians” belong only to the historical category of the primitive and have not survived into the contemporary period. james (mumiġan) nageak’s oral narration of the story “kunuuksaayuk,” in iñupiaq, is not only evidence of indigenous cultural continuity but actively works to preserve and disseminate the tribal language that encodes in the story traditional iñupiaq values and ways of knowing and being. to emphasize the importance of orature to the building and unification of community, weaver turns to the words of pueblo poet simon ortiz: noting the coterminous nature of orature and contemporary culture, simon ortiz declares, “the oral tradition is not just speaking and listening, because what it means to me and to other people who have grown up in that tradition is that whole process… of that society in terms of its history, its culture, its language, its values, and subsequently, its literature. so it’s not a simple matter of speaking and listening, but living that process.” (qtd. 47) living the process of the story is what the player does by interacting through the avatars nuna and fox, switching between these two characters or playing in two-player mode with each player controlling one of the avatars, in order to complete successfully the challenges presented by the game. each avatar-character has unique capabilities: nuna can climb, move objects, and throw her traditional bola; fox can fit into small areas, jump high, and moves faster. neither nuna nor fox can proceed if either is left behind, so cooperation between the human and otherthan-human animal is a fundamental game mechanic. together, fox and the force of the wind help nuna to jump onto a spirit’s back; fox’s movements help to guide where nuna must move, and fox is able to guide the spirit helpers. trees come alive and reach out to greet fox. this cooperative behaviour is coded into the mechanic that governs the assistance offered by other animal and spirit entities who will, for example, lift nuna and fox across the screen, from one object to another; but these helpers cannot be summoned at will by the avatar-player, their help being a gift freely given. however, from mid-point in the game, when he transforms into a boytransmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 97 spirit, fox can move freely by “swimming” around the screen to access objects that are inaccessible to nuna, and he is able to activate “helping spirits” to overcome obstacles so the characters can proceed from screen to screen. the completion of the challenges that comprise episodes of the story is rewarded with the unlocking of “cultural insights” in the form of interviews with iñupiaq elders, storytellers, and cultural ambassadors. these short embedded documentary videos must be earned and they then provide cultural information that helps the player to overcome subsequent obstacles and threats. by using this inherited information, the player transforms data into experiential knowledge, in a learning process that enacts traditional iñupiaq educational forms. “cultural insights” relate to the main game narrative in several ways besides offering information. some “insights” explain or interpret narrative events that have already taken place. for example, in one of the most distressing episodes of the game narrative, fox is killed by the man, “the terrible one,” who wants the bola. we move to a cut scene in which nuna and fox fall down into a snowy forest landscape; nuna grieves the loss of her companion but then fox is reborn into a different form, the form of a boy-spirit, who “swims” in the air around nuna. the narrator puts into question the ontological distinction between the other-than-human animal and the humanized spirit-being by asking, “was it [the boy-spirit] who he [fox] really was this whole time?” in the cultural insight that follows, “animal spirits,” ishmael angaluuk hope explains how the iñupiat do not recognize a hierarchy of creation with humans separate and “on top.” in iñupiaq cosmology, all animals have or can be seen in a human form but the animal must want to be seen in its human form. from this point, a game mechanic offers the player a button which when held down allows interaction with spirits. the narrator underlines the interrelatedness of the animal, human, and spirit entities by remarking that fox continued to reveal “the beauty of the helping spirits.” by acting on the traditional knowledge that is gained, the player-avatar is rewarded with increasing ease of movement, a greater capacity to overcome obstacles, and a greater sense of belonging in the iñupiaq diegetic world. the challenges presented in the game are puzzles, primarily spatial obstacles (such as unstable ice floes, caverns, or precipices) or entities that may be animals or spirits, that block the progress of nuna and fox. navigating the story space of the game demands close attention to all aspects of the environment, in the manner of cajete’s description of traditional indigenous education: by “[t]he cultivation of one’s senses through learning how to listen, observe, and deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 98 experience holistically by creative exploration” (33). many of the features of the diegetic world are neither “good” nor “bad” but must be understood and accommodated by the player. for example, one of the mechanics introduced early in the game is the behaviour of wind (remember, the crisis engaged by the story is a never-ending blizzard). a strong gust of wind will push nuna off an ice precipice or into a chasm so when the player hears the wind approaching, s/he must manipulate the controller so that she crouches protectively; however, in subsequent scenes, the only means by which nuna can jump across ice floes is by harnessing the power of the wind to give her distance as she runs and jumps. the wind, a natural phenomenon, is not presented pejoratively. rather, the player acting through the avatar is required to learn to read and respect environmental conditions, and then adapt their behaviour accordingly. this mechanic illustrates the importance of learning to watch closely and to interpret accurately the diegetic space of the game, which is underlined in the cultural insight entitled “reading the weather.” as the game narrative progresses new mechanics are introduced through the reading of the diegetic space. for example, when a sparkling spirit ball appears nuna is able to call a spirit helper if she hits the ball with her bolo. or entities in the environmental background, like the owl early in the game, can later become actors such as when that owl takes human form to give nuna a side quest— finding and returning his drum—which is then rewarded with the empowering gift of the bolo. here, the iñupiaq value of interrelation among all elements of creation works with the game dynamics and aesthetics within the diegetic space to thematize the introduction of the mechanic of the bolo, which nuna learns will not only enable her to call spirit helpers but in more practical terms allows her to break down ice walls that block their path. the mechanics that determine game action work closely together with the game dynamics of challenge and fellowship or cooperation, and the game aesthetics, to produce a covert level of meaning that is resistant to paraphrase. located in the player’s experience of reading the diegetic world through nuna and fox, and receiving reward in the form of cultural insights, this covert meaning can be equated to the adoption of an iñupiat subject position within the diegetic community of creation. the ultimate objective of the game is to discover the source of, and resolve, the mysterious blizzard that afflicts nuna’s village. to achieve this, nuna must cooperate with fox, primarily, but also the entire game-world environment that comprises beings of all ontological kinds: plants, human and other-than-human animals, ancestors and spirit beings, and mythological monsters. in this respect, never alone enacts weaver’s “linkage of land and people transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 99 within the concept of community... lands populated by their relations, ancestors, animals and beings both physical and mythological” (38). in never alone the iñupiaq concept of such a community of creation is named “siḷa”: the space that connects the land, the moon, sun, and stars, and the weather. siḷa has a soul, and spirit helpers reside within siḷa. amy fredeen, lead cultural ambassador and a cultural insights contributor, explains in “siḷa has a soul” that “[i]t’s not one way of seeing things, it’s one way of knowing you’re connected to everything.” in the game, then, siḷa is the shared network of relationships among all entities in the game environment. even the destructive “manslayer” who is causing the devastating blizzard is part of this network of relations. this character is a recurring villain in traditional iñupiaq stories where he threatens the survival of individuals and the whole community. but in the final cultural insight (“kunuuksaayuka”) ishmael angaluuk hope explains that manslayer or the “blizzard man,” is like “the physical embodiment of an element of nature.” the protagonist who confronts manslayer represents a return to order on a cosmic scale and to “true living within the community” of all creation. amy fredeen adds that the moral of the story’s conclusion is “don’t think only of yourself but always keep the community in your heart.” this is the community that is siḷa. the interconnectedness and interdependence that characterize siḷa are related to the indigenous understanding of kinship that is key to the experience of survivance. as weaver reminds us, “[n]ature, an understanding of which was essential to native survival, is viewed and characterized in kinship terms. more than simply a sense of place, though it is often that as well, this view of ‘creation as kin’ imbues the work of native writers, in different ways, with a potent sense of interrelatedness” (163). at one point in the game, nuna and fox are trapped in an icecave with an angry polar bear. if the player-avatar tries to break the ice, s/he dies. if the playeravatar tries to kill the polar bear, s/he dies. through the repeated experience of failure, the player must learn to control nuna as she evades the bear, allowing it to break the ice and open an escape route for nuna and fox. deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 100 figure 2. upper one games & e-line media, “ice floes.” never alone. 2014. [pc]. digital art. screenshot 8 dec. 2016. the game mechanic here demands that the bear-character be the agent that breaks the ice wall; if nuna tries to break the ice or kill the bear the player-avatar spends too much time in that part of the game-world exposed to the bear’s anger and so is killed. the obstacle to progress, the ice wall that encloses the cave, can be overcome only if the player respects the “bear-ness” of the bear and does not try to impose control on the bear’s actions but allows it to express its anger and frustration by attacking the ice wall and knocking it down. later in the game, the bear reappears as a “helper” but, again, behaving according to its ursine nature, to which the player must adapt. in both instances the bear assists nuna and fox when these avatars respect the bear’s role within the totality of siḷa. as the game progresses, the player must act with an increasingly complex understanding of the game mechanics that govern siḷa and of being appropriately “human” in the iñupiat world, by collaborating respectfully with weather, environment, animals, trees, ancestors and spirit beings. in the aurora borealis sequence, a cultural insight “northern lights” has passed on the story that the beautiful but mysterious green lights dancing and swooping through the air are, in fact, children who have died in childhood, and are now playing in the sky. the story warns that if these spirit beings are encouraged to come too close or if someone goes outside without wearing a hood, they will cut the heads off their unsuspecting victims and use the severed heads to play with as balls. this story contextualizes the following game segment, in which the primary hazard is the animated spirit lights (the “aurora people”) who threaten nuna and fox. the narrator warns that the player-avatars nuna and fox are located in an environment hazardous to those who do not heed the wisdom of the elders, evoking the story that has just been told. with the inherited knowledge of the story and the capacity to move cooperatively within the diegetic space, nuna and fox are able to evade the aurora people just as they did the polar bear. if they are touched by one of the spirit beings they will die; if their actions respect the nature of these beings then they can progress in the narrative. the cultural insight “northern lights” is the seventeenth of the twenty-four embedded videos. at this stage of the game, the interpretative relation between the videos and game play is familiar but the aurora borealis sequence underlines the importance of inherited knowledge; it is transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 101 juxtaposed with the immediately preceding “king island” sequence and the relation between the two creates the potential for a level of covert meaning to emerge from the game narrative. the cultural insight “king island” describes the iñupiat community that historically lived on this rocky outcrop (ugiuvak) in the bering sea; the embedded video explains the nature of the distinctive stilt housing built high against the steep rocky cliffs as preparation for the following game-play sequence in which nuna and fox must navigate an unstable environment of abandoned and collapsing structures evocative of king island houses. the narrators emphasize the fact that these stilt houses remain in place today and mention in passing that “it’s a growing community as the people return back to their island.” what is not explained is why the island was abandoned, to be re-inhabited only recently. alice rogoff, in a recent article published in the alaska dispatch news, provides the history that is missing from the cultural insight: in 1959, just before alaska’s statehood, the bureau of indian affairs decided summarily to close the island’s school. in so doing, a bureaucratic decision effectively ended their lives there, forcing several hundred families to become new residents of nome, a foreign place with a gold mining past, not predisposed to embrace an ancient island iñupiaq culture that had lost its island. and the transition was not administered with care: young children were forcibly separated from parents in the name of school “truancy” laws; older ones were sent to boarding schools thousands of miles away, with no way of communicating with families left behind. in short, the fabric of king island extended family life was shredded without cause. the stated reason for the move, from the bia, was that a boulder was about to roll down the hill and crush the school. more than 50 years later, the boulder still hasn’t moved. (rogoff, n.pag.). this direct colonialist intervention of the us federal government, through the bureau of indian affairs, achieved a number of things: the vacating of the island, the collapse of the traditional iñupiat community, the weakening of family and community relations through forcible separation, and the removal of indigenous children into assimilative mainland schools. recall the point made earlier: survivance is grounded in a complex network of interrelationships among the people, the land, other-than-human animals, mythological entities, spirit beings, and ancestors. the removal of the people from their traditional lands breaks this network and commits what weaver calls “a kind of psychic homicide” (38). juxtaposed with the “king island” sequence and the suppressed history of forced alienation of the people from their land is the “northern lights” deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 102 sequence that is motivated by the story of dead children. from this juxtaposition emerges a covert narrative of violent colonization and historical trauma. but the overt narrative communicates the resilience and continuance of the iñupiat people. it is at the end of these two juxtaposed sequences that fox dies and transforms into a powerful boy-spirit. the cultural insight “rebirth & naming” that follows shortly—after “animal spirits” which also provides context relevant to fox’s transformation—focuses on the key value of interrelatedness. elder ronald aniqsuaq explains the iñupiat understanding of life, death, and afterlife: at the moment of death timi (body) returns to nuna (the earth); however, the spirit of atiq, a name that is passed down over generations, lives on for as long as the name is remembered. when the spirit returns to siḷa, it may be reborn if the name is passed on to a new child who retains some of the memories of the original name. the name fox is retained in both forms of the avatar (as boyspirit and other-than-human animal) seemingly along with memories of the mechanics of the diegetic world and relations among all the inhabitants that comprise the community of siḷa. in never alone the narrative of colonial trauma is muted, emerging covertly though the juxtaposition of narrative sequences and, even then, within the context of iñupiaq resilience and continuance—a context that is transmitted as the inheritance of the wisdom of the elders. this is a powerful gesture of indigenous decolonization. the game narrative of never alone insists on the autonomous expression of traditional iñupiaq cultural values. by its very existence, this video-game contradicts the colonial mythology of indigenous peoples as doomed and vanishing; the voice-over narration spoken in iñupiaq gives the lie to the extinction of traditional indigenous orature; the expression of a traditional story in a digital medium opposes the notion that indigenous cultures are “pre-modern.” indeed, the medium of the interactive digital narrative allows for the effective communication of iñupiaq traditional knowledge through what, in look to the mountain (2010), gregory cajete calls an “ecology of indigenous education” that serves the concept of survivance. cajete’s place-based and nature-centered education is realized in the diegetic world of never alone, which is resolutely the iñupiat world of siḷa; learning to overcome obstacles by being fully “human” in iñupiaq terms means learning to live with, and respect the interdependence of, everything that makes this world as it is. cajete opposes indigenous interrelational, holistic reality to western european traditions of objectivism, dualism, and reductionism: to play the game in dualistic (such as human versus animal) terms is to fail to meet the challenges of the game-play and to “die.” the quest for knowledge and truth in transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 103 never alone is collaborative, not competitive; for example, to refuse to collaborate with fox and other beings in the game world—to play competitively—is, again, to “die.” the aim of indigenous education, according to cajete, is wholeness, self-knowledge and wisdom; in never alone the increasing demands of the game, as the player learns to behave as a member of a virtual iñupiat community, requires the synthesis of all that has been learned into a holistic understanding of siḷa. this is education for decolonization, eschewing settler-colonial epistemological and ontological forms in favor of the performance of inherited indigenous values that evidence the ongoing sovereignty of indigenous communities. conclusion: the mechanics of survivance while they are very different kinds of video-games, both never alone and invaders constitute creative acts of indigenous “representational sovereignty”: “a declaration that the native is selfdefining, producing an ‘autovision’ and ‘autohistory’ in the face of amer-european heterohistory… it reverses assimilation and dispels the myths of conquest and dominance. it aspires to participate in the healing of grief and sense of exile” (weaver 163-4). at the end of never alone, while gliding around nuna’s seated figure, the player hears the narrator’s voiceover: the fox said to the girl, “if you ever need to find your way home again, just look up for me.” and [sic] floated up through the night sky. i have heard nasruk tell the story that way. the game’s teaching is that of the traditional story, a story told and retold down through the generations and now told powerfully in an interactive digital form that replicates the primary principles and processes of traditional iñupiaq values. siḷa is the diegetic world of the game and the world of the iñupiat people; to succeed in the game the player must learn to live in a proper relationship with siḷa. this is possible by learning to adopt a virtual iñupiaq subject position within the game narrative. this learning process is managed by the player’s responses to the constraints imposed and possibilities afforded by the game mechanics, which are determined by iñupiaq traditional knowledge. player-avatars who do not adapt to the rules of the iñupiat diegetic world simply “die.” amy fredeen, one of the iñupiaq cultural ambassadors who deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 104 contributed to both the game development and also the narration of the cultural insights, explains that “[a]daptation has been a cornerstone of survival for alaska native people… never alone is another way we can share our values and culture with future generations and the world [by p]assing on wisdom and values… bringing our traditional wisdom to a modern world that has changed the path of our people forever” (qtd o’connell n.pag.). the game mechanics of never alone provide for the possibility of success on the part of the player; this potential is foreclosed by the mechanics of invaders. yet in both games resolution is achieved progressively and performatively as the player learns the consequences of possible actions for the state of the gameplay. in never alone “death” is the consequence of actions that are not consistent with the iñupiaq values that inform the game mechanics; success is a measure of the player’s adaptation to the values of iñupiaq survivance. the conditions for ending the game in never alone are made clear; with the defeat of manslayer, the final “boss,” and the ending of the blizzard the game concludes. effectively, we come to the end of the sequence of side-scrolling screens—although the narrator reminds us that the story endures. invaders both continually ends and never ends: the historical narrative constructed by steven paul judd’s juxtaposition of iconic figures and informed by trevino brings plenty’s musical score underlines not only the continuous present of settler-colonialism but the sustained survivance that, as in never alone, ensures that the story does not really end. the nature of player-interactivity in these games, determined by the constraints and possibilities imposed by the indigenously-driven game mechanics, requires that the games be played from indigenous epistemological positions.10 fundamental to these epistemologies is survivance, performed in the games as a right to inherit indigenous stories, histories, and cultural lifeways while dramatizing the point made powerfully by amy fredeen in the cultural insight, “a living people: a living culture”: “one of the things i think a lot of people need to understand is we aren’t a museum piece. the iñupiat people are a living people, and a living culture.” fredeen’s point is developed by elizabeth lapensée in the specific context of survivance and video-games: “survivance refers to recognizing indigenous communities as thriving rather than merely surviving. an act of survivance is a work that arises from the practice of survivance, meaning an ‘active sense of native presence.’ games, which are made of varying levels of code, design, art, and audio, can provide spaces for expressing self-determination so long as, within the context of indigenous art, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 105 they stand ‘against colonial erasure… [and mark] the space of a returned and enduring presence’” (“games as enduring presence” 180). lapensée’s emphasis here on indigenous presence is realized in the games she designs through the creation of mechanics that prescribe player interactivity as the performance of survivance. in indigenously-determined video-games, like invaders and never alone, indigeneity is present in the artwork, music, and storytelling that work to thematize game mechanics that require the respectful adoption of native presence as the player’s subject position. by resisting “colonial erasure” with sovereign native presence, these games function as digital weapons in what vizenor has called the “word wars”: the multifaceted discursive battle for control over the meaning of the actual events of colonization. in wordarrows (1978) he describes how the “arrowmakers and wordmakers survive the word wars with sacred memories” (viii).11 in the conflict between “white” words and tribal memory what is at stake is the inheritance of indigenous stories that express ownership of or belonging to the land and living tribal traditions. in very different game genres, never alone and invaders oppose ongoing settler-colonial attempts to eliminate traditional systems of culture and identity in favor of assimilation to imposed settler-colonial discourses. indigenously-determined games are discursive weapons in the struggle to defeat colonial stereotypes and simulations of “the indian” by dispatching (literally in invaders) “word arrows” to engage the continual onslaught of settlercolonialism. “the heritable right of succession” is asserted in invaders as the inheritance of histories of resistance and, even more importantly, the indigenous values that motivate resistance to victimry and promote the integrity of enduring tribal nations. the “cultural insights” of never alone bring into the game-world inherited wisdom in the form of information and advice that has been passed down by elders and ancestors, and in this way the game performs “the heritable right of succession” that motivates survivance. both invaders and never alone demonstrate the decolonizing potential of video games by performing survivance-as-resistance and survivanceas-survival as ethical actions. the mechanics of these games determine not just the “rules of the game” but crucially shape the ethical decisions that guide the ways in which a player can interact with the game-world. by controlling the potential for action, game mechanics shape what i am calling here the “axiology” of survivance. this axiology (or system of ethical action) is both the consequence of inherited tribal epistemologies and is the instantiation of inherited tribal lifeways. deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 106 arising from inherited values, stories, and wisdom, present-moment actions become the inheritances of the future in the dynamic process that is survivance. to focus only on the terms that comprise vizenor’s neologism—“survival” and “resistance”—is to analyze at the level of action (important though that is) rather than engage with the dynamic relations between action and the deeper structure of cultural inheritance that motivates ethical acts based on inherited values. moving beyond cultural preservation (or “surviving”), these video-games use the mechanics of game design  to engage player-interactivity and create lived experiences of enduring indigenous presence (or “thriving”). vizenor suggests that the decolonizing power of survivance is fueled by the concept of inheritance when he describes survivance as “the heritable right of succession or reversion of an estate” (1, emphasis added). the reversion of an estate defines the return of property ownership to the original owner (or grantor) after a temporary period that ends with the expiry of pre-agreed conditions or an agreed period of time; “reversion” also names the right of the grantor to succeed to the reverted estate. read in this context, survivance does much more than describe a legacy; it is a radical call to readiness for a decolonized, reverted estate in which original owners or custodians will reclaim possession of their indigenous estate. virtual opportunities to experience this post-colonial reversion are offered by the indigenously-determined game-worlds of invaders and never alone, through the decolonizing power of the mechanics of survivance. notes 1 vizenor's interest in the concept of inheritance can be seen in the titles of such novels as the trickster of liberty: tribal heirs to a wild baronage (1988; rpt. 2005), the heirs of columbus (1991), and bearheart: the heirship chronicles (1990; first published as darkness in saint louis bearheart [1978]). 2 see elizabeth lapensée, “indigenously-determined games of the future” for a discussion of indigenously-determined games as “a path for passing on teachings, telling our stories, and expressing our ways of knowing”; “[g]ames with our people represented in our own ways, with our placenames, with our stories, with manidoo” that are constructed from technology adapted to create “game engines that comprehend our ways of knowing – game engines with blackfoot physics, game engines with lakota star knowledge, game engines designed from structures of ongoing non-linear storytelling” (n.pag.). 3 see rigby & ryan, in particular chapter 4: “games and the need for relatedness.” 4 http://survivance.org/invaders/. in the discussion that follows, i describe the game as played using a keyboard; the mechanics of the mobile versions (for ipad and ipod) use in place of the arrow keys a sliding cursor with which to move the avatar and to fire his arrows. the movement and firing take place simultaneously in the mobile versions; pressing the cursor in order to move transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 107 the avatar is the same mechanic as firing an arrow. moving the avatar and firing an arrow are distinct mechanics in the keyboard version of the game. 5 see vizenor, wordarrows: indians and whites in the new fur trade (1978). reprinted as wordarrows: native states of literary sovereignty (2003). as noted above, this is not the case in the mobile version of the game where the mechanic for firing is different. 6 qtd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/space_invaders. 7 while judd’s choice of images—especially the photographs that are reminiscent of edward curtis’s work—evokes the history of us settler-colonialism specifically, the historical relations proposed by his artwork in invaders are relevant more generally to the logic of elimination proposed by patrick wolfe as characteristic of settler-colonialism. 8 juul further explains that “play theorist brian sutton-smith has proposed that play is fundamentally a ‘parody of emotional vulnerability’: that through play we experience precarious emotions such as anger, fear, shock, disgust, and loneliness in transformed, masked, or hidden form” (26-7). 9 parts of the following analysis will appear in german translation in subjektivität und fremdheit in demokratischen gemeinschaften: beiträge am schnittpunkt von literatur und politischer philosophie, edited by michael festl and philipp schweighauser, wilhelm fink verlag, 2018. 10 this is not to say that all players must “play indian” in order to engage with these games; rather, the game mechanics are determined by indigenous epistemological principles that in turn determine the ethical possibilities for a player’s actions and the outcomes in the game-world of those actions. 11 a relation between the concept of inheritance and the “word wars” is suggested by the title of the embedded narrative—“the heirship chronicles: proude cedarfair and the cultural word war”—that comprises most of vizenor’s bearheart: the heirship chronicles. deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 108 works cited brings plenty. trevino. “tutorial on composing music for the game “invaders.’” iktomifilms. 21 aug. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-vb1fsyuww. accessed 31 oct. 2015. cajete, gregory a. look to the mountain: an ecology of indigenous education. kivaki press, 1994. cleveland, robert. unipchaanich imagluktugmiut: stories of the black river people. national bilingual materials development center, 1980. cook inlet tribal council and e-line media, 2014. never alone. http://neveralonegame.com/. accessed 7 sept. 2016. corriea, alexa ray. “games can preserve indigenous stories and oral histories.” polygon. 17 march 2014. https://www.polygon.com/2014/3/17/5520030/games-can-preserveindigenous-stories-and-oral-histories. accessed 15 jan. 2016. hunicke, robin, marc leblanc, robert zubek. “mda: a formal approach to game design and game research.” 2001. http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/pubs/mda.pdf. accessed 10 dec. 2014. invaders. elizabeth lapensée, designer; steven 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(2017) 109 the-land. accessed 9 april 2016. mckegney, sam. magic weapons: aboriginal writers remaking community after residential school. u of manitoba p, 2007. martinson, patti. “expressing herself in design and art: elizabeth lapensée.” sequential tart vol. 16, 2017, n.pag. http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=3021. accessed 19 jan. 2017. moya-smith, simon. “war paint.” native noise: resilience, pride, and making a noise. http://www.rebelmusic.com/#!music/rebel-music/feature/native-noise. accessed 11 sept. 2016. murg, wilhelm. “‘andy warriorhol’ steven paul judd subverts cultural norms while making people laugh.” oklahoma gazette, 25 nov. 2015. http://okgazette.com/2015/11/25/cover-story-andy-warriorhol-steven-paul-juddsubverts-cultural-norms-while-making-people-laugh/. accessed 9 sept. 2016. the ntvs. “ntvs: the originals.” www.thentvs.com/. accessed 11 sept. 2016. never alone (kisima ingitchuna). upper one games & e-line media, developer; e-line media, publisher. 2014. “never alone, cultural insights.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4iqq4_hoxk. accessed 19 june 2015. o’connell, liz. “never alone—iñupiat storytelling with spirit.” 30 jan. 2015. http://www.scilogs.com/frontier_scientists/never-alone-game-native-culture-spirit/. accessed 19 june 2015. rigby, scott and richard m. ryan. glued to games: how video games draw us in and hold us spellbound. praeger, 2011. rogoff, alice. “king island: living community and mystical place,” alaska dispatch news, 1 november 2011. http://www.adn.com/commentary/article/king-island-livingcommunity-and-mystical-place/2011/11/02/. accessed 6 sept. 2016. ross, gyasi. “man crush monday: the audacious genius art of steve judd, kiowa love machine,” indian country today media network, 26 may 2014. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/05/26/man-crush-mondayaudacious-genius-art-steve-judd-kiowa-love-machine-155033. accessed 11 sept. 2016. rostkowski, joëlle. “prologue: conversation with gerald vizenor.” conversations with remarkable native americans. state u of new york p, 2012, pp. xxxvii-li. deborah l. madsen “the mechanics of survivance” 110 sapieha, chad. “imaginenative film + media arts festival explores games made by and about indigenous peoples.” post arcade. 13 october 2015. http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/post-arcade/imaginenative-film-mediaarts-festival-explores-games-made-by-and-about-indigenous-peoples. accessed 15 jan. 2016. schreiber, ian. “game design concepts.” 2009. https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/. accessed 24 june 2015. scimeca, dennis. “why never alone is so much more than a video game.” 1 march 2015. http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11965/neveralone-alaska-native-video-game/. accessed 19 june 2015. space invaders. tomohiro nishikado, designer; taito, developer; taito (japan), midway (us), publisher. 1978. space invaders. “play guide for space invaders.” 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williams, maria shaa tláa, ed. the alaska native reader. duke up, 2009. wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2006, pp. 387-409. microsoft word galley main.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 52 reimagining resistance: achieving sovereignty in indigenous science fiction miriam c. brown spiers indigenous science fiction—that is, science fiction written by indigenous authors, as opposed to texts that simply include native characters—is a relatively new genre, and the question of how we might define, or even name, that genre is still under discussion. the most popular term, “indigenous science fiction,” was popularized by grace l. dillon in her 2012 anthology, walking the clouds. in the introduction to that work, dillon makes two important claims: first, that indigenous science fiction has “the capacity to envision native futures, indigenous hopes, and dreams recovered by rethinking the past in a new framework,” and second, that “indigenous sf is not so new—just overlooked, although largely accompanied by an emerging movement” (2). while i share dillon’s optimism for the possibilities of the genre, i am also concerned about the potential consequences of reclaiming older texts as examples of science fiction. for instance, dillon introduces the category of the “native slipstream,” which “is intended to describe writing that does not simply seem avant-garde but models a cultural experience of reality” (4). such a project has obvious value for native literature and communities, but dillon’s definition raises other questions about the nature of indigenous worldviews. if examples of the native slipstream “model a cultural experience of reality,” then why categorize them as science fiction in the first place? what separates such texts from the multitudes of other indigenous stories that reflect “a cultural experience of reality” through interactions with ancestors, wendigos, or tricksters? although he does not address dillon’s work directly, ⁠i dean rader illustrates some of the complications that might arise out of such a broad definition. to distinguish between science fiction and the “cultural experience of reality” that dillon describes, he introduces the term “indian invention novel” rather than “indigenous science fiction.” rader explains that the indian invention novel: draws from all of the motifs of science fiction that make it fun, fanciful, and forward looking, but, unlike the “science” and “fiction” components of sci-fi, indian invention tropes are neither scientific nor fictional. they arise out of the diversity of indian miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 53 narrative—its humor, its disregard for the laws of physics, its trickster traditions, and its sense of circular and unending time. the novels of indian invention play with creation stories, shape-shifters, coyotes, and all that is atemporal, creating a new genre that takes indigenous aesthetics to new planes. (86) rader’s distinction between science fiction tropes and the “diversity of indian narrative” draws attention to the dangers of collapsing definitions, especially when relying on mainstream, euroamerican critical categories to describe indigenous literatures. by labeling texts that reflect indigenous worldviews as “science fiction,” critics run the risk of trivializing native voices and communities, of reducing lived experiences to mere superstition. just as toni morrison has resisted the term “magical realism” because “[i]t was a way of not talking about the politics. it was a way of not talking about what was in the books. if you could apply the word ‘magical’ then that dilutes the realism,” so too could dillon’s reclamation of earlier texts be used to imply that all indigenous literature is simply fictional (226). although this is clearly not dillon’s intent, readers who are unfamiliar with native cultures may mistakenly use these new categories as another way of reading native literature as myth, as a fascinating but naïve interpretation of reality that ultimately allows readers to dismiss and disregard indigenous cultures. in effect, although she aims to demonstrate the ways that these texts model resistance to colonization, the problematic nature of these categories might actually reinforce such structures. rader’s term, on the other hand, resists reductive readings, instead highlighting and celebrating indigenous narratives and worldviews. as important as the concept of the indian invention novel is, however, rader’s argument does not necessarily refute the existence of indigenous science fiction—it just asks us to reconsider how we define the term. in fact, the concept of the “indian invention novel” fails to account for those texts that engage with both native worldviews and mainstream science fictional tropes. like rader, i am concerned with maintaining a distinction between texts that are “science fictional” and those that simply reflect “the diversity of indian narrative” (rader 86). while rader’s genre is populated by texts like thomas king’s green grass, running water and leanne howe’s miko kings, i would argue that there is also room for indigenous science fiction, or “sf,” as a related but distinct category. indigenous sf certainly reflects “a cultural experience of reality,” partially by engaging with elements of native worldviews such as “creation stories, shape-shifters, [and] coyotes,” but, unlike the indian invention novel, it also transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 54 engages directly with western science fictional tropes like aliens, apocalypse, and alternate realities (dillon 4, rader 86). the last of these categories, the alternate—or sometimes virtual—reality allows native authors to explore indigenous concepts of time, including confrontations with traumatic historical events such as removal. both rader and dillon point to the possibilities of such engagement: dillon in her description of the native slipstream and rader in his discussion of leanne howe’s theory of tribalography. dillon argues that indigenous science fiction “allows authors to recover the native space of the past, to bring it to the attention of contemporary readers, and to build better futures,” while rader suggests that, through the lens of tribalography, native authors are able to depict “history and the contemporary intersecting at the ground zero of tribal identity” (4, 76). i propose that the trope of alternate/virtual realities does similar work, offering indigenous writers new ways to imagine and explore the intersections of the past and the present. in such stories, as opposed to more conventional time travel narratives, characters are able to revisit and reinterpret the past, but, notably, they lack the ability to change historical events. one of the clearest examples of indigenous science fiction is cherokee writer blake m. hausman’s 2010 novel, riding the trail of tears, which situates the science fictional trope of virtual reality within a decidedly indigenous text. by locating his story at the intersections of native literature and science fiction, hausman is able to confront the traumatic story of cherokee removal and imagine a new interpretation of those events while also acknowledging the ongoing influence of historical narratives in the present day. if, as thomas king has famously argued, “[t]he truth about stories is that that’s all we are” then the stories that we tell about the past must continue to shape our lives in the present (2). thus, the trope of virtual reality that hausman employs is important primarily because of its narrative approach, which defies a linear, euroamerican understanding of history and suggests that we might more appropriately confront the trauma of cherokee removal by examining its effects, not only on the particular time of the midnineteenth century, but within the particular space of cherokee territory as it continues to exist in both the past and the present. because riding the trail of tears is set first in the near future and later within a virtual reality version of the 1830s, it is able to confront the trauma of nineteenth-century cherokee removal while simultaneously depicting the importance of indigenous sovereignty in the miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 55 twenty-first century. hausman tells the story of a virtual reality ride based on the trail of tears, where tourists can ostensibly learn about cherokee history and culture while experiencing removal for themselves. thus, instead of trying to erase or reverse the history of removal, riding the trail of tears focuses on the ways that contemporary peoples, both cherokee and not, might understand and respond to that history. hausman’s decision to use virtual reality rather than time travel is key: if he had introduced a time machine that allowed his characters to go back in time and simply undo the past, the novel would become a work of fantasy, problematically erasing the very real people who suffered and died along the trail. moreover, such a text would be less useful for contemporary indigenous peoples, who have no such time machine to improve their own lives. instead, by telling a cherokee story that is simultaneously set in two centuries, hausman offers a new model of resistance and empowerment in the face of historical trauma. based on plot alone, riding the trail of tears seems to fit easily into the genre of mainstream science fiction. in the novel, scientists have used a new technology called surround vision to create a virtual reality window into the past. this technology has attracted attention primarily for its money-making potential; it has been used to develop a tourist trap in northeast georgia called the trepp, or “tsalagi removal exodus point park” (hausman 13). the use of bureaucratic language coupled with the word “tsalagi,” one of the cherokee’s names for themselves, hides the violent history inherent in both the ride and north georgia itself: behind the catchy name, customers are actually paying to experience cherokee removal by riding a virtual trail of tears (hausman 51). following a familiar generic convention of science fiction, the story begins when the virtual reality mechanism malfunctions and leaves the novel’s protagonist, a cherokee tour guide named tallulah, trapped inside the game with a group of disgruntled tourists. when technology malfunctions in a work of mainstream science fiction, we might expect to learn a lesson about putting too much faith in machines or the disastrous consequences of tampering with historical events. but it is not just the presence of the trail of tears that makes this novel cherokee: hausman also reverses generic expectations by considering these typical science fictional scenarios from an indigenous perspective. the technology behind the trepp becomes an organic part of the world, and the opportunity to reshape a painful history is championed rather than condemned. by embracing the conventions of science fiction and then subverting and transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 56 adapting those conventions to reflect a cherokee worldview, riding the trail of tears alters the parameters of the genre and creates a space of both virtual and real resistance to removal. not only does virtual reality become indigenized within the world of the novel, but, practically speaking, the presence of the book itself challenges received knowledge about the “vanishing indian” and insists that, far from having been removed in the nineteenth century, the cherokee remain in their traditional homelands—both in the readers’ present and in the near future in which this story takes place. despite the difficulty of imagining riding the trail of tears as a recreational activity, the attraction is apparently so popular that, in the world of the novel, the trepp now rivals helen, a very real “german-theme-town tourist trap” located in the north georgia mountains (hausman 94). tourists ride the trepp for a variety of reasons: schools schedule educational field trips, while college students can earn extra credit by participating. computer programmers take an interest in the technology, and the ride is also considered a family-friendly experience. in the trepp, tourists are zipped into virtual reality suits and, in three hours of real time, they experience several months of life as cherokee citizens during the process of removal from the traditional cherokee homelands of north georgia in 1838. customers can choose the level of violence that they are prepared to encounter on the tour. groups with young children or the elderly should register for level one, while on level four, customers risk such gruesome deaths as being shot in the virtual face by u.s. soldiers (hausman 179). the ride is so successful that it has spawned two restaurants (the soaring eagle grill and the turtleback café), a gift shop, a bookstore, and a movie theatre, all located on a road called tsalagi boulevard (hausman 36, 34). although his subject matter is decidedly cherokee, hausman also adheres to many of the widely accepted generic conventions of euro-american science fiction. one of the defining characteristics of the genre, according to theorist darko suvin, is the presence of a “novum,” or “strange newness” (4). this novum is produced through the “interaction of estrangement and cognition” (suvin 7-8). what suvin refers to as “estrangement” is echoed in philip k. dick’s claim that science fiction is defined by the reader’s “shock of dysrecognition” (4). whatever language we use to describe the reader’s relationship to the unexpected, it occurs in works of fantasy as well as science fiction, but cognition, according to suvin, “differentiates [science fiction] not only from myth, but also from the folk (fairy) tale and the fantasy” (8). in other words, the presence of the novum must be explained logically, rather than magically, if the text miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 57 is to qualify as “science fiction.”ii the novum that serves as the catalyst for the rest of the story in riding the trail of tears is the trepp itself, which hausman explains logically by detailing the creation of the machine: it began as a rough prototype that was invented by tallulah’s grandfather, and it was later purchased and developed by a large corporation. through tallulah’s recollections, we learn how the machine evolved into a large-scale virtual reality program. because she has been involved with the creation of the trepp from its inception, she also recalls developing and editing the stock characters within the game. as far as tallulah and the rest of the trepp staff are concerned, those characters are merely computer programs, capable of being altered and rewritten as necessary. throughout the novel, tallulah relies heavily on the trepp’s tech crew to answer questions about discrepancies and malfunctions in the game, even when it becomes evident that the crew is no longer in control of their programs. these details all confirm that the trepp has, up to this point, operated according to the rules of computer science and is therefore a clearly recognizable novum, a kind of “cognitive estrangement” that becomes the catalyst for the events that follow. when the novel opens, something has gone wrong with the surround vision technology, and tour group 5709 is stuck inside the game. this opening scenario works staunchly within at least two familiar sf conventions. first, as everett f. bleiler notes, early science fiction often focused on “technological perfectibilism” (xiii). one of the most common motifs within that category is “things-go-wrong,” a theme that cautions readers to be wary of putting too much faith in technology (bleiler xvii). that theme appears in countless science fiction stories: mary shelley’s frankenstein is an early example of a text that warns against the dangers of relying too heavily on technology, as does hal 9000 in stanley kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey and the park itself in michael crichton’s jurassic park. more recently, cherokee author daniel wilson’s robopocalypse tells the story of all technology on earth revolting against humanity. the second generic convention occurs when tallulah explains that, “‘[t]he trail has begun, and we can’t stop it now. we have to see it through’” (hausman 86). the trope of the un-ending game is also familiar, occurring in texts as diverse as jumanji, tron, and several episodes of star trek: the next generation, such as “the big goodbye,” where the crew is unable to exit the holodeck. sf has prepared readers to recognize these situations, so the novel fits comfortably within the boundaries of the genre when several members of the tour group disappear and the in-tour violence suddenly jumps from level 1 to level 4. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 58 but riding the trail of tears is more than a science fiction story that happens to take place in cherokee country. hausman takes advantage of the necessary ambiguities in a scientific explanation of the trepp to introduce a particularly indigenous perspective, one that challenges both euro-american worldviews and suvin’s clear-cut distinction between science and religion. the breakdown in technology in this novel cannot be blamed on the technology itself; rather, the trepp breaks down because the cherokee little people, creatures that ethnographer james mooney describes as “fairies no larger in size than children,” are inexplicably living inside the game (331). moreover, because one of these little people narrates the novel, readers have no choice but to acknowledge their presence. although the inclusion of these “mythical” creatures in a work of sf might seem to trouble suvin’s theories, his definitions of genre also establish a space for cultural difference. suvin argues that a work of science fiction must contain “an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment,” which means that “reality” is defined by the author’s understanding of the term, not necessarily by a euroamerican scientific worldview (suvin 8). because hausman is cherokee and the little people fit within the “empirical environment” of a cherokee worldview, their presence does not necessarily turn the novel into a work of fantasy—or even of science fiction. although many readers may be unfamiliar with the little people, their presence does not fit the criteria of a novum because, from a cherokee perspective such as hausman’s, they should not cause a “shock of dysrecognition” (dick 8). however, hausman’s little people go on to subvert the expectations of a traditional cherokee worldview, by which act the novel establishes them as a second novum. rather than following in the footsteps of traditional cherokee stories about the little people, the narrator offers some new definitions: first, there are the nunnehi, the immortals, who are about the same size as average humans. and then, second, there are the little people, who are naturally smaller than the nunnehi. and then, there’s us. we’re the real nunnehi, the real immortals, and those human-sized creatures who appear from time to time are actually manifestations of our labor . . . for convenience’s sake, you can call me the little little person. or you could call me nunnehi, because, as i said, we’re the real nunnehi. (hausman 5-6) unlike the presence of the little people, the introduction of “the little little people” is a secondary novum because these beings are not included in traditional cherokee stories or miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 59 worldviews. it might be tempting to categorize the little little people as another piece of mythology, of magic creeping into a work of science fiction, but, once again, hausman provides a cognitive explanation for their existence—and also for the fact that no one knows about them. following mooney, he tells the story of a caste of cherokee priests who took advantage of their position and sexually assaulted several beautiful young women while the men were away hunting. when the men returned, the people “rose up and killed their leaders, killed them all. every single priest, dead” (hausman 4). one result of the revolution was that “the stories began to change” (hausman 4). the narrator suggests that, “[s]ome stories changed so much that everyone—storytellers and listeners—forgot the originals. our story is one of those stories. when the priests were killed, we were accidentally cut from the people’s memory” (hausman 5). while the killing of the priestly class is indeed a story that james mooney recorded, including pointing to several earlier historical accounts that supported his version, he does not mention any description of lost stories—and perhaps he could not, given that the stories were lost to the cherokee before mooney worked with them. nonetheless, the little little people’s story is supported by historical accounts such as mooney’s,iii suggesting that it is grounded in actual, not virtual, reality. the emphasis on storytelling as knowledge also reflects an indigenous worldview, and the idea that lost stories must be recovered echoes similar concerns in many contemporary native communities, where tribal leaders are working to establish language preservation and revitalization programs. this second novum, so clearly grounded in a cherokee perspective, combines with the trepp to establish a story that is, by definition, a work of science fiction grounded in a native worldview. although the novel incorporates both indigenous and euro-american perspectives, the presence of the little little people exposes the differences between the two worldviews. speaking from a euro-american perspective, suvin claims that all “mythical” stories are also “static” because he believes that, in a world determined by religion, there is no possibility for real change (7). but the little little people are ostensibly “mythical” beings that also change over time. in fact, rather than referring to them as “mythical,” it would be more appropriate to simply describe them as characters who originate in cherokee oral tradition. such characters are not static like those in suvin’s myths; as the novel demonstrates, they are instead connected to adaptation and innovation. they existed in the people’s stories before the revolution, and, although their stories later disappeared, the little little person narrating the novel has found a transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 60 way to recover them and gain a new audience. he tells readers that “i’m probably more indigenous than you, and the digital earth is where i’m indigenous” (hausman 13). it is unclear how the little little people, who existed “before the big colonization, before cristobal colon, before hernando de soto,” can be indigenous to a digital environment that has only been developed in the last ten years, but these partial explanations certainly suggest a long history of change rather than stability (hausman 3). thus, the narrator’s position is both fixed and fluctuating, as we learn when he explains that, “i’m more nunnehi than you probably thought nunnehi could be, but i never took such a formal shape until they built their ride” (hausman 13). repeatedly, the little little people refuse absolute definitions and defy the strict separation of science and religion that is inherent to suvin’s argument. the novel’s restructuring of categories echoes tewa philosopher gregory cajete’s definition of native science as “the entire edifice of indigenous knowledge” (3). because many native worldviews do not distinguish between science and religion, the combination of the trepp and the little little people within riding the trail of tears empowers native peoples by insisting upon the value of indigenous knowledge as a more appropriate framework for understanding our complex world. this empowerment of indigenous traditions is reinforced by the fact that the little little people ultimately save the day: they are able to literally rewrite the history of the trail of tears without erasing the memory of the original events. as a site of virtual reality, the trepp provides a space to confront the violent history of removal; the nunnehi appropriate that space and, with the help of other figures from cherokee oral tradition, they guide both the tourists and tallulah in a new and more productive direction. according to mooney, both the nunnehi and the little people are kind beings who often take in lost wanderers and lead them back home (331). this is precisely what the nunnehi in the novel are able to do as they redirect tour group 5709; they lead tallulah and her tourists away from the trail of tears and back to their homeland in north carolina, where tallulah also has the opportunity to reconcile with her dead father. like the fairies described by mooney, the little little people guide tallulah in the right direction, both in and out of the game. as proven by the nunnehi, the trepp has the potential to create positive change within the world of the novel. despite the fact that it capitalizes on the attempted genocide of the cherokee people by the u.s., the game could also offer an educational experience, using virtual reality as a new medium through which to present cherokee history and worldviews to a miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 61 mainstream audience. this goal seems close to what the original creator, tallulah’s grandfather art, might have had in mind. in his prototype, passengers ride inside a jeep cherokee whose windows have been converted to television monitors. each screen displays scenes from the trail of tears, so, as the car drives virtually, it accompanies the digital cherokee on their walk “from the stockades in georgia to the hills and lakes in northeastern oklahoma” (hausman 33). tallulah remembers those first digital indians as “a mass of bent and broken bodies that stretched up to ten miles long at the beginning of the trip” (hausman 33). although her grandfather reassures her “that the indians walking the trail were digital and couldn’t see inside the car . . . tallulah thought they stared right through her” (hausman 33). as she experiences this early incarnation of the trail, her “feet felt bruised and raw” and “[h]er knees buckled and shook upon the upholstery,” despite the fact that she experiences the trip from within the relative safety and isolation of the jeep (hausman 33). as evidenced by her empathetic physical response and her belief that the digital indians are looking back at her, it is clear that tallulah sees the digital cherokee—at least in this early incarnation—as real human beings. although she will later be desensitized by working for the commercial version of the trepp, tallulah’s first reaction demonstrates her ability to empathize with the digital indians, as well as the possibility that the prototypical version of the game actually encourages participants to establish a human connection with its non-human characters. the form of the trepp also provides a space that could be used to revitalize oral storytelling traditions, as opposed to the more limited written form that we commonly rely on when learning about native cultures in the twenty-first century. tallulah notes that, “[t]oday cherokees around the world learn about their culture from the mooney book,” but, as many scholars and storytellers have pointed out, oral stories often lose something when they are translated into text (hausman 57). within the virtual reality space of the trepp, the digital cherokee could be programmed to tell both traditional and contemporary stories, which would then become more accessible to tourists, as well. in fact, because the digital cherokee are programmed to “react to [tourists’] reactions,” they might be able to reflect the traditional oral storytelling practice of telling particular stories only within the appropriate contexts. the digital cherokee could be programmed to share certain stories when they are most applicable to the listeners’ experiences, providing a kind of personal connection that is difficult to reproduce in written texts (hausman 71). transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 62 tallulah demonstrates the possibilities of oral storytelling within the trepp when she tells her tourists the story of how first man and first woman turned into strawberry plants (hausman 102). this story is appropriate to the situation in two distinct ways. first, the tourists have just picked strawberries themselves, and the story explains how first man and first woman gave the world strawberries. tallulah even makes a conscious decision to “stay on target” by telling this story, since “[t]his patch of digital earth is covered with strawberries” (hausman 96). the story she tells is connected explicitly to a place and the experience that the tourists have in that place. by telling this story in this place, tallulah reinforces vine deloria jr.’s argument, which he details in both god is red and the metaphysics of modern existence, that native cultures tend to value space over time; it does not matter when first man and first woman created strawberries, only that the story explains how this particular patch of earth came to be covered in the fruit. if tallulah could pass her storytelling skills on to the technical crew and, through them, to the digital characters, oral storytelling might easily be integrated into the virtual world of the trepp. in addition to the possibilities of oral storytelling, the program also has the potential to bring traditional characters to life for new audiences. rather than constantly re-enacting the violence of the trail of tears, the program could allow tourists to learn about, and even participate in, these traditional stories. because there are often multiple versions of such stories, tourists would have the flexibility to influence the stories rather than being forced into a strict script. although no traditional stories are re-enacted in the novel, characters from these stories do exist inside the game. among the characters who have evolved with the help of the nunnehi rather than being created by the programmers, tallulah meets ish and fish, twin boys who work in the kitchen with their father, chef. the family is reminiscent of the traditional story of kana’ti and selu and their sons, the good boy and the wild boy. in fact, tallulah connects the twins directly to the story of kana’ti and selu, which she presumably learned about by reading mooney (hausman 103). in mooney’s version, kana’ti provides game for the family, and his wife, selu, provides vegetables. when their two sons get curious about where their mother gets corn and beans every day, they follow her to the storehouse and watch her produce corn by rubbing her stomach and beans by rubbing under her armpits (mooney 101). convinced that their mother is a witch, they kill her. this murder might explain the strange absence of the boys’ mother—or any elder women—within the trepp miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 63 (hausman 167). after killing selu, the boys follow her directions to “clear a large piece of ground in front of the house and drag my body seven times around the circle” (mooney 101). corn begins to grow along the path where they drag her body, and this story is used to explain the origin of corn for the cherokee. because the story of kana’ti and selu explains how the first cherokee obtained staple foods, it makes sense that their corresponding digital versions would be responsible for feeding the cherokee people within the game. when tallulah first meets the boys, she wonders whether they are twins and promptly answers her own question: “[o]f course they are . . . how could they not be? it’s all part of the mythology” (hausman 308). in this instance, tallulah’s choice of the word “mythology” serves as a reminder that she has come to view the game from a rigidly euro-american perspective, and, thus, that she does not even pause to consider that such characters could actually exist. later, tallulah confirms the boys’ traditional identities when she refers to fish as “the wild boy” (hausman 318). even though they have been brought into the game by the nunnehi rather than the trepp’s programmers, their presence suggests that the game could be an excellent place for tourists to learn about traditional characters by interacting directly with them. although ish and fish are clearly connected to cherokee oral tradition, it is important to reiterate that tallulah and the programmers did not actually create them; instead, ish, fish, and chef only emerge when the trepp begins to “malfunction.” as in the case of the little little people, the novel demonstrates that characters from oral tradition, unlike those found in western myths, have the ability to change over time and adapt to new circumstances as necessary. their spontaneity and flexibility might explain why tallulah, who insists on sticking to the same unchanging script each time she travels through the trepp, is initially frustrated by these characters. because she is eager to finish her tour and leave on vacation, tallulah is inconvenienced rather than excited or curious when she encounters characters who do not fit into the fixed narrative of the virtual trail of tears. even though the twins interact pleasantly with her tourists, she remains suspicious of their friendship. rather than these traditional cherokee figures, who introduce an element of flexibility bordering on chaos into the world of the trepp, tallulah prefers the stock characters who can be relied upon to behave the same way every time. one of the best examples of these stagnant, programmed characters is the wise old medicine man, who tallulah created with the assistance of the trepp technicians. “old medicine,” as tallulah refers to him, is one of the main attractions of the tour. he greets each transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 64 tourist who dies on the trail, but those who survive also get to visit him before returning to reality. as the narrator explains, old medicine’s “program ensures customer satisfaction on the trail of tears” (hausman 57). old medicine is a mishmash of popular stereotypes, a wise old man who “uses your comments and questions to determine your beliefs. he then reaffirms your personal ideology by showering you with the kind of aboriginal spirituality that only dead people can exude” (hausman 57). old medicine is so popular that tourists sometimes contemplate ingame suicide in order to speed his arrival (hausman 59). in tour group 5709, a tourist who dies a gruesome death on the trail of tears later exclaims that, “’[t]hat whole trail of tears was totally worth it,’” because she had the opportunity to meet old medicine at the end (hausman 335). despite the tourists’ love of old medicine, he reinforces stereotypes and perpetuates the romanticization of native peoples. he is not tribally specific, nor does he share any actual indigenous beliefs. rather, he simply reinforces whatever tourists already believe, “ensur[ing] customer satisfaction” rather than challenging guests to confront the attempted genocide of the cherokee people directly. because he is the last thing that people experience before the game ends, he encourages them to disregard the very real suffering that they have witnessed, focusing instead on what a great time they had—an impulse that will encourage repeat customers, but which undermines any educational or ethical goals of the tour. ultimately, this exaggerated character depicts indigenous peoples as “mythical and static,” to borrow suvin’s language, rather than constantly changing or evolving, and thus does a disservice to both the cherokee and the tourists. because hausman’s narrator is so openly critical of old medicine, however, readers are encouraged to see the tourists’ response as problematic and, in fact, are invited to reassess their own relationship to stereotypical narratives about indigenous peoples. tallulah’s growing dependence on structure rather than flexibility—even at the expense of cherokee values and historical accuracy—is reflected in the design of the game itself. although tallulah is not a programmer, she has collaborated with the technical team to design the virtual world of the trepp. over time, however, she has become critical of other people’s contributions, and, in her own life, tallulah believes that she “didn’t need anyone’s help” (hausman 301). the single-player design of the game reflects this desire for independence and individuality: rather than several passengers riding together in a jeep cherokee, as in grandpa art’s original prototype, “the chairsuit visor is totally individualized. it is the single-occupancy miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 65 realization of [tallulah’s] grandfather’s dream” (hausman 74). in other words, tourists embark upon this difficult experience by themselves despite the fact that communal support might help them cope with and survive the trail. this desire for control and independence, reflected in the trepp as well as in tallulah’s own life, goes against a cherokee emphasis on community. this juxtaposition of values is exemplified by tallulah’s walkie-talkie, which she uses to communicate with the tech crew from inside the game. the walkie-talkie is a physical representation of tallulah’s connection between virtual and actual reality. this tool is shaped like a water beetle, a tiny creature who plays a prominent role in one version of the cherokee creation story. in that story, first woman falls through a hole in the sky and lands on earth, which is completely covered in water. she perches on turtle’s back while the animals try to create land for her. several animals dive to the bottom of the ocean in search of mud, and water beetle is the first to succeed. as tallulah explains, he “spent years diving down to the bottom of the ocean and swimming back up with little bits of earth” until he had enough to cover turtle’s back and create the land (hausman 97). the water beetle, and the earth diver story in general, serve as a reminder that the world was created collaboratively and required the efforts of even the smallest creatures. the water beetle walkie-talkie connects tallulah back to the material world, but it is also a symbol of world creation, a reminder that tallulah is part of a community that worked together to create the trepp. as one of the digital indians reiterates, “’[y]ou must remember, the whole of the community is more important than any single individual’” (hausman 117). unfortunately, tallulah seems to have lost sight of those communal values and shared experiences: she takes on too much personal responsibility for both her tourists and the trepp. by trying to make and sustain the world alone, tallulah overworks herself and fails her community. she has forgotten to be flexible, to adapt, and to turn to others for assistance. because she has ridden the trepp so many times, she has come to believe that she can rely on the same script and the same standard responses on each journey, overlooking the fact that the world—even the virtual world—is subject to change. relying on a standardized script leaves her vulnerable when change actually does occur; she realizes that her stories have become stagnant, like suvin’s dreaded myths, and the process of reliving the trail of tears over and over has worn her down. moreover, because that script rewards tallulah and her tourists for giving in without a fight, tallulah has become a proponent of the trail of tears itself. she encourages everyone to keep acting out the process of transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 66 removal, even when other options present themselves. she has repeated these patterns many times, retelling the same stories in the same language until she has become both dehumanized and colonized by continuing to rely on this single, inflexible, and violent narrative. not only does exposure to the trepp continue to inflict harm on tallulah; it has also trapped its digital characters in an unending and horrific cycle of violence. rather than confronting and overcoming the violence committed against the cherokee in the 1830s, tallulah is forced to relive the trauma of that experience every time she goes to work. as the narrator explains, “tallulah’s stomach grinds while telling her tourists that it will all be over soon. for her it never ends. this is her one thousand one hundred and third trip through the trail of tears” (hausman 60). the digital cherokee have undergone a similar kind of violence because they, too, must relive the trail for each new group of tourists. while tallulah has only ever thought of these stock characters as computer programs, she eventually learns that some of them have retained their memories of each trip through the virtual trail. if tallulah has ridden the trail of tears over a thousand times, that number can be multiplied for the digital characters, who ride the trail not only with tallulah, but also with each of the other tour guides at the trepp. the nunnehi narrator explains that these characters “have all bled to death thousands of times, and they feel it each time. they feel every drop of everyone’s blood, their own blood and the blood of their young ones. they remember every moment” (hausman 286). this awful description serves as a reminder that, in a closely connected community such as that of the virtual cherokee, the pain experienced by some has a lasting impact on the entire group. in addition to this endless torture, the digital indians also explain that, “’[t]he memories are worse than the pain’” (hausman 286). they keep repeating this experience over and over because they have been “‘made to belong’” to a place that “‘is not our home’” (hausman 112). they have been “made” to live in this place by the programmers who created the characters, who “‘programmed [them] to be killed, then brought back to life’” (hausman 119). they have been forced into a problematic narrative in much the way that the cherokee who traveled the historical trail of tears were “made to belong” in oklahoma. one of the lasting effects of removal is this complicated relationship between multiple homelands; as tallulah notes, “[e]ven though most cherokees today live in oklahoma or somewhere else out west, the center of our culture definitely comes from [the great smoky] mountains” (hausman 53). both tallulah and the digital indians must relive this conflict on a daily basis, so that each experience adds another miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 67 layer of trauma to the historical violence done to their people in the 1830s. for both the real tour guide and the virtual indians, the act of reliving this experience perpetuates the cycle of violence against the cherokee people. this literal cycle of violence, which is repeatedly experienced by the same individuals, is only possible because of the presence of the trepp itself. within the world of the novel, the trepp is a novum that has the potential to induce cognitive estrangement in its customers: tourists could be challenged to reconsider their stereotypical assumptions about “indians,” which could potentially lead to healthier relationships between native and non-native peoples in the present. instead, because the corporation that owns the trepp has chosen to value customer service above all else, that novum has instead only extended and magnified the violence inherent in the historical trail of tears. this is why hausman has to introduce a second novum in the form of the little little people: because the characters within the novel have appropriated the trepp and used it to repeat the same static and inaccurate narratives of cherokee history and identity, the nunnehi must intervene directly in the narrative. thanks to that intervention, the digital cherokee seem to be imbued with indigenous knowledge and an innate sense of their cherokee homeland—they know that they belong in the mountains of north carolina, not the artificial stockade where they live in between games. without ever having been to “the motherland,” the digital cherokee know “how nice” north carolina is (hausman 123, 124). when asked how they can know about a place they’ve never been, one of the cherokee leaders simply responds that, “’[w]e know . . . we all know’” (hausman 124, italics in original). similarly, they explain that they know what is going to happen in the game because “‘[w]e know things’” and “‘[w]e are part of this machine’” (hausman 125). their information seems to be tied up in both indigenous knowledge—like knowing about the cherokee homeland—and euroamerican technical, scientific knowledge, which they hold because, despite having existed long before the creation of the trepp, they are indigenous to the machine itself. it is this combination of different types of knowledge, both euro-american and indigenous, which allows the digital cherokee to resist their programming, and, thus, to resist assimilation and colonization. by asking tallulah to lead them back to north carolina, the nunnehi encourage her to recognize that she also has access to indigenous as well as scientific knowledge, and they provide her with the necessary tools to recognize and resist oppressive violence in her own life. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 68 but, before tallulah can accept responsibility for the digital characters inside the trepp, she must confront her own problematic role in creating and maintaining the world that exists within the game. tallulah’s position, much like the little little people’s, is vexed by the complex and contradictory definitions of this virtual native space. although the physical building that houses the trepp theme park is built in historic cherokee territory in northeast georgia, that space is today more frequently seen as part of the american south. tallulah clearly understands that the cherokee were illegally removed from this place, but most of her tourists are only vaguely aware of that history. the multiple understandings of the land are further complicated by the existence of the virtual space itself, which is ostensibly cherokee rather than american. within the game, tallulah spends her time in “indian country,” but that indian country has been created by programmers, none of whom are cherokee themselves. although tallulah is a cultural consultant, she does not ultimately have control over the landscape or the characters in the trepp. thus, the indian country of the trepp is only an imperfect, simulated version of the actual space. on the other hand, because the game focuses on the experiences of the cherokee, the majority of the characters who populate the virtual world are cherokee citizens, despite the fact that their creators are largely non-native. in fact, even the tourists appear cherokee within the game, leading to the illusion of a native majority within the virtual space. but “authentic” native identity is a much more complex concept than either the tourists or the programmers acknowledge, and the tourists’ indigenous appearance further problematizes that question of identity: is it enough to “look cherokee,” to have physical characteristics that mark you as an “indian”? tallulah “looks cherokee,” in large part thanks to her braids, which are “the most indian of her features,” but she often worries about her own authenticity (hausman 361). native identity is further complicated in a world where virtual reality allows every single tourist to “look cherokee,” but the novel ultimately suggests that indigeneity requires more than biology, and certainly more than physiognomy; having braids or even meeting blood quantum requirements is less important than cultural identifiers, which are much more difficult to establish, especially within the virtual world of the trepp. even if we accept that the digital indians are “authentically” cherokee—and at least those created by the little little people seem to be—the trepp is still a contested territory because it is located in time as well as space. as long as the trepp is set in 1838, during the miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 69 time of removal, it will always be defined by the violent conflict taking place between the cherokee and the american soldiers whose goal is to force them west. at the beginning of the game, it appears that, as a result of their programming, the digital cherokee are largely unable to resist removal. in fact, those characters who are programmed to resist are most likely to suffer during the game and, in some cases, to be held up as a warning to tourists who might be tempted to fight back. for instance, tallulah’s tourists always spend the first night inside the game with a digital cherokee couple, deer cooker and corn grinder. in every game, the tourists wake up to american soldiers invading the house, and so, every time, the virtual family must walk the trail of tears with the tourists. tallulah compares the digital indians’ reaction to her own, noting that the family “walks with similar stoicism. they are professionals too” (hausman 172). by casting deer cooker and corn grinder in these roles, the programmers have ensured that they will play the part of perpetual victims. later, after corn grinder’s invariable death at the hands of soldiers, tallulah considers that deer cooker is programmed to grieve. traumatized and suddenly weary, deer cooker plays the role of a model american indian—he does not fight back, he does not harbor lasting resentment toward the soldier who killed his wife, and he does not protest when another soldier grabs his arm and hoists him back onto the trail. (hausman 178) because she is shot when she disobeys, corn grinder is used as a negative example, a warning to tourists who might rebel. on the other hand, because deer cooker serves as “a model american indian,” it is his example that tourists are encouraged to follow. tallulah reinforces this behavior when she “instructs her tourists to do as they’re told and follow the soldiers’ orders” (hausman 170). if the tourists try to resist, if they try to protect the cherokee homelands and culture, they, too, will be attacked and perhaps even killed early in the game. although the goal of the game is ostensibly to teach tourists about the actual cherokee experience, it instead encourages them to surrender in order to survive. so long as the digital cherokee are programmed to give in, and so long as the tourists are encouraged to follow their lead, the ostensibly cherokee space of the trepp will never be truly indigenous. instead, deer cooker’s experience suggests that a certain amount of internal colonization is built into the game. this is quite literally true for the digital characters, who have been “programmed to grieve”—or, worse, programmed to die—and tallulah, the only “real” transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 70 cherokee who tourists encounter in the trepp, has come to share this assimilated mindset. so, although tourists may feel that they are getting an “authentic” cherokee experience, the trepp is always already a contested space. the pressure on tallulah to meet her tourists’ expectations of an “authentic” experience only exaggerates her own discomfort with her cherokee identity. although she is well paid, she is simultaneously exploited for her heritage; the pictures in all of the “trepp promotional literature accentuate her hair,” which is “the most indian of her features” (hausman 361). the company takes advantage of her indigenous knowledge as well as her cultural background, and both tourists and co-workers are eager to treat her like a “real” indian. tallulah struggles to reconcile this position with the fact that she is somewhat estranged from her cherokee roots, both physically and emotionally. moreover, that sense of displacement is further complicated by her experience on the trepp, which requires her to literally walk away from her homeland on a daily basis. the little little people, who are introduced as a secondary novum, intervene in the trepp—and in the novel itself—in order to resist the damage being done by the first novum. as part of that project, they help tallulah resist the stereotypes that surround her at the trepp, and, as a result, the novel begins to supply more accurate knowledge and model more appropriate behavior for its readers, as well. just as tallulah’s tourists are challenged to reconsider their assumptions, so are hausman’s readers. at the same time, the novel offers a model of resistance to those readers who may occupy a space similar to tallulah’s. by introducing indigenous knowledge into both the machine and the novel, the nunnehi challenge the fixed boundaries between genres and cultures and establish a new form of resistance and survival for cherokee peoples. like the little little people, who became indigenous to the digital environment after being lost from a much older oral tradition, the cherokee have also migrated from one homeland to another. and, while tallulah struggles to reconcile her native identity with her sense of displacement, the nunnehi narrator is able to announce, with a rather cavalier attitude, that he is indigenous to the digital earth (hausman 13). his confidence despite such a paradox can serve as an example for tallulah and other cherokee, including hausman’s readers as well as those located inside the trepp. like the little little people, tallulah has the opportunity to reclaim her own story despite the fact that it remains incomplete. rather than continuing to reenact the miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 71 trail of tears and reinforcing stereotypes about native peoples for new audiences on a daily basis, tallulah, alongside the digital cherokee, ultimately chooses to quit working for the trepp and return to north carolina. although the novel ends without telling us what happens next, it is clear that tallulah has broken the cycle of violence and begun to tell a new story about her own life. because of the intervention of the nunnehi, tallulah is able to resist and even reverse some of the violence that has been done to her people. rather than leading her tourists, as well as the digital cherokee, on to oklahoma as she has done eleven hundred times before, tallulah agrees to lead this group east, into the mountains of north carolina. the virtual journey corresponds to her real-life plans for the coming weekend: after finishing this tour, tallulah will drive to her grandparents’ home, which is located in cherokee territory in north carolina. throughout the novel, she has viewed this particular tour as the last obstacle before her vacation can begin. by changing her plans inside the tour instead, she takes responsibility for both her own life and the lives of the digital cherokee rather than continuing to ignore the problem by following the same old patterns. instead of enacting yet another painful death, tallulah contributes to a story of survival and reclamation as the cherokee return to their homeland. in addition to challenging the trail of tears itself, hausman uses cognitive estrangement to create a space where tallulah can confront her real-world identity issues. this is possible not because of any program that tallulah or the tech staff consciously create, but because the little little person who narrates the novel has experienced tallulah’s dreams with her. because this narrator is indigenous to the digital earth, he can manipulate the trepp so that tallulah’s dreams take physical form, creating a virtual space where she can encounter and resolve a recurring dream about her dead father. in that dream, tallulah finds herself in a dark cave with a black bear. she knows that the bear is her father’s spirit, but she has thus far been unable to have a conversation with him (hausman 12). she compares the experience to a vision quest but worries that she is inadequate, wondering, “what was so wrong with tallulah that she couldn’t even experience a vision properly?” (hausman 323). inside the trepp, however, tallulah finally finds her voice: she shares her insecurities, as well as her anger at her father for leaving her, and, “for the first time in four years, tallulah wilson cried inside the trail of tears” (hausman 326). in this moment of catharsis, her father comforts her and says that he loves her. her dream finally reaches a resolution, thanks to the novum of the trepp, which serves as an transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 72 intermediary between the physical world and the world of dreams. such a space is only possible at the intersection of religious and scientific contexts—or, more accurately, by viewing the world holistically, as cajete suggests when he explains that, “[w]hen speaking about indigenous or native science, one is really talking about the entire edifice of indigenous knowledge” (3). rather than analyzing the world from a euro-american perspective, which insists that we divide knowledge into discrete—and often artificial—categories, riding the trail of tears relies on the trepp to demonstrate the individual and communal benefits of interpreting experiences through the more inclusive lens of indigenous knowledge. although the trepp does not allow for actual time travel, and, thus, is not capable of changing the course of history, it still causes real harm by repeating earlier traumas. it is only through the interaction between the first and second nova—between the trepp and the little little people—that the novel becomes a tool for resistance rather than colonization. by creating the digital cherokee, who rebel against the soldiers and lead tallulah’s tourists back to north carolina, the nunnehi are able to tell a new story. this story does not undo or erase historical events, but it does challenge the tourists to rethink their assumptions about those events. in a more concrete way, the nunnehi also break the cycle of violence that has trapped both tallulah and the digital cherokee. with their assistance, tallulah learns to recognize the digital cherokee as non-human members of her community who are therefore deserving of respect. moreover, tallulah finally demands that she be treated with respect rather than continuing to play the role of a salesperson who must keep smiling while her tourists treat her—and other native peoples— as less than human. finally, by allowing tallulah to confront her father and sort through her own emotions, the trepp helps her understand her personal history from a new perspective. she may not be able to change the actual trail of tears, but, working as part of a community inside the trepp, tallulah can create a new, more hopeful narrative for herself, her tourists, and both real and virtual cherokee people. by employing and adapting the science fictional trope of virtual reality, and especially by introducing the trepp and the little little people as joint nova, hausman is able to offer a new perspective on the historical removal that affected so many tribes during the nineteenth century. the genre of science fiction, which is inherently interested in encounters with otherness and the possibility of enacting real change in the world, serves as an ideal form for exploring questions of assimilation and difference. moreover, because native worldviews emphasize the importance miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 73 of space rather than time, the virtual space of the trepp, which defies a linear conception of time by existing in both the past and the present, establishes a tangible connection between the 1830s and the 2010s. by following a contemporary protagonist, riding the trail of tears demonstrates the ways that the attempted genocide of the cherokee, which often seems to exist in the distant past, continues to affect cherokee people and shape cherokee stories. ultimately, the novel calls attention to and resists the ways that the ongoing romanticization of native peoples perpetuates violence in the twenty-first century and, rather than trying to erase past events, it suggests new avenues by which contemporary native peoples can confront historical trauma without succumbing to internal colonization or losing their tribal identities in the process. notes i. rader’s engaged resistance was published before walking the clouds, but dillon had already introduced the topic of indigenous science fiction by the time that rader’s book was released. see, for instance, dillon’s 2007 article “miindiwag and indigenous diaspora: eden robinson’s and celu amberstone’s forays into ‘postcolonial’ science fiction and fantasy.” ii although such a binary definition might initially seem inappropriate to a discussion of indigenous literature, suvin’s explanation actually demonstrates an awareness of his own epistemological position and acknowledges the validity of other worldviews. he defines “cognition” both as a stand-in for “scientifically methodical cognition,” in the euro-american sense of the term, and as “intrinsic, culturally acquired cognitive logic” (suvin 66). he further argues that “cognition is wider than science” and suggests that we might take “‘science’ in a sense closer to the german wissenschaft, french science, or russian nauka, which include not only natural but also all the cultural or historical sciences and even scholarship” (suvin 13). these broad definitions encompass euro-american understandings of science but also make space for alternate kinds of cognition, such as the indigenous knowledge that determines the underlying logic in many works of native science fiction. iii. mooney traces this story to john haywood, who recorded his version “some seventy years ago” (667). in addition, he records “a more detailed statement” given “on the authority of chief john ross and dr. j.b. evans” (668). works cited “the big goodbye.” star trek: the next generation. writ. tracy torme. dir. joseph l. scanlan. paramount, 2002. dvd. bleiler, everett f., with the assistance of richard j. bleiler. science-fiction: the gernsback years: a complete coverage of the genre magazines amazing, astounding, wonder, and others from 1926 through 1936. kent: kent state university press, 1998. web. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 74 cajete, gregory. native science: natural laws of interdependence. santa fe: clear light publishers, 2000. print. crichton, michael. jurassic park. new york: alfred a. knopf, inc., 1990. print. deloria jr, vine. god is red: a native view of religion. 30th anniversary edition. colorado: fulcrum publishing, 2003. print. —. the metaphysics of modern existence. san francisco: harper & row publishers, 1979. print. dick, philip k. the shifting realities of philip k. dick: selected literary and philosophical writings. ed. lawrence sutin. new york: pantheon books, 1995. print. dillon, grace l., ed. walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction. tucson: the university of arizona press, 2012. print. —. “miindiwag and indigenous diaspora: eden robinson’s and celu amberstone’s forays into ‘postcolonial’ science fiction and fantasy.” extrapolation 48.2 (2007): 219-243. print. hausman, blake m. riding the trail of tears. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2011. print. king, thomas. the truth about stories. toronto: house of anansi press inc, 2003. print. kubrick, stanley. 2001: a space odyssey. metro-goldwyn-mayer, 1968. film. mooney, james. myths of the cherokee and sacred formulas of the cherokee. washington: bureau of american ethnology, 1890. print. morrison, toni. “an interview with toni morrison, by christina davis.” conversations with toni morrison. ed. danille taylor-guthrie. jackson: university press of mississippi, 1994. print. pinsky, michael. future present: ethics and/as science fiction. madison, nj: fairleigh dickinson university press, 2003. print. rader, dean. engaged resistance. austin: university of texas press, 2011. print. shelley, mary. frankenstein or the modern prometheus. ed. m.k. joseph. london: oxford university press, 1969. print. suvin, darko. metamorphoses of science fiction: on the poetics and history of a literary genre. new haven: yale university press, 1979. print. tron. dir. steven lisberger. perf. jeff bridges, bruce boxleitner, david warner. walt disney pictures, 1982. dvd. miriam c. brown spiers “reimagining resistance” 75 van allsburg, chris. jumanji. new york: houghton mifflin harcourt publishing company, 1981. print. microsoft word ed statement.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) iii old meets new, or arting: editorial statement “the materialist presentation of history leads the past to bring the present into a critical state.” – walter benjamin. the arcades project, (n7a, 5), 1927-1940. “i sometimes wonder how anything is accomplished by indians because of the apparent overemphasis on humor within the indian world.” – vine deloria, jr., custer died for your sins, 1969. i don’t want to write a longer and verbally gymnastic introduction, describing personal relationships, histories of publications, digital disagreements, or memeish he said she saids. but i do want to talk briefly about this art thing. this “quality and control: how native artists have failed to criticize each other” from june 8, 2017 in icmtn (r.i.p.). i am grateful to terese mailhot for beginning this conversation, and suspect i’m not the only one. (note—the business, this business of addressing the business of art is actually for another series of discussions.) this one here is about movement and movements, i think. native art is moving forward, moves forward all the time, reflects the movement of us all. at least in a perfect world. that is, we are all moving, in that perfect world. we don’t all always see it though, i think. that? that’s the fault of the media, usually, and less so, but still guilty, our own lazy search habits. typically, critiques of art and artists relate to the particular movement that the artist is situated in, and often, that artist is one of the founders of that movement. after critiquing the movement and its founder(s), while somehow, somewhere in the piece noting that critique is not an implicitly bad thing, nor is the practitioner of the art an implicitly bad person (unless you are writing as say, evelyn waugh, who signed off letters “death to picasso,” but hmmm, still said "señor picasso's paintings cannot be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilized masters,” so, hah, i guess only critiquing the work with that one), the critic often holds up a new artist or movement as the replacement for what the critic perceives to be a tired or obsolete style or movement. this is not happening at the moment. and in the rush to make the type of art being critiqued (whether pop, ndnpop, or what i’ll call retroshop,), representative, in broad, if not absolute ways, of the current field of “native american art,” we have missed something, i think. theodore c. van alst, jr. “arting” iv mailhot mentioned a sketch comedy piece with thousands of likes. i’m not sure which one it is, but i can guess the sketch comedy troupe that made it, and say that some pieces have more likes than others. often by the thousands. humor is subjective, of course. humor finds its way into successful sketch “comedy” (using those marks obviously says there might be another meaning to the word, and here, if we are feeling particularly generous, we can note that “comedy” is often insightful “critique”), and humor finds its way into the visual arts as well. some of those retroshop photos are…funny. and intelligently funny for a variety of reasons. to be sure, the “we’re still here” and the “indians in unexpected places” is part of the attraction, but for the same reason that some segments of drunk history are hilarious is because both turn upon the pairing of completely unrelated anachronistic items. the work is accessible because of its style and content, and also because of social media. this type of work lends itself well to instagram, and facebook, and tumblr, and others because it’s visual, often arrestingly so. it spreads virally because it has the chops and format to do so. ultimately it does so because, well, people like it. when we look at, for instance, steven paul judd’s films like neil goes to the moon, rounddance, six-pack and gas money, search for the world’s best indian taco, or his graphic work in dr. sioux, or the warriors, or lego my land, that’s a body of work. do all his productions hit the mark? no. of course not. but did judd revise the warriors after folks pointed out the lack of women in the piece? you bet. and that level of engagement between artist and audience ain’t gonna happen in a gallery in nyc. the work he is producing now, while not limited to “photoshopped images of old photos of unnamed native men in regalia within some contemporary setting,” reflects a long engagement with a variety of artistic traditions, including “native pop.” he works to expand his vision of art in the worlds he knows well. and there are others (thinking here of brent learned) who come from other artistic traditions or schools and find something here that relates to their own artistic vision. they contribute their styles and views. that expansion reaches others outside the field, and brings them in as well. (this happens all the time. it can even happen with horrible consequences. think of kiss’s “i was made for loving you,” or the rolling stone’s “emotional rescue.”) that’s a movement, good or bad, whether you like it or don’t. that’s an art movement that builds upon the ideas and structures and most importantly, urges of the art of edmonia lewis, or tc cannon, or the kiowa six, or helen hardin, or james luna, or b. yellowtail, or jeremy singer, or…name your favorite artist here, and see if they are part of a movement, or might even be founding one. that’s where it gets really good. because i think we can marvel at what we have, and work hard to identify what’s next. this is progress. we can move forward. we are obligated to do so. this is what mailhot has pointed out. i’m looking forward to so many future conversations, especially those ones “that will inevitably make us better.” theodore c. van alst, jr. november 2017 microsoft word 1088-article text-6334-1-18-20221218.docx nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 126 speculative possibilities: indigenous futurity, horror fiction, and the only good indians nicole r. rikard a decade ago when grace l. dillon’s walking on the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction was published, the term ‘indigenous futurisms’ began to describe the vast body of work that had already been and would continue to be crafted by indigenous storiers to create representations in visions of futurity. the term pays homage to mark dery’s coinage of ‘afrofuturism’ in his work, “black to the future,” from flame wars: discourse of cyberculture (1993). in the 1990s, dery sought to answer urgent questions surrounding speculative fiction, including why so few african american authors were composing in the genre, despite it being “seeming[ly] uniquely suited to the concerns of african-american novelists” who are “in a very real sense… the descendants of alien abductees” (179-180). dery posed the question, “can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of history, imagine possible futures?” (180). since dery’s inquiry, scholars like alondra nelson, ytasha l. womack, and greg tate, just to name a few, have contributed to the growing body of scholarship on afrofuturism and the immense possibilities it affords. it is not difficult to discern dillon’s inspiration—afrofuturism is a vital critical movement that continues to influence black activists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, scholars, artists, designers, and more, and it transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 127 seeks to create spaces and futures “void of white supremacist thought and structure that violently oppress[es] black communities” and to “evaluat[e] the past and future to create better conditions for the present generation of black people through use of technology” (crumpton par. 1). indigenous futurisms, like afrofuturism, seek to explore the possibilities of alternate pasts, presents, and futures by decentering western perspectives. the decentering of western aesthetics and ideologies is essential and enables indigenous futurisms to “offer a vision of the world from an indigenous (or native american) perspective,” helping to address and explore difficult topics like “conquest, colonialism, and imperialism; ideas about the frontier and manifest destiny; about the role of women within a community; and about the perception of time” (fricke 109). as we continue to address and advocate for change regarding the histories and atrocities of conquest, colonialism, and imperialism worldwide, decentering the western narrative of these events—and therefore the narratives of how these events continue to impact individuals and communities—is crucial. decolonizing ideals and aesthetics is a theoretical and political process essential to decentering western-normative notions and, for indigenous studies, recentering indigenous knowledges, cultural practices, and identities. indigenous futurisms enable indigenous activists, authors, musicians, and more to decolonize the narratives of the past, present, and future, and because the “native american novel has been experimental, attracting and modifying subgenres to seek native cultural survival and development… native writers have made the novel their place of both formal and social innovation” (teuton 98). to qualify, i am not suggesting that all indigenous authors have or must use their works in the same ways or to achieve the same goals; to do so would be a gross misstep and extreme miscalculation of the literary and artistic nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 128 possibilities afforded when literature by individuals spanning 570+ federally recognized and unique indigenous tribal nations in the contiguous united states alone are often combined into the category of indigenous or native american literature. unfortunately, though, there is often a misconception about these possibilities. as indigenous literature scholar billy j. stratton states in a recorded interview with stephen graham jones, prolific novelist, short-story and essay-writer and member of the blackfeet nation, “the notion of engaged readers and writers and the recognition of good art has a strong bearing on native literature because it is not really allowed to be just entertainment. gerald vizenor has long been advocating the production of literature as a function of what he calls “surviv[ance], as a means to both persist and resist colonialism and its legacy” (34). jones responds: when you’re an american indian writer, it’s like you have all this political burden put on you—that you have to stand up for your people. you have to fight for this, and you can’t depict people this way or that way… my big goal, one of the things i’ve been trying to do is to complicate the issue... (qtd. in stratton 34) the only good indians (2020), a recent novel by jones, exemplifies many strategies and characteristics of indigenous futurisms while also functioning as an inventive work of horror fiction, a genre that has long been associated with popular culture and stigmatized by literary studies’ establishments. jones is a prolific author of many works of horror fiction including his most recent, don’t fear the reaper (2023), the babysitter lives (2022), the backbone of the world (2022), “attack of the 50 foot indian” (2021), “how to break into a hotel room” (2021), my heart is a chainsaw (2021), “wait for the night” (2020), night of the mannequins (2020), and “the guy with the name” (2020), and scholars like billy j. stratton, rebecca lush, cathy covell waegner, and john gamber have contributed fruitful conversations concerning jones and his work. similarly, scholarship on indigenous futurisms continues to grow, with transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 129 artists, scholars, and authors like lou catherine cornum (navajo), suzanne newman fricke, elizabeth lapensée (anishinaabe and métis), jason lewis, darcie little badger (lipan apache), danika medak-saltzman (turtle mountain chippewa), and skawennati (mohawk) cultivating the movement. this article seeks to further both conversations— on jones and the only good indians, as well as on indigenous futurisms—by exploring the novel as a work of indigenous futurism, specifically as it relates to rewriting the past, present, and future through various methods of native slipstream. jones combines fictional newspaper headlines and articles, a concentrated insistence on rationalization coupled with the inability to achieve such measures, and various points of view in this novel. the result is a depiction of resiliency and possibility for an alternative future in which indigenous worldviews replace the damaging cycles created and perpetuated by western ideologies. the only good indians is an exceptional contribution to the field of indigenous futurisms, and it substantiates that both horror and futuristic fiction can serve as an effective medium of decolonization. science fiction, horror, and possibilities for futurity indigenous futurisms are largely prominent in the speculative fiction subgenres of science fiction and fantasy, but they are certainly not mutually exclusive with these genres; in previous work, i have illustrated how even poetry is an effective and insightful genre being utilized by indigenous poets to reflect futurity (rikard). science fiction is the literary genre that has received the most attention within the movement, nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 130 though, and this is due to several factors. first, like other subgenres of speculative fiction, science fiction allows for considerable imagining with technology and worldbuilding. in our innovative, technology-dependent contemporary moment, there is no question that science fiction enables authors to bridge our everyday obsession with and reliance upon technology with fictional world building. additionally, science fiction has always been and continues to be a medium of alternate perceptions regarding our contemporary moment. in scraps of the untainted sky: science fiction, utopia, and dystopia (2000), thomas moylan acknowledges that the genre is often misunderstood in two primary ways: many people understand it as a medium for depicting an inevitable and undesirable future caused by our contemporary flaws and damaging behaviors (usually classified as ‘dystopian’ or ‘(post)apocalyptic’ fiction), or that it is simply a metaphorical retelling of the present moment. moylan argues that the purpose of the genre is actually to “re-create the empirical present of its author and implied readers as an “elsewhere,” an alternative spacetime that is the empirical moment but not that moment as it is ideologically produced by way of everyday common sense” (5). for indigenous futurists, science fiction is used for more than just recreating the current moment in new spaces. indigenous futurists craft new futures and spaces for indigenous lives and communities by critiquing and modifying both the contemporary moment and the past. they illustrate how western knowledge systems and values control the present and how history has been omitted and reconstructed to construe false narratives of indigenous histories and lives. given considerably less attention than science fiction is how indigenous storiers are using the horror genre to explore indigenous futurity, especially in literature and literary studies. in recent decades, many works of horror have been acknowledged as critical formations (literary and experimental horror) instead of mere mediums of entertainment (genre horror), though the genre still struggles for legitimacy in many transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 131 literary spheres. compare, for example, toni morrison’s ‘l’iterary beloved (1987), mark z. danielewski’s experimental house of leaves (2000), and stephen king’s highly popularized the shining (1977) and the ways in which these novels have been received by popular culture and scholarly discourse. my intention is not to define literary horror and/or genre horror or sort titles into these categories; this is a fraught debate in literary circles that often leads to the blurring of lines between the two forms and an overall dispute to be settled elsewhere. what i argue, instead, is that genre horror fiction, literary or otherwise, often gets overlooked as a well-suited method of exploring contemporary issues and decolonizing western modes of thinking and knowledge. horror fiction has become seemingly easier to define over time, though as already mentioned, it can be difficult to assess and agree upon which novels/stories bend genre conventions and still function as part of the genre. despite a few misconceptions, horror fiction does not necessarily have to be concerned with the supernatural, but “rather with forces, psychological, material, spiritual, or scientific, that can be ‘supernaturalized’ and made into a force that threatens the living with annihilation” (herbert par. 1). spanning centuries, horror fiction has evolved to be categorized into two types of tales: those determined by an external threat or force, either supernatural or logically scientific, and those determined by an internal, psychological threat. there are, of course, times when stories blend these two types of horrors, such as in the case of the only good indians. whether internal or external threats abound, horror fiction: asks us to step back from any straightforward historical realism and read at the very core of what literature and the arts are about, that is, representation and interpretation, the symbolic, and the use of strategies of estrangement and nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 132 engagement to explore and challenge cultural, social, psychological, and personal issues. (wisker 404) horror fiction, like other speculative fiction genres, allows for a revisioning of recognized knowledge and the very western normative ways in which this knowledge has been enforced and proliferated. this work is not intending to claim that indigenous horror is new, but instead, that it is overlooked, especially within the literary arts and scholarship in indigenous studies. and, like dillon, this work advocates for the continuing use of horror fiction by indigenous authors and works to subvert western notions of normalcy regarding knowledge, history, time, and identity. as blaire topashcaldwell states: counter to research on the negative effects of native american stereotypes on youth, positive representations of native peoples observed in indigenous sf portray alternative futurisms to those represented in mainstream sf and celebrate indigeneity knowledge while making space for indigenous agency in the future. (87) as the indigenous futurisms movement continues, indigenous authors can use horror fiction to achieve similar possibilities afforded by science fiction and indigenous futurisms. indigenous horror and the elk head woman a discussion about the only good indians is not possible without recognizing that the novel is a telling of the elk head woman. known by other indigenous storiers as deer woman, deer lady, and in jones’s novel, “ponokaotokaanaakii,” elk head woman is a figure present in many indigenous tales across north america, including (but certainly not limited to) those from the muscogee, cherokee, anishinaabe, haudenosaunee, choctaw, and pawnee nations. these tales vary from one culture to another, but transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 133 according to carolyn dunn and carol comfort in through the eye of the deer (1999), “the traditional deer woman spirit… bewitches those who are susceptible to her sexual favors and who can be enticed away from family and clan into misuse of sexual energy” (xi). though not always sexual in nature (evers 41), these stories are usually didactic and intended to warn youth of the consequences of “losing social identity” through “promiscuity, excessive longing for one person, adultery, and jealousy,” ultimately underscoring their responsibilities within the tribe (rice 21, 28-29). more recently, indigenous storiers have been revisioning elk head woman to represent female strength, sexual agency, and the fight for the thousands of missing and murdered indigenous women across north america. deer woman: an anthology (2017) showcases various indigenous authors’ and artists’ renderings of the figure. despite the many variations of this figure in tellings and retellings, the blending of the animal and human forms is consistent. this is unsurprising, because as vine deloria jr. states in god is red (1973): nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 134 very important in some of the tribal religions is the idea that humans can change into animals and birds and that other species can change into human beings. in this way species can communicate and learn from each other. some of these tribal ideas have been classified as witchcraft by anthropologists, primarily because such phenomena occurring within the western tradition would naturally be interpreted as evil and satanic. what westerners miss is the rather logical implication of the unity of life… other living things are not regarded as insensitive species. rather they are ‘people’ in the same manner as the various tribes of human beings are people… equality is thus not simply a human attribute but a recognition of the creatureness of all creation. (88-89) jones adds to the revisioning of the elk head woman in the only good indians, depicting ponokaotokaanaakii as a figure seeking retribution for a violent attack that took her life. ten years before the novel begins, the four narrators—ricky, lewis, gabe, and cass—decide to break the rules of the reservation and drive their truck through to the section preserved for elders, where they come across a herd of nine elk. lewis recounts that he “remember[s] cass standing behind his opened door, his rifle stabbed through the rolled-down window… just shooting, and shooting, and shooting…” (62). realizing that the smallest elk (still just a calf) is still alive, they shoot her again—and again after she still does not fall. the entire scene is horrific and haunts the men for the rest of their short lives. the game warden finds the men shortly after the slaughter and gives them an ultimatum: throw the entirety of the meat down the hill and pay a high fine for breaking the rules of the reservation or consent to never hunt on the reservation again. the men agree to the second option, apart from entreating to take the body of the calf, which lewis silently swears to make complete use of so that her horrific death is not in vain. the intended plan is successful for ten years—until gabe transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 135 throws out a package of her meat that was stored in his father’s freezer, initiating ponokaotokaanaakii’s vengeance. rewriting and reclaiming history and narratives in the only good indians native slipstream jones’s tale of the elk head woman exemplifies many characteristics of indigenous futurisms. the only good indians insists on rewriting histories, current realities, and crafting a better future, and it does so by introducing elements of what dillon terms native slipstream. this is an area of speculative fiction that “infuses stories with time travel, alternative realities and multiverses, and alternative histories” (3), a captivating tactic in indigenous futurisms. in native slipstream, characters are seen as “living in the past, future, and present simultaneously” (cornum par. 2); time flows together, as dillon notes, “like currents in a navigable stream… [replicating] nonlinear thinking about space-time” (3). in the first few narratives, the reader comes to understand that its temporality is not stable or linear; it is distorted because of how much the past influences the present, and ultimately the future, of each character. in short, jones utilizes narrative techniques to create temporal distortion which allows him to jump around in the timeline of many years, sometimes neatly and with elaborate transitions, and sometimes unexpectedly and suddenly. native slipstream is not entirely synonymous with slipstream, a term used to describe all speculative writing that simply defies neat categorization and timelines. coined by bruce sterling and richard dorsett in 1989: slipstream is an attitude of peculiar aggression against ‘reality.’ these are fantasies of a kind, but not fantasies which are ‘futuristic’ or ‘beyond the fields we know.’ [slipstream] tend[s] to sarcastically tear at the structure of ‘everyday nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 136 life…’ quite commonly these works don't make a lot of common sense, and what's more they often somehow imply that nothing we know makes ‘a lot of sense’ and perhaps even that nothing ever could… slipstream tends, not to ‘create’ new worlds, but to quote them, chop them up out of context, and turn them against themselves. (78) native slipstream in indigenous futurisms is a way to reorient indigenous ways of thinking and assessing the world; it is the act of decolonizing time as a linear, progressive model and understanding it as a myriad of possibilities. this concept has been around since time immemorial and integrating it into speculative literary genres such as horror and science fiction creates the potential not to disorient the reader and create distrust in the timeline of events, but to exemplify that western ideology of time is arbitrarily formulated and perpetuated. indigenous storiers had been crafting slipstream narratives far before a term was created to categorize it, with authors like gerald vizenor (anishinaabe), sherman alexie (coeur d’alene), joseph bruchac (abenaki), louise erdrich (ojibwe), n. scott momaday (kiowa), leslie marmon silko (laguna pueblo), and of course, stephen graham jones (piegan blackfeet), contributing. in the only good indians, jones uses native slipstream to contradict ‘official’ narratives and the ways in which they are retold, warping interpretations of time and events. he begins by integrating extra-textual materials, specifically news headlines and articles. the reader does not have to wait long to realize this will be a reoccurring and important tactic, as the novel briskly opens with one such headline: “the headline for ricky boss ribs would be indian man killed in dispute outside bar” (1). then, immediately following the headline, the narrator tells the reader, “that’s one way to say it” (1). in these first two sentences, jones is outlining his approach not only to use headlines to explain situations, but also his insistence on using them to tell an transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 137 important truth: no one, except the person(s) living in the moment and experiencing the situation—and sometimes not even then, completely—truly knows how situations unfold. throughout the novel, we realize these headlines are often misconstrued, written by someone who has perceived the situation or would potentially perceive it from a different angle without all the details. for example, in ricky’s case, there is much more that happens outside of the bar that night than a simple news article can explain. ricky’s chapter is a short one, and the ending of the narrative sees ricky witnessing an elk running full speed in his direction, demolishing cars in the parking lot outside the bar where ricky stands. he seems to know that this must be some sort of delusion or supernatural occurrence, reminding himself that “elk don’t do this” (8), but he nonetheless tries to flee from the terrifying animal. jones weaves perceived realities and delusions here, presenting ricky as a narrator who might not be the most reliable source for the truth of the situation. ricky remains self-aware, however, able to understand the bizarre nature of what he is perceiving versus what other bystanders perceive. as the men from inside and outside the bar move to the parking lot and see the damage done to the cars, ricky “saw it too, saw them seeing it: this indian had gotten hisself mistreated in the bar, didn’t know who drove what, so he was taking it out on every truck in the parking lot. typical” (9). jones employs temporal distortion throughout this scene, leaving readers unsure whether what ricky is experiencing with the elk is real or a fabrication of his mind, and this is left ambiguous as ricky’s story ends. (this reliability is examined in more detail later.) after running as far as he can, ricky sees “a great herd of elk, waiting, blocking him in, and there was a great herd pressing in behind him, too, a herd of men already on the blacktop themselves, their voices rising, hands balled into fists, eyes flashing white” (12). ricky realizes then that nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 138 he is not going to survive this encounter, and jones integrates the news headline that tells only part of the truth, here. this headline will forever depict ricky’s futurity— whenever people speak of him or his death outside that bar—as a different story from the reality he actually perceived and experienced. in the next section of the novel, titled “the house ran red” and centering lewis, jones more elaborately lays emphasis on the importance of perception. most of the headlines occur in this section; in fact, besides the headline on the first page that has already been mentioned and the two full-length news articles introduced later, this section introduces the only other extra-textual materials, totaling ten headlines in all (16, 22, 36, 39, 45, 88, 121, 127) that compile lewis’s “mental newspaper” (16). he constantly rewrites his situations as they unfold in front of him, giving each situation a headline that would break if anyone else were to find out about his predicament. for example, when explaining why he and his wife peta will not have any children, the reader learns that peta doesn’t want her children to have to “pay the tab” from the chemicals she put into her body before she met lewis (38). lewis thinks to himself that, instead of the headline reading, “fullblood to dilute bloodline,” like he initially thought it would when he married a white woman, the headline would now read, “fullblood betrays every dead indian before him” (39). the truth of the matter is obviously more complex than a single-line newspaper heading could ever convey. with these short newspaper headlines seemingly redefining and limiting the scope of lewis’s everyday situations and realities—and therefore his future (as he will be remembered by others)—jones is exemplifying the complexity of perception and how simple the process of disseminating inaccurate realities and histories is. when readers realize that lewis’s full name is lewis a. clarke and he is the character mostly responsible for crafting these inaccuracies, it becomes even more obvious that his transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 139 narration is unreliable: a nod to the many inaccuracies in captain meriwether lewis and lieutenant william clark’s recording of their nineteenth century expedition. as mentioned, jones also weaves two full-length news articles into the narrative. one occurs at the end of lewis’s section, after he has brutally murdered a co-worker named shaney, who is also of indigenous, crow, identity, along with his loving wife. the headline reads, “three dead, one injured in manhunt” (129). there are many inconsistencies in lewis’s and the newspaper reporter’s accounts, leaving the reader unsure whether to trust lewis’s narrative or the article. leading up to the news article, the third-person narrator reveals that lewis is found by four men with rifles; the news article reports that these men were the ones to find lewis are unconfirmed. it is then stated in the news article that lewis was apprehended by police, but later chapters reveal he was actually killed. lewis’s chapter ends with him focusing on the elk calf before being shot, though in his account it is unclear whether it is by the hunters or someone else. additionally, there is no mention of a teenage girl—the form ponokaotokaanaakii has taken on—though in the news article it suggests the men were attacked by this teenage girl while lewis and the calf were in the back of their moving truck. discrepancies such as these highlight how unreliable news articles can be when reporting on complex situations, in addition to reflecting how misinformation and lies are common in the creation of written history, or, as termed by gerald vizenor in manifest manners (1999), the literature, language, and narrative of dominance. jones uses these ‘official’ articles, in essence, to rewrite the characters’ histories from a dominant ideological point of view; everything must be rationalized through western norms and presented to the public in easily understandable ways, but often times, this information is inaccurate. these news headlines and articles effectively integrate nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 140 elements of native slipstream into the novel, as they outline the truth, or rather, the lack thereof, about how histories are told and information is disseminated. (un)reliability: the splitting of the westernized mind jones’s use of newspaper headlines positions the present as a space and time that also exists in the future, as lewis (presently) predicts how the situation will be perceived by others (in the future). this usage also exemplifies how the past can be recorded imperfectly due to incomplete information, differing perspectives, and intentional falsehoods at play in colonial discourses. as such, jones challenges notions of western, scientific thought. lewis represents this ideology and continually tries to rationalize events that unfold before him. everything in the novel is centered around that day in the clearing when they killed the elk. these men cannot go back and erase what they have done in their past, and consequently, ponokaotokaanaakii returns to rewrite their present and futures, reclaiming her own history she never had the chance to experience. ricky and lewis spend most of their narratives thinking about this past that cannot be undone, and jones introduces elements of implausibility in each of their stories. for example, lewis continuously diminishes the abilities and possibilities of ponokaotokaanaakii, explaining that the elk shouldn’t have been able to conceive that young and at that point in the hunting season; how even if she didn’t encounter the hunters that day, she couldn’t have carried full term (73); that he couldn’t have seen her in his home (20), that she wouldn’t even have fit in his living room (37); that “of course and elk can’t inhabit a person…” it had to have been “a shadow he probably saw wrong” (82). gabe also exemplifies this type of perception where, if logic cannot explain it away, it cannot be true. for example, when gabe and lewis are discussing the possibility that the elk herd could remember them from that fateful day ten years ago, gabe laughs it off and tells him, “they’re fucking elk, man. they don’t really have transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 141 campfires” (27). and when gabe is about to enter the sweat lodge with cass and nate, he thinks he sees a glimpse of black hair in the mirror of cass’s truck, “[e]xcept that couldn’t have been” (195). lewis, gabe, ricky, and cass obsessively rationalize their every encounter and almost always from a western perspective, trying to explain what could not and should not have been possible, yet there are obviously things they are not able to explain or fully rationalize. as such, an uneasy tension of unreliability builds between these narrators and readers, challenging the latter to assess the truth with all of the information available from the omniscient narration. to complicate this process, jones weaves elements of internal and external threats together throughout the novel, challenging the reader to decide if the real antagonist in the novel is an external threat (ponokaotokaanaakii) or internal ones (the men’s psychologies, internalized colonial ideologies, and emotional distress). this is exemplified from beginning to end, with ricky’s narrative indicating that there is indeed an elk responsible for the destruction of the vehicles outside of the bar (as already explored); to lewis’s paranoia, ostensible unraveling, and double homicide of shaney and peta; to gabe’s and cass’s gruesome murder-suicide outside of the sweat lodge. jones’s masterful use of indirect characterization—most fruitfully, each character’s internal dialogue and external dialogue with others—engages readers and challenges them to determine the truth of the narratives. toward the end of lewis’s section, this type of characterization reveals that lewis’s mental state has deteriorated significantly and his paranoia is controlling his emotions and actions. leading up to and after the murder of shaney, his thoughts become jumbled and panicked, filled with questions and desperate rationalizations for his thoughts and actions: she didn’t know about the books, he repeats in his head. meaning? nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 142 meaning she was elk head woman. because? because she was lying. that means she’s a monster? …no, he finally admits to himself. it doesn’t mean for sure she’s that monster, but added together with the basketball being so alien to her, and her knowing where to stand in the living room, and to turn the fan off, and, and: what about how she wouldn’t touch her own hide on the kitchen table? lewis stands nodding. that, yeah. she could have been lying…” (118-119) lewis can’t stop himself from calculating the logic in his and shaney’s actions, breaking it down to modus ponens (if a, then b; b; therefore a) and modus tollens (if a, then b; not b; therefore not a) arguments. by the end, he estimates that “[h]e’s not even really a killer, since she wasn’t even really a person, right? she was just an elk he shot ten years ago saturday. one who didn’t know she was already dead” (117-118). lewis’s paranoia engages a sort of distortion where it is difficult for the reader to assess if he is losing his ability to accurately assess and engage reality, or if there really is a supernatural, external force manipulating him and the people around him and he is beginning to see the world as it truly is—that is, from an indigenous worldview. his thoughts do become frantic, but in later chapters, it is revealed that at least some of lewis’s assumptions and explanations are true, such as when gabe confirms that he did indeed throw out the elk meat stored in his father’s freezer. in lewis’s, gabe’s, and ricky’s chapters, they struggle with what is real and what simply cannot be, and they use western notions of regularity to do so. when confronted with the unexplainable, their minds seem to crack down the middle. one transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 143 side confirms that it is indeed impossible for ponokaotokaanaakii to exist and be responsible, because western notions of science cannot explain such an entity and its reign on the real world. the other side reinforces blackfeet ideology, insisting on a clear, supernatural connection. blackfeet ideology has always emphasized strong ties with the supernatural and unique ways of seeing the world in relation to it. william farr asserts, “the blackfeet world possesse[s] an extra dimension, for amid the visible world, [is] an invisible one, another magnitude, a spiritual one that is more powerful, more meaningful, more lasting. it [is] a universe alive’” (qtd in lapier xxxi). the invisible dimension is, according to many blackfeet histories and stories, the real world—and the visible dimension is a mere partial experience of that world (lapier 25). if these characters’ brains have indeed split between western and blackfeet ideologies, the ‘distortion’ of sorts is a battle of principles regarding the supernatural, space and time, and the classification of the ‘real.’ indeed, “this confounding of divisions… between the animal and human— challenges western ways of thinking” (dunn and comfort xiii); as such, lewis, gabe, ricky, and cass cannot accept the events occurring around them as they exercise western notions of science, nature, and the perception of the elk head woman. “while the non-native cultural product makes deer woman a monster, thus evincing the colonial(ist) impulse of consuming the indigenous… native works… interpret deer woman as symbolic of the indigenous worldviews” (vlaicu 3; dunn and comfort xiii). jones exemplifies the unreliability of lewis’s, gabe’s, ricky’s, and cass’s thoughts as they depend on limiting notions of western thought to try and understand the blackfeet world around them. western ideologies simply cannot account for the strange circumstances that befall the characters throughout the novel, insisting on a more traditional explanation and one that allows a space for supernatural events. if we nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 144 attempt to understand the world using blackfeet cosmology, what does ponokaotokaanaakii truly symbolize, as the partial experience of the real, invisible world? point of view: perspectives and the construct of time another tactic jones utilizes to build upon native slipstream principles is point of view. the novel begins in third-person narration following ricky, then lewis—and then there is an abrupt shift in the point of view to second person. in the second section, “sweat lodge massacre,” the first chapter inserts readers into the mind of ponokaotokaanaakii. the narration reveals the elk’s short life and horrendous death, outlining the events of the day she was killed in her own perspective. in horror fiction, it is unsurprising to see through the eyes of the antagonist. however, in jones’s novel, this perspective shift occurs nearly halfway through the entire novel, surprising readers with a fresh, new perspective on the incident that took place ten years ago, the progression of time, and the deaths of the main characters. beginning in that second section, jones begins weaving instances of second person into gabe’s and cass’s chapters, reminding readers that there is always more than one perspective of every situation. ponokaotokaanaakii is always watching and assessing these men, stalking them like prey to attain vengeance. while lewis becomes obsessed with figuring out why, ten years later ponokaotokaanaakii has chosen to come after them, she asserts, “for them, ten years ago, that's another lifetime. for [ponokaotokaanaakii] it's yesterday" (137). additionally, the ways in which ponokaotokaanaakii transforms illustrates that she is beyond the understanding of western notions of time. she recounts: just a few hours ago you [ponokaotokaanaakii] are pretty sure you were what would have been called twelve. an hour before that you were an elk calf being transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 145 cradled by a killer, running for the reservation, before that you were just an awareness spread out through the herd, memory cycling from brown body to brown body, there in every flick of the tail, every snort, every long probing glared down a grassy slope. (134) the way in which ponokaotokaanaakii perceives time indicates that time is an arbitrary construct, at least as the four men perceive it—indeed, the entire construction of time as a linear ideal is deconstructed as their views on time are juxtaposed. in interviews, jones has described himself as a “blackfeet physicist,” creating timelines that reflect “a blackfoot framework of loops, glitches, and the constant experience of indigenous time travel: living in the past, future, and the present simultaneously” (cornum qtd. in fricke 118). this is exemplified throughout the novel with the revisioning of the past, present, and the future (with news headlines and articles); the merging of past and present with each character hyperfixated on that fateful saturday ten years gone, which ultimately defines their futures; and the past and present becoming intertwined as dead characters interact with those that are still alive—ponokaotokaanaakii throughout, and ricky and lewis in the sweat lodge. these revisionings fashion space and time as interconnected and non-linear, a direct contradiction to notions of western knowledge regarding time. such a pushback against dominant modes of thinking offers an alternative reorientation of indigenous knowledge and perception. decentering western ideologies and crafting indigenous futurity ultimately, denorah, gabe’s daughter, ends the destructive, murderous cycle that has defined and controlled the lives of her father, lewis, cass, ricky, ponokaotokaanaakii, and more symbolically, everyone controlled by western perceptions of knowledge, history, time, and identity that has been engrossed in this same cycle. although it nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 146 might appear that this cycle began with the slaughtering of those elk in the clearing ten years ago, it is indeed more complex. lewis clarifies this when he reflects: that craziness, that heat of the moment, the blood in his temples, the smoke in the air, it was like—he hates himself the most for this—it was probably what it was like a century or more ago, when soldiers gathered up on ridges above blackfeet encampments to turn the cranks on their big guns, terraform this new land for their occupation. fertilize it with blood. (75) lewis explains that he has contributed to a centuries-old cycle with the slaughtering of those elk—one that continues to control him and others because of the hands they continue to play within it. however, denorah refuses to let the destruction of the past define her present and future, and she takes a courageous stand, ending the long cycle of murder and retribution. denorah chooses a new path where she, ponokaotokaanaakii, and everyone else can move on from the atrocities of the past into a new future of possibilities. in this way, denorah represents and practices an indigenous worldview. she accepts ponokaotokaanaakii’s existence and, by doing so, the possibilities for a better, alternative future for her generations and the ones to follow, which is illuminated in the final lines of the novel: “it’s not the end of the trail, the headlines will all say, it never was the end of the trail. it’s the beginning” (305). stephen graham jones’s the only good indians is a powerful and timely contribution to the indigenous futurisms movement. jones experiments with various forms of native slipstream tactics, weaving a narrative that attempts to rewrite the past, resituate the present, and create possibilities for the future. newspaper headlines and articles, an intense focus on rationalization coupled with the inability to achieve such measures, and varying points of view combine to illustrate futurity and possibilities created by breaking the cycle of western perceptions and dominant ideologies. according to danika medak-saltzman, indigenous futurist imaginings “create transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 147 blueprints of the possible and [provide] a place where we can explore the potential pitfalls of certain paths,” enabling us to “transcend the confines of time and accepted “truths”—so often hegemonically configured and reinforced—that effectively limit what we can see and experience as possible in the present, let alone imagine into the future” (143). with the only good indians, jones uses the horror genre to decenter dominant ideologies and to offer potential futures in which indigenous knowledge systems and practices are centered in indigenous lives. as sean teuton posits, “[t]he native american novel has become increasingly aware of itself as an art with real world consequences for native lives” (99), and further, the only good indians and other fiction by jones supports horror fiction, specifically, as an effective medium for subverting western notions of normalcy regarding knowledge, history, time, and identity. as the indigenous futurisms movement continues to develop and indigenous creators continue crafting new spaces and possibilities for representing indigeneity, scholarship must recognize and address how horror fiction is being used to imbue native sensibilities and knowledge. works cited cornum, lindsey catherine. “the creation story is a spaceship: indigenous futurism and decolonial deep space.” voz-à-voz, 2018. www.vozavoz.ca/feature/lindsaycatherine-cornum. crumpton, taylor. “afrofuturism has always looked forward.” architectural digest, 2020. www.architecturaldigest.com/story/what-is-afrofuturism. deloria, jr., vine. god is red:a native view of religion. new york: fulcrum publishing, 2003. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uarkebooks/detail.action?docid=478520. nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 148 dery, mark. “black to the future: interviews with samuel r. delaney, greg tate, and tricia rose.” flame wars: discourse of cyberculture, edited by mark dery, durham: duke up, 1994, 179-222. dillon, grace l. walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction. tucson: u of arizona p, 2012. dunn, carolyn and carol comfort. introduction. through the eye of the deer: an anthology of native american woman writers. san francisco: aunt lute books, 1999. elliot, alicia. “the rise of indigenous horror: how a fiction genre is confronting a monstrous reality.” cbc/radio canada, 2019. www.cbc.ca/arts/the-rise-ofindigenous-horror-how-a-fiction-genre-is-confronting-a-monstrous-reality1.5323428. evers, larry. “notes on deer woman.” indiana folklore 1.11, 1978: 35-45. fricke, suzanne newman. “introduction: indigenous futurisms in the hyperpresent now.” world art 9.2, 2019: 107-121. doi: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1627674. gelder, ken. “global/postcolonial horror: introduction.” postcolonial studies 3.1, 2000: 35-38. doi:10.1080/13688790050001327. graham jones, stephen. the only good indians. new york: saga press, 2020. herbert, rosemary. "horror fiction." the oxford companion to crime and mystery writing. oxford: oxford up, 2005. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195072396.001.000 1/acref-9780195072396-e-0324. higgins, david m. "survivance in indigenous science fictions: vizenor, silko, glancy, and the rejection of imperial victimry." extrapolation 57.1, 2016: 51-72. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/extr.2016.5. transmotion vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) 149 lapensee, elizabeth. deer woman: an anthology. albuquerque: native realities, 2017. lapier, rosalyn r. invisible reality: storytellers, storytakers, and the supernatural world of the blackfeet. lincoln: u of nebraska p, 2017. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1s475jg. medak-saltzman, danika. "coming to you from the indigenous future: native women, speculative film shorts, and the art of the possible." studies in american indian literatures 29.1, 2017: 139-171. muse.jhu.edu/article/659895. moylan, tom. scraps of the untainted sky: science fiction, utopia, dystopia. boulder: westview press, 2000. rice, julian. deer women and elk men: the lakota narratives of ella deloria. albuquerque: u of new mexico p, 1992. rikard, nicole. “the craft of rewriting and reclaiming: indigenous futurism in postcolonial love poem and the only good indians.” university of arkansas (2021): student paper. roanhorse, rebecca et al. “decolonizing science fiction and imagining futures: an indigenous futurisms roundtable.” strange horizons, 2017. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/decolonizing-science-fiction-andimagining-futures-an-indigenous-futurisms-roundtable/. sterling, bruce. “slipstream.” science fiction eye 1.5, july 1989: 77-80. stratton, billy j. the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. albuquerque: u of new mexico p, 2016. teuton, sean. native american literature: a very short introduction. oxford: oxford up, 2018. nicole r. rikard “speculative possibilities” 150 topash-caldwell, blaire. “‘beam us up, bgwëthnėnė!’ indigenizing science (fiction).” alternative: an international journal of indigenous peoples 16.2, 2020: 81–89. doi:10.1177/1177180120917479. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners. u of nebraska p, 1999. ---. “the ruins of representation: shadow survivance and the literature of dominance.” american indian quarterly, 17.1, 1993: 7–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/1184777. wisker, gina. “crossing liminal spaces: teaching the postcolonial gothic.” pedagogy 7.3, 2007: 401-425. muse.jhu.edu/article/222149. microsoft word carocci.docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 201 “native american slavery in the seventeenth century.” arne bialuschewski (ed), ethnohistory, special issue. 2017 (64:1). published as a special issue in the journal ethnohistory, this collection of five articles on indigenous american slaveries is the outcome of two subsequent annual meetings of the american society of ethnohistory (2013, 2014). the editor arne bialuschewski introduces the topics individually with short summaries, and presents a short review of the current state of research on the topic. the editor, however, does not clarify the choice of the seventeenth century as the time span covered by the articles other than by saying that it offers a “comparative and contrastive perspective” between the case studies of this early period. although it may be clear to specialised scholars, who can see the relevance of this little studied chapter of indigenous slaveries, the result of this brief explanation may render the firm focus on the seventeenth century unjustified. he further explains that the absence of brazilian material is due to a planned second volume dedicated to its indigenous populations. the material gathered here is very heterogeneous, nonetheless. it presents a good case of the diversity of enslaving practices among colonial powers. the data collated in the articles touch upon mexico, guiana, suriname, the caribbean region, french north america, and new england. curiously, in spite of this diversity, the volume deceivingly refers to “native american” slavery (a term usually applied only to the indigenous peoples of the usa), rendering presentation and content somewhat incoherent since only two of the articles directly deal with north american cases (fisher, and milne). this oversight notwithstanding, the volume is a much needed addition to a growing body of literature that focuses on the multiplicity of indigenous american experiences that in current historiography are commonly referred to with the term “slavery.” the editorial introduction is clear on this point, and plainly underlines its objective: to contribute to research in this field with new and fresh research, which it does egregiously. the collection puts several forms of indigenous slavery at the centre of the colonisation of the americas manifesting a mounting desire to understand the phenomenon in its full magnitude, from a hemispheric point of view. earlier published research had tried to trace the contours of this complex phenomenon, and inevitably, many blind spots were created in the process. the choice of the cases presented in the collection however does more than filling these gaps. as suggested once again by the editor, the collection has the purpose of showing the extent to which indigenous slaveries were central to the colonial economies of the atlantic world. yet with this modest assertion the editor seems to minimise the relevance of the volume. the reader can clearly see that the studies cumulatively help us to redraw the economic geographies of seventeenth century americas. this quasi synoptic outlook offers a much needed continental bird’s eye vantage point that greatly enhances our understanding not only of indigenous slaveries in their distinctive incarnations, but of the role that centres and peripheries took at this moment in time in the interlinked scenarios of captivity and unfree labour experienced by so many amerindian groups from all parts of the continent. the editor could have probably stretched the collection’s ambition a bit farther by highlighting this important point, for it is only by explicitly addressing the various linkages between the locales presented in the volume that one can truly see the scale and extent of the early colonial slaving networks’ impact. the cases presented here suggest that virtually all the indigenous peoples under colonial rules were unwillingly moved about the continent in unexpected ways: from yucatan to several caribbean islands (bialuschewski), from surinam to barbados (arena), max carocci review of “native american slavery” 202 and across numerous locations across the spanish empire (resendez). all the articles indicate that early colonial americas were criss-crossed by often invisible, undetected, illicit, or downright secret networks that reconfigured alliances and enmities between indigenous and colonial actors. this is a great addition to our current perception of americas’ histories, one that it is by now abundantly clear, cannot be told without the essential agents described in the detailrich studies such as the ones proposed in this special issue. the issue opens with an overview of the situation in the spanish domains, and how the slaving networks linked the pacific to the americas, the caribbean and the atlantic ocean. maya slaves captured by shrewd pirates are the topic of the second article, and the third one is about the trade of guiana indians to barbados. the last two articles cover the aftermath of colonial wars against the wampanoag of massachusetts, and the french used of captives in the lower louisiana. several of the authors stress differences in the quality and nature of unfree statuses during this period. although this has been a common theme of ethno-historical scholarship of indigenous american slaveries since its inception, this current research confirms that because of this unique character an overarching account of amerindian slaveries can be difficult to draw. scholar joyce chaplin once called this the “history without a narrative.” this volume proves that despite all the difficulties, a new history of amerindian slaveries is now starting to emerge from blurry, albeit very promising, boundaries. the variety of forms of bondage and slippages between categories explored by the five authors (captives, prisoners, slaves, labourers, guides, translators, gifts) indicate that scholars should try to weave together a comprehensive narrative from this complex checkerboard pattern of historical intersections. if a linear narrative of amerindian slaveries is at present hard to build, it is because its structure is still incredibly fragmented. as proven in this collection, much more work is needed to fill the gaps left by years of neglect of this crucial element in indigenous-european relationships. the scholars gathered here have demonstrated not only that original research can elicit new questions about geographical areas and historical periods still greatly under researched, but also that the ethno-historical cases in this special issue are a crucial component in the history of the continent, one whose textured details greatly enrich the fabric of our understanding of early phases of the colonization of the americas. max carocci microsoft word 114-1224-1-pb-1-dcarlson2.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 26   the columbian moment: overturning globalization in vizenor’s the heirs of columbus david j. carlson i. the columbian moment and the meanings of globalization at the end of gerald vizenor’s 1991 novel the heirs of columbus, one of the aforementioned heirs, admire, punctuates a deadly game of chance (a moccasin game) played against a cannibal wiindigo by whistling a tune from antonin dvořák’s new world symphony (heirs 183). not surprisingly, for readers familiar with vizenor’s work, this is not the only reference to that particular piece of music in the novel. admire whistles the same tune earlier in the narrative to commemorate the founding of the sovereign tribal nation of point assinika (located in the strait of georgia between vancouver island and the mainland of british columbia), which forms the primary setting for the novel’s second volume (123-4). former international model and repatriation expert (the book designates her a “trickster poacher”) felipa flowers also whistles dvořák as she enters a churchyard at gravesend on a mission to recover the remains of pocahontas (115). this takes place just before she is murdered by a vengeful mixedblood artifact collector, doric michel. and the symphony is also played over casino loudspeakers at the end of a successful hearing concerning the repatriation of remains (90), a hypothetical example of what vizenor has termed elsewhere a “bone court.” in these ways, then, dvořák’s masterwork provides a leitmotif to vizenor’s subversive meditation on the columbian quincentenary. as one might expect from vizenor, however, the repeated invocation of dvořák in heirs goes well beyond some form of playful narrative ornamentation. i would suggest that we view the new world symphony as a keynote figure that introduces us to a central tension in the novel, one that will be the focus of my discussion here. the heirs of columbus is a meditation on the ambiguous nature of modern globalization for american indian people. in making this distinction between “modern” globalization and a more general definition of the concept, i am influenced by both economist amartya sen’s and political philosopher giacomo marramao’s writings on this topic. in his 2006 book david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 27   identity and violence, sen has argued that today’s globalization is, in fact, part of a larger historical movement or pattern that can take different forms. much contemporary scholarship on globalization, of course, holds that the phenomenon is essentially a product of western capitalism and modernity and thus should be viewed either (1) positively, as a marvelous contribution of the west to the rest of the world or (2) negatively, as an extension and continuation of western imperialism. in contrast, sen maintains, globalization is neither particularly new nor necessarily western. this qualification makes considerable sense, if one understands globalization to refer to the emergence of networks of exchange where goods, ideas, and symbolic systems circulate in ways that bring about an intensified consciousness of the interpenetration of the local and global. when seen in that broader perspective, as marramao’s work suggests, globalization can be reimagined as a force structuring human experience in a manner not necessarily overdetermined by the exploitative mechanisms and systems of capitalism and imperialism. (this is not, of course, an authorization to blithely ignore the ways that such systems have in fact functioned in such a manner.) globalism, for marramao, can involve a “passage to the occident of all cultures,” by which he means, not an experience of universal colonial absorption into a hegemonic west, but rather the radically transformative experience of a mutual penetration of “alterity” that affects all cultures in more positive ways (14). a similar utopian sensibility regarding the political and artistic possibilities of a retheorized globalization appears in much of vizenor’s work, particularly in the heirs of columbus. at two specific points in heirs, vizenor deploys dvořák’s new world symphony in a manner that suggest his awareness of the kind of tensions surrounding the concept of globalization that we can track through the work of thinkers like sen and marramao. at the start of the book, he incorporates the piece into the fabric of the novel and the collective history of the anishinaabeg trickster-heirs by reimagining its very composition. vizenor places the genesis of the work “at the headwaters” of the minnesota river (a sacred place for his own anishinaabeg people) and notes further that the czech composer “heard tribal music in the stones” as he brought his great work into being (10). in this way, he reinscribes the symphony as a highly positive (albeit fictionalized) image of transcultural inspiration and artistic transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 28   production, one reflecting a dynamic of mutual recognition between europeans and indigenous people coming into contact in a “global” setting.1 in the epilogue to heirs, however, vizenor also offers us a rather different take on dvořák’s masterpiece, one that is grounded in the actual historical experience of colonial modernity rather than in imaginative fancy. there, he reminds us both that dvořák was the director of the conservatory of music in new york city when he composed the new world symphony and that the work was written expressly for the 1893 columbian exposition in chicago. that event, of course, stands as one of the more retrograde examples of the history of cross-cultural mediation and representation of american indian people in the united states (187).2 in pointing out the historical link between dvořák’s piece and an exhibition that trumpeted the cultural and technological superiority of american modernity while offering sad tableaus and patronizing recognition of the “vanishing” indian tribes in the united states, vizenor highlights the fact that there is no guarantee that the moments of mutual discovery and reinvention characteristic of globalization (vizenor sometimes calls these “imagic moments”) will lead to reciprocal altruism.3 the history of western dominated modernity often suggests, quite to the contrary, that such moments lead to colonial domination, cultural appropriation, and genocide. the heirs of columbus is not about antonin dvořák, of course; it is about columbus. but much of the same dynamic and tension that i have been discussing thus far also pervades the novel’s treatment of the “admiral of the ocean sea” and his indian heirs. in that treatment, i would argue, vizenor tries to open up an imaginative space between (1) the historical reality of a form of globalization overdetermined by colonization and conquest, and (2) a fantastic reimagining of the encounter with the other that offers alternative, utopian possibilities for what globalization could mean. in the end, then, i would refine my earlier statement and suggest that it is the “columbian moment” of mutual discovery between europeans and indigenous peoples that is vizenor’s primary subject matter. columbus, in this respect, becomes the central signifying figure in the novel (as opposed to merely a historical personage) standing in some sense for the divergent meanings and functions of globalization. vizenor makes his intention in this regard fairly explicit at several key points in the text. in the epilogue, he indicates that heirs is not to be read as a direct study or david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 29   literal critique of the historical columbus: “columbus arises in tribal stories that heal with humor the world he wounded; he is loathed, but he is not a separation in tribal consciousness. the admiral of the ocean sea is a trickster overturned in his own stories five centuries later” (185). “overturning” here represents something different from parody, and in my reading vizenor is engaged in something much more complex than merely mocking the explorer. having been remade as a trickster in this particular “tribal story,” columbus the man is available to be allegorized or transformed in other ways. lappet tupis brown, a private investigator hired by the tribal government within the novel, speaks for vizenor in this regard when she testifies at the “bone court” hearing that tricksters are not real people, but “figures in stories” or “language games” (80). remade by vizenor into an element in a fictional language game, then, columbus becomes a tool for the analysis of the ideology of discovery, which initiates the modern phase of globalization that turns away from the more positive possibilities of global encounter. quoting steve woolgar’s book science: the very idea in the epilogue to heirs, vizenor notes that “the sense of discovery is mediated by social conditions, [persisting] as a ‘process rather than a point occurrence in time.’” significantly, too, “the discovery process extends in time both before and after the initial announcement or claim’” (188). following this line of thinking, “the columbian moment” of discovery is not represented in heirs as a discrete one, something limited to a specific set of events taking place in 1492. 1492 is one particular instantiation of a much larger force moving through human history and imagination, in other words. vizenor’s contribution to the quincentenary, then, is not to create another monument to conventional western history and its linear sense of time, nor is it to offer a simple critique and deconstruction of that history. instead, he engages his readers in a mediation regarding the ongoing structural and imaginative effects that not only did, but hypothetically could, both emerge from the experience of mutual discovery and from the interpenetration of the global and the local.4 the columbian moment represents an archetypal experience of encounter and “glocalization” (the interpenetration of local and global self-awareness described by roland robertson in his 1992 book globalization) rippling through time. and vizenor’s narrative techniques of reiteration, irony, and inventive signification provide a mechanism both to critique its instantiations and to explore its effects. when read in this transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 30   manner, we can better make sense of what might otherwise seem a puzzling decision made by a major american indian writer—the decision to observe the columbian quincentenary, in part, by reimagining a figure largely reviled throughout the indigenous new world as somehow, himself, being “indian.” ii. the globalizing mirror: the columbian indian/the indian columbus the heirs of columbus abounds with narrative threads that establish a pattern of resemblance linking christopher columbus, his anishinaabeg trickster-heirs, and other indigenous figures. the first of these appears right away, in the opening chapter’s initial introduction of the contemporary anishinaabeg trickster, radio host, and political leader stone columbus.5 christopher columbus, we are told, began his life as an “obscure crossblood,” whose fame was based on his efforts to found and extend an empire (3). one might note, here, that the narrative takes seriously the hypothesis advanced by some scholars that columbus might have had jewish ancestry, while also presenting his nomadic career as a kind of archetypal diasporic experience. in this, he and his modern namesake stone resemble each other, for the latter is a typical vizenorian “crossblood” trickster with a similar career path. stone achieves his own renown through the founding of, not one, but two “nations,” which stand, at least for a time, as extensions of anishinaabeg sovereignty. these are the “santa maria casino” of the first half of the novel and “point assinika” (part casino and part genomic research facility) of the second. we might also take note of other coincidental details, such as stone’s wearing of a golden-eyed, blue mask of columbus and columbus’s own record of his delight at receiving a golden mask from a local taino leader when he founded his first settlement in what is now haiti on christmas day in 1492, la villa de la navidad. through these, and other examples, vizenor makes clear that he is interested in exploring a connection between these two figures that goes well beyond a mere nominal echo. the strong parallels between the modern trickster and the early modern explorer make it difficult, then, to read stone simply as a parody of his ancestor, and to read the novel simply as a piece of satire. put in typical vizenorian parlance, heirs represents not mockery, but rather a tease of columbus. and teasing, for vizenor, always emerges from, and expresses, a deeper sense of relationship. david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 31   it is worth remembering, in this context, that vizenor has frequently written of his sense of the existence of a pan-indian or indigenous inclination toward exploration, discovery, and reinvention through encounter. vizenor opens his essay “ontic images” with the following claim: “native american personal and cultural identities have always been strategic maneuvers, and in that sense, modernist, names and singularities that arise from and are created by both communal nominations, collective memories, and by distinctive visionary experience” (159). this modernist “maneuver” of identity formation is effected through the processes of “analogical thinking,” a term vizenor adapts from barbara maria stafford’s book visual analogy. analogical thought may be characterized by both its “uncanny visual capacity to bring divided things into unison or span the gap between contingent and absolute” and its “move to tentative harmony” in that process (159). this “tentative,” transformative, gap-spanning process is “modernist” in so far as modernity signifies any moment in which our reality is altered as a result of an encounter that induces a shift in our paradigms for organizing/thinking about it. in this respect, the “columbian moment” represents an archetypical example of modernity, provided we understand that the latter term has been transformed from a chronological marker into a signifier of a transhistorical structure of human experience. vizenor sees the modernist impulse of globalization as deeply embedded in native traditional cultural practices, noting that indian stories “have always been the imagic moments of cultural conversion and native modernity” (“ontic” 161). he makes this point explicitly through the example of crazy horse. in the spirit of crazy horse, vizenor notes, native storiers have always evinced an openness to encounter the new and to move towards a “tentative harmony” with it in a way that allows for a perpetually modernizing sense of self. most suggestively, vizenor grounds this claim in a general ethnographic assertion regarding the customary globalization of tribal peoples: “natives have always been on the move, by necessity of sustenance, and over extensive trade routes. motion is a natural right, and the stories of visionary transformation are a continuous, distinctive sense of sovereignty” (162). significantly, here, we begin to see how vizenor indexes sovereignty to the ability to create one’s stories/identity through a process of analogical encounter with others. the phrase “native identities are stories that arise from the common tease of cultures” becomes a vizenorian creed (163). transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 32   with this critical context in mind, it is less surprising to find that the numerous connecting threads between christopher and stone columbus in heirs, including actual bloodlines linking them, consistently interfere with the reader’s ability to maintain an entirely comfortable sense of imaginative distance between them. indeed, heirs offers a number of details that emphasize christopher’s “indianness” and his indians descendants’ “columbian” natures. one of the most striking of these is the depiction of columbus’s relationship to the mayan people. “the maya created columbus,” stone declares matter-of-factly, though this assertion can be construed in a number of ways (20). stone could be suggesting that the maya foretold columbus’s coming through their own prophetic traditions. taken further, he might even be suggesting that those stories made columbus happen, in a ritually performative manner. this would not be surprising in a text that clearly takes seriously and represents the power of story and storytelling, tellingly represented in the novel through the figure of “stones.” but in another sense, the novel also suggests that the maya begat columbus, in both figurative and literal senses, through their own prior migrations to europe. vizenor imagines that in the ancient past mayan shamans and “hand talkers” actually voyaged to the old world, providing evidence of a pattern or structure of global migration and encounter (of indigenous modernism) dating far back into ancient history. the novel imagines a long historical trajectory of globalization and “columbian moments,” in other words. readers of heirs are also told that the mayans produced a “bear codex” describing themselves and their journeys. this book came into the possession of the emperor ptolemy, who ordered it to be translated and included in the collection of the great library of alexandria. from there, before it was lost in the great fire that destroyed that ancient wonder, we are led to suppose that it exerted an imaginative influence on the thought of the ancient western world. perhaps the bear codex was co-influential, along with the ancient greek authorities referenced by explorers of columbus’s era, in reshaping the western understanding of the spherical world and their place in it? in this way the novel implies that the self-awareness and selfunderstanding of old and new world peoples were entwined from the earliest periods of history.6 and even if those connections became muted or forgotten over time, a potent enough trace of them remained to reappear in future manifestations of globalized david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 33   consciousness. in this way, vizenor recontextualizes and reimagines the significance of the way that columbus writes in his own journals of the inspiration of ancient authorities (like ptolemy) who reinforced his own intuition that a passage to the east could be found by traveling west. the fact that the mayan “radiant presence” is also linked in the novel to the global spiritual cause of christ (as an aspiring world religion) and, later, to the diasporic movement of the sephardic jews serves to reframe the seemingly discrete moment of columbian exploration as a manifestation of a larger force and pattern in human history (28). as the preceding discussion suggests, then, like all of the other major elements in heirs, the maya function in the novel as a figure, offering evidence of an earlier phase of globalization that is intended to liberate our thinking to allow us to reconceive its nature and possibilities. vizenor’s maya represent one indigenous instantiation of the “columbian moment” that is meant both to structurally resemble and also literally plant the seeds for future imaginative manifestations of the impulse for discovery. the novel’s assertion of a maya-sephardic genealogical line that includes columbus himself is suggestive in this respect. the book presents columbus as being maternally mayan, with his mother, susanna di fontanarossa, as the bearer of a “signature” of survivance—a “blue radiance” passed down to her through her mayan ancestors. there is a clear intimation, here, that the echoes of the globalizing impulse of his mayan past represented a key driving force behind columbus’s own aspirations and journeys, influencing him through this line of blood memory. columbus recalled the new world before he had even seen it, through dreams. in this respect, he appears to have inherited the maya gift for prophetic storytelling and imagination. and this trace of a maya past within him literally guided columbus toward the fulfillment of his ancestor’s prophetic anticipation of him. the novel opens by quoting from, and then reinterpreting, a passage from the journal of the first voyage as evidence of these traces of maya cultural memory. columbus remembers seeing a blue light in the west, though “‘it was such an uncertain thing,’ as he wrote in his journal to the crown, ‘that i did not feel it was adequate proof of land’” (heirs 1). vizenor characterizes columbus’s perception in that moment as a half-formed insight that he is, in fact, part of a larger world historical process whose meaning and trajectory he only vaguely understands. “that light was a torch raised by the silent hand transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 34   talkers, a summons to the new world” (3). the historical tragedy that subsequently unfolded, though, was tied directly to columbus’s only partial recognition of the significance of the experience in front of him. it is at this point, then, that we need to step back from a discussion of how heirs works systematically to depict strong lines of connection between the indigenous world and the western world, in order to also acknowledge that vizenor does not collapse all sense of difference between them. indeed, if i am correct in seeing part of the novel’s subject matter to be an exploration of the manifestations of a globalizing impulse that can be mutually and positively constitutive, it is nevertheless clear that vizenor also wants readers to be aware that not all forms of globalization are equal. the different forms that the columbian moment takes in historical time must be considered critically, in other words. we can turn back to the connections between stone columbus and christopher columbus to begin to illustrate this point, for these two central figures in the novel are presented as imperfect replicas of one another, as opposed to being pure dopplegangers. frequently the patterns of repetition and coincidence in heirs are slightly off. this sometimes creates a sense of dissonance, and at other times a literal form of mirroring built on reversal. take, for example, columbus’s founding of la villa de la navidad, mentioned earlier. columbus was forced into that act—the first moment that fully transformed his voyage of trade and exploration into a voyage of colonization and conquest—when his flagship, the santa maria, was wrecked on a reef, due to the inattentiveness of a crewman. with much of the foundering ship’s goods and material saved, largely through the assistance of a local taino leader, however, columbus interpreted this apparent disaster as an act of providence. he chose to cannibalize his vessel in order to build a permanent settlement, in which many of its crew would reside until he was able to make a return voyage. la villa de la navidad failed to survive the period between the first and second voyages, however, owing in large part to the acts of violence and predation on the part of its spanish occupants toward the local indian population. they elected to manifest the globalizing impulse in an early form of colonialism, imperialism and incipient genocide, rather than experiencing imagic moments of analogical recreation. looking forward, we find that stone columbus has his own “santa maria,” too, david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 35   and that this also experiences a wreck. his floating casino, a replica of the spanish carrack that columbus sailed, lies anchored at the international border between minnesota and ontario, near big island in lake of the woods. stone presides over the santa maria casino from its sterncastle and cabin, like the “admiral of the ocean sea,” and he watches the decks for signs of exuberance that mark the discovery of sudden wealth (another echo of columbus’ long wait for signs of the rich lands of cathay). stone’s “flagship,” too, is wrecked, in this case by a violent storm that causes it to crash on a reef and sink near the big island. but unlike the earlier disaster off the coast of haiti, stone’s shipwreck marks only the temporary collapse of a legitimate space of sovereignty, as opposed to the founding or extension of an imperial one. the loss of the santa maria casino brings to an end four summers of casino operation (echoing the four voyages, perhaps?) carried out “in the name of the great explorer” (11). significantly, though, where columbus’s accident represented the inauguration of a global system of violence and depredation, the modern wreck of the trickster’s casino-state leads to a peaceful reiteration and extension of the anishinaabeg nation, this time into the pacific northwest (with the founding of point assinika). the trajectory of stone’s career (and of that of his fellow heirs) suggests that it is possible to experience a de-territorialization, extension, or relocation of tribal sovereignty that somehow avoids columbus’s path towards empire. the vector of the columbian moment is fundamentally different in each case. as readers, though, we are encouraged to ask why this is the case. iii. global survivance versus global empire as i have suggested, columbus bears the mark of an indigenous (maya) past that represents one form that the globalizing impulse might take, but in his historical enactment of that impulse he clearly turns towards another form, with dire consequences for the indigenous peoples of the new world. vizenor’s novel seeks to analyze these two forms of globalization with an eye toward developing a critical sensibility that allows the positive to overcome the negative. to fully illuminate this point, we need to look a bit more closely at the novel’s depiction of these two instances of the “columbian moment,” beginning with the maya-indigenous one. heirs represents the spirit of mayan globalization through a series of repeated symbolic figures—among them “blue radiance” transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 36   and the moccasin game mentioned above. throughout the novel, the color blue stands in general as a sign of the power of “survivance.” many people bear its “signature,” including the maya, the sephardic jews, the moors (“once a nomadic people”), as well as the modern heirs/tricksters (34). but what does it mean to be marked by “survivance” in the context of a narrative focused on voyages of discovery and global encounter? despite being one of vizenor’s most familiar neologisms, “survivance” is a word that defies straightforward definition. as i have argued elsewhere, though, one of the central meanings embedded in the concept is the ability to be “recognized” (see carlson, “trickster”). in this respect, we might understand those who carry with them the “blue radiance” of survivance as those who are able to endure over time and whose endurance is tied both to their assertion of autonomy and their ability to have that autonomy acknowledged by others—a process that involves mutual or reciprocal recognition which allows for change and growth.7 survivance, in this respect, is an integral component of sovereignty. and for vizenor, interestingly enough, the moments that seem to provide both the clearest indices of survivance, as well as their most vigorous tests, are journeys of exploration and mutual encounter (along with the stories that commemorate and disseminate them). we might remember how, in the opening lines of his essay “postindian warriors,” vizenor describes the journals of the lewis and clark expedition of 1804-6 as “the most notable literature of tribal survivance” (1). developing an awareness of these kinds of associative links surrounding the “blue radiance” of survivance allows us to perceive another interesting pattern underlying the novel’s symbolic use of the mocassin game. felipa flowers’s signature blue moccasins set up a basic link between that symbol and the concept of survivance through mutual recognition. felipa’s work as a negotiator who effects the repatriation of tribal remains is an expression of this sense of survivance, for that work is built on negotiations that only succeed when they take place in legal, cultural, and personal frameworks that allow for mutual recognition and respect that also acknowledges cultural difference. the theft of felipa’s moccasins from her own body when she is murdered by agents working for doric michel (the artifact poacher and member of a colonialist “brotherhood of american explorers” that meets regularly in a “conquistadores club” in new york city) is deeply suggestive in this regard. for that criminal act represents quite clearly a david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 37   distinction between two models of how the global human encounter might take shape. for one heir of columbus, felipa, the experience of globalization is built on the reciprocity of survivance. for the other, doric michel, it is built on exploitation, dehumanization, and colonialism. the novel’s use of the moccasin game as a recurrent plot motif goes even further in elaborating this idea of contrasting forms of the columbian moment. here, again, we see vizenor using a recurrent symbol to explore two different sides to the global encounter with the other. on the negative, imperialist side, interestingly enough, we have a figure from inside the tribal world, the wiindigo, whose ongoing predatory game against the anishinaabe forms the centerpiece of one of vizenor’s most frequently invoked traditional cultural narratives. (vizenor relates the story of the contest between the wiindigo and tribal tricksters in many of his books, both fictional and nonfictional.) the wiindigo, of course, might be thought of as a person who has become a monster through the failure to recognize his commonality with other people; this is one of the symbolic meanings of his cannibalism. consequently, his encounters with tribal peoples, in relation to whom he has become an alien other, take the form of predatory games— attempts to dupe, defraud, and destroy the people in whom he should see “relation.”8 if the wiindigo’s moccasin game metaphorizes the dark side of the columbian moment (its negative instantiation), heirs also includes a suggestive counter-example in the ‘bone court’ hearing in the novel. the bone court is presided over by judge beatrice lord, a character whose sympathetic responses to tribal claims of sovereignty and autonomy and whose ability to fully imagine the indian other suggests a great deal about the utopian potential of the experience of mutual recognition. during the hearing, which focuses on the ongoing contest between doric michel and the heirs over the right to possess the remains of columbus (a trope for vizenor’s own engagement with the legacy and meaning of the columbian moment, perhaps), the trickster and technologist almost browne offers lord the chance to experience a “virtual moccasin game.” putting on a pair of electronic moccasins and other equipment enables lord to “enter the shadow realities of tribal consciousness” (84). figuratively, then, this section of the novel offers an illustration of the way that an openness to the direct realization and experience of the power of stories of the other creates the possibility for the mutual recognition of transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 38   commonality and difference that would characterize a positive encounter between differing localities within the framework of global space. in the virtual global environment of almost’s technological system, lord is able to bring a range of narratives, localities, and perspectives together in a manner that enhances her respect for tribal sovereignty without leading her to totally abandon or repudiate her own traditions. as she plays the game, she comes into contact with an intense experience of anishinaabeg locality (visiting the sacred headwaters), feels the power of intersubjective identification (observing shamanic bear-to-human transformations), and gains insight into the larger political and colonial contexts surrounding the criminal issues involved in the specific repatriation case before her (witnessing a reenactment of the disappearance of columbus’s bones from doric michel’s vault). through this process, she discovers that “the legal issues of standing in federal court could be resolved through simulations,” and she thus learns deeper lessons about the importance of the interpenetration of imagination and of mutual recognition in ensuring that the columbian moment becomes one of survivance (87). the experience of a moment of global encounter becomes, for lord, an opportunity for ethical breakthrough and a chance for self-reinvention. my reading here of the figural presentation of the elements involved in overcoming the imperial form of the columbian moment is also reinforced, i believe, when we consider vizenor’s reimagining of columbus’ initial moment of encounter with the new world. building upon those elements discussed earlier regarding the traces of blue radiance within him, vizenor tellingly depicts columbus as having been presented with an opportunity to choose between different paths in the first phases of his career as an agent of globalization. and by allowing us to re-read that moment against the matrix of symbols and figures that run throughout the text, vizenor encourages his readers to view that choice as a paradigmatic one that speaks to the broader history and potentiality of global encounter. traces of the potential for columbus’s new world encounter to mimic and recreate the positive legacy of his indigenous ancestors are thematized in the form of a series of references to blue puppets. early in his life, columbus witnesses and is moved by a group of sephardic jewish women puppeteers he sees on the island of corsica. he is haunted by this memory, which the novel ties to his early experiences of the call of the ocean. that relationship is further explained as an older columbus david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 39   encounters the blue puppeteers again, this time at the convento dos santos in lisbon. this is the place where, historically, columbus first saw a well-born nineteen-year-old, felipa moñiz, whom he would later marry, but vizenor transforms that fairly mercenary encounter with an other into something more prophetic and potentially transcendent. it is at this stage, too, that columbus discovers that the blue puppets have been carved out of the wood of trees carried from the new world before wild storms, washing up on the azores. echoes of blood memory and the pull of a voyage promising self-recognition through an encounter with the other thus lay the foundation for what might have been in those fateful months and years after columbus boarded his santa maria. the moment of truth in the novel is marked by the third appearance of the puppets, which by this point in the narrative clearly represent the trace of something hidden underneath the bloody actuality of the history of conquest, something that might be recovered through an act of imagination. columbus hears the voices of the puppeteers at the moment of his encounter with “samana” (37). here is another complex and interesting example of linguistic and imaginative play on vizenor’s part. at this point in the novel, the literal event he (through stone) is reimagining is columbus’s landing on october 28, 1492, at bahia de bariay in what is now cuba, the first moment he set foot on new world soil (10). vizenor changes this history in a variety of suggestive ways. he plays with the historical controversy regarding whether columbus first landed in cuba (which he called san salvador) or at samana cay (an island sixty five miles south of there). for the novel both names his landing place samana cay and posits an erotic meeting between columbus and an indian woman of the same name (whose descendant, not surprisingly, is one of the moderns heirs). this represents both a witty joke evoking the notion of columbus’s fundamental lack of understanding of his location as a global subject and an imaginative means of opening up a space to reconstruct an alternate history. vizenor multiplies that effect by having stone immediately change the date of the event he has just described, because “columbus is ever on the move in our stories” (10). in the end, we have a series of potential columbian moments, some historical, some imagined, that took place somewhere between october 28, 1492, at bahia bay or samana cay, and october 29, 1492, at rio de la luna (11). wherever and whenever columbus landed, heirs does maintain that his encounter transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 40   with the indian woman samana represented a historical crossroads and a choice between two types of globalizing moments. samana, who is also described as a tribal hand talker (both an imaginative link to the earlier blue puppeteers and a clever evocation of the likely dynamics of communication that persisted between columbus and los indios in this period of first contact when they spoke “through signs”) swims out to the santa maria and makes love to him. part of vizenor’s intent here, of course, may be satirical, playing with standard iconographic depiction of the new world as exotic indian woman in european travel literature and the later colonial trope of virgin land. in this case, though, both a figure of the indian subject and the land (she pulls together both the human and cartographic elements of global encounter), samana has considerable agency and a capacity for survivance (5). the novel explicitly suggests how columbus’s brief encounter with her represented a missed opportunity for an experience of mutual selfdiscovery that might have been justly celebrated by both worlds. it is worth recalling that, generally in vizenor’s fiction, sexual and erotic pleasure also signifies the imagination, imaginative pleasure, and liberation. clearly, then, columbus’s night with samana can be read allegorically. columbus’s family curse of a “twisted penis” makes perfect sense in this context (30). the novel suggests that it is a curse laid on (old world) men as revenge by women who were burned along with the bear codex in alexandria. that burning, within the narrative framework of the novel, would represent a blindness to the existence and equal subjectivity of the other, a denial of key parts of the universality of human experience (for example, the fact that the globalizing impulse can manifest itself in others besides western man), and a foolish castration of imaginative capacity. columbus’s twisted penis, then signifies more than persistently painful erections. it represents the move by western man to define himself through the subordination and then the erasure of the indigenous world. this fundamental act, which underlies the colonialist form of globalization, represents a colossal failure of imagination, one that in the case of our novel costs christopher columbus dearly as well. his night with samana represented a moment of breakthrough where the mental structure of colonialism gave way to an alternative form of global encounter. columbus experienced release with samana, whom the novel (recalling the codex) describes explicitly as a bear shaman possessing a healing touch and as characterized by that familiar symbolic blue radiance david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 41   (12). the text repeatedly references the idea that she healed columbus. regrettably, though, the healing did not last (19). despite the emotional and existential pull he feels towards her (vizenor invokes the journals’ most positive and enraptured descriptions of both the people and land of the new world at these points in the novel), columbus turns away from this type of modernizing encounter of self-recreation. instead, he soon founds his first colonial settlement (navidad), initiating a system of slavery and murder while continuing to chase gold throughout the caribbean. in a touch of wonderful lyricism, though, vizenor notes that columbus hears the voice of the blue puppeteers one last time on the deck of his ship during the stormy winter return to europe at end of the first voyage (44). he will remember them many times after that, up to his death, by which time most of his honors and wealth had been stripped from him by his own people. so what might have happened if the columbian moment of 1492 had taken another shape, the shape it takes, imaginatively, in the indigenous world of this novel? we get a hint of an answer to this in stone columbus’ reenactment of his ancestor’s career. it is significant that heirs presents stone’s nation-building activity, both at the santa maria casino and at point assinika, as expressions of tribal sovereignty built on reciprocal altruism and expansive networks of cross-cultural relations. initially, it would seem, stone opens his casino as a kind of provocation and a parody of the european law of discovery. he asserts his “right to operate a casino as a new reservation moored to an anchor as long as the waters flow in the new world,” in a manner that clearly plays off of the language used by ferdinand and isabella in granting title to his ancestor christopher at the time of the first voyage (7). this is an absurd claim, of course, but its very absurdity raises the obvious point that the basis for non-indian title claims under the law of discovery is equally strange. in the end, though, i think the key point to realize is that stone’s act of global legal consciousness here leads to the kind of liberating reinvention characteristic of vizenorian survivance. it is no surprise that stone’s initial formulation of, and claim to, sovereignty would be challenged, but the end result of that challenge is to trigger some important reformulations of the concept, with positive implications for both tribal and non-tribal peoples. on july 4th, three years after the first launching of casino, stone is arrested for violation of state tax and gambling laws. subsequently, the question of the nature of the transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 42   sovereignty of the santa maria casino ends up in federal court, in a case presided over by beatrice lord. in the end, lord sanctions the “reservation on an anchor,” in no small part because she admires the imagination involved in its creation. even more suggestively, though, in announcing her decision from the casino’s sterncastle (on columbus day), she redefines tribal sovereignty in a way that detaches it from formulation of title rooted in discovery law. “the notion of tribal sovereignty is not confiscable, or earth bound,” lord writes. “sovereignty is neither fence nor feathers. the essence of sovereignty is imaginative, an original tribal trope, communal and spiritual, an idea that is more than metes and bounds in treaties” (7). following this logic, “the court...ruled that an anchor and caravel is as much a tribal connection to sovereignty as a homestead, mineral rights, the sacred cedar, and the nest of a bald eagle” (7).9 in this way, lord signals that, despite its western legacy and baggage, the concept of sovereignty remains valuable because it can be stretched and adapted, imaginatively, in a way that takes it out of the realm of possessive property law (the reference to “metes and bounds”) and into a larger sense of relation and intersubjectivity.10 lord’s experience of legal globalization (her opportunity to preside over a columbian moment of contact between the u.s. legal system and stone columbus’s innovative assertions of tribal autonomy) allows her to continue forward with the process of deterritorializing and reframing the concept of sovereignty. she recognizes, of course, that stone’s sovereignty claims exist in a political framework that, at present, limit them. in a nod to u.s. indian law and the marshall court’s use of the law of discovery in defining indian communities as “domestic dependent nations,” she comments that “the santa maria and the other caravels are limited sovereign states at sea, the first maritime reservations in international waters...” (8-9). and yet, the fact that stone has created a “sovereign casino” that does, in fact, function surely highlights the idea that a tribal nation need not be synonymous with a sovereign state in the post-westphalian sense of the term. the “new casino tribe” is more like what political scientist nina caspersen calls an “unrecognized state,” a kind of sovereign entity that relies on support from outside of itself and is characterized by its economic and cultural permeability (8). a “casino nation,” in other words, cannot exist without a constant dynamic of exchange between itself and those outside of it. it cannot stand alone or imagine itself in a way that cuts it david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 43   off from the broader totality that surrounds it. it must embrace the dynamic of global encounter in a way that sends its people down a very different historical and political path from that of the europe of christopher columbus. and in doing so, vizenor suggests, with his characteristic hopefulness, indigenous people might offer guidance on how the modern world can redeem the columbian moment and overcome the bloody legacy of its instantiation five centuries ago. judge lord’s observation regarding the wisdom and imagination that led stone to placing his sovereign casino on an international border is wonderfully suggestive, for it urges the reader to consider how currently emerging international legal norms and a redefinition of the relations of power between local and global bodies are becoming increasingly important tools in the work of decolonization. through lord, vizenor teases us into a recognition that the imaginative relocation of the “nation” and its claims to sovereignty into a globalized space might, in fact, be liberating. reimagining the nation as something constituted in the exchange between global and local, then, can create the political conditions that allow for new definitions of legal status, new claims of sovereignty, and new ways in which those claims might be recognized. indeed, vizenor’s work on the recently ratified revised constitution of the white earth nation highlights the “real world” applicability of that idea (see carlson, “trickster”). if such change can be broadly achieved, the columbian moment might indeed be worthy of global commemoration. notes 1 this idea, incidentally, forms a central theme in vizenor’s more recent novel shrouds of white earth, in its depiction of a narrative triptych composed of marc chagall, the fictional anishinaabeg painter dogroy beaulieu, and vizenor himself. 2 for a general overview of the columbian exhibition, see bolotin and laing. 3 see vizenor, “ontic images.” examples of other critics who have begun to take up vizenor’s terminology would include martinez and schweninger. 4 this idea can be usefully connected to jodi byrd’s concept of “transit.” byrd explicitly links her work with vizenor in the transit of empire. 5 there are many other versions of this pattern of imperfect reiteration and echoing throughout the novel. the part of the plot focused on felipa flowers, for example, makes a great deal out of the similarities between her experiences and those of pocahontas, down to the fact that both meet their end at gravesend. stone is also compared to the métis leader louis riel, who is likewise recalled in the form of another character, a retired military intelligence officer, now turned private-investigator and double-agent named chaine riel doumet. american indians are compared to the sephardic jews, who transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 44   are, in turn, linked to the mayans. however, in order to contain the complexity of the narrative a bit, for the purpose of the present argument, i want to maintain a narrow focus on stone columbus as the primary heir and to consider, through him, what the significance of this representational patterning in the novel might be. 6 in this respect, vizenor gives readers an imaginative extension of historical realities explored recently by jace weaver in his book the red atlantic. 7 vizenor offers another formulation of this idea in the second half of the novel, in his discussion of the (metaphorical) work being done at the genome pavilion at point assinika. there he writes that “...the chemical of genes can be touched in meditation and memories, that blue radiance is a wondrous instance in human creation, and those who can imagine their antimonies and mutations are able to heal with humor” [my emphasis] (heirs 134). 8 it is no wonder that many contemporary indigenous writers invoke the wiindigo-figure as a trope for colonialism and empire. louise erdrich does so in her novel tracks in her characterization of pauline puyat, who turns on herself and her own people in a fury of misrecognition and assimilationist-driven self-hatred. joseph boyden explores wiindigo sickness in his wwi novel three day road. jack forbes has also suggestively linked the wiindigo with the origins and spread of imperialism and colonialism in columbus and other cannibals. 9 vizenor clearly signals the importance of this definition by reiterating it later in the book. when almost brown is celebrating the repatriation of columbus’s remains with a laser show, the loudspeakers on the casino mask boom out the following words: “the notion of sovereignty is not tied to the earth, sovereignty is neither fence nor feathers...the very essence of sovereignty is a communal laser. the santa maria and the two caravels are luminous sovereign states in the night sky, the first maritime reservation on a laser anchor” (heirs 62). 10 on this type of dialectical transformation of sovereignty, see my forthcoming book imagining sovereignty (2016). works cited bergreen, laurence. columbus: the four voyages, 1492-1504. new york: penguin, 2011. print. bolotin, norman and christine laing. the world’s columbian exhibition: the chicago world’s fair of 1893. urbana: university of illinois press, 2002. print. boyden, joseph. three day road. new york: penguin, 2006. print. byrd, jodi. the transit of empire: indigenous critiques of colonialism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011. print. carlson, david. sovereign reading: discourses of self-determination in american indian law and literature. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2016. david j. carlson “the columbian moment” 45   (forthcoming). print. ----. “trickster hermeneutics and the postindian reader: gerald vizenor’s constitutional praxis.” studies in american indian literatures. 23. 4 (winter 2011): 13-47. print. caspersen, nina. unrecognized states: the struggle for sovereignty in the modern international system. malden (ma): polity press, 2012. print. columbus, christopher. the four voyages: being his own log book, letters, and dispatches with connecting narratives. trans. j.m. cohen. new york: penguin. 1992. print. erdrich, louise. tracks. new york: harper perennial, 2004. print. forbes, jack. columbus and other cannibals: the wetiko disease of exploitation, imperialism, and terrorism. new york: seven stories press, 2011. print. marramao, giacomo. the passage west: philosophy after the age of the nation state. new york: verso, 2012. print. martinez, david. “this is (not) indian painting: george morrison, minnesota, and his return to a land he never left.” american indian quarterly. 39. 1 (winter 2015): 25-51. print. polo. marco. the travels of marco polo. trans. ronald latham. new york: penguin, 1958. print. robertson, roland. globalization: social theory and global culture. london: sage publications, 1992. print. sen, amartya. “does globalization equal westernization?” the globalist. march 25, 2002. web. 15 aug. 2015. <http://www.theglobalist.com/does-globalizationequal-westernization/> ----. identity and violence. new york: w.w. norton, 2006. print. schweninger, lee. imagic moments: indigenous north american film. athens: university of georgia press, 2013. print. vizenor, gerald. "aesthetics of survivance." native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009. 85-103. print. ----. the heirs of columbus. middletown: wesleyan university press, 1991. print. transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 46   ----. "ontic images." native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009. 159-78. print. ----. “postindian warriors.” manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1999. 1-44. print. ----. shrouds of white earth. albany: state university of new york, 2010. print. weaver, jace. the red atlantic: american indigenes and the making of the modern world: 1000—927. chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2014. print. microsoft word 496-2735-1-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     104   me & my monster andrea l. rogers “he’s a monster,” gina whispered, describing the one she loved. her grandmother sipped her medicine. “all boys are monsters, sweetie. i’ve been telling you that since you were no taller than a tiger lily.” gina wrote a letter to the star-telegram. the city was currently in the midst of lake worth monster madness. the paper ran daily monster updates and blurry photos that might have been tall skinny people in gorilla suits running away from the camera. blonde sasquatches with goat horns and cloven hooves were described. these were details not discernible from the pictures, but relayed through eyewitness accounts of people claiming to have seen a goat boy, who reeked like white crappie, in  the dark, half a mile away. gina, however, knew the “goat man.” she had held his hoof while they watched the moon rise over the lake from a secluded bluff. she left that detail out of her letter. dear mr. editor, the lake worth “monster” is no monster. he is a perfect gentleman. if he threw a tire at you, then you had it coming. i was talked into going to the lake to look for the “monster.” moments after we parked my date had his hands all over me. let that be a warning to you other girls: teenage boys have more than monsters on their minds! andrea l. rogers “me & my monster”   105   i argued with my date and got out of his vehicle. he followed me and knocked me to the ground. i screamed for help. it immediately arrived in the form of an individual your readers are calling the “goat man.” he towered over us and my terrified date fled. he gave chase. my date drove away, leaving me behind. i panicked. i curled into a ball and wept for several minutes. finally, i looked up and saw those beautiful red rimmed, baby blue eyes staring at me from several yards away. i got up and dusted myself off. i walked in the direction of the highway. he stayed a ways behind me, following me slowly. when i turned back to see if he was still there he waved at me shyly. once i got to the road i flagged down what turned out to be a nice baptist couple on their way home from choir practice. as i looked back, he gave me one more long wave. then he dropped to all fours and bounded away like a deer, not a goat. sincerely yours, lady in distress class of 1969 when gina returned later that week to thank him for saving her she learned the lake worth monster’s name was “matt.” she offered him a plate of fresh chocolate chip cookies. their first visit was interrupted by jeering onlookers from below the bluff. matt rolled a tire in their general direction. matt was goatish, but the fishiness was an exaggeration. the lake smelled of dead fish in several places, so perhaps this accounted for the misperception. gina kept a scrapbook of all the lake worth monster articles and was thrilled to see her letter to the editor when it was transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     106   published. she cropped out the introduction, though she still remembered every word. they wrote that her “fictional account” had given the newsroom such a big laugh they felt they owed it to their readers to spread the mirth. inevitably, it was a star-crossed romance beset with challenges. first, she didn’t own a car. borrowing her father’s oldsmobile required a complicated chain of deceit. second, gina quickly realized she would not be getting any love poems from him. and, he immediately ate whatever notes she proffered. third, his taste in romantic gestures ran to gifts of prickly pear cactus fruit and bleated love songs. fourth, she was set to go to bacone college in muskogee, oklahoma soon. while it was obvious to her that her cloven-footed boyfriend was no demon, she wondered if her love for him would survive four years of a baptist education. still, she persevered. she was more comfortable when he wore clothes. she salvaged a torn pair of jeans from the laundromat and handily patched the ripped knee. she also gave him a shirt of her father’s, though it was much too large for matt and missing several buttons. the blue set off matt’s strange, electric azure eyes. she had to remind matt to put the outfit on each time she came to see him. as the summer drew to a close she became melancholy. they wouldn’t be exchanging letters. their courtship had stalled. their romance was based on little more than baked goods, unwanted gifts of clothing, and wordless gallantry. the evening before she was to leave for college she borrowed her father’s car. she wanted to discuss their future one last time. gina found matt sitting on their log wearing his andrea l. rogers “me & my monster”   107   jeans and button up shirt. from somewhere he had obtained a tie and wrapped it haphazardly around his throat. he absentmindedly chewed on its short end as she drove up. she sat next to him and took his cloven hoof into her hands. she talked. he quickly became agitated and withdrew his foot. he cried a long mournful bleat, stood up, stepped out of the jeans and then dropped to all fours. his head swiveled back and forth as he struggled with the removal of the tie. eventually the tie fell to the ground and he trampled on it while dragging the cuffs of the shirt over the rocky, sandy soil. without ever looking back, he disappeared into the scrubby growth between the parkway and the lake. there will be no salvaging that shirt, gina thought, as she stood watching him disappear into the dark. she heard a splash and soon saw the moon glinting off his back as he swam towards goat island. tears ran down her cheeks as the distance between them grew. dating teenage boys had been more dangerous than she had expected, more dangerous than being courted by the lake worth monster. in the end, long distance relationships are always hard.   microsoft word mccormick.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 168 deborah miranda. raised by humans. san fernando: tia chucha press. 2015. 80pp. http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/raised-humans beginning with the title of her third poetry collection, raised by humans (tia chucha 2015), deborah miranda conjures the california mission system to reveal its haunting legacy of colonization. miranda reminds her readers that native californians, rather than spanish soldiers and priests, were the humans who harvested the crops, and quite literally raised the adobe walls of the twenty-one california missions. while spain, mexico, and then the u.s sought the physical and historical erasure of california indians, miranda insists readers recognize their material and cultural contributions. she does not allow us to minimize the impact of the franciscans who paradoxically sought to raise the souls of “child-like natives” up to heaven while enslaving them behind the adobe walls of the missions. but the speakers of her poems do not live in the confines of the past nor are they ghosts. instead, they reach to the past only to move forward. in doing so, they weave together the concerns of indigenous communities with intimate, often painful desires and disappointments from within the family circle. these poetic narratives are not tales of misery—elegies for decimated people and cultures—but expressions of survivance. raised by humans begins with the acrostic poem, “alphabet of lies” in which miranda lays out an extensive and ongoing, if far from definitive, catalogue of lies that buttress genocide, theft, and subjugation. more importantly this a to z list underscores the way language, particularly the written word, can be a powerful silencing tool in the process of colonization. as miranda moves through the alphabet she uses the language of the colonizer to denounce “casino lies cozy as road-kill in the beak of a crow” (7) and “kinky lies strutting black kevlar boots all over your water rights” (7) and finally “zombie lies zig-zagging through generations like contagious zygotes” (8). she illuminates how these lies have been carefully, systematically, relentlessly nurtured from generation to generation. she closes the poem with the stanza, “learn the drill. teach your children; / alphabetize. civilize. / reservation. termination. / savage. savage. savage” (8) thus weakening the power of the colonizer’s alphabet while teaching us how to read the rest of her collection. miranda parses the remaining poems into three chapters: “history,” “education,” and “faith,” each section further revealing the slippery instability of language as a tool of control. she acknowledges the erasures and inaccuracies that history, education, and faith often perpetuate even as she affirms them as centers of resistance. in “history,” miranda defies the fantasy of vanished, static indians and the fallacy that their many “authentic” traditional cultures are lost forever. in the poem, “directions,” miranda writes, “when we tell stories, / skeletons dance / in dark museums, / clappersticks crack / like lightening deep / in unmarked graves” (14). she refutes museum curators and others who continue to define indigenous tribes in terms of remains and artifacts. then, turning her focus to the lived experience and resilience of native americans she intones, “…we speak / a bright language / with no word / for dead, or end, / or lost. following / these constellations, / we will always / find our way” (14). in the eponymous poem, “raised loretta mccormick review of raised by humans 169 by humans,” the poet speaks of a much more recent history beginning, “my mother abandoned me. / left me behind, didn’t look back” (20). she bears witness to the fact that a history of violence enacted on a people, a family, a human can turn someone into creatures that behaves “like a tamed fox” (20). in her abandonment, the poet admits, “and i hung around waiting, whimpering, chained / to my cage by a metal only the human heart / knows how to forge” (21). in the second chapter, deborah miranda begins with an education in the harsh realities of material and spiritual poverty and in “$10 an hour” she admonishes those who continue to render poor people of color invisible with the charge, “you don’t see me. you won’t remember / me if you do. i’m a bucket full of pledge, pinesol, sponges with / scratchy edges. you don’t see me vacuum, dust knick knacks, scrub / your tub, your toilet” (35). and yet miranda does not linger in this poverty. instead, she revels in the education of love—erotic love, tender love, and love of nature. in “clementine for beginners,” a simple peel of fruit can feel, “like a love letter on the table” (38). “eating a mountain” exalts the bounty of fresh meat and the connection to the world that its nourishment brings: “we are rich! i rinse, pack, / mark the cuts, this beautiful / deep red velvety offering. / eating this deer means eating this mountain” (45). but it is “wolf lullaby” that promises, “me, i’ll welcome you into my body: / your howl the only heart i need” (49) and in doing so reaffirms the healing power and necessity of physical human contact. closing with “faith,” miranda turns catholic imagery and dogmatic language that has, at times, served to manipulate and control into prayers of liberation through explorations of regret, grief, hope and thanks. for example, “rosary” re-envisions california missions not as static centers of pain and slavery but, rather, points on a continuous path of discovery and empowerment. “san juan capistrano, san fernando rey de españa, santa barbara. / let me pass by the adobe missions, the ridiculously renovated, the / melting rubble, with tender thoughts for the souls of my ancestors. / like clay and stone, we transform: that is the string of miracles i follow” (61). this is not hope as much as it is an expression of certainty. and while the final poem in raised by humans, “decolonizing the alphabet” is in conversation with the despair and brilliant anger radiating from the first poem “alphabet of lies,” this time, miranda imagines the alphabet, “going native” (71), “becoming indigenous” (71). in “appropriating the weapon” of the written word, deborah miranda proves, “it’s alive. / it’s ours” (72). and finally, she explains, “we will not give it back” (72). with these final words she inscribes her vision of empowerment and victory onto the hearts and consciousnesses of her readers and they are a prophesy of the necessary narratives of survival, anger, beauty, and resiliency we can expect from deborah miranda in the future. loretta mccormick, university of wisconsin, milwaukee microsoft word charlton.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   140   leanne betasamosake simpson. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2017. 320 pp. isbn 978-15179-0386-2. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/as-we-have-always-done. michi saagiig nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist leanne betasamosake simpson’s latest book continues the work of dancing on our turtle’s back: stories of nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence, and a new emergence in articulating and recentering indigenous radical resurgence. as we have always done holds indigenous freedom as a guiding vision and manifesto, initially posing the brilliantly human question “what does it mean for me, as an nishnaabekwe, to live freedom?” (7). simpson goes on to detail the powerfully complex and multifaceted relational, ethical, reciprocal, procedural, and embodied answers that come from a deep engagement with nishnaabewin, the “lived expression of nishnaabeg intelligence” (25) or nishnaabeg ways of being, and biiskabiyang, the decolonial, resurgent, and embodied processes of return, reengagement, reemergence, and unfolding from the inside out. in her own words, “this is a manifesto to create networks of reciprocal resurgent movements with other humans and nonhumans radically imagining their ways out of domination, who are not afraid to let those imaginings destroy the pillars of settler colonialism” (10). simpson recenters indigenous political resistance, not as a response to the settler colonial state, but instead as an act and process of indigenous nation-building. simpson enacts nishnaabewin in her writing by reinscribing kwe (woman within a spectrum of gender variance) as method, refusing to separate body and life from research or “be tamed by whiteness or the academy” (33). the knowledge she shares is generated from different practices than those centered in the academy. she instead centers nishnaabewin knowledge generated through the kinetics of place-based practices that produce both heart and mind intelligence. she seamlessly weaves together nishnaabeg stories, teachings from her elders doug williams and edna manitowabi, lived experiences and realities, relationality to other indigenous theorists, and examples of resurgence. in this way, the experience of reading is cyclical and generative as ideas appear, reappear, and overlap in various contexts and modes in relationship to each other, navigating the reader through interconnected networks of nishnaabewin knowledge. through this journey, two main principles of indigenous radical resurgence emerged for me: the practice of reciprocal recognition and the practice of generative refusal. reciprocal recognition starts with knowing and expressing “who we are” (67) as nishnaabeg and indigenous peoples, through nishnaabewin and grounded normativity. simpson recurrently draws upon yellowknives dene scholar glen coulthard’s concept of grounded normativity as a procedural, lived, and engaged nation and place-based ethical framework. from this place of internal and grounded intelligence and ethics, simpson presents a simple but radical act of love when she advocates for collective reciprocal self-recognition: “the act of making it a practice to see another’s light and to reflect that light back to them” (184). this act of reflection and recognition becomes a radical tool of resistance in the context of settler colonialism, because colonialism strategically employs shame as a mode of dispossession. adar charlton review of as we have always done   141   one of the most powerful images of recognition that simpson puts forth in the book comes from her “favourite part” of mohawk scholar audra simpson’s work mohawk interuptus, where audra interviews a fellow mohawk about his definition of community membership. his response is simply, “when you look in the mirror, what do you see?” “genius,” simpson remarks (179). the image of the mirror reminded me of work done on settler colonial cognitive imperialism and the insidious effects of shame on indigenous self-identification within colonial structures and institutions, particularly in education. james sákéj youngblood henderson describes the effect of eurocentric education on indigenous students as “the realization of their invisibility […] similar to looking into a lake and not seeing their images” (59). this also echoes what adrienne rich has famously described as physic disequilibrium, “as if you looked in a mirror and saw nothing” (199). in a complete refusal of the position of victim, simpson, instead of merely looking for a reflection, embodies the whole mirror: “so at the same time i am looking into the mirror, i also am the mirror” (181). i will assume that simpson would also advocate for reclaiming the whole lake as part of an intact indigenous land base, where grounded normativity and nishnaabewin emerge from and are practiced on. she asks, “what if the driving force in indigenous politics is self-recognition rather than a continual race around the hamster wheel of settler colonial recognition?” (180). refusing settler colonial recognition becomes integral to radical resurgence because, as simpson explains, colonialism begins from a want for land, but materializes in a series of complex and overlapping processes that maintain expansive dispossession of indigenous bodies and lands (45). in nishnaabeg thought the opposite of dispossession is not possession, but consensual attachment – reestablishing reciprocal recognition, reconnecting to networks of relationships to the land, and reenacting indigenous relationality and thought. refusing dispossession through attachment generates the alternative to capitalist, white supremacist and heteropatriarchical state control beyond the structures of that control. this brings us to the second main principle, the embodied act of generative refusal: refusal to participate in colonial structures and processes, and stepping outside or simply leaving as resistance. through various interwoven threads, simpson shares the nishnaabeg story of the hoof nation leaving nishnaabeg territory in reaction to being disrespected and overhunted. they retreat in order to recover, and rebuild before renegotiating terms of treaty with the nishnaabeg. actualizing teachings from this story, simpson asks, “what if no one sided with colonialism?” (177). the day i was writing this review, i was able to see this type of generative refusal in action. on feb. 28th, 2018 the indigenous students’ council at the university of saskatchewan released an official statement calling for indigenous student non-participation in all of the university’s administrative indigenization and reconciliation efforts. the students are asking for support for indigenous student autonomy through the creation of an indigenous student union and the renaming of the current indigenous student centre to the gordon oakes red bear indigenous student union building. these students are enacting precisely what simpson is calling for – generative refusal and reciprocal recognition by building an alternative system outside of the settler colonial structure of the university (and reclaiming space to do so). in part this action is in response to the inaction of the university following the unjust not-guilty court rulings in the deaths of coulten boushie (red pheasant cree first nation) and tina fontaine (sagkeeng first transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   142   nation). while the boushie and fontaine families necessarily, strongly, and resiliently fight to seek justice within a system not meant to serve indigenous peoples, but to uphold the settler colonial state, these students recognize and are putting into action their capacity to envision what it means to refuse recognition from the university and strive for self-recognition outside of the system. as they state, “the greatest resource we have on campus is each other” in this “step toward building a decolonial future.” the work they are doing is inspirational and i stand in full support and solidarity with them. to pull only these two principles out of the interwoven complexity they are situated within in as we have always done does them a great disservice for the purposes of summary. simpson carefully enmeshes critical interventions and critiques of colonial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy into the unfolding of these two concepts. she also stresses the necessity of recentering and recovering woman, two-spirit queer, and child identities, because heteronormative policing of sexuality and gender, and the implementation of heteropatriarchy is at the heart of colonial dispossession. heteronormativity is a tool of colonization used to control bodies and sexualities as sites of sovereignty and political governance that threaten settler claims to land. simpson also recognizes accountability to the black communities within kina gchi nishnaabeg ogamig and beyond in a shared struggle against domination. ultimately, simpson beautifully imagines constellations of coresistance – clusters and relational networks of local artistic and political resurgence that “create mechanisms for communication, strategic movement, accountability to each other, and shared decision-making practices” (218). and she encourages what she terms flight paths out of colonial shame and violence that include everyday practices at home, being on the land regardless of colonial divisions of reserve, rural, and urban spaces, claiming collective and private physical space to think, and simply acting with indigenous presence. in other words, radical resurgence is also normal: “just indigenous life […] as we have always done” (247). though a necessarily fully immersive read, simpson’s cerebral and multifaceted theories continually emerge, clarify, and, then slip from grasp, reinforcing process over fixity. the book requires a read, and a reread, and then maybe a reread with friends, but in my opinion is essential for anyone studying any aspect of indigenous decolonization, politics, law, and settler colonialism, and signals a vital shift away from current neoliberal discussions and policies of indigenization and reconciliation in order to rebuild and recover indigenous nationhoods. adar charlton, university of saskatchewan a note to white readers: i purposefully put this note outside of the main review, because it is a position we need to get used to being in. we do not need to see ourselves in this book. simpson works to decenter whiteness as a necessary part of working outside of settler colonialism. she offers the humbling and somewhat underhanded advice that real white allies will “show up in solidarity anyway” (231). so, show up anyway read this book and educate yourself! adar charlton review of as we have always done   143   henderson, james sákéj youngblood. “postcolonial ghost dancing: diagnosing european colonialism.” reclaiming indigenous voice and vision, edited by marie battiste, ubc press, 2000, pp. 57-76. indigenous students’ council. official statement of the indigenous students’ council. facebook, 28 feb. 2018, 3:20pm, https://www.facebook.com/istudentscouncil/posts/1649172661784694. accessed 28 feb. 2018. rich, adrienne. “invisibility in academe.” blood, bread, and poetry: selected prose 1979 1985. norton, 1986, pp. 198-201. microsoft word robertson.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     189   lisa charleyboy and mary beth leatherdale, eds. #notyourprincess: voices of native american women. toronto: annick, 2017. 112 pp. isbn: 9781554519576. http://www.annickpress.com/notyourprincess #notyourprincess: voices of native american women, co-edited by lisa charleyboy and mary beth leatherdale, is a heartfelt and heart-full contribution to the creative productions of indigenous women, queer, trans, two-spirit, and non-binary communities that have proliferated in canada and the united states over the past several years. described by charleyboy as a “love letter to all young indigenous women trying to find their way” as well as an effort to “[dispel] stereotypes so we can collectively move forward to a brighter future,” (9) #notyourprincess is a book by and about native women and girls written for native women and girls. it includes poems, essays, interviews, and art from a multigenerational collection of over fifty contributors who belong to a diverse array of indigenous communities and showcases the voices of indigenous women and girls as they speak to relationality, the gendered and sexual oppression of colonization, stereotypes, and indigenous futurity. these themes are organized (respectively) into four sections: (1) the ties that bind us, (2) it could have been me, (3) i am not your princess, and (4) pathfinders. at its core, #notyourprincess is concerned with witnessing, refusing, and transcending the violence that settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy directs toward indigenous women and girls. the magnitude of such violence is described most succinctly in nahanni fontaine’s contribution to the collection, “reclaiming indigenous women’s rights”: altering, diminishing, and transforming indigenous women and girls’ spaces and places within the nation, tribe, territory, community, and family has sown and set the seeds and firmly entrenched the conditions for physical and sexual violence; the break-down of community-based thinking; intergenerational trauma; economic and political marginalization; the regulation and oppression of our reproductive health, including being sterilized by the government without our consent; the theft of our children, taken to residential schools and put up for adoption without our permission; and, ultimately, the theft of our very lives (25). the taste, touch, and feel of the violence that fontaine speaks of is explored in more depth by a number of contributors to the collection. for example, in her essay “we are not a costume,” jessica deer writes about the relationship between colonization, cultural appropriation, and sexual objectification, speaking specifically to the weight such representations force native women and girls to bear: “we have to deal with ongoing marginalization and the lingering effects of colonization, like a culture that normalizes violence against us” (61). in “the things we taught our daughters,’ helen knott soberly reflects on the ways in which indigenous communities have come to normalize and replicate the sexual and gendered violences that heteropatriarchal colonialism has introduced into our lives. lines such as “somewhere we learned to create an asylum / for the very things / that plague our dreams” (44) and “we stuck sexual abuse up on the mantelpiece / picture framed the portrait of rape / and named the old rez dog domestic dispute” (45) are painful to stomach and demand critical self-reflection. imajyn cardinal’s brief plea, “all over the news there are native girls being hurt and abused. i feel kimberly robertson review of #notyourprincess   190   afraid when i walk around. but i don’t want to be afraid,” (39) conveys a stark vulnerability that can’t easily be dismissed. and shelby lisk’s photo series “the invisible indian” communicates the dehumanization and commodification of indigenous identity that has occurred through assimilationist efforts. alongside mugshot-like photographs of native women and girls holding papers with their tribal registration numbers printed on them, lisk describes the impossible-toachieve expectations and desires that colonial powers have of indigenous peoples and concludes, “they [colonizers] want my culture behind glass in a museum. but they don’t want me. i’m not indian enough” (65). these contributions to #notyourprincess, as well as others, are important acts of witnessing the onslaught of violences that indigenous women and girls are subjected to. simultaneously, they operate as acts of refusal – blatant rejections of the settler colonial and heteropatriarchal imperative to eliminate the voice, visibility, livelihood, indeed the very existence, of indigenous women and girls. equally significant, however, are the contributions to #notyourprincess that transcend these violences, that dream of and operationalize indigenous pres-ence/ents and futures. these contributions foreground hope, resiliency, survivance, and life itself. chief lady bird’s illustrations are a beautiful example of such work. in “we are sacred,” she weaves an illustration of the torso and neck of a native woman with a lush and flourishing landscape out of which the woman (literally) emerges (53). in an untitled illustration that sits opposite tiffany midge’s essay “what’s there to take back?” – a refusal of an indie publication’s call for submissions aimed at “taking back” the disney character tiger lily – she depicts an intentionally nonplussed native woman staring unflinchingly into the eyes of anyone who dares to obstruct her journey (66). another poignant example of such work is the short essay “defender of mother earth,” written by annalee rain yellowhammer. the thirteen-year-old, who initiated the petition to halt the dakota access pipeline and who ran 2000 miles alongside 37 other youth to deliver the petition to washington dc, boldly declares, “we demand ‘rezpect’ for our water, our land, and our voices” (85). yellowhammer’s words pair nicely with dana claxton’s photo contribution “baby-girlz-gotta-mustang,” which pictures two indigenous girls wearing red polo-shirt dresses and moccasins while sitting regally atop red bicycles and staring confidently into the camera. claxton’s accompanying commentary guides us in reading the photo: “i see powerful and knowledgeable girls who have the enormous potential to lead us into a just future. i see girls who thrive and survive despite the violence of colonialism and settler colonialism” (97). kelly edzerza-bapty and claire anderson’s presentation of their rematriate project in “more than meets the eye” similarly employs photography to resist colonial representations of native women and girls and make visible “that indigenous women are not a single stereotyped age; that they hold multiple identities and are much more than meets the eye” (95). indigenous cultural worker tanaya winder has developed the concept of “heartwork” to describe the labor of finding one’s passion, using one’s gifts to ignite healing in others, and to live (and create) revolutionary love. #notyourprincess is a powerful and greatly needed example of heartwork in action. each of the contributors to the text have passionately and sincerely employed their experiences, their talents, their visions, and their dreams to ignite healing in other native women and girls. this labor is not easy. indeed, as winder herself reminds us, this labor is necessarily (at times) the labor of “div[ing] headfirst into the muck, ugliness, stark darkness of transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     191   that wreckage [of colonialism]” (79). but this labor is also transformational. “this is what we do,” winder declares, “we recast wounds in unending light. and so, light, love, and courage are circles we keep coming back to” (79). for this reader, #notyourprincess is another of those things i will keep coming back to – a light in the settler colonial and heteropatriarchal darkness. kimberly robertson, california state university, los angeles microsoft word burkhart.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     171   tanya talaga. seven fallen feathers: racism, death and hard truths in a northern city. toronto: house of anansi press. 361 pp. isbn: 9781487002268. https://houseofanansi.com/products/seven-fallen-feathers. in the prologue to seven fallen feathers: racism, death, and hard truths in a northern city, tanya talaga shares the story of a broken promise between nanabijou and the ojibwe. the giant nanabijou offers protection and peace for the ojibwe as long as they keep secret the silvery metal found in the rocks near gichigami, known to the white man as lake superior. a sioux man, taken in and cared for by the ojibwe, surreptitiously discovers and steals some of the shiny metal. the sioux man is then caught and, with the aid of alcohol, is persuaded to share the secret of the metal with the white man. as the promise is broken, nanabijou is “turned from warm flesh and blood to solid stone,” leaving the ojibwe to fend for themselves (3). talaga continues in the prologue to provide a brief history of thunder bay, ontario, “a city of two faces” (3). she explains the stark division between the white and indigenous communities, port arthur and fort william respectively. as the white community grew and the fur trade diminished, indian assimilation became a white objective to be carried out through residential schooling. although more than a century has passed since the first residential school was built in thunder bay, mistreatment of indigenous students persists. talaga writes with precision, grace, and compassion about contemporary atrocities perpetrated on indigenous youth in thunder bay, ontario. she writes to understand the stories of the seven lost students who are the subjects of this book, the seven “fallen feathers,” you must understand thunder bay’s past, how the seeds of division, of acrimony and distaste, of a lack of cultural understanding and awareness, were planted in those early days, and how they were watered and nourished with misunderstanding and ambivalence. and you must understand how the government of canada has historically underfunded education and health services for indigenous children, providing consistently lower levels of support than for non-indigenous kids, and how it continues to do so to this day. the white face of prosperity built its own society as the red face powerlessly stood and watched. (11) talaga’s account of seven children who lost their lives as residential school students is as clear and comprehensive as it is heart-wrenching. her clarity of prose and journalistic proclivity make this book simultaneously easy and difficult to read. that is, the fluidity of her writing does little to ease the dreadful nature of her subject. talaga painstakingly recounts the lives and deaths of jordan wabasse, jethro anderson, curran strang, paul panacheese, robyn harper, reggie bushie, kyle morrisseau, all killed while attending residential school in thunder bay. by pointing to the systemic causes and the lack of governmental funding and involvement that allows deaths such as these to proliferate, talaga seeks to offer hope that indigenous students can get the support they need so that these atrocities do not continue. talaga highlights those in the community who work tirelessly not only for the safety and wellbeing of students who attend school there in thunder bay, but also for justice for those who have lost their lives there as well. she exposes the aftermath of the families who have lost their loved ones and their resiliency as they continue to move forward in spite of the void in their lives of losing a child. brett douglas burkhart review of seven fallen feathers     172   the book can feel repetitive in places, and talaga’s research has provided a lengthy list of names of those involved that can be overwhelming. in talaga’s defense, the occurrences of these injustices and atrocities are repetitive and overwhelming, not to mention sickening and demoralizing. talaga provides the kind of awareness that precedes action and a staunch and noteworthy optimism in the face of adversity that should embolden her readers. in the epilogue, talaga writes that alvin fiddler, grand chief of nishnawbe aski nation and thunder bay resident, continues to work in an effort to provide safety for the indigenous children of thunder bay, but that he knows “time is ticking” (314). every passing moment is vital to the well-being of these children and, therefore, to the future. talaga imagines fiddler as he prepares for the canada day holiday and country’s 150th birthday in 2017: he will be at a powwow in grand council treaty no. 3 territory with his family. he will be standing in a circle with all the nations surrounding him in ceremonial dance, and he will be thinking of the children before him decked out in their beautiful jingle dresses, their bright-coloured ribbons, and their feathers, and he will wonder about their future and what he can do to make sure they make it to the final prophecy – the eighth fire. can the settlers and the indigenous people come together as one and move forward in harmony? fiddler hopes against hope that the colonial past will be overcome and that for the good of the country we call canada, the anishinaabe nation will rise strong. (315) the final words of talaga’s important book strike a personal note in the acknowledgements section as she writes to her own children, “you two are the next generation: remember who you are and carry the stories forward” (349). it is only through remembering the fallen and telling the stories that we can ever hope to escape a brutal and unjust past and present. this work is important, and not just for canada. talaga’s attention to detail and willingness to meet with people and help to tell their stories serves as the kind of vehicle of truth that leads to healing for indigenous people, not only in canada, but everywhere indigenous people are subjected to the injustices of systemic racism and the deleterious aftermath of colonial practices. the “hard truths” that talaga shares in this book are indeed difficult, but she also shares stories of those who are taking action to prevent further violence against indigenous youth and stories of those who are beginning to heal. and talaga reminds us that where there are stories, there is hope. brett douglas burkhart, university of oklahoma microsoft word deer.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   133   cheryl suzack. indigenous women’s writing and the cultural study of law. toronto: university of toronto press, 2017. 208 pp. isbn: 978-1442628588. https://utorontopress.com/us/indigenous-women-s-writing-and-the-cultural-study-of-law-2. as an indigenous attorney, i work within the boundaries of the law. even when crafting unique and novel legal arguments, i am still situated in the dominant society’s discourse about law, rights, and governance. the principles of precedent and stare decisis still hold great weight in the approach of the legal profession to social problems. thus, i am challenged and intrigued by cheryl suzack’s indigenous women’s writing and the cultural study of law. suzack’s approach to legal principles and indigenous feminisms offers liberating and forward-thinking approach to justice for native women. by exploring how indigenous women articulate conceptions of justice in storytelling, suzack transcends the typical critiques of anti-indian jurisprudence and offers a fresh perspective on landmark judicial decisions. as such, her project touches on a wide variety of academic disciplines and activist communities. this monograph should be required reading for anyone interested in gender and law. as suzack explains in chapter 2, “literary texts question legal appropriations by articulating the gender injustice that follows from legal reasoning…” (49). thus, suzack uses literary analysis to present cogent critiques of four cases. suzack’s project is divided into four main chapters, each with a focus on one court case and a corresponding novel authored by an indigenous woman. by juxtaposing the judicial decision-making with the fictional texts, suzack offers novel ways to critique the judicial decision that often aren’t part of typical legal critique. the pairings and alignments are illuminating. even those already intimately familiar with the cases will find themselves challenged to re-think their common assumptions. in chapter 1, gendering the politics of tribal sovereignty, suzack tackles one of the thorniest united states indian law cases of the 20th century – santa clara pueblo v. martinez (1978). the martinez case is widely celebrated as a victory for tribal nations in the united states, because it articulated a clear principle of tribal sovereignty and preserved the right of tribal nations to make citizenship decisions without federal interference. for many native women, however, the substantive result of the decision is devastating. julia martinez was a citizen of the santa clara pueblo who challenged the pueblo’s patrilineal rules for citizenship. her children, fathered by her navajo husband, were denied citizenship in the pueblo because they did not have a santa clara father. in her appeal to the u.s. supreme court, martinez argued that the pueblo citizenship law violated her (and her children’s) constitutional rights to due process and equal protection. the supreme court rejected her arguments, holding that tribal nations cannot be sued in federal court for alleged violations of the indian civil rights act. the court also noted that issues such as “tribal custom and tradition” (e.g. citizenship laws) should fall under the exclusive purview of tribal nations. in many federal indian law texts, this case is represented as a rare “victory” for tribal nations and that concludes the story. suzack, through her critical reading of leslie marmon silko’s 1977 novel ceremony, problematizes the outcome of the martinez case through the lens of a “dignity-based consciousness” (21) for indigenous women. because the martinez decision prioritizes tribal sovereignty over gender discrimination, many native women’s voices on the outcome have largely been silenced. a major theme in silko’s ceremony concerns the “legally enforced social disposability” (36) of native women. silko’s novel sarah deer review of indigenous women’s writing   134   beautifully articulates how the disenfranchisement of indigenous women presents a direct threat to the existence of tribal nations. by exploring silko’s prose, suzack is able to push back against dominant narrative that martinez was the correct result because it purported to protect tribal sovereignty. suzack challenges us to understand martinez as a case that failed native women which, in turn, has significant implications for tribal survivance. this insight encourages the reader to think critically about the interconnection between native women and tribal sovereignty. instead of adopting the mainstream “tribal sovereignty above all else” discourse, suzack skillfully argues that recognition of native women is not something to be sacrificed on the federal altar. in doing so, she encourages the reader to remember that recognition and dignity of native women is the foundation of tribal sovereignty and self-determination. chapter two, the legal silencing of indigenous women, considers the decision of racine v. woods, a canadian case, alongside beatrice culleton mosioner’s fictional autobiography, in search of april raintree, both published in 1983. racine v. woods is a troubling case about child custody, in which an indigenous woman, linda jean woods, permanently lost custody of her seven-year-old daughter in part because of perceptions of woods’ “bad choices” and “false consciousness.” racine v. woods represents a disconcerting approach to tribal custody decisions because the canadian court elevated the abstract “best interests of the child” over the fundamental importance of raising indigenous children within indigenous communities. mosioner’s autobiographical character, april, likewise suffers through several of the common tribulations of indigenous women and girls – including out-adoption, foster care and sexual assault. suzack draws parallels between april and the litigant linda jean woods, exploring how the western legal system simultaneously exploits and dismisses their testimonies as indigenous women. for both woods and april, western courts “create the conditions of social segregation” by cruelly separating families and denying the collective rights of indigenous women. suzack’s masterful treatment of this topic illustrates the ways that colonial violence continues to be ubiquitous in the courts of the conqueror. chapter three, colonial governmentality and gender violence, combines a somewhat lesserknown case, minnesota v. zay zah (1977) with louise erdrich’s 1998 novel the antelope wife. building on the themes from prior chapters, suzack artfully explores how land dispossession has cogent gender implications that are often ignored in mainstream legal discourse. minnesota v. zay zah in the dominant narrative, represented a victory for a tribal citizen whose ancestor’s allotment had been illegally forfeited to the state of minnesota. embedded within the litigation, however, the question of blood quantum was central – because the united states government had attempted to craft different rules for “full-bloods” and “mixed-blood” indians. blood quantum was created by the colonial government as a primary way to separate bodies from land. as suzack notes, the case illuminated the “failure of the federal government to safeguard indigenous peoples’ land rights…” and exposed the widespread, outright theft of indian lands in the early 20th century. suzack’s connection of the case to erdrich’s novel is not as strong as the first two chapters (in part because gender is not a direct component of the zay zah case), but does allow her to explore how dispossession (in all its forms) disparately affects indigenous women. the antelope wife tells the story of a family of ojibwa women who are physically and psychologically displaced through colonial violence over the course of many decades, which nearly severs their familial and social ties. like colonial blood quantum rules, violence committed against indigenous women threatens the very fabric of tribal societies by denying indigenous people their rightful cultural inheritance. the journey of the characters in the novel to transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   135   regain cultural continuity form the basis for suzack’s poignant assertion that “…it is only through acceptance and integration rather than separation and denial that women are able to recover a sense of their inheritances and intergenerational community relations.” (97). the final chapter, land claims, identity claims continues the discussion of the white earth experience by exploring how a failed challenge to the 1986 white earth land settlement act (welsa) spearheaded by acclaimed native activist winona laduke, represented the continuation of colonial entanglements with land and law. chapter 4 is not as cohesive as the prior three chapters, in part because suzack uses this chapter to more fully explicate what she means by an “indigenous standpoint” feminist perspective (a section which is well-crafted and argued). the legal text centered in this chapter is the 1991 manypenny v. united states case that denied a challenge to the welsa, which suzack situates alongside laduke’s novel last standing woman. this pairing is perhaps the most cogent in the book because laduke was a primary plaintiff in the manypenny case. manypenny represents, for many a complete failure of the federal justice system to remedy the historical injustices done to the white earth people. instead of returning the stolen land to the rightful heirs of the allottees, welsa authorized nominal payments for the stolen land in order to settle the legal uncertainty that arose in the aftermath of the zay zah case. the manypenny plaintiffs sought to challenge the legal framework established by welsa by seeking to recover the disputed land instead of accepting payment, but their claims were denied. last standing woman introduces gender into the story of dispossession by developing female characters who, despite being victims of horrific violence, establish community connections through a shared vision of collective responsibility for the land. by employing a trans-historical narrative, laduke artfully establishes white earth as a sacred homeland – not a mere “remnant of the treaty process”. the novel thus serves as the literary antidote to the manypenny decision. it also offers a vision of contemporary movement-building through “mutual respect and cultural obligation.” early in chapter 2, suzack presents a profoundly provocative question: “to what extent can indigenous women turn to law to fulfill their expectations of justice when law and its social consequences have been the source of their disentitlement and oppression?” (51). as an indigenous feminist lawyer trained in the american legal system, this question is unsettling. but after reading suzack’s finely crafted monograph, i am left with a sense of hope and gratitude for what indigenous feminist literature can teach us about the quest for justice, which often takes place far from the courthouse doors. sarah deer, university of kansas microsoft word 1080-article text-6331-1-18-20221216.docx transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 95 “in the shallows of a lake that goes on forever”: reconstructing native becoming in stephen graham jones’s mapping the interior zachary s. laminack father of ash. father of a past without a mouth. he who ate too much of / the sunset. what is it to live, to suffer, and, above all, to love in an emotionally inflexible world fashioned to produce men who eat “too much of the sunset?” we are haunted by that turning point, brought back to it again and again. but it doesn’t once and for all consign us to a ravaged life. there is more to be said; there is another mode of life to inhabit. billy-ray belcourt in the introduction to masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood, sam mckegney offers the title concept in an attempt to capture reductive representations of indigenous masculinities within settler culture.1 as mckegney explains, settler stereotypes produce images of native men as “the noble savage and the bloodthirsty warrior” and their offshoots: “the ecological medicine man, the corrupt band councilor, and the drunken absentee” (1). such figures, as sarah kent observes, have always been marked for death. “the masculindian is always dead before he arrives,” kent claims, because “there is no futurity for the figure of the masculindian” (123). taiaiake alfred likewise sees such figures as “meant to be killed” because they fuel settler fantasies of violence that in turn perpetuate the violent erasure of actual native men (79). the line zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 96 between the “actual” and the image in these discussions reflects their grounding in the concept of simulations.2 mckegney sees the “masculindian” as a tool for revealing settler cultural simulacra, akin to gerald vizenor’s conception of the indian as simulation from manifest manners, and offers it as a way to meet the “urgent need” to “grapple with both indianness and masculinity” (3).3 robert alexander innes and kim anderson, in their introduction to indigenous men and masculinities, contextualize the urgency of these critiques within statistical evidence of health disparity, victimization, and violence and argue that negative and limiting representations of indigenous men stem from “the hegemonic masculinity that is perpetuated through white supremacist patriarchy and conveyed by education, news, and entertainment institutions” (9).4 “as a result of the colonization of their lands, minds, and bodies,” innes and anderson continue, “many indigenous men not only come to accept these perceptions but also come to internalize them” (10). as these arguments make clear, native masculinities as imagined within settler fantasies of violence and erasure are unlivable. the question that rises to the surface among all of these arguments, then, is how to repair masculinities in order to locate, as kent puts it, “a liveable ontology for indigenous masculinity” (122). however, to the extent that questions of repair posit a “deficit model” of masculinity, as jessica perea argues in her essay on iñupiaq men and masculinities, they reflect an animating sense of crisis that pervades the field of men’s studies.5 the notion of a deficit within contemporary masculinities, perea suggests, tends to “assume that there was once one universal and honorable way to be a man” (127). expressive of the orientation of men’s studies toward deeply essentializing notions of gender that index masculinity to qualities supposedly inherent to bodies understood as male, the universalizing discourse of men’s studies belies a fundamentally conservative orientation toward “past” models of masculinity within which one might find an transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 97 “honorable way to be a man” that could be recovered and redeployed.6 such deficit models arguably animate innes and anderson’s thinking about how to break from “cycles of dysfunction” that they see as endemic to “white supremacist heteropatriarchal masculine identities” while retaining masculinity as a core concept that can be disarticulated from narratives of “indigenous deficiency,” in daniel heath justice’s terms (2).7 mckegney’s “cautious commitment to the ongoing prescience of masculinity” likewise suggests that deficit models animate some discussions of recovery throughout the collection, particularly when such concepts are grounded in “traditional” conceptualizations of gendered roles that one can recover or “dig up” (4).8 as mckegney notes, however, such questions are fraught from the outset with concerns over “the pull of gender essentialism, biological determinism, and what vizenor calls the ‘faux science’ of ‘race’” (3). added to these problematics, in his recent carrying the burden of peace, mckegney further cautions “vigilance” against the threat of what he calls “corrosive inheritances” of heteropatriarchy: “homophobia, misogyny, and/or hypermasculinity” (xxii-xxiii). considering mckegney’s cautions, how might the notion of “corrosive inheritances” further complicate efforts to recover past masculinities or to reawaken gendered knowledges imagined as flowing through one’s blood? in the context of a discussion regarding recovering rites of passage into manhood, richard van camp, whose novel the lesser blessed is often cited in conversations about indigenous masculinities, explains “i love to ask people . . . ‘when did you know you were a man? when did you feel that body wake up inside your blood?’” (188). offered as an alternative to settler stories of becoming gendered, van camp’s sense of a body “waking up” in the blood suggests a view of the body as what lisa tattonetti has recently called a “somatic archive of indigenous knowledge” (78). drawing on studies of trauma and affect, tattoneti reads “n. scott momaday’s trope of zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 98 memory in the blood” as an early encapsulation of more recent scientific studies of affective inheritance that suggests “historical trauma persists within the body at a cellular level” and that as a result we might also speculate that “survival mechanisms” likewise persist and flow as “memories in the blood” (78-79). van camp’s sense of manhood “awakening” in the blood may suggest “blood memory” as a kind of sociosomatic inheritance that one’s body and oneself becomes. though van camp imagines the body waking up in one’s blood as a “survival mechanism,” in the sense of waking up to the potential knowledges carried in one’s blood, how might this way of imagining blood also work to solidify conceptual links between masculinity as a “lived cluster of meanings” in mckegney’s phrasing (5), and “manhood” as a supposedly essential biological quality lying in wait in one’s blood? the “masculindian” or other ways of naming colonialist formations of indigenous manhood, imagined as simulacra of settler culture or as distracting and damaging layers of settler history that have accumulated around and thus obfuscated core notions of indigenous manhood beneath, appear as different versions of van camp’s image of a masculine body in one’s blood waiting to be awakened. though not always presented through such metaphors, arguments that one’s experience of life is an experience of aberration that has thwarted the potential to become otherwise posit that an otherwise nevertheless exists but has not yet found the catalyst that will precipitate its actualization. from a perspective oriented toward deconstructing and dismantling the permeation of settler heteropatriarchy and racialized formations within which indigeneity becomes “indianness,” such lines of critique are necessary interventions into the continual barrage of misrepresentations and their effects on everyday ways of living. but how might those same ways of thinking about gender, particularly with respect to “manhood” and “tradition,” flow alongside settler chronobiopolitical narratives wherein “failure to become” is viewed as an aberration transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 99 that, to paraphrase billy-ray belcourt, consigns one to a ravaged life? how are the imagined “failures” variously configured within notions of futureless native masculinities also stories of “squandered potential” as junior, protagonist of stephen graham jones’s mapping the interior, imagines them (16)? and what happens when such narratives are fused with notions of dormancy, and “squandered potential” becomes a way of figuring masculine “failure” in terms of heredity and biology, as something that “awakens” in one’s blood? what lies in wait “inside” within these ways of storying native masculinities? mapping the interior is a narrative of “squandered potential,” but not in the ways those terms are typically deployed. junior tells the story of his adolescence as being shaped around his father’s absence from his life and the stories of “squandered potential” (16) offered to explain that absence. the main narrative sequences take place between junior’s twelfth and thirteenth birthdays. throughout them, junior experiences sleepwalking episodes during which he begins to see a silhouette figure he believes to be his father returned from the dead. junior theorizes sleepwalking, however, in a way that destabilizes his—and readers’—certainty as to the content of his vision: to sleepwalk is to be inhabited, yes, but not by something else, so much. what you’re inhabited by, what’s kicking one foot in front of the other, its yourself. . . if anything, being inhabited by yourself like that, what it tells you is that there’s a real you squirming down inside you, trying all through the day to pull up the surface, look out. but it can only get that done when your defenses are down. when you’re sleeping. (12) the “real you” junior imagines bears striking resemblance to van camp’s images of dormant masculinity and through that image jones situates junior’s experience of the silhouette figure he sees as the beginnings of a “dim shape” he feels himself becoming zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 100 (99). that dim shape—a silhouette outline of a fancydancer that recurs throughout the narrative (14, 52, 62, 69, 88-89, 91)—is drawn around details from stories that color junior’s imagination of his father’s life. as his aunts tell it, junior’s father wanted to be a fancydancer as a boy but the world got in the way. instead of becoming a dancer, junior’s father kept “living [his] high school years five years after high school” (30), and was found dead in a lake on the reservation by the time junior was four. recalling his aunt’s description of his father as being “how you talk about dead people… especially dead indians,” junior notes that such talk is “all about squandered potential, not actual accomplishments” (16). junior’s reflections frame the narrative of his becomingmasculine as a process of becoming a silhouette story of “squandered potential” and cast his adolescence as a period in which that “potential” begins to wake up. unfolded through metaphors of “life cycles” and chrysalides (107, 46), jones imagines junior as living through determinist models of native masculinity that posit “potential” as a hereditable content that one will perpetually fail to actualize as one “develops” into an adulthood shaped by talk about “dead indians” (16). through junior’s story and the storyworld in which jones wraps junior’s experiences, jones highlights the relationship between story—how one narrates the possible and the impossible—and becoming. talk about “dead indians” forecloses on futures in which one might live otherwise, jones suggests, because living otherwise appears impossible to actualize within stories of “squandered potential” (16). although mapping may appear to follow the general shape of critiques of indigenous masculinities as overdetermined models that nevertheless “produce very real men,” in brenden hokowhitu’s phrase (“taxonomies” 81), the silhouette figure junior imagines himself becoming challenges notions of “internalized” colonial models of masculinity and deeply problematizes the search for reparable and recoverable models of manhood. the figure junior imagines first as the fancydancer his father transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 101 always wanted to be in life eventually takes on monstrously vampiric form and feeds on junior’s brother dino’s blood (88-89). mapping illustrates that this figure, decidedly not a figure of repair, likewise lies dormant in stories of “blood.” stories in which possible masculinities are narrated as “either penetrative or extractive,” as daniel heath justice observes, represent a “catastrophic failure of the imagination and a huge ethical breach” (“fighting shame” 145). it is out of this kind of “tradition,” storied through narratives of “squandered potential” as a “life cycle,” that jones suggests vampiric silhouettes emerge. cast through a father who feeds on his son’s blood, jones links the critical frame of an absent future to the notion of potential as something one inherits through blood and then actualizes into “accomplishments” or “squanders” into the next generation’s inheritance. mapping’s dark portrayal of native masculinity as a vampiric cycle of self-destruction nevertheless holds out peoplehood and kinship as possible alternatives to the self-sustaining cycles of extractive violence that try to drain those concepts of their future.9 in this vein, mapping imagines living and feeling through the conceptual knots of masculinity, indianness, and blood in ways that foreground the inescapable tethers of such concepts to essentialist and biologically determinative racial constructs. throughout the narrative these constructs figure as a generic “indianness” with which junior identifies and through which junior apprehends the silhouette figure he believes to be his father’s rematerialized potential. as already dead or death-bound, the silhouette figure junior perceives suggests the influences of “masculindian” constructs. the narrative’s conceptualization of generic indianness as patrilineal inheritance, however, complicates such readings. junior remembers his father as a man who “never danced. he didn’t go to pow-wows” was “neither a throwback nor a fallback. he didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the stories, and didn’t care that he didn’t” (14). in terms of relations to land, junior recalls his father joining fire crews “not to protect any zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 102 ancestral land” but because he could sell the fire service-issued pants to hunters in the fall (14). of his father’s childhood, junior imagines that “when you grow up in indian country, the tv tells you how to be indian” (15). he recalls his aunts explaining that when “his eyes were still big with dreams” junior’s father had been “really into bows and arrows and headbands,” “the exciting part of your heritage” that junior wryly observes “you can always find at the gift shop” (15). of specific stories or tribal traditions, junior recalls them only in terms of stories from the “old-time indian days” (107), which he often dismisses as childish in the same breath (101). taken together, these details suggest that the stories of “dead indians” junior inherits, and out of which he tries to discern the shape of the man he feels himself becoming, profoundly shape junior’s retrospective narration of his becoming-masculine. stories that take shape within structures of assimilative erasure, as jones illustrates, foreclose on the ability to talk about the dead’s “actual accomplishments” because such accomplishments appear otherwise unremarkable against “tradition”— speaking the language, dancing, and relating to one’s ancestral territory— as a horizon of expectation. however, that junior imagines these traditions as uninheritable further underscores the narrative’s critique of blood metaphors in relation to masculinities and indigeneity. mapping here suggests that inheritance and indigeneity (at least as imagined through language and land as important orientations of peoplehood) are not equivalent; but generic “indianness” and the discursive frame within which it becomes a way of talking about impossible futures is imagined to flow through patrilineal lines of descent.10 what gets in the way of the “future” and what creates the conditions within which junior imagines his father’s return as a vampire who feeds on dino is presented in the narrative as simply “the world” that finds and “does its thing” to native men (98). at once an image of ambient and free-floating violence, “the world” also suggests transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 103 quotidian routines. in this vein, simply living—growing into adulthood—“does its thing.” junior’s world is filled with detective shows (56, 81), bus stop and school violence (26, 39, 57-58), ferocious, rabid dogs (29, 42-55), an enraged and potentially homicidal neighbor who junior may or may not have murdered in self-defense (70-75), an abusive sheriff’s deputy (74-75), and the threatening rematerialization of his fatheras-vampire (80-89). “the world” thus presents junior with a near constant barrage of extractive and violent models of masculinity that become the background against which he perceives his father’s return and his relationship to his father’s silhouette form. the background, as mark rifkin develops the concept in beyond settler time, “serves less as an inert setting than as the condition of possibility for registering action, change, survival… absent a background, nothing can figure in or as the foreground and be available for attention, perception, or acknowledgement” (11). to the extent that violence is “the background,” in this sense, of the world in which junior lives, his father’s “squandered potential,” suggested by the fancydance regalia the figure appears to wear, figures in the foreground as the shape of junior’s becoming. in contradistinction to the tendency to assume “internalization” within critical discussions of indigenous models of masculinity, mapping suggests settler violence is the background condition of possibility against which masculinities in general can figure. jones thus critiques notions of “tradition” as a recuperative well for native masculinities because the concepts of “tradition” and “masculinity” appear inextricable from the background violence against which they take form. part of what the “world” of broader settler violence does, jones suggests, is reproduce a patriarchal orientation toward women and, in mapping, toward stories of peoplehood, kinship, and land. junior’s family lives in a modular home “down in the flats” off the reservation (100). noting the difference between a modular home and a “trailer,” junior explains that a modular house “stays there, more or less” while “a zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 104 trailer. . . can still roam if need be” (18). junior’s mother, though, refers to “home” as the reservation, explaining at one point that “if we were back home, everybody would be saying” that junior looks like his father (37). despite her fear for what her sons might become on the reservation, she remembers it as a place of kinship and peoplehood. “unlike dad,” junior recalls, “she wasn’t still living her high school years five years after high school. but she did have her own sisters, and one brother still alive, and aunts and uncles and cousins and the rest, kind of like a net she could fall back into, if she ever needed them” (30). “the rest” suggests a broad “net” of relations and relationships. however, the background patriarchal violence against which her sons’ futures appear fated to follow their father’s also does its thing to her memories and sensations of kinship. as junior narrates the memory, his mother felt these relations to have become a form of currency she was compelled to trade if she wanted to keep her sons alive: “but she cashed all that in. because, she said, she didn’t want either one of us drowning in water we didn’t have to drown in, someday” (30). the scene suggests that the broader world of settler violence in which junior experiences himself is the world in which his mother experienced her networks of relations as fungible for her son’s potential futures. the narrative ironically casts these choices as likewise subject to “talk about… dead indians” (16), though, because such potentials as might have been possible on the reservation remain obfuscated against the violence of dispossession. though jones is not explicit about mapping’s relationship to specific stories or lands, the narrative action resonates with blackfeet story in ways that suggest an alternative “background” for the narrative action, one that is obscured, or rendered in “silhouette” through the “world” that “does its thing.”11 junior recounts experiences within, between, and across what rosalyn lapier describes as “three dimensions” of the universe within blackfeet knowledge: “the above world, the below world, and the water world” (26). lapier explains that these dimensions are understood to be transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 105 “parallel… existing side by side and separate. but they were also interconnected and permeable” (26). junior’s experiences in various spaces throughout the narrative including in a lake on the reservation at the narrative’s conclusion (91-92), a scene to which i return below, may allude to blackfeet conceptualizations of multidimensionality. further, it is also possible that mapping’s plot alludes to blackfeet stories of supernatural beings who, as lapier writes, “transcended” the three dimensions, “such as napiwa, kotoyissa, and paie” (27). lapier explains: napiwa, or old man, is a supernatural being who as far as we know has lived forever. he was foolish, petty, and greedy. he lived life in the extreme, always wanting too much or too little. katoyissa, or blood clot, was a superhero who travelled the below world, ridding it of monsters to make it safer for the niitsitapi, or humans. and paie, or scar face, played a similar role in the above world. he became a superhero for his role in travelling the above world, ridding it of evil beings to make it safe for the beings in the above world. (27) the superhero, whether as an image or as an action figure, recurs throughout mapping (26, 32, 69, 82-83, 90-91, 106),12 and is often figured as a bridge between moments set in different “levels” of the house—whether below or above—as well as being represented as a key element of junior’s transportation to the lake in which he confronts his father (90-91). additionally, junior recalls his father in terms similar to lapier’s characterization of napiwa or old man through a story of “the old-time indian days” in which “a father died, but then he came back. he was different when he came back, he was hungry, he was selfish, but that’s just because he already had all that in him when he died, i know. it’s because he carried it with him into the lake that night” (105). junior, likewise, suggests lapier’s characterization of katoyissa because he imagines himself as “the one who fought the monster” for dino, “for all of us” (104). similarly, in a scene where junior lays outside at night and feels for the moment an zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 106 urge to fly his brother dino’s superhero action figure against a backdrop of stars (69), jones may be alluding to blackfeet stories of paie, or scar face that lapier describes as a “superhero” of the above world. to the extent that blackfeet notions of multidimensionality and entities within blackfeet story might make up the structure of junior’s experiences they suggest the superimposition of competing backgrounds. yet, when such suggestions appear in the text, junior dismisses them as childlike fantasy: as when he resists the urge to fly dino’s superhero against the stars because he “wasn’t a kid anymore” (69); or when following junior’s description of encountering his father in the lake, he imagines a conventional close to “a lot of indian stories”—in which his mother “gathers [the boys] in her arms” and “the moon or a deer or a star” comes down “making everything whole again”—as being from “a long time ago” “before we all grew up” (101). junior’s consistent dismissals of the potential resonance of blackfeet story echo his earlier sense of the way one talks about “dead indians” (16). through the suggestion that knowing blackfeet story, or more generally the stories of one’s people, might help junior renarrate and reframe his sense of himself in relation to his people, jones offers dismissal of that potential as a kind of deadness. whether in the sense that something within junior that would be otherwise receptive to story has been killed by a world hostile to it or that through growing into adulthood junior was encouraged to become “dead to” potentialities in excess of settler framings of “the world,” jones casts this sort of deadness as the orientation of “properly” acculturated native men—“dead indians” in the novel’s idiom—who believe their potential to become otherwise has already been “squandered.” to the extent that such stories could have provided a sense of the world as existing otherwise than as represented in the broader settler imaginary, they represent talk of “squandered potential” against the reality of “actual accomplishments” (16). transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 107 the “actual” in this sense refers to the “real world” (103) in which causal connections between actions and outcomes appear self-evident and discrete. the contrast between “real” and childlike ways of placing experience within a broader narrative framework— such as junior’s sense of “reality” as an unfolding forensic narrative juxtaposed to “indian” story as childlike fantasy one grows out of as “the world” “does its thing” (98)—points to the dramatic irony between junior’s story and the storyworld mapping wraps around him. through junior’s ambivalent relation to blackfeet storying, jones highlights the extent to which he experiences becoming-masculine as a process that requires distancing himself from “story” in ways that translate the potential of blackfeet storying to help situate his lived experience into a relic of outdated “indianness” “from a long time ago” (101). given the suggestion of blackfeet story as a possible background against which to orient junior’s experience of becoming-masculine, his distance from those stories stands out in sharp relief. he imagines that distance spatially—as being “nearly a whole state away” from the reservation—and temporally as stories emanating from a past long ago (101). junior’s feeling estranged from place and story suggests the narrative’s presentation of masculinity and generic indianness unfolds in part through a critique of settler time. within settler timelines, lived relations to place, people, and land are often narrated as “of a past” incommensurable with a present understood as “a neutral, common frame” against which other ways of conceptualizing or sensing time appear either as aberrations or as different ways of conceiving of what is ultimately the same temporal plane (rifkin, beyond 3).13 part of junior’s struggle to understand his father’s potential reemergence throughout the narrative and to reconcile it with his own feelings of becoming the silhouette he perceives comes from his difficulty reconciling the possibility of their occurring simultaneously in different places and times. viewed from a temporal frame of reference in which the present always succeeds the past and zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 108 moves toward the future, reemergent figures such as the silhouette junior experiences appear to “haunt” from a past that breaks into or disrupts the present.14 however, junior’s experience of space and time collapses when he confronts the materialized silhouette and attempts to drown it by plunging dino’s superhero action figure into the kitchen sink. “it slipped into the cold water, and then—” junior recalls, “—and then the water, it was lapping all around us. around both of us… we were on the reservation… we were in the shallows of the lake” (91-92). breaking the section on either side of the em dash, jones graphically illustrates junior’s experience of moving through space and time. notably, the water and the superhero figure—suggesting allusions to elements of blackfeet story and multidimensionality—combine to transport junior to a lake on the reservation where he experiences mysteriously having become an adult confronting his father’s conventionally human form in the moments before he drowned (90-92). within the temporal frame of junior’s story, this sequence of events would have taken place at least nine years earlier when junior and dino would have been four and one respectively. at the time, junior was in the hospital “nearly dying of pneumonia” (13). as such, reconciling the experience through the rubric of the conventional present appears impossible. however, the event is narrated as though it occurs in “real time” in the same way as any other scene, and thus suggests that junior experiences this moment as a moment of multidimensionality. from this frame of reference, the events within the sequence in the lake become possible turning points that present alternative ways of inhabiting one’s relationship to land and peoplehood. in the lake he sees his father, “‘park’ in this memory,” who recognizes him as “junior” (92, 94). junior is determined to drown park in order to “save dino. no matter how much it hurt” (95). as junior pummels park, he is interrupted for a moment by park’s striking question: “‘what are you… what are we doing, junior, man?’” despite the question, junior presses ahead with the actions he transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 109 believes to be fated, and drowns his father “in the shallows of a lake that goes on forever” (103). however, jones leaves open the possibility that the question park poses is part of the central structure that tethers junior to this moment and keeps the determinative cycle going, a structure reproduced as park’s and junior’s “spitting image,” collin (103). the feeling of being tethered to a place one is compelled to revisit and a moment one is compelled to relive is another way of signaling the determinist conjunction of racial formations and discourses of impossibility jones describes as “squandered potential” and the way one talks about “dead indians” (16). through the image of a tetherball pole (33), which junior years later finds still standing near the site of their burned-down-years-ago modular home when he returns with dino in hopes of re-cycling the process (105), jones illustrates the scene of junior’s memories as an anchorage that ensures his eventual return. importantly, this anchorage is off reservation, and within the terms through which the book presents something like landedness in relation to peoplehood, it is “outside” the boundaries of the “net” of people and relations junior’s mother imagines there (30). thus, in geopolitical terms, junior is tethered to a place that appears to keep him away from his people. however, despite not knowing the precise location of “the flats” where mapping takes place, the extent of blackfeet homelands encompasses the better part of present-day northern montana, the majority of which was recognized by the u.s. as blackfeet territory in an 1855 treaty with the blackfoot confederacy.15 the contrast between “the reservation” and “the flats” highlights the clustered effects and affects produced by the successive encroachments on and dispossessions of blackfeet territory since the 1855 treaty, including especially the “ceded strip” that today makes up part of glacier national park.16 in this vein, figuring the reservation as “home” as opposed to imagining “home” to extend beyond the reservation boundary suggests that the confluence of zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 110 settler geopolitics, jurisprudence, and dispossession has severed junior’s experience of relations to family and kin from his experience of land and territory. in other words, as a policy object and geopolitical boundary the reservation is not equivalent to homeland, but the homelands on “the flats” don’t feel like home. the image of the tetherball pole that keeps junior anchored to a space he experiences as a home that is less than home figures this disjuncture, and through it jones suggests that among the “things” the world does as it stories “dead indians” into being is deaden the sense of connection to land and place by tethering the notion of authentic and authenticating peoplehood to the reservation in ways that allow for re-narrating off-reservation space as devoid of relations that sustain peoplehood. imagined as, in billy j. stratton’s terms, “a spectral frontier landscape” where the neighbors are murderous and their dogs are even more so (“habitations”), the tetherball-poll-as-anchorage further suggests that this off-reservation space has become an origin point from which models of vampiric masculinity emerge and remerge. try as he might to get away, the strings attaching bodies to unlivable lives anchored to a landscape storied as a zone of erasure and disappearance will always pull junior back to the center. temporally, returning to the scene suggests a cyclical story in orbit around a fixed point, but the temporal fixity i would argue actually straightens the temporality of the scene around patrilineal descent in a way that sees “return” as successive rather than cyclical. in this sense, jones presents the two settings, “the reservation” and the modular homesite, as different temporal backgrounds against which junior’s experience of time likewise shifts. jones thus illustrates the ways in which the notion of the “background” as that which enables figures to appear in the foreground can also be applied to time as, in rifkin’s terms, “the conditions of emergence for particular temporal sensations” (beyond 24). in the “shallows of a lake that goes on forever,” junior experiences multidimensional realities transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 111 in which choices affecting the sensation of duration (“forever”) in relation to becoming can be made. at the modular homesite, in contrast, junior experiences a unidimensional present that is “tethered” to a past which in turn determines the rhythms and sensations of the future to the extent that a future can be imagined beyond the story of “squandered potential.” shifting frames of reference thus shift the ways temporal sequences can be imagined, and from which multidimensionality and multiple temporalities can be imagined as coextensive but not co-determinative nor mutually exclusive. jones illustrates this possibility through expanding the notion of inhabitance junior experiences as sleepwalking earlier in the narrative. after being transported into the water, junior recalls: “and then it hit me: the same way that, when sleepwalking, i was kind of inhabiting myself, that’s what i was doing here. just, now i was inhabiting someone else. someone before… i had access to this truck owner’s memories, too, and remembered them like they’d happened to me” (92). the lake and the water enable junior to experience forms of collective temporal sequence as potentially expressive of a collective sensation of peoplehood. jones imagines this element of mapping’s alternate temporality through junior’s sense of relation to “every fourth person on our reservation,” who also is named “junior,” “like the same stupid person is trying life after life until he gets it right at last” (94). from this frame of reference, “life after life” suggests an expansive network of mutually unfolding attempts to live otherwise that junior experiences and seemingly inhabits collectively. through the moment of collective temporal experience, jones suggests that junior senses a connection to peoplehood otherwise unavailable to him from other frames of reference and against other temporal backgrounds. park’s question, “what are we doing?” stands out as a moment in which junior could have recognized the “we” as stretching beyond paternal lineage, and thus beyond fathers and sons and blood, to encompass a zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 112 broader “net” of people represented in the narrative as “the reservation” but figured throughout as suggestive of kinship that transcends the boundaries imposed on native space. to the extent that something like a blackfeet surround might be understood to form an alternative temporal and phenomenological background in mapping, jones suggests that recognizing it depends on the stories and memories to which one has access. as i have argued throughout, the language of “squandered potential” is the story through which junior apprehends and imagines his father’s absence and his relationship to it as he recalls becoming-masculine. that story narrates junior’s life as a “cycle” that turns within the racial formation of generic indianness. within that formation, “potential” is imagined as inheritable through blood and inevitably “squandered” through the ways the “world” “does its thing” in situating masculinity against a background of settler violence where native becoming appears in silhouette, an outline suggestive of hopelessly obfuscated content. within such storyscapes, notions of “tradition” appear anchored to the past in ways that cannot be actualized in the present and sensations of peoplehood and land feel epiphenomenal. figures such as mckegney’s “masculindian” appear as already marked for death, signifying in kent’s terms a kind of living-as-walking-dead inextricable from “colonialism’s reliance on necropolitics” or “the governmental determination of the disposability of certain subjects” (122). the search for ways to live through such stories—to find liveable ontologies, to recall kent’s phrase—appears bound to the genre conventions of settler storytelling, as junior’s forensic search for clues that might help him solve the mystery of his father’s absence and yield new facts with which to reconstruct his life illustrates. as glen coulthard notes, discursive formations are “not neutral; they ‘construct’ the topic and objects of our knowledge; they govern ‘the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about.’ they also influence how ideas are ‘put transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 113 into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others.’” (103). hokowhitu reminds us that “the construction of masculinities through the discursive terrain of colonial masculinity produces very real men, who inhabit history, who embody and thus make real the discursive field, who bring to life the world of forms so to speak” (“taxonomies” 81), and that such constructs often “conceal [their] genesis” as “cultural fictions” (“producing” 31). when such fictions take as their terrain heteropartiarchal “discourses and policies,” rifkin argues, they “generate the impression of a sphere of life whose contours are biologically determined (since they supposedly are necessary for human reproduction itself) that exists independently of all forms of political determination, negotiation, and contestation” (“around 1978,” 173). as mapping illustrates throughout, stories figuring native masculinities through a language of “squandered potential,” including critical narratives in which “death” is the outcome for the “simulations” that stalk settler imaginaries, are inevitably stories of violence against becoming otherwise because such stories aim to reconstruct becoming around the supposedly self-evident neutrality of heteropatriarchy. violent settler storyscapes like these are a part of how the “world” “does its thing” through the language of “squandered potential,” an everyday form of biopolitics which jones clearly couches as a critique of racist narratives of indigenous deficiency. jones imagines the violence of such narratives viscerally through a father figure returned to feed on his son’s blood. importantly, the son on which the father feeds is imagined as “already slowing down, or, really, topping out” (87). the silhouette figure needs dino because, jones suggests, the figure’s feedings have arrested dino’s cognitive abilities and as such he has retained his childhood imagination against the world that has “done its thing” to junior and junior’s father. dino’s “blood” is thus pure potential, in the narrative’s frame, from which men who haven’t become in life what they’d hope to become as children, like junior’s father, can zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 114 return to find energy for a new beginning. couched throughout as a heroic effort to save dino from the monster, junior’s choice to sacrifice dino in hopes of bringing back his own son collin betrays junior’s intentions (106). junior makes this decision at the site of the modular home, anchored to the geotemporal location from which his frame of reference forecloses on his ability to acknowledge notions of connection or peoplehood that lie outside the lines of patrilineal descent. jones offers the scene through another indictment of the “world” that does its thing. junior explains: in the movies, after you beat up the bad guy… then all the injuries it inflicted, they heal right up. that’s not how it works in the real world. here’s one way it can work in the real world: the son you accidentally father at a pow-wow in south dakota grows into the spitting image of a man you remember sitting in the shallows of a lake that goes on forever. like to remind me what i did, what i’d had to do. (103) junior’s sense of what he “had to do” is another way of representing the notion of a phenomenal background of experience. against the background of broader settler violence, erasure, and dispossession, what presents itself in the foreground is further violence construed as a painful and impossible zero-sum choice. focused on “life cycles” as images of biological determinism, mapping’s imagined return of the father to feed on the son illustrates the ways blood metaphors rely on the presumption of biological essentialism for their meaning. through a sustained cycle of emergence, violence, and absence, the men in mapping offer a dark illustration of what it might be like to live through essentialist narratives of “indianness” as blood. the recurrent motif of “squandered potential” likewise plays into rhetorical tropes of tragedy and the vanishing indian embedded in notions of blood and racialized forms of kinship and family. the threat that one’s blood will “run out” makes blood a valuable resource. imagining a vampiric father figure who needs dino’s blood, transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 115 “something inside him” (87), “inside of dino’s bones” (84), to get solid enough to live as he was supposed to, jones illustrates the ways in which bodies and blood can be situated as resources whose “content” becomes “extractable” as sustenance for a future that seems otherwise impossible without it. junior recalls a moment when he began to realize what the silhouette figure wanted and what it would eventually take: i always thought—i think anybody would think this—that when you come back from the dead like he had, that you’re either out to get whoever made you dead, or you’re there because you miss your people, are there to help them somehow. the way it was turning out, it was that you could maybe come back, be what you’d always wanted to be, but to do that, you had to latch on to your people and drink them dry, leave them husks. after that, you could walk off into your new life, your second chance. with no family to hold you back. (80) the passage illustrates the conceptual translation of kinship into blood that is part and parcel of the discursive production of “indianness” as a racial formation that abets processes of dispossession and removal. part of the ways the structures of dispossession perpetuate themselves, the passage suggests, is through mapping colonial models of extraction onto paths to becoming “what you’d always wanted to be” when whatever one wants to be appears impossible to become in life (80). the sense of the impossible is sustained, jones suggests, through “cycles” of vampiric heteropatriarchal relationships configured as the past returned to drain the future of life. reconstructing the same set of facts reproduces the same set of assemblages. to break from such “cycles,” one has to tell a different story. as jones has written elsewhere, “if you wrap yourself in the right story, everything makes sense” (“werewolf” 7). zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 116 mapping highlights the tension between settler stories of futureless becoming and the potential of blackfeet story to ground narratives in an otherwise actualizable set of conditions within which different stories than those of vampiric fathers and drowning sons might be told. junior’s father “didn’t know the stories, and didn’t care that he didn’t” (14). “stories,” writes louis owens, “make the world knowable and inhabitable. stories make the world, period… silence a people’s stories and you erase a culture. to have graphic evidence of this phenomenon, all we have to do is look at a map” (210-211). mapping the interior closes with this sense of story as what makes the world inhabitable and how the topography of one’s map can detail the ways dispossession shapes the contours of bodies and experiences. junior’s map charts violence, dispossession, and dislocation as stories of erasure and “squandered potential.” mapping the interior calls for different stories than those in which native men appear already marked for death. jones suggests that these different stories are not found in “tradition,” nor in “blood,” but in the way the water in a kitchen sink might lead to the “shallows of a lake that goes on forever” (103). notes: 1 for the first epigraph, see belcourt, this wound is a world, p. 9. for the second epigraph, see belcourt, a history of my brief body, p. 14. mckegney has also developed and applied the notion of the “masculindian” in other essays. see mckegney, “masculindians”; “‘pain, pleasure, shame. shame.’”; and “‘beautiful hunters with strong medicine.’” 2 mckegney’s sense that the “masculinidian” is a simulation reflects jean baudrillard’s conceptualization of the simulation from simulation and simulacra as the “generation by models of a real without origin or reality” (1). 3 for vizenor’s elaboration of simulations and hyperreality in relation to settler representations of native people(s), see “postindian warriors,” in manifest manners, pp. 1-44; for definitions of vizenor’s terminology, see fugitive poses, pp. 14-17; for a useful reading of the complex philosophical structure within which vizenor deploys these terms, see hume, “gerald vizenor’s metaphysics.” transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 117 4 “hegemonic masculinity” as innes and anderson use the term refers to the dominant representation of idealized masculinity within a given cultural formation, in this case settler whiteness in the u.s. and canada. australian sociologist r. w. connell is widely credited with having coined the term in the 1980s. for connell’s articulations of the concept, see masculinities and gender and power. 5 perea alludes to a lengthy body of scholarship that has since the 1980s announced and theorized a “crisis” in masculinity, particularly (though often unnamed as such) white heterosexual masculinity in the u.s. for selected examples of this work, see faludi; kimmel, angry and manhood; kaufman; and malin. for a consideration of how u.s. fiction has represented white masculinity in crisis, see robinson. 6 for an example of this line of inquiry within studies of euromerican masculinities, see kimmel, manhood. 7 in why indigenous literatures matter, justice gathers damaging settler narratives through which native peoples have been characterized under “the story of indigenous deficiency” (2), which he writes “seems to me an externalization of settler colonial guilt and shame” (4). for an elaboration of the many narratives justice gathers under the phrase, see pp. 2-4. 8 considering tradition as outside of or apart from the structures through which settler superintendence is articulated raises difficult questions over the meaning and “content” of tradition. as mark rifkin argues in when did indians become straight?, “the citation of tradition does not itself guarantee that whatever is being designated remains unaffected by or exterior to settler socialities and governance; moreover, such formulations of tradition can function as a way of legitimizing native identity in ways that ultimately confirm, in [taiaiake] alfred’s terms, liberal ‘values and objectives.’ native feminists have explored the ways that contemporary articulations of peoplehood can rely on heteropatriarchal ideologies which are inherited from imperial policy but cast as key elements of tradition” (21). for the further elaboration of the critique, see pp. 17-25. also see barker, native acts; coulthard, red skin, white masks, pp. 79-103; and simpson, as we have always done. 9 i use the term “peoplehood” to describe the novel’s imagined alternative social formation in response to the novel’s explicit avoidance of tribally specific markers. “peoplehood” in its broadest sense also names social formations that are not dependent on lineal descent, federal recognition, geopolitical boundaries such as reservations, proximity to settler cultural imaginaries and figurations of “indianness,” nor to ethnological or anthropological imaginaries of cultural authenticity. for a discussion of peoplehood in this sense as a way of theorizing sovereignty, see holm, zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 118 pearson, and chavis; for a discussion of peoplehood as a hermeneutic for native literary studies, see stratton and washburn. 10 though not explicitly framed or addressed as such, mapping’s critique of blood metaphors as ways to understand native masculinities may also offer an implicit critique of blood metaphors as deployed within policy frameworks, especially blood quantum policies, used to determine native identity. the blackfeet nation, of which jones is an enrolled member, currently sets one-quarter blackfeet blood as its enrollment criteria; however, this requirement has been challenged in the mid-1990s and again in the early 2010s as members of the blackfeet nation and “descendants,” a term designating those without sufficient ancestry to enroll under extant blood quantum requirements, petitioned to change the policy from blood quantum to lineal descent. for reporting of these protests, see redman, “blackfeet—fractioned identity”; and murry, “tribe split over blood quantum measurement.” in his history of blackfeet political organization since allotment, paul rosier notes that “blood” has been a key axis of factionalism among tribal members; see rebirth. see also mcfee, modern blackfeet. on the broader relationship of “blood” and blood metaphors, race and racial science, and native peoples, see tallbear. 11 mapping does not reference a specific location nor specific people(s). some elements of the setting, however, suggest references to the blackfeet reservation, the boundaries of which border northwestern montana to the east and south, the canadian province of alberta to the north, and glacier national park, a part of blackfeet homelands and a continually contested boundary, to the west. lakes within glacier national park, as lapier writes, are prominent spaces within blackfeet story. on blackfeet lands and the political history of glacier national park, see spence, dispossessing, especially pp. 71-100; and craig, yung, and borie, “blackfeet belong.” mapping’s ambiguous setting resonates with jones’s writing and comments regarding indigenous identity and the critical reception of his and other native writers’ work. in “letter to a just-starting-out indian writer—and maybe to myself,” jones is sharply critical of the ways indigeneity can overdetermine a work’s literary value, foreclose on analyses of craft, and lock native writers into exoticized market constructions (xi-xvi). however, jones has also said, as billy j. stratton writes in “come for the icing, stay for the cake,” that “because he is a blackfeet person, his writings are necessarily blackfeet and, more broadly, native in their composition and literary significance. all of the stories he writes and shares emerge out of and draw significance from just such a native understanding of the world, articulating a consciousness inextricably informed by his ancestry, travels, and experiences” (11). 12 see also jones’s graphic novella, my hero (2017). transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 119 13 in beyond settler time, rifkin explores the relationship between theories of time and duration and conceptualizations of sovereignty and self-determination. in an effort to move beyond the supposed impasse of “modern” and “traditional,” as one such way of naming temporal incommensurability, rifkin argues for a conceptualization of temporal multiplicity that allows for “discrepant temporalities that can be understood as affecting each other, as all open to change, and yet as not equivalent or mergeable into a neutral, common frame—call it time, modernity, history, or the present.” (3). for further elaboration of the concept, see esp. “indigenous orientations,” pp. 1-47. 14 reviewers of mapping have read the text in terms of haunting almost exclusively. for example, sean guynes reads mapping as tracing “cycles of poverty, violence, and colonialism; of place, space, and time; of genre; of the expectations placed on contemporary native authors—of being (and being made to be) indian” (71). john langan sees the novella as a “ghost story” as much as a “tale of haunting” and the “absences that bend and warp our lives” including especially the paternal absence at the core of the narrative, which langan notes through reference to junior’s name, which “describes him in relation to someone else.” mark springer likewise situates mapping as a ghost story about “the ways in which the past forever haunts the present,” and couches such haunting in terms of intergenerational trauma and “old wounds” that “never heal.” billy j. stratton, in his review of the novel for the los angeles review of books, sees the novella’s “haunting” as central to its representation of the lines between past and present and the inhabitances that such temporal clashes engender, and reads its characters as living on “the margins of a spectral frontier landscape” that suggests an “uncanny, almost gothic american west.” 15 on october 17, 1855, members of the piegan, blood, blackfeet, gros ventre, nez perce, and flathead tribes and a delegation of u.s. officials and indian agents signed the “treaty with the blackfoot indians.” article 4 of the treaty designates blackfeet lands as follows: “the tract of country lying within lines drawn from hell gate or medicine rock passes, in an easterly direction, to the nearest source of the muscle shell river, thence down said river to its mouth, thence down the channel of the missouri river to the mouth of milk river, thence due north to the forty-ninth parallel, thence due west on said parallel to the main range of the rocky mountains, and thence southerly along said range to the place of the beginning, shall be the territory of the blackfoot nation, over which said nation shall exercise exclusive control, excepting as may be otherwise provided in this treaty.” for the full text of the 1855 treaty, see blackfeetnation.com/government/treaties. 16 on september 26, 1895, members of the blackfeet nation entered into an agreement to sell the mountain portion of their reservation lands, part of what is today zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 120 glacier national park, to the united states for $1.5 million. for the full text of the agreement, see blackfeetnation.com/government/treaties. for a history of the events leading to the agreement and its aftermath, see spence and rosier. works cited alfred, taiaiake. “reimagining warriorhood: a conversation with taiaiake alfred.” masculinidians: conversations about indigenous manhood, edited by sam mckegney, michigan state up, 2014, pp. 76-86. barker, joanne. native acts: law, recognition, and cultural authenticity. duke up, 2011. baudrillard, jean. simulation and simulacra. translated by sheila faria glaser, u of michigan p, 1994. belcourt, billy-ray. a history of my brief body. two-dollar radio, 2020. ---. this wound is a world. u of 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reimagining indigenous masculinities through story. u of arizona p, 2021. ---. “into the full grace of the blood in men.” masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood, edited by sam mckegney, michigan state up, 2014, pp. 1-13. ---. “‘pain, pleasure, shame. shame.’: masculine embodiment, kinship, and indigenous reterritorialization.” canadian literature, iss. 216, 2013, pp. 12-33. ---. “masculindians: the violence and voyeurism of male sibling relationships in recent first-nations fiction.” cross/cultures, no. 145, 2012, pp. 357-367. ---. “‘beautiful hunters with strong medicine’: indigenous masculinity and kinship in richard van camp’s the lesser blessed.” the canadian journal of native studies, vol. 29, nos. 1-2, 2009, pp. 203-227. murray, david. “tribe split over blood quantum measurement.” great falls tribune, 18 aug. 2016, https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2016/08/18/tribe-splitblood-quantum-measurement/88962774/. accessed 23 may 2022. owens, louis. mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place. u of oklahoma p, 1998. perea, jessica bissett. “audiovisualizing inupiaq men and masculinities on the ice.” critically sovereign: indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, edited by joanne barker, duke up, 2017, pp.127-168. redman, hanah. “blackfeet—fractioned identity.” native news: vast expanses, 2013, http://nativenews.jour.umt.edu/2013/. accessed 31 aug. 2021. rifkin, mark. beyond settler time: temporal sovereignty and indigenous selfdetermination. duke up, 2017. zachary laminack “in the shallows of a lake” 124 ---. “around 1978: family, culture, and race in the federal production of indianness.” critically sovereign: indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, edited by joanne barker, duke up, 2017, pp.169-206. ---. when did indians become straight?: kinship, the history of sexuality, and native sovereignty. oxford up, 2011. robinson, sally. marked men: white masculinity in crisis. columbia up, 2000. rosier, paul c. rebirth of the blackfeet nation, 1912-1954. u of nebraska p, 2004. simpson, leanne betasamosake. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. u of minnesota p, 2017. spense, mark david. dispossessing the wilderness: indian removal and the making of the national parks. oxford up, 1999. springer, mark. “in ‘mapping the interior,’ native fathers and sons, haunted by the past.” fiction unbound, fictionunbound.com/blog/mapping-the-interior, 23 june 2017. accessed 23 may 2022. stratton, billy j. “in the habitations of specters: on stephen graham jones’s ‘mapping the interior.’” los angeles review of books, 21 april 2018, lareviewofbooks.org/article/in-the-habitations-of-specters-on-stephen-grahamjoness-mapping-the-interior. accessed 23 may 2022. ---. “come for the icing, stay for the cake: an introduction to the fictions of stephen graham jones.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion, edited by billy j. stratton, u of new mexico p, 2016, pp. 1-13. stratton, billy j., and frances washburn. “the peoplehood matrix: a new theory for american indian literature.” wicazo sa review, vol. 23, no. 1, 2008, pp. 51-72. jstor, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30131246. access 23 may 2022. transmotion vol 8. no. 2 (2022) 125 tallbear, kim. native american dna: tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. u of minnesota p, 2013. tatonetti, lisa. written by the body: gender expansiveness and indigenous non-cis masculinities. u of minnesota p, 2021. “treaties.” blackfeet nation, 2022, blackfeetnation.com/government/treaties. accessed 20 may 2022. vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. u of nebraska p, 1998. ---. manifest manners: postindian warriors of survivance. wesleyan up, 1994. microsoft word galley main.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 96 in the master’s maison: mobile indigeneity in the heartsong of charging elk and blue ravens john gamber those of us who work in native american literature (and i imagine this includes anyone inclined to peruse this essay) are perfectly familiar with william bevis’s formulation of the homing plot. within such narratives, a lost young native protagonist ventures out into the world, becomes psychically and physically wounded, and returns home to heal.1 for that matter, within these texts, the healing and the return are co-constitutive: they both represent a reintegration that is physical, psychological, cultural, and religious.2 the examples abound, and such stories form the core of the native american literary canon, from classics like the surrounded, house made of dawn, and ceremony, to more recent works including gardens in the dunes (as well as filmic examples set forth by powwow highway and smoke signals and continuing through barking water and empire of dirt). indeed, such plotlines have become a formula for relative material success for native authors and auteurs. nonetheless, homing plots have never represented the totality or diversity of native literature. after all, a worrisome potential implication of such texts is that native people cannot (or, more to the point, are disallowed the potential to) relocate and still live healthy or happy lives. this implication proves not only treacherous but implausible in the face of the fact that the overwhelming majority of native people live away from their tribal communities (2010 census). by contrast, a few novels exist that portray healthy native individuals and groups away from their tribal nations.3 this essay looks at a pair of the more extreme examples of indigenous mobility: james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk (2001) and gerald vizenor’s blue ravens (2014), both of which feature native protagonists settling permanently in france.4 each novel portrays a character relocating on a temporary basis, but ultimately choosing to stay— albeit under profoundly different circumstances. setting these texts abroad allows their authors to imagine indian people entirely outside the settler colonial context, which of course informs everything that happens within settler state borders. considering these extra-colonial imaginative possibilities, we are apt to hope for happy endings for these indigenous characters. indeed, charging elk’s (the protagonist of welch’s novel) adaptation to france is often read as extremely positive. however, as i will demonstrate, his transition is in fact quite complicated, john gamber “in the master’s maison” 97 and i argue, ambivalent at best. such an ambivalence is fitting, when one considers that these moves out of settler colonial spaces are also moves in to colonizing metropoles; these indigenous characters cannot simply cast off the colony or colonization. specifically, charging elk represents an always-already (temporally) diasporic subject, removed from what he perceives to be home not only in space but also in time—even when he dwells in the oglala stronghold.5 the beaulieu brothers of blue ravens (aloysius and narrator basile) remain similarly unchanged over the course of the novel in regard to their move to france. however, as vizenor’s text establishes white earth as a traditionally cosmopolitan space, it renders their movement and relocation to be a part of, rather than apart from, their communities and cultures. in light of these related circumstances, i look at the vexed and vexing portrayals of native masculinity within these novels, each of which confronts warrior stereotypes and ideologies as deeply incomplete representations of native people and cultures. ultimately, i argue, these novels when read together portray the possibilities for native movement and relocation.6 such movement is not without incident, they suggest, but it is also neither inherently damaging nor liberatory. both novels portray young, male, native protagonists who resist the physical stasis mandated by us governmental requirements of indian people broadly—that they be bound to reservations not only (historically) as a form of containment if not outright incarceration, but also (more recently) in order to conform to a discourse of native authenticity by which only reservation indians count as “real indians.”7 for charging elk, this resistance manifests in not only the rejection of, but intense disdain for his home community, which he sees as having ceded its freedom—and particularly as having surrendered a certain form of masculine power. the beaulieaus likewise ultimately reject their home community as a place to live, but see such a rejection as a continuation of native liberty that is right for them, without demonizing those who choose to remain. i contend that the beaulieus leave their home and family physically, but never do so psychically; charging elk does not intend to leave forever physically, though he has already left psychically.8 as much as these novels have in common—their settings around the turn of the century with young male native protagonists (with close fraternal ties) relocated by variable degrees of chance and choice—their differences have to be noted.9 centrally to this essay, while charging elk struggles to belong within any community for the entirety of the text, the beaulieus never do. in his youth charging elk rejects domesticity and desires a homosocial community that glorifies transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 98 a masculinity that mirrors settler expectations of nomadic native men.10 as i will show, welch’s protagonist’s ideas about oglala masculinity reject the models put forth by the men in his community. the beaulieus might appear to revel in a similar masculinist impulse with their desire for travel and willingness to serve in war. nevertheless, they emphasize in their younger days a return home and a focus on their community (shaped by women as much as by men), and embracing native and non-native influences where they are useful to them.11 we also cannot skip over the fact that these young men come from different nations and regions, charging elk is oglala lakota from the plains; the beaulieus are anishinaabeg from the great lakes.12 finally, while i note the close temporal proximity of these texts—set within thirty years of one another— that thirty-year span straddles monumental changes for native communities across the country and for these two communities in particular. welch’s and vizenor’s attention to the historical milieus in which their characters find themselves signals the need for the contextualization of these monumental changes.13 charging elk finds his way from the dakota territory to france as a performer in buffalo bill’s wild west show.14 while in marseille, charging elk becomes ill but decides to perform; he faints, falls from his horse, and awakens in the hospital, from which he flees. he finds his way back to the grounds where the troupe had performed, only to discover that they have left without him. because he lacks any documentation and is not a citizen of the united states (citizenship not being conferred upon most native people until 1924), he cannot leave france. after living in marseille for about six years, charging elk awakens to find himself, having been drugged, being sexually assaulted. he kills his attacker and is sentenced to prison, where he remains for ten years, learning to farm in the prison fields. upon his release, he begins to work on a farm outside of agen, aquitaine (in southwestern france), where he falls in love with nathalie, the daughter of the farm owner; they marry, and charging elk determines that he will never return to his oglala community, but will remain in france (marseille, specifically). blue ravens follows brothers aloysius and basil beaulieu, the former a painter of increasing renown, known for the titular blue ravens prominent in his work, the latter a writer of short stories and poems, as well as the narrator of the text. the two grow up on the white earth reservation in what has become minnesota. their interest in international issues is stoked by their family’s ownership and operation of the white earth newspapers, the progress and the tomahawk, and their work selling the latter paper at the local train station (and from hearing john gamber “in the master’s maison” 99 stories from the travelers they meet).15 the pair travels to minneapolis, a trip that stands as a formative adventure. they later register for the draft and are activated to serve in the united states army and fight in world war i. upon their arrival in france, a nation to which they trace some of their ancestry, they are made into scouts “only as natives, and not because of any special training” (121). the sergeant who selects them for this service “was convinced that stealth was in our blood, a native trait and natural sense of direction even on a dark and rainy night in a strange place” (121). at war’s end, they return home, only to decide to relocate to france (paris, specifically) to live out the bohemian lifestyle of the lost generation. in his article “‘a world away from his people’: james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk and the indian historical novel,” james donahue asserts, “charging elk suffers from just this alienation [“displacing charging elk, and forcing him to assimilate into a completely foreign culture”] and throughout the course of the novel works to reconstruct his cultural identity though separated from his family, his tribe, and his homeland” (59-60). donahue’s is a common sentiment expressed in the criticism regarding this novel: that charging elk, disconnected from oglala culture because of physical distance in france, forges a new, even healthy individual(istic) identity, expressing positive possibilities for indigenous people in the face of the many displacements of settler colonialism.16 i argue that such readings are, at the very least, extremely incomplete, not in their advocacy of indigenous mobility, but rather in that charging elk has already alienated himself from his community ideologically as well as physically prior to his arrival in europe. we also note that this repeated privileging of individualism (especially when read in the face of charging elk’s condemnation of his community and elders) chafes against many oglala values expressed in the novel. charging elk’s diasporic subjectivity is born of a collective trauma; the reader first encounters him as an eleven-year-old boy witnessing the surrender of the oglala at the red cloud agency in 1877. indeed, the opening sentence of the novel’s prologue concludes with mourning: “it was early in the moon of the shedding ponies, less than a year after the fight with the longknives on the greasy grass, and the people looked down in the valley and they saw the white man’s fort and several of the women wept” (1). the greasy grass translates the lakota name for the space on which an alliance of lakota, cheyenne, and arapaho forces defeated the seventh cavalry of the united states, led by george armstrong custer, a clash also known as the battle of the little bighorn. within a year of this celebrated victory, the indigenous forces transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 100 had disbanded, and oglala leaders, weary from a brutal winter’s flight, chose to end their military actions. thus, within this first sentence in the novel’s prologue, welch establishes a historical moment that will undergird its protagonist’s worldview throughout. the oglala have slid from being free people, victors over the us military, to being subjugated by that same nation and military. this slide from glory is further exemplified within the prologue, this backstory that welch includes prior to chapter one, by red cloud himself. the narrator explains, “he had been a great war chief then. now he was a reservation indian and had been one for ten years. now he took his orders from white chiefs….still, in his clean buckskins, with his headdress that flowed over his horse’s rump,…he looked as dignified and powerful as ever—a chief” (2). we note the contrast between red cloud taking his orders from white chiefs and looking the part of a chief himself through the passage’s transitional “still.” red cloud was once dignified and powerful, but now he is a reservation indian. in short, from the very beginning of the heartsong of charging elk, its narrative persona, a third person omniscient perspective that continually returns to charging elk’s point of view (though also giving considerable attention to the povs of nonnative characters upon charging elk’s time in france), establishes a contrast between particularly masculine power and dignity on the one hand, and an implicitly feminized reservation life on the other. this contrast continues into the body of the text, and we note that charging elk maintains some of his harshest criticisms for those closest to him. in describing charging elk’s father the novel explains: scrub had been a shirtwearer, one of the bravest and wisest of the oglalas. he had fought hard at little bighorn and had provided meat when the people were running from the soldiers. but that winter when the people were starving and sick, he had become a peacemaker, just like the reservation indians who were sent out by their white bosses to try to talk the band into surrendering. charging elk had been ashamed of his father that winter. and when he saw his father sitting idly in his little shack, drinking the black medicine and sometimes telling the holy beads, he could not believe his father had gone from shirtwearer to this. it was always this image of his father that drove charging elk time and time again back out to the stronghold. (17) john gamber “in the master’s maison” 101 like the novel’s description of red cloud (which we can now discern at least mirrors charging elk’s perspective), this reading of scrub moves from triumphalist martial figure to defeat and shame. however, scrub’s accomplishments during his former glory days were not only military; he is also described as wise, generous, and caretaking. once again, charging elk judges harshly an elder of his community for becoming a “peacemaker, just like the reservation indians.” his father transforms from man of action into idler, and perhaps worse, a christian. the novel explicitly states charging elk’s shame of his father as peacemaker, privileging an eternal war rather than this acquiescence, regardless of the lives that scrub’s decisions almost certainly saved, and the fact that he may still be wise, generous, and caretaking.17 contrasting these fallen icons of oglala masculinity, charging elk opts out of reservation life. he and his kola, strikes plenty, choose what they see as a freer existence at the stronghold, despite, or perhaps because of the fact that this distances them in multiple ways from the majority of their tribal community. the narrator explains, “the indians out there were considered bad indians, even by their own people who had settled at the agency and the surrounding communities. charging elk and strikes plenty lived off and on at the stronghold for the next nine years, hunting game, exploring, learning and continuing the old ways with the help of two old medicine people” (14). these two young men see themselves as culture keepers, maintaining the “old ways,” guided by elders. a large part of this cultural maintenance comes in the form of isolation, though, with charging elk and strikes plenty straying on adventures, just the two of them. the heartsong of charging elk, however, demonstrates the dangers to such isolation, namely those of scorn and disassociation. reflecting back on his time at the stronghold after just a few months in marseille, charging elk recalls how he and strikes plenty had “prided themselves on their ability with bows, shooting birds and rabbits with the steel-tipped arrows. most of the others, even those at the stronghold, had long since given up this traditional weapon. and when they ran out of bullets, they had to tighten their belts” (164). the pair see themselves as more traditional not only than those who have chosen reservation life, but also their peers at the stronghold. they maintain their ability to hunt with the bow, a traditional lakota weapon. it is striking, however, that their arrows are “steel-tipped,” this metal being a post-contact technology. steel arrowheads are reusable; bullets are not. so, charging elk’s and strikes plenty’s hunting practices serve a pragmatic purpose. but, the text explains that at least part of their pride stems from the “traditional” aspect of this weapon. traditional, here and throughout transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 102 charging elk’s musings, carries a connotation not of adaptation, but of that which is oldfashioned, of that which statically maintains the old ways. in this context, charging elk negates his own adaptations to steel arrows, and the novel’s inclusion of this detail encourages an evaluation of the protagonist’s misconceptions of the traditional. as cobb-greetham explains, “charging elk had very specific ideas about what it meant to live as an oglala person. because of his strict interpretation, he left boarding school, left his family to live at the stronghold, mocked the reservation indians, and felt shame toward his father for becoming a reservation peacekeeper” (165). these strict definitions of oglala (masculine) identity revolve around maintaining what he believes are the practices of the past, a rigid notion that belies the adaptations that all peoples engage in. we might contrast charging elk’s ideas regarding traditionalism to craig womack’s critical intervention to that term. in red on red he asserts, “i wish to posit an alternative definition of traditionalism as anything that is useful to indian people in retaining their values and worldviews, no matter how much it deviates from what people did one or two hundred years ago” (41-42). according to such an approach, one that allows native people to adapt (like members of any other culture), there is nothing more or less traditional about hunting with stone or steel arrowheads or with rifles. the novel’s invitation to question charging elk’s traditionalism continues in its next paragraph. the text reminisces that charging elk and strikes plenty “had lived a strange life together for eleven winters—no family, no other friends…for the most part, they had lived away from others; consequently, charging elk had felt uncomfortable around families, especially children” (164). theirs is a deeply isolated existence; though they learn to some degree from elders at the stronghold, they are mostly alone, trying to find their ways in the world. while charging elk seems to prefer this homosocial setting (whereas strikes plenty hopes eventually to wed and “settle down)”, charging elk recognizes that it is “strange” to live, not simply apart from one’s family, but apart from all families. as such, he does not learn key elements of oglala culture, elements relating to interactions with children, yes, but also those involving parents, spouses, brothers and sisters, and so many more—he has simply opted out of them. moreover, it is difficult to view his disdain for so many of his elders (including his parents) as a traditional oglala virtue. all of this is to say that contrary to the widespread reading that charging elk becomes lost absent the lodestone of his culture and language upon arriving in france, he has in fact been disconnected for the entirety of the reader’s familiarity with him. john gamber “in the master’s maison” 103 recent scholarship shows the ways that the model of masculinity imposed on native communities in particular has often come in the form of the warrior or “brave.” this martial imagery creates the alien other as the enemy against which the settler state can imagine and measure itself, in part to deem itself the civilized counter to the indigenous savage. taiaiake alfred explains, “for the violence of conquest you needed a violent opponent, so you created this image of the native as a violent warrior, the classic horseback opponent… the way to confront that and to defeat it and to recover something meaningful for natives is to put the image of the native male back into its proper context, which is in the family” (79).18 the hypermasculine native warrior image becomes reified by settler inventions including buffalo bill’s wild west show in which charging elk gleefully participates, despite the misgivings of many in his community. the novel explains, “of course, he knew that it was all fake and that some of the elders back home disapproved of the young men going off to participate in the white man’s sham” (52). alfred continues, asserting that indigenous communities place men within “the context of a family with responsibilities to the family—to the parent, to the spouse, to the children (or nephews, nieces,…or even just youth in general)” (79). alfred moves us from the flat stereotype of the native warrior to the round embodiment of native men (emphasizing as well that this identification is not biologically defined) as serving in the role of warrior at times, but also serving roles that nurture within their communities. similarly, niigaanwewidam james sinclair notes, “one of the legacies of colonization has been the separation of men from their roles within families, communities, and nations. what’s replaced these are the hegemonic forms of… individualist identities that ossify cultures” (225). the hegemonic constructs of native masculinity we continue to encounter shape expectations of violence over care-giving, and individualism over community. narratives of specifically oglala masculinity as measured ultimately by one’s warrior positionality, moreover, echo vine deloria jr.’s foundational chapter, “anthropologists and other friends” from custer died for your sins. deloria notes that the oglala “tribe became a favorite subject for study [by anthropologists] quite early because of its romantic past. gradually theories arose to explain the apparent lack of progress of the oglala sioux. the real issue, white control of the reservation, was overlooked completely” (90). instead, “anthros” advanced their own theories, including that “the oglala were warriors without weapons” (90). deloria continues, “every conceivable difference between the oglala sioux and the folks at transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 104 hyannisport was attributed to the quaint warrior tradition of the oglala sioux. from lack of roads to unshined shoes sioux problems were generated, so the anthros discovered, by the refusal of the white man to recognize the great desire of the oglalas to go to war” (91). he concludes with his classic biting wit, “why expect an oglala to become a small businessman when he was only waiting for that wagon train to come around the bend?” (91). this last sentiment, particularly with its invocation of the wagon train as a mode of transit that exists in what anthros imagine to be the temporal present for oglala people proffers them as static denizens of the past, a standard settler move that eliminates indigenous populations from the present.19 thus we so often encounter people who speak about native people exclusively in the past tense: “native americans believed…” kevin bruyneel describes this construct as “colonial time,” and charging elk himself seems to buy into it. bruyneel asserts: important temporal boundaries, while often implicit, can be located in economic, cultural, and political narratives that place limitations on the capacity of certain peoples to express meaningful agency and autonomy, especially in the modern context. these narratives place temporal boundaries between an ‘advancing’ people and a ‘static’ people, locating the latter out of time, in what i call colonial time (2). i argue that such a static viewpoint of native identity renders charging elk diasporic not so much in terms of space as in time. such a temporal diaspora can never be ended, of course, as a return to a time passed is even more complicated than a spatial return to homeland—though we must always also remember that space and time are co-constitutive. charging elk, more than most of his compatriots it seems, has internalized the logic of elimination, colonial time, and the narrative of the disappearing indian.20 for deloria, such elimination works on multiple fronts. first, it obscures settler colonial responsibility for the marginalized conditions of indigenous populations, generally. second, it misdirects funds and energies that might assist oglala people; “real problems and real people become invisible before the great romantic notion that the sioux yearn for the days of crazy horse and red cloud and will do nothing until those days return” (91). third, it becomes a hegemonic expectation of oglala people in both out-group and in-group minds. the dominant discourse surrounding native people is often replicated in native ideas about indianness just as it is within settler society broadly. charging elk represents one character’s acceptance of this same warrior mythos of oglala masculinity.21 ironically, for him, to be oglala is to be ever physically john gamber “in the master’s maison” 105 mobile (hence, his repeatedly demonstrated fear of remaining in one place) while being ideologically and temporally static. over the course of the novel, however, charging elk comes to change his tune considerably on this particular front, especially in terms of his relationship to and opinions about agriculture. an early manifestation of charging elk’s character valorizes his life at the stronghold as opposed to the stationary and farming lifestyle adopted by his parents: “there was nothing left at home. the american bosses were making the ikce wicasa plant potatoes and corn. what kind of life was that for the people who ran the buffaloes?” (29). on its face, charging elk’s condemnation of his the life at home hinges on the fact that it is agricultural (farming two crops which are indigenous to the americas, for the record). as we will see shortly, charging elk alters his view regarding farming, even when that farming is less than voluntary. but, in the meantime, we note that he views any life apart from running with the buffaloes to be a defeat.22 nonetheless, when he first engages in this european-style agriculture, he finds tremendous comfort in it, despite the fact that his experience comes during his incarceration. the narrative tells us, “in the gardens, it was easy to forget. all the hard work beneath a blazing sun or a chilling rain blocked out any despair that he would remain in la tombe until they carried him out for burial in the plot not far to the north of the garden” (357). working in the fields and orchards outside the prison provides charging elk an emotional escape but also a preoccupation and distraction from the time in his cell. on this level, he has perhaps come to an acceptance of farming in a world he has no power to change. in his incarceration he mirrors his family, similarly incarcerated in a nineteenth-century reservation space from which they were denied egress, though his preoccupation differs in that the oglala community is bound by the very nation occupying their land. nonetheless, we must be careful not to conflate his appreciation of farming at this stage in the novel with a necessarily pure enjoyment of it (as he perhaps should understand his father’s and community’s acceptance of what may have felt equally inescapable). charging elk emerges from prison into a burgeoning domestic romance plot, establishing a neolocal home with the daughter of the man on whose farm he finds work.23 he and nathalie wed and relocate back to marseille where he finds work and joins the dockworkers’ union, while the couple awaits the birth of their first child. charging elk at long last begins to develop interpersonal relationships, romantic, professional/fraternal, and familial. moreover, he demonstrates changes in terms of the ideals of lakota conservativism he held to in his youth. he transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 106 looks upon a cathedral, “notre dame de la garde in marseille—a shining beacon that one could see from a long way off that might offer guidance to lost souls like himself” (378). the narrator clarifies, “it was the first time he had ever been in a wasichu church, and it didn’t seem to be a bad place. he thought of the times he had gotten angry with his parents and the other lakotas for going to the white man’s church” (383). now that he has allowed adaptations in his own life, charging elk has let go of much of his condemnation of others for their adaptations. this move toward acceptance, if not a wholesale embrace of his life in france, however, is not without its drawbacks. most notably, the reader encounters a protagonist who continues to relinquish his relationships to the community into which he was born. the wild west show returns to marseille, and charging elk seeks out the actors in their village. upon finding a lakota family, he inquires after his parents. one of the performers, joseph, tells him that his mother, “double strike woman still lives at pine ridge agency. she has a little cabin. she is well” (430). his father, however, “died three winters ago. influenza. i didn’t know him well, but there was a big ceremony at the church, then at the community hall. everybody went” (431). the community recognizes charging elk’s father, honoring him in ways that charging elk certainly never has. joseph continues, “he was an important man, your father—a shirtwearer….you should have been home for him” (431). charging elk replies, “you are right, joseph….i failed him—and my mother. for a long time i have thought only of myself” (431).24 joseph righteously chastises charging elk for his failure to return to pine ridge, a failure that the reader also recognizes as a lack of effort on charging elk’s part. one should certainly mitigate these realizations with charging elk’s institutionalization, the psychic and physical containment that his incarceration has wrought upon him. nonetheless, welch opts to show charging elk continuing—or repeating—the distance from his community that he has always maintained. to that end, charging elk describes for joseph a particularly resonant dream he has had, in which he tries to jump off a cliff at the stronghold, “but every time he tried, a big gust of wind blew him back… he looked down and he saw his people lying in a heap at the bottom… in the roar [of the wind] he heard a voice, a familiar voice, a lakota voice, and it said, ‘you are my only son.’ and when he turned back to his village at the stronghold, there was nothing there—no people, no horses or lodges… everything was gone” (235).25 throughout the novel, charging elk struggles to try to interpret this dream. joseph, however, explains that the voice is his mother’s, “she was telling you to come home. she needs you now.” charging elk’s reply, john gamber “in the master’s maison” 107 simply: “i can’t” (436). charging elk has never served as the kind of son that his community, it appears, continues to expect. he has never directed his energies toward maintaining bonds with his people—he admits these motivations to be “selfish.”26 when we consider that the novel offers the lakota term for settlers as “wasicuns, the fat takers,” a term that implies that they take the best parts for themselves, charging elk’s selfishness rings with particular aspersion (13).27 we need not liken charging elk’s brand of self-centeredness with the colonizing forces of the settler state, rather we can note a general emphasis within oglala culture that privileges the community over the individual. vizenor’s novel begins just a few years after the temporal setting of the heartsong of charging elk and moves through the end of world war i. indeed, it is quite reasonable to think that charging elk himself would have been in france, like vizenor’s beaulieu brothers, during the war. despite these temporal overlaps, though, vizenor’s tale of native relocation to france differs considerably, and demonstrates a much greater emphasis on the agency of his characters and on the positive aspects of their international movements. both of these elements emphasize vizenor’s usual opposition to narratives of native victimry. he defines survivance as contrapuntal, “an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry” (manifest manners vii).28 again, we must engage with key differences between these novels: vizenor’s text pairs native characters together (we can imagine that if charging elk and strikes plenty were together the text would have been quite different); the brothers are, moreover, allowed to return to the us and then, informed by that freedom of movement, choose to return to france (opportunities that charging elk is clearly not afforded). the beaulieus also trace ancestry to france; their name derives from “beau lieu, … a beautiful place in french. that fur-trade surname became our union of ironic stories, necessary art, and our native liberty” (1). the union is not only of the anishinaabe and the french language; their name stems from a moment in contact prior to the establishment of the settler colonial nations that would be formed around anishinaabe lands (the united states and canada). french men came to trap furs, inculcating indigenous people in transatlantic trade; some remained, and were adopted into anishinaabe communities (as many indigenous traders and travelers had been before).29 the beauty of place, wrapped up in their french/anishinaabe surname, rings with significance as well. these indigenous characters are transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 108 tied to place in the ways that the very term indigeneity implies: born or produced naturally in a land or region (oed). this definition of indigeneity offers only that people are from a specific land. all too often, however, indigenous people face being disregarded, unrecognized, or refused in the face of not remaining on that land. as discussed earlier, they are deemed inauthentic if they do not live within the territories set apart as indigenous spaces. patrick wolfe deems such enforced ties to place a form of “repressive authenticity.” he explains, “the narrative structure of repressive authenticity is that of the excluded middle. the more polarised the binary representation, the wider its intervening catchment of empirical inauthenticity (“nation and miscegenation” 112). the settler state establishes itself in contradistinction to the indigenous population. anything settlers do, indigenous people necessarily do not. as such, any action that an indigenous person does that mirrors the settler renders that indigenous person inauthentic—they no longer count as native. indeed, settler assimilationist impulses and legal actions (including boarding schools and allotment) were meant precisely to eliminate the indianness from indians.30 in this context, in order to be recognized as indigenous by the settler state, it is not enough to be from a land or region, one must remain there.31 the beaulieus, who carry a name constructed around place, however, prove to be wanderers, refusing such settler constructions of static indigeneity. these anishinaabe characters’ return to another ancestral home invokes great excitement. as they approach france in anticipation of their combat tour, basile explains, “i could not sleep that night and was out early to catch the first sight of the country of our distant ancestors, the fur traders. the war provided the curious notion of a magical return and at the same time a discovery. actually the native romance of the fur trade and agonies of war was a revelation of the heart not the irony of discovery” (107). vizenor plays with the construct of discovery here, twisting its perspective from europeans discovering the americas to indigenous americans discovering europe. instead of such an “irony of discovery,” vizenor offers the “revelation of the heart,” a far more apt term for finding oneself in a new place already densely populated with humans. it is not a discovery, but a revelation, a revealing of that which was always there, but about which the supposed discoverer did not know. the revelation here is both of the land of the protagonists’ ancestors and of their own emotional responses to that land. vizenor’s work has long been claimed by certain cosmopolitan critics as representing native art and cultures as always hybridized. i have elsewhere challenged this categorization, john gamber “in the master’s maison” 109 arguing that his writing has always been profoundly tied to the specifics of anishinaabe story and place.32 as if right on trickster cue, in blue ravens, vizenor invokes the name of cosmopolitanism overtly as a descriptor of white earth as a community. he notes that with the introduction of newspapers, “straightaway the reservation became a new cosmopolitan culture of national and international news. white earth became a cosmopolitan community” (18). while many at the turn of the twentieth century imagined native communities to be provincial (this is alas true of many at the turn of the twenty-first century as well), blue ravens contends that white earth has always been drawn toward engagement with the world far beyond its own borders. moreover, in their movements, the beaulieu brothers are supported by their elders. as basile notes, “our uncle consented to the earth as a country, and to natives as world citizens” (91). the entire world as “a country” (as opposed to “country” without an article, or “the country”) articulates precisely a cosmopolitan positionality. native people are citizens of the world—as any people can be if they recognize their connections beyond the provincial. the anishinaabe characters of blue ravens offer a counter point to charging elk’s ideas of a singular or provincial form of masculinity. there is no limit to the beaulieu’s constructions of what is appropriate for anishinaabe people (of whatever gender). these men are soldiers, but they are not interested in being soldiers as a mode of existence. being a warrior is a temporally limited activity for them, one that involves defending the liberties of those who are under attack. along these lines, aloysius’s and basile’s uncle exclaims, “only a vagrant would not fight for his country, and natives have fought for centuries to be citizens of the earth, the reservation, and of the country” (91). if we recall that the world here serves as the country, then we understand that people who are related to place, as he implies we all should be (vagrant seldom serving as a compliment), must recognize that having a place in the world means having responsibilities to it and to our relations within it. isolationism is a mark of a lesser being.33 while it offers a positive slant on native relocations, this is not to say that blue ravens takes a blasé approach to native dislocations. the reader learns early in the novel that the beaulieus, like charging elk, “were required to attend the government school on the reservation, and too many native students were sent away to boarding schools” (18). children in these schools are educated away from their communities and taught a disrespect for them as well as for their language, religion, and culture. we also note that vizenor writes not only of anishinaabe people during this era, but of native students broadly. he further connects the other-than-human transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 110 to this thread—particularly in terms of anishinaabe relationships to the trees of their nation’s forests (a concern we see throughout vizenor’s work, perhaps most notably in darkness in saint louis bearheart).34 as the boys travel by train, taking an adventure to the big city, “we wondered … about the timber that built the houses in minneapolis. we were native migrants in the same new world that had created the timber ruins of the white earth reservation” (27). the denuding of the forests parallels the denuding of the cultural landscape of white earth, and of indian country broadly. they are stripped bare for the benefit of a settler society that cares nothing about the vacuums, the lifeless spaces they leave behind. upon their return to the us, the beaulieus find a triumphalist nation beating its chest as vanquishers of imperial oppressors, but continuing to refuse native people rights as citizens either of sovereign nations or of the united states. “the soldiers who returned that summer were hardly prepared to become the precious resurrection of patriotism… we were both inspired by the mystery, anxiety, and irony of the passage to war, to the country of our ancestors of the fur trade, but the actual return was futile, and the sense of vain nostalgia only increased with the patriotic hurrah and celebrations” (169). such a calling out of vain nostalgia certainly counters charging elk’s approach. indeed, what these native veterans find is the irony of being indigenous soldiers returning to a settler colonial state. basile explains, “the native soldiers who were once the military occupiers had returned to the ironic situation of the occupied on a federal reservation” (175). he further notes, “we returned to a federal occupation on the reservation. our return to the reservation was neither peace nor the end of the war” (170). the beaulieus return to a home that is even more colonially triumphalist than it had been before and choose not to remain. however, white earth is not unlivable because the community accepts this triumphalism, but rather because that triumphalism is being thrust upon it. that is, unlike charging elk, the beaulieus never blame their community for colonialism, or for being subjected to it. for them, the blame lies, as it rightly should, with the invaders.35 the loosened seams of a bounded space allow these native men to move, but they have always been allowed such relocations. the beaulieus choose to return to france, though this expatriate lifestyle does not equate to an abandonment of their relationship to white earth or of their identities as anishinaabe people. rather, it merely expands the scope of where anishinaabe people live. the novel concludes by retracing the steps of the beaulieus from the reservation to their first trip to the city, into france during the war, and to paris in their final relocation. basile john gamber “in the master’s maison” 111 explains, “natives continued the stories of our ancestors in natural motion at the headwaters of the great river. the stories continued at the livery stable, government school, reservation hospital, orpheum theatre, château-thierry, square du vert-galant, café du dôme, and le chemin du montparnasse” (283). vizenor’s emphasis on continuation, on the maintenance of connections backward and forward across time and space refuses the tragic and the irreparable that we note in charging elk’s refusal to return home. i offer my alternative reading of charging elk as a character and of welch’s novel not to diminish the text—indeed quite the opposite. like all of his work, welch’s the heartsong of charging elk is, among other things, a rich and complex marvel of descriptive prose. rather, i contend that (again like much of welch’s writing), the protagonist is intentionally deeply flawed. it would be short-sighted, even wrong-headed, considering his cultural context, to ignore, let alone laud charging elk’s denial of communal obligations or his lack of respect for his elders, just as it would be to condemn him for his desire to see the world or his attempts to make what life he can for himself in france.36 welch’s writing is always more subtle, nuanced, and honest than that. readers must bear in mind, as might be difficult at first blush, that charging elk is not damaged solely because he is lost in france; he was damaged to begin with. much of that damage comes, as it does for the beaulieu brothers, at the hands of violence propagated by imperialism. both texts offer possibilities by which native men might contend with their own masculinities and their relationships to community away from home. welch’s text, especially as regards charging elk’s life prior to his departure with the wild west show, reads more as a manual of how not to do so. by contrast, vizenor’s offers a way to do so without severing ties, without denying relationships and responsibilities. that is, only one of these novels offers native movements outside of the frameworks of tragedy and victimry. notes 1 bevis contrasts native narratives of “homing in” to the european and euro-american bildungsroman—the “leaving” plot in which the (usually male) liberal humanist individual(ist) self sets out to find himself away from the constraints of the “ancien regime” of his roots (581). accordingly, maselstien declares welch’s novel “a native american bildungsroman” (94). shanley makes a similar point regarding welch’s text and others from the native american renaissance “looking for the way back” (167). she also places this novel in very useful context of welch’s other work. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 112 2 countless native american and indigenous traditions, of course, view being grounded in specific place as fundamental to health in all of these forms. homing plots reflect some of the positive elements of those values. 3 much of louis owens’ oeuvre, louise erdrich’s the antelope wife, leslie marmon silko’s gardens in the dunes, vizenor’s hiroshima bugi and griever, for example. 4 for recent historical scholarship on such transatlantic journeys, see weaver, thrush, ferguson, and jaskulski. 5 stronghold mesa is a craggy outcropping and district within what is now badlands national park, which the oglala lakota co-administer with the united states. this region, like the black hills, carries a resonance of resistance throughout native discourse beyond, though because of, its specifically oglala socio-historical contexts. shanley also wields the concept of diaspora to read charging elk’s situation, albeit with a different focus. 6 i use the word “relocation” here only in its broadest sense, and not in specific reference to the united states’ policies formalized under the american indian relocation program of 1956. both novels clearly, and rightly, condemn such forced and coerced assimilative programs. nonetheless, both speak to the survivance of native people and peoples in the face of such ethnocidal impulses. 7 examples of such ideas abound in the troubling purity discourses that surround indigenous people within settler states. we can think of the attention to who counts as a “real indian” in alexie’s work (such as the absolutely true diary of a part time indian, flight, indian killer, and smoke signals) and, as just one example, eva marie garroutte’s real indians: identity and the survival of native america. such discourse reflects what wolfe calls “repressive authenticity” (discussed further below). 8 for this reason, and because this essay is particularly meant to serve as a corrective to criticism about the heartsong of charging elk, i devote more attention to welch’s novel than i do to vizenor’s. 9 each novel centralizes chosen family. the beaulieaus are brothers, though they are not biologically related. charging elk’s most meaningful relationship, at least for the majority of the novel, comes with his kola (a lakota word often translated as “brother friend”), strikes plenty. 10 i allude, of course, to sedgwick’s construction “homosocial desire,” which she notes is “a kind of oxymoron” rife with both “discriminations and paradoxes” (1). sedgwick, discussing representations in 18th and 19th century literature, finds portrayals that reinforce the thesis that, among other things, men deflect homosexual desires (compulsorily contrasted to the heterosexual and homosocial) onto women. this construction of homosociality proves especially fitting within welch’s novel as its protagonist’s defining moment comes in a spectacularly violent assault on one of its few homosexual characters, none of whom, as womack notes, are portrayed in a remotely positive light (“fatal blow job”). to that end, krupat adds, “it is unlikely, indeed almost impossible, that a lakota of charging elk’s generation would have considered a winkte [a lakota term translated in contemporary contexts as ‘two spirit’] to be evil in something like the way in which the catholic rené soulas considers homosexuals evil. but welch does not use the word winkte anywhere in the novel” (“history” 250). 11 the brothers are especially influenced by their mother, margaret, but other prominent characters in their community include messy fairbanks and catherine heady. 12 there are profound cultural distinctions between these communities as well, of course. such ethnographic elements lie beyond the scope of this essay. for more on linguistic and social john gamber “in the master’s maison” 113 contexts pertaining to welch’s novel, see womack (“fatal blow job”) and krupat (“history”). each of these pays profoundly important attention to notes of homophobia that many readers find in heartsong. 13 most notably, welch’s turbulent temporal choice for his novel, with charging elk leaving the u.s. in 1889, has him present for the shrinking of tribal land holdings under the various iterations, violations, and abrogations of the fort laramie treaty (including settler invasion of the black hills), and oglala surrender at the red cloud agency to end the great sioux war (1877) as a boy, but absent for the establishment of the pine ridge agency and south dakota statehood (1889), the wounded knee massacre (1890), and the imagined closing of the frontier. vizenor’s characters especially note the role of allotment (as seen under the 1887 dawes act for native communities broadly but especially the 1889 nelson act for anishinaabe reservations) which mandated lifestyle assimilation through private, rather than communal, landholding (especially as european-style farming) as well as opening up “surplus” land to settler interests— particularly timber interests—as well as world war i. 14 this, the most famous, but by no means only, frontier show, featuring reenactments of american frontier life and historical events such as the battle at the little bighorn (1876). buffalo bill’s show ran from 1883-1913, touring particularly in the eastern united states and europe as well as a famous and exceptionally successful stint at the 1893 chicago world’s fair. the tour travelled throughout europe beginning in 1887. welch’s novel serves as a creative historiography following the actual death of performer featherman from smallpox on january 6, 1890 (maddra 66). in the novel, featherman and charging elk are conflated in the french bureaucracy with charging elk being declared dead. for more, see cobb-greetham, krupat “issues,” maddra, mcnenly, griffen, moses, and russell. in another moment of cross-over between these texts, we learn that julius, a non-native trader who is friends with another trader, odysseus, who frequents white earth, “sponsored a company of natives to attend the paris exposition universelle in 1889. the natives lived and traveled for about a year in france. the trader had met the army scout and impresario… buffalo bill, several times in nebraska territory, but he had never seen the circus show of the wild west until he attended the paris exposition” (83). 15 the progress was published between 1886 and 1889 by cousins augustus (gus) beaulieu, aloysius’s and basile’s uncle in blue ravens, and theodore (theo) beaulieu. the tomahawk (1903-1927) began under gus beaulieu’s watch, and he returned as editor for a time, but ownership and editorial duties changed hands on multiple occasions. for more, see spry, vizenor the people named the chippewa, chronicling america. 16 jaskulski, for example, suggests, “staying overseas comes at the cost of estrangement: linguistic, cultural and communal” (48). see also ferguson, haselstein, and bak. this is not to say these essays lack value, merely that i see them as off-base on this point. 17 scott richard lyons’s x-marks: native signatures of assent offers a useful corrective here, specifically in terms of the agency and leadership demonstrated by native representatives in treaty negotiations and peacemaking. he addresses the decisions made that, at least it was hoped, “would keep ‘indians’ viable for at least seven generations, strengthen existing communities, enhance our political independence, and provide the greatest degree of happiness for the greatest number of indians” (50). 18 morgensen adds, “colonial masculinity sustains both colonial and heteropatriarchal power by presenting its victims as the cause and proper recipients of its own violations” (55). transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 114 19 i am drawing on patrick wolfe’s use of elimination, of course. he explains, “elimination refers to more than the summary liquidation of indigenous people, though it includes that. in its positive aspect, the logic of elimination marks a return whereby the native repressed continues to structure settler-colonial society. it is both as complex social formation and as continuity through time that i term settler colonization a structure rather than an event” (390). elimination comes in the form of rendering indigenous people invisible, irrelevant, or inauthentic in order to justify settler land claims (and, indeed, existence), as well as to reinforce settler sociocultural elements as “common sense.” 20 speaking to the image of the vanishing indian, and perhaps to general philip sheridan’s legacy, the novel explains that after the aforementioned bureaucratic snafu, “as far as the good doctor, and the city of marseille, and, of course, the republic of france, are concerned, charging elk is dead, plain and simple” (158). upon further query, it is declared, “he is nonexistent, a ghost you might say” (178). to that end, haselstein likewise argues, “the nostalgic image of the warrior provides protection and identity but also turns charging elk into an allegorical character in a past constructed to provide an image of the american nation” (96). 21 for more on the tensions still extant in indigenous communities surrounding such warrior constructions and related toxic masculinities, see innes and alexander and mckegney. in the latter, a collection of interviews, sinclair articulates an all too common misconception regarding being a protector or a warrior as a self-chosen identity, reminding that “protectorship is something you earn. indigenous men don’t start off as protectors; they inherit it through work, mentorship, and being recognized” (226). sinclair’s emphasis on inheritance is important: it only comes from within and with close ties to the community and only by the bequeathing from others. charging elk, then, cannot claim warrior status; such a position must be earned from recognition from the very community he denies. 22 at the same time we can read his aspersions as primarily stemming from the fact that this agricultural foodway is mandated by “american bosses.” 23 charging elk serves ten years of a life sentence; he is released on what some might (erroneously) call a technicality. an attorney explains to him, “it seems you were tried as a citizen of the united states of america. as it turns out, by treaty, your tribe is its own separate nation and therefore not subject to the legal agreements between the united states and france. thus the reclassification from the common criminal to political prisoner. you have been held illegally all these years” (361). 24 welch’s choice in naming this character joseph, not only an english name (anglicized from hebrew), but one central to abrahamic religions (the husband of mary, mother of jesus in the new testament, of course, but more aptly in this case, the favored and multi-colored coatwearing son whose fate is bound to his dreams in genesis 37), demonstrates some of the folly of charging elk’s thinking about the static nature of his community. after all, it is joseph who maintains ties to the oglala community that charging elk had largely abandoned even prior to his sojourn in europe. 25 haselstein adds that this dream’s “you are my only son” may refer to “matthew 3:17 (‘you are my beloved son’) and thus allude to the soteriological framework the novel repeatedly invokes” (99). 26 elsewhere the novel explains, “somewhere along the way, he had lost that desire to share, replaced by an attention only to himself and his own desires” (243). john gamber “in the master’s maison” 115 27 one wonders if the positive readings of charging elk stem from a dominant liberal humanism that likewise privileges the individual over his commitments to community. 28 vizenor offers a classical european allusion, specifically to homer’s odyssey, to counter the homing plot for his characters. indeed, homer crafts the classic homing plot, the story of a man trying to return home. vizenor intersperses relevant sections of homer’s epic through the beaulieus’ narrative. 29 we note an inversion of the imagined unidirectional process of native people assimilating to european lifeways. 30 one is of course reminded of richard henry pratt’s dictum for the carlisle indian industrial school, “kill the indian, and save the man.” 31 in selecting the word “recognized” here, i mean to allude to glen coulthard’s red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. 32 see “wild word hunters.” 33 furthering their service as a defense rather than an assault, the novel explains, “this was a war provoked by an empire demon, more sinister than an ice monster, and the enemy of natural reason, and not by native visionaries, our sturdy ancestors, fur traders, or by the french” (109). 34 vizenor, in keeping with his emphasis on fluidity in written narratives, revised this novel into bearheart: the heirship chronicles. 35 within the indigenous framework upon which vizenor draws, ties to physical space take on not only social, but sacred resonance as well. following the war and upon their return to white earth, the brothers find themselves incapable of using the tools for hunting they now experience as weapons of war. basile explains, “we could never again live as hunters. we could never declare war on animals. the fur trade had decimated animals and weakened native totems. we could never overcome by stories the miserable memories of war, and endure the tormented visions of blood animals” (194). the traumas of war render them incapable of participating in further killing, but much more, they cannot heal through the stories that should tie them to place. the totems have been weakened, the bonds of human to other-than-human forebears are so damaged that the people cannot make themselves right. 36 after all, as cobb-greetham points out, “traveling with the wild west show did not make charging elk and his companions any less “oglala” than those who lived at the stronghold like strikes plenty or those who stayed on the reservation and learned english like scrub” (159). works cited alexie, sherman and ellen forney. the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian. new york: little, brown, 2009. print. alexie, sherman. flight. new york: grove, 2007. print. ----. indian killer. new york: atlantic monthly, 1996. print. alfred, taiaiake. “reimagining warriorhood: a conversation with taiaiake alfred. sam mckegney. masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2014. 76-86. print. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 116 bak, hans. “tribal or transnational? memory, history, and identity in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk.” companion to james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2015. 110-140. print. barking water. directed by sterlin harjo. dirt road. 2009. dvd. bevis, william. “native american novels: homing in.” recovering the word: essay on native american literature. brian swann and arnold krupat, eds. berkeley: university of california press, 1987. 580-620. print. bruyneel, kevin. the third space of sovereignty: the postcolonial politics of u.s.-indigenous relations. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2007. print. 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gardens in the dunes.” studies in american indian literature 18.2 (2006): 34-53. print. john gamber “in the master’s maison” 117 gamber, john. “wild word hunters: tricky language and literary allusion in harold of orange.” deborah l. madsen and a. robert lee, eds. texts and contexts: gerald vizenor. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2010. print. garroutte, eva marie. real indians: identity and the survival of native america. berkeley: university of california press, 2003. print. griffin, charles eldridge. four years in europe with buffalo bill. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1908. print. haselstein, ulla. “ghost dance literature: spectrality in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk.” companion to james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2015. 88-110. print. “indigenous, adj.” oed online. oxford university press. http://www.oed.com/view/entry/94474. accessed may 9, 2016. online. innes, robert alexander and kim anderson, eds. indigenous men as masculinities: legacies, identities, regeneration. winnipeg: university of manitoba press, 2015. print. jaskulski, józef. “a native american in paris. landscapes of dislocation in the heartsong of charging elk and three day road.” atenea 33, no. 2–jan (january 2013): 43–55. print. krupat, arnold. “history, language, and culture in james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk.” companion to james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2015. 242-62. print. ----.“issues of identity.” companion to james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2015. 196-212. print. lyons, scott richard. x-marks: native signatures of assent. u of minnesota press, 2010. maddra, sam. hostiles?: the lakota ghost dance and buffalo bill’s wild west. lincoln: university of oklahoma press, 2006. print. mckegney, sam. masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2014. print. mcnenly, linda scarangella. native performers in wild west shows: from buffalo bill to euro disney. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2015. print. mcnickle, d’arcy. the surrounded. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 1978. print. momaday, n. scott. house made of dawn. new york: harper collins, 2011. print. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 118 morgensen, scott l. “cutting to the roots of colonial masculinity.” indigenous men and masculinities: legacies, identities, regeneration. robert alexander innes and kim anderson, eds. winnipeg: university of manitoba press, 2015. print. moses, l. g. wild west shows and the images of american indians, 1883-1933. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 1999. print. powwow highway. jonathan wacks. hand made. 1989. dvd. russell, don. the lives and legends of buffalo bill. new edition. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1979. print. seals, david. the powwow highway: a novel. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2014. print. shanley, kathryn w. “‘looking for the way back’: displacement, diaspora, and desire in the heartsong of charging elk.” companion to james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2015. 167-195. print. silko, leslie marmon. ceremony: (penguin classics deluxe edition). new york: penguin, 2006. print. ----. gardens in the dunes: a novel. new york: simon and schuster, 2013. print. sinclair, niiganwewidam james. “after and towards: a dialogue on the future of indigenous masculinity studies.” sam mckegney. masculindians: conversations about indigenous manhood. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2014. 233-37. print. smoke signals. directed by chris eyre. shadow catcher. 1998. dvd. spry, adam. “‘it may be revolutionary in character’: the progress, a new tribal hermeneutics, and the literary re-expression of the anishinaabe oral tradition in summer in the spring.” deborah l. madsen, ed. the poetry and poetics of gerald vizenor. unm press, 2012. 23-42. print. thrush, coll. indigenous london: native travelers at the heart of empire. new haven: yale university press, 2016. united states census. “the american indian and alaska native population: 2010.” january, 2012. http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-10.pdf. accessed 9 may 2016. online. vizenor, gerald robert. bearheart: the heirship chronicles. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1978. print. john gamber “in the master’s maison” 119 ----. blue ravens. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, 2014. print. ----. darkness in saint louis bearheart. truck press, 1978. print. ----. dead voices: natural agonies in the new world. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1994. print. ----. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2000. print. ----. griever: an american monkey king in china. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1990. print. ----. hiroshima bugi: atamu 57. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2003. print. ----. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1999. print. ----. the people named the chippewa: narrative histories. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1984. print. ----. summer in the spring: anishinaabe lyric poems and stories. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1993. print. welch, james. the heartsong of charging elk. new york: anchor, 2000. print. wolfe, patrick. “nation and miscegenation: discursive continuity in the post-mabo era.” social analysis: the international journal of social and cultural practice, no. 36 (1994): 93–152. print. ----. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native journal of genocide research volume 8, issue 4.” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240#.vzdjcgawdow. accessed may 9, 2016. online. womack, craig s. “the fatal blow job.” 213-41. companion to james welch’s the heartsong of charging elk. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2015. 167-195. print. ----.red on red: native american literary separatism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1999. print. microsoft word cavanaugh.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   136   deanna reder and linda m. morra, eds. learn, teach, challenge: approaching indigenous literatures. waterloo, on: wilfrid laurier, 2016. 485 pp. isbn: 9781771121859. https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/books/l/learn-teach-challenge in learn, teach, challenge: approaching indigenous literatures, editors deanna reder (cree/métis) and linda m. morra take on the extensive project of assembling a critical introduction to canadian indigenous literary studies. their anthology brings together major figures in north american indigenous literary criticism such as janice acoose (saulteaux), emma larocque (métis), gerald vizenor (anishinaabe), and craig womack (creek/cherokee) while introducing emerging scholars like niigaanwewidam sinclair (anishinaabe), qwo-li driskill (cherokee), and keavy martin. the anthology offers a rigorous introduction to indigenous literary studies, with a particular concern for pedagogical interventions providing a jumping-off point for contemporary and ongoing discussions within indigenous literary, political, and cultural scholarship. reder and morra separate learn, teach, challenge into five key approaches that oscillate around the modes of inquiry captured in the book’s title. they organize the first of these sections around critical positioning, recognizing the importance of acknowledging one’s position in relation to place and indigenous presence in scholarship and critical movements. many of the writers in the “position” section express their investment to communities as scholars, teachers, and thinkers. the selected pieces the importance of articulating the relationship of scholars to their work and their role in academia or literary discourse writ large, as in janice acoose’s “iskwewak kah’ ki yaw ni wahkomakanak: re-membering being to signifying female relations.” acoose weaves her experience as a nehiowe-metis and anishinaabe woman brought to the cowessess residential school into her later resistance in university classrooms to dominant settler narratives of canadian literary history. through her experience, acoose found “that literature and books are powerful political tools,” encouraging “students to read critically and with an awareness of their own cultural position” (33). as acoose and the section as a whole remind us, as scholars of indigenous literature—whether indigenous or non-indigenous—we would be well-served to consider our position in relation to the works we are reading and teaching, to the debates we are bringing into our classes, and most importantly to the peoples and places we are thinking and writing about, even from what may seem a textual or historical distance. the second section, “imagining beyond images and myths,” makes a critical intervention often necessary in non-indigenous literary survey courses by bringing together several texts that challenge the stereotypical images of indigenous peoples that came to dominate literary canons. the first essay in the section is the oldest publication in the book: kanien’kehá:ka writer e. pauline johnson’s “a strong race opinion: on the indian girl in modern fiction,” in which she makes a call for cultural specificity in the late 19th century that still resonates today. reder and morra note the preponderance of critical work that identifies and challenges stereotypes, but they emphasize texts that theorize indigenous alternatives, such as gerald vizenor’s seminal “postindian warriors,” rather than those that simply call out racist images. the section therefore equips students and teachers to move their inquiry into images and myths of indigeneity beyond simply calling out stereotypes, opening a productive discourse into the ways that indigenous alexander cavanaugh review of learn, teach, challenge   137   writers and thinkers actively resist these images and claim a radical presence in the literary and representational world. in “deliberating indigenous literary approaches,” the third section of the anthology, natalie knight (yurok/diné) distills a set of key questions that have served as the foundation indigenous literary criticism: what is the relationship of indigenous literature to indigenous politics? what is the relationship between an ethics of reading and writing and a politics of engaging with community? how do we, as indigenous or non-indigenous scholars, “‘present ourselves’ to our communities as whole persons” […] within the economic, political, social, and spiritual realities of settler colonialism? how is our art and criticism accountable, and to whom? and what are some methodologies that do justice to living relationships, history, and the future? (222) responding to these questions, the section includes debates over the utility of western philosophical or theoretical frameworks to reading indigenous literatures, critiques of representing indigeneity on national or pan-indigenous terms in scholarship, and approaches to scholarly ethics. leanne betasamosake simpson’s “gdi-nweninaa: our sound, our voice” demonstrates the importance for indigenous scholars to ground their approaches in the specific teachings of their communities and languages. simpson shares four nishnaabeg perspectives “to deepen our understandings of decolonization, assimilation, resistance, and resurgence from within” these perspectives, a process that centers indigeneity in approaches to scholarly ethics, careful critiques, and conscious engagement with the ideas and stories of others (289). the spirit of this foundational section carries into the fourth: “contemporary concerns,” a section that offers a snapshot of major concerns in first nations scholarship in its current moment, including reconciliation, appropriately representing narratives of murdered or missing indigenous women, indigenous two-spirit and gender studies, and political resurgence. presenting such a section as “contemporary” immediately raises questions of limitation for the anthology in terms of future movements in the field. nonetheless, offering such a section and defining it as “contemporary” speaks to the editors’ sense of responsibility to a pedagogical project that models engagement with contemporary issues. as in each of the other sections, “contemporary concerns” depicts the ways indigenous studies is dynamic, more so than many other literary fields: continuously articulating the stakes of indigenous writing in the 21st century, advancing often radical decolonial projects, and upholding expectations of attending to community responsibly. the fifth section, “classroom considerations,” presents commissioned essays on pedagogy, beginning with the difficult question of whether or not certain texts should be taught at all, which reminds teachers to acknowledge their position and familiarize themselves with protocol in their discourse community and in the communities tied to texts. other essays in the section engage alternative genre and media possibilities for teaching indigenous literature and media. expanding the boundaries of what “counts” as a text in a literary classroom is an ongoing endeavor, one that reder and morra attend to but could even more substantively draw out in regards to visual or aural media. as the final section demonstrates, the anthology provides a working foundation transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   138   with a set of approaches to teaching and thinking about indigenous texts, but at no point is it a manual for teaching indigenous literatures. i see this as an important characteristic of the collection. to presume that there is or should be a prescribed way to teach (beyond recognizing protocol and being aware of one’s critical positioning) would contradict the rich debates and diverse perspectives brought together in the collection. those voices and perspectives are the offering; they are the best instruction for thoughtful teachers. even so, the editors and contributors open each section with an articulation of their organizing rationale, pointing out key interventions by the scholars and theorists whose work populates the sections. this consideration makes the anthology accessible on multiple levels: those looking for a brief overview of the field can read these introductory overviews and selections from some or all of the sections and come away with important perspectives on scholarly discussions and practices. those looking to substantively engage the material—such as those designing a course or planning a discussion of indigenous literary scholarship—will find a deliberate, thorough immersion into prescient perspectives and debates over the last quarter century and beyond. finally, the anthology stands as a rigorous and very useful introduction to first nations literary criticism for scholars outside canada. such was my encounter with the anthology—as a u.s. based student of indigenous literatures, i have noticed an absence of indigenous theory and criticism from north of the u.s.-canada settler border in the bibliographies that i come across. this anthology opens a door to a field of scholarship that is at once in dialogue with and a part of the discourses more familiar to u.s.-based students. given the often overlapping historical, political, and economic issues that indigenous literary studies on both sides of the u.s./canada border take up, the anthology brings together voices and perspectives that have seemed separate for far too long. this move serves as a reminder of the long-standing relationships between indigenous nations on both sides of that interruptive settler border; it therefore makes sense to turn to critical anthologies like learn, teach, challenge at a period when the field is turning toward the global. this turn, i found, was absent from this anthology; while some essays make explicit moves toward indigenous globality, such as kateri akiwenzie-damm’s “erotica, indigenous style,” the collection itself does not address the emerging field of global indigenous studies. as the anthology looks semi-hemispherically at indigenous literary criticism in its contemporary moment, the next step, in my mind, is to pivot from the hemispheric to the global, a move that will bring these many strong voices and the field into a greater position as a major critical discourse. in my estimation, however, learn, teach, challenge succeeds at perhaps its most pertinent goal: to provide a solid foundation for teachers outside the field of indigenous studies who wish to include indigenous literature in their classes. in its organization and contents, the anthology offers specific ethical guidelines and approaches to protocols (not protocols themselves) regarding how, why, and whether certain texts and issues should be approached in a classroom environment. following reder and morra’s thoughtful organization and collation, the book is a resource that can help prevent the problems that come from mishandling, misrepresenting, or tokenizing indigenous texts in literature classrooms. as reder puts it, indigenous literature, when approached properly: might inspire you to search for wisdom and to value humility as you take on the responsibilities involved in making meaning; to integrate contemporary concerns into alexander cavanaugh review of learn, teach, challenge   139   your analysis and pedagogy throughout the process, because there is no literature today that is as relevant to general society as that by indigenous authors (3) reder and morra offer this anthology as a way to facilitate positive representation and inclusion of indigenous texts and to foster solidarity in university settings that have historically marginalized indigenous voices. their offering is a valuable contribution to the field for teachers and students alike, for those extensively familiar with or new to the rich discourses of indigenous literary studies. for teachers and readers looking to approach indigenous literatures ethically and productively, learn, teach, challenge will make an invaluable resource. alexander cavanaugh, university of oregon microsoft word grewal.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 168 theodore c. van alst jr., ed. the faster redder road: the best unamerican stories of stephen graham jones. university of new mexico press, 2015. http://unmpress.com/books.php?id=20000000006088 billy j. stratton, ed. the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. university of new mexico press, 2016. http://unmpress.com/books.php?id=20000000005880&page=book “i don’t know if it’s about visiting another world, a dream world. i think what it’s about is the fact that the world doesn’t make sense to me. but i can write a story that’s twenty-four pages long, and for those twenty-four pages i can make the world make sense. i need those injections of the world making sense. it allows me to fake my way through this world that doesn’t make sense.” stephen graham jones, the fictions of stephen graham jones (17). from red ford trucks to teenage halloween horror, and from west texas to montana, stephen graham jones writes complicated and affective narratives about the american west. as editor of the faster redder road, theodore van alst jr. explains that jones is an author who ‘can wrench your gut with horror and humor, leave you wandering and wondering, and ultimately make you ask for more hours in the day’ (xvi). in this collected anthology of jones’s work, van alst has worked hard to include some of jones’s most exciting and challenging writing. he brings together a wide breath of jones’s previously published work ranging from eight novel extracts to 27 short stories. some works that appear in both van alst's collection and billy j. stratton’s the fictions of stephen graham jones include the fast red road: a plainsong, “captivity narrative 109”, the long trial of nolan bugatti, demon theory, it came from del rio, and the last final girl. if you have never read jones, the faster redder road is the place to start. part of the draw of this collection is van alst’s introduction, where he sheds light on jones’s ability to write stories that explore more than what it means to be ‘indian in the twenty-first century’ (xvi). he joyfully points out that ‘finally, finally, when i read these stories, unless i am told otherwise, all of the characters are indian. but best of all, very best of all, they’re incidentally indian’(xiv). this collection is as diverse as some of jones’s influences, which include gerald vizenor, bret easton ellis, louise erdrich, phillip k. dick, and stephen king. ‘infused with nostalgia’, we travel with jones to convenience stores, diners, playgrounds, and high schools (xvi). reading like an all-access behind the scenes pass, jones’s story notes appear at the end of each narrative and explain jones's writing techniques and thoughts when writing a particular character, place, or memory. two notable narratives that make us feel, as van alst explains, like we ‘can’t look away’ or ‘get away’ are “so perfect” and the last final girl (xvi). “so perfect” illustrates two murderous teenage girls and a gruesome tick infestation that is sure to make you queasy. set on halloween night, the last final girl features a murderer in a michael jackson mask and turns the slasher genre on its head. another of my favorites is “to run without falling” a story of a 14-year-old boy and his friends’ injurious teenage nights at a playground, where blood mixes with gravel and nadhia grewal review of the faster redder road and the fictions of stephen graham jones 169 ‘seesaws greased so quiet that we had to make up for it by screaming our presence, that we existed’ (108). one of the most disturbing stories is “father, son, holy rabbit”, which hauntingly portrays a father and son lost on a hunting trip. in a snowy wilderness, species boundaries are challenged as a father’s love for his son turns deadly. also, consider this from truck stop narrative “paleogenesis, circa 1970”, one of the list stories in the collection: “this is how i say rain, in little grey drops of noise that roll down the face of the page, a silent patter that has been falling for years. but it’s not raining now. listen. this is how i say truck stop: a finger of neon light on the horizon; the feel of idling rigs in the stained concrete; the smell of diesel, grease, chiliburger, toys bought that will someday be the only thing a child has left” (135) . followed by jones’s story note: “this one’s just me sitting in a booth. or, “me,” i should say” (142). this is just one example of jones bleeding onto the page as what he calls his shadow self. this is elaborated upon further by jones in the fictions of stephen graham jones. as editor of the critical essay collection, stratton has orchestrated a timely and well-focused collection on an author whose work has previously not been given the scholarly attention it deserves. reflecting on the ever-multiplying works of jones and the variety of genres that he deploys, stratton anchors the collection with an essay by jones himself “letter to a just-startingout indian writer— and maybe to myself”. as an invitation to ‘come for the icing, stay for the cake’, stratton’s introduction hits right to the core of jones’s allure—empathy. it is precisely jones’s intense ‘emotional core’ and the authenticity of his work that pulls us as readers into each page (20). this is followed closely by a standout piece in the form of an interview with jones titled “observations of the shadow self”. in the interview, jones says when writing fiction he always is ‘looking over at that shadow self, that other self that could have been’ (21). referring to his characters as his shadow selves, he says ‘the way i make them real is by saying they’re me’(21-22). genre bending and fusing ‘literary territories’ with memory, jones’s human and more-thanhuman characters resist categorization and often reveal the blurred boundaries between the living and the dead (4). jones’s fiction involves many forms ranging from ‘slipstream, thriller, sci-fi, horror, detective fiction, the graphic novel, film treatments, short stories, microfiction, and even blogging’ (4). as frances washburn notes, jones’s novels ‘rupture’ american indian literature in the sense that he writes in a genre that is his own (68). jones has done countless interviews, many of which can be found on his site demontheory.net, and stratton's interview reveals the ‘dark pathways’ and the major themes of jones work (259). he has organized the collection into three main sections, each centered on jones’s dialogue with survivance, history, and genre. i focus on a few selected essays that illustrate the diversity of jones’s writing. welcoming us into the ‘brave red world’ of jones, stratton’s love and dedication to jones’s work is apparent (402). his chapter stands out amongst the strongest of the collection and he points us towards the unique nature of jones’s work at every turn. focusing on jones’s first novel the fast red road, stratton points out jones’s ability to lead the reader ‘into territories beyond the belief to face the mystery of storytelling and what it can teach us’ (107). as a postmodern gothic, the fast red road layers conventions common to genre fiction whilst illuminating the spectral hauntings of colonial invasion from west texas to new mexico. there is a particularly succinct comparative exploration of the fast red road and thomas pynchon’s the crying of lot 49, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 170 which illustrates jones’s deconstruction of meaning and postmodernist influences. intertextuality is central to stratton’s chapter and much of jones’s work. also exploring jones’s postmodern fiction, kristina baudemann explains how jones’s formatting is postmodern creating ‘a sense of direction, metafiction, and différance’ (161). birgit däwes's insightful chapter on the bird is gone uniquely explores the detective narrative perspective, ecological themes, and jones’s speculative future where the great plains is returned back into ‘indian territories’ (134). she is quick to point out that this novel is ‘a rubik’s cube’ that has to be twisted and turned many times in order to tie together the narrative streams (68). john gamber’s chapter, which follows däwes’s, is also on the bird is gone, and offers an indepth analysis of the legal implications of land re-allocation in jones’s novel. pinpointing the central current of the novel, he asks ‘what if native american proprietorship were suddenly recognized by the united states’ (133). he successfully argues how jones further complicates the notion of wilderness space through the mythos of the great plains and the frontier offering an insight into contemporary native land issues (135). both däwes and gamber break down what is known as one of jones’s ‘least accessible novels’ with a zeal that proves that the bird is gone is worth exploring (116). analysis of jones’s novels are covered extensively but the sections dedicated to his short stories illuminate why more attention should be paid to jones’s 200 plus short stories. chris lalonde’s “cryptic portrayals” discusses the short story collection bleed into me. noting that when reading jones ‘one is rarely far from death’ (218). a. robert lee also discusses a few of jones’s short story collections together in “dark illumination”. notable here are some of lee’s readings from the ones that got away; his short analysis of ‘monsters’, which involves a young boy’s summer vacation, a cadaver dog, and a vampire, underlines why ‘memory again becomes haunt’(266). lee pinpoints the often cyclical nature of jones’s writing and reveals how he transforms the most ordinary situation into a nightmare. the third and final section of the book deals with jones’s genre fiction, and builds on earlier discussions. van alst explores the old west and the new west in “lapin noir: to del rio it went”. describing it came from del rio as ‘literary noir' and 'texas twisted’, he offers an analysis of the novel alongside films such as repo man, touch of evil, and navajo joe (328). rebecca m. lush discusses two of jones’s more recent novels, the last final girl and zombie bake-off, in her contribution “dead celebrities and horror archetypes”. layered with zombie apocalypse, horror, and humor, lush’s analysis develops an understanding of jones’s engagement with horror and pop culture. although jones’s more recent horror works deal less explicitly with native themes, lush notes that ‘the native is never too far around the proverbial corner’ (306). she delivers a reading of jones’s horror and speculative fiction that demonstrates his deconstruction of classic horror tropes. as jones disrupts narrative conventions of the horror genre, lush shows how jones engages with the slasher theme and zombies in order to flesh out how the boundaries between life and death remain tenuous. bookending stratton’s collection is grace l. dillon’s mediation on native slipstream and science fiction “native slipstream: blackfeet physics in the fast red road”. she explores the fast red road, where time bends and realities blur. the novel reads as an indian road trip narrative with a 'native shuffle step' that switches between time periods (352). dillon defines native nadhia grewal review of the faster redder road and the fictions of stephen graham jones 171 slipstream as alternative and multiple realities that promote ‘cultural, economic, and environmental sustainabilities for self-determining indigenous peoples’ (344). she also links quantum physics and indigenous futurism to the theme of the ‘native glitch’, where ‘a series of defining moments or characters in native history’ are destined to repeat in an 'endless loop’ (351). demonstrating the relationship between speculative fiction, time-travel, and native fiction, dillon argues that these conventions are ‘central to native epistemologies’ (345). finished with over 20 pages of manuscript pages with jones’s notes scribbled in the margins, a glossary of terms, and an excerpt from the graphic novel of demon theory, this collection skilfully brings together essays that prove the many ways that jones makes sense of living in the twenty-first century. entering the world of stephen graham jones is an otherworldly experience and his characters live on in your mind long after the book closes. when read together, these collections insist upon how relatable and experimental jones’s fiction is. reading jones is certain to hot-wire your sight but, as both van alst and stratton’s collections show, the vision may not be quite what you had expected. anything will happen; we just have to be brave enough to turn the page. nadhia grewal, goldsmiths university of london microsoft word rantic.docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 180 groulx, david a. wabigoon river poems. neyaashiinigmiing, on: kegedonce press, 2015. 58 pp. 978-1-928120-01-8. https://kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/65-wabigoon-river-poems.html   [i]t was 1967-69 when i was asking around for indian poets. indian poets? you mean poetry written by indians, right?... well, i knew of the young poets at the institute of american indian art (iaia) beginning to barely surface in the modern world… [such as] james mcgrath and his wife, t.d. allen… [there was] joy harjo… leslie marmon silko… but other than that, there were no poets. nothing. i mean literally nothing. (ortiz 39) half a century after the era described by simon ortiz, indian poets are no longer an endemic curiosity of the literary world. contemporary indigenous north america boasts not only an abundant and multifarious poetic production1 but also a growing number of publishers dedicated to its development and dissemination, both of which strive to (re)define native literary aesthetics in the increasingly dynamic and relational global context. one such publishing house is kegedonce press, a native-owned and operated independent press based in the traditional territory of the chippewas of nawash first nation at neyaashiinigmiing indian reserve in ontario, which is one of the three established canadian aboriginal publishers and the only aboriginal publishing company committed to publishing indigenous poetry and promoting it both nationally and internationally (kegedonce press). one of kegedonce’s latest titles, wabigoon river poems (2015) by award-winning author, david a. groulx, comprises 39 poems, some of which were previously published in the criterion: an international journal in english, ricepaper, about place journal, the trillium, one throne magazine, and black heart magazine. like groulx’ previous kegedonce collections, the long dance (2000) and under god’s pale bones (2010), from the very first page wabigoon river poems absorbs its reader in a unique poetic architecture that masterfully integrates the vehement force of the living word with a compact in medias res style. the poems, largely unified by mood, tone, and the free verse form, are arranged into two sections—part one: pallor mortis and part two: wabigoon river poem(s). pallor mortis is braided from three dominant structural-thematic strands—poems charged with personal emotion, such as the beautiful poem “food for moths” and “on seeing a photograph of my mother at st. joseph residential school for girls,” decolonization poems, and epigrammatic environmental verse. ironically titled “higher intelligence,” “global warning,” and “blind man’s eye,” poems from the last group sharply warn of impeding ecological cataclysm and humanity’s self-destruction: we are so smart we’ve learned how to melt the great ice above and below the world to flood it again and rid it of ourselves (“higher intelligence” 3) sanja runtić review of wabigoon river poems 181 they paint an apocalyptic vision of a wasteland in which “rusted razors” carve the burning land that has been raped by a people convinced of their preordained destiny “to make / life into a commodity / to make earth into / property” (“blind man’s eye” 12) whose “perverted life” and false sense of superiority continues to entrap them in their “repulsive imagination” (“blind man’s eye” 12). the same vision resurfaces in the poem “kiss,” which replaces the “rusted razor” metaphor with that of “the abortionist’s hook”—“an inhospitable kiss” that “stuffed us back into the womb” (“kiss” 14)—invoking the horror of coercive  sterilization practices, a method of systemic annihilation of indigenous peoples used by colonial powers all over the world. the dehumanization of aboriginal people, historical amnesia, and the omnipresent residue of institutional racism are further addressed in “sketch of a small town.” both the poem’s language and its imagery shatter the illusion of homeliness evoked by the title as from a remote whiteman’s gaze perspective the speaker imparts the news that a native boy was hanged by his playmates during a cowboys and indians game in his small town in ontario: “. . . the police cut down / the body / and he kicked a bit / like a pony” (“sketch of a small town” 8). in piercing, precise strokes, several poems in the first section foreground the question: what are indians?: we are the aftermath of an apocalypse the remnants of a holocaust that began in 1492 we are the dust of a great storm that has not yet settled we are soldiers after the war survivors of a death camp… (“what are indians?” 1) the same question reappears in the poem “i know what an indian is.” repeatedly referred to in inanimate terms, “the indian” is identified as a dehumanized, colonially imposed configuration: an indian is the creation of a subhuman by an act of government (“i know what an indian is” 15) transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 182 satirically subverting the imperial paradigm of civilization, the poems “hobbesian notions” and “why are they called white people” answer the same question by deconstructing the concept of whiteness: if the whiteman thinks indian lives were “nasty brutish and short” before he came he should see them now (“hobbesian notions” 2) why are they called white people and not immigrants colonists settlers or killers or kidnappers or thieves (“why are they called white people” 9) the second section, wabigoon river poem(s), introduces a different, albeit thematically related, set of poems. supplemented by as many as 126 endnotes, it explores the topics of oppression, freedom, and injustice through densely intertextual, opaque verse, revealing the author’s admirable erudition and acute awareness of imperial practices across space and time. this part of the collection maps a comprehensive diachronic geography of oppression perpetrated by “people [with] hell in [their] hand and heaven in [their] mouth” (“wretched red: i” 20) on all parts of the planet—from the congo, south africa, ghana, somalia, nigeria, haiti, guinea, argentina, guatemala, venezuela, cambodia, vietnam, the philippines, palestine, qatar, iraq, iran, afghanistan, armenia, bosnia, croatia, hungary, greece, and spain to the small sagamok reserve in western ontario. as a result, it provides a broad platform for rumination, targeting not only native or anglo-american/canadian readers—as is confirmed by the endnotes, which also explain terms such as tecumseh (52), custer (52), pontiac (54), geronimo (54), and métis (55)—but also an eclectic worldwide audience that subsumes both cosmopolitan intellectuals and a simply curious, semi-informed readership. poems in this section are not (just) exclusively indigenous, or postcolonial, or protest poetry; they are above all human. groulx’s creative imagination leads us through abysses of suffering and despair, as it breaks down the concepts of race, religion, and nation, testifies to a universal experience of entrapment in western civilization’s materialistic sanja runtić review of wabigoon river poems 183 overtures, and upholds a shared strife for liberation from the confines of historical injustice. it echoes the cry of the subjugated and the dispossessed whose lives have been torn apart by bigotry, structural violence, and ethnocide (“wretched red: iii” 26). in a centrifugal sweep, it fuses the fate of ontario aboriginal communities ravaged by mercury poisoning with victims of oświęcim concentration camp and wounded knee massacre. transcending the boundaries of space and time, it crafts a space in which ho chi minh, sitting bull, geronimo, che, pontiac, leonard peltier, and simon bolivar stand together in fight against a man-eating war god fed by western scientific and philosophical ideas of heidegger, nietzsche, hegel, rousseau, hayek, tocqueville, ploetz, and gobineau. yet, despite the macabre mood, some poems of this section weave a thread of hope. the persona in “wretched red: ii” is not only the one who perceives the horrors of oppression but also the “one who remembers” (“wretched red: ii” 24) and nourishes the healing power of word. simultaneously, using paratextual tools, the poet positions himself as a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants, the one whose work merely follows in the footsteps set by intellectual bards of liberation such as fanon and achebe, whom he often credits at the beginning of his collections.2 groulx’ “celebration of influence” (see blaeser 144) further extends to memorable resistance heroes and dissidents—ojibwa warrior and poet, waubojeeg, tecumseh, pontiac, pope, toussaint l'ouverture, josé rizal, larbi ben m’hidi, breyten breytenbach, warsame shire awale, daniel varoujan, ken saro-wiwa, miklós radnóti, dennis brutus, mohammed al-ajami, and many others who are referred to in the poems and the notes. even though the last poem, “reckoner (addenda),” condemns the possibility of humanity’s regeneration on its present civilizational foundations, it also calls for change, as do the poems “wretched red iv” and “v”: “… rise / rise / the world is waiting” (“wretched red: iv” 27); “… howl / to be free men / amen” (“wretched red: v” 29). one of the final poems of the second section, “ceremony,” shares the same tone, as it repeats not only the title but also the closing blessingway pattern of leslie marmon silko’s famous novel. whereas in ceremony the “witchery” returns “into its belly” and vanishes by coming back on itself (silko 261), “ceremony” celebrates the return of the ancestors, ancient prophets, the buffalo, and the traditional ways, discarding settler civilization’s disposable customs: “our men will return / eat from bowels / and bowls to be thrown away / they will return, blessingway” (“ceremony” 42). except for some minor typographical and factual errors, wabigoon river poems is a superbly crafted collection of verse. its powerful, relatable imagery proves not only that in this time and day native poetic voice is alive and thriving but also that the perspective it conveys, received with interest and appreciated worldwide (croatia, in my case), is invaluable to understanding and envisioning our world. sanja runtić, university of osijek, croatia notes 1 as recent scholarship has demonstrated, written evidence to the rich tradition of american indian poetry goes as far back as the 1670s (see parker 4). 2 this volume is framed with a famous quote from things fall apart: “the white man is very clever. he came quietly and peaceably with his religion. we were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. he has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 184   works cited blaeser, kimberly, m. “song buried in the muscle of urgency.” transmotion 2.1&2 (2016): 144–154. 22 apr. 2017. groulx, david a. the long dance. neyaashiinigmiing, on: kegedonce press, 2000. ---. under god’s pale bones. ed. gregory scofield. neyaashiinigmiing, on: kegedonce press, 2010. kegedonce press. web. 20 apr. 2017 <http://kegedonce.com>. ortiz, simon. “finding an indian poet.” studies in american indian literatures 18.3 (2006): 39–40. parker, robert dale. changing is not vanishing: a collection of american indian poetry to 1930. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p, 2011. silko, leslie marmon. ceremony. new york: penguin, 1986. microsoft word 125-1231-1-le.docx transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 47   “carried in the arms of standing waves:” the transmotional aesthetics of nora marks dauenhauer1 billy j. stratton in october 2012 nora marks dauenhauer was selected for a two-year term as alaska state writer laureate in recognition of her tireless efforts in preserving tlingit language and culture, as well as her creative contributions to the state’s literary heritage. a widely anthologized author of stories, plays and poetry, dauenhauer has published two books, the droning shaman (1988) and life woven with song (2000). despite these contributions to the ever-growing body of native american literary discourse her work has been overlooked by scholars of indigenous/native literature.2 the purpose of the present study is to bring attention to dauenhauer’s significant efforts in promoting tlingit peoplehood and cultural survivance through her writing, which also offers a unique example of transpacific discourse through its emphasis on sites of dynamic symmetry between tlingit and japanese zen aesthetics. while dauenhauer’s poesis is firmly grounded in tlingit knowledge and experience, her creative work is also notable for the way it negotiates tlingit cultural adaptation in response to colonial oppression and societal disruption through the inclusion of references to modern practices and technologies framed within an adaptive socio-historical context. through literary interventions on topics such as land loss, environmental issues, and the social and political status of tlingit people within the dominant euro-american culture, as well as poems about specific family members, dauenhauer merges the individual and the communal to highlight what the white earth nation of anishinaabeg novelist, poet and philosopher, gerald vizenor, conceives as native cultural survivance.3 she demonstrates her commitment to “documenting tlingit language and oral tradition” in her role as co-editor, along with her husband, richard, of the acclaimed series: classics of tlingit oral literature (47). in this groundbreaking cultural revitalization project, the dauenhauers reinforce the importance of tlingit language in the shaping of specific cultural practices. because indigenous knowledge is commonly conceived as an interpenetrating totality, which eschews the systems of categorization billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 48   and disciplinary division between history, oral tradition and fiction, or the sacred and secular that typifies western knowledge, the relationship between such research and dauenhauer’s creative production remains much more fluid. in both the droning shaman (1988) and life woven with song (2000), dauenhauer addresses time-honored themes from tlingit storytelling, such as their relationship to the natural environment and the life forms that dwell there, the importance of traditional cultural and spiritual practices, the nature of mortality, and the ways in which the tlingit have adapted to the changes brought by colonialism. she is also able to cultivate a poetic voice that is generative of a transnational literary aesthetic through an engagement with the work of non-native writers, including han shan, setcho, bashō and e.e. cummings. the unexpected and varied array of literary interests produced by native and non-native writers that influence dauenhauer’s work is reflected in the production of a cosmototemic aesthetic that, nonetheless, remains grounded in her own tlingit subjectivity. for vizenor, “the visionary and totemic stories of creation are instances of literary transmotion, and the continuous variations of origin stories create a discrete sense of presence and survivance” (“literary transmotion” 17). dauenhauer’s poetry demonstrates a similar approach through her capacity to adapt tlingit narratives of totemic and visionary transmotion to contemporary concerns and create new modes for the expression of indigenous knowledge. the engagement with tlingit historical experience with colonialism in the past and present that is evinced through dauenhauer’s work offers valuable insight into the function of tlingit literary expression and allows readers to better understand the multivalent role of contemporary native writers as storytellers and tribal historians who, according to vizenor in fugitive poses, testify to “that sense of presence in remembrance” (15). the ephemerality of memory gains traction through what he goes on to term, “the connotations of transmotion,” which are encapsulated in “creation stories, totemic visions, reincarnation, and sovenance” (15). in the poem, “anchorage,” by her friend the mvskoke creek poet and songwriter, joy harjo, in which dauenhauer is also present, the legacy of intergenerational trauma implicit in colonial history becomes an anchor for the manifestation of native sovenance through the image of “someone’s athabascan / grandmother, folded up” on a park bench, “smelling like 200 years / of blood and piss ” (14). as harjo and dauenhauer walk transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 49   together along the streets of this alaskan city “made of stone, of blood, and fish,” harjo’s narrative poem bears witness to the ineffable nature of colonial experience signified by the anonymous native woman, “her eyes closed against some / unimagined darkness, where she is buried in an ache / in which nothing makes / sense” (14). through the emblem of collective trauma that this woman characterizes, along with “the 6th avenue jail of mostly native / and black men,” the poem further testifies to the injustice and oppression to which native people have been subjected since contact (14). refusing to relegate native people to the role of victims, however, the poem ends with an invocation of morose humor and ironic astonishment: everyone laughed at the impossibility of it, but also the truth. because who would believe the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival those who were never meant to survive? (15) the intensity of this poem, which illustrates the vital importance of native literary production as a means of decolonization, lies in harjo’s reinscription of the despair and hopelessness that many native people experience into an affecting narrative of cultural survivance. the active sense of presence conveyed in the work of dauenhauer, harjo, and vizenor combines to give renewed emphasis to the critical importance of sovereignty and amplifies the emancipatory potential of native literature to serve as a corrective to the “literature of dominance” that seeks to define native people through the tropes of tragedy and victimry. while the works of joy harjo and gerald vizenor4 have been long afforded canonical status in native american literary studies due to the contributions they have made to tribal communities and the causes of intellectual and political sovereignty, nora marks dauenhauer’s contributions carry these concerns into new theoretical and geographic locales. the invocation of these simultaneous qualities allows dauenhauer to formulate a more thorough picture of tlingit aesthetics that serves as a framework for the expression of cultural survivance and the imperatives of decolonization within a storied cartography. one that also acknowledges the important value of transpacific cultural exchange. billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 50   dauenhauer’s utilization of tlingit cultural memory as a prominent feature of poetic work that evokes connotations of transmotion is especially prominent in her first collection of poetry, the droning shaman, acting to transgress overdetermined social and cultural categories. this book is divided into seven sections with the first six consisting of original poems that reflect on dauenhauer’s experiences and the importance of family, which necessarily recall broader themes that are vital to tlingit identity and culture. dauenhauer draws on these creative insights in the final section to inform tlingit translations of works by non-native poets, giving the whole a cosmopolitan appeal. for the purposes of this study, my primary focus in regards to these translations will concern dauenhauer’s sustained engagement with issues vital to native american cultural expression as manifested through aesthetic reciprocity between tlingit and zen philosophy. the first section will explore the influence of bashō’s work on dauenhauer’s poetic style, necessitating a fuller exploration of the sense of native transmotion that is operant in her work. from this methodological foundation i move on to a consideration of the ways in which dauenhauer developed a unique poetic style by drawing on japanese haiku and imagistic poetry to conceive of tlingit memory and experience within a more holistic transpacific aesthetic independent of “mere comparitives and performative acts” (fugitive 183). the appeal to both native and non-native epistemological frameworks and aesthetics in dauenhauer’s work further operates as an effective counter-discourse and critique of the stagnant conceptions of traditionalism in which native cultures are viewed as anchored to an irretrievable past that is widely perpetuated by social science discourse and the legacy of colonial subjection. tlingit and zen poetics: permanence and change along the pacific divide before i move on to an examination of dauenhauer’s work some preliminary words about haiku and its development seems useful. the development of haiku into a distinct poetic form was the result of a process that took place over the period of nearly a thousand years involving both chinese and japanese poets. one of the earliest ancestors of modern haiku in japan can be found in the form of the waka,5 which was structured by lines of 5-7-5-7-7syllables (“disuse” 711). the next forerunner to the haiku was the renga, which koji kawamoto explains as “a linked poem . . . which comprises of 36 or transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 51   100 verses composed in turns by two or more persons at one sitting” (“basho’s haiku” 246). according to r.h blyth, the renga “thus became an extended waka, and in intention a very high and difficult art” (history xiv). the haiku as a distinct form was then created out of the renga by separating the opening section of the renga, which retained the waka 5-7-5 arrangement (xii). developing out of this more rigid and aristocratic form of the renga in the late sixteenth century, as kawamoto further notes, the haiku’s “very raison d’être, was . . . its flashing divergence from the traditional genre, not in form but in vocabulary and subject matter” (“disuse” 711). the divergence in form was driven by a desire among poets to liberate themselves from the restrictive conventions of these previous classical forms. the primary way that this distinction was emphasized was through the use of a language that in its suggestiveness was more accessible and open to comic insights and associative play, while continuing to engage with the themes of “seasonal changes, love, grief for the dead, and the loneliness experienced on journeys” (“disuse” 711). of these, it is the enduring presence of the natural world as a unifying foundation where force, sentiment, memory, and desire are deftly melded within a haiku to create meaning. “its peculiar quality,” asserts blyth, “is its self-effacing, self annhiliative nature, by which it enables us, more than any other form of literature, to grasp the thing-in-itself” (haiku 980). this function was made explicit by masaoke shiki, who, as carl johnson notes, “coined the term ‘haiku’” in which the goal of this new form was the “depiction of objects as they were” (172). within less than a hundred years the haiku was well on its way to overtaking the waka and renga as the favored mode of poetic expression in japan. this shift was made evident by the refinements in style and spiritual resonance of works produced by bashō following the travels throughout japan that served as the subject matter for his most famous works, with the first of these published in 1684 as the record of a weatherexposed skeleton (yuasa 29). among the most significant features of bashō’s work, according to nobuyuki yuasa, was the insight into the relationship between change (ryukō) and substance (jitsu), which figure prominently in the foremost concerns of the haiku (37-38). while the meaning of such terms may initially seem self-evident, as keiji nishitani points out, the notion of substance presents the human mind with a particularly billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 52   fraught set of other questions. “whether animate or inanimate,” nishitani observes, “man or even god, insofar as an entity is considered to exist in itself, to be on its own ground, it has been conceived as substance” (110). the critical insight that nishitani brings to our attention, however, is the indispensible role that human subjectivity plays in this matter, requiring a consideration of “the field where the mode of things as they are in themselves is grasped eidetically and where the concept of substance comes into being” (113). thus, when thinking about substance and its disposition towards change, whether that be through the forces of entropy or temporality, this problem is of “a twofold character: on the one hand, it is the field on which things come to display why they are in themselves; and on the other, the field on which we grasp what things are in themselves” (113). it is this critical awareness that lies at the center of haiku, and provides the dramatic effect of the kireji, the cutting word, that opens the natural world to new associations and intuitive insights. it is the poet’s ability to seamlessly combine the force of change upon substance within the fragile unity that allowed haiku to develop beyond its strictly reactionary and parodic origins. bashō is a significant figure in this development because it is in his works, culminating in the narrow road to the deep north, that the substance (in this case, the words themselves) was deftly combined with the essence (kyo) of the work in an elegant unity that reflected “the hidden vital force that shapes the work into a meaningful whole” (yuasa 38). the conception of the natural world as an inherently interrelated system of elements created out of substance and change—an understanding shared between zen japanese and native cultures—serves as a generative space for artistic exchange and transcendent intuition. as vizenor observes in his introduction to favor of crows, “haiku from the start turned my thoughts to chance, ephemerality, and impermanence, the very traces of a creative tease and presence in nature” (ix). dauenhauer’s the droning shaman presents the incipient development of a similar poetic voice that highlights the relation between tlingit culture and the land, while providing a dynamic venue for exploring the intersections between native and zen philosophy and literary expression. she displays a serious interest in formulating a transpacific aesthetic in this work through the bilingual composition of works in both tlingit and english, in addition to tlingit translations of the work of the zen poets bashō transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 53   and setcho. the presence of these translations distinguish dauenhauer as an innovative storier within the context of native literary production in which the exploration of tlingit culture and its relation to the flows of transmotion are shown to be prominent features in her poetic work. dauenhauer further extends the reach of tlingit storytelling and poetic form in her second collection of poetry and prose, life woven with song, in which poetry and prose operate in a similarly organic way to the haibun composition style as refined by bashō in the narrow road to the deep north where “prose and haiku illuminate each other like two mirrors held up facing each other” (yuasa, 39). a strong sense of literary synthesis is created in dauenhauer’s work through the incorporation of the unifying themes of seasonal change, mortality and human interactions with the natural world, which are central to the philosophical foundations of both tlingit and zen cosmologies. presented within a cohesive whole, her aesthetic vision explores the elemental function of storytelling that binds the interrelations between people, temporality and the land through personal meditations on the themes of human presence and absence. far from being derivative of bashō’s style, however, dauenhauer indigenizes the imagistic poetic form by grounding it in tlingit experience and native peoplehood, highlighting fertile sites of transnational literary exchange. although tlingit oratory and storytelling convey a precise expression of tlingit indigeneity, dauenhauer asserts, as with bashō’s poetry, it “is also universal in its concern for grief and the ability of the human spirit to transcend death” (xi). furthermore, dauenhauer’s poetry and creative non-fiction testifies to what vizenor calls the “shadow survivance” of indigenous peoples and exemplifies the specific ways in which the tlingit have negotiated cultural disruptions wrought by colonialism and technological change. interestingly, vizenor goes on to associate this capacity to persist with a fundamental element of the haiku form, noting that it “ascribes the seasons with shadow words: the light that turns a leaf, a bird, a hand. shadow words are intuitive, a concise meditation of sound, motion, memories, and the sensation of the seasons” (manifest 65). dauenhauer’s tlingit translations of the haiku of bashō, whose influence is perceptible in many of her own poems, seems natural given the emphasis on the conception of holistic interconnectivity prominent in their perceptions of the natural world. the poems appearing in the opening section of the droning shaman display billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 54   similarities to the haiku translations, drawing attention to inherent points of intersection with her own tlingit subjectivity. in the poem, “kelp,” for instance, dauenhauer succinctly moves from the substance to the essence of the arctic ocean by ascribing to it animate qualities that are further highlighted and reinforced in subsequent poems: “ribbons of iodine / unrolled by fingers / of waves” (7). the juxtaposition created by the use of “fingers” as a cutting word between kelp and the ocean allows readers to better understand the significance of this time-honored natural resource, which is rendered as passive, ephemeral “ribbons of iodine” that drift in the literal grasp of ocean currents. the attribution of both the ocean and kelp with its own totemic and transmotive force, which vizenor would distinguish as “an active spiritual presence,” offers a subtle reminder of tlingit ecological practices that are demonstrative of the connection that is maintained with their coastal environment. growing to lengths as long as three hundred feet and once commonly used throughout the northwest coast as receptacles for the storage of dogfish oil, kelp has been an essential resource for tlingit people for generations, and by including such a description in her poetry, it remains so in the memory and stories of the people. dauenhauer, of course, is not the only native writer who has displayed an aesthetic appreciation for japanese haiku and imagistic poetry. more than two decades before the publication of the droning shaman, gerald vizenor explored the latent transpacific philosophical and aesthetic linkages between native american and asian cultures, and has most recently published several new volumes of haiku and imagistic poetry including almost ashore, favor of crows, and the privately published calm in the storm/accalmie.6 as vizenor explains in his favor of crows “haiku scenes are similar, in a sense, to the original dream songs and visionary images of the anishinaabe, the chippewa or ojibwe, on the white earth reservation in minnestoa” (xi). he elaborates on the indelible influence the haiku form had on the development of his own literary aesthetic stating, “truly, haiku enhanced my perception and experience of dream songs, and my consideration of native reason, comparative philosophies, and survivance” (xix). reflective of these implicit cultural connections, other anishinaabe writers such as kimberley blaeser and gordon henry have also employed the haiku to great effect in their works. one crossblood anishinaabe character in henry’s the light people, for transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 55   instance, uses haiku as a means to reclaim the ability to speak after having “lost” his voice “in a distant government boarding school” (61). within a broader transnational literary context, the poetry of vizenor, blaeser, henry and dauenhauer serve as vital bridges that span geographic and temporal boundaries, native oral tradition and written literary discourse. the connection to the land conveyed in dauenhauer’s poetry parallels the personal engagement with the natural world found in haiku, and reflects the amaranthine nature of the interrelationship between human beings and the natural world that is exemplified in every aspect of tlingit experience. as translator and poet, dorothy guyver britton, observes, “a good haiku should rouse in the reader’s mind a deeply subjective response and set in motion a world of thoughts” (17). for dauenhauer, however, there is no need to distinguish an orientation in and with the natural world, as such already comprises an inherent feature of tlingit cultural identity and peoplehood. dauenhauer testifies to the vital role of the concept of interconnectivity that is evident in life woven with song, stating, “i am trying for a more quiet ‘inner dialogue,’ and for conflict not among the characters, but within the individual, as the individual finds himself or herself in the natural and cultural environment” (xii). given the similarities between tlingit and zen conceptions of the natural world, it is not surprising that the manner of literary expression dauenhauer articulates in this passage displays many points of correspondence with the deeply reflective aesthetic vision that is imbued in bashō’s work. like other native writers, such as leslie marmon silko, dauenhauer grounds her literary aesthetic in a culturally-specific sacred cartography. in one such example she utilizes the image of a woven basket as a central metaphor that informs and intensifies the power and meaning of her work. returning to life woven with song, a traditional basket operates as a metaphor of the life-affirming nature of artistic creativity and the cultural survivance of native people, while emphasizing the indelible connection the tlingit maintain with their natural environment. recalling memories of a childhood outing with her grandmother in the rainforest of southeastern alaska to gather spruce roots from which these baskets are fashioned, dauenhauer writes, “this is the earliest i remember going for natural materials to be made into art” (31). the remembrance of this occasion formed such a significant experience in dauenhauer’s maturation that it remained a billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 56   “haunting image” that “kept coming back” (31). the relationship between the people and the land revealed through the tlingit art of basket-making functions as a unifying narrative motif, while subtly reinforcing an imperative philosophical principle common to indigenous culture, while also reflected in zen cosmology dauenhauer’s creative work enacts a transnational, transcultural exchange of ideas and experience, while reinforcing her critical role as a tribal storyteller. she successfully combines these discursive roles through the integration of many of the themes and narrative techniques employed in oral storytelling since the beginning of tlingit history. the sort of literary fluidity that these congruent roles engender contribute yet another level of meaning to the metaphor of basket weaving. dauenhauer brings emphasis to these connections in her descriptions of childhood experiences with storytelling within her own family: “this is when i would be pulled in and woven along into the stories. i imagined every incident and tragic ending as real. if we listened carefully, we kids could practice telling the stories to each other later. i usually fell asleep listening to the storytelling” (33). it bears noting that the notion of veracity expressed here is fundamentally different from the function afforded to literature in western culture. stories are not just stories in tlingit culture, but a people’s shared reservoir of knowledge where the distinctions between literature and history have little significance. tlingit stories, whether found in oral tradition or written literature, convey and confirm the epistemological system that forms the very foundations of reality itself. conjoining the literary traditions of her own tlingit culture with those of japanese zen poets such as bashō, dauenhauer deftly traverses the space between national and cultural boundaries by accentuating a shared sense of historic immanence, totemic association, transmotion and holistic reciprocity. in another of the austere imagist poems appearing in the droning shaman, “alux  the sea,” for example, the cold, uncompromising waters of the bering sea are brought to life and personified as “a droning shaman,” who “puckers spraying lips” (3). the poetic transfiguration of the arctic sea into a benevolent spiritual being that showers the tlingit with kisses conveys an affirming recognition and appreciation for the ocean’s power and spiritual force. “we tlingit have always been eating salmon,” declares dauenhauer in the essay that opens life woven with song, and it is the life-giving ocean, this “droning shaman,” that has transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 57   provided the tlingit with this vital source of food since time immemorial (3). as dauenhauer’s description of the bering sea reveals, however, the relationship between people and the environment is not one predicated upon the exploitation of resources, but founded upon the principles of reciprocity and mutual respect. the practice of salmon fishing is viewed by tlingit as an act of sacred communion with the ocean, and one of the primary means by which this relationship is maintained is through creative acts of storytelling. the critical standpoint of both tlingit and zen epistemology conceives non-human species as possessing equivalent standing to human beings, a view that contrasts sharply with hierarchical conceptions of non-human sentient life in western epistemology. john bierhorst, writing in the way of the earth, notes that in tlingit culture one does not just speak of fish, “one speaks of xat qwani, ‘fish people’” (23). the implication of this axiomatic epistemological distinction is that not only are salmon and other creatures understood to be a type of “people” of equivalent status to humans, but that salmon, like humans, are inherently dualistic, consisting of both physical and spiritual elements that are specified by the word “qwani.” moreover, dauenhauer’s use of the eastern aleut word alux as a signifier for the bering sea emphasizes a tlingit conceptualization of place. much more than representing a direct translation, however, dauenhauer’s use of alux is intended to emphasize the complexity of aleut linguistic practice and its broader philosophical implications for native people who maintain long-standing historic connections to specific landscapes. the complex ways in which language, place, and storytelling operate in both tlingit and zen poetry reveals yet another intriguing instance of transpacific, transhistoric, transmotive ecological synergy between these two cultures. as yuasa observes, “in the narrow road to the deep north, we often find that even place-names are made to contribute to the total effect” of the poetry (38). this is illustrated in one episode in which bashō traveled to mount haguro, a place he described as “one of the three most sacred shrines of the north” (125). meditating upon the spiritual significance of this place, bashō observes, “indeed the whole mountain is filled with miraculous inspiration and sacred awe. its glory will never perish as long as man continues to live on the earth” (125). while mount haguro may be viewed as inherently sacred in zen culture, it is the reciprocal relationship that is implied and enacted through buddhist ceremonial and billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 58   storytelling practice that makes the sacredness of the mountain most clear and meaningful. similarly, the landscape of alaska accumulates sacred cultural meaning from a tlingit perspective through the interconnected activities of storytelling and ceremonial practice, activities that serve to reinforce attachments between human populations and particular sacred places. one way that merging of the physical and metaphysical is achieved in tlingit culture is through the concept of at.óow, which denotes an “owned or purchased thing or object” (haa shuká, 25). at.óow takes the form of many different substances and essences in the unity of things that form tlingit reality such as “land (geographic features such as a mountain, a landmark, an historical site, a place such a glacier bay) a heavenly body, a spirit, a name, an artistic design,” as well as, “an image from oral tradition such as an episode from the raven cycle on a tunic, hat, robe or blanket” (25). within this deeply animated ontological framework, according to thomas f. thornton, “clans or their localized segments, known as house groups, owned and maintained rights of exclusive use to physical property (including salmon streams, halibut banks, hunting grounds, sealing rocks, berrying grounds, shellfish beds, canoe-landing beaches and other landmarks)” (296). the complex organization of knowledge illustrated in this practice creates a site of resonance and unity with vizenor’s conception of the world in which “native memories, stories of totemic creation, shamanic visions, burial markers, medicine pictures, the hunt, love, war, and songs are the transmotion of virtual cartography” (fugitive 170). viewed from within a tlingit worldview it becomes apparent that while the place name for the bering sea can be translated into aleut as alux, due to the complexity of the meaning that is inherent to this term the reverse simply does not apply. for speakers of the tlingit language the mere mention of this place name would likely call to mind an entire body of associated and interrelated stories that serve to anchor it in tlingit culture and history in much the same way that haiku plays on the inherent linguistic and metaphorical connections between substance and essence in linked verse. perhaps one reason that dauenhauer’s poetry is so compelling lies in her capacity to produce multiple layers of meaning through unexpected associations within a field of natural imagery. for poets like bashō, the capacity to succinctly distill the fundamental transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 59   essence of reality and experience was viewed as the highest measure of artistic achievement. in another of dauenhauer’s imagistic poems found in the droning shaman titled, “fur seals,” the notions of a holistic natural environment and the play of natural motion and transmotion is made explicit thorough a vivid description of seals in their natural environment: carried in the arms of standing waves, gliding to the head, breaking through the frothing mouth. (4) as with the significance of kelp discussed previously, the fur seals simultaneously function as the subjects of the poem, swimming, hunting and playing in their natural environment, while also the implied objects, seemingly cradled like sleeping infants in the sea’s, the droning shaman’s, protective embrace. here again, dauenhauer directs her poetic energy to a vital constituent of the marine ecosystem that the tlingit have relied upon as a natural source of sustenance and as a material resource for centuries. the custom of imbuing things in the natural world, such as oceans, streams, mountains and trees, with human qualities and emotions is commonly characterized in western literary terminology by the pathetic fallacy. in many indigenous and non-western ontological systems, however, such a designation would itself be a fallacy. for the tlingit, as well as other native groups of the northwest coast, who have cultivated a reciprocal relationship with the natural world, which is reinforced through storytelling and ceremonial practice, it is only natural that the bering sea would be characterized through such dynamic and even sanctified totemic associations. the manner by which dauenhauer honors the lifegiving force of the ocean in her poetry, as well as the other life forms that share its space, conveys a deep sense of respect and gratitude. such a perspective also seems to affirm what vizenor calls “native sovenance,” which is “a sense of presence in remembrance” vital to the interpenetrating matrix of sacred reciprocity that persists beyond mere written history (fugitive 15). crossing into the world beyond: tlingit elegy as regenerative poetic form the comprehension of a virtual cartography where the physical and spiritual billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 60   world merge forms the basis of dauenhauer’s writings and is also reflected in the work of zen poets, leads naturally to issues concerning life, death, and mortality (171). this concern is particularly apparent in the haiku bashō produced following his journeys throughout japan, which includes numerous poems that memorialize people who have died. in one such poem inspired by his experience at a memorial for a promising young poet, bashō writes: “move, if you can hear, / silent mound of my friend, / my wails and the answering / roar of autumn wind” (133). the statement composed by bashō in honor of the deceased poet, and imbued with powerful emotion by the interplay between his weeping and the rushing wind, draws attention to a cyclical conception of human mortality where death is posited as a transformation rather than a cessation. likewise, in tlingit spirituality, death is not viewed as the end of one’s being-in-the-world, but instead as an inviolable feature of the infinite cycle of existence in which the distinctions between past, present and future are understood in ways much different from those posited in the scientific rationalism or religious doctrines of the west. as the ethnologist, frederica de laguna, observed, according to tlingit spiritual belief, the soul maintains an “indefinite temporal extension, comprising not simply the present life, but running through the after-life and pre-life to include other incarnations” (172). in a note accompanying “a cycle of poems about grandchildren,” dauenhauer refers to the tlingit understanding of “reincarnation,” which is best understood in the context of a cyclical conception of time (shaman 71). in the poem, “don’t grieve,” dauenhauer addresses the nature of kinship and interconnectivity as the focus of major concern. keenly aware of the divergence of cultural viewpoints on mortality brought on by the forces of assimilation and deculturation, dauenhauer’s work functions to assuage the grief felt for relatives who have passed away.7 all such relatives are, as dauenhauer expresses in the poem, “present even now” in the spiritual dimension of reality and, thus, always by our sides (shaman 36). the concise articulation of tlingit spiritualism in this poem provides readers significant insight into tlingit culture, epistemology and storytelling. this poem also transcends the local and particular to address the broader concerns of a wider panindigenous audience. by urging readers “not to grieve” for the loss of loved ones, dauenhauer illustrates the ontological principle of spiritual immanence that de laguna transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 61   ascertained from his tlingit contacts, which included dauenhauer’s own great grandfather, frank italio. in addition to her response to the encounter with grief, in another poem titled, “grandpa jakwteen in eclipse,” the poem’s narrator suggests that death should not be met with fear or dread, but embraced. here, grandpa jakwteen recalls a day hunting on the beach when “he was caught in a midday / eclipse of the sun,” which “according to tlingit folk belief . . . could turn you / into a stone” (song 58). dauenhauer’s re-telling of this family story is notable as the meaning does not rest solely upon the nature of tlingit spiritual belief, but more importantly, upon jakwteen’s reaction to it. instead of pitying himself for his bad luck or, still worse, fleeing the beach in terror, the poem continues, “so he climbed up / on a high rock / where he could easily be seen” (song 58). his calm acceptance and sacred reverence for the merging of vital energies serves as an instructive example of how to maintain dignity in the face of impermanence and mortality, as the narrator adds parenthetically: “(if he had to be a stone, / he wanted to be seen)” (song 58). while grandpa jakwteen displays a clear acceptance of his journey upon the tlingit path of life, however, his transmutation into stone was not to be. the poem concludes, instead, with an expression of dauenhauer’s appreciation for the stories through which jakwteen continues to live: lucky for us, he lived to tell the story. no stone, and his descendants are like sand. (58) through the subtle play on the idea of a stone overlooking the beach and its inevitable erosion into sand—its natural offspring produced from the forces of the wind and ocean—dauenhauer transforms what is in itself an extraordinary personal experience into one with deeply spiritual significance. this poem emphasizes the dialogic function of storytelling, which as trinh t. minh-ha evocatively suggests, maintains the “power both to give vividly felt insight into the life of other people and to revive or keep alive the forgotten, dead-ended, turned-into-stone parts of ourselves” (123). the layering of complex meaning that dauenhauer creates in her poetry through the interplay of billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 62   substance, words and essence illustrate the immediacy and continued relevancy of native american oral tradition and indigenous knowledge. on a more intimate level, the use of conventional storytelling themes within modern poetics allows her to demonstrate the complexity of tlingit thought concerning their spiritual and material orientation, while celebrating the richness of kinship relations, environmental connectedness, community and tribal sovenance. readers familiar with both volumes of dauenhauer’s poetic works may notice that many of her poems are written as dedications or take as their subjects various family members and close friends. although this very personal feature of her work may help readers to identify the literary relationships she maintains and the influence of fellow native writers such as leslie marmon silko and joy harjo, it also functions to reinforce tlingit kinship patterns and conceptions of indigenous spirituality, binding her work to traditional tlingit oratory. “eva, ax kéek’, my younger sister,” presents readers with a particularly poignant example: eva, waiting for you, calling to you, “hurry, papa, hurry!” laughing, happy to see you following her into the land beyond. (shaman 37) although similar in style and substance to the elegy form, this example resists the function of bringing closure through the poet’s use of images that evoke spiritual resolution and persistence. despite the deeply personal subject matter that addresses the ostensible death of one’s sibling, dauenhauer reinforces the fragile balance between life and death, the physical and metaphysical worlds in which eva greets their father in “the land beyond” (37). the reference to “land” here acts as a subtle reinforcement of the shared immanence between these worlds, and the ability of people to transition from one to the next in the cycle of unceasing existence. poems such as these work to reinforce the dynamic of transmotion that binds people, the land and each other, while evoking feelings of continuation and anticipation rather than of loss and mourning. in an effort to transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 63   span the distance between historic and contemporary native experience, as peter nabokov observes, such poems dealing with the nature of death represent modern adaptations of traditional mortuary speeches, which “affirm the tlingit sense of historical continuity, provide therapy for close relatives, and integrate social subsets of the community” (50). in the introduction to life woven with song, dauenhauer appeals to the universal experience of loss and extends notions of mortality beyond the culturally specific conception of kinship and oral tradition to one that is transnational and emancipatory in nature: i think that everyone is left with memories of their heritage, and these memories continue to teach us. they are a gift that keeps giving. in a way this is what my writing is, my poems, plays, prose. my family left me these images and memories, and i would like to keep them alive. (xi) as these examples illustrate, words are inherently powerful and dauenhauer’s creative work provides further testimony to tlingit cultural survivance and acts to preserve the sacred history of her own family, clan and tribe, while offering insights that reflect the collective experiences of other native and indigenous people as well. through the use of memory in the service to storytelling, dauenhauer’s work traverses the boundaries between oral tradition and written literature to bring about the dissolution of an artificial dichotomy between stories about the world and stories as being of the world. closing the circle in a broader literary context, dauenhauer’s poetry also confronts fundamental challenges that threaten indigenous knowledge and sovereignty through the use of irony and scathing social commentary. a particularly effective example is found in her poem “cross talk:” when asked by the census taker how old she was gramma replied, “tleil dutoow, tleil dutoow.” the census taker says, billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 64   fifty two. (shaman 32) in a scenario all too familiar to native people throughout the united states, the census taker’s dismissal of gramma’s reply seems indicative of the systemic repression of native languages exacted through the deployment of colonial power relations. the footnoted translation of gramma’s response, tleil dutoow, meaning, “it’s not counted,” is indicative of a different relationship to time, while reinforcing the sense of persistent cultural insensitivity and ambivalence experienced by indigenous people in their interactions with euro-american culture (32). as a not-so-subtle reminder of the continued repression of native languages, this poem also underscores the vital importance of language preservation, for as vizenor starkly reminds us, “when a language dies, a possible world dies with it” (“survivance” 20). the strong sense of indifference to tlingit knowledge and being evoked by the official’s reaction in this poem, while documenting the common experience of tlingit people, reveals a deeply entrenched colonial consciousness that sublimates native culture into a monolithic group with little agency or relevance in the modern world. the attendant consideration of the subaltern status of native writers vis-à-vis the american literary establishment is confronted in “listening for native voices,” and dedicated to joy harjo. drawing parallels to the census taker’s inability to communicate with gramma in the native language of the place, in this poem native writers are presented as: “trapped voices, / frozen / under sea ice of english” (shaman 28). while this poem articulates a succinct but potent critique of the lack of esteem afforded to native writers within the literary establishment, it serves also as a commentary on the challenges inherent to producing work in a colonial language. for many native and indigenous people, the imposition and adoption of english and other european languages is inextricably tied to the devastating effects of colonialism and assimilation, whereby native, first nations and aboriginal languages in the united states, canada, australia and elsewhere were systematically oppressed and eliminated. dauenhauer experienced the effects of these policies first hand at the age of eight when she began attending a parochial boarding school where “the first memories are of being rapped across the knuckles with a ruler for speaking tlingit, and of always being blamed and punished for reasons i didn’t understand, for which i didn’t know enough english to explain or defend transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 65   myself” (song 42). despite the cruelty of such acts, neither dauenhauer, nor other native writers of whom she speaks, were reduced to passive subjects or stripped of agency by such actions. instead, native writers who speak out against colonialism and oppression represent courageous voices of decolonization engaged in active resistance against the force of colonial hegemony, and are always “surging to be heard” (shaman 28). the assertion of literary and intellectual sovereignty dauenhauer brings to bear in all of her work encapsulates what joy harjo and gloria bird have famously called “reinventing the enemy’s language” (24). just as dauenhauer’s choice of the active verb, “surging,” functions to reveal the effort by native writers to produce anti-colonial counter narratives, the poem simultaneously makes an appeal to non-native audiences to be more responsive to both native subjectivities and the natural world in which we all live: “listen for sounds. / they are as important / as voices” (shaman 28). by extending the interpretive register with associations to the tlingit interconnection to the coastal environment of the pacific northwest, the denotative potential of the poem is opened to diverse readerships. this strategy gives dauenhauer’s play on the inherent ambiguity between words and meaning, whereby the invocation of the “sounds” of nature becomes a referent to a foreign language such as tlingit, as well as the hum of the droning surf, effectively transcribes the idea of transmotion as “a spirited and visionary sense of natural motion and presence” into the linguistic and aesthetic realms (“transmotion” 17). the emphasis placed on multilingual exchange apparent in dauenhauer’s poetry is indicative of the resiliency that native people have displayed in order to persist as distinct peoples. what makes dauenhauer’s work so effective is her ability to address the traumatic legacy of oppression and cultural misunderstanding while eschewing the politics of victimry that might otherwise seem a natural response for native american people burdened with the weight of more than 500 years of colonialism. in a poem entitled “genocide” dauenhauer is able to render the shared traumatic experience of native and indigenous people by reference to a strikingly mundane, yet compelling, example: picketing the eskimo whaling commission, an over-fed english girl billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 66   stands with a sign, “let the whales live.” (shaman 26) the stinging irony displayed in the message on the protester’s sign is not lost to native peoples facing high rates of unemployment and poverty, along with the continued and systemic suppression of traditional ways of life. written ostensibly in response to events surrounding the makah whaling controversy and the affirmation by the u.s. supreme court of the treaty of neah bay, this poem provides an excellent example of the use of satire and juxtaposition as a means of bringing attention to the ongoing suppression of native cultural practice and political sovereignty. implicit in the “over-fed english girl’s” appeal to the eskimo whaling commission is her well-meaning but utter ignorance concerning the devastating historical effects of commercial whaling on native cultures and the essential role that whales have in the maintenance of sustainable environmental practices of the northwest coast. this poem serves as a sobering reminder that acts of cultural genocide are not confined to the violent events that took place in centuries past, but are deeply embedded in contemporary policies and beliefs that fail to discern the essential cultural practices from commercial destruction of natural resources that threaten to deprive native peoples of their ways of life. dauenhauer acknowledges the centrality of everyday experience when reflecting on the writing process, recalling “memories of seasons, and of stories that were told at many places: in clan houses, in hunting and trapping camps” (song xi). in both form and content dauenhauer’s poetry shares much common ground with bashō, whose work celebrated “the humble and unpretentious imagery of everyday life” (yuasa 24). as kawamoto similarly observes, bashō’s poetry stands out for his ability to invest the mundane and up-to-date with the deep meaning of serious poetry,” and it is likewise dauenhauer’s capacity to reconcile the sacred with the profane, tradition and modernity that is most striking in her work (717). the events and memories that inspire and give meaning to dauenhauer’s writing belong not just to herself, or even the tlingit, but to a broader indigenous consciousness that challenges colonial hegemony and seeks to (re)define native experience on its own terms. in the preface to life woven with song, dauenhauer meditates upon the relationship between memory and identity, stating, “most of the memories recalled here are happy ones. where the images are neutral, negative, or transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 67   discouraging, i like to think that they reflect our ability to continue as individuals, as a family, as a community, as a people” (song xi). implicit in her role as a tlingit storier, dauenhauer ensures that the memories and local knowledge contained in her writings will not be lost or forgotten, but passed on for the benefit of future generations, while also serving as a source of inspiration for other native writers and storiers. “salmon egg puller—$2.15 an hour,” dauenhauer’s most anthologized poem, exemplifies what it means to be a tlingit person in contemporary american society where native people struggle to maintain cultural continuity and the system of interconnections that have defined their experience in a socio-historical context marked by rapid technological change and adaptation. just as dauenhauer and other native writers have adopted and appropriated foreign languages and literary forms to their own purposes, the ongoing cultural survivance of native peoples necessitates constant adaptation to a rapidly globalizing world. this situation is exemplified by the experience of modern salmon egg pullers who must, “learn to dance with machines, / keep time with the header” (song 63). whereas the activities of previous generations of tlingit fishermen and storytellers took place during particular time periods that were aligned with the changing of the seasons in both fishing camps and clan houses, these activities have now undergone radical transformation. through the ever-shifting contexts of indigenous knowledge and experience, the practice of storytelling continues in village tract homes and automated processing plants, requiring a constant negotiation between the responsibilities of work and family: go home for lunch. attend to kids, and feed them. work four hours in the afternoon with a fifteen minute coffee break. go home for dinner. attend to kids, and feed them. (63) despite the disruptions to native cultures wrought by modernity, environmental destruction and globalization, as the work of writers such as harjo, vizenor and dauenhauer testify, native nations will continue to persist and thrive. although many of the activities related to salmon fishing will continue to be effected by the tension between billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing waves” 68   traditional knowledge and the advent of modern ways of life, the cultural traditions that connect indigenous people to the land and each other will remain, just as storytelling practices are extended across different literary and linguistic frontiers. it is this resiliency and determination, enacted through acts of native self-expression and cultural survivance that animates the memory of the past in the present: next morning, if your fingers are sore, start dancing immediately. the pain will go away after icy fish with eggs. (64) while some might consider the monotonous routine of the contemporary egg puller’s existence an ignoble one, through this poem it can be more productively read as an answer to vizenor’s call in celebrating native cultural continuity and survivance. “the first european and euro-american explorers to southeast alaska,” as dauenhauer reminds her readers, “found us tlingits in various places drying salmon,” emphasizing the sacred covenant implicit in their relationship with the natural world that defines them as a people (song 3). in a sublime articulation of the effects of colonial oppression and the ongoing challenges of ecological preservation and assimilation, “egg puller—$2.15 an hour” embodies the capacity of native people to persevere and confront these challenges on their own terms. as one who, perhaps, sometimes laughs herself “at the impossibility of it, but also the truth,” nora marks dauenhauer creates a unique vision of native transmotion, demonstrating that life and experience in a world defined by interconnectivity really are woven with song. notes 1 special thanks to luci tapahonso for her encouragement of the original production of this article and the valuable feedback and advice provided on the initial drafts. the generosity of your poems, stories and teaching continues to inspire. i also want to acknowledge the generous support provided by the university of denver interdisciplinary research incubator for the study of (in)equality (irise), without which this research could not have been completed. 2 aside from reviews of dauenhauer's work the critical attention to her poetry has thus far been scarce. see, russell caskey's “tools of self definition: nora marks dauenhauer’s ‘how to make good baked salmon,’” studies in american indian literatures 16:3 (2014): 29-46; and james ruppert’s “‘listen for sounds’: an introduction to alaska transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 69   native poets nora marks dauenhauer, fred bigjim, and robert davis,” the northern review 10 (summer 1993): 86-90. a note on terminology: gerald vizenor originally initiated the use of indian, lowercase and italicized, to denote the “absence of real natives–the contrivance of the other in the course of dominance” (manifest manners, vii). he has also commonly rendered the term "native" in reference to people and culture as lowercase, and i follow these practices throughout this essay. 3 vizenor coined this term to signify a combination of survival and persistence/resistance as a means of highlighting the historical agency of native people in the face of centuries of colonial oppression. in his essay, “aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice,” he defines survivance as “an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories, not a mere reaction, however pertinent” (1). this concept also figures prominently in several of vizenor’s other works, including manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1994), fugitive poses: native american scenes of absence and presence (1998), and native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance (2009). 4 craig womack offers a strong reading of joy harjo’s contribution to creek national literature in his widely influential work, red on red: native american literary separatism (1999). robert warrior provides an insightful analysis of harjo’s poetics and native conceptions of space and place in “your skin is the map: the theoretical challenge of joy harjo's erotic poetics,” in reasoning together: the native critics collective. eds. craig s. womack, daniel heath justice, and christopher b. teuton (2008). for some excellent discussions of the work of gerald vizenor, see for example, kimberly m. blaeser’s, writing in the oral tradition (1996) and deborah madsen’s understanding gerald vizenor (2009). 5 a classic verse poetic form popularized by aristocratic poets in japan that thrived from the eighth century well into the twentieth. with its 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic pattern, it is also the source of the more open and inclusive comic form of the haiku. see donald keene’s the world within walls (1976) for a comprehensive account of the history and development of these related genres. 6 for an analysis of vizenor’s adaptation of the haiku form see, kimberly m. blaeser, gerald vizenor: writing in oral tradition (1996), and karen ford jackson, “marking time in native america: haiku, elegy, survival,” american literature 81.2 (june 2009): 333-359. 7 from a tlingit and native perspective, this would not only include members of one’s immediate family, but also those of the same clan as well. works cited bashō, matsuo. the narrow road to the deep north. trans. and ed., nobuyuki yuasa. new york: penguin, 1966. print. bierhorst, john. the way of the earth: native america and the environment. new york: william morrow, 1994. print. billy j. stratton “carried in the arms of standing 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2003. print. johnson, carl m. japanese poetry and the ‘pathetic fallacy.’” mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature 45:1 (2012), 171-184. print. kawamoto, koji. “basho’s haiku and tradition.” comparative literature studies 26 (1989), 245-251. print. ----. “the use and disuse of tradition in bashō’s haiku and imagist poetry.” poetics today 20 (1999), 709-721. print. laguna, frederica de. “tlingit ideas about the individual.” southwest journal of anthropology 10 (1954): 172-191. print. minh-ha, trinh t. woman, native, other: writing, postcoloniality, and feminism. bloomington: indiana university press, 1989. print. nabokov, peter. a forest of time: american indian ways of history. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 2002. print. nishitani, keiji. religion and nothingness. berkeley: university of california press, 1982. print. thornton, thomas f. “know your place: the organization of tlingit geographic transmotion vol 1, no 2 (2015) 71   knowledge.” ethnohistory 36 (1997): 295-307. print. vizenor, gerald. “aesthetics of survivance.” survivance: narratives of native presence. ed. gerald vizenor. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2008. print. ----. favor of crows: new and collected haiku. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, 2014. print. ----. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1998. print. ----. “literary transmotion: survivance and totemic motion in native american art and literature.” twenty-first century perspectives on indigenous studies: native north america in (trans)motion. eds. birgit däwes, karsten fitz, and sabine n. meyer. new york: routledge, 2015. print. yuasa, nobuyuki. trans., and ed. “introduction,” matsuo basho, the narrow road to the deep north and other travel sketches. new york: penguin, 1966, 9-49. print. microsoft word remy-kovach.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     162   christian f. feest and c. ronald corum. frederick weygold: artist and ethnographer of north american indians. altenstadt: zkf publishers, 2017. 272 pp. isbn: 978-3981841206. https://www.zkfpublishers.de/books/frederick-weygold/ this biography of the artist frederick weygold was co-edited by christian f. feest, professor of anthropology, and charles ronald corum, a neurophysiologist. the book follows weygold’s life chronologically, from his birth in 1870 in st. charles, missouri, usa, through his various travels and career paths, until his death in 1941 in louisville, kentucky. this sequential linearity is sectioned in thematic chapters such as “painted tipis,” “collecting in pine ridge,” or “too civilized to go to war.” given that corum is a neurophysiologist, his involvement in an artist’s biography can appear surprising at first. the preface explains that he learned the lakota language from david w. maurer, who himself learned it from weygold’s notes. interested in lakota culture since the 1970s, corum has researched the artist’s life for more than forty years. between 1973 and 1978, as a graduate student from the university of louisville, corum visited the pine ridge and rosebud lakota sioux reservations in south dakota. the research material he gathered was later digitized, and donated to his alma mater in 2013. this “c. ronald corum lakota research collection” was then shared with the woksape tipi library and archives at the oglala lakota college in kyle, south dakota, as an act of repatriation. unfortunately, some of feest’s wordings in frederick weygold describing corum’s interest in lakota culture, such as his “fascination with native american spirituality”, diminish his research and dedication by suggesting a more romanticized and stereotypical generalization of lakota and native american peoples. despite the exemplary biographical research, scrupulous attention to detail, and a striking visual corpus of pictures, paintings, sketches, and reproductions, frederick weygold: artist and ethnographer of north american indians falls short of our expectation of historically accurate contextualization. the detailed biographical research done by corum is truly admirable, but feest’s frequent use of words such as “perhaps,” “surely,” or the convolution “it is inconceivable that he did not” constantly weaken the historical reports on weygold’s actions, tainting every chapter with uncertainty and scruple. the corpus of sources for frederick weygold comprises correspondence with his family, friends, and fellow researchers, as well as letters to and from art dealers and museums both in germany and the united states. corum also used weygold’s personal notes and journals, and completed these texts with archival documents from newspapers and museum catalogues. from train tickets to shopping lists and drafts jotted on the back of art school assignments, the amount of textual information gathered by corum is incredible. he also had access to digitized documents, drawings, and interviews on cassette tapes. considering such a rich wealth of biographical material, it is even more surprising that feest’s text would express hesitation and gaps so often in its accounts of weygold’s travels. the compendium of images used to illustrate the text is as diverse and interesting as the compilation of documents. sketches, drawings, paintings, book illustrations, photographs and postcards are among the visual elements you will find in frederick weygold. furthermore, the quality of the reproductions is excellent. the inclusion of letters and documents from german léna remy-kovach review of frederick weygold   163   museums offers the rare opportunity for a glimpse into the politics of what was called “primitive art” acquisition and conservation in the late 19th century. the authors also provide us with the successive steps taken by weygold to provide his peers with ethnographic studies, when this field of study was only starting to emerge as such in western academia. amateur anthropologists like weygold were able to speak with authority on lakota culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but their work and collections are under scrutiny today. as others did at that time, weygold taught himself the language by studying missionary dictionaries, and then visited lakota reservations to purchase items such as tipis, regalia, or ceremonial tools for european and american museums and art dealers. although his legitimacy as an ethnographer was not questioned at the time, it should be contextualized for modern readers, whereas the contemporary colonial contexts and policies are only vaguely brushed upon. the description of the extermination of the buffalo is a good example of lack of historical contextualization. this act was facilitated by the american government under pressure to secure more land for settlement because of the gold rush and transcontinental railroad expansion projects. “hunting by rail” was advertised, and masses of hunting parties rode the kansas pacific trains while shooting buffaloes from the wagon roofs and windows, leaving behind thousands of carcasses to rot on the plains. state governments encouraged the practice, because the decimation of the buffalo helped their colonial policies. these animals were the main source of food, clothing, and shelter, and without them native populations on the plains were forced into signing treaties with the government in the hope of getting housing supplies and food rations. this allowed new white settlers to install farms and cattle on the land. in frederick weygold, this crucial period of colonial history, with all its political, industrial, and economic ramifications, is reduced to a single neutral sentence: “the bison skins had gone out of use among the lakotas [after] the buffalo herds had disappeared” (19). other problematic oversights include the suggestion that ancestral cultural practices were “forgotten” or simply removed from the chain of transmission. the devastating consequences of land theft, boarding schools, and missionary work on lakota customs are insidiously absent from most of the narrative. although these accounts were common at the time, it is very problematic to find them unaddressed, and moreover even propagated, in a 2017 publication on north american ethnography. it amounts to dangerous revisionism. great progress has been made towards more culturally accurate historical studies of american colonization, both in academia and in the political sphere. this book is a step backwards. moreover, several references are made to weygold’s admiration for edward s. curtis and karl bodmer. they too were non-native artists who travelled throughout the u.s. to photograph and paint portraits of native american people they encountered. their work has also been praised for artistic qualities as well as ethnographic value, but their reputation has been constantly revised in the last two decades. their accounts of native american societies are more recently criticized as partly, if not greatly, fabricated, following the steady fashion for romanticizing of their generation. like curtis, weygold is said to have provided culturally foreign items to lakota models, or removed elements, such as ribbons (41), to erase visual clues of western assimilation before photographing them for his postcards. this demonstrates his attachment to unrealistic, romantic notions of what american indians should look like. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     164   in thoroughly examining this work, it appears as though the authors were aware of weygold’s cultural faux-pas, but chose to try to excuse not only his mistakes, but also the problematic behaviors of ethnographers of his time. his interest in preserving art, and later his activism for the respect of native american rights, are undeniably commendable. however, his expertise in the field of lakota studies is shrouded throughout this biography in conspicuous attempts at disguising errors and wrong-doing under the guise of praising his efforts. weygold’s early reports on painted tipis are labelled as careful and insightful, though at the same time it is mentioned that he had never met a real native person, nor read any scholarly work on the topic at the time of his writing (18). feest tells us that over the course of his ethnographic career, weygold made numerous appraisal, identificative, and interpretative mistakes. he also chronically omitted attributions, museum or archival details, and catalog numbers of the objects he traded and/or sketched for his clients (23). he purposely lied on listings, and spread false information on the plains items he was acquiring for, or selling to, museums (36, 50). these gaps in research and ethical violations are often mentioned but never addressed. all in all, frederick weygold: artist and ethnographer of north american indians is a pleasing close-up on a life dedicated to visual arts. despite questionable oversights concerning the sociohistorical contexts of native american ethnography and policy of the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as numerous typographies that were overlooked by the editors, it is a truly original book, full of detailed biographical anecdotes and high-quality representations, pictures, and photographs. it provides comprehensive descriptions of the earliest ethnographic studies of plains tipi construction and painting. although it may disconcert some native american scholars and readers, it is also likely to please early ethnography enthusiasts, and admirers of plain indians’ visual arts. léna remy-kovach, university of freiburg microsoft word galley main.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   131   paul simon money terese marie mailhot the fall of man is my mother’s story. i am the child of a woman laid low on this earth. not that i was born to a green world and trespassed with her, but born into the blood. maybe her generation was adam and eve: radical spiritualism and awakening. maybe the sixties was of the body and pure. the indians were corporeal manifestations of the spirit world, and their leather jackets and brown bodies and fists, majestic and holy and connected. it’s all bullshit, but maybe. mom transgressed. she only needed to do it the once, but she did it twice for posterity. god foreordained eve’s transgression. he is all knowing. he knew eve was hungry, and he knew the serpent was around, and he knew that man would shine brighter in heaven after the fall. he knew he’d give up his only son to show mercy. had eve stayed in her confines, there wouldn’t be an incarnation of christ. to ascend there must be a dark, a dissention. christianity’s first female martyr was a bad mom. perpetua tore her child from her breast so she could have her own intestines pulled out by a lion. who does that? salvador was serving time for murder when he wrote an article for a radical indian newspaper. he talked about the binding vices of colonialism and imperialism, and puerto rico. he signed off, “¡que viva wounded knee!” they corresponded: my mother from her island, which was bordered by two channels of the fraser river; salvador from a box in attica. she left seabird island, her children, and her mother little bird for new york. paul simon would tell it slant in the white ways of provocation and sentimentality. mom worked for xyolhmeylh child & family services, a group home for native teens. they take kids being neglected and abused, and try to place them with native homes. she worked three-day-long shifts keeping teenagers off the streets. i went to work with her sometimes and watched how she connected with the girls. their eyes would dart and mom would get out a board game and tell them they could have a soda. “stay,” she said. they did every time, even when their jackets were on and they wanted to see the other side of the door. sometimes mom came home with lice. sometimes she worked overtime and left us alone for days. before she went, she bought groceries for the week. we feasted on hot pockets and terese marie mailhot “paul simon money”   132   frozen pizzas and juice boxes and no name chips that first day and then starved the rest. mom came home to a house covered in wrappers and dirty cups, and two hungry kids. we never went to school, so our lives were spent waiting. mom drove us into town, parked at the chevron, and gave us five dollars. a bruised banana and peanut butter crackers were transubstantiated into the body. i’ve always had the human condition of hunger, always hungry. i used to babysit for chips and snickers. my oldest sister took advantage of that in her twenties. she was a young mother who needed a beer, a man––to leave. her eyes were like eve’s at the gates of the garden. she was clothed and ashamed. we were teenagers, my brother and i, already acclimated to my mother’s way: do good for others first. we didn’t celebrate christmas when she worked at a homeless shelter in vancouver. i asked her to help make cranes for a veteran’s day project in grade three and she told me symbolic gestures weren’t necessary. we couldn’t object to her, not in her exhaustion to be just. my oldest brother and older sister moved out when they were young. when paul simon called i was watching tv on the couch. our landline was screwed into the old seventies wood panel of our kitchen wall. i was ashamed of the house. the room was barren. there was an orange, thrift shop dinette set, and a shrine on our counter for stevie ray vaughan. it was a picture of him surrounded by barks and sage my mother picked, with red ties, and turquoise jewelry. the bracelets and rings were gifts from my uncle lyle, a jeweler who idolized elvis and wore a bouffant, until old age turned it into a less voluminous side part. my mother was in the bath. paul simon’s voice was timid. he asked for mom. i yelled to her that paul was on the line. mom told me to keep him on the phone while i heard her body emerge from the wet. “how old are you?” simon asked. “i’m ten. what do you do?” i asked. “i’m an artist,” he said. i told him that was nice and asked him what kind of art. he laughed. my mother, wrapped in a towel, ripped the phone from my hand. she carried on several conversations like this. i began to suspect they were flirting when i went with mom to the library to look up if simon had a wife. i didn’t want paul simon to be my new father. i saw an album cover with him on it and grimaced. he wore turtlenecks. he was pasty. he had beady eyes. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   133   “he’s married to some red-head, i think. white woman,” mom said. we had seen some news clippings and rented a biography. he was a god, and not the personalized one of benevolence, but the type who could take things away. she sent him every letter between herself and salvador argon. i had read the letters in our basement. there were images of horses and dirt and bodies, and nothing of love until it became all about love. simon was inspired by salvador’s plight. while mother wanted to share their turmoil, and all the penned letters that showed intellectuality, paul was turning the work into a broadway play. mother’s narrative was drowned in simon’s version of it all, and nowhere was sal’s story. he was dead. we became self-important indians with every call. mom floated around the house after three-day shifts and became happy. after years of writing maniacally in her room, someone was finally using her words. a camera crew came to interview mom. when the film came out, a narrator with a rich english accent said, “paul simon and his team researched every detail of the story. they even located wahzinak. she offered paul simon her intimate memories of sal’s character.” “he was much more beautiful in real life,” my mother said. “he just illuminated. his prose was phenomenal. he could talk about the prison life. he could talk about his poverty. people come along and they grace your life, and they make it extraordinary.” after the interview my mother cried into the phone and she didn’t speak to us. she didn’t sit at the table; she sat on the floor. i watched her body shake. maybe it was having cameras in our rotting home. it was infested with mold and ladybugs and old furniture we didn’t wear down ourselves. maybe that’s my shame talking. maybe it was that indians are at a ripe age when they’re fifty, and mother was there. maybe it was that salvador was kind. she met a serpent in prison who was my father. the same provocation and sentimentality drew her in, and he wasn’t kind. the legend is that he was banished from the house after many transgressions, and that we all waited by the door with weapons in case he came back, even me, a baby then, holding a hammer or a bat or a broom or a doll. the story has shifted because it’s not funny anymore. simon gave us a choice: american dollars or a family trip to new york. julia roberts attended the opening. a woman from grey’s anatomy played my mom. we missed the opportunity to see them to buy school clothes. mom spent the rest on bills, food, and things. terese marie mailhot “paul simon money”   134   the play reduced mom down to an “indian hippie chick,” as variety’s greg evans called her. a “prison groupie,” and i had only known her as an outreach worker. prison was part of that, getting them to write or draw, to find sanity in isolation. i’m trying not to make excuses, because she did fall. it’s in the text and on my mind every day how she fell. it could be like eve. the old texts say we get menses for the fall, feel pain for the fall. god couldn’t watch it; he sent us his boy, but i doubt he watched his son die. i think he just waited for him on the other side. one of my mother’s old friends, richard, wrote about her breasts and salvador’s womanizing for his non-fiction book. he wrote with provocation and sentimentality while the iron was hot. dick flew from california to seabird to show mom the book. he told me about his jeep and that he would take me to the city someday, and mom grew suspicious. he handed her the book after tea. she went to her room, came out, and told him to leave. mother cried. i found the book underneath her bed and understood the contents like hildegard, a prophet without an education. her heart was inflamed and she knew the scriptures and the gospel. she didn’t understand the tenses or the division of syllables, but she could read the pain. the pain was a process to understanding. men were born to hurt my mother in the flesh and the text, and she was my savior. the language was always wrong. even in this account, i can’t convey the pulse of her. in her sleep i couldn’t turn away, in love with her heavy breathing. she rarely slept, but, when she did, it was a hibernation. her small palms were red with heat. she always fell asleep with a book on her chest. it was the illumination of living light. i can feel her, formless to me now, and more god than our deity x:als or creator. mom took us to the abbotsford mall and handed us each five hundred dollars. she got “stevie ray vaughan” embroidered on the back of a raincoat at a sports store. her old jacket had ‘tupac’ on the back, and had been worn down by protests and hikes through the valley to pick devil’s club shoots. i walked to the corridor in the mall to the bathroom and stayed by the drinking fountain, knowing something was wrong. when it was time to convene i bought a purple adidas tracksuit and runners for school. on the drive home i asked her if she wanted to be in new york. she told me she thought about leaving every day, but life wasn’t like that. i remembered the car smelling like mcdonald’s french fries, and vaughan’s cover of little wing played. i wanted to confront paul transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016)   135   myself, to bruise his art with the idea that a white man can never know us. but how can i condemn what he wrote, when she smiled for months one year? in the root of my mind, which is contained like my old house and formed just so, i see her laying down against the concrete with my father standing above her. i walk backwards up the steps, knowing my feet like i never did. when i was six i watched a lot. do i forgive my mother for him? we’re all more human for the fall, and resentful when we’re at our worst. there’s a meaning beneath it all that knows everything before it happens and still will let it be. we shine brighter in heaven. she is formless to me now beneath the currents of daily operations. i can pull you up, mom. between you and i, being lukewarm about you is the only sin i forbid. my words lay still like shadows on the page, but they are better than nothing. better than your formless looming, and the guilt i carry, and the dead men who left you. i often feel ripped from your chest; only i’m on my way to the lions. on earth you can be the shadow these words cast. is this conjuring and am i forgiven? i lament and lament the beginning until the end, where your red hands are waiting.   microsoft word proof7.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     150   -­‐from swift cinder crisosto apache from fire from ignition buckshot splitting air, cracking space, ricochets off tree bark, tree limbs scattering brush climbing high up into bear canyon, into the mouth wednesday, april 09, 2014, roughly around 3:00 in the afternoon this specific moment and time no different than the odious big bang   setting a single course a determinant event billions of years in the making first refractive light against stars lifting split light against lit faces bringing this moment facetiously forward toward a series of collisions envelopment of toiling flame engulfing in combustion gas, subatomic particles obit out of control nucleus circles expansion girds into guard rails flying fenders in swift swirls oil sludge, petroleum, plastic and metal the gestalt sending his ghost into nearby thickets. t’eesh ash flakes fall softly crisosto apache “from swift cinder”   151   t’eesh ash flakes fall in soft particles t’eesh ash release soft particles t’eesh ash release of all particles leaving a gold vacuum of space there kú’yuu   kú’yuu there                       there kú’yuu,   kú’yuu and there indiscriminate object strewn forming dash board, quick shot echoing along highway 70 collision translates probability cohesion of metallic abrasion of beauty upon impact birds scatter, birds cease, shot gun blast ricochets again off tree barks darting up the canyon again again again again and again abbreviate oblique asymptote never meeting its predetermine coordination terminus end point destination a formulaic mathematical formula transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     152   approaches a straight line a given course of action curving the only variable bow of equation imminent infinity high rate of speed this straight line continues,   approaching never supposing to meet its camber as significant the value of asymptote we do not fall together from ash to ashes not with fallen flesh but to fall with flesh asymptotic straight line finale skidding perpetual motion in slow motion stills slow motion still preceding months slow motion long vowel continuation constant yearning of the letter ‘o’ late into disappearing night dispersing into the blank wisps of air absolve this swift cinder— —past midnight the following night eardrums ring over silence crisosto apache “from swift cinder”   153   extending artery encumbers saintly candles burn their somber sway petrol sings scent of sanctifying beeswax odorous incumbent oh how, the flame flickers leaning shadows cast against obscuring walls warp shapes dance burns consummate along minuscule granular surface that chosen scuttle cupped light an aspirate flux silence and amorphous veils cascade after tiny pirouette flares fragments, only fragments i sink in the snow shovel in the earth in the road in the grass and mountains —tomaž šalamun   second section, a slant shoulder impact, his arm extends a patient persistent throw, as flat river stone scathe surface, tapping flight across calm water and mirror light, as though each gripping rock inside his grasp grows tight, muscles jolt in slow motion, gather in a slither, docile stone glides through a sideways slide, silence from a young waif toward moments come hither, to a specific moment with rippling water collides— wait, oh wait, particulates scatter a top laden fuel mistaken for water, can anyone mistake a plausible transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     154   death defying scenario, to sever umbilical as dual wake from dream a wish cannot want, to erase invisible strains of scattering car parts, had he not driven so opposite that hastened his departure, to such a thriving continent,   inside this cricket house, into night, our body lies awake, cricket songs assemble against a judder of paper wings when moth wing dust disperses, light vibration procures a lure into a soaring death flight, twirling center light   ambient background wavers absent into night, our body lie awake a top flagstone, cricket songs assemble scratching their paper wings and chirrup into desert clefts we both gather in our beds, they stay to rub, some hiss, some strike sparingly or first gathers in masses, sand covers arid slabs, water is all around, and slithers as old sediments a crisscross tinder fist, marks intersections, white lines pass back and forth, through and over, then the white bear comes charging, breaking through brush and thicket musters old dirt into heaves of glass, sprays sinew inside wrists and joints, divulges over our toroid air mass empty these demarcate calculations   crisosto apache “from swift cinder”   155   [4.73-80] relatives afar, in skeletal trailers houses, can see our saunter, his small hands clench mine, there was no rain fall, suckling the half empty bottle of apple juice, over rocks and sand, the hum of power lines tremble, leading us across, into the dusty land of canaan           [4.81-88] lights flicker at a gas station at rio puerco, night insects swirl in 8mm film trails, erect in a makeshift glass ice case a polar bear watches over us, from a distance they enter a bar, late into the evening a few hundred yards away, our eyes leave the stare of a white bear who oscillates loudly over the building [4.89-96] a few drinks in a condo just off a roadway, just off the reservation, in the mountains, longer into a docile night we drank, just the two of us, turmoil courses through our vein, a rage inside rivers, a slippage of rocks and boulders, a reave of engine, a scale of head lamp, a glare of vague human lumbers in a drive way, we could never explain the splay of web oxidizing the windshield [4.97-04] early morning a crack through trees wake a lingering ghost, it usurps into a misty tree line, silent we raise from our bed, a quarter mile down the road, fire fighters pry his body, a brisk morning calls the ghostly finger to pinch his aorta, his body suspends, a mangle wreck, inanimate towards albuquerque [4.05-12] he returns home after twenty years in a black chrysler 300, it had deep window tints, a shiny rows of crow eyes, he drives the hell out of that car [4.13-14] one long tire skid mark, burns tar, scorches earth, metal mesh with polymer, blood vaporizes, no amount of liquid can extinguish the slow scald but through boughs, a forest is still a forest, just as a door is still a door, though a door, through a forest, exists or enters this child in it, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     156   from swinging hinge cross the threshold, this child small and grim finds solace among the boughs a gray hawk in flight, the sedge wren does scatter leaving one feather in a tether as a falling leaf pass over lower jaw bone through esophageal aqueduct, tiny surfeit saliva discharge, detonates fireflies every collapse of breath surpasses a slither of arid forest wind septal septet mortar sings as mute clay expels morsel lips, hastens exonerate bars that trudge pacing meadows, just before expiry, leaves in a hidden grove a smudge of severed branches night moves into diamond sparkle that shimmers layers about our eyes, immerse down into the cradle valley inside a cluster of naked words, reassuring daybreak is still coming, the sandia mountains steeple behind, a cascade prediction of early bruise bluish light ascends from the valley below, naked words plucks a floating mimic muddle of silt river, river surrounds phonetic carcass mask with new tongues, we left ourselves behind, let’s call one birth water, let’s call the other fire storm, we left them behind, crisosto apache “from swift cinder”   157   just as we were all left behind, somewhere between bones of recession and a gullet of inflation, simulating crane clusters, where words chose us, when we lay still, motionless, inside our helpless state, you said to me, under whispers of blowing sands, under whispers of two foolish boys, walking the tight shadow of electric power lines, electric in our need to wonder the outskirts of limestone and the western tularosa basin plateaus, trying desperately to find a homestead away from death’s small grasp, here we are walking, no stagger, again a bewildering path that leads us both to the same pile of ash, a pile of ash that will eminently fluster   here are all the angles that fasten to one path or another here is the screw impaling beside the roof here is the unreachable us who flail heavenly about here is the path that rips through the back of this child here are the small piles of ash, hidden, to count when eluding the fiery man who empties dried shells threaded on string,   by a corral sinking in manure, here is the fool of a brother whimpering into fingers on a bed full of fleeting words, coral and turquoise here inside the pages, coral and turquoise shedding dust, turning our eyes into red jewel branches i crawl the tall sunflowers where the ground is ardent, in the same way of baptism, and a cross hatches lament, and the arduous ends of hollow rods is an envious company of a false father influences under a waste of trees. wasted by a douse of lies left under palms for decades, left as welts, forlorn dusk, planks for ill fitted studs turning the hinges, over which your casket remains an array at the moment of your lumber transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     158   execution of carcinogen dust slithers over someplace, binding its fang tracks in pebbles and sand we are still too arid to spawl, too arid to wheeze, as if i can huddle in a burrow fusillade with roots of plants we cannot modify beneath a brush a couple of hister beetles dig together through the next world, where no other, we sense, crackles of decay for the fertile many we grimace but we still crouch below, maybe, the entire basin squanders or wastes, maybe the older beetle digresses without progressing toward the vast stretch, over the tularosa basin, or how a bird cannot see those blackened specks against the pebbles beneath it, but keep soaring until its wings tire, while the beetle eases lucidly outside their stranger air as we both think this, some roads we don’t run leave tracks, in the slinking dust, we both want to mimic them, and see nothing, the way a skink speeds though arroyos not seeing the belly of birds water rises and gushes and it means everything will wash we both want to be fistulous, crisosto apache “from swift cinder”   159   a vein or a vessel of powder, impelling, particles into shards. we both want to be beneath and dissolve back into that sludge of birth, and reform the urges of a bottle grip so we can both run while we both sweat, walking on a blustering trail, suddenly many granules among us, in a white bloom, streams fast toward white sands, among the immense cloud clogging white, we both stream in its seriatim, never breathing in forlorn and against ribs, a fist sprays a bouquet inside bone gullies, we both strains against bruises, it, while thickening inside mother, father, brother ties graphs from skins, the cells that harden long and centric, a threatening impact since, all the fists disrupt us both, who keeps the face in forlorn in forlorn, a bruise that spreads, that strains and eases like bones, like plain bones that decay and leans against the ribs the nature of our face presses up against the glass, flat as an opaque doll face, lucid in the moon glow who will say we are the pale face, lost inside a loose box, a box place on a grey shelf, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     160   for that  eternity, which will never come       our face presses up against the glass, round and distorted inside an everlasting smile who will say we are the pin hole that allows dust to vacate through vesicles unseen, unseen by our opaque eye who will say our face distorts as it presses round against the lucid moon, never coming, against the everlasting smile behind it   microsoft word 369-2098-4-ce (proof).docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   i   editorial indigenous digital games uniquely enact survivance by passing on teachings, telling our stories, and expressing our ways of knowing through varying weavings of code, design, art, music, and audio. honoring this ongoing work involves recognizing the influence of traditional games as well as the role of the intergenerational kinships among indigenous game developers and game players. making and playing games is certainly not new in indigenous communities. rather, from analog to the digital, there is a vast network of support that has positioned us here now, with excitement for all that is to come. importantly, this network is intergenerational and international. developers across many communities are mentoring the next generations to not only play indigenous games but also to express themselves through games. thanks to youth game development workshops such as skins coordinated by aboriginal territories in cyberspace and the initiative for indigenous futures guided by jason edward lewis and skawennati, indigenous routes in collaboration with dames making games, as well as those hosted by joseph arthur at hoopa valley and darrick baxter of ogoki learning systems, self-determination is burgeoning in games by developers including tehoniehtathe delisle, gabriela aveiro-ojeda, and meagan byrne. as this and more work unfolds, there have been amazing nodes in the collective constellation of this network, such as the first ever natives in game dev gathering in 2015 hosted by industrydefining developer john romero which brought together maneco manaque'to and others highlighted here. still yet, it is with much importance that the game developers conference 2017 held a panel for indigenous game developers where game industry veteran allen turner stood with next generation developers renee nejo and julia keren-detar as well as myself in an empowering series of lightning talks. this lightning reaches far, igniting across peoples. similarly, this special issue serves as a constellation in and of itself, bringing together game analysis and game development with recognition for the work of scholars including jodi byrd and david gaertner. whether scholar, storyteller, coder, designer, artist, musician, educator, or an ever-changing hybrid, all roles are valued as contributors to survivance through games. kisima inŋitchuŋa (never alone) is a defining act of survivance as the first game involving indigenous communities to be widely distributed on consoles. “playing in the digital qargi: iñupiat gaming and online competition in kisima inŋitchuŋa” describes self-determination in the design and aesthetics of the widely recognized platformer game. katherine meloche builds on the work of new media and digital storytelling scholar david gaertner who sees never alone as an extension of iñupiaq culture. she draws attention to the ways in which the gameplay expresses ongoing sovereignty, importantly making connections with the writings of rachel attituq qitsualik and weaving in the words of storyteller and writer ishmael hope. her reflection on never alone establishes a strong thread that runs throughout this special issue—games have always been integral in indigenous communities and digital games excitedly add to existing forms of self-expression and interaction. david gaertner’s analysis is then expanded on from an indigenous perspective in “never alone: (re)coding the comic holotrope of survivance” with depth and insights brought forth by michelle lee brown. she uniquely (re)maps the experience of playing never alone as an act of transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   ii   survivance that allows players to relate to and reshape stories. in order to do so, she looks to mishuana goeman’s process of (re)mapping, an approach that calls for embracing and revisiting works to ultimately restructure analyses with emphases on connections and kinship. she generates new ways of understanding gameplay, particularly that of the fox which she perceives as a trickster relating to vizenor’s comic holotrope. she uplifts voices including kim tallbear while embracing her positionality as an indigenous player dissolving the boundaries of remediation with (re)mediation. collectively, jeanette bushnell, jonathan tomhave, and tylor prather robustly enact (re)mediation of several games with indigenous representations and reify the connections between traditional games and digital games in “how do you say watermelon?” as indigenous gamers and academics from varying nations who share in local lushootseed language, they formed a community to deeply discuss games within indigenous philosophies. their conversations resulted in n.d.n. players indigenous game tags, which indicate ways of looking at games as acts of survivance and also as serve as inspiration for developing new survivance games. their ongoing work forms constellations of connections among traditional games, digital games, and future possibilities in game design and aesthetics from a gamer-centered view. genuinely self-determined game development puts emphasis on players. for, in order to create a sovereign game space, gamers need to be more directly involved, not just to provide feedback at iterative stages of development, but to influence and have a direct hand in a game from its formation to distribution. this is particularly important in the context of reinforcing sovereignty through indigenous games, as exemplified by david dennison lacho and aaron leon in “‘please mom? can you please download it at home?’”: video games as a symbol of linguistic survivance.” they describe a vital phase of community engagement for their forthcoming platformer game based on splatsin oral stories. through the process, they introduced youth and community members to games such as never alone, survivance, idle no more: blockade, and spirits of spring, bringing forth and merging discussions of survivance from both gamer and developer perspectives. with the intricate and well-established connections between indigenous traditional games, digital games, game players, and game developers, “transformations and remembrances in the digital game we sing for healing” describes game development and the resulting game design. (re)mapping is seen visually as i revisit and describe how i created a musical text choose-yourown-adventure game in collaboration with exquisite ghost. in returning to and retelling the story, the structure of connections within the game is brought into form as a constellation. in this work and others in this special issue, games and game development are recognized as fluid spaces within and from which can enact survivance. elizabeth lapensée july 2017 microsoft word proof.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     53   basket becomes codex: a poem by trevino brings plenty in the portland art museum karen m. poremski before it was published in wakpá wanáǧi / ghost river, the poem “little, cultural, teapot curio exposes people,” by trevino brings plenty (lakota), was available on film as part of the portland art museum’s exhibit “object stories.” the poem works to redefine the meaning of its subject—a tlingit basket made for the tourist market circa 1920, acquired by a collector, and donated to the portland art museum; the basket currently sits in storage as part of the pam’s permanent collection. as an object made for sale to the tourist and collector market, the basket falls outside the scope of nagpra’s guidelines for repatriation: it will not return to the family and people who made it. yet its meaning can be reclaimed, and the poem becomes an act of survivance through that reclamation. through redefining the meaning of the basket, the poem creates a story of survivance that steps out of the colonial story of the basket as decorative item for a non-native consumer and instead posits it as a holder of knowledge and means of connecting generations of family across space and time. reading through native theory in his essay “aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice,” gerald vizenor (anishinaabe) sets forth some of the guiding principles of how survivance is created through native storying, and what difference it makes to native presence. he argues that “the character of survivance creates a sense of native presence over absence, nihility, and victimry” and that “native survivance is an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories, not a mere reaction, however pertinent” (1). amidst the influences and acts of colonizing institutions, native literature posits a different story from that of the colonizers. most useful for this essay is vizenor’s idea that “survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, detractions, obtrusions, the unbearable sentiments of tragedy, and the legacy of victimry. survivance is the heritable right of succession or reversion of estate and, in the course of international declarations of human rights, is a narrative estate of native survivance” (1). i am particularly interested here in the language of succession and inheritance, karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   54   as the brings plenty poem refigures an object that is owned by a museum. while the poem cannot give the object back to the family whose ancestor made it, as a survivance story it can give back to that family—and other native people—the object’s meaning and significance. as a survivance story, the poem reclaims the basket from the meaning assigned to it by the colonialist operations of the collector and museum and instead writes it as a form of art, knowledge, and relationship. as paula gunn allen (laguna pueblo) writes in the sacred hoop, “the significance of literature can be best understood in terms of the culture from which it springs…” (54). allen calls for placing native literature in its contexts so that scholars do not misunderstand or misconstrue a work’s significance. she also calls for bringing things together rather than separating them: “the non-indian tendency to separate things from one another—be they literary forms, species, or persons—causes a great deal of unnecessary difficulty with and misinterpretation of american indian life and culture” (62). in this essay, i bring together several ideas to examine the teapot basket poem: native material rhetorics (stories about objects and what they mean when connected with their communities), tribalography (how stories bring ideas to life), brings plenty’s latest book of poetry, museum collection history, the history of spruce root basketry, and the policies and programming of the portland art museum. i bring together these contexts—some from a number of different indigenous nations—because these ideas inform brings plenty’s work as a lakota poet who has lived a significant portion of his life in the city of portland, oregon, in a post-relocation atmosphere of people from different communities and traditions coming together to resist colonization and express indigenous art. when the poem resonates in all of these contexts, it works as a powerful revision of how museum objects have been understood in the past, and becomes a new storying of suvivance that redefines the significance of even the most seemingly trivial objects. objects can be read as things that, at least in part, communicate possession, “havingness.” objects are also important communicators of meaning. the field of native material rhetorics helps us see the relationships between objects, community, and storytelling in an indigenous context. in her article “wampum as hypertext: an american indian intellectual tradition of multimedia theory and practice,” angela m. haas argues that wampum belts and the recitals connected to them serve as a form of hypertext; the essay thereby “positions american indians as the first known skilled multimedia workers and intellectuals in the transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     55   americas” (78). haas shows the multiple processes through which a wampum belt connects people in a community: making a wampum belt, presenting it at the ceremony of agreement it signifies, witnessing its meaning (by an audience), and periodically reciting the story of its creation to renew the agreement. all of these processes contribute to the ways in which the object represents the needs and priorities of the people who participate. in other words, wampum belts such as the two row treaty belt (haas 85) speak to commitments and agreements, and tell stories of relationship through their symbolism, physical materiality, and connections with people who know and tell their story. in haas’s essay, rather than an art object whose value is primarily aesthetic, the wampum belt becomes a sign and tool of sophisticated networks of meaning and relationship. the essay helps contextualize wampum belts for people not familiar with them, revealing them as complex and communicative texts that resonate with meaning. we can then think about how other objects made by native people might serve similar functions. another article that helps us understand the importance and meaning of objects appears in the journal museum anthropology: martha graham and nell murphy’s “nagpra at 20: museum collections and reconnections.” the article details several case studies of native people working with the american museum of natural history (amnh) on repatriation efforts. in the article graham and murphy describe an incident in which representatives from a tlingit village came to the amnh in order to identify objects that may have come from their village that should be repatriated. one elder, harold jacobs, spotted a carved prow piece, an object that had not been identified as an item for possible repatriation; in fact, the cataloguing information was very vague, only saying that the item had been acquired from alaska by a lieutenant emmons (109). the prow piece and its canoe had been revered in the village several generations before the visit to the amnh; it had been the only one not destroyed in a bombardment by the u.s. navy, and therefore became the means of the village’s survival (109).1 rather than belonging only to the clan who created it, the canoe became the property of the whole village, and the men used it to “hunt, fish, and gather fuel” (109). because of this history, the prow piece became much more important than it normally might have been: when the canoe developed a crack and could no longer be used, it was disposed of in a ceremony more like “a relative’s funeral rather than […] dismantling an old canoe” (110). but information about the prow piece was unknown to the museum staff. graham and murphy note, “neither the amnh nor the [tlingit] delegation knows how or when emmons acquired the prow piece. because the karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   56   catalogue description and provenience were nonspecific, the museum had no knowledge of its role in angoon’s [the village’s] history. jacobs’ discovery was a surprise for everyone” (110). if the elders had not recognized the prow piece as they toured the museum’s storage area, it likely never would have been repatriated—both because it was poorly catalogued and because a prow piece typically is not considered to be a sacred object or object of cultural patrimony, and thus would not be eligible for repatriation. after the village elders told the museum staff the history of the prow piece, the museum repatriated the piece, which is now featured in ceremonies at home. it has a special relationship with the village, as recounted by daniel johnson, jr. (tlingit), one of the people interviewed for the article: “when it is out, our fathers, grandfathers, children, and/or grandchildren acknowledge its presence—and speak directly to it—granting it the status of being one of our leaders of the tribe—or more importantly—viewing it as being one of their father’s people, or grandfather’s people, or their child, or grandchild” (117). the prow piece participates in such community events as mourning a loved one’s passing (118). when asked about whether repatriation has led to healing, johnson responds: “a huge resounding ‘yes!’—for the prow piece and for all other artifacts that have been returned. all have been ‘brought back to life’ and are now fully integrated within the framework of our culture—as was intended by the ‘creators’ of the respective items” (117). from this story, we can conclude that objects are more than just objects, in many cases. they are linked to stories, sometimes of survival, and they help to communicate a people’s identity and philosophy. they are expressions not just of native aesthetics, but also of native history, technology, knowledge archives, and belief systems. and sometimes they are relatives. of course, different nations have different beliefs and practices, and we cannot assume that all objects will carry the same status as this prow piece or an iroquois wampum belt. what i’d like us to notice, in these examples, is that the objects resonate and mean much more when considered in the context of their nation of origin. these two examples show that it can be extraordinarily important that an object be connected to its people if it is to be understood fully; this connection will also bring the object to life, wake it up from its sleep in the museum and give it voice so it can fulfill its purpose for being. giving voice makes a difference. in “the story of america: a tribalography,” leanne howe (choctaw) lays out a theory of connection and storytelling that helps to explain a choctaw transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     57   perspective on how the world works. in one section of the essay, she describes the importance of storytelling through a closer look at one aspect of the choctaw language: my tribe’s language has a mysterious prefix that, when combined with other words, represents a form of creation. it is nuk or nok, and it has to do with the power of speech, breath, and mind. things with nok or nuk attached to them are so powerful they create. for instance, nukfokechi brings forth knowledge and inspiration. a teacher is a nukfoki, the beginning of action. nuklibisha is to be in a state of passion, and nukficholi means to hiccup, or breath that comes out accidentally. (15) in this choctaw way of thinking, telling a story about something gives it breath, which in turn gives it life. furthermore, howe tells us that storytelling “brings forth knowledge and inspires us to make the eventful leap that one thing leads to another” (18). a story can help the listener, the audience, understand something new, and therefore be able to imagine something that may not yet exist. in “tribalography,” howe also argues that other forms of art can be understood as storytelling: the genres of “novel, poem, drama, memoir, film, history” (31), even a painting or a scientific theory. howe notes that various forms of storytelling carry the power of creating something new, “whether they [the storytellers] [are] speaking them into audio tapes, writing them by hand, typing them into computers, or recounting them to future generations of storytellers…” (36). if this is true, then brings plenty’s poem and video can be stories that help to shift what the museum visitor thinks about an object on display; they can be stories that help change the viewer’s understanding of an object, and therefore create a new possibility, one that falls outside the colonial mindset. basket becomes codex as part of “object stories,” brings plenty’s poem/video “little, cultural, teapot curio exposes people” (and his commentary on the video after he performs the poem) focuses on changing the language around the object in order to change viewers’ minds about what the object means and how it means. he reconnects the object with family and culture, shows that it is a form of sophisticated technology, and demonstrates its interconnection with its region and family of origin. despite its appearance and purported definition as a decorative object for tourists and karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   58   collectors, the teapot basket is also a holder of knowledge and the means to carry that knowledge into the future. brings plenty’s “object stories” film, with photographs of the poet and the teapot basket, can be accessed through the museum’s youtube channel, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofppa6drd34. here is the poem as it appears in the book wakpá wanáǧi / ghost river: the thought codex of a culture is in the object. my cells are in the weave, dna strands of story. the neuron mapping of us, familiar dialogue as concrete as dream. i gave this tome to your mom, who turned into your grandmother, who is your daughter's love unraveling at the kitchen table. we story ourselves to ancestors for they are us to a future who wondered at our language. the structure of hand contains schematics to that which we reimage. we are everything all the time. as story as people, we turn home. i stitched coordinates, systems, pathways. the hues of age bind us. it is simply love my people. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     59   the title of the poem expresses the teapot basket as an insignificant thing, a “curio,” or item of curiosity, a cute oddity; but the poem’s first line negates this idea, calling it the “thought codex of a culture.” the teapot basket belongs to its culture in a meaningful, non-trivial way. the term “codex” resonates with the aztec and mayan texts that were burned by conquistadors, complex works that contained knowledge and that, according to damián baca, were intricately connected with their communities.2 in his book mestiz@ scripts, digital migrations, and the territories of writing, baca argues that the writing in codices was “a pictorial system consisting of images structured to create visual messages” (68). these messages were read by a special person who was able to decode and interpret them for the audience; such readings “constituted a communal ritualistic and ceremonial event” (73). like the wampum belt, the codex connected symbols (writing) and objects with people, and forged connections among people and between those people and an event.3 so the basket, because it is a codex, becomes also a means of connection and meaning-making. when asked about the term, brings plenty said “the word ‘codex’ is a combination of coding and decoding, from computer language. using code and information works on both sides—on the part of the maker, but also the viewer. i was also taking the idea of a knowledge base in something that’s not a book, putting cultural knowledge into a form that is available to you” (brings plenty, personal interview). the teapot basket as text is also echoed in the term “tome” used in the next stanza, which brings to mind a heavy, serious book. in direct contrast to the actual weight of a teapot basket, these metaphors invite the viewer to see it as heavy with meaning. the basket can be read as a document of the maker’s philosophy, an object that represents knowledge traditions gathered over multiple generations, not just a decorative frivolity for a tourist’s home or a beautiful object in a museum display. the poem’s next lines bring into focus a particular speaker: “my cells are in the weave, / dna strands of story.” with parts of its maker left in the object, the teapot basket becomes personal and particular, working against the anonymity communicated in the information card that the museum provides, which says the basket’s maker is unknown.4 the poem gives this maker a voice, and she is now speaking, describing the intimate connection between herself and the object. this line also draws our attention from the teapot basket resonating on a very large scale—the representative of a culture—to the level of the personal—so personal as to be absolutely unique, in the speaker’s cells left on the basket. the two lines complement each other karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   60   in scale, and claim for the teapot basket a significance that has nothing to do with its buyer or owner. the next stanza also continues the idea of narration—that the object tells a story—in the reference to “familiar dialogue” (emphasis added), a verbal exchange between family members. the poem’s references to relatives—mom, grandmother, daughter—echo the idea of exchange, and even show people morphing into one another, the mom becoming the grandmother, then being expressed in the daughter’s love. these lines create family bonds that are so tight, they make the women part of each other. the teapot basket performs a kind of magic: it is able to connect people over time and space, beyond the normal limits of human being. the poem then shows us the exchange that happens between these generations, between ancestors and descendants: “we story ourselves to ancestors / for they are us to a future / who wondered at our language.” here again, we travel through time thanks to an object that will last beyond the maker’s time and preserve the family’s story into the future. these lines also carry the sense of a lost language—perhaps the descendants do not know how to interpret or speak the language of the ancestors, or perhaps their “wonder” conveys being in awe of their ancestors. making this object might allow the artist to speak that language again, to make that connection with the ancestors. it also creates an object that can be passed to succeeding generations, even those that will not be seen by the narrator. placed throughout the poem are references that turn what seems to be a simple, whimsical object into an example of technology, of sophisticated method and significance. the teapot basket holds the maker’s dna and is also the holder of “neuron mapping.” in stanza three, the relationship between the body and object is expressed in another way: “the structure of hand contains / schematics to that which we reimage.” in these lines, the maker’s hand—and those of her descendants—contains the plans needed to make more baskets, more objects that hold the stories of family and culture. the ability to make such an object is special; as brings plenty and i shared that we both were impressed by our friends who make things, he noted, in reference to the basket, “the technical knowledge needed to make this thing takes a lot of skill and preparation” (brings plenty, personal interview). in the fourth stanza, the speaker says, “i stitched coordinates, / systems, pathways.” these images suggest a map, and a system of navigation in the time travel that these family members will engage in. such complex transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     61   situations—mapping, time traveling, reading schematics—help to communicate the idea that this basket represents knowledge. because the teapot basket is a form of technology that aids in navigation to the future, the poem suggests that objects themselves can rebuild links that have been severed between native people and the repositories and expressions of their knowledge. in other words, native people must have access to the objects their ancestors have made in part because these objects are their knowledge base, their codices, their libraries. even if the objects are not ceremonial or sacred in nature, they still contain information that must be accessible to the people so that these particular ways of thinking and knowing and being in the world can inform and help the next generation. the poem also expresses the sense that, when you engage with this system of knowledge, you engage in a different way of thinking about the world: a teapot basket becomes a codex. in his video commentary after the poem, brings plenty talks about language and relationship. he notes that the maker of the teapot basket and her family would have had a special relationship to the beings in nature who provided the materials for her work, and her native language would have created a connection between herself and those beings, a connection that was not just about taking resources but working with each other in a relationship of mutual respect and reciprocal care. when you practice making a basket, you are not just making a basket, you are engaging with the resources available in a specific place, with the language, and with a worldview derived from existing in an ongoing relationship with these things. the ways of life that created this basket, this language, created a home that supported all of the beings who lived together, including the non-human ones. in the last stanza of the poem, we return to this home through the technology of the basket. in the poem’s last line, “it is simply love my people,” the multivalent referent “it” could point to a number of things: the object itself; the making of pathways and coordinates and maps so that the next generation can find their way; or the impulse to make such an object so that future generations will have a vocabulary for the expression of self and culture. or perhaps the “it” refers to the tendency to turn homeward, like the maker’s ancestors did, and create something that would represent the people who are “everything all the time.” the word “everything” here reminds us, finally, of the interconnection of all beings that is expressed in the worldview of many native tribes, including the lakota, brings plenty’s ancestors. as i have noted elsewhere, brings plenty’s wakpá wanáǧi brings the lakota karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   62   philosophy of mitakuye oyas’in, “all my relatives,” to bear on the varied subjects of the poems in this volume. we see speakers and subjects—patients in a group home, uncles and grandfathers, a suicidal girl, a celebrity—brought together through love and relationship despite the difficulties that inevitably come with being in relationship (poremski). the poem’s line “we are everything all the time” provides an expression of lakota philosophy in a poem about a tlingit basket on display in a museum. in the end, it does not matter whether this object is seen as a “curious” decoration; it is, in fact, something else: the holder of a way of thinking and expression, the way to learn the past and pass it on to the future, the way to find home and self and family, the way to speak among all the generations. the poem’s title states that the object exposes people; the basket, in the eyes of the right viewer—namely, the poet trevino brings plenty—performs the work it was made for: communicating between generations, telling a story about a culture, representing knowledge. the poem brings to life and to purpose this artifact, placing it in relationship, redefining how and what it speaks. in this way, the poem becomes a survivance story that speaks against dominance and native victimry, in vizenor’s terms, and reclaims the basket as a native estate, signifying wholly different views and priorities from the basket’s definition in a typical museum context, a colonial context. in the space of the poem, the basket, like the repatriated prow piece, becomes alive and is able to fulfill its purpose. even though the actual physical object “sleeps” in a storage area at the museum, the poem and video in the “object stories” exhibit bring it back into relationship, back to life.   museums and native people saying something meaningful about museums is tricky; they have changed so much since their beginnings, and they also have not changed. museums started out as an important tool of colonization that was part of the effort to characterize native people as savage, backward, untouched by the processes of civilization, and standing in the way of american progress and therefore in need of being removed from their land. museums were both the result (product) of manifest destiny and the means (process) of carrying it out. in her book decolonizing museums: representing native america in national and tribal museums, amy lonetree (ho-chunk) provides an overview of the history of museums and their part in the process of colonization, along with the establishment of boarding schools, land loss and language loss, and the transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     63   criminalization of religious practices.5 there are countless stories in the historical record of how museums have participated in u.s. efforts to destroy native people and culture even as they worked to preserve and display native objects. i would like to share a few here as a way to ground the discussion, bring our focus to how these events affected human beings. in the 19th century, u.s. soldiers decapitated the native people they killed—including those at sand creek (mihesuah 2)—and sent the heads to researchers back east for a study on crania. the purpose of this study was to prove that non-white people of all kinds had smaller brains and therefore were less capable of higher thinking and civilization and, therefore, less worthy of citizenship. in 1868, collecting native bodies became official policy, which “directed army personnel to procure indian crania and other body parts for the army medical museum” (trope and echo-hawk 126). after the study was completed, the “specimens” were sent to other museums. devon mihesuah (choctaw) reports that “in 1900 at least forty-five hundred skulls and bones were transferred from the army medical museum to the smithsonian institution” (2). in another version of people becoming objects, native people themselves sometimes became exhibits and items of study. many have heard of ishi, the yahi man who lived in the university of california’s anthropology museum and became a resident subject of study for alfred kroeber and others (kell), but in the essay “bones, and other precious gems,” linda hogan (chickasaw) tells of six native people from the arctic “taken to the museum of natural history in new york for what was called a scientific study” around the turn into the 20th century; among them was a boy named minik and his father (181). these men “stood naked for scientists, anthropologists, photographers, and others whose work it was to compare races” (182). the scientists wanted to know things like whether native skin behaves the same way as white skin when you burn it (182). minik’s father died while they were objects of study; years later, minik returned to the museum to discover his father’s skeleton on display, an experience that “traumatized him for the rest of his life” (182). even when native bodies are not on display, their objects can still tell a story of violent colonization. two lakota people have told me the story of the blue water creek massacre and the artifacts taken afterwards, but i have rarely heard anyone else mention it, or write about it. in this event, g. k. warren, an army surveyor, was sent out with several campaigns in the 1850s against the tribes the u.s. called the sioux. his job was to make maps and collect items of scientific interest as he accompanied the army (hanson 4). after a massacre carried out by troops karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   64   under the command of general william s. harney in which more than 150 people (including children) were killed or wounded (hanson 13), warren ordered his men to empty their supply wagons and fill them up with things the lakota left behind as they ran for their lives. hanson’s book provides photographs of some of the items: men’s leggings, men’s shirts, women’s dresses, hair ties, moccasins; storage bags, blankets; saddles and headstalls; lariats, bows and arrows, knife sheaths; pipes and pipe bags; children’s toys, dolls. even lodges (tipis) were taken. hanson notes: “warren [the surveyor] subsequently deposited the bulk of the floral, faunal, paleontological, and ethnographic collections he gathered with the smithsonian, as was the custom of other u.s. army expeditions” (5).6 he emptied their supply wagons in order to take “artifacts.” those items, some of them stained with blood, remain in the storage area of one of the smithsonian museums. there were others collecting native objects. ohiyesa (charles eastman) (dakota) traveled in ojibwe country in 1910 to collect stories and “to search out and purchase rare curios and ethnological specimens for one of the most important collections in the country” (94). eastman had long acted as a go-between, trying to convince the u.s. government to do right by natives, and trying to convince natives that adopting “civilized” practices was the best way into the future. on his visit to the “sugar point band,” in which he hopes to see a war club that is said to be the instrument their chief used to fight his enemies, he notes: “i made use of the old-time indian etiquette, as well as of all the wit and humor at my command, to win a welcome, and finally obtained from the old man the history and traditions of his people, so far as he knew them, and even the famous war club itself!” (96). despite his eloquent and pointed critiques of non-native people elsewhere, eastman’s participation in coercing leaders to relinquish their important tribal objects here is haunting. building the collections of museums meant stealing native people’s belongings, buying them at rock-bottom prices when native people were desperate for food and other resources, taking them as the spoils of war, or buying them from collectors who had done these things. the rich resources in museums are the visible evidence of the violence of colonization. behind the beauty of these objects lie pain and loss, grief and trauma. native people have always known this, and have always spoken out about it.7 the efforts of activists, lawyers, and legislators finally resulted in the enactment of the native american graves protection and repatriation act (nagpra) in 1990, which ultimately resulted in many transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     65   items being repatriated, and established a process to make repatriation more easy and systematic. during the discussion leading up to the act’s passage, many anthropologists and museum staff reacted with alarm, predicting that its enactment would result in empty museums. this has not happened. large loopholes in the legislation—among them, a clause that states items can remain in museums if they are of significant scientific importance—have meant that museums can refuse to repatriate some objects and even human remains. the results from nagpra’s implementation have been mixed: museums still have collections, and native people are getting some of their objects back. nagpra is not perfect, but it has created real change in the world of museums, and in the relationships between native people and museums. museums are being decolonized through the institutions’ efforts to collaborate with native communities in exhibitions, collections, and display practices. viewers who are accustomed to the colonial story are getting something different, depending on where they go. lonetree outlines the practices through which museums engage in decolonization, which has become more commonplace as a result of native activism: “they do this through honoring indigenous knowledge and worldviews, challenging the stereotypical representations of native people produced in the past, serving as sites of ‘knowledge making and remembering’ for their own communities and the general public, and discussing the hard truths of colonization in exhibitions in an effort to promote healing and understanding” (25). yet, as lonetree also points out, we should be careful; if we “celebrate” that museums have been decolonized, we “[obscure] the glaring power imbalances that remain” between native people and those institutions (24). as brings plenty stated in an interview in april 2016, “in the last decade, we’ve been viewing things differently; but for the most part, museums are about whiteness and old money.” this is still the prevailing mode of museums in the world, despite the work of decolonization being done. while i would be uncomfortable claiming that brings plenty’s poem single-handedly (single-versedly?) decolonizes the pam, i believe we can say that a viewer who listens to the poem experiences a shift in the meaning of the object, a view of what that object means according to indigenous priorities and worldviews. a visitor who hears this poem is invited to think about the object in a native context rather than a traditional museum context.   basket as knowledge karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   66   in addition to museum history helping us consider the poem in context, we can also gain an appreciation for how special its subject is—the teapot basket—through learning more about the history of basket-making in tlingit culture. made around 1920, the teapot basket of brings plenty’s poem represents an era when tlingit women were adapting their art to new purposes. basketry had been one of the longest-practiced arts of the tlingit before contact with non-native people; both everyday items (used for cooking, storage, etc.) and ceremonial items (capes, hats) were made out of spruce roots and grasses. in tlingit culture, baskets are so important that they have a place in their origin stories. in her book spruce root basketry of the haida and tlingit, sharon busby shares the tlingit story of the first basket: in the days when raven [the trickster] was active on the earth, and before he “disappeared into the unknown, taking with him the power of the spirit world to mingle with mankind,” a maiden becomes the wife of the sun, and goes to live with him in the sky (19). they are happy and have many children, but she worries about her children, who are more like her (more human) than their father (19). as she worries and twines together some roots, she inadvertently makes a basket (19). it becomes the means of their return to earth: “her husband, the sun, had divined her fears and perplexities. so he took the basket […] she had unknowingly made and increased its size until it was large enough to hold the mother and her eight children. in it they were lowered to their homeland, the earth” (19-20). as in brings plenty’s teapot basket poem, this story shows a basket being made while a woman is thinking about her children and how they will live, and that basket becomes the means to carry them to safety, to home. to this day, busby notes, some villages still hand down from generation to generation an enormous “mother basket” that is present at ceremonies (74-75). so, in tlingit culture, baskets are an everyday object, a ceremonial object, and a means by which they came to live on earth. their significance cannot be overstated. basket-making requires a serious commitment on the part of the maker. the process of harvesting the material for the woven object was as labor-intensive as its creation: “many weavers say that over half the work of making a basket is in gathering, preparing, and splitting the spruce root and the decorative grasses. moreover, the quality of the basket is absolutely dependent on the quality and regularity of the spruce root. even a great weaver cannot make up for poor materials” (busby 30). the tradition of gathering materials implies that tlingit people developed a working relationship with the beings in their environment—in this case the spruce transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     67   trees and grasses—that supplied their needs. they make efforts to treat those organisms well: “before leaving the site, the diggers return the ground cover [taken away to dig out the root] to its original position, taking care that no roots are left exposed, and thank the tree for its gift. treasuring this renewable resource, the weavers are careful to let an area recover before visiting it again” (busby 27). as careful stewards of the trees and grasses, the tlingit weavers show respect through their art and its processes. and this practice goes back thousands of years: according to busby, the oldest basket found by archaeologists is 6000 years old (23).8 given the technical and artistic skill displayed in the baskets and the length of time they have been made, we can infer many centuries of careful observation, experimentation, stewardship, and care in harvesting. before colonization, the tlingit had a rich and far-reaching working relationship with the spruce trees that resulted in beautiful objects that helped the people live well. as the economy shifted and their way of life was severely disrupted by the influx of outsiders, the tlingit did not abandon their relationship with spruce trees, but adapted it. rather than making everyday cooking equipment or ceremonial hats, the women shifted the bulk of their production to items they could sell to tourists and collectors (busby 77-82). despite the relative remoteness of the villages, in the early 20th century, tourists were encouraged to seek ethnographic treasures as souvenirs in their trips to the new wilderness. busby notes, “in 1906 the alaska steamship co. of seattle published a pamphlet on alaska indian basketry that begins, ‘no home is complete now-a-days without a neat and artistically arranged indian basket corner.’ the pamphlet encourages people to ‘wander about in the quaint indian villages which still have the primitive charm’ and to search for ‘rare and curious relics.’” (88). native people made changes to both the shapes and construction of their work to meet the new demand and new tastes in what the buyers wanted: the average tourist wanted an attractive, inexpensive basket to admire rather than a basket sturdy enough to withstand heavy use. in fact, the typical tourist was not knowledgeable enough to appreciate the differences between the traditional forms and new ones developed by the weavers to save time and materials… during this period, fine weaving and decoration were prized over strength and functionality. (busby 88-94) with the disruptions of colonization, tlingit women adapted their traditional practice to their modern needs while retaining relationships with the beings in their homeland, and retaining the art of making baskets. even in the face of drastic changes to their way of life that caused karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   68   challenges and hardships,9 tlingit people used baskets to maintain important relationships and create connections between ancestors and descendants. native objects at the portland art museum some museums would not designate a basket made for the tourist trade in 1920 as an “authentic” native object. older objects, uninfluenced by non-native forces, are seen as more “purely” indian. the portland art museum helps change some of these assumptions as it influences museum practices. the pam includes not only ancient or pre-contact objects in its native american exhibit, but also objects made in the 20th century and up to the present.10 the contemporary pieces invite non-native viewers to think in nontraditional ways about native objects and their makers—namely, that they are still here, still creating beauty, still using art to speak about their lives, and still practicing their cultures, bringing them into the future. in the pam, an older exhibit of native american art that was once largely based on ethnographic materials collected in the late 19th / early 20th century now includes contemporary pieces as well as traditional ones. for example, a display of baskets in one glass case includes a piece woven by gail tremblay (mi’kmaq and onondaga) in 2011 entitled in great expectations, there is no red leader (“online collections”). this basket is made in the strawberry style, but uses strips of 35mm film rather than grass or roots or reeds. it becomes a traditional-style piece that comments on images of native people created by the film industry. pam’s native american collection also features a piece called sits with the stars, a satin dress made by wendy red star (apsáalooke). while the dress uses a traditional visual motif seen in star quilts, its materials— satin fabric and metallic fringe that catch and return all the available light in the dimmed room— create a strikingly contemporary piece. the space-age metallic fringe and star quilt motif combine traditional and contemporary ideas about stars and astronomy, bringing native images in the museum forward to today and into the future. the pam’s innovative policies change the way native people are represented in museums, and lead visitors to a more informed understanding of native art. in addition to the changes in how objects in the permanent collection are presented in the native american gallery, in fall 2015 the museum added a gallery for temporary exhibits of works by contemporary native artists, as described in the blog post “new directions—new connections: revitalizing a museum’s approach to native american art” (murawski). deana transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     69   dartt (chumash), who was the curator of the native american collection until mid-september 2016, created this gallery as a way to feature new works by native artists.11 the pam has hosted significant exhibits of native art in its main galleries as well; recent shows included “contemporary native photographers and the edward curtis legacy” and “native fashion now: north american indian style.” with each exhibit related to native people and native creations, the pam does community outreach and hosts events at the museum, drawing people from underrepresented groups in portland. in the pam’s efforts to bring together community and museum, dartt says, we want to show the whole spectrum of artists and art practice in indian country, from customary or ‘traditional’ to the edgy contemporary, seamlessly woven together in a way that is meaningful to our community as a whole as well as empowering for young native visitors as they walk through the galleries. i’m always thinking about—and always inspired by—the power of art to heal historic wounds and restore hope. (murawski, “new directions”) these efforts show an understanding of native art as vital and current, and as connected to the community. native art and artists are not frozen in some pre-historic past that has disappeared with the vanishing of the frontier; contemporary artists continue to find inspiration in traditional materials and forms (baskets, dresses, etc.), but use them to make a contemporary statement about their lives. the museum’s engagement with community shows that native art is lively, dynamic, and looking to the future as it brings the past forward, and helps bring non-native visitors a more complex and meaningful understanding of native art and native lives. brings plenty’s poem, then, is one example in a multivalent effort to decolonize the pam. interlude: visiting the museum, april 2016 as part of a long-term project on objects in museums, i have been visiting museums in person, putting my body in those spaces and observing carefully the relationships set up between the visitor and the objects on display. i believe this is an important part of understanding the stories that museums tell, and the stories that native people tell about their objects. i go to these places to see the objects, but also to notice what it feels like to walk into the institution, to enter a gallery, to travel through an exhibit. karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   70   during a 2016 visit to portland, i went to the pam several times to view the exhibit “contemporary native photographers and the edward curtis legacy.” like other museums noting the 100th anniversary of curtis’s appearance in the art world, the pam mounted a retrospective of his work. but the exhibit at the pam situated curtis’s photographs within the context of three contemporary native artists: zig jackson (mandan, hidatsa, arikara), wendy red star, and will wilson (diné); these artists and their works explicitly or implicitly engage with curtis, the most (in)famous photographer of native people. the entrance of the exhibit featured a giant enlargement of a photograph from zig jackson’s “indian photographing tourist photographing indian” series: a young man stands in pow wow regalia, a white tourist facing him, holding a large camera mere inches from the young man’s face. the image forces the viewer to think about representation—about who’s pointing the camera at whom, for what purpose, to tell what kind of story. the fact that the pam’s rendition of the photograph was taller than me also said: “visitor, we will not let you look away from this issue.” i noticed two things: the boy being nearly assaulted by the camera takes it in stride (perhaps he is used to it, or perhaps he is brave; probably both); and there’s a younger boy in the frame, too, escaping the scene, on the lower left of the shot. he is laughing. in addition to centering questions of native representation, this exhibit also called into question what many have been taught about curtis. when i toured the exhibit with friends, i told them that i had heard (like many others) that curtis’s regular practice was artificial to the point of deception, making his subjects don costumes from a hundred years ago, and long-haired wigs. i did not trust curtis’s representations of native people. because of the exhibit, and a lunchtime public presentation given by mike murawski, director of education and public programs at the museum, i learned that the story is more complicated. curtis was in a position of negotiating with his subjects, not just ordering them around; they chose whether and how they wanted to be presented. murawski shared the response of one subject’s grandson, who said: how dare we assume that native people had no will, no say, no power in these transactions. yes, the power relations were complicated, and were partially determined by race and economic status, but native people were not pawns, not dupes (“midday art break”). and some aspects of curtis’s portraits changed over time despite his consistent use of sepia tones. at the beginning, the photographs tended to portray an anonymous native figure striking “stoic” poses, or riding into harsh landscapes and sunsets, or serving as a representative of their people, identified only as a transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     71   “type” (a kiowa maiden, a nez perce man); these images echo and repeat the “vanishing indian” narrative of the late 19th and early 20th century in the u.s. in the photographs made toward the end of his career, however, some of curtis’s subjects appear in their “normal” clothes (non-buckskin, non-beaded, non-exotic). some of them are smiling. they have names. they are individuals. on my visits to the pam with friends, i steered them towards a couple of my favorite works in the exhibit: the gorgeous panoramas of a poisoned landscape by will wilson, postapocalyptic and yet utterly contemporary, beautiful and scary at once; zig jackson’s portraits of elders in their living rooms, complete with photographs of ancestors who were alive during curtis’s time and descendants whose smiling faces speak of survival, a family reaching into the future; wendy red star’s photographs of contemporary apsáalooke women in their brightly colored trade cloth dresses on a backdrop of a huge black-and-white allotment map covering a whole wall, showing plots of land with names of families on them. these works speak volumes of the context that curtis’s work has been said to erase. they reinscribe the various ways in which colonization has taken its toll on the land, on people, on families. the vague and romantic gestures at the edges of curtis’s early work are here fully visible, demanding acknowledgement. these contemporary photographs, most importantly, speak volumes about how native people did not disappear. they are reviving native populations, cultures, languages. native presence and native art, as acts of survivance, negate the narrative curtis’s photographs echoed and amplified a hundred years ago. like brings plenty’s poem, the exhibit told a new story, a native story of survival and persistence, perseverance despite terrible odds. “objects have stories” the ongoing online exhibit “object stories” at the portland art museum, not overtly linked to the museum’s native american collection or exhibits, seeks to explore how people feel about objects that are important to us. the exhibit’s tag line tells visitors: “objects have stories. tell us yours” (“about”). “object stories” features videos in which a person describes an object and why it is important to them. in some videos, staff members point out the compelling features of a favorite item in the museum’s collection; in others, members of the public talk about a favorite object from home. the objects cover a wide range of categories: paintings, a purse, a contemporary reproduction of a medieval musical instrument, ceramic figurines, a pair of pants. karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   72   the variety is stunning, and invites the viewer to think about the range of objects to which we give meaning—not just works of art, but the everyday things around us. in online materials, the exhibit is described as “an open-ended exploration of the relationship between people and things, the museum and the community, and the subjective and objective” (“about”). the exhibit seeks to encourage museumgoers to rethink the relationship between viewer and object: “by […] calling attention to the things we overlook in our lives, object stories ruminates on the ways objects make us as fully as we make objects, and the myriad ways objects speak to and shape who we are—our ideas, emotions, values, relationships, and aesthetics” (“about”). in this way, the museum makes patrons into co-curators of the exhibit, and storytellers in their own right, rather than passive consumers of art. so, in addition to rethinking their relationships to objects, the museum asks visitors to rethink their relationship to the museum. though brings plenty’s poem appears as one of the stories in “object stories,” the exhibit as a whole does not focus on native objects, and does not overtly engage questions about acquisition of museum objects, or the relationship between native communities, their objects, and the museum. however, the connections between museum objects and native people are more overtly shown through a subset of the object stories collection, “listening to the ancestors,” a project that arose from a collaboration between the portland art museum and the native american youth association family center’s early college academy in portland. in this project, native high-school-age students chose an object in the museum’s native american collection, conducted research on it, and presented their information in a video similar to the ones in the rest of the object stories exhibit (“listening”). in addition to the benefits of giving high school students some experience in researching, writing, and presenting information to the public, the project resulted in other benefits as well. according to a brief audio commentary from deana dartt on the pam web site, those benefits extend to the museum and its visitors, who gain in hearing “alternative voices” in the information provided about the object (dartt, “about”). and there are less obvious benefits to the students, among them cultural pride (dartt, “about”). dartt is most likely pointing to the same studies cited in the white house’s 2014 native youth report, studies that suggest “incorporating native languages and culture into academic settings can improve educational engagement and outcomes” (executive 20). one other thing to note: most of the programs connecting native children to their cultures are located on or near transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     73   reservations; it is highly unlikely that urban schools would be able or willing to add such material into their curriculum. so the project at the pam was a unique way to address the needs of urban native youth. it is not difficult to imagine that if a young adult feels pride in her culture—if she admires the art and science and philosophy created by her ancestors—she feels better as a human being and wants to learn more. in this scenario, museum objects are much more than beautiful things, aesthetic expression; they make it possible for young native people to see their lives as worthwhile. the objects come alive, and help people. conclusion: what poems can do because it is included in a museum exhibit, the poem “little, cultural, teapot curio exposes people” becomes a way to make change, to speak in the museum against the “normal” practices of objectifying native people, to inform an audience about the truth of native art and knowledge. in that place, the poem becomes a survivance story—a way to recover native knowledge as knowledge, to recognize the technical and artistic skill of ancestors, and to honor the ways in which they changed what they were making yet kept alive their relationships with the natural world (however limited, however damaged, however hemmed in). they made do and made art; they continued forward and survived. brings plenty’s poem has brought me this idea, which i am sharing with you, hoping to give it breath and life: even when it is appropriate and legal that a museum own and display an object, we need for that object to be accessible to the people who made it, and to their descendants, as a way of continuing culture. it is not just sacred objects that need to be reconnected to their people, as brings plenty’s poem shows us. the poem does the work of revealing the true import of this teapot basket codex, and connecting its technology and its philosophy to its people so that future generations can keep these alive. if the tlingit descendants of the basket’s maker cannot get the object back, at least a native person’s voice can say what that object means and why it is important—not for its aesthetic value to a white collector, but for its expression of complex relationships between human generations, some of whom will never meet each other, and between humans and the plants that supply them with the means to live. it can speak about sophisticated knowledge, and values of reciprocity and beauty. reconnecting people with objects so that the people can regain or relearn ways of life lost to colonization can take many forms. sometimes it happens through legislation; sometimes it karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   74   happens through policy changes at museums. and sometimes it happens through literary art, through a poem whose words create a survivance story of relationships between objects, people, values, land. a poem can give objects and people a voice to tell their stories so their stories can come true.                                                                                                                           acknowledgements i would like to express my gratitude to trevino brings plenty and deana dartt, who were generous with their time and met with me to talk about their work; to friends who gave me feedback on an early draft of this essay: alexa weinstein, nina handler, and jen mcclung; to dee peterson and jillian maruskin, who helped with library resources; and to kent smith and steven tamayo, who helped me think about museums. i would also like to thank the organizers of the western literature association conference for making space for the conference version of this essay. and thanks go to the editors of transmotion, particularly david carlson, and the anonymous reviewers of this essay for their helpful advice on revisions. notes 1 what was destroyed: 40 out of 45 homes, a building that stored food and heating oil, and all the canoes on the beach (109). in other words, the attack destroyed their shelter, their food, their heat in the wintertime, and their means of survival. 2 i first learned of baca’s book through haas’s article, which also compares wampum belts to maya codices. 3 baca points out that, during the era of conquest, in addition to ordering the destruction of codices, the invaders ordered new codices to be created that presented knowledge according to european ways of thinking (73). one duty of the people creating these new works “was to reconstruct mesoamerican memory by literally rewriting codices that had been systematically destroyed” (73). and further: “under spanish rule, the early colonial codices were converted to something closer to ‘artifacts’ instead of the living commemorative manuscripts they once were in the hands of the amoxoaque and their fellow performers” (73-74). this process reminds me of what happened with many objects that were acquired by museums: they became overwritten and redefined by the meaning that outsiders placed on them. 4 busby notes that the weavers of most baskets collected in the 19th and 20th centuries are unknown; it was not common until recently to keep track of who had made the piece. 5 there are many resources available on the history of museums and exhibitions. here are some that i have found particularly helpful, in addition to the works of lonetree and erikson: the essays in mihesuah, repatriation reader; riegel, “into the heart of irony”; simpson, “native american museums and cultural centres”; and sleeper-smith, contesting knowledge. also notable are exhibiting cultures, ed. karp and lavine; bennett, the birth of the museum; and clifford, routes. 6 hanson’s book includes journals written by warren as well as an introductory essay to the volume. hanson explains that “because the property was destined for destruction [under orders transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     75     by harney], it could not have been considered stealing to take it as loot of war” (16). hanson also speculates on the sources of warren’s later regret over participating in the expeditions. 7 suzan shown harjo tells a number of remarkable stories in the article “protecting native american remains, burial grounds, and sacred places: panel discussion.” see riding in et al. 8 busby also cautions that there may have been much older examples that disintegrated because they’re made out of organic material, and that archaeologists are always finding more things, so it is plausible that even older examples could be found someday (23). 9 lonetree points out the complex status of items made for the tourist market: they were “objects that tribal communities either sold or voluntarily parted with… however, even when objects were sold voluntarily, we must remember the deeper historical context. extreme poverty and ongoing colonial oppression permeated tribal life at the time, as it does for many native people today” (12). 10 when i asked dartt if she thought that some of the pam’s more innovative practices were possible because it is an art museum rather than a history or anthropology museum, she said: absolutely yes (dartt, personal interview). indeed, art museums have been engaged in presenting native art that decolonizes the space of the museum for decades, most notably in the work of james luna (“artifact piece,” “take a picture with a real indian,” and many others) and guillermo gómez-peña and coco fusco (“the couple in the cage”). 11 dartt’s contributions to the pam were significant and numerous. according to a retired museum director who attended dartt’s send-off celebration, her accomplishments as recognized at that celebration include: adding 300 objects to the native american collection; indigenizing the curatorial care of objects, including implementing ritual to honor ancestors in the curatorial process; establishing a native american advisory board and expanding the native american council to support programs; establishing the center for contemporary native american art (the new gallery on the 3rd floor); securing a $1 million endowment for native american art; securing a $325,000 neh grant for “art of resilience,” a tlingit art exhibit (with catalog book and programming through 2018); creating alliances between the museum and regional educators (smith).     works cited “about.” object stories. portland art museum. portlandartmuseum.org/objectstories. accessed october 2014. allen, paula gunn. “the sacred hoop: a contemporary perspective.” the sacred hoop: recovering the feminine in american indian traditions. beacon, 1986, pp. 54-75. baca, damián. mestiz@ scripts, digital migrations, and the territories of writing. palgrave macmillan, 2008. bennett, tony. the birth of the museum: history, theory, politics. routledge, 1995. brings plenty, trevino. “little, cultural, teapot curio exposes people.” object stories. portland art museum. july 2013. www.objectstories.com. accessed october 2014. karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   76   ----. personal interview. 21 april 2016. ----. wakpá wanáǧi: ghost river. backwaters press, 2015. busby, sharon. spruce root basketry of the haida and tlingit. photography by ron reeder, illustrations by margaret davidson. marquand books / u of washington p, 2003. clifford, james. routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century. harvard up, 1997. dartt, deana. “about this project,” at “listening to the ancestors,” portland art museum. http://portlandartmuseum.org/exhibits/multimedia/object-stories/. accessed april 2015. ----. personal interview. 9 august 2016. eastman, charles alexander (ohiyesa). from the deep woods to civilization. 1916. dover, 2003. erikson, patricia pierce, with helma ward and kirk wachendorf. voices of a thousand people: the makah cultural and resource center. u of nebraska p, 2002. executive office of the president, 2014 native youth report. december 2014. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/20141129nativeyouthreport_final.pd f. accessed october 2015. haas, angela m. “wampum as hypertext: an american indian intellectual tradition of multimedia theory and practice.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 19, no. 4, winter 2007, pp. 77-100. hanson, james a. little chief’s gatherings: the smithsonian institution’s g. k. warren 185556 plains indian collection and the new york state library’s 1855-57 warren expeditions journals. fur press, 1996. hogan, linda. the woman who watches over the world: a native memoir. norton, 2001. howe, leanne. “the story of america: a tribalography.” choctalking on other realities. aunt lute, 2013, pp. 13-40. karp, ivan and steven d. lavine, eds. exhibiting cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display. smithsonian institution p, 1991. kell, gretchen. “ishi apparently wasn't the last yahi…” press release, university of california public affairs, 5 february 1996. https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/96legacy/releases.96/14310.html. accessed 7 october 2015. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     77   “listening to the ancestors.” portland art museum. portlandartmuseum.org/exhibits. accessed march 2015. lonetree, amy. decolonizing museums: representing native america in national and tribal museums. u of north carolina p, 2012. mihesuah, devon a. introduction. in devon a. mihesuah, ed., repatriation reader, pp.1-15. ----, ed. repatriation reader: who owns indian remains? u of nebraska p, 2000. murawski, mike. “midday art break.” public presentation, 13 april 2016, portland art museum, portland, or. ----. “new directions—new connections: revitalizing a museum’s approach to native american art,” art museum teaching blog, 14 december 2015. https://artmuseumteaching.com. accessed 7 october 2016. object stories. portland art museum. portlandartmuseum.org/objectstories/. accessed october 2014. poremski, karen m. review of wakpá wanáǧi / ghost river. transmotion vol. 1, no. 2, 2015. https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/index red star, wendy. sits with the stars, 2011. portland art museum, portland, or. riding in, james, cal seciwa, suzan shown harjo, and walter echo-hawk, “protecting native american human remains, burial grounds, and sacred places: panel discussion.” wicazo-ša review, vol. 19, no. 2, colonization/decolonization i issue, autumn 2004, pp. 169-83. riegel, henrietta. “into the heart of irony: ethnographic exhibitions and the politics of difference.” theorizing museums: representing identity and diversity in a changing world, edited by sharon macdonald and gordon fyfe, blackwell, 1996, pp. 83-104. simpson, moira g. “native american museums and cultural centres.” making representations: museums in the post-colonial era. routledge, 2001, pp. 135-69. sleeper-smith, susan. contesting knowledge: museums and indigenous perspectives. u of nebraska p, 2009. smith, kent. text messages, 16 september 2016. tremblay, gail. in great expectations there is no red leader, basket, 2011. portland art museum, portland, or. karen m. poremski “basket becomes codex”   78   trope, jack f. and walter r. echo-hawk. “the native american graves protection and repatriation act: background and legislative history.” repatriation reader: who owns american indian remains?, edited by devon a. mihesuah, u of nebraska p, 2000, pp.123-68. vizenor, gerald. “aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice.” survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor, u of nebraska p, 2008, pp. 123.   microsoft word contributors 3_2.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)  182   contributor biographies jordan abel is a nisga’a writer from bc. currently, he is pursuing a phd at simon fraser university where his research concentrates on the intersection between digital humanities and indigenous literary studies. abel’s creative work has recently been anthologized in best canadian poetry (tightrope),the land we are: artists and writers unsettle the politics of reconciliation (arbiter ring), and the new concrete: visual poetry in the 21st century (hayword). abel is the author of injun,un/inhabited, and the place of scraps (winner of the dorothy livesay poetry prize and finalist for the gerald lampert memorial award). crisosto apache is a mescalero / chiricahua apache and diné (navajo), salt clan born for towering house clan, from new mexico, usa. he is an alumnus from iaia (afa 1992 / mfa 2015) and metropolitan state university of denver (ba, 2013) for english writing and creative writing. he teaches at several colleges in the denver metro in colorado. he currently lives lakewood, colorado with his spouse of 17 years. his public work includes native lgbtqi / ‘two spirit’ advocacy, board membership, and online poetry editorials. some of crisosto’s work is published in black renaissance noiré, yellow medicine review (2013/2015), denver quarterly (pushcart prize nominee 2014), toe good poetry, hawaii review, cream city review plume anthology, common place, tending the fire, by christopher felver, and american indian culture & research journal (acrj). crisosto also appeared on mtv’s free your mind (1993) ad campaign for poetry. crisosto has book reviews for the native american anthology visit tee-pee town (coffee house press 1999), published in the poetry project publication, issue 175, june 1999. brian burkhart is assistant professor of philosophy at california state university northridge. he grew up on the navajo nation in arizona and is also from the cherokee tribe of oklahoma, where he still has a lot of family. he wrote his doctoral dissertation at indiana university on environmental ethics and indigenous philosophy, and is in the process of having a book published by suny press entitled respect for kinship: toward an indigenous environmental ethics. david j. carlson is professor of english at california state university, san bernardino. he is the author of sovereign selves: american indian autobiography and the law (university of illinois press, 2006) and imagining sovereignty: the discourse of self-determination in american indian law and literature (forthcoming, university of oklahoma press, 2016). david groulx was raised in northern ontario. he is proud of his aboriginal roots – ojibwe indian and french canadian. after receiving his ba from lakehead university, where he won the munro poetry prize, david studied creative writing at the en’owkin centre in penticton, b.c., where he won the simon j lucas jr. memorial award for poetry. he has also studied at the university of victoria creative writing program. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)  183   david has had nine poetry books published—night in the exude (tyro publications: sault ste marie, 1997); the long dance (kegedonce press, neyaashiinigmiing, 2000); under god’s pale bones (kegedonce press, neyaashiinigmiing, 2010); a difficult beauty (wolsak & wynn: hamilton, on 2011); rising with a distant dawn (bookland press: toronto, on 2011); imagine mercy (bookland press: toronto, on 2013); these threads become a thinner light (theytus books, penticton, bc 2014); and in the silhouette of your silences (n.o.n publishing, vancouver, bc 2014). wabigoon river poems is david's ninth title. (kegedonce press, neyaashiinigmiing, 2015). david won the 3rd annual poetry now battle of the bards in 2011, and was a featured reader at the ifoa in toronto & barrie (2011), as well as ottawa writer’s festival (2012). david has appeared on the aboriginal peoples television network and was the writer-in-residence for open book toronto for november 2012. david’s poetry has been translated into spanish & german. rising with a distant dawn was translated into french; under the title, le lever à l’aube lointaine, 2013. red river review nominated david's poems for pushcart prizes in 2012, and david’s poetry has appeared in over a 160 publications in 16 countries. he lives in ottawa, canada. deborah l. madsen is professor of american studies and director of the department of english language and literature at the university of geneva. her research focuses on issues of settler-nationalism, indigeneity, and migration, exemplified by her work on american exceptionalism and the white supremacist ideology of manifest destiny. she has written extensively on the work of gerald vizenor, including the monograph understanding gerald vizenor (2009) and the edited books gerald vizenor: texts and contexts (co-edited with a. robert lee, 2010), the poetry and poetics of gerald vizenor (2012), and the routledge companion to native american literature (2015). olena mclaughlin is a phd candidate in english with focus in native american literature at oklahoma state university. she also holds an ma in native american studies from montana state university. her primary research interests focus on manifestations and functions of memory in contemporary native american literature, art, and film. carter meland teaches american indian literature and film courses for the department of american indian studies. he received his ph.d. in american studies with a thesis that examined the role of tricksters in the works of contemporary native novelists. his academic work has appeared in journals like american studies, studies in the humanities, and studies in american indian literatures. his fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals including yellow medicine review, lake, and fiction weekly. he also blogs at http://the-long-one.blogspot.com/. his debut novel, stories for a lost child was published in 2017 by michigan state up. margaret noodin is the author of weweni (wayne state university press, 2015), a collection of bilingual poems in anishinaabemowin and english, and bawaajimo: a transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)  184   dialect of dreams in anishinaabe language and literature (michigan state university press, 2014). she currently works as an assistant professor at the university of wisconsin–milwaukee, where she also serves as director of the electa quinney institute for american indian education. karen m. poremski is an associate professor of english at ohio wesleyan university, in the homelands of the lenni lenape people. she teaches classes in early and 19th-century american literature as well as women's literature, native literature, composition, and business writing. her current research project examines the ways contemporary indigenous writers portray the complex relationships between native people, museums, and the objects in museums. she also enjoys writing creative nonfiction and poetry. billy j. stratton (phd, american indian studies—university of arizona) is currently an assistant professor in the english department at the university of denver. his teaching and research centers on contemporary american/native american literature, critical theory and creative writing. his first book, buried in shades of night, was published in 2013. theodore c. van alst, jr. is associate professor and chair of native american studies at the university of montana. he is a former assistant dean and director of the native american cultural center at yale university, and has been an assistant professor and co-chair of the program in comparative literary and cultural studies at the university of connecticut. his most recent work includes “lapin noir: to del rio it went” in a critical companion to the fiction of stephen graham jones, ed. billy j. stratton from the university of new mexico press as well as the chapters “navajo joe,” and “the savage innocents,” in seeing red—hollywood’s pixeled skins: american indians and film (2013), available from michigan state university press. his current book-length project is spaghetti and sauerkraut with a side of frybread, and his edited volume the faster redder road: the best unamerican stories of stephen graham jones was released in april 2015 by the university of new mexico press, who are also publishing a collection of his short stories in 2018. his fiction and photography have been published in entropy, the rumpus, indian country today, the ravenchronicles, and yellow medicine review, among others. he has worked as a consultant on multiple projects for the disney channel as well as on npr’s all things considered, and has recently appeared in multiple segments of the history channel series mankind the story of all of us. he has been interviewed by the washington post, canadian broadcast corporation, native america calling, smithsonian magazine, and al-jazeera america television on a variety of subjects, from native representation and tonto to spaghetti westerns, headdresses, and twilight. cathy covell waegner taught in the english department of the university of siegen in germany until her retirement in july 2013. she obtained degrees from the college of william & mary (ba) and the university of virginia (ma, phd). in addition to her work on william faulkner and toni morrison, she has published on native american themes, transculturality in the ethnic bildungsroman, minstrelsy, afroasian transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)  185   “postmodernist passing,” 400 years after jamestown, “hybrid tropes” in film, new diasporas, palimpsestic trajectories on the “ethnic shore,” and the interaction between american and european cultural phenomena. waegner edited a volume in the american indian studies series (michigan state university press) in 2015 called mediating indianness, co-edited a project volume with norfolk state university scholars, transculturality and perceptions of the immigrant other: “from-heres” and “comeheres” in virginia and north rhine-westphalia (2011), as well as, with colleagues from université d’orléans, literature on the move: comparing diasporic ethnicities in europe and the americas (2002). she served as mesea (multi-ethnic studies: europe and the americas) treasurer for four years. her current research focuses on contemporary native american literature, specifically in connection with issues of globalization. carol edelman warrior joined the cornell community as a postdoctoral mellon fellow in the department of english, and is currently an assistant professor. she is enrolled with the ninilchik village tribe (dena'ina athabascan / alutiiq), and is also of a'aninin (gros ventre) descent. before coming to cornell, warrior taught in the departments of english and american indian studies at the university of washington in seattle. among her research and teaching interests are indigenous critical theory, indigenous philosophies, futurisms, ecocriticism, activism, literature, film, music, material culture, and sovereignty. microsoft word senier.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   121   maurice kenny. monahsetah, resistance, and other markings on turtle’s back: a lyric history in poems and essays. norman, ok: mongrel island press, 2017. print. rachel bryant. the homing place: indigenous and settler literary legacies of the atlantic. waterloo, on: wilfrid laurier, 2017. print. when asked to consider reviewing maurice kenny’s monahsetah and rachel bryant’s the homing place for transmotion, i took the opportunity to consider together these two seemingly disparate books—one a famous indigenous poet’s last lyric collection, the other a young settler scholar’s first academic analysis. they turn out to have quite a bit in common. both toy with the lines between the creative and the scholarly, the indigenous and the european. both contribute thoughtfully to our field’s ongoing conversations about sovereignty and survivance, territoriality and land. and both are firmly grounded in, and determined to (re)indigenize, northeastern north america, known to many of its first peoples as the dawnland. if transmotion defies statist, territorial definitions of sovereignty, indigenous people in this region have exceedingly long histories of transmobility. according to some of their oldest stories, people have always been inclined to travel across boundaries—geological boundaries, boundaries between kin groups and clans, boundaries between human and other-than-human. to this day, the violence of settler colonialism denies formal “recognition” to many northeastern tribal nations, while segregating them in the remote past, on fixed territories. yet indigenous people have continued to protect their lands, cultures and kin, here--as elsewhere--through story. writing in this journal’s first issue, deborah madsen defined transmotion as “the practice of transmitting cultural practices across time as well as spaces of travel and trade (24). kenny and bryant are two traveling, trading intellects who devote considerable thought to precisely how indigenous people have moved, exchanged, and endured. maurice kenny died in april 2016, gifting us with a final collection of prose and poetry that revisits characters and ideas he pondered for much of his life. it’s in two parts. for this reader, the second, “markings on turtle’s back,” is the more compelling. rooted in his home in haudenosaunee territory, this section reflects on the people and places, historic and contemporary, that kenny knew and loved. there is a charming catalogue of the beloved “knickknacks” that decorate his work-space and remind him of his friends and kin, such as poems and essays about indian stereotypes, or recipes for maple mush and shepherd’s pie. there is also a long piece on molly brant, wife of the british diplomat sir william johnson, sister to the mohawk chief joseph brant, and subject of kenny’s highly regarded 1995 book, tekonwatonti: molly brant: poems of war.   in this piece, kenny comes to terms with why tekonwatoni fascinated him for so many decades. originally, he says, he believed that her story (not familial, and not even transmitted familially) was “not personal to me, but merely persona” (161)—that is, until a young phd student named craig womack came along. womack’s research helped kenny understand that “if molly was not actually based on my birth-mother, she was possibly the mother i ‘had always desired’” (161). with this new insight, kenny poignantly starts to excavate the story of his mother, a woman who was “seneca by descent,” though she “held no ties, no sentiments and little knowledge of that culture.” (intriguingly, she was also “an ever so great-granddaughter of the english poet robert siobhan senier review essay: monahsetah and the homing place   122   herrick.”) doris herrick kenny welch was reserved; she was strong. like molly brant, she experienced war and family disruption, moving to new jersey to work in a defense plant during world war ii. like molly brant, too, she risked being forgotten without someone to write her story, a fate on which kenny, at the end of his life, seems to be ruminating. “few of us are remembered,” he writes, though by exploring such stories and genealogies, he hopes we might discover “a line of blood between all of us on turtle’s back” (169). the first and longest part of this book, “monahsetah,” is a little more uneven. kenny’s relationship to this figure is a little more vexed and ambiguous, though he spent decades writing about her, too. she first came to the poet’s attention in mari sandoz’s 1953 bestseller cheyenne autumn, which reported that this daughter of a cheyenne chief was captured in the 1868 battle of washita river, and later gave birth to a son by george armstrong custer. historians disagree about this last part: adrian jawort (northern cheyenne) accepts written cheyenne oral histories reporting that monasetah had custer’s son and even that she was devoted to him; others believe that custer was likely sterile from gonorrhea (agonito 96). monahsetah’s story has been written, indeed overwritten; since sandoz’s book, google n-gram tells me, she has been periodically and enthusiastically taken up by settler historians captivated by that old trope of a complicit indian princess (most recently and horrifyingly in a romance by custer’s great-great-granddaughter). other writers, including charlotte declue (osage) have represented monahsetah as a resistant, unwilling captive. kenny certainly paints her that way, at least at first: you ask why did i not take my knife and rush it into his belly allowing his enemy blood to river into my people’s oklahoma earth. he called me to his bed. . . . i was his war treasure, his hunk of gold, a pot of flesh. there was no escape. (2) if kenny found in molly brant a mother, he seems to have looked to monahsetah for some kind of sister or twin. “in 1966,” he says, “i began looking for her, and somewhere along the way, i found myself” (15). his method of recounting this search is to alternate prose poems dated to the 1860s, imagining monahsetah’s story, with pieces dated to the 1960s, charting his own political, aesthetic and sexual awakening. kenny recalls reading sandoz as he was returning home from a long stay in mexico, and witnessing the violence of vietnam, and suddenly grasping the global and temporal continuities of indigenous people: “up and down two continents. . .a program of extermination of indians”: “it took courage to truly observe the land of my birth where part of my blood was hated and the other part imported into a land knee-deep in genocide and bloody with racism, sexism and homophobia, blockades to liberty and happiness let alone sexual fulfillment” (4). these pieces, then, evoke a sense of mixed-blood ambivalence and alienation perhaps more common to native american literature and criticism of the late twentieth century than we tend to see in the present, more tribal-centric literary moment. sometimes the parallels to monahsetah’s transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   123   story in this vein are quite powerful; for instance, kenny endows her with a political awakening of her own when she watches male cheyenne leaders capitulate to plans to remove the tribe to sand creek: “when monahsetah asked her father who the soldiers were protecting the people from, he could only shake his head that he did not know” (35). less comfortable are the poet’s attempts to represent this cheyenne woman as chafing against ostensibly restrictive traditional gender roles: for instance, she deplores “the life of a common woman, the drudgery and slavery to lodge and husband” (10). one senses, perhaps, the queer poet’s own desire to depict and imagine tribal life outside of heteronormative patriarchy, but it’s hard to separate a passage like this from garden-variety stereotypes of plains indian women as “drudges.” it’s equally uncomfortable to read the intimate scenes with custer, and the rape passages when monahsetah is temporarily married to a cheyenne husband against her wishes. monahsetah and other markings is edited by chad sweeney, kenny’s student, friend and collaborator, and it would be fascinating to know exactly what his role was in editing and arranging these various pieces. he says that he worked with kenny for over a year on this project, and that kenny died while still working on those custer sections. he was in too much physical pain to keep writing, and understandably “reluctant to guess at monahsetah’s level of complicity” (v). some parts of the cheyenne sections do indeed feel rushed, like kenny was hastening to make sense of everything he had read, written, thought and felt. the strongest sections—vintage maurice kenny, empathetically imaginative when it comes to depicting indigenous women, history, and space—remind us that the subaltern does speak, but that we can never know whether heard her correctly: monahsetah went into story long tales and short talks probably imagined perhaps a handful true to a few facts of her breath (16, 125) indigenous writers from craig womack to cheryl savageau and countless others have paid maurice kenny due homage for his support of indigenous literature, and for the gathering places he created at his strawberry press and the magazine contact/ii, as well as at his own home in saranac lake, new york. but where “the gathering place” is conceptualized as a place where indigenous people have traditionally and continually regrouped, shared and exchanged, the “homing place” is rachel bryant’s way of trying to understand how indigenous and nonindigenous people have struggled to live together and to communicate across cultural, political and epistemological divides. bryant is a settler canadian scholar, currently at dalhousie university as a social sciences and humanities research council postdoctoral. her book takes seriously sovereign treaty relationships between first nations and settler canadians on every level—political, epistemological, cultural and literary. writing is (or should be) an attempt to communicate across these many divides, but bryant finds an invisible and too often impenetrable wall between western imaginaries and indigenous knowledge systems. in her reading, anglo-atlantic writing has built a “system of self-protection” that has sought to contain indigenous geographies and siobhan senier review essay: monahsetah and the homing place   124   indeed indigenous agency. indigenous writings, she argues, have challenged and chipped away at those western imaginaries, though western readers have nevertheless managed to absorb those challenges, often remaining stubbornly unchanged by them. because bryant reads regionally, with a focus on english-language writing on both sides of the us/canadian border, she is able to unpack settler exceptionalisms in new ways. the homing place (continuous present) is a process, bryant’s revision of an influential theory of “home place” proposed by gwendolyn davies to apply to maritime writing, one that will be familiar to scholars in american studies as a gambit connecting place and identity. where davies theorized the “home place” as a trope that allowed settler writers to become maritimers, feeling that they owned places as intellectual property, bryant proposes homing places: in the non-human world, homing is the process through which beings such as pigeons, lobsters, salmon, sea turtles, and butterflies navigate unfamiliar locales as they work to return to a state of familiarity. it is a process that only works in cooperation with all other forms of life; intrusive human-made elements, like pesticides and commercial ships, adversely affect the ability of insects and sea animals to receive crucial navigational cues from their surroundings. of central importance to the process of homing, then, is the constant struggle to receive essential information across the various barriers and interruptions that have been systematically built into the everyday workings of the western world’s industrioscientific culture. (27) this lively construction suggests the broad interest of bryant’s study, touching on concerns common to canadian, american and indigenous studies, as well as to ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. indeed, in one of her most innovative, transmobile chapters, she reads across passamaquoddy territory, bisected today by the us/canadian border, yet enduring in indigenous people’s lives and knowledge as a hom(ing) place, peskotomuhkatik. settlers on both sides of this border, she shows, have used maps, diplomatic and legislative documents, and histories to control access to indigenous resources. at the same time, indigenous people and the land itself have maintained their own opposing narratives of continuity--in oral traditions, wampum belts, and rock formations. for bryant, understanding these conflicting positions is an ethical stance with ongoing urgency; as she writes in a later chapter, it “challenges settlers, the direct beneficiaries of north american colonization, to consider for a moment that ours is not the only world and that the ground beneath our feet has a history and an identity that we have actively and anxiously hidden from ourselves” (181). three other chapters also examine the work of settler writers: john gyles, a new england puritan who wrote a captivity narrative about his years with the maliseet people during king william’s war; anna brownell jameson, an english settler and nineteenth century feminist essayist; and douglas glover, whose 2003 novel elle re-imagined the popular story of marguerite de la rocque, a sixteenth-century french noblewoman who was abandoned on an island during jacques cartier’s final voyage to the gulf of st. lawrence. bryant shows how such writers, especially gyles and jameson, install their identities in settler space, disrupting indigenous communities and “divest[ing] land of any pre-existing (or pre-contact) meanings or agency” (21). in glover she finds a little more willingness to un-settle a sense of unitary imperial transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   125   identity. she calls this “cartographic dissonance,” as glover’s protagonist gradually comes to apprehend, to see competing cultures and epistemologies located in the same geographic space. the remaining two chapters turn to two indigenous poets. bryant reclaims the more famous of the two, rita joe (mi’gmaw), from a tradition of literary criticism that has tended to frame her as a cultural mediator. this older way of reading indigenous women was not uncommon in native american and indigenous literary criticism, especially during the 1990s, and bryant’s insistence that joe challenges settler violence and settler refusal to listen is refreshing and persuasive. her chapter on josephine bacon (innu), who is perhaps better known among canadian/first nations scholars than among indigenous studies scholars elsewhere, similarly shows how indigenous writing counters colonial violence. this chapter situates bacon’s poems squarely within innu cultural history and tradition, reading them as alphabetic tshissinuatshitakana, or message sticks that reconnect innu people with their unceded land. the homing place is published by wilfrid laurier press, which is producing intellectually groundbreaking, materially gorgeous books in indigenous studies. their series, under the dynamic editorship of deanna reder (cree-metis), includes the excellent collections read, listen, tell and learn, teach, challenge; as well as daniel heath justice’s much-anticipated why indigenous literatures matter. the generous, professional production given to the homing place is a wonder to behold: the typography and cover alone are stunners, but the book also gets a good number of plates to show off significant images like wampum belts. the real glory is the treatment given to a 1939 address written by chief william polchies: four full-page, full-color plates that reveal in extraordinary detail the birchbark on which polchies wrote, the leather binding at the spine and the edges, and the fully legible text, first in english, then in maliseet. these images powerfully underscore bryant’s persuasive argument that the birchbark book is a “distinct indigenous material form,” one that “evokes and engages the ‘place-world’ from whence [polchies’s] diplomacy emerges, subsuming settler canadian relations, traditions and ruling structures under the necessarily higher authority of laws and practices that, for centuries, allowed the maliseet people to use and care for their land” (15). at the level of scholarly content and visual production, this book could not be more beautifully done. siobhan senier, university of new hampshire agonito, joseph. brave hearts: indian women of the plains. lanham, maryland: rowman & littlefield, 2016. declue, charlotte. “to the spirit of monahsetah.” in beth brant, ed., a gathering of spirit. new york: firebrand books, 1988. pp. 52-54. jawort, adrian. “did custer have a cheyenne mistress and son? native oral history says yes.” indian country media network, 1 feb. 2017, https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/did-custer-have-a-cheyennemistress-and-son-native-oral-history-says-yes/. siobhan senier review essay: monahsetah and the homing place   126   kelly-custer, gail. princess monahsetah: the concealed wife of general custer. bloomington: trafford publishing, 2007. madsen, deborah. “the sovereignty of transmotion in a state of exception: lessons from the internment of ‘praying indians’ on deer island, massachusetts bay colony, 1675-1676.” transmotion vol 1, no 1 (2015): 23-47. savageau, cheryl. “letter from the editor [special issue memorializing maurice kenny].” dawnland voices issue 4 (may 18, 2017). https://dawnlandvoices.org/letter-from-theeditor/ womack, craig. “the spirit of independence: maurice kenny’s tekonwatonti/molly brant.” in penelope m. kelsey, ed., maurice kenny: celebrations of a mohawk writer. albany: suny press, 2011. pp. 75-96. microsoft word luckenbill.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   114   indigenous engagement with christianity: a review essay covered in this review: tolly bradford and chelsea horton, eds. mixed blessings: indigenous encounters with christianity in canada. vancouver: ubc press, 2017. 236 pp. isbn: 9780774829403. https://www.ubcpress.ca/mixed-blessings timothy p. foran. defining métis: catholic missionaries and the idea of civilization in northwestern saskatchewan 1845-1898. winnipeg: university of manitoba press, 2017. 240 pp. isbn: 978-0-88755-774-3. https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/defining-metis julius rubin. perishing heathens: stories of protestant missionaries and christian indians in antebellum america. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2017. 276 pp. isbn: 978-14962-0187-4. http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496201874/ in an essay titled “rethinking edward ahenakew’s intellectual legacy,” tasha beeds, an indigenous studies scholar of cree-métis origin, resists scholarship’s dismissal of christian practice among first nations individuals merely as evidence of assimilation, arguing instead that a person could both adopt christianity and maintain strong allegiance to an indigenous culture. she writes specifically about edward ahenakew, “one of the first nēhiyaw [i.e. cree] people in the post-reserve era to bridge the indigenous and non-indigenous worlds in terms of language, spirituality, and politics” (120). his contributions to cree society are, according to beeds, often discounted because of his commitment to christianity (121). without dismissing christianity’s involvement in colonization, beeds asserts ahenakew’s powerful ability to use his experiences as a christian for the benefit of the cree people while still retaining his nēhiyaw identity. featured in the edited collection mixed blessings: indigenous encounters with christianity in canada edited by tolly bradford and chelsea horton, beeds is one of a number of contemporary scholars reinvestigating the complexities of indigenous interactions with christianity as part of the necessary and challenging task of decolonizing academia. in recent decades in both canada and the united states historians, literary critics, and theologians have indicted christians as perpetrators of colonial violence, identifying indigenous people as their victims. this assessment, vital for decolonization, is in many ways long overdue, preceded by years of denial of wrongdoing by both church and state and celebration of narratives that diminish indigenous perspectives. however, some contemporary scholarship, like that produced by beeds, complicates the conversation, considering the harm perpetrated by christians alongside possibilities of indigenous acceptance and/or subversive use of christianity. mixed blessings co-editors bradford and horton and defining métis author timothy foran have created book-length studies that creatively interrogate settler and missionary source material and consider “indigenous agency” (bradford & horton 5) as the first nations of canada interacted with christianity. in perishing heathens, julius rubin likewise contributes to the scholarly project of re-examining indigenous engagements with christianity, but he pairs indictment of the colonial impulse of antebellum american missionaries with sympathy for early evangelical christians, a combination that may trouble some readers. read together, these three books rachel r. luckenbill “indigenous engagement with christianity”   115   function like a primer on the project of decolonizing scholarly perspectives, evidencing the possibilities and pitfalls involved in studying often tense and ambiguous moments of interreligious and cross-cultural encounter. this review offers an overview of each text and then highlights ways in which all three situate themselves in relation to indigenous perspectives, address the difficulty of accessing indigenous history through archival sources, and contribute something significant to the field of indigenous studies. mixed blessings is the strongest of the three in terms of careful framing, breadth of coverage, and the dynamism of a collection grown directly out of dialogue. bradford and horton present an interdisciplinary study that spans multiple centuries, allowing space for both historical and theological considerations of first nations interactions with christianity. contributors to the volume first participated in a workshop entitled “religious encounter and exchange in aboriginal canada,” and the resulting responsiveness of many of the contributors to one another creates a sense of community and relationship when their essays are read as a collection. divided into three sections that focus on “community, individual, and contemporary sites of encounter” respectively (6), mixed blessings progresses from detached to increasingly personal analyses and also moves forward in chronology from investigations of the 18th century all the way through the present day. to some extent, all nine essays consider the political implications of christianity’s arrival among the first nations of canada, acknowledge the transnational context of encounters with christianity, and take “seriously the role of spiritual experiences and knowledge” (7). bradford and horton acknowledge that canada is only just grappling with christianity’s involvement in colonization, most especially “the traumatic histories of violence associated with christian missionaries, churches, and the residential schools” (5). both the workshop and collection of essays move the dialogue beyond uncomplicated indictment of christianity toward privileging “indigenous agency” while questioning “singular stories of powerful churches and powerless indigenous subjects” (5). in the conclusion, the editors call for an investigation of “indigenous-christian interactions” that “balance[s] the harsh realities of colonialism with the possibility that christianity had, and continues to hold, deep spiritual and political meaning for some indigenous people” (207). without bradford’s and horton’s thoughtful framing remarks acknowledging the potential dangers of exploring first nations acceptance of christianity, the collection might be perceived as moving too quickly past the egregious intertwining of christianity with colonization in favor of taking a more positive look at historical experiences between first nations individuals and the christian religion. but the editors are careful to acknowledge their precarious position between long-overdue acknowledgment of canada’s dark past and more complex investigation of the nuances of indigenous religious identity and experience throughout the missionary era. without trying to oversimplify the diverse perspectives represented by their contributors, bradford and horton make it clear that they compiled this book with a “decolonizing spirit” in the hope of catalyzing “ongoing innovative investigation” of first nations experiences with christianity (3). all contributors to the volume grapple with the problem of access to early first nations voices and cultures, given that most source material was produced by settlers. section one, “communities in encounter,” highlights this dilemma through three complementary essays that reinterpret archival sources in order to understand indigenous religious practices as a form of political and social power. both timothy pearson and elizabeth elbourne use knowledge of specific first nations cultures to infer how indigenous communities might interpret the transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   116   observations recorded by euro-canadian missionaries. for example, pearson examines first nations religious rituals of the 18th century, reading between the lines of missionary documents to construct interpretations that privilege indigenous social and spiritual values. elbourne’s study dovetails nicely with pearson’s, focusing specifically on anglicanism and how its practice, texts, and symbols were used by both euro-canadians and first nations people to form and break political alliances, to affirm communal identity, and to express obligation or resistance to other communities. while both of these writers depend entirely on archival sources, amanda fehr uses a combination of euro-canadian historical documents and indigenous ethnographic sources. this difference is possible largely because fehr focuses on a more recent subject, a 1930s public memorial featuring a cross erected by members of the stó:lō community. fehr provocatively interprets the cross as an authentic expression of stó:lō beliefs and resistance to government encroachment, not as evidence of missionary influence (73). throughout her article, fehr acknowledges that, even with ethnographic sources, the religious and political histories she attempts to piece together are ambiguous and partial at best. all three scholars in this section read their sources creatively in order to maximize their limited access to earlier first nations perspectives. the remaining two sections continue this theme of seeking access to and understanding of indigenous perspectives. “individuals in encounter” features studies of the lives of missionary wife eliza field jones, architect of the 1885 métis rebellion louis riel, and cree leader edward ahenakew. “contemporary encounters” concludes the volume with three dynamically written essays on present day interreligious negotiations. siphiwe dube’s theoretical analysis questions whether christianity’s prominent involvement in the truth and reconciliation commission of canada is productive. denise nadeau offers an insightful and practical guide for decolonizing any classroom in which faculty teach indigenous traditions or knowledge. carmen lansdowne’s essay is definitively more personal than those in the rest of the collection: the second of only two indigenous contributors in the volume, lansdowne writes an autoethnography, an analysis focusing on herself, the researcher, as the essay’s subject. significantly, lansdowne reflects on her experiences researching first nations christians who evangelized her own ancestral village (193). she makes a strong case for integrating the personal with the academic, especially when investigating indigenous tradition, experience, and knowledge. coeditors bradford and horton acknowledge that the majority of voices in the collection, with the exception only of tasha beeds and carmen lansdowne, are those of “settler heritage” (206). while this is a weakness, the volume’s primary strength lies in the ability of the workshop and the written work to sustain in-depth provocative dialogue between scholars with often competing methodologies. this type of collaborative dialogue produces a study that is both intellectually rigorous and heartfelt, a combined effort from multiple disciplinary perspectives to decolonize and complicate existing approaches to first nations encounters with christianity. marked by tension and depth, mixed blessings is timely, bold, and sensitive. timothy foran’s defining métis: catholic missionaries and the idea of civilization in northwestern saskatchewan 1845-1898 is much narrower in scope but no less considered in its approach and organization. in contrast to mixed blessings’ coverage of first nations encounters with christianity from the 18th century to the present, defining métis offers a “micro-history,” an intensely focused investigation of the 19th century catholic mission called saint john baptiste, at rachel r. luckenbill “indigenous engagement with christianity”   117   île-à-la-crosse. through creative historical analysis and careful structuring, foran offers a fascinating, instructive, and decolonizing exploration of this precise but significant slice of canadian and first nations history. instead of focusing his analysis on the métis themselves, foran studies the lives and correspondence of the catholic missionaries who evangelized them, thereby centralizing the problem of access to first nations perspectives. more specifically, he studies the development and use of the term “métis,” suggesting that historians have given too much credence to catholic missionary perceptions of the métis that originally portrayed them as faithful catholics and later as a once faithful population now vulnerable to corruption and in need of reform (2, 114). while his focus is on the missionaries, foran’s study shares the decolonizing spirit of mixed blessings. he differentiates himself from historians who have traditionally placed great trust in records kept by religious officials without considering that the missionaries’ “origins, education, affiliations, and clerical status” would influence those very records (3). foran notes a change in scholarship, a growing skepticism of most missionary writings but a persistent trust in a specific set of records including censuses and logs of baptisms, marriages, and burials (3). using newly available archival sources, foran sets out to interrogate the record keepers themselves, specifically the oblates, laypeople or clergy devoted to serving the catholic church but not as monks, friars, or nuns. he ultimately concludes that “the oblates’ revision of the term métis was as much a product of disruption in their apostolate as it was a reflection of objective change in an historical métis population” (118). his study complicates existing histories and challenges scholars to move beyond overly simplistic understandings of the métis and the missionaries, to explore the complexities of both métis culture and catholic identity and experience. the complexity of this volume is impressive and effective. foran divides his study into an introduction, four chapters, a brief conclusion, and an appendix of maps that are especially helpful if consulted while reading the chapters. the chapters are dense and extremely detailed. of the 229 page book, 76 pages are devoted to notes. still, foran structures the text to make this micro-history as accessible as possible. each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of saint jean baptiste: the catholic network supporting it, its relationship to the hudson’s bay company (hbc), the operation of a residential school on the premises, and the use of the term “métis” by the oblates who ran the mission. read consecutively, each chapter builds on the previous one. by the end of the volume, a reader can understand relationships between the availability of oblates, the influx of euro-canadian settlers south of île-à-la-crosse, hbc’s altering trade routes, and oblate perception of métis religious beliefs. in many ways, chapter three, “oblates and the beginnings of residential education,” is most pertinent for scholars interested in métis experiences at the mission. it closely examines the residential school established by the oblates and the grey nuns. not only does foran trace the ebb and flow of the school as it coincides with the rise and fall of the mission and changes in the hbc, he also offers original source material that describes, in startling language, oblate attitudes toward the plan of civilizing indigenous people. here is where readers see, intimately and troublingly, a religious community’s commitment to forceful assimilation. foran notes that historians have traditionally focused on residential schools that opened after the treaties of 1877. these same historians have often asserted that catholic missionaries who cooperated with the government did not fully believe in the program of assimilation. foran’s detailed attention to the saint john baptiste mission and school demonstrates that these particular oblates vigorously transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   118   pursued assimilation even without government oversight or support (65-66). this is all the more reason to question their seemingly empirical observations and categorizations of the métis. though foran’s study focuses on the missionaries rather than on the métis, he makes a significant contribution to indigenous studies. his methodical and detailed attention to the historical record and those who wrote it creates space to question the way scholars interpret histories constructed from these records. foran provides a rigorously detailed, well-organized, and insightful study of changing oblate attitudes toward this particular group of first nations people. in perishing heathens: stories of protestant missionaries and christian indians in antebellum america julius rubin holds a magnifying glass up to the lives of early settler evangelicals and native american converts. as a historical sociologist, rubin explores individuals, both native and non-native, many of whom are underrepresented in the historical record. the book emphasizes the melancholic nature of early american evangelicalism and its failure to bring about widespread native conversion. rubin appears to have three primary goals: to understand and honor the early american evangelical missionary spirit and the individuals who committed their lives to it, to identify the tension between early evangelical christianity and native american cultures, and to wonder about the effectiveness of such a missionary spirit by looking at its shortcomings. like foran and the contributors to mixed blessings, rubin acknowledges the insufficiency of access to indigenous experiences in the historical record. for example, in the preface he attempts to piece together the life story of ann cornelius, of whom no record exists except a tombstone labeling her “an indian girl” (xi). because of his focus exclusively on christian perspectives, rubin turns to written “religious intelligence” (xx) rather than oral tradition. he consults mission records, diaries, memoirs, letters, and reports produced by missionaries and native converts. though he acknowledges colonial and christian biases among his sources and makes an effort to understand the incongruities between native and christian worldviews, he also expresses sympathy for the missionaries whose devotionalism took the form of intense and often isolating self-examination, heightened awareness of and anxiety about death, and a fervent desire to build the kingdom of god by converting the “heathen” into followers of christ (12-13). rubin emphasizes the difficulties faced by missionaries and their converts, demonstrating throughout the entirety of the text that the lives of antebellum american evangelicals were often marked not by successful conversions and faithful long-term service but by suffering, illness, debt, and loss. because of this emphasis, rubin foregrounds christian perspectives in archival sources. rubin’s analysis of the antebellum evangelical missionary spirit is problematic from an indigenous studies perspective because it functions in many ways as a eulogy for that spirit. in the preface he announces his intention to “awaken in contemporary readers a sociological and historical imagination — the capacity to engage with empathy the lived experiences of missionaries and christian indians from past times” (xxii). this is an admirable goal, challenging readers to more deeply understand the experiences of others, and rubin’s enthusiasm as a sociologist who wants to reclaim narratives of individuals from the past is evident. however, this enthusiasm is at times unbridled and, at least for this reader, resembles admiration. at the end of his introduction, rubin describes both the missionaries and native converts as living with “heroic, tragic, and melodramatic fervor” and asserts that ”their stories merit retelling to remind us of how evangelical protestant culture helped shape american identity” (22). he frequently rachel r. luckenbill “indigenous engagement with christianity”   119   identifies a “need” to remember. for example, in the preface he writes, “we need to reflect on what we share in common with those who forged a distinctive evangelical american identity and what we have lost” (emphasis added, xxii). calling the missionaries “true believers,” rubin emphatically addresses readers in the introduction: “we need to view the men and women called to domestic indian missions as representative lives who forged [. . . an] identity founded upon religious values” (emphasis added, 4). while rubin does highlight the failures of the missionary endeavor, in the introduction he chooses to punctuate the “meaning and purpose [early christians found] in the fulfillment of religious values” (22). he appears to honor the missionary spirit adopted by both settlers and native converts even as he purposefully identifies fatal flaws within that spirit, such as complicity in colonization. this contrast produces tension throughout perishing heathens and will render the book insufficient for some readers and challenging to others. rubin’s indictment of christian participation in forced assimilation, though accompanied by an insistence on remembering early evangelicalism’s contribution to american identity, is present throughout the text. for example, at the outset of chapter two, rubin notes the seemingly inseparable link between missionary endeavors and manifest destiny. likewise, in chapter five, perhaps his strongest and most tightly organized of six chapters, he explores how the euroamerican plan of civilization permanently altered cherokee culture specifically by examining the lives of two cherokee christian women, catherine brown and sister margaret ann. taking up the question of cultural identity, he wonders to what extent each woman replaced or combined her cherokee ways with her newfound faith. elsewhere he acknowledges the starkness of evangelical life compared to the vibrant and communal experiences had within many native cultures. he asserts that native experiences with religious devotion were marked by intense suffering and often accompanied by the political motivation of securing survival for native people as christianity and euro-americans encroached upon them. multiple times throughout the text, rubin evidences his understanding of christianity as antagonistic to native americans. this means that his call for readers to empathize with the missionaries remains in constant tension with the historical realities of christianity’s role in colonization. the extensive attention rubin gives to women like catherine brown and sister margaret ann who devoted themselves to evangelicalism but have not received much attention is one of the book’s primary strengths. throughout the text, he argues that the lives of evangelical women were harder than those of their male missionary counterparts because of the physical toll of childrearing and the constraints of early gender roles. sister margaret ann’s story, in particular, highlights the relationship between christianity and gender roles in indigenous communities. rubin identifies a “benevolent religious paternalism” (150) that involved white male missionaries pressuring sister ann to marry in order to pursue her religious life. sympathetic to sister ann’s reluctance to accede to the missionaries’ plan, rubin notes that she was newly a widow of an abusive husband and was just beginning to experience “relative autonomy” (154). while stories of other women punctuate many of the chapters, chapter three focuses almost exclusively on the sacrifices made and disappointments experienced by early female missionaries. rubin provides a compelling critical analysis of how enmeshed the concept of “true womanhood” was with the missionary spirit and articulates how, surprisingly, some early 19th century women sought out lives as missionaries so that they could have public influence disallowed to women who led private domestic lives. however, maintaining his focus on the melancholy nature of missionary lives, rubin records in tragic detail countless stories of female transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   120   missionaries whose high expectations met with “disease, disability, discouragement, and death” (85-86). though complicated by sympathetic treatment of the early missionary spirit, rubin’s book makes a valuable contribution to indigenous studies through his detailed investigations of individual life stories that illustrate how this antebellum evangelical worldview influenced the lives of native converts to christianity. perhaps his most significant contribution, though, is to the study of american religious history as he illuminates the fervent but tragic lives of early missionaries who participated in westward expansion by passionately pressuring native americans to adopt civilization as a hallmark of christian belief. while rubin calls readers to a deeper understanding of “how evangelical protestant culture helped shape american identity” (22), he simultaneously documents the failure of that early protestantism to accomplish its goals. he attributes these failures to a mismatch between expectation and reality, the disparity between the intense individualism of early christian piety and the call to evangelize others, the harsh conditions of life in early america, and an insistence upon a europeanized christianity that was oppositional to cultures and beliefs of native peoples. the three volumes featured in this review offer readers multiple models for what a journey toward decolonization looks like in academia. in perishing heathens, it looks like paying careful attention to little-known archival sources and examining the failures of the missionary spirit. rubin’s text also evidences the tension inherent in sympathizing with both white missionaries who married evangelism with civilization and the native americans negatively affected by such colonization. in defining métis, decolonization looks like a re-examination of settler source material long considered empirical and authoritative. and in mixed blessings, decolonization takes the form of dynamic interdisciplinary dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous scholars all of whom confess a desire to more deeply understand first nations experiences with christianity outside of a colonial framework. mixed blessings, defining métis, and perishing heathens all move scholarly dialogue past mere indictment of the colonizer’s religion toward the possibilities of indigenous refusal, acceptance, adaptation, and politically motivated use of christianity. rachel r. luckenbill, southeastern university microsoft word gamber.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 148 zoltán grossman. unlikely alliances: native nations and white communities join to defend rural lands. seattle: university of washington press, 2017. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/grounl.html as i write this, from what is currently called the state of utah, united states, a struggle is taking place. tribal activists are working to oppose the stripping of federal protections under the national antiquities act of massive sections of bears ears and grand staircase-escalante national monuments. a coalition of navajo, hopi, zuni, and ute people, among others, are protesting the reduction of that national park by some 85% by the current us president (undoing the creation of the park created under the obama administration). his administration hopes to open the space to uranium and oil extraction. the fight to protect the park’s initial boundaries will rage for some time, and it is likely that tribal opposition alone will not secure their protections. allied politicians and non-native utahns and arizonans have entered the fray as well. nonetheless, many of the region’s non-native (and overwhelmingly white) residents oppose the national park designation, feeling those lands should be made available to cattle ranching, and often welcoming the jobs that might accompany the aforementioned extractive enterprises. we’ve seen such tensions before, of course. time and time again native people fight on the front lines of protecting their land, often in the face of vocal (and frequently violent) opposition from their white neighbors, whose livelihoods draw upon those threatened lands. we are so used to this narrative that we often assume it to be the natural order of things. enter: zoltán grossman’s book, which examines examples of native and rural white alliance and cooperation resisting ecological degradation. such a project is fraught with pitfalls. when i first picked up the book, i worried that it would wander down a path of multicultural feel-good cherry-picking, or worse, tales of white folks riding in to save native people from themselves. fortunately, grossman’s text offers something far more nuanced and more realistic, replete with stories of successes and failures. these stories emphasize native sovereignty as a multifaceted good, in the face of ongoing histories and legacies of white settler ideologies that in a few hard-fought cases seem to abate. grossman asserts his thesis overtly: i hope this book functions as a type of guide to native and non-native community organizers and leaders in the beginning stages of building alliances against new mines, pipelines, or other projects, to see precedents elsewhere in the country and what strategies have worked and not worked. i also hope that the book can stimulate discussion among students, faculty, and researchers studying innovative ways to alleviate racial/ethnic conflict, create populist movements across cultural lines, and roll back the centuries of dispossession and colonization of indigenous nations (xv-xvi; the preface is also available in its entirety online). in each of these goals, it succeeds. this is not a how-to sort of textbook though, at least not in terms of an abc checklist. rather, it serves as a text of recent history, an ethnography of the kinds of organizers grossman hopes to support. unlikely alliances offers four traits that seem to recur as necessary for the success of those alliances in securing their aims. grossman’s findings come over the course of examining dozens of native/non-native alliances. in each successful instance, john gamber review of unlikely alliances 149 the alliances were able to 1) build grassroots rather than only institutional relationships, 2) emphasize local place identity, 3) define local place in territorial (rather than social) and inclusive terms, and, 4) recognize and respect particularist (rather than universalist) identity differences (287-88). ultimately, the examples grossman offers create an interesting, valuable, and useful text for people working with or interested in native american rights and sovereignty, environmentalism, coalition building, and activism broadly speaking. it is a text that largely anticipates readers’ concerns (especially those regarding native issues), but also one that seems to struggle with escaping certain settler positions—perhaps by design. this text offers itself as a pragmatic guide, and, as such, its ideology tends to privilege finding immediate solutions for the crises it addresses. this immediacy is fitting, of course. ecological threats aren’t the kind of thing that can wait to be resolved. unlikely alliances is also, ultimately, a hopeful text, one that celebrates a kind of progress in these alliances. grossman explains, “the collaboration of native americans and rural whites to defend their common home against outside interests was a rare anomaly in the 1980s….but by the 2010s, cooperation between native and non-native rural organizers [became] almost commonplace” (273). the breadth of grossman’s work is impressive and laudable, melding history, law, and ethnography. the reader encounters an extensive and impressive host of interviewees (just over one hundred). among these are “sport-fishing group leaders and fishing guides, farmer and rancher group leaders, tribal government leadership, indigenous elders, native community organizers, and rural white community organizers, schoolteachers, small business owners, and others” (7). moreover, the scale and breadth of the interviews, topics, and regions covered serves to bolster grossman’s claims. the text moves about the pacific northwest, intermountain west, northern plains, and great lakes covering a wide array of topics: spear fishing, legal interventions (especially the boldt decision), dams and dam breaching, resistance of military projects (base expansion, low-level flights, the mx missile system), environmental justice, coal and gold mining, black hills preservation and treaty rights, climate justice, pipelines (including kxl and dapl), coal locomotive transportation, ports, and oil terminals. grossman discusses movements for environmental protection ranging from the 1970s to the contemporary moment. the chapters tend to follow a pattern that introduces a particular environmental struggle and its major players, discusses attempts, successes, and failures in alliance building (all via interviews with parties involved), and concludes with a quick listing of related, nearby, and later examples that mirror those successes and failures. in the early chapters that listing can come off as a bit jarring: so many rapid-fire details, facts, and figures. but, as one gets further along, one comes to expect them and to understand what grossman is doing with them; namely, strengthening his claims with abbreviated examples that parallel the longer examples at the chapter’s opening. grossman describes successful collaborations as going through four broad and not necessarily distinct phases. “first, native peoples asserted their autonomy and renewed nationhood. second, a right-wing populist backlash from some rural whites created racial conflict over the use of land, water, or natural resources. third, the racial conflict declined in intensity as the neighbors initiated dialogue over common threats to land and water. fourth, native and white neighbors collaborated on the protection of their community, livelihood and natural resources using a crosscultural anticorporate populism” (5). in example after example, these phases play out, and this is one of grossman’s most interesting findings. native people wielding or enacting their transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 150 sovereignty comes first. indeed, the text demonstrates that in circumstances where native nations were more eager to acquiesce to settler expectations of them, less forthright about their sovereignty, the alliances generally failed. he notes that this was, more often than not, followed by a white backlash. we might wonder, of course, whether we can really call anti-indian racist actions a backlash when they are sown into the fabric of our nation. after all, they didn’t spring up as a result of native actions; they have been enacted and reinforced in settler ideology. grossman’s text does make these last points, demonstrating, for example, the irony of white people who protested indigenous sovereignty lamenting their own loss of land. along with the four phases discussed, grossman identifies three primary connections that allow these alliances to succeed. “first, they address the common ‘sense of place’ of native and nonnative communities” (6). that is, they draw on a shared connection to physical landscape (these connections may be material and/or spiritual). “second, they examine the common purpose of the communities in facing a common enemy” (6). these alliances refuse to be divided, for example. throughout the text the common enemy tends to come in the form of corporate extractive industries. (i found myself wondering whether the same practices of vilifying indigenous people were at play in the psyches of their white neighbors mobilizing against not only the toxification of their communities, but the people involved with those industries.) “third, they explore the common sense of understanding that could extend beyond a short-term alliance of convenience to long-term cooperation” (7). the most successful cases grossman studies show formerly adversarial relationships blossoming into friendships, or at least relationships of true respect. one of the strengths of the text, and one of the ways that it allays fears that it will engage in the kinds of ethnographic treatment of indigenous peoples common in so much of academic writing, comes in the form of grossman’s self-awareness and self-reflexivity. in the preface foregrounding his own positionality as relates to his project, grossman narrates that he is descendent on his father’s side of a hungarian jewish family, many of whom did not escape murder at the hands of nazis. owing at least in part to this familial history, he explains, “i learned to mistrust cultural pride and difference, because of the horrors it could lead to, and to instead find and appreciate similarities among peoples that transcend religious, ethnic, or racial divides” (xii). oh no, we might think, this is going down that multicultural road. however, grossman quickly assuages some of those concerns. he goes on to explain that his mother’s side of the family, also hungarian post-wwii immigrants, retained much of their culture, including their language and food (retentions facilitated by living in “buffalo’s large hungarian community”), and connections to their former “small village in western hungary” (xii). one could go so far as to argue that grossman is either having some fun with those readers who would likely be suspicious of a universalist text, or drawing in those who would be attracted to one, setting them up for a more complicated position. either way (or neither way) the device works. grossman’s book has an uncanny way of anticipating a reader’s objections, of starting down one of those dangerous paths only to veer back, to correct any homogenizing narratives one might worry it is drifting into. the text’s central ambivalence seems to center around the binary it constructs from its inception, its attempt to simultaneously embrace universalism and particularism. while unlikely alliances works to fix these as mutually constitutive, and does so fairly well in the conclusion if not john gamber review of unlikely alliances 151 throughout the entire body of the text, it seems mainly to vacillate between them—again, seeming to topple over into multiculturalism and then wobbling back away from it. grossman asserts, “many [scholars] are deconstructing racist institutions and structures, but fewer are discussing how to construct just institutions and structures in their place” (10). he continues, “fewer have speculated what ‘geographies of inclusion might look like” (10). this longing for inclusion smacks of the liberal multicultural state impulse. but, what if the inclusion of settler descendants like grossman (and myself) isn’t what justice looks like? what if the mandate of such inclusion is a replication of, or at least a not-so-distinct riffing off of, those racist instutions and structures? right on cue, grossman cites glen coulthard, noting that “appeals to ‘common ground’ accommodation fail to acknowledge that the ‘commons’ has belonged to indigenous nations” (11). ultimately, grossman’s book hinges on the concept of cooperation, specifically privileging grassroots organizing over governmental alliances. he argues, “cooperation needs to sink roots into local communities to sustain government-to-government relations at the top” (52). his examples point to these local connections as the primary mode by which successful alliances not only come to be, but prove fruitful moving forward as well. he contends, “a ‘paradigmatic shift’ toward lasting relationships that promote justice can prevent the regeneration of social tensions” (62). in many of the alliances he studies, those involved come to see one another as friends. they recognize that if they want a better neighborhood, they need to be better neighbors. grossman refers to these grassroots interactions as connecting “on a human level” (91). (one wonders how humans have ever connected on a non-human level, but i digress). by contrast, he contends that when people have foregrounded “‘government-to-government’ cooperation at the top [in hopes of translating that] into cooperation at the grassroots” the results have been mixed (57). moreover, “where tribes had the backing of urban-based environmental groups but not local white communities, such as in the little rocky mountains, the alliances could not prevent mining” (149). again, according to grossman, success lies in a coalition of the local. it is important to note that this emphasis on building alliance between native and non-native communities does not mean that grossman looks to weaken native sovereignty. instead, as he demonstrates, the unyielding exercise of that sovereignty by native nations is absolutely integral to the successes of the alliances he studies. indeed, he points out a clear danger to this approach of prioritizing native/non-native alliances. as one of his informants reminds him, “white people are once again ‘using’ something owned by native americans, in this case treaty or sovereign rights, for their own ends—to stop a project that may threaten their livelihoods” (279). with that in mind he also contends that “the most successful alliances [brokered by native communities] have tended to use a ‘carrot-and-stick’ strategy—using a ‘stick’ to confront racism by white communities and institutions, while dangling a ‘carrot’ that promised a common future based on common land-based values” (150). while grossman looks to the successes of alliance and community, his reading is hardly naïve. he offers no post-racial fantasy here, far from it. to that end, he contends, “native nations do not have to compromise their sovereignty in some feelgood reconciliation scheme with the state. instead, their sovereignty cements their position as a powerful entity in their own watershed or even…as the ‘lead entity’” (97). and, “instead of accepting the white community’s terms of one-way ‘inclusion’ (meaning official recognition and integration), the tribal nations began to set their own terms of mutual inclusion, including a projection of tribal powers in resource management outside the reservations” (272). transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 152 grossman’s text offers valuable insights for people thinking through the empowerment of native communities particularly, rather than marginalized communities broadly, as this centrality of sovereignty plays such a pivotal role. it’s a useful text for thinking about coalition building, a mode that some reject for the compromises it requires. it also, honestly, has some very sweet stories of people working not only with, but for one another. it manages these feel-good moments without sacrificing rigor. it calls out a brand of selfish yet self-destructive anti-indian racism and white supremacist settler ideology throughout (though many of the white informants are far less self-aware than the text is). it’s well worth a read. john gamber, utah state university microsoft word 501-2732-2-ce (1).docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   108   when white people talk about their country being stolen (i throw up in my mouth a little bit) tiffany midge the morning after the election results, while our country was waking up from one of the biggest hangovers of its life, lawrence and me had the complicated and compounded misfortune of waking to the telltale sounds of what i assumed was a celebratory victory rut of our upstairs neighbors, who happened to be ardent trump fans. “the upstairs neighbors are going at it! a victory bang.” i posted on my facebook. then deleted. then re-posted. then deleted again. i have no filter. our neighbors have trump signs all over the yard, a poster sized “vote trump” sign taped to the back of their minivan, along with year-round christmas lights and miniature american flags all up and down the concrete path to their porch. when i ruptured my tendon, these same untoward neighbors gave me a walker, offered help, visited me and sympathized with my trouble. yes, they are good people. they know not what they do goes the refrain inside my head. i know how to deal with trumpsters. their narrative is simplistic, transparent, and in my face. what’s not so simple, what isn’t an easy-to-follow recipe, are those white folks stomping through our yard in pink pussy hats and safety pins stuck to their lapels, on their way to another saturday rally in the park across the street. these socially conscientious liberals who want their country back. “there’s a lady kicking over the planters in the walkway.” lawrence says from the window. “shit. is she wearing a pussy hat?” “yes. should we call the police?” “no. tell her to get off our lawn.” tiffany midge “when white people talk”     109   we laugh. the lakota and nez perce couple raising cane at hippies who’re tearing around on their front lawn. that’s rich. “i feel a little sorry for them. they look so lost.” i say. “don’t. one of them broke our planter. this here’s frontier justice.” we laugh. “we could join them?” i say. “they don’t know what hit them. trump is going to turn the whole country into a banana republic.” “or a reservation.” lawrence says. “welcome! we’ve got a chair for you right here at the kid’s table.” i say. “we should teach seminars called ‘dispossession is a bitch.’” we laugh. in that good way. from the distance we can hear a woman’s voice amplified through a megaphone. in the park, a sea of pink assembled like a coral reef. we part the curtains and peer through the window as if we’re jacques cousteau surveying a mysterious new species. so much pink. if i take my glasses off, all i see is a blur of cotton candy. it makes me feel nauseous, as if i’d stayed at the carnival too long. lawrence takes my hand and opens the front door. we step out into the morning air and reluctantly join the parade. microsoft word 252-2988-1-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 113 the value of perseverance: using dakota culture to teach mathematics annmaria de mars & erich longie1 what does it mean to be an indian, anishanaabe or a dakota? mcglennen argues convincingly that native identity is not a connection to place, to a particular reservation. legally, being the member of a native nation can be defined as tribal enrollment, regardless of residence (spirit lake tribe). however, concerns over cultural appropriation seldom arise because another falsely claims residence or tribal enrollment. being a dakota or an ojibwe means more than regalia. this is not the identity native people seek to protect. rather, backlash from native communities is against the exploitative use of culture, including dress, dance, music, etc. often for financial or other personal gain and taken out of context (scafidi). as a dakota who fought a decade-long battle to abolish the hated fighting sioux nickname, this is the type of cultural exploitation that is our concern (longie, 2015). members of native nations are connected through a shared history and values, but by whose definition? blaeser (168) noted that the history of native people is most often presented in romantic stereotypes “…unconnected to the every day lives and survival of contemporary native people…” there is diversity among the 500 american indian groups in degree of preservation of tribal language and in tribally specific religious and social activities (red horse, lewis, feit, & decker; weibel-orlando). yet, many social scientists feel it is possible to identify certain core indigenous values (e.g., sue & sue); generosity, courage, honesty, harmony with nature, noninterference; patience; circular time; and a broad view of the family. blaeser cites endurance, relatedness, survival, spirituality and time as important cultural ideas. vizenor also emphasizes survival, resistance and relation with nature as important contexts of native culture. in the united states, despite hundreds of years of oppression and campaigns of extermination, the native americans have survived and persevered (longie, 2006). when our youth wear clothing emblazoned with “native pride” whence comes the source of that pride? it’s not the poverty or the plethora of other problems endemic to most reservations– it’s our character, those values that people should emulate that have enabled use to endure and survive as de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 114 a people despite those challenges. perseverance in the face of hardship may be the unifying characteristic of native peoples. the present study applies perseverance and fortitude, two major values of the dakota to game development, with the objective of improving academic achievement of native american children. perseverance is defined as a steady and continued effort, usually over a long period, and especially in spite of difficulties or setbacks. the dakota cultivated perseverance. traditionally, rules were rules of survival and if they weren't followed, the whole tribe was at risk. those who enforced the rules persevered in their chastisements until individuals conformed to the law. without perseverance, the dakota would not have survived the world they lived in. their perseverance is one of the main reasons why their descendants are here today. fear is the greatest enemy of perseverance. there is the physical fear of being killed or injured by an enemy or wild animal. another type of fear that persists today and relates to education is fear of failure, of not being able to measure up to expectations. we were born during what many american indians call the greatest generation, those in the 1940s and early 50s who overcame poverty, racism, alcoholism, lack of transportation to get an education, fight for a job within the system and bring jobs and self-governance to the reservations. this generation because of their perseverance brought much of the development we see on the reservations today housing, manufacturing, tribal colleges -that overcame many barriers that benefit the reservation today. prior to this generation, there was nothing on the reservation no running water, no housing. this generation, in turn, opened the opportunities available to indians now. we overcame the prejudice of the border towns, even the bad treatment of us when we went into the stores and restaurants in towns adjacent to the reservations. why was our generation able to do that? maybe because we were the first generation exposed to technology. we were exposed to television, gas stoves, etc. during our adolescence. as edmunds noted, rural reservations were “inundated by a cultural invasion” that began with radio and television and has continued through videogames, the internet and social media. a lot of us went to non-indian schools off the reservation. we were put in the “slow” class with the poor white students. they never expected us to join the extra-curricular activities because they didn’t think we were worth it. yet, these same people were the ones who came transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 115 back and started many of those improvements on the reservation. they didn’t let the racism deter them. today reservations are a much better place to live than they were 150 years ago, 100 years and even 50 years ago when the author was a boy on the spirit lake dakota nation. there are better schools, there are jobs, and hardly anyone suffers from malnourishment. yet, schools have a huge drop out rate. we propose a simple answer to the problem of academic achievement– return to the traditional value of perseverance. when the job becomes difficult some workers simply quit or do not attempt to look for work. the problem has become so severe on reservations that some casinos mandate an employee orientation for tribal members who have been fired or quit jobs at the organizations three or more times. when adults no longer practice perseverance, we do not pass this virtue down to our children. as a result, when attending school becomes difficult or uninteresting, they simply do not attend. research on one reservation found that the average student in elementary school missed an entire month of school (longie, 1995). a return to traditional values of perseverance and fortitude was hypothesized as a solution to this problem. spirit lake: the game was developed by dakota elders and tested with dakota children in an effort to channel the new technology to benefit the next generation by integrating their traditional values, culture and history. in this manner, we follow in the footsteps of such native american leaders as yellowtail (hoxie & bernardis) and deer (kidwell) who applied the education they learned in the white man’s schools to defend and maintain the culture and sovereignty of their tribes. historically, the dakota were the ultimate survivors. in spite of a war of annihilation by the europeans, they survived. in spite of being put on reservations and living in poverty, they survived. in spite of the numerous social ills that plagued reservations they survived. now in the twenty-first century, dakota are one of the fastest growing populations in the country. how did people manage to survive in spite of tremendous odds? simple, it was in their character to persevere. they were taught this virtue from childhood. in his book, dakota life in the upper midwest, samuel pond writes this about the dakota before the coming of the white man, if they would have accompanied them through one year, in 1834 they would have learned that they did not contrive to live without hard labor, also that they did not shrink from hard work, but acted like men who were determined to take care of de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 116 themselves and their families. if they had been as indolent and inefficient as many think they were, we should have never heard of them, for they would have perished long ago. (23) years later, john fire lame deer, who was born in a twelve-by-twelve foot cabin gives an account his life on a south dakota reservation. john fire lame deer persevered despite extreme hardships and became a noted medicine man. here is the first paragraph of his story, hard times in sioux country: there were twelve of us, but they are all dead now, except one sister. most of them didn’t even grow up. my big brother tom, and his wife were killed by the flue (sp) in 1917. i lost my own little boy thirty-five years ago. i was a hundred miles away, caught in a blizzard. a doctor couldn’t be found for him soon enough. i was told it was the measles. last year i lost another baby boy, a foster child. this time they told me it was due to some intestinal trouble. so in a lifetime we haven’t made much progress. we medicine men try to doctor our sick but we suffer from many new white man’s diseases, which comes from the white man’s food and white man’s living, and we have no herbs for that (311). today’s reservations continue to provide role models who have faced enormous difficulties in their lives yet they persevered. research on academic success at the community college level found integration of native american culture, from accommodation of intergenerational responsibilities to incorporation of native american history throughout the curriculum, to be related to significantly higher retention of at-risk students (rousey & longie). in contrast to the types of cultural appropriation seen in mainstream films, video games offer a more functional application of native american culture, specifically, dakota culture. while at first glance, traditional dakota values and educational video games may be an unexpected combination, there is much more to being a dakota than regalia, pow-wows and sweat lodges. other cultures that wish to copy the dakota are advised to copy these values – honesty, courage, generosity and perseverance. both the national council of teachers of mathematics and the common core standards emphasize the importance of perseverance in mathematics (national governors association center for best practices & council of chief state school officers). the very first standard of mathematical practice is “make sense of problems and persevere in solving them”. spirit lake: the game is an example of how the value of transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 117 perseverance in the context of traditional native american culture can be applied in contemporary society. in the united states, native americans are both the fastest growing minority group and the lowest performing in mathematics (devoe, darling-churchill & snyder). over 1,000,000 native americans live on federally-designated reservations; students from these sites perform even lower than the mean for all native americans (de mars & longie). many variables correlate with academic outcomes for native american students, as well as the general population. numerous studies have found time to be a factor predictive of achievement in mathematics (hersh and john-steiner). the time factor includes time devoted to solving a problem, the perseverance shown, time spent on homework and instructional time. as one of the barriers to effective instruction in classrooms of predominantly disadvantaged children is behavioral, i.e., lack of sustained attention (laffey et al), we hypothesized that increased attention would translate into higher mathematics achievement. spirit lake: the game was created to test this hypothesis. to heighten attention, we incorporated native american culture in an educational video game in two ways. first, in the general story line we based everything from clothing to the landscape to daily activities on authentic tribal history, given research showing that student de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 118 figure 1: introduction to problem-solving lesson figure 2: buffalo hunt scene in spirit lake transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 119 engagement, as evidenced by physiological and behavioral responses, is enhanced when users perceive features of a learning environment to be visually realistic (sibuma). second, we emphasized traditional cultural values of perseverance and fortitude as applying to achievement today. figure 1 above shows the introductory screen of a unit on problem-solving that begins by encouraging students to follow in the footsteps of their ancestors who did not shirk difficult tasks. after earning their arrows through completing math problems that helped the tribe such as dividing the 48 hunters into hunting parties of 8 hunters each, and determining if any would be left out – the player has earned the right to join the buffalo hunt. as reinforcement, the player is actually able to hunt buffalo in a 3-d world, as shown in figure 2 above. each game level follows this same pattern that includes subject matter instruction with culture rather than in place of instruction in the content area. after instruction, students are presented with math challenges. correct answers lead to game play that is integrated with the problems, just as the problem of dividing into hunting parties is followed by hunting virtual buffalo. incorrect answers route students to corrective instruction that must be completed before returning to the game. evaluation sample to test the efficacy of the game, we selected a sample of 62 fourth and fifth-grade students from two schools located on an american indian reservation in central north dakota. the schools are located approximately twenty miles apart on the same reservation. the schools are demographically similar. both have student bodies over 95% native american, both have 2025% of students proficient in mathematics in grades three through five. neither of the schools met state targets for annual yearly progress in mathematics or reading. both are high-poverty schools located in the same rural persistent poverty county. as the program is designed to be implemented within a school, random selection of individuals is not possible. one school was randomly selected as the control group and a second as the intervention. games were played by all of the students in fourthand fifth-grade at the intervention school. de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 120 we implemented the program in the fall semester. all fourth-grade students at both schools and all fifth-graders at the control group school were administered the pre-test and posttest with the exception of students with learning disabilities too severe to be tested. the children who were excluded were essentially non-readers. according to teacher report and our own observations, their reading and mathematics skills were second-grade level or below. in the intervention school, five fifth-grade students from each of the three classrooms were selected by their teachers to participate. demographic statistics for the sample, by group, can be seen in table 1. there were no significant differences between experimental and control group schools in gender distribution, or in age within grade. table 1 sample demographics intervention (n =39) control (n=23) gender % female 51% 48% grade • fourth grade • fifth grade 70% 30% 51% 49% mean sd mean sd age (all students) grade • fourth grade • fifth grade 9.7 9.5 10.4 0.8 0.6 0.9 10.1 9.9 10.3 0.6 0.7 0.5 transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 121 instrumentation we created a 24-item test, matched with north dakota state standards for grades two through six. we initially planned to use released items from the state standards test. however, north dakota is one of the few states that does not release test items. thus, we used released items from the california state standards test. the published california standards addressed by these items matched verbatim with north dakota standards. while research with a substantially larger, more diverse sample found a cronbach alpha of .84 for this test (de mars), internal consistency reliability coefficient we computed for the current sample for the same test = .57. this relatively low value is likely a result of the high ceiling of the test, with many students simply guessing at the upper-grade items, as discussed below. data collection all fourthand fifth-grade students from the two schools took the pre-test in their respective school’s computer labs using the same on-line test created with surveymonkey software. all students in the intervention group and all students from the control group school who were still enrolled in the school took the post-test, with the exception of students in special education, as noted above. at post-test, approximately 25% of the students at each school were no longer available. some were absent or suspended but in most cases the school staff remarked, the students were merely “gone”. we administered tests at the beginning of the fall semester, and again, eight weeks later, after students had played the games two to three times per week in their classrooms for 25-30 minutes per day. we collected usage data to estimate total time on task during the hours allotted for the intervention group. to progress in the game, students are required to answer a challenge question or form approximately every two minutes. each answer records the number of attempts, response and a date-time stamp. the total minutes the class spent on task during a session was computed automatically by subtracting the time of first input from a student in the class from the time the last student in class answered a question. data analysis we performed all analyses using sas/stat software, version 9.4 for windows. we computed de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 122 descriptive statistics computed for demographics, pretest items, pre-test and post-test total scores, by grade level and by school. we performed two repeated measures analysis of variance (anova) to test for statistical significance. one analysis was conducted with only school and time as the predictor variables. a second analysis included school, time and grade. as both analyses yielded essentially identical results, only the latter is presented here. four outliers, two from the intervention group and two from the control group, were deleted from the final analysis. three of these had low scores (less than five) due to having left the remainder of the problems blank. in one case, the student had been called out of class after beginning the test. analyses were run with and without the outliers. the effect was minor, and resulted in slightly smaller, but still significant, effect in favor of the intervention group. results the percentage correct for each item on the pre-test can be seen in figure 3 for fourth-grade students and in figure 4 for fifth-graders. some evidence for validity can be seen in the higher scores for fifth graders and the pattern of progressively lower percentage correct as the items move from the secondto the fifth-grade level. also, consistent with published state reports showing the majority of students at these two schools to be below grade level, it was only at the second-grade level that all of the fourth-grade students’ percentage correct was higher than the transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 123 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade figure 3: grade four pre-test scores, all students 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade figure 4: grade five pre-test scores, all students de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 124 25% predicted by chance, with multiple choice items with four options. on only two of the five third-grade level items were fourth-grade students’ scores above the chance level. similarly, with the fifth-grade students, as can be seen in figure 4, on only one of the five fifth-grade level questions did more than 25% of the students respond correctly. clearly, students were performing significantly below grade level. means, standard deviations and number of subjects, by grade, are shown in table 2 for the intervention group and table 3 for the control grouas would be predicted based on the low performance on individual items, mean pretest scores were very low for both groups. out of 24 questions, the average student answered less than ten correctly. while both groups increased from pre-test to post-test, it can be seen that the improvement of the two intervention groups substantially surpassed the two control groups. the effect is best illustrated graphically, as in figure 5. the control groups increased only slightly in mathematics achievement, as would normally be expected after only eight weeks of mathematics instruction of 45 minutes or less per day. in contrast, the fourth-grade intervention group improved the mean test score 64% while the fifth-grade intervention group improved 29%. table 2 descriptive statistics, by grade level, intervention group pre-test post-test mean s.d n mean s.d n all 9.3 2.3 37 14.3 5.2 40 grade 4 9.2 2.5 25 15.1 5.3 28 5 9.5 1.9 12 12.3 4.6 12 transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 125 table 3 descriptive statistics, by grade level, control group pre-test post-test mean s.d n mean s.d n all 9.0 2.1 21 9.7 2.6 22 grade 4 9.3 2.5 10 9.9 1.9 11 5 8.6 1.7 11 9.5 3.3 11 results of the repeated measures anova are summarized in table 4. consistent with the results portrayed in figure 3, it can be seen that there was a significant effect of time, with scores improving from pre-test to post-test. there was also a significant interaction effect of time by school, with students from the experimental group improving significantly more from pre-test to post-test than did the control group. de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 126 figure 5: pre-test and post-test mean scores by grade and school although the fourth grade increased more than fifth graders, this difference was not statistically significant. it should be noted, for reasons discussed below, that the fifth-grade class spent significantly fewer minutes using the program. while the fourth-grade classrooms spent an average of 24-28 minutes per session using the program, or 4856 minutes per week, the fifthgraders had less than half of this amount of time on task, approximately 17 minutes per session, due to conflicts in availability of the computer lab and early school dismissal due to weather. table 4 repeated measures analysis of variance, tests of hypotheses source df type iii ss mean square f value pr > f time 1 164.97 164.97 12.91 0.0007 time*school 1 91.04 91.04 7.13 0.0100 time*grade 1 11.58 11.58 0.91 0.3454 time*school*grade 1 22.00 22.00 1.72 0.1953 error(time) 54 690.00 12.78 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 pretest post-test grade 4 intervention grade 4 control grade 5 intervention grade 5 control transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 127 conclusion the goal of the dakota learning project (dlp) was to integrate dakota culture with research in mathematics education and computer gaming in order to raise the mathematics achievement of native american children. these pilot study results were extremely promising in both providing preliminary support for efficacy and providing guidance for future research. the game proved to be highly engaging to the students and related to significantly higher test scores. teacher reports, the site coordinator observations and the time students were on task all support a high level of student engagement. time—including time devoted to solving a problem, the perseverance shown, time spent on homework and instructional time—is a much better predictor of mathematics achievement than measures of mathematical aptitude (dehaene; hersh & john-steiner). through educating students in the traditional values of perseverance, courage and survival against all obstacles, teachers used the game to encourage students to spend more time on the mathematics challenges in the game and not give up. we applied research on the use of effective educational game design throughout development, combining feedback from the game regarding correctness of answers with elaborated instructions and meaningful incentives (delacruz; nelson; van eck & dempsey). in spirit lake: the game these incentives were the opportunity to experience culturally-based activities in a 3-d virtual world, such as gathering herbs to save the tribe from an epidemic or hunting deer. several changes are recommended in future research based on our experience of evaluation of educational video games in two reservation schools. problems in organization and low-performance in these low-performing rural schools were greater than anticipated. achievement was lower, resources scarcer and absenteeism higher even than the high level of challenge we had anticipated based on past experience in this and similar reservation communities. at post-test, approximately 25% of the students at each school were no longer available. frequent scheduling conflicts occurred, both for individual students and facilities. while it was possible to teach fourth-graders as a whole class, this was not an option for the fifth grade as all classes desired to be involved and it was not possible to schedule six classes twice per week. instead, the computer lab was scheduled and five students from each class were de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 128 selected. the time required for students to travel from their classrooms and back again reduced time available for using the program. on some days, the computer lab had been double-booked and the site coordinator and students would spend another ten minutes or more looking for an available space. we originally proposed to have third through fifth-grade students participate, as the game was targeted to teach mathematics at this level. however, pretest results for fourthand fifth-grade students showed the majority to be achieving a year below grade level. within these particular schools, it was determined that third-grade students were not performing at a high enough level to benefit from the program. therefore, the pilot was conducted only with fourth and fifth-grade students. in the interest of creating a workable prototype within a short time frame, we used commercial solutions, surveymonkey for collecting pre-test and post-test and sas software for data management and statistical analysis. use of a multiple choice format allowed students to randomly guess at an answer and still have a 25% probability of getting the answer correct. this guessing, along with the generally low pretest scores resulted in low-test reliability. we have since re-written these tests using our own code to be all open-ended response. these complications in the research should not discourage further work in the area of educational games based on indigenous culture. the gains in test scores were both substantial and significant. perseverance in solving problems in mathematics is part of the common core standards adopted by 37 states. spirit lake: the game emphasizes perseverance, a core dakota value, and although no quantitative measure was included for perseverance in the pilot, qualitative indicators suggest an improvement on this dimension. students in both of the schools researched showed little perseverance initially. if a problem was difficult, the student simply gave up. this same lack of perseverance was shown during the intervention. in the first weeks, if students could not answer a question, he or she immediately asked the teacher or site coordinator for the answer, or guessed at random. after three weeks, half-way through the intervention, many of the students were observed, unprompted to begin using a pencil and paper to try to work out problems in the game. on the post-test, 5% of the students simply quit well before finishing the test. all of these were from the control group. one advantage of spirit lake: the game and other video games is the capability of automated collection of student engagement. while observational measures of student time on transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 129 task are more reliable than teacher or student self-report, their use is prohibitively expensive, requiring multiple on-site assessments of each classroom and specialized training (fredricks et al.). games, in contrast, can monitor student activity by the number of minutes each student is interacting with the program. the present study lends indirect support for the proposition that teaching traditional values, particularly perseverance, can impact native american student achievement through increased effort. future research will compare games with and without lessons in traditional values to directly test for effects on perseverance in instructional activities and resulting impact on achievement. notes 1 annmarie de mars is from national university & 7 generation games; erich longie is from spirit lake dakota nation. works cited blaeser, k. (2015). refraction and helio-tropes: native photography and visions of light. in c. c. waegner (ed.) mediating indianness university of manitoba press. 163197. de mars, a. & longie, e. “the roles of school, home and culture in predicting academic achievement.” presentation at the national assessment of educational progress, national indian education study seminar, washington, dc. (2011) de mars, a. (2014). paperwork without tears: completing your reporting requirements in 10 easy steps. paper presented at the annual meeting of the western users of sas software, san jose, ca. dehaene, s. (2011). the number sense: how the mind creates mathematics. oxford university press. delacruz, g.c. (2011). games as formative assessment environments: examining the impact of explanations of scoring and incentives on math learning, game performance, and help seeking . (cresst report 796). los angeles, ca: university of california, national center for research on evaluation, standards, and student testing (cresst). devoe, j.f. & darling-churchill, k. e. & snyder, t. d. (2008) status and trends in the education of american indian and alaska natives:2008. national center for education de mars & longie “the value of perseverance” 130 statistics, institute of education sciences, u.s. department of education. washington, d.c. edmunds, d. (2001). twentieth-century warriors. in d. edmunds (ed). the new warriors: native american leaders since 1900. lincoln: university of nebraska press, pp 1-16. fredricks, j., mccolskey, w., meli, j., mordica, j., montrosse, b., and mooney, k. (2011). measuring student engagement in upper elementary through high school: a description of 21 instruments. (issues & answers report, rel 2011–no. 098). washington, dc: u.s. department of education, institute of education sciences, national center for education evaluation and regional assistance, regional educational laboratory southeast. retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs. hersh, r. & john-steiner, v. (2011). loving and hating mathematics: challenging the myths of mathematical life. princeton, nj : princeton university press. kidwell, c. s. (2001). ada deer. in d. edmunds (ed). the new warriors: native american leaders since 1900. lincoln: university of nebraska press, pp 239-262. laffey, j. m., espinosa, l., moore, j., & lodree, a. (2003). supporting learning and behavior of at-risk young children: computers in urban education. journal of research on technology in education, 35(4), 423-440 lame deer, j. f. (1999). hard times in sioux country/ in peter nabokov (ed). native american testimony: a chronicle of indian-white relations from prophecy to the present, 14922000. penguin books longie, e. s. (2015). no, the sioux were not silenced. grand forks herald, april 25, http://www.grandforksherald.com/opinion/op-ed-columns/3730824-erich-longie-nosioux-were-not-silenced longie, e. s. (2006). self-determination: a study of academic excellence at two triballycontrolled colleges. doctoral dissertation, university of north dakota, grand forks. longie, e. s. (1995). a study of attendance and achievement patterns among eighth grade american indian and non-american indian students on the devils lake sioux reservation (master’s thesis, university of north dakota, grand forks, north dakota, 1995). mcglennen, m.s. (2015). “by my heart”: gerald vizenor’s almost ashore and bear island: the war at sugar point. transmotion, 1(2) 1-25. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 131 national governors association center for best practices & council of chief state school officers. (2010). common core state standards for mathematics. washington, dc: authors. hoxie, f. e. & bernardis, t. (2001). robert yellowtail. in d. edmunds (ed). the new warriors: native american leaders since 1900. lincoln: university of nebraska press, pp 55-78. nelson, b. c. (2007). exploring the use of individual, reflective guidance in an educational multi-user virtual environment. journal of science education and technology, 16(1), 83-97. pond, s. (1908). dakota life in the upper midwest. st. paul, mn: minnesota historical society red horse, j. g., lewis, r. g., feit, m., & decker, j. (1978). “family behavior of urban american indians”. social casework, 67-72. rousey, a. m. & longie, e. s. (2001). the tribal college as family support system. american behavioral scientist ,44, 1492-1504. scafidi, s. (2005). who owns culture? appropriation and authenticity in american law. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. sibuma, b. (2012) virtual characters: visual realism affects response time & decision-making. journal of interactive learning research, 23(4) 349-360. spirit lake tribe (2014). our tribe. retrieved from the internet july 30, 2016. http://www.spiritlakenation.com/our-tribe/ sue, d. w., & sue, d. (1990). counseling the culturally different: theory and practice (2nd ed.). new york: wiley. van eck, r., & dempsey, j. (2002). “the effect of competition and contextualized advisement on the transfer of skills in a computer-based instructional simulation game.” educational technology, research, and development, 50(3), 23-41. vizenor, g. (1998) fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln: u of nebraska press. weibel-orlando, j. (1991). indian country. champaign, il: university of illinois press. microsoft word andrella.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     178   john h. monnett, ed. eyewitness to the fetterman fight: indian views. norman, university of oklahoma press, 2017. 248 pp. isbn: 978-0806155821. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/2189/eyewitness%20to%20the%20fetterman %20fight as with most battles and massacres of the plains indian wars, the historical memory of the fetterman fight on december 21, 1866 seldom includes indigenous perspectives and interpretations. john h. monnett addresses this predicament through an edited synthesis of lakota and northern cheyenne eyewitness accounts, to reexamine the traditional narrative of this battle. early twentieth-century ethnographers and historians characterized the defeat of captain william j. fetterman’s command of nearly eighty soldiers near fort phil kearny in northern wyoming as a disaster that resulted from fetterman’s disobedience and arrogance. monnett sheds light on this misconception, arguing instead that the fight was one of the most strategic indigenous victories on the northern plains. since there were no survivors of fetterman’s command to remark on their experience or fetterman’s frame of mind, scholars previously relied on scant documentary evidence and the maligned impressions of nonparticipants at fort phil kearny. until the expansion of ethnohistory in the 1970s, historians did not consider native sources of historical memory as valid forms of history. monnett provides an avenue for these lakota and northern cheyenne voices to not only broaden the context, but to reclaim the fetterman fight’s historical narrative. monnett defines the purpose of his work as both historical and methodological. through the accounts of joseph white bull, fire thunder, american horse and others, the alliance of lakota, northern cheyenne, and arapaho warriors denoted careful strategizing, knowledge of the geography, and tactical skill. monnett emphasizes that these communities of the lush powder river region had legitimate reason to defend their accessibility to the ecosystem, hunting ranges, and trade (monnett 8). for the lakota, maintaining control over this contested space had been crucial since acquiring the basin from the crow in 1857. older, secondary literature eschews this critical understanding of intertribal relations and the culture of plains indian warfare. monnett restores this cultural significance through his assembly of lakota and northern cheyenne perspectives to reveal how the fetterman fight had implications regarding both the land and successive generations. best resonated in the words of bill tallbull, a grandson of a warrior in the battle, the lakotas and northern cheyennes “were fighting for their families and their future” (137). preserving the memory of family members and tribal leaders involved in the fetterman fight meant memorializing their legacy as both a personal feat and defenders of the community. from a methodological standpoint, the impressive arrangement of eyewitness accounts enables readers to interact with the sources in their raw form and approach the production of history from an ethnohistorical perspective. monnett situates his collection of published and unpublished interviews with historical context and his own scrupulous interpretations and critiques for guidance. in each testimony, he is cautious not to overshadow the strength of indigenous jennifer andrella review of eyewitness to the fetterman fight     179   narrations with his own voice. furthermore, monnett warns the reader to be conscious of the interviewer’s positionality in these accounts. whether ethnographers embellished the oral histories for audience appeal or used the knowledge of their native subjects for personal advancement, monnett addresses this predicament of validity in native testimonies with an approach of transparency. best exemplified in john g. neihardt’s interview of the oglala warrior, fire thunder, monnett provides both the original transcription and how it appeared in black elk speaks. in doing so, monnett offers an important lesson in linguistic floridity and manipulation by non-native interviewers. he emphasizes the importance of this skill again in other, more ambiguous accounts where it is especially challenging to extrapolate the veracity from the interviewer’s embellishment. in total, the diverse array of lakota and northern cheyenne accounts develops an organic consistency aided by monnett’s cross-examinations and corroborations. the mystery surrounding the roles of red cloud and crazy horse in the fetterman fight become a critical subject of inquiry for monnett. the fetterman fight took place in the middle of red cloud’s war (1866-1868), a broader series of armed conflicts between the lakota, northern cheyenne, and arapaho alliance against the u.s. government on the northern plains. in plains indian historiography and popular memory, red cloud and crazy horse are some of the most familiar figures, but their exact roles in the fetterman fight seemed to be at a historical impasse. in the oglala lakota testimonies, most interviews attest red cloud’s presence at the battle, whereas the minneconjou lakota and northern cheyenne accounts claim that he was absent. as for crazy horse, the accounts provided by eagle hawk, american horse, and rocky bear all testify to his presence near the battle site (85). monnett clarifies that although red cloud’s and crazy horse’s positions cannot be fully confirmed, it is likely that they participated in some way. what is most significant, monnett concludes, is the iconic value of red cloud and crazy horse as leaders in the resistance against u.s. settler colonialism. while these speculations about red cloud and crazy horse are plausible, one wishes that monnett further explained the consequences of their representations in the secondary literature. as monnett himself proclaims, the fetterman fight had an alliance of at least 1500 native warriors defending their families, communities, and livelihood. perhaps another interpretation of the disparities regarding red cloud and crazy horse might suggest that the lakota, northern cheyenne, and arapaho peoples represented in this history understood their alliance to be predicated on collective agency. joseph white bull and others noted the democratized nature of this alliance, with all participants having personal and communal reasons to participate in the battle. as monnett’s argument in eyewitness to the fetterman fight encourages, the traditional narratives of such events must be reassessed to acknowledge those whose voices lack representation. it will be up to the younger generation of ethnohistorians to answer these intriguing considerations monnett presents. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     180   john h. monnett’s thoughtfully crafted assembly of native voices adds an untold dimension of the fetterman fight and reminds readers of the necessity of indigenous agency in historical production. for the lakota, northern cheyenne, and arapaho warriors in the battle, the trivial details of the battle were not as important as the main objectives of their fight: securing their communities and defending the powder river country. monnett’s fifteen-year commitment to the study of the fetterman fight culminates with eyewitness to the fetterman fight, which engages students and scholars of ethnohistory to reimagine both the narrative and the craft. jennifer andrella, michigan state university microsoft word alberts.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 192 cutcha risling baldy. we are dancing for you: native feminisms & the revitalization of women's coming-of-age ceremonies. university of washington press, 2018. 193 pp. isbn: 9780295743448. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/ristog.html hollywood has, arguably, done more to perpetuate the stereotypes of the "native american"—a haphazard, non-existent, mish-mash of cultures, like those of the apache, comanche, and lakota—than any other place.1 yet, when one thinks of the "first peoples" of california, what often comes to mind are the spanish missionaries or, later, the u.s. settlers that flooded the region during the 1849 gold rush. there may be a few who recall ishi, a "yahi man […who became] a display in the uc berkeley museum" in 1911 and was known as "the last wild indian" (risling baldy 75). however, most will likely not think of the many tribal nations of california, perhaps because their populations were reduced by 90% between 1846 and 1864 as a result of, among other causes, the mexican-american war, spanish colonizers, miners, and numerous massacres, with fifty-six occurring in humboldt county alone (55). yet, in we are dancing for you, cutcha risling baldy (hupa, yurok, and karuk) works to reclaim, "(re)write, (re)right, and (re)rite" the flower dance (ch'iłwa:l) of the hoopa valley tribe,2 located in what is now known as humboldt county in northern california, as part of a cultural revitalization movement that "articulates and supports an indigenous decolonizing praxis" (9). as suggested by the work's subtitle, risling baldy's main emphasis is on women's coming-of-age ceremonies, but, as she notes, "[i]n the anthropological record of northwest california, there is little discussion of indigenous epistemologies of menstruation" (108). for risling baldy, a main reason for this erasure can likely be summed up by a single name: alfred kroeber— arguably one of the "fathers" of the american anthropology, early chair of berkeley's still top-ranked department, warden of ishi, and author of what remains a foundational text on the subject: handbook of the indians of california (1925). consequently, risling baldy begins (re)writing the history of the hupa by starting to right what is wrong with kroeber's account. because she cannot correct all of his 1,000-plus-page ethnography in her compact monograph, she chooses to focus on the reclamation of women's voices. she points out the fallacies that arise when a white man relies on postinvasion indigenous male informants, which, unsurprisingly, results in the increased entrenchment of heteropaternalist ideas in relation to the hupa. for example, risling baldy notes: kroeber's approach to establishing the superiority of one native culture over another included his designation of women's coming-of-age and menstruation ceremonies as "a mark of inferior cultural development." kroeber wholeheartedly believed that tribes who continued to practice public puberty rites well into the contemporary period would never be able to reach the same level of civilization as tribes who had "never" had public puberty rites or who had given them up altogether. (83, internal citations omitted) risling baldy challenges these notions, among others, influenced by salvage ethnography by conducting an extensive literature review of anthropological texts from the historical to the contemporary and theoretical works ranging from feminist to indigenous perspectives, in crystal k. alberts review of we are dancing for you 193 addition to their various intersections.3 she argues that kroeber's "scholarship is deeply ingrained with a western patriarchal belief that menstruation is dirty and polluting," which "meant that kroeber was particularly critical of women's coming-of-age ceremonies and practices associated with women, menstruation, and power" (83). but, risling baldy does not stop there, she also uses primary texts––including theodora kroeber's analysis of her husband, alfred kroeber's own archive, as well as correspondence from his contemporaries—that reveal letters encouraging kroeber to "'get in closer and closer contact with the hupa indians and take a good look at their religion'" (risling baldy 86). ultimately, risling baldy counters the conclusions of kroeber and his peers by sharing her own personal interviews with hupa, yurok, karuk, and/or wiyot peoples, usually those who identify as women, who articulate what was ignored, such as the significance of the flower dance to the "athabascan cultures of california and the southwest," with a specific focus on the hoopa valley tribe (87). according to risling baldy, pre-invasion, the hupa culture recognized women as equals who possessed strength and luck, especially when menstruating (tim-na'me), but the introduction of notions of the "taboo" and christian ideology, including the idea that women were the cause of original sin and should be subordinate to men, shifted community beliefs and practices. as a result, the hupa went from performing public celebrations of menstruation to treating it as something that is shameful and should be hidden. in addition to other complicating factors that contributed to this change, risling baldy draws attention to a mistranslated word: min'ch. kroeber and his contemporary, linguist pliny earle goddard—despite neither ever having seen one—contended that min’ch signified a flimsy, temporary shelter known as a "menstrual hut," a term which also appears in the hupa online dictionary (risling baldy 111, 169 n67). risling baldy challenges this definition by breaking down the linguistic roots to argue that min'ch actually means "something like 'a small, familiar, or dear house'" (113). however, christianity and white anthropologists were not the only threat to the hupa way of life. risling baldy argues that the miners (often known as the 49ers), rushing to conquer the land and profit from its resources, perceived coming-of-age ceremonies as fertility rites and an open invitation for sexual assault. as such, another part of the (re)writing and (re)righting is acknowledging the role violence and settler colonialism played in eliminating these rites and people. or, as risling baldy's mother puts it: "my grandfather once told me, 'remember, granddaughter, you are alive because some miner was a bad shot'" (52). consequently, as risling baldy makes clear, many ceremonies are only available in a limited sense: they are found in the writings of white, usually male, anthropologists or government ethnographers and based on what the indigenous populations were willing to share (some participated in ethnographic refusal). they are further compromised by the fact that what is documented is one particular version of a ceremony, as told by a handful of members—or maybe only one person—of a tribe, band, clan, or family. hence, they must be (re)rited in that the ceremonies have to be pieced together, updated for the contemporary time, and reimagined to fill in the gaps that have been left, while accounting for the inherent variations and omissions of the "original." risling baldy ends her text by doing this work, documenting interviews with those who have participated in the flower dance performed by the hoopa valley tribe since 2001, including the first woman to be celebrated in many generations, as well as the medicine women who performed the rite and a number of others who have been a part of this cultural transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 194 revitalization. because of her close interactions with the participants and the community, risling baldy suggests that bringing this rite back into the public eye has had a positive impact on the members of the hoopa valley tribe, including a slow, but steady, change in attitudes of and toward women, as well as beliefs about traditional ways. precontact, ch'iłwa:l (the flower dance) was originally intended to do be one of the four main ceremonial dances, the others being xonsił-ch'idilye (the white deerskin dance), xay-ch'idilye (the jump dance), and xon'na'we' (the brush dance), with the first three being "world renewal dances" (19). risling baldy implies that the revitalization of the ch'iłwa:l, the most female-focused dance, will start to restore balance (152). that said, at times, we are dancing for you may seem like it has too much critical framing and might occasionally feel repetitive; however, this form may actually be necessary for the (re)righting of these ceremonies. unfortunately, when someone is among the first to analyze or explore a subject, particularly when incorporating personal observations, interviews, or stories, and, especially when that person is challenging the established view of things as told by a respected, senior member in the field, like risling baldy does in this work, it becomes essential to demonstrate that one is well versed in the extant scholarship and can use that language fluently before introducing one's own argument and knowledge. in other words, in a world that continues to be predominantly heteropatriarchal, anyone who is not a cishet, white, christian man must demonstrate that they have the right to speak, because, having gone through other rites of passage (such as earning a ph.d.), they have the authority to do so. risling baldy moves between the worlds with ease: one moment calling out the aforementioned "heteropaternalism" or "heteropatriarchy" that were introduced postinvasion, then explaining the ch'iłwa:l and k'ixinay, before shifting back into theory to show how these stories are part of "epistemological frameworks of decolonization, selfdetermination, sovereignty, and survivance" (8). her research and bibliography are gifts to anyone who wants to better acquaint themselves with the field. because each chapter is able to stand alone, it is a valuable pedagogical tool. overall, we are dancing for you is a significant contribution to the growing field of scholarship on the indigenous peoples of california. crystal k. alberts, university of north dakota notes 1 see, for example, reel injun (2009) or an interview with the film's director, neil diamond, in indian country today. 2 risling baldy is an enrolled member. https://www.cutcharislingbaldy.com/bio.html 3 salvage ethnography is the belief that indigenous peoples and cultures would soon be extinct, and a scholar should preserve whatever he could in the time that remained. see jacob w. gruber, "ethnographic salvage and the shaping of anthropology," american anthropologist, new series, vol. 72, no. 6 (dec., 1970), pp. 1289-1299. works cited indian country today. "q&a: ‘reel injun’ director neil diamond." 20 jan. 2011. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/q-a-reel-injun-director-neil-diamondr_xbvhmmpusqxqvc0gxpcw/ accessed 18 june 2018. microsoft word martin.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 146 joe karetak, frank tester & shirley tagalik, eds. inuit qaujimajatuqangit: what inuit have always known to be true. halifax & winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2017. 268 pp. isbn: 9781552669914. https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/inuit-qaujimajatuqangit this collection presents essays by nine nunavut elders on topics related to inuit qaujimajatuqangit—what inuit have known for a very long time. right off the bat, co-editors joe karetak and frank tester problematize the connotations of ‘traditional’ knowledge, emphasizing that instead of belonging to a now-fading past, the lessons that the elders have to share are profoundly relevant for contemporary life. the resulting book is a rich archive of experiences, reflections, and clear teachings for the future, which are relevant not only to contemporary inuit, but—as the editors emphasize—for non-inuit as well. most striking about this volume is its consistent emphasis on family life and childrearing—or inunnguiniq, making a human being. readers may already have some sense of the depth of inuit knowledge as it pertains to living in arctic environments, for instance when it comes to the harvesting of wildlife, the navigation of sea ice, etc. but the stories told in this book (by male and female elders alike) emphasize that the development of able human beings—who can manage the challenges provided not only by the land by also by life in contemporary communities—begins in early childhood, and the teachings around this are rich and complex. mark kalluak (himself a writer and editor who dedicated his life to the preservation of inuit language and culture) notes that when children are scolded, “they become sad and lose interest” in things (47). a child’s feelings, he suggests, are central to their ability to learn. rhoda akpaliapik karetak explains, meanwhile, that children should neither be coddled as if they were eggs nor hardened into rocks (143). atuat akittiq notes that evidence of a child who is inuttiavaungittuq—who often displays a bad attitude—is that “little things will get him or her upset. the child won’t care if the tension inside of them spills out on everyone around them” (112). maturity, resourcefulness, a commitment to helping others: these things spring from a bedrock of emotional wellbeing that benefits not only the child themselves but also the community around them. many elders note with concern the changes in the ways that children are being raised—and the introductory chapter by frank tester provides the sobering context for these cultural shifts, as it describes the impacts of tuberculosis epidemics, paternalistic government relocation policies, and the residential school system. the elders’ essays extend this critique with their emphasis on the vast pedagogical differences—and the interruption in traditional childrearing—represented by the contemporary school system. “it was like the parents gave up their right to control their children when they sent them to school,” says rhoda akpaliapik karetak. while some note the potential for inuit qaujimajatuqangit to be integrated into the schools and other nunavut institutions, elders like atuat akittiq also question the dominance of eurowestern structures and their often token inclusions of inuit ways of doing things: referencing the justice system, she points out, “we are invited to sit in a court case, but everything is already arranged. they’ve already planned the case even before we are invited.... no other power is given to us” (123-124). the many challenges facing contemporary inuit youth render the task of passing along inuit qaujimajatuqangit even more pressing—and elders like rhoda akpaliapik karetak apply these keavy martin review of inuit qaujimajatuqangit 147 teachings to their own pedagogical practice, centering adaptability and a concern for emotional intelligence: “i often try to live in my children’s and grandchildren’s way a little bit... just so they are comfortable with me….” karetak says. “we can still make a human being in such a way that it will not seem too much—or too different—by collaborating with today’s ways of learning” (119-120). near the end of the book, joe karetak’s gripping tale of having survived with his son after being swept out to sea during a seal hunt—reminding his son to stay calm, carefully parcelling out his own remaining energy, and using his mind to combat hypothermia, even as he was required to save the rescue pilot who managed to crash his helicopter through the thin ice— provides a illustration of the nuance, adaptability, and ongoing relevance of inuit qaujimajatuqangit. co-editor shirley tagalik relates that the elders’ “most sincere wish is that the book will provide inuit with access to their own process of healing by reconnecting them with the unique knowledge and perspectives of inuit qaujimajatuqangit” (xv). this idea seems to be in tension, however, with the book’s production, which appears in some ways to prioritize accessibility to a broader (non-inuit) readership—most notably through the fact that the elders’ essays have been translated into english. it may be that this eases the complexity of publishing contributions written (or dictated) in multiple dialects of inuktitut—perhaps english is being used as a textual lingua franca for the inuit readers whom the elders wished to reach? perhaps the inuktitut and inuinnaqtun originals, whether written or recorded, will be made available in another venue? but the editors—and the epilogue written by cree academic margo greenwood—emphasize the significance of inuit qaujimajatuqangit to non-inuit, as well. this rings true, and yet the shift in audience changes the nature of the conversation somewhat, given the worry that the elders are said to have felt “about how the book might be used” (xi). norman attangalaaq provides context, explaining that “when we are asked about inuit laws it is extremely awkward to answer instantly, knowing that inuit have been chastised and made to feel embarrassed about rituals or practices…” (107). while the book most certainly does provide an invaluable resource for noninuit seeking to better understand inuit ways, one hopes that its publication does not compare to the story that rhoda akpaliapik karetak tells about her brand new embroidered white kamiik (boots), which she was required to give away to a visiting stranger for a pittance. southern audiences can remain grateful in any case for the existence of this volume, which both educates readers and also provides guidelines for ways in which we might become more adept educators ourselves—by situating learning within relationships, emotional landscapes, and hands-on experience; by embracing the adaptability of tradition; and by choosing our words with extreme care. the example that the elders have provided in this volume is indeed the most generous gift. keavy martin, university of alberta microsoft word walsh.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 207 a dramatic reading of vizenor’s bear island at the university of michigan martin walsh on march 23 2018 gerald vizenor delivered the annual berkhofer lecture at the university of michigan with a talk entitled “betrayal and irony: native american survivance and the subversion of ethnology.” named in honor of the pioneering michigan anthropologist robert berkhofer, the lecture series was begun in 2016. n. scott momaday and joy harjo had been the previous speakers. in honor of vizenor’s visit to campus the university’s residential college in conjunction with its native american studies program presented a dramatic reading of bear island: the war at sugar point, vizenor’s poetic meditation on the leech lake, mn battle of 1898. this wa the last conflict of the u.s. army with native americans as vizenor documents in his introduction to the published work, with further perspectives provided by jace weaver in a foreward (university of minnesota press, 2006). the theatrical presentation took place in the keene theater of the residential college on thursday evening march 22. as head of the college’s drama concentration, i devised and directed the reading on the model of ping chong’s oral history theater works. the piece was scored for four voices and included two dozen projections of historical images alternating with contemporary photographs of the leech lake area, as well as anishinaabe songs performed by the local mino-maskiki singers (formerly the swamp singers). the latter were under the direction of jasmine pawlicki (sokaogan band of lake superior chippewa) and included her daughter shayla, nancy morehead (little river band of ottawa) and karen schaumann (passamaquody). bear island is vizenor’s most extensive poetic work. its short lines reflect the poet’s lifelong engagement with the japanese haiku form which he finds closely analogous to anishinaabe dream-songs. the poem develops a wide variety of moods, lyrical, satiric, elegiac, journalistic, which easily lend themselves to oral performance. bear island is divided into six unequal sections beginning with the history and mythos of the pillager band and moving on to the climatic event from both the native and white american perspectives. they are: overture: manidoo creations/ bagwana: the pillagers of liberty/ hole-in-the–day: grafters and martin walsh vizenor’s bear island 208 warrants/ bearwalkers: 5 october 1898/ gatling gun: 6 october 1898/and war necklace: 9 october 1898. each of the four voice-actors had specific areas they generally covered with some overlapping. anishinaabe language elements, which vizenor uses throughout, as well as the majority of nature references were assigned to ms. pawlicki;.passages relating to the u.s. army to graham atkin; other passages relating to white encroachment and exploitation to another um drama alumnus joseph mcdonald, with myself assuming the voice of and passages relating to leech lake elder hole-in-the-day (bugonaygeshig) whose mistreatment by the federal legal system was the underlying cause of the conflict. the solo performances were punctuated with occasional multiple voices and staccato rhythms. the historical images furnished by the minnesota historical society included portraits of the military leaders maj. melville wilkinson, who perished in the conflict, and gen. john m. bacon; scenes of company e of the third infantry both before and after the action; portraits of pillager band elders; views of sugar point and bugonaygeshig’s cabin and garden plot; and the iconic portrait of him posing with his winchester wearing the necklace he had made of spent cartridges gathered from the battlefield. photographs taken by me around leech lake during a snowy weekend at the end of october 2017 conveyed the present look of the historical locales under weather conditions similar to those of the battle itself. not designed to be point-for-point illustrations of the poem, the projections were faded in and out in a slow rhythm over the entire reading. the anishinaabe songs which bracketed and divided in half the reading performance were: “pete seymour shuffle” from whitefish bay, “shakaakamikwe” by brenda macintyre (with anishinaabe words by margaret noodin) and the “strong women’s song” which came out of the kingston, ontario prison for women in the 1970s. it was felt that a strong native female presence would nicely complement the “tricky” victory of the pillager warriors over the u.s. army which the poem both celebrates and justifies but also finds deeply ironic. the multiple grievances of the pillagers, for example, are juxtaposed to a long tally of the casualties inflicted upon the largely european immigrant soldiery. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 209 prof. vizenor attended the performance and was extremely complimentary of the effort at presenting his work live. he graciously joined with the performers for a spirited question-andanswer session with the audience. martin walsh vizenor’s bear island 210 version of the battle from an illustrated weekly, mid-october 1898 microsoft word sexton.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 164 robert m. owens. red dreams, white nightmares: pan-indian alliances in the angloamerican mind, 1763-1815. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2015. 243 pp. red dreams, white nightmares by robert m. owens covers the years 1763-1815, starting at the end of pontiac’s war and ending with the conclusion of the war of 1812, a significant period in euramerican imperial expansion and colonization. in terms of expansion, once the colonists broke political ties with britain they became another entity among european powers vying for territorial control and growth. while the belief in manifest destiny would not take hold until the mid-nineteenth century, there were conflicts over control and momentum toward expansion. in terms of colonization, breaking political ties with britain ushered in a new phase of colonization. breaking away from the metropole signified the fact that the colonizer intended to stay, which can generally be characterized as settler colonialism. while the belief in providence, greed, and just good ole’ “indian-hating,” have all been fingered for the impetus behind expansion, owens contends that a factor that often gets overlooked is the colonist’s fear of indian “savages,” specifically the fear of pan-indian alliances and a “general indian war.” in the introductory chapter, he lists a brief historiography of indigenous wars and coalitions but claims that “none of these works fully addresses the link between anglo-americans’ fears of indians, especially the dread of broad alliances, and its influences on european and american indian policy” (7). while owens is not offering new research, he offers a new perspective, one he feels has not been adequately covered, if at all, in previous scholarship. he specifies this point by claiming that, with the exception of gregory evans dowd’s 1992 a spirited resistance, such studies focus on either side of the ohio river and fail to see possible pan-indian alliances across the river. pan-indianism is a broad term. owens says that while its coinage is relatively recent, it often refers to indigenous alliances from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century. perhaps most notably, it often conotes intertribal unity during the red power movement. owens clarifies his usage as being aligned with dowd’s: “in the context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, [pan-indianism] refers to efforts by native americans… to establish broad, multitribal military coalitions” (4). such pan-indian alliances seek to bring indigenous nations, often traditional enemies, together. for the purpose of red dreams, owens’ discussion on pan-indianism focuses particularly on coalitions formed among indigenous nations across the ohio river. he argues that, although europeans and euramericans feared an “indian war,” their biggest fear was a “general indian war”: “a broad war against a great many different indian peoples” (5). thus, this fear plays an essential part in euramerican expansion and colonization. red dreams is broken into three parts, each examining different but related time periods. the first part begins with the end of pontiac’s war, which only exacerbated settler fears given that it exposed how vulnerable british forces were to a pan-indian militarized coalition. from 1763, the year king george iii signed the royal proclamation that banned further settlement west of the appalachian mountains, to the revolutionary war, “british policy became one of quietly encouraging intertribal rancor, to save money and to save anglo-american lives” (17). this divide-and-conquer strategy was used to stave off pan-indian alliances when it became apparent how difficult it would be to enforce the proclamation and stop further settlement. part ii focuses on how this fear influenced the revolutionary war era through the mid-1790s. the war fostered a shift in british indian policy. before the war they were content with keeping steven brent sexton review of red dreams, white nightmares 165 indigenous nations fighting amongst themselves. when war was inevitable, their policy shifted to promoting such alliances in order to fight patriot rebels. owens also asserts that this period, particularly the 1790s, was the greatest opportunity for indian resistance given how britain and spain were willing to support such alliances. for early americans, the war introduced additional elements: “if southern indians and runaway slaves with spanish guns acted in concert with northern indians bearing british ones, the cost of putting down such a war might well break the treasury” (71). but avoiding such a coalition not only had practical purposes, it also helped forge an american identity, as “americans increasingly self-fashioned their identity as the civilized opponents of indian savagery” (176). this patronizing attitude would continue to guide indian policy. furthermore, since the colonists had just broken political ties with britain to form their own nation, they needed to cultivate their own identity. ironically, they had to eliminate indigenous people while appropriating their own sense of indigeneity. part iii covers the end of the 19th century to the end of the war of 1812, a period owens claims was the last great effort for a pan-indian alliance. this period also saw the efforts of probably the most famous of indigenous agents who attempted a coalition, tecumseh and his brother tenskwatawa. the brothers’ connection to britain was infamous and euramericans recycled the fear of a british and pan-indian coalition that was recreated during the revolutionary war. as the slave population rose in the south during this period, so did the fear of a revolt in conjunction with a pan-indian alliance, which was nothing new as the “threat posed by indians and slaves joining forces had weighed on white minds, especially in the south, nearly since the beginning of colonization” (199). in actuality, the plausibility of such an alliance declined, particularly after tecumseh’s coalition fell apart. owens asserts that for euramericans, pan-indianism’s failure would be celebrated as yet another sign of american exceptionalism. owens finishes the book with an epilogue that relates the last ditch effort for a pan-indian alliance by the sauk leader black hawk, “one of tecumseh’s former disciples,” forming a panindian/african american alliance with foreign aid, but in 1832, he “would badly overestimate the odds of forming and maintaining such an alliance” (14). owens goes on to say that although the chances of such an alliance forming was “slim at best by the 1830s, several factors combined to make that chance seem terrible” (240). among these factors was fear of these alliances, which should speak again to the power of fear. throughout the book, for example, owens mentions the use of the image of the “tomahawk and scalping knife” that was employed prodigiously in newspapers to represent that “savage” threat indigenous people posed. by defeating such alliances, real or imagined, it “set a default narrative whereby they could only look more virtuous, regardless of how they fought their enemies,” thus justifying their imperial moves (243). owens proclaims red dreams is a story about fear and cites the 2004 anthology, psychology of fear, edited by paul l. gower. while gower says fear can be individual or collective, owens further explains that collective fear can be expressed on a national level and is often disproportionate to any actual danger being posed. owens, however, limits his discussion of the psychology of fear to one paragraph in his introductory chapter, which is an unexpected choice considering the book’s thesis is examining how fear of pan-indian alliances influences european and euramerican indian policy. further explication of this idea along with further scholarship on fear may have been prudent. and while the book carries the theme of colonists’ fears of pantransmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 166 indian alliances throughout, the ideas particular to the psychology of fear are rarely mentioned, let alone applied, to historical events. in this sense, red dreams lacks deep analysis and theoretical application vis-à-vis such psychological formations. since owens is claiming to be breaking new scholarly ground in examining how this fear influenced policy, it is forgivable that a more explicit application of this theory is not readily present. red dreams’ stated purpose is to examine how fear affected european and euramerican indian policy. while owens does clarify how he defines and uses certain terms, e.g. pan-indianism, coalition, alliance, and confederacy (4-5), he does not do so with “policy.” how tightly or loosely owens defines “policy” has an effect on the content of each chapter and the rhetoric. on the one hand, if its meaning is restricted to official policy by either european nations or the us, then “policy” gets almost completely lost in the reading. each chapter chronicles and sharply focuses on various battles and important figures, both indigenous and non-indigenous, although mostly non-indigenous, and “policy” is rarely mentioned. if on the other hand, his definition includes smaller actions made by individuals, (e.g. military strategic decisions, indigenous leaders encouraging alliances) the book is very successful. the point is not about semantics but rather the effect his definition of “policy,’ and what it includes, on the prose and how the content is presented. since it appears owens assumes a loose understanding, the book tends to be more generalized with the notion of “policy” getting lost. just as red dreams lacks deep analysis and theoretical application, the focus on “policy” gets lost in the reading. when assessing how fear influences our actions, it is judicious to question whether or not those fears are founded. this often helps us determine if such fears and resulting actions are justified. determining indigenous motivations and actions is difficult for this time period, given the lack of written records, although owens does an admirable job. he does admit: “it is impossible to determine exactly how many efforts were made to form pan-indian alliances” (11). there are moments when owens relays native leaders’ voices and intentions, but there are moments when he, and thus the reader, are in the dark. he relies heavily on archival and primary sources throughout the book and relates the native voice when he can, and the research is impressive. however, red dreams might have benefitted from seeking the native voice more often. indigenous studies challenges the accepted methods used to maintain objectivity, and some early american historians rely on interviews or consult indigenous national historians, but others fear compromising objectivity and ignore this challenge altogether. while more debate on that challenge is much needed, red dreams presents a thorough depiction of how european and euramerican politicians, military leaders, indian agents, and settlers reacted to the fear of an indigenous alliance. red dreams covers an era that, as previously mentioned, is critical as it covers the shift to settler colonialism once the colonist broke political ties to the metropole and proceeded to fashion a differentiated identity, one with old world sensibilities but steeped in indigeneity. this era, then, depicts the nativity of american settler colonialism, if we rely on a strict definition of settler colonialism. while previous scholars have studied numerous facets of what helped shape the us, geo-politically, culturally, socially, and politically, owens offers a new perspective not yet explored. while those familiar to early american history and indigenous studies are familiar with how indigenous people are depicted by euramericans and the fear it evokes, justified or not, owens offers a detailed and thorough perspective on how the fear of a pan-indian alliance steven brent sexton review of red dreams, white nightmares 167 affected european and euramerican people. this book is crucial for anyone interested in early american colonialism. steven sexton, university of oklahoma works cited dowd, gregory evans. a spirited resistance: the north american indian struggle for unity, 1745-1875. baltimore: john hopkins university press, 1992. gower, paul l. ed. phycology of fear. new york: hill and wang, 2004. microsoft word alvarez.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 241 carolyn dunn. the stains of burden and dumb luck. mongrel empire press, 2017. 69 pp. isbn: 978-0-9972517-7-7. http://mongrelempire.org/catalog/poetry/thestainsofburden.html carolyn dunn, of louisiana creole, tunica-choctaw-biloxi, seminole, creek, and cherokee descent, is already known for her works echolocation (2013), coyote speaks (2008), and through the eyes of the deer (1999). diane glancy’s summation states, “she covers the cartography of memory” in her newest collection of poetry. this cartography of memory, as glancy terms it, is more than just a map of dunn’s memories, but is also representative of the senses that evoke and hold those memories in place. place, space, sky, rain, and breath are all common themes throughout the brief collection that elicit a sense of being and emotion that a mere cartography could not contain. while all of these concepts are prevalent in the book, they are not overbearing, and the reader is allowed to take the journey through time, space, and place on their own terms. dunn begins her collection with a brief commentary—"bloodline.” she claims, “a place doesn’t have to be idealized to still claim the comfort associated with being called home” (1). home, according to dunn’s pieces, is not free from pain or sorrow, but it is where the heart lies, where memories are formed, and where the soul is at peace. this is evident in one of the first poems in the first section, “in some other world,” where she writes my mother’s words pass through my lips... beckons us home with songs that bring corn my grandmother’s voice passing my lips escapes the veil of some other world (7-8). she makes no effort to hide the pain and sorrow of home in her work, yet she does not allow that pain to take over. instead, dunn uses these notions of pain to serve as a reminder of what once was, what is, and what will be in the future—pain becomes in her poem a means of understanding and home, whether painful or joyous, has the ability to map out that pain and remind us of who we are and where we come from, where our ancestors hope we will be. it is not an idea of loss, but an idea of hope and renewal, a belief that pain and the earth and the ancestors are all working together to make us who we are. dunn also writes in the prologue that “woven in the bone and blood of the ancestors, it is now a tapestry concerned with keeping of stories, vocalized in song, in whispers, in secret, from stages and from graveyards and birthing rooms around the long pathway of this world to where the next world awaits” (1). it is these stories, these songs and whispers, that are mapped out and transport us to the ancestors, to home. the second section of the book is a great example of this. in “words,” dunn writes words are our only weapons as grief grows swallowing knot of feathers, bones and the undigested bits kelli pyron alvarez review of the stains of burden and dumb luck 242 turning our steps into shards of glass bone fragments...we are glass, ever shattering at any moment i carry voices on my tongue a world where there can be no mercy, no joy no thought of ever catching the last train home (31-32). while her words transport us to another world, to home, she speaks of being transported herself, and we make our journeys together. one of the central themes in dunn’s collection is the idea of the self. recognizing who we are, how we came to be, and our purpose: these are questions that many individuals strive to answer daily, and dunn addresses them in her own way. in the third section of the book, “baskets filled with burdens,” her poem “cardinal directions” asserts that in this foreign land, the love of place carries the love of space the difference is we love for what we know we are (53). the idea that space and place are central in understanding who we are and how we came to be can often be forgotten when we are away from home; remembering that home is always with us, always informing and molding us into who we are supposed to be, is critical in our journey to understand ourselves. as readers, we allow dunn to give voice to these songs, to the past, present, and future, to grief and home, and to memories. but as readers we are also giving voice to these concepts as well, and in doing so we are the storyteller and the story. dunn is not the first to approach this concept. n. scott momaday and gus palmer are but two other indigenous writers and scholars who have voiced this idea, and dunn provides us the opportunity, as readers, to practice and realize this notion of inclusivity and mutual sense of being. it is through dunn’s words and ideas that we are able to transport ourselves onto the page and transport the words on the page into our realities. in her poem “world renewal,” found in the second section, dunn writes, “we breathe life / into dying songs” (15). dunn writes about memories and stories and pain and grief as we have and continue to experience them through time and space and place, but these simple lines remind us, ever so gently, that our breath offers the gift of life. by singing the songs of our ancestors, by offering up prayers and poems through our own breath, we are giving our memories and our ancestors life, which in turn nourishes and nurtures us further. we are not only giving the ancestors life, we are giving ourselves life, too, and, as dunn suggests, is there any greater gift? transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 243 the stains of burden and dumb luck provides us a map of the past, present, and future—a map home—in a way that is unique to dunn and reflects one indigenous perspective. connections between poems and the stories they tell—of ashes and bones, rocks and stolen tongues—create a sort of scavenger hunt for readers. we all have stories that are woven throughout time, space, place, and memory, and dunn not only tells her stories, but helps us give voice and power to our stories as well. sometimes we get lost in the stories, and dunn provides us a map to find our way back. find the connections, understand the meaning, get lost in the stories, reconnect with the ancestors, and you just might find yourself again. kelly pyron alvarez, university of oklahoma microsoft word killelea.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   156   victoria l. lapoe and benjamin rex lapoe ii. indian country: telling a story in a digital age. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2017. 98 pp. isbn 9781611862263. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-3fb2#.wp7pqohubiu. the latest release from the american indian studies series at msu press, indian country: telling a story in a digital age, is a groundbreaking title. at the point of this writing, no other text has set out to generate an investigation of native-run newsroom norms and routines. authors victoria l. lapoe (cherokee) and benjamin rex lapoe ii situate native american journalists in the digital age as building on "the rich tradition of storytelling" (87) already practiced by native peoples in diverse ways since time immemorial. building on these oral traditions, as the digital divide in technology accessibility decreases within native communities, more and more storytellers and journalists are turning to online platforms, which advance the visibility of native peoples and issues (73). while the text includes traditional newsprint and radio format journalists as part of their study, the authors are especially interested in the ways in which the internet, social media, and mobile applications have impacted reporting and dissemination of news in indian country. in order to understand these impacts, the authors interviewed established and burgeoning native american news reporters affiliated with the native american journalists association (naja), koahnic broadcast corporation (producers of native america calling and national native news), the navajo times, last real indians, vision maker media, the cherokee phoenix, and others. the result is a thoughtful, useful, and very readable text that will serve both native communities and non-native allies interested in understanding and improving native news coverage in the years to come. while comparing native and non-native news reporting norms and routines is not the focus of this book, before getting to the findings of their interviews with native journalists lapoe and lapoe ii make it a point to draw several important distinctions between approaches to news coverage within and outside of indian country. according to the authors, non-native media report on stories that are "revenue generating" (2), whereas "sacredness to all living things is where most native people truly find 'profit,' success, and fulfillment" (89). this does not mean that economic concerns do not impact native journalists – costs of production and the economic disadvantages disproportionately affecting native communities cannot be ignored. however, generating revenue was not cited as an important concern, whereas serving the needs of native communities was privileged in the interviews featured in the book. additionally, because traditional native storytelling honors multiple versions of stories, and because perspectives vary within communities instead of trying to craft an "authoritative" account of a news story like in the associated press, the interviews show that many native journalists seek to "get out as many native voices as possible" when covering an issue (76). the interviews also find that native journalists are also acutely aware of their own positionality and the historical, legal, and political concerns affecting their people. there is a sense of accountability to their communities that is not seen in non-native community; the author interviews with reporters at the navajo times are especially useful in elucidating this point as it relates to privacy and tribally-specific codes of moral conduct. additionally, since tribal members are "underrepresented in non-native newsrooms" (2), most of the time native peoples are completely ignored by mainstream media. when and if non-native patricia killelea review of indian country     157   coverage of native issues does occur, it is more often than not reported through a stereotypical lens and evidences "overt and inferential racism" (21). seen through colonial eyes, the most popular narratives of indigenous peoples perpetuated by culturally-uninformed and/or biased reporters focus on stories that misrepresent native communities as "frozen in time," impoverished, and criminal. the authors explain that, "one method of defying these stereotypes is to support and recruit additional american indians who are familiar with native storytelling to enter the field of journalism" (96). in additional to internships and mentoring with native professionals in the field, the book argues for mainstream media to increase their recruitment and promotion on reservations and within native organizations. in this way, even as indian country: telling a story in a digital age offers a basic survey of native journalism as it stands today, it also takes a practical approach by offering solutions like these that could easily be implemented. because of its dialogic nature, native media is a "communal gathering place" (43) not only allowing for native people to talk back to one another, but also to talk back to settler colonial culture at large. the authors found that those interviewed largely "viewed the internet as a vehicle for offering counter-stereotypes and providing more truthful information and images" (93). even while indian country is theoretically and methodologically rich (their transparency and outlining of their research process are especially well-done), the book's primary contribution comes from its interviews. as a snowball sampling, these interviews allow for established and emerging indigenous voices in journalism to tell their stories, share their values, and push back against stereotypical views of native peoples and communities in media. some of those interviewed are well-accomplished movers and shakers in the field, such as paul natonabah and marley shebala, while others have rose to meet community needs only in recent years. the intergenerational scope of the text is, indeed, one of its strong suits. while this book review cannot go into each of their topics in depth, readers will find the book's organization useful. lapoe and lapoe ii outline the primary themes emerging from their research: history/context, storytelling, digital media, and youth/future. anyone interested in any of these topics will find those appropriate sections worth an extensive look, but the book reads well from beginning to end, and readers will benefit more by examining how those interviewed both echo and complicate one another's experiences and insights. while this book would be especially useful for those studying and working in native american studies, indian country: telling a story in a digital age should arguably be required reading for all students studying journalism and communication, both native and non-native. not only does the text provide an intelligent critique of mainstream journalism's shortcomings when it comes its treatment of native peoples and issues, it offers both broad and tribally-specific parameters for what an improved media focus on native communities might look like in theory and practice. the authors demonstrate how contemporary native journalism is an extension of traditional oral storytelling, but readers who are unfamiliar with those oral traditions to begin with will have a difficult time understanding the nuances of these connections— additional readings might be needed for those audiences. indian country: telling a story in a digital age could have benefited from engagement with native american studies in general, perhaps turning to texts such as renya k. ramirez's (hochunk) native hubs and craig s. womack (muscogee) et. al.'s american indian literary nationalism. this book, then, might be a great starting point for opening up increased dialogue between native news reporters and others working in the field of transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   158   native american studies, especially those within letters, digital arts, and native-led community development. finally, while this book features interviews with native journalists who are actively trying to recruit native youth for writing and videography in newsprint and online venues, the scope of the text focuses primarily on traditional news reporting while leaving out more diy and/or underground, youth-driven reporting and editorials on native issues. for example, the instagram account "indigenousgoddessgang" is a collective of native women who post about native social issues and environmental concerns with an emphasis on indigenous women's justice, such as the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women (mmiw). does this count as a form of journalism? while not traditionally trained in communications studies, such a collective: 1) informs their immediate regional, as well as international, communities about native women's issues in indian country; 2) fosters community dialogue on these issues through encouraging conversation and interaction; and 3) actively redresses stereotypes while disseminating and increasing the visibility of and accessibility to native perspectives in the media. beyond instagram and facebook, there is also the world of twitter and snapchat, as well as youtube channels produced by and for native peoples unaffiliated with newsrooms proper. as the digital divide narrows and technology becomes more accessible, platforms draw many users focusing on issues within their communities, but with content generated by writers and documenters who are often not formally educated in journalism— much of this phenomenon is youth-driven. if the future of native journalism lies in the hands of the youth, it's important to cultivate inclusion and broaden an understanding of the field to include pop culture coverage and untrained writers sharing stories and creating multimodal news media within native communities. because this book investigates the newsroom norms and routines in native media, indian country: telling a story in a digital age would be a useful text for those interested in exploring media covering of critical concerns like standing rock and #nodapl, as well as idle no more and mmiw activism. although this book was published in 2017, it does not make mention of any of these issues, even as these key movements were and are driven by social media and grassroots-level reporting. for example, the indigenous environmental network has been around since 1990, covering not just #nodapl, but also other rights issues, such as the faulty enbridge pipelines, which threaten the safety of the water and the peoples— human and otherwise— here in anishinaabe territory. this subject also raises another important question not addressed in indian country: telling a story in a digital age: as native storytellers and journalists increasingly turn to digital technologies, how will they offset the environmental impacts of those technologies? i think this question is worth considering; however, as lapoe and lapoe ii importantly point out in their conclusion, "storytelling culture is still the driving force of the content. their stories are not controlled by the technology," (96). as more and more native-operated digital news networks emerge and expand their influence, indian country: telling a story in a digital age will be a great starting point for writers, community members and scholars looking to understand the ways in which native peoples continually adapt to the digital age while also honoring diverse traditional values as they record, respond, and share the stories and voices that matter most. patricia killelea, northern michigan university microsoft word delgado.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 185 tillett, rebecca. otherwise, revolution!: leslie marmon silko’s almanac of the dead. new york: bloomsbury, 2018. 208 pp. isbn: 9781623567873. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/otherwise-revolution-9781623567873/ due to the inherent challenges posed by such a project, there is a small list of monographs devoted exclusively to the examination of one singular work of fiction. jane hafen’s reading louise erdrich’s love medicine and robert m. nelson’s leslie marmon silko’s ceremony: the recovery of tradition are two examples of such works in the context of native american literature. we can now add rebecca tillett’s book, otherwise, revolution!: leslie marmon silko’s almanac of the dead to the list. tackling silko’s 1990 novel, once described by joy harjo as “an exploded version” of ceremony, is no easy feat (tillett 7). the novel centers on people living on both sides of the u.s.-mexico border – smugglers, drug dealers, politicians, and police officers, to identify some – on the precipice of the revolution foretold in the titular almanac. its international scope, fragmented structure, and brutal depictions of racial and sexual violence have long made the novel a difficult read, as the initial reviews excerpted in tillett’s book illustrate. responding specifically to sven birkerts, whom the author quotes to indicate the type of unfavorable reviews almanac received upon publication, tillett argues that while the book may have been belittled as “nothing less than a paper apocalypse” at first, it has become increasingly relevant following donald trump’s presidential election win in 2016 (tillett 6). otherwise, revolution! thoughtfully examines how silko’s novel contests the neoliberal world that first inspired it as well as the rise of authoritarian regimes in 2018. despite these real-world – or what the author terms “extra-textual” – connections, tillett argues that almanac avoids despairing for the current state of the world or our prospects for the future. rather, it continually forges a sense of hope through its emphasis on our responsibility to one another, drawing on glen coulthard’s notion of “grounded normativity.” quoting coulthard, tillett defines “grounded normativity” as a conceptual framework where “‘our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others’ are both ‘inform[ed] and structure[d]’ by ‘the modalities of indigenous land-connected practices and long-standing experiential knowledge” (16-7). in other words, at its root, otherwise, revolution! follows a growing trend prioritizing and promoting indigenous practices and knowledges in a field, literary studies, that has historically neglected them. almanac itself speaks directly to the importance of “land-connected practices” when one of its main characters, zeta, who smuggles people and weaponry across the border, thinks to herself that “there was not, and there never had been, a legal government by europeans anywhere in the americas… because no legal government could be established on stolen land” (silko 133). here, zeta questions (as many characters in the novel do) the nature of personal relationships based on national identity, especially when these nations are the result of genocide and theft. but tillett’s analysis exceeds the scope of violent uprising that is implied in zeta’s thoughts and expertly unpacked by previous scholars like channette romero and elizabeth ammons. the revolution that tillett promotes as central to silko’s concept of worldwide change pertains to ideology. in each section of part 1, “oppression and dispossession,” tillett tackles various aspects of settler colonialist ideology that we must overcome before any worldwide movement – francisco delgado review of otherwise, revolution! 186 the one of silko’s novel or recent examples like idle no more, standing rock, or the arab spring of 2010 – can succeed. chapter 2, for instance, explores the analogy between vampires and capitalists in that both have become something other-than-human. tillett explains, “almanac’s capitalists must eliminate the human; they must, like the vampire, become inhuman” (35). only in this greedy consumption reminiscent of vampires, as well as the dehumanization of the human into labor (or food upon which the system feeds), can capitalism persist. tillett argues that silko’s almanac shows us that we must shift our focus from a system based on exploitation to one based on obligation: “the correct relationship between humans and earth, then, is one of mutual respect, support and obligation: a living with and for the land that engages directly with the workings and epistemologies of indigenous cosmologies and cosmopolitics” (tillett 28). chapter 3 extends the book’s critique of capitalism to patriarchal violence in a way that is worthwhile for scholars and students of literature and gender studies alike. she writes, “patriarchal power is established and consolidated via the construction of gendered and sexualized hierarchies,” up to and including the feminization of the earth, a tactic that allows its exploitation and ruin (63). in chapter 4, the final chapter of this section, tillett illustrates how these ideologies permeate the intellectual discourse under the guise of objective knowledge: “scientific and academic discourses are put to use as tools for oppression, acting – both consciously and unconsciously – to support and facilitate misogyny and racial and social discrimination in the wider societies governed by vampire capitalism and homosocial patriarchy” (91). these discourses, she explains, have historically objectified and belittled the cultures and practices of marginalized communities, contributing to the racist and misogynistic narrative of settler colonialism that first compelled silko to compose the novel. in addition to her succinct examination of how scientific and academic discourses are deployed to perpetuate oppression, tillett departs from the majority of scholarship on almanac in her focus on the novel’s portrayal of ecological resistance. ecological resistance forms the foundation of the book’s emphasis on hope in part 2. citing sources as varied as angelita la escapia’s indigenization of karl marx’s methodology in her revolution efforts to the elusive figure of geronimo – who, tillett explains, “continues to represent the outlaw and that which is outlawed [as well as] an embodiment of the very concept of indigenous resistance and revolucion” – tillett argues that the possibility of a better future hinges predominantly on the promotion and practice of indigenous worldviews (147). in particular, tillett points to the idle no more movement in canada as exemplary in its focus on indigenous sovereignty and an earth-centric approach. stemming from her ecofeminist framework, tillett expands the scope of ecological resistance in silko’s book to include human and non-human agents alike, representative of indigenous methodologies of resistance and care. that last word, “care,” is especially important, as tillett shows in her examination of the militant group green vengeance, whom she criticizes for replicating “patriarchal capitalist paradigms” instead of fully challenging them in the novel (139). otherwise, revolution! thus shows almanac’s increased relevance not only to scholars in the environmental humanities but to students and readers more generally as we face our own climate challenges and concerns in the twenty-first century. in no small way, as well, otherwise, revolution! shows the value of the humanities to answer pressing questions about racism, misogyny, and ecological catastrophe at a cultural moment when such humanistic (and humane) approaches are often questioned, dismissed, or outright attacked. francisco delgado, borough of manhattan community college, cuny microsoft word hardbarger.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 165 jeffrey paul ansloos. the medicine of peace: indigenous youth decolonizing healing and resisting violence. winnipeg: fernwood, 2017. 128 pp. isbn: 9781552669556. https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/the-medicine-of-peace the medicine of peace asserts that the impacts of complex historical trauma are tied to the cycles of violence facing indigenous youth in canada, with the western criminal justice and mental health systems being complicit in perpetuating further violence. ansloos (fisher river cree nation) advocates for a holistic, culturally relevant, and relational approach, versus the current standard procedures in settler nations such as canada. ansloos argues that youth are “shaped and situated” within the intergenerational violence of colonialism. highlighting the disproportionate incarceration rate, growing gang involvement, and internalized violence (including suicide) it is argued that cycles of violence are exacerbated by a punitive criminal justice system and culturally disengaged interventions. a critical reflection on the canadian psychology field/mental health system is put forth to foreground recommendations for holistic indigenous approaches that would better address differing notions of self and well-being. using a foucauldian discursive analysis through a postcolonial lens, and drawing upon scholars such as fanon, ansloos provides an overview of how colonial processes have caused indigenous youth to feel culturally inferior and powerless, namely the politicization of language and binary internalized and externalized processes of identity whereby indigeneity is weakness/bad and settler identity is powerful/good. ansloos asserts that youth feel dependent and inferior in canadian society leading to shame being the dominant framework from which they view, and ultimately distance themselves from, their indigenous culture. he asserts that indigenous youth are in desperate need of reconnection and cultural and communal revitalization. the colonial history of canada plays out in the justice system, rehabilitation, interventions, and research that fail to take historic trauma and indigenous worldviews into account, ultimately harming indigenous youth. additionally, youth are at an intersection of unhelpful psychosocial interventions based upon an assumed superiority and universality of western methods (“cultural imperialism”). ansloos calls for the field of psychology to critically reflect on the past and present impacts of colonization and the need for more communal and restorative practices versus individualistic and retributive practices. potential action steps would include a more relational and contextual approach and the holistic indigenous concept of well-being would replace the prevalent and often overly simplistic, western views on identity and cultural factors. ansloos uses theoretical arguments by multiple scholars to tie individual psychological health to community well-being. the sentiment aligns well with many past research studies such as a 2007 study claiming “youth suicide as [being] a ‘coalminer’s canary’ of cultural distress” (hallett, chandler et al., 394). the findings of the hallett, chandler et al. study indicate cultural continuity factors have a clear tiffanie hardbarger review of the medicine of peace 166 correlation to youth suicide, especially related to language continuance. specifically, first nations communities with a higher degree of native language knowledge had fewer suicides and communities with a low degree had a higher suicide rate. the author advocates for a “critical-indigenous peace psychology” to be realized through raising the critical consciousness of settler and indigenous identities to the devastating impacts of colonization and reconnecting youth to “reconstruct a postcolonial identity that is shaped by their own indigenous conceptions of a non-violent future” (54). the medicine of peace asserts if youth embody their indigenous identity, an identity that is “principally opposed to violence”, it will promote an ethical foundation able to resist colonization (85). keeping in mind diverse audiences, a deeper explanation of this statement is needed to combat prevalent romanticized notions. in the final chapter, some “pathways forward” are offered using a medicine wheel model; however, the suggested model is highly theoretical and not overly grounded in a relational indigenous cultural context. the suggested strategies would benefit from consultation from youth, elders, or a more localized community-based approach with an analysis of past studies/projects that have used a similar approach. there have been multiple research studies and health initiatives focused on first nations communities/youth using various “culturally appropriate” methods, with the medicine wheel being a popular aspect of many (e.g. kirmayer, laurence, et al.; sasakamoose, jolee, et al.; lavallée; stewart, and others). examining existing scholarship would have provided an opportunity to compare the approaches and findings across the fields of criminal justice, mental health/psychology, and health and wellness related to potential lessons that could be used for future indigenous youth programs. in her 1995 article peacekeeping actions at home: a medicine wheel model for peacekeeping pedagogy, calliou offers a peacekeeping pedagogy model using the medicine wheel, encompassing racism, multiculturalism, anti-racism, and peacekeeping. as an example of health-related research done alongside community and youth, the 2016 study “because we have really unique art”: decolonizing research with indigenous youth using the arts took similar theoretical arguments to the ones presented in the medicine of peace and engaged with indigenous youth in canada on their perspectives of how to do the work of decolonization. although the book puts forth a thorough theoretical foundation, it lacks a research component or indigenous concepts that would ground the work in specific indigenous epistemologies and/or knowledges (e.g. concepts of well-being). indigenous methodologies are mentioned as being salient guiding frameworks to engage in research with indigenous communities yet there was no engagement or accountability to any community. working in an indigenous community would have allowed youth and community members to share their voices and visions of violence prevention and treatment. since there was no engagement with first nation communities and/or transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 167 youth, the research would benefit from additional context on the author's decisions to remain solely theoretical and how this decision influenced and shaped the work. indigenous-led research in this area is sorely needed. i commend the author for laying bare such deeply personal feelings and insecurities surrounding his identity. the complexities of his personal identity struggle open many of the chapters where the author relives experiences of his adolescence “wrestle with the layers of colonial shame that entangle me” (64). the author has obviously thought deeply about his positionality and provides an honest account of how he, as an indigenous author estranged from his cree culture and trained in western methods, can unknowingly objectify indigenous teachings. this book would be beneficial to audiences looking for an in-depth theoretical analysis related to the need for youth to reconnect with indigenous cultural identity that could serve as a foundation for further research and application. tiffanie hardbarger, northeastern state university calliou, sharilyn. "peacekeeping actions at home: a medicine wheel model for a peacekeeping pedagogy." first nations education in canada: the circle unfolds (1995): 47-72. flicker, sarah, et al. "because we have really unique art": decolonizing research with indigenous youth using the arts." international journal of indigenous health 10.1 (2014): 16. hallett, darcy, michael j. chandler, and christopher e. lalonde. "aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide." cognitive development 22.3 (2007): 392-399. kirmayer, laurence, et al. "indigenous populations healing traditions: culture, community and mental health promotion with canadian aboriginal peoples." australasian psychiatry, vol. 11, oct 2003 supplement, p. s15. lavallée, lynn. "physical activity and healing through the medicine wheel." pimatisiwin 5.1 (2007): 127-153. sasakamoose, jolee, et al. "first nation and métis youth perspectives of health: an indigenous qualitative inquiry." qualitative inquiry 22.8 (2016): 636-650. stewart, suzanne l. "promoting indigenous mental health: cultural perspectives on healing from native counsellors in canada." international journal of health promotion and education 46.2 (2008): 49-56. microsoft word anderson.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   173   douglas hunter. the place of stone: dighton rock and the erasure of america’s indigenous past. chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2017. 344 pp. isbn: 978-1-46963440-1. https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469634401/the-place-of-stone/ in the place of stone (2017), douglas hunter tells the story of dighton rock, a forty ton boulder, originally located on the shore of the assonet river, which is covered in petroglyphic markings. in algonquin, assonet translates to “the stone place,” or “the place of stone,” and, it is likely that the river that washed and submerged the rock twice daily in tidal waters not only offered its original geographic and cultural context, but was significant to its original and ongoing interpretations. however, in 1963, dighton rock was forcibly removed from the river, “dragged in chains” and held in “virtual captivity … within a bunker-like museum structure” that now claims for it portuguese, and not indigenous, provenance (4). long before its 1963 removal, dighton rock had become an object of inquiry and misinterpretation for european and american antiquarians, seeking to invalidate indigenous claims to past and place and to assert euroamerican narratives of belonging. from the outset, hunter explains that in the place of stone, readers will not find his own non-expert interpretation of the glyphs or “some exciting technological breakthrough in examining the rock’s surface,” noting, instead, that indigenous provenance “was apparent from the beginning of european and anglo-american inquiries” (3). rather than a conventional work of rock art scholarship, then, hunter sets out to tell “the story of dighton rock’s many stories and storytellers,” a story that “uniquely illuminates processes of belonging, possession, and dispossession from the first decades of the colonial period to the present day” (emphasis added; 5-6). tracing this story of settler misinterpretation from 1680 to the present, hunter offers a detailed and lucid historical narrative focused on the antiquarians who have long attributed non-indigenous provenance to the rock’s markings, from phoenicians to eleventh-century norsemen to a series of “lost” peoples: the lost tribes of israel, the lost city of atlantis, and the lost portuguese explorer miguel corte-real. although hunter claims that his book is not “about indigenous cultural survival,” the place of stone contributes meaningfully to american indian studies (5). at the center of his historiography are the questions: “who belongs in america?” and, “to whom does america belong?” (14). by raising these questions, hunter marks dighton rock as emblematic of much larger settler colonial projects that assert euro-american belonging and possession and indigenous dispossession. defaced with centuries of graffiti and forcibly removed from its original location, dighton rock, as the book’s subtitle suggests, bears the marks of indigenous erasure and displacement, while its history of non-indigenous misinterpretation extends to other palimpsestic erasures and re-inscriptions. by recognizing the history of dighton rock’s many misinterpretations as a contested and ongoing process, rather than a finished or inevitable outcome, hunter unsettles the settler discourse of belonging and possession. hunter’s primary objective may not be to tell the story of “indigenous cultural survival,” but his historiography of dighton rock makes a meaningful contribution to the growing canon of scholarly efforts to critique historical and ongoing processes of indigenous dispossession and to affirm projects of indigenous reclamation, repatriation, and political recognition. specifically, hunter’s project interrogates the fallacies undergirding the rise of object-based archaeology in the u.s. and actively discredits the erroneous, often absurd, misinterpretations and misattributions of dighton rock by european and american antiquarians, whose competing narratives shared the common goals of legitimizing euro-american conquest and dispossessing indigenous peoples of past and place. joshua anderson review of the place of stone     174   with its emphasis on settler hermeneutic strategies in american archaeology, the place of stone draws immediate comparison to jean m. o’brien’s firsting and lasting: writing indians out of existence in new england (2010). for some readers, hunter’s methodology, which privileges non-indigenous interpretations of dighton rock and proclaims to document “the erasure of america’s indigenous past,” may risk reifying the long-standing trope of the “vanishing indian.” as hunter himself explains in the introduction, dighton rock “does not speak in this book in the sense of conveying a message from an indigenous antiquity,” but, instead, “it speaks in the voices of its many western interpreters,” who hunter asserts “have employed the rock in a never-ending act of cultural ventriloquism” (6). however, in his richly textured and thoroughly researched account, hunter reveals and critiques these “never-ending act[s] of cultural ventriloquism” through ten chapters that span over three-hundred years. in this ambitious undertaking, we find that dighton rock has held many “places” in the settler imagination, where it has been assigned to many non-indigenous “pasts.” and, with its emphasis on settler interpretations of antiquity, the place of stone might serve as something of a companion piece to chadwick allen’s recent indigenous-centric methodologies for interpreting and engaging with indigenous earth works as vibrant, multiply-encoded sites of historical and ongoing “transindigenous” meaning-making (as discussed in chadwick allen’s chapter “siting earthworks” in his monograph). for scholars of american indian and indigenous studies, hunter’s research methodologies are not as immediately relevant as those of o’brien and allen. whereas hunter’s work tells the story of dighton rock through its “many western interpreters,” o’brien develops indigenous-centric frameworks for interpreting settler historiography and the “vanishing indian,” while allen develops “trans-indigenous” methodologies for reading the ongoing presence and relevance of indigenous earth works, and other forms of indigenous writing on the land and “by the land” (allen). however, hunter’s book is relevant, both as a detailed reference and a resourceful guide, for scholars whose work seeks to understand and critique settler-colonial discourse through archaeology, anthropology, and historiography. moreover, in the place of stone, hunter demonstrates how the eccentricities of biography inform the broader discourse of historiography—or how the settler story of antiquity interpreted in dighton rock is inseparable from the personal and political motivations of its settler storytellers. for instance, throughout the book’s ten chapters, hunter introduces (or reintroduces) readers to the migration theorists who used scriptural hermeneutics to promote theories to discredit indigenous claims to antiquity, such as the bering strait land bridge and the lost tribes of israel. we meet (or are reacquainted) with cotton mather, john winthrop, samuel danforth, and other notable new englanders who interpreted dighton rock to promote versions of transatlantic gothicism, as well as linguistic interpreters such as samuel harris, who died before completing his work which, hunter notes, seemed “suspiciously like an attempt to turn dighton rock into an american rosetta stone” (113). moreover, we see the rise of american archaeology and its new “object-based epistemology” through the work of samuel latham mitchill and other nineteenth-century archaeologists, who developed theories based on interpretations of objects, from “cabinets of curiosities” to large-scale cartographic surveys of earth mounds. in chapter 6, titled “vinland imagined,” hunter traces how carl christian rafn’s antiquitates americanae (1837), became “one of the most important scholarly works on american antiquity of the nineteenth century,” in which rafn reinterpreted norse sagas to claim a “norse presence in the america’s some 500 years before columbus” (133). and, in transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   175   particularly noteworthy chapters (ch. 7 and 8) focused on nineteenth century ethnologist and philologist, henry rowe schoolcraft, we find the only documented account of an indigenous reading of dighton rock by shingwauk, member of the ojibwe crane clan. however, hunter warns that because schoolcraft was infamous for “shaping (and reshaping) … his indian legends for publication,” there is “little doubt that he took the information he gleaned from shingwauk and composed a literary narrative as much as an ethnographic report” (169). taken more broadly, hunter’s work casts doubt (and ultimately discredits) the claims to antiquity interpreted and promoted by colonialist thinkers who have long used the marks on dighton rock to shape and reshape narratives of settler belonging and policies of indigenous dispossession. as hunter asserts, “the story of dighton rock gathers in other places, other artifacts, and illuminates the much larger and more consequential story of how a colonizing society (through its most educated and politically empowered elite) has defined indigenous people at both the biological and cultural levels, and to what ends” (5). through the competing accounts of migration theorists, linguistic and object-based archaeologists, and other professional and amateur interpreters of american antiquity, the place of stone raises and re-casts the questions “who belongs in america?” and “to whom does america belong?” perhaps most successfully, hunter introduces the methodological term “white tribism,” which he uses to critique settler hermeneutic strategies grounded in the faulty migration theories and racist “ethnogenesis” discourse developed by “writers and theorists largely trading in imagined migrations, and imagined infusions of white or european genes” (35). as a lucid and detailed account of settler imagination, hunter’s the place of stone makes for a compelling read, archiving the many “places” dighton rock holds in settler-colonial interpretations of antiquity, and the many “pasts” into which it has been assigned. in its pages, readers will discover the story of how dighton rock became (and continues to be) a site for settler place-making and home-making, and a strategically misinterpreted symbol for perpetuating and authenticating settler claims to land and history. moreover, readers will find eleven figures—the interpretative drawings, engravings, and historical photographs of dighton rock—that not only add visual detail, but historically served as the basis for ongoing interpretation, at times replacing dighton rock itself as the primary text for interpretation. what hunter leaves to other scholars, however, is the story of dighton rock as remembered or reinterpreted by the indigenous peoples of what is now new england, where the rock remains both a historic and ongoing site of indigenous meaning-making and place-making, likely with multiple and changing interpretations closely tied to its specific geographic location. as hunter asserts, “the utility of dighton rock to contemporary indigenous culture is charged with great possibility” (6). the place of stone does not follow through on this possibility, but it does lay the foundation for future scholarship that builds from hunter’s efforts to tell the vexed and varied history of dighton rock. joshua anderson, ohio state university allen, chadwick. trans-indigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies. u of minnesota p, 2012. microsoft word williams.docx samantha m. williams review of recovering native american writings 187 jacqueline emery, editor. recovering native american writings in the boarding school press. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2017. 348 pp. isbn 9780803276758. http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9780803276758/ in an 1880 editorial, carlisle indian industrial school student samuel townsend, a citizen of the pawnee nation, confronted white americans who denigrated the intelligence of native children enrolled in federally-managed boarding schools in the united states. writing in the school news student newspaper, townsend declared, “some white folks say that the indians do not know anything and can’t learn anything, but the indians are learning something. … maybe those white folks don’t know anything” (emery 56). townsend’s words underscore his emphasis on the intellectual capabilities of native students as well as his willingness to challenge and dismantle white supremacist narratives. that he made these comments while a student at carlisle, established as the first off-reservation indian boarding school in 1879 with a mandate to assimilate and “civilize” native children, also displays a resilience that, according to author jacqueline emery, was more common among boarding school students than one might think. in her edited volume recovering native american writings in the boarding school press, jacqueline emery shares many such accounts that were written between the 1880s and the first two decades of the twentieth century, the period during which the indian boarding school system in the united states was at its peak. in her introduction, emery argues that this collection of student writings is important for a number of reasons. first, they provide crucial insights into native students’ lives as they document their boarding school experiences and interests during an era of intense assimilation in which native children were often kidnapped from their families and pressured to reshape their lives according to the dictates of white, middle-class society. second, she characterizes student writings as critical means of communication that were utilized in sophisticated ways by boarding school pupils. emery asserts, for example, that student authors used school newspapers “to shape representations of indianness” in these publications, to create communities of indigenous readers and editors, and to reach out both to their home communities and other native boarding school students across the united states (2). student writings were also a means of preserving aspects of native culture as they allowed students to write about their tribal histories, stories, and cultures in specific and nuanced ways. further, emery also argues persuasively that these student writings, while almost certainly subjected to oversight and censorship by school officials, should be considered as important works of native literature, and not solely as propaganda used by school administrators to illustrate their success in educating native children. she points out the complicated negotiations between students and non-native school officials that likely accompanied the publication of articles, such as that written by samuel townshend, and also addresses the subtler ways native authors confronted white supremacist narratives. emery cites a letter written by arizona jackson, for example, who, after graduating from the seneca indian school in 1880, enrolled in college where she was forced to contend with the preconceived notions of the predominately non-native study body. jackson wrote that her fellow students were shocked to learn she was “the indian girl” at school, as they presumed native peoples to be “savages, uncivilized, and anything but the right thing” (39-40). transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 188 the volume is organized into two distinct sections. the first half focuses on the letters, editorials, essays, and short stories written by students while they attended boarding school. the majority of works in this section are culled from boarding school newspapers published by five different schools across the country: the carlisle indian industrial school in pennsylvania, the chilocco indian industrial and agricultural school and the seneca indian school in oklahoma, the hampton normal and agricultural institute in virginia, and the santee normal training school in nebraska. the second half consists of essays, articles, and addresses written by native intellectuals after their departure from the boarding school system. emery suggests that the writing skills of many within this network of native public intellectuals, such as gertrude bonin (yankton sioux), angel de cora (winnebago), francis la flesche (omaha), and laura cornelius kellog (oneida), among others, were honed by their time working on student publications as boarding school students. throughout, emery is careful to showcase writings that contain a variety of different perspectives and that both critique and praise different aspects of native peoples’ boarding school experiences. emery’s arguments about the importance of boarding school writings, combined with the detailed accounts of daily life and the assortment of viewpoints included in this book, suggest a range of ways in which this work will be utilized by readers. as a course textbook, recovering native american writings in the boarding school press will allow instructors to explore both the history of the native american boarding school system in the united states and the ways students navigated these oppressive environments. the writings emery includes in this volume also encompass an impressive selection of previously unpublished primary source documents that students, researchers, and educators can mine for details about student experiences and native american activism. in terms of their literary value, readers will find much to analyze in the numerous and compelling accounts of boarding school life, such as gertrude bonin’s description of her first days at boarding school: the first day in the land of apples was a bitter cold one; for the snow still covered the ground, and the trees were bare. a large bell rang for breakfast, its loud metallic voice crashing through the belfry overhead and into our sensitive ears. the annoying clatter of shoes on bare floors gave us no peace. the constant clash of harsh noises, with an unknown tongue, made a bedlam within which i was securely tied. and though my spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless. (254-255) emery’s work should also inspire the publication of additional collections of native american boarding school writings. generations of native children were subjected to these schools, each of which featured opportunities for students to showcase their literary talents and share their views about their educational experiences. the absorbing nature of these writings and reflections, combined with the insights they provide into an often-ignored chapter in u.s. history, illustrate their value and significance and underscore the importance of publishing additional volumes of native students’ writings. samantha m. williams, university of california, santa cruz microsoft word hausmann.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 201 raymond i. orr. reservation politics: historical trauma, economic development, and intratribal conflict. norman, ok: university of oklahoma press, 2017. 239pp. isbn: 9780-80-61-53-9 http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/2213/reservation%20politics in the 1980 supreme court case united states v. sioux nation of indians, the judiciary ordered the payment of “just compensation to the sioux nation” in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars as restitution for the illegal annexation of the black hills in the late 1870s (blackmun 424). the lakota people turned down the government’s offer and have continued to do so to this day, even as the fund set aside for their payment has ballooned with interest to well over $1billion. the motivating question behind raymond i. orr’s reservation politics: historical trauma, economic development, and intratribal conflict is: why has the lakota leadership declined this wealth in the face of the massive economic and social challenges facing their people? it is a fair question and one that is well worth asking. orr, a political scientist at the university of oklahoma, argues that this question, as well as several other contemporary political questions spread across multiple reservations, can be answered by examining what he calls a given society’s “worldview.” this is a spacious term, and orr goes to some length pinning it down to a concrete meaning for the purposes of his argument: “a worldview … is the interpretation about the world and our role in it … constituted from the intersection of our motivations and how we frame or perceive our surroundings” (5). in short, orr’s central claim is that to understand why a given tribal government makes particular political choices, one must first understand the longterm historical processes at play within a given society, especially the instances (or absences) of major community trauma. reservation politics uses a comparative analysis of three reservation governments – the citizen potawatomi in oklahoma, the isleta pueblos in new mexico, and the rosebud sioux in south dakota – to examine the way an indigenous group’s worldview shapes their reaction to political questions and crises. orr dives deep into the often complicated and fraught world of intratribal politics and adeptly explains the factions, motivations, and fractures at play in a diverse array of political contexts. of notable strength is orr’s examination of the isleta pueblo and the importance of witches and other “common secrets” (informal community knowledge often ignored in scholarly literature) within their community. in describing complicated, sometimes puzzling, political and social systems, orr’s analysis and writing is strong and deft. equally impressive is the care orr shows in describing important, though delicate, social systems and relationships. he utilizes informant interviews with the respect and care indicative of longterm, carefully cultivated relationships based upon mutual trust. on the topic of witchcraft within the isleta pueblo community, orr readily admits that “there are sensitivities around the subject of witchcraft” which he understandably respects and which informed his research and writing (150). but when he “asked those willing to discuss witchcraft whether it should be written about stephen robert hausmann review of reservation politics 202 … most told me that writing about isleta society and politics would be incomplete” without doing so (150). here and throughout the text, reservation politics takes seriously the fraught nature of social science research in non-euro-american cultures and lets the research subjects and informants guide the argument and evidence. however, despite orr’s well-placed care, the book’s analysis is nonetheless flawed in critical ways. the historical processes which serve as explanatory factors in crafting an individual group’s worldview are often ahistorical and overly simplistic. orr draws on freud and nietzsche (two individuals who, he recognizes, are themselves fraught with historical baggage) among more contemporary social science research to describe the role of trauma in indigenous societies. “collectively traumatizing events could be wars, starvation, genocide, and forced relocation,” orr writes, citing events which north american indian societies have experienced in spades, and “it should not be unexpected that years of prolonged and direct experience with traumatic events … would incline individuals toward a melancholic worldview” (70-71). orr groups his worldview concepts into two broad forms: melancholic, which is shaped by historical trauma, and self-interested, which is created by processes of economic development (9). it is in these broad categories, such as trauma, melancholy, and economic development, that the analysis in reservation politics falls short. trauma, for instance, seems to be only inflicted by white colonizers, which ignores the complex social and political webs into which european empires embedded themselves beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. do slave raids by the yamasee and westos upon their rivals in the american southeast in the early eighteenth century count as traumatic experiences with similar multi-generational effects as forced relocation? did attacks and horse raids by nomadic lakotas and arapaho upon the more sedentary mandan at the beginning of the nineteenth century also create historical trauma with twenty-first century implications? to be sure, neither of these events were destructive on the scale of outright imperial warfare or forced marches and relocations, but such distinctions are not made in reservation politics, and trauma remains an ill-defined concept throughout the book. moreover, orr’s deployment of the concept of trauma and its influence in lakota politics verges at times on victim-blaming. “conflict seems internalized among the lakotas,” he writes toward the end of the book, “neither the white world, as construed by them, nor that of outsiders engages in reservation pillaging or conducts raids on this community … [c]onflict and violence, i claim, are often internalized” (178-79). although it is never explicitly stated, orr’s implicit answer to the question of why lakota leadership has refused to accept the black hills restitution is that they have made the choice out of a deep-seated, community-wide tendency toward self-sabotage and that his recommendation would be that they simply take the money. this line of argument is misguided at best, pernicious at worst and is laced throughout the back third of the text. “why we are inclined to seek out our disappointments and frustrations is an interesting question,” orr muses in the final chapter, before commenting that “[a] community, such as that of rosebud, seems to instigate painful events,” and while “the black hills matter might concern honor … the lakotas, i believe, refuse to find closure and therefore continue at least some of the trauma of transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 203 colonization” (185). despite his expertise in the politics within indigenous societies, orr’s prescriptive message is less than unhelpful here. not all the discussion of multi-generational trauma in reservation politics is quite so tainted. orr’s use of still-emerging epigenetic science to describe the effects of multi-generational trauma is tantalizing and worthy of greater inclusion in work by social scientists and humanists. however, his narrow definition of what constitutes trauma as well as his apparent diagnosis of flawed native decision making are difficult to reconcile with the more well-realized portions of the book. other important and broad concepts such as “melancholia” and “economic development” also fail to find specific historical grounding and are presented as static, vague, and ideal categories, despite orr’s occasional caveats. similarly lacking is orr’s historiographical intervention. the author is quite right to suggest that scholars need to produce more historical and social science writing on the conflicts and politics within reservations in the twentieth century. however, orr’s argument that historians are loath to do so because they believe “perhaps it is better to stay quiet on contemporary intratribal and intra-ethnic politics” because of “sensitivities about what should be said” or because “it might be more difficult to remain neutral” are unfounded (29). indeed, several works exist in the historiography which capably and fearlessly examine the role intra-tribal conflict has played in indigenous politics, including akim reinhardt’s excellent ruling pine ridge (2009) and paul chaat smith and robert allen warrior’s classic like a hurricane (1997), neither of which orr cites. more research should indeed be done in this field, but the historiographical hole is not so dire as orr contends, nor is there much evidence that historians and social scientists have avoided the topic out of fear. reservation politics is a provocative and often frustrating book. scholars interested in the issues facing contemporary native american societies will find it useful for its clarity in describing the complex dilemmas facing the three case study reservations orr describes. the book is also a good model for how to write comparative analysis. however, the intellectual framework upon which orr’s argument rests, while certainly compelling in its unique perspective, is shaky and significantly less well-conceived. stephen robert hausmann, temple university works cited blackmun, harry a. and supreme court of the united states. u.s. reports: united states v. sioux nation of indians, 448 u.s. 371. 1979. retrieved from the library of congress, www.loc.gov/item/usrep448371/. reinhardt, akim d. ruling pine ridge: oglala lakota politics from the ira to wounded knee. lubbock, tx: texas tech university press, 2009. stephen robert hausmann review of reservation politics 204 smith, paul chaat, and robert allen warrior. like a hurricane: the indian movement from alcatraz to wounded knee. new york city: new press, 1997. microsoft word lucchesi.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     194   esther g. belin. of cartography. tucson: university of arizona press, 2017. 88 pp. isbn 9780816536023. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/of-cartography esther g. belin’s newest collection of poetry, of cartography, is a moving and innovative work, bringing together poetry and indigenous experiences and knowledge of space. indeed, belin mobilizes poetry to articulate what can be understood as a new form of cartographic practice, informed by her family’s experiences of relocation and migration. as her poems travel throughout california and her diné homelands in the southwest, we come to see a deep relationship between stories and the land to which they belong, coupled with an assertion of sovereignty in healing and identity in the wake of colonial relocation policy, and the ways in which belin writes such navigations of belonging serve as a guide for readers to reflect upon poetry as a form of cartography. indeed, belin crafts text and poetic structure in a way that requires us to examine how meaning is inscribed to space—both on the page and on the land. belin’s upbringing in los angeles, and her relationship to her homeland, are a central theme of this collection. these stories function as the building blocks of a new cartographic practice, one that reflects indigenous epistemologies and experiences. indeed, her treatment of the intergenerational effects of relocation and navigation of an urban indian identity give insights into how a strategic cartography may be implemented by indigenous people surviving and resisting the complexities of off-reservation life. for example, belin writes of the sense of home that is created by the sound of navajo language, even in the midst of an urban environment, and describes these urban navajo speakers as mapping an imagination of homeland on the landscape—“in the middle of busy intersections/and energy-efficient street lights/they see a cornfield and canyon walls” (48). however, in the same poem, belin also writes of walking past these navajo speakers, and uttering bits of other indigenous or foreign languages, leaving them in confusion as to her origin. this may be representative of the inter-tribal/cultural knowledge that urban indigenous people attain while living in a mixed cultural space, as well as the nature of being indian in a place where indians are not imagined to exist, constantly being mistaken for a different ethnicity. more largely, i view it as a signifier that these cartographies are not a given or automatic, predicated upon indigeneity; rather, they are solely seen by those who draw and choose to navigate within them. access to them, therefore, to some degree depends on an individual’s knowledge of language or culture. the role colonial education played in these experiences is also a recurring theme in belin’s poems. belin’s parents participated in the special navajo five-year program at sherman institute in southern california, as part of federal relocation efforts that led to large urban indian populations in cities like los angeles. these relocation policies and boarding schools are repeatedly referenced throughout the collection, spanning back to the 1895 incarceration of hopi men at alcatraz island, for refusing to send their children to boarding schools. in contrast, belin opens the collection with references to navajo education, locating it on the navajo nation, and describing it as a home that still stands, where her mother once hid her prized belongings. annita lucchesi review of of cartography     195   this sense of home and familiarity with place further highlights urban indigenous experiences of geography. belin writes beautifully descriptive poems not just of her homeland, but of the spaces between homeland and home; her family’s travels on the route between the navajo nation and los angeles is a powerful example. in this poem, belin maps the journey using significant place-markers like the grand canyon and gallup, peppered within a narrative of her family’s experience of the drive—noting the turnout to crownpoint, rez cars, and hud housing. in so doing, belin stresses the use of alternative landmarks, using place-markers that would be of significance to a navajo or indigenous driver but may melt into the landscape for anyone who lacks the cultural context to notice or appreciate them. moreover, she insists on indigenous cultural survival where others may not see it—describing her daughter’s car seat as “a modern cradleboard that meets car and airplane safety requirements” (37). this may be seen as another element to the cartographic practice this collection offers. perhaps the most striking demonstration of this cartographic practice, however, is in the architecture of the text itself. the poems are organized according to diné cardinal points, and are graphically organized in such a way that they require readers to sit and learn to read them, examining the directionality of the text and the spatial relationships between points. these poems are visually challenging and rich, and reading them becomes an exercise similar to poring over a detailed map. these poems ask readers experiment with different directions in which to read the text (5), plot coordinates of locations and items (39), relocate points (73), and use relocated points as an “entryway” to weaving together a new bundling ceremony (74). in this way, belin not only theorizes and demonstrates a new cartographic practice, but asks readers to learn this practice and become literate in it themselves. this is where the beauty of of cartography shines its brightest. its engagement with readers requires us to embark on reclamation of spatial agency alongside belin, and the teachings within it function as literary cartography lessons. of cartography is a beautiful application of a new cartographic practice, where poetry written to reflect navajo epistemologies and language is mobilized as mapping technology. this collection is of importance to anyone interested in indigenous cartography and geography, expression and navigation of urban indigenous identity, and navajo literary interventions. annita lucchesi, university of lethbridge microsoft word 523-2797-1-sm.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     i   red readings: decolonization through native-centric responses to non-native film and literature scott andrews the idea for this issue of transmotion came from the bottom of the sea. while watching the 2014 film godzilla, i was struck by ways in which the famous lizard’s battle with a flying, radiation-eating monster resembled the dynamic relationship between the anishinaabe creatures of mishibizhiiw (water monster) and animikii (thunder beings). i wrote up my thoughts then about those similarities in a blog posting titled “godzilla is red: an american indian reading of the king of monsters” (andrews). this issue’s theme became more fully developed when i proposed a “red readings” panel for the native american literature symposium in 2015. this issue’s essays from becca gercken and ken roemer were presented in shorter versions then; at that session margaret noodin presented a paper on sapho and gertrude stein, but for this issue she focuses only on stein. i proposed “red reading rides again” for the 2017 nals, and shawaano chad uran presented a shorter version of his essay on the land of the dead. both sessions were wellattended, and they provided lively, intelligent, and often funny presentations. brian burkhart submitted his re-imagining of john locke’s work through the cherokee trickster of jisdu independent of those sessions, but he will present it at nals this year on a panel devoted to cherokee culture. so i want to thank the organizers of the native american literature symposium for indulging me and creating a space to conduct such thought experiments. i encourage people interested in native literature, film, and art to consider attending the annual event (https://nativelit.com/). first i should say the name “red reading” is not an attempt to racialize or essentialize a particular literary response. i thought of the name simply to create a catchy title for my panel at the symposium. the reader does not need to be native for this practice, but the reading should be native-centric; the reading process should be grounded in issues important to native communities and/or native intellectual histories or practices. put most simply, a red reading produces an interpretation of a non-native text from a native perspective. scott andrews “red readings” an introduction     ii   once i came up with the title for the panel, i discovered that james cox had used this phrase in his book muting white noise (attributing it to jill carter’s 2010 doctoral dissertation). for cox, a red reading re-interprets representations of native people in non-native texts; this “is an act of liberation from the imaginative foundations of colonialism” (9), and he demonstrates several such readings in his book. (i also learned that daniel heath justice had used the phrase in his chapter of indigenizing the academy, but he used it to describe centering college classrooms on texts by native authors.) for my nals panels and for this issue of transmotion, my approach to a red reading is different from cox’s. while his fine book deconstructs narratives about american indians that enable colonization (narratives that have been weaponized against native people), the red readings in this issue work in one or more ways: they reveal the pervasive mechanisms of settler colonialism in american culture; they re-imagine those mechanisms in order to resist and alter them; they build bridges between native literatures and canonical american literature, but they do so by placing native perspectives at the center of the discussion; and they are imaginative and playful. the essays in this issue were written in the same spirit that kimberly blaeser describes for the works of gerald vizenor: they are dedicated to "liberation, imagination, play, and discourse." in gerald vizenor: writing in the oral tradition, she claims: "his writing seeks to function as both the presentation of an idea and as an invitation to discover where that idea might lead, an invitation to engage in a dialogue" (4). how do they do that? by interpreting, re-interpreting, transposing, or deconstructing nonnative texts from a native perspective, sometimes playfully and sometimes seriously. what happens when you read a non-native text from a native perspective? what disruptions in a text are made possible by reading it with native assumptions? what latent meanings can become apparent? what new meanings can be produced? i think of red reading as similar to “queering,” which also is an invitation to discover where ideas might lead. in the introduction to a special issue of art journal in 1996, jonathan weinberg wrote that queering things such as works of art or literature has the objective of “making them strange in order to destabilize our confidence in the relationship of representation to identity, authorship, and behavior” (12). making things strange in this way was part of a larger effort by queer artists and academics to “investigate the mechanisms by which a society claims to know gender and sexuality” (11). transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     iii   weinberg’s description of queering parallels cox’s goal for red reading. a red reading can destabilize the dominant culture’s confidence in the relationship of its representations of american indians to actual native people. in this sense it also is similar to what gerald vizenor called “trickster hermeneutics,” which is the process by which those representations of american indians are deconstructed as tools for dispossessing native people of their lands, identities, and political and cultural sovereignty. trickster hermeneutics is a corrective to the misrepresentations fostered by the dominant culture, and those misrepresentations are elements of what vizenor called “manifest manners,” the methods by which the united states of america tries to realize its dreams of manifest destiny. trickster hermeneutics and other examinations of race representations are (to again echo weinberg’s language) efforts to investigate the mechanics by which the dominant culture of the united states claims to know race, including whiteness – since the role of the indian in many representations is to be the other against which american whiteness defines itself. the essays in this issue do not try to destabilize representations of american indians; instead, they seek to destabilize, among other things, the dominant culture’s confidence in representations of itself. that includes, for example, destabilizing fundamental conceptions upon which america’s settler colonial nationhood has been built; burkhart does this by imagining jisdu (rabbit, the cherokee trickster) helping correct john locke’s thinking. it also includes shaking the dominant culture’s assumption that its literary canon is the standard against which all others are measured; noodin and roemer do this when they measure canonical authors (gertrude stein and walt whitman) according to native standards. the essays in this issue also investigate the mechanisms by which the dominant culture knows nationhood and the narratives that enable it. but back to queering. craig womack also sees an affinity between queer and native responses to texts, and he also sees the trickster potential of such responses. in the last chapter of red on red, womack writes: “also, the thinking behind the term ‘queer,” which seems to celebrate deviance rather than apologize for it, seems embodied with trickster’s energy to push social boundaries” (301). reading non-native texts from a native perspective similarly celebrates the difference between the native and the non-native, between native epistemologies and a settler colonial state that seeks to erase or appropriate them. in that chapter, womack interprets the play the cherokee night by lynn riggs through a queer lens; womack suggests that riggs conflates scott andrews “red readings” an introduction     iv   cherokee identity with homosexuality in the play – native and queer being things oppressed by the mainstream and things repressed by some people who are native and/or queer but who wish to live in that mainstream. womack suggests homosexual desires and denials are never named in the play but greatly influence the play’s plot and the actions of its characters – a reading that riggs, as a closeted homosexual, perhaps would have denied. this is trickster-like since womack evokes meanings the original speaker would have not intended, twisting a speaker’s words into a different message – perhaps even into the truth (or another truth). gercken does this with “the yellow wallpaper” and uran does it with the land of the dead. like womack reading the cherokee night through a queer lens, they read their texts through a lens of settler colonialism. womack asks something like this: “what if riggs’s lived experience as a closeted gay man influenced the content of his play?” gercken and uran ask, “what if being immersed in a colonizing culture influenced perkins and romero in the creation of their narratives, even in ways they would not have recognized?” while the native-centric readings offered in this issue of transmotion may not upset social boundaries (i doubt they will offend anyone), they imaginatively push on intellectual or academic boundaries. reading non-native texts from a native perspective can be seen as part of the larger project of cultural studies and criticism. that project tries to understand cultures through their various expressions and representations (including “high” and “low” culture, such as canonical literature and hollywood films or gothic cathedrals and las vegas casinos). in their contribution to what is cultural studies?, john frow and meagan morris state that cultural studies examines … practices, institutional structures and the complex forms of agency they entail, legal, political, and financial conditions of existence, and particular flows of power and knowledge, as well as a particular multilayered semantic organisation; it is an ontologically mixed entity, and one for which there can be no privileged or “correct” reading. it is this, more than anything else, that forces cultural studies' attention to the diversity of audiences for or users of the structures of textuality it analyses that is, to the open-ended social life of texts…” (355-356). native-centric readings add another voice to the diversity of audiences that frow and morris mention. the readings may consider non-native texts, but they are texts likely to be experienced transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     v   by native readers, whether directly in a school classroom or on a television screen, or indirectly through the governmental policies established upon or supported by them. if we understand red reading as a kind of reverse-appropriation (the colonized stealing from the colonizer and repurposing those cultural tools), we can also acknowledge that many acts of interpretation are a kind of appropriation, even when no cultural boundaries are crossed. much of cultural studies (including literary criticism) examines texts from the past, and we can understand those interpretations as a kind of appropriation through time. while an interpretation may claim to uncover new facts about old texts, it may instead produce new uses for them, regardless of their original meanings. herbert grabes wrote something similar to this in “literary history and cultural history relations and differences”: and we know that the signifiers of the past lend themselves not only to an attribution of meanings informed by a knowledge of the culture within which they were produced. their selection and interpretation are also subject to the inclinations and needs of the later culture within which they are newly approached. the functional history of literature will therefore also have to integrate the history of reception – at least in part – a history of “misreading”; which is, of course, only a misreading in respect to its being different from the one most likely at the time of the texts’ production. (28) if what grabes says is true, then we could say that a functional history of american literature will need to integrate a history of native reception or native “misreadings.” how does a native perspective make sense of non-native texts? what uses can a native perspective find for a text that was not produced with it in mind? for instance, gercken’s pleasurable misreading of “the yellow wallpaper” in this issue. a native perspective could find that short story to be a useful allegory for experiences with federal indian policy. who cares what charlotte perkins gilman intended with her story? the first version of my panel title for nals was “red reader response” (i changed it simply to make the panel title shorter), and grabes’s emphasis on the importance of reception in literary history and criticism illustrates how this issue’s theme arises from interpretative methods such as reader response criticism. in fact, i consulted reader-response criticism: from formalism to post-structuralism in preparing this introduction. several ideas from that famous scott andrews “red readings” an introduction     vi   book are helpful in describing the goal of the essays in this issue, but i will discuss only one here. it comes from walker gibson and his chapter titled “authors, speakers, readers, and mock readers.” gibson states that each text has two readers: the actual human who is reading and a mock reader “whose mask and costume the individual takes on” (2) to participate in the imaginative experience being created by the text. sometimes this could involve the actual reader pretending to be a character in an author’s fictional universe, such as when nanapush in louise erdrich’s tracks tells stories to his granddaughter, lulu; this includes directly addressing her, but the actual reader knows she is not present; the actual readers are pretending at some level to be lulu and trying to imagine her responses to nanapush’s stories while also tracking their own responses. a different example would be readers of leslie marmon silko’s ceremony. her novel famously is built from laguna pueblo cultural capital that most readers do not possess, relying as it does upon pueblo beliefs and storytelling traditions. silko’s mock reader is steeped in laguna pueblo history and culture, and the actual readers must realize there is much they are missing from the experience of reading the novel. (we hope that actual readers are persuaded to learn some about that history and culture and then return to the novel to more fully appreciate its artistry and its message.) of course, gibson had neither erdrich nor silko in mind when he wrote “authors, speakers, readers, and mock readers.” the examples in his chapter come from american canonical authors such as f. scott fitzgerald and nathaniel hawthorne. but in considering the reception of various texts by a mock reader, including the challenges that some texts present for mock readers, gibson makes a statement that is relevant to red readings. he writes: “a bad book, then, is a book in whose mock reader we discover a person we refuse to become, a mask we refuse to put on, a role we will not play” (5). we can easily imagine native readers being uncomfortable with the masks a settler colonial text asks them to wear, even those texts that do not involve representations of native people. we can imagine, for example, native readers refusing to share the spoken and unspoken assumptions made by john locke in his “second treatise on civil government.” we can imagine their alienating experience of reading that and other texts in the canon of literature produced by settler colonial nations. we also can imagine the useful exercise of non-natives reading those same texts as a native mock reader, using a native perspective to defamiliarize their own cultural texts. perhaps if more non-native readers transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     vii   examined the works in their canon from a native perspective they would be liberated from some of the dangerous ideas found there. works cited andrews, scott. “godzilla is red: an american indian reading of the king of monsters.” may 24, 2014. http://scottseesthings.blogspot.com/2014/05/godzilla-is-red-american-indianreading.html blaeser, kimberly. gerald vizenor: writing in the oral tradition. u of oklahoma p, 1996. carter, jill. repairing the web: spiderwoman’s children staging the new human being. dissertation, university of toronto, 2010. frow, john and meagan morris. “australian cultural studies.” what is cultural studies?: a reader, edited by john storey. st. martin’s press, 1997, pp. 344-367. gibson, walker. “authors, speakers, readers, and mock readers.” reader-response criticism: from formalism to post-structuralism, edited by jane p. tompkins. johns hopkins u p, 1980, pp. 1-6. grabes, herbert. “literary history and cultural history: relations and difference” no. 17 real: yearbook of research in english and american literature. literary history/cultural history: force-fields and tensions, edited by winfried fluck, herbert grabes, jurgen schlaeger, brook thomas. gunter narr verlag, 2001. pp 2-34. justice, daniel heath. “seeing (and reading) red: indian outlaws in the ivory tower.” indigenizing the academy: transforming scholarship and empowering communities, edited by devon abbot mihesuah and angela cavender wilson, u of nebraska p, 2004, pp. 100-123. weinberg, jonathan. “things are queer.” art journal (winter1996) pp. 11-14. womack, craig. red on red: native american literary separatism. u of minnesota p, 1999. microsoft word proof.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     129   gigawaabaa-bye-bye margaret noodin jim northrup’s words are like the zizigwad, the sound of jack pines, ever alive and reminding us of who we are. he wrote stories for every season of the year and every season of our lives, as individuals and as a community. he left a legacy of humor and storytelling that will be remembered for a long time. he also left a few things unfinished. what he definitely accomplished is a body of work that memorializes anishinaabe life. his poems, stories and plays will be read for many years in walking the rez road, the rez road follies, anishinaabe syndicated, dirty copper and rez salute. his newspaper column, the fond du lac follies, ran for a full quarter of a century, tracing the scandals, shenanigans, politics and rezperspective of the real people who make up a sovereign north american nation. the follies first appeared in august of 1989. h. w. bush was president. the bingo hall was small. the community college was new. fond du luth casino was only three years old and pow wow season was leaning into ricing time. jim shared the view from his kitchen table. he cracked jokes about columbus, commods, relationships and relatives. he asked questions: “didja ever notice, bingo money doesn’t seem to last as long as regular money?” and gave answers: “it’s got an attitude of “easy come, easier go.” always with a sly wink to let you know he laughed just as hard at himself as he laughed at everything else: “now what was that last bingo number?” behind jim’s lightning fast exchange of phrases was a subtle, yet scathing critique of capitalism, industry and people who don’t know how to live right. he encouraged us to go to school, predicting “a few more generations of this and we will consider higher education a normal state instead of a rarity.” and he challenged us to get involved, to carry memories, language and anishinaabe knowledge forward into the future. he would hook us with an image of “canoes edging closer to the road, new rice poles gleaming in the sunlight” and whet our appetites by wondering who knows “how to cook moose ears?” then he’d point us to “the weeds taking over more and more of the rice beds” and ask the real question, “who is watching the water level of the lakes?” (august follies, 1989). margaret noodin “gigawaabaa-bye-bye”     130   twenty-five years later, he left us in the deep waters poling on our own as “the final curtain came clanging down on the fond du lac follies.” never one to avoid reality, he said it was time to “step back and hang up the spurs and computer” (august follies, 2014). circling back to some of the same topics that filled the follies first pages he commented: monthly per capita payment has kept the lights on in some homes, made car payments and has put food on some tables, the rest of us use plates… of course there have been some problems associated with gambling. one is we think money can solve anything. two is we think money can solve anything (august follies, 2014). he taught readers that no single perspective is perfect and most importantly you need to hone your own points. jim was a veteran and a survivor of many battles. as a marine he served in vietnam as part of india company, 3rd battalion, 9th marine regiment, 3rd marine division. he survived the war and then came home to “survive the peace” (“shrinking away”). part of the way he survived was through keeping many anishinaabe traditions alive including spring syrup-making, summer basket-making, fall rice-harvesting and winter storytelling. but perhaps the most important tradition he continued was the art of healing through narration. many times jim answered the query of under-paid public school teachers who wanted him to visit class. off he would go, on the road sometimes for hours to do what he called “one for the people.” standing before a classroom of children, he told jokes and used laughter to lubricate creativity. he proved to future writers that every voice matters. following his example, writers young and old have traced their own journeys, connected with others and dreamed themselves whole to recover their identities in a complicated, and sometimes downright cruel, world. jim often began a writing lesson with his “character building recipe” which centered a person and brought the story and teller to life. his theory was that if you think around and about someone, you will find their story. he started with a simple list, sometimes adding and subtracting characteristics: character building recipe 1. name 2. age transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     131   3. skin 4. height 5. weight 6. clothing 7. tribe 8. place 9. voice 10. language 11. moves 12. education 13. goals 14. fears 15. secrets the list could be used to write a short sketch of chibinesi, james warren northrup jr. who lived from 1943 to 2016. he had hair that would match a black bear and skin between zhiiwaagamizigan (maple syrup) and maakademaashkikiwaabo (coffee). according to his fond du lac band card which “certifies that the person identified is a duly-enrolled member of the fond du lac band of lake superior chippewa and entitled to exercise hunting, fishing, and gathering rights in accordance with the laws of the band” he weighed 210 pounds, was 5’ 9” and had firearms safety training. he typically wore jeans, a t-shirt, maybe a pendleton jacket, soft traditional corvette-driving moccasins and around his neck a set of claws or a 1960s era smiley face turned into modern regalia by his wife, patricia. he wrote from what he called “headquarters” just south of chi’zagaa’iganing (big lake) on northrup road in sawyer, minnesota, and his voice was as wide as the sky and deep as the rice roots sinking into the earth. some of his best moves involved poling, knocking, tap carving and basket making. one might say he had an advanced degree in all of these. as for official education he attended several schools including: pipestone indian school, brainerd indian training school, carlton high school and milwaukee technical college. in 2012 he received an honorary doctor of letters from fond du lac tribal and community college. goals, fears and secrets are hard to confirm or deny. in many ways, his writing is an accounting of the goal of living life well and working to heal himself and others, which he accepted as a continual task. perhaps his fears were of failing margaret noodin “gigawaabaa-bye-bye”     132   at this. and secrets are not secrets if they are broadcast, but there were a few things he didn’t get done before changing his address from one world to another and those secret wishes are the ones i want to honor here. jim wanted the story of his grandfather to be summarized and shared, he wanted someone to consider the character of joseph anthony northrup who lived from 1882 to 1947. although their lives did not overlap by much, his persistence and powers as a storyteller always interested his grandson who recalled: “i met him once, when i was 3 or 4, all i remember was a man with a big nose leaning in to look at me. later i learned he got frostbite on that nose walking nine miles to work and then nine miles home again” (northrup, 2003.) carlisle entrance reports note that in 1908 he was 5’ 9” and weighed 151 pounds. the same strange document also indicates his resonance and respiration were “normal.” he is described at that time as a chippewa from cloquet, minnesota who attended the school with the catholic ymca of northfield, massachusetts listed as his patron. his secret, while at carlisle, may have been that he was attending the school after pleading guilty to manslaughter, being sent to the reformatory and being eventually released through a pardon from the governor to accompany his two brothers to carlisle indian school. this personal history came to light in 1911 when joseph was expelled from carlisle for behavior, but instead of returning home, he headed to washington d.c. where he was arrested and placed in iron manacles at union station. according to the arresting officer, “he was wanted in minnesota for shooting another indian.” northrup explained “there had been a quarrel long ago… and he shot a man who he afterwards learned had died as a result of the wound” (harrisburg patriot). supporters from carlisle showed up to escort him home, promising to hand him over only to “the legal authority of his reservation.” the complex affection between student and institution continued with records of correspondence at carlisle indicating that joseph had a practical view of his education. he spoke both chippewa and english and school records note he was trained to work as a “disciplinarian, interpreter or forest guard.” no records indicate exactly why he was expelled and that detail remains a secret. in reply to the record of graduates and returned students filed later that same year, joseph stated he was married, living in sawyer and making $50 per month working for the fire patrol. he wrote, “my home is a happy one and i am improving it continually. we have eighty acres of land valued at $30.00 per acre, [we also have] pine and [as timber it is] valued at $1100, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     133   a nice home and also $150 credit in the bank.” joseph continued, “i have had an uphill fight, but though only a short time at dear old carlisle, i got the idea there to always “s-t-i-c-k” and make good. yes sir, though expelled, carlisle is ever dear to my heart and what i learned there i shall always treasure.” he remained in touch with his alma mater and in 1914 received a kind letter from the superintendent to which he replied “i can say that the training i have had at carlisle has stood me in good stead. i am doing my utmost to uphold the honor of my alma mater. may the good work you are doing for the uplift of the indian continue.” joseph went on to join the u.s. national guard and was the founder of the wanabosho club, named for his own grandfather, which served the 12,000 chippewas in minnesota at the time. he was a community leader who bridged nations and published clear political opinions. in 1921 he wrote: “exploitation of the indian must cease in order that this nation of the ‘square deal’ will not blacken its honor by regarding its treaties as mere scraps of paper. the indians have well earned the right to administer their own affairs like other citizens instead of being held in subjugation while foreigners may come into this country and exercise rights withheld from the indians.” his rhetorical truth was echoed years later as his grandson, jim jr., wrote about using his treaty rights to hunt, fish, gather and govern as a citizen of a sovereign nation. across the generations, joseph and jim also shared a love of telling sweeping, dramatic, unforgettable stories. using the pseudonym chief northwind, joseph northrup published the novel wawina in 1937. described by the publisher as a love story “based on personal records as handed down in primeval wigwam lore” it was also classic romanticism with a tragic ending between lovers of opposing ethnic traditions, in this case a chippewa “princess” who kills herself and her sioux lover. the northrup tradition of writing stories likely began many generations before joseph and will continue long after jim jr. their contribution was to examine the effects of colonization and deforestation, to measure the impact of anishinaabeg becoming american citizens. both joseph and jim recorded the unspoken traumas, triumphs and daily trials of continuing against all odds. each, in his own way, made an important contribution to anishinaabe-american literature. this is the legacy jim jr., who had sons he named both jim and joe, wanted passed to the next generation. he understood people of many cultures are always healing from the tangle of history that ignites their existence. as he saw the end of his life grow near, jim began writing and distributing healing phrases. in the chitwaa luke babaamajimowinini aakoziwigamig (saint margaret noodin “gigawaabaa-bye-bye”     134   luke the evangelist hospital) he taught the doctors and nurses to say maashkikinini indaaw or maashkikikwe indaaw, reminding them they are people of medicine, because the word maashkiki breaks down into components meaning strength from the earth. jim knew the power of words. he believed if he could say, ninoojimo’iwe (i am healing), it was more, likely to happen. he wanted the words to be heard in the world: noojimo (to heal, restore or cure someone); nanaandawi (to investigate, diagnose or doctor someone). he wasn’t afraid to ask for help by saying wiidookawishin or naadamawishin. and always he would say, “ojibwemotawishin daga (speak ojibwe to me please).” we would arrive and practice sentences, which became a small chapbook handwritten, copied and distributed to those in need. he included what he felt were the most important phrases: ginanaandawin. ninanaandawi’iwe-nagamomin. i am healing you. we are singing a healing song. ningiige, mashkowiziyaan. be bangii ninganaandawiz. my wound is healing, i am strong. little by little i am being healthy. ningii-bimose miinawaa nengaaj wiisiniyaan. onizhishin. maamakaaj. i walked and slowly i am eating. it is good. it is amazing. niwii-minogwaam. niwii-nibaa gabe dibik. i will rest. i will sleep all night. i think he took on this task because makwa odoodamaan, he was bear clan. he understood the responsibilities of his clan to be gikinoo’amaage (to teach), nagadawenjige (to care for others), to gizhaadige (to serve as a guard). he was marine, he was makwa, he was a grandson, a son, a husband, a father and grandfather, he was part of a circle that he had the wisdom to see while many others view life as a line. authors are often remembered for their “greatest” work, or most well-known, but as he planned his exit, jim offered one more chance for readers to learn from him. the last few phrases of his book were written when he was simply trying to move from one place on earth, the hospital bed, to another, the kitchen table. but reading them again illustrates how a great poet writes lines to be read many ways. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017)     135   ninogimaakandaadiz. i am telling myself what to do. nindaanjidiz. i am changing myself ninzhaabooskaan. i am getting through it aabdeg nindamaajaa. i have to leave. boochigo niwii-giiwe. i have to go home. gimiigwechwininim gii bi dagooshinoyeg. i thank yous for coming here. giga-waabamin miinawaa. i will see you again. giga-waabamininim. i will see you all again. i am not related to jim by clan or family but as a writer who uses anishinaabemowin we had a thirty year friendship that sustained and challenged both of us to do more than either one of us might ever have done. looking back on his life i am reminded of another writing exercise: ingii-biinjise, makaak gii-izhi-temigag gaawiin da-saakonaasiimaan… i walked into a room, there was a box i wasn’t supposed to open… jim opened that box every time. he saw the worst of society, yet found a way to write stories of survival. he attended a boarding school where he was punished for speaking ojibwemowin, but margaret noodin “gigawaabaa-bye-bye”     136   became a writer so that his words could connect him to family and friends. he was sent to fight in vietnam where he risked his life with no welcome home and endured a lifetime of ptsd as a result, but his stories and poems gave all of us a way to process and live with the scars of that war and many more. he last wishes were that we remember his grandfather and tell stories of healing. use his character building recipe to write the story of your grandparents, grandchildren or yourself… saakonaan makaak (open the box). last of all, be brave enough to say good-bye, or as jim might say… “gigawaabaa-bye-bye.” works cited anonymous. “carlisle indian goes west with his hands in irons,” harrisburg patriot, 1911. northrup, james jr. “shrinking away,” walking the rez road, 1993. microsoft word lopenzina.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 208 stephanie woodard. american apartheid: the native american struggle for selfdetermination and inclusion. ig publishers, 2018. 288 pp. isbn 978-1632460684. https://www.igpub.com/american-apartheid/ the united states, in the age of trump, has entered an era in which our politics have become animated by unprecedented levels of corruption and mendacity, while a significant portion of the populace has been driven to vigorous displays of dissatisfaction and protest in response. if this all seems strange and new to many of us, however, it is a reality that has cast a long historical shadow over indian country. stephanie woodard’s new book american apartheid provides an up to date roadmap of the ongoing battles of native peoples in the u.s. to retain their land base, secure voting rights, halt the exploitative extraction of resources on their lands, and stem the tide of abuse, neglect, and coercion that has often defined relationships with the settler colonial powers that woodard likens to the oppressive south african system referenced in her title. woodard, although not native herself, has spent nearly the last two decades reporting on indigenous affairs in respected alternative media outlets such as indian country media network, in these times, and yes. although her reporting at times lacks the granular detail one might expect in a more tribally specific, or even geographically focused, scholarly study, it is clear that woodard has established trusting relationships with peoples in indigenous communities across much of the country and has served as an effective advocate and ally. not surprisingly, recent events at the standing rock indian reservation (íŋyaŋ woslál háŋ) provide a kind of touchstone for the general reader who may have no frame of reference for native activism beyond the highly publicized 2016-2017 standoff to halt construction of the dakota access pipeline. but woodard is quick to acknowledge that native activism long precedes standing rock, and her book bears witness to that broader range of cultural and political struggles, zeroing in on her field reporting in native space, but providing ample historical context covering centuries of survivance. in observing the resilience of native peoples through all these conflicts, woodard comes to regard indigenous culture as “a shield that has persisted, indeed thrived, despite all efforts to stamp, starve and regulate it out of existence (xii). each chapter in american apartheid is laid out in regards to a specific issue, with the first chapter dedicated to resource extraction on indigenous lands, the second chapter devoted to voting rights, the third to issues of cultural preservation and repatriation, and so on. because woodard’s reporting over the years has been fairly extensive on each of these issues, she doesn’t focus on simply one story or incident per chapter, but instead expands upon a range of encounters with indigenous nations, from new mexico to alaska, whose experiences help to illuminate systemic patterns of abuse. for instance, in chapter four, which covers ongoing issues of incarceration, jurisdiction, and police violence both on and off the reservations, she touches base with events effecting the puyallup, the northern cheyenne, the lakota and others. her method is typically to locate leaders, activists, or individuals within the indigenous community whose lives have been touched by the issue in question, and to embed herself to some degree in the actions forged to address and confront these issues. this approach helps us to see, in a holistic manner, how indigenous communities are responding to these terrific historical challenges. drew lopenzina review of american apartheid 209 we can see how this works when, in the fourth chapter entitled “rough justice,” woodard reports on the death of jaqueline saylers of the puyallup tribe, who in january of 2016 was shot at close range by police in tacoma, washington while in her car, despite being unarmed (145). although the police were ultimately cleared of charges, the puyallup were not prepared to let matters drop. in response, they forged “justice for jackie, justice for all,” which began as a support group among family members, but grew into a community-wide gathering of native, black, white, and latino citizens, all concerned or personally effected by the issue of escalating police violence. woodard offers the testimony of various speakers at these meetings but trains her attention on jackie’s uncle, james rideout, who, recognizing a responsibility to care for all those in attendance, gathers fresh crab from puget sound before the event. rideout explains to woodard that “puyallup” translates into english as “the generous welcoming people.” he explains that “when the police killings happened to people who didn’t have a tribe to back them up, they were alone, on their own out there. when our tribe took a position on the issue, we realized we had an opportunity to take care of them all, to bring them along with us” (168). tim renyon, a tribal council member who also speaks with woodard, clarifies that this is precisely “the original significance of what it means to be a tribe” (169). moments like these in the book demonstrate woodard’s sensitivity to discursive frameworks of indigenous-centered knowledge and offer a poignant glimpse into the very human responses surrounding otherwise tragic and difficult, if not atypical, circumstances. the importance of human relationships privileged in american apartheid are supplemented by the reporting of historical contexts and statistics that, while perhaps not surprising or new to native studies scholars, will be helpful to the average reader for whom this book is presumably written. woodard points to the despoliation of native lands, observing how a quarter of superfund sites in america are located on indian reservations (138). she reports on incarceration rates for natives that are 38% higher than other americans. while native peoples comprise a very small percentage of the american population she writes that native children are “three times as likely to be under lock and key as white kids” (147). because of unique jurisdiction issues pertaining to tribal lands, even misdemeanors are likely to be tried in federal court and typically result in stiff sentencing. meanwhile, as a result of legal arrangements dating as far back as the 1887 indian allotment act, native individuals often remain unable to obtain even a fraction of market value for the leasing of tribal lands or the extraction of resources. taking a long historical view, woodard notes how the tribes were transformed “from flourishing precontact societies to today’s marginalized and often poverty-stricken communities,” walled off from surrounding prosperity by “federal policies, bureaucratic incompetence, official corruption and racism” (5). although native peoples have fought tirelessly for decades to change these entrenched practices, there are systems set in place to prevent meaningful reform. woodard reports effectively on how laws have been used, across the nation, to suppress native votes, particularly in sparsely populated states where native voter turnout could potentially turn the tide of an election. those living on reservations, lacking local polling places, typically have to travel hundreds of miles of bad road back and forth to cast their votes, and often face intimidation when they do so. although federal laws require that voting be accessible, little effort is extended to meet this requirement on reservations that are, by design, secluded from major population centers. as one transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 210 navajo citizen incredulously exclaims, “don’t penalize me because of who i am and where i live. the government put us on this reservation, and now we can’t vote because we live here” (56-57). in the village of togiak, in the bristol bay region of alaska, woodard reports on how voter turnout among indigenous peoples rose substantially after extensive legal battles requiring ballots to be translated into the yup’ik language. in addition, early voter opportunities were enacted in order to accommodate subsistence hunting practices that made it virtually impossible for all voters to appear on a single prescribed day. arriving by bush plane to observe the election day results in togiak, woodard notes the enthusiasm of the community at the increased participation, and later attends a celebration feast consisting of local fare such as whale blubber, beaver, moose, herring roe on fronds of kelp, and baked, dried, and jerked salmon. in a conversation with nicole borromeo of the alaska federation of natives (afn), she is told, “our people have a hunger to vote. they go to huge lengths to do so and overcome barriers no one else in the country faces” (76). as a result of the increased voter participation on that day, woodard reports that alaska’s natives were able to “elect a native lieutenant governor, raise alaska’s minimum wage and create barriers to placing copper, gold, and molybdenum mines in the watershed of the bay” (76). there are a few loose ends the book neglects to tie up, narratives threads one might wish to revisit even if the legal battles in question remain unresolved, and some might fault woodard for being partial in her coverage to western plains and alaskan native groups. east coast nations receive scant attention despite, in many cases, having endured the strains of this “apartheid” system for a greater period of time. certain issues, such as the epidemic of sexual violence against native women, while referenced, are not given as much attention as they seem to deserve. nevertheless, american apartheid effectively covers a great deal of journalistic ground. it is a useful and informative book that certainly might be assigned, either as a whole or by selected chapters, in classes designed to introduce contemporary concerns of indigenous communities to students. the conversations are surprisingly current, taking us into legal decisions only just being brought down by the current administration. but, more importantly, woodard remains up to date on the ways that native peoples are defining their struggle, survival, and sovereign identity under long-sustained settler colonial oppression. she discusses culturally engaged educational initiatives and reforms taking place on reservations, how indigenous social workers are using traditional practices to address the ongoing generational traumas of boarding school programs and adoption policies, how the identification of ancient pueblo aqueducts and water filtration systems might have implications for current legislative action, and she pays special attention to the multigenerational concerns of indigenous leaders who wish to pass along lifeways and resources to their children and grandchildren. visiting an ancient camp of the western shoshone with tribal member joseph holley and his two grandchildren, woodard observes how historic sites, medicinal herbs, and other artifacts like arrowheads found along the trail were discussed, handled, and carefully placed back in their proper place by the young children. part of this area was bulldozed over by a mining company in 2016 to make way for a powerline, despite the fact that the site had been determined as eligible for consideration in the national register of historic places. although the loss from such wanton, toxic, destruction is immeasurable, holley remains invested in affording his grandchildren the opportunity to engage with this space, so that “the children can then look at drew lopenzina review of american apartheid 211 our modern camp and see that it reflects the old one, with places to sleep, cook, gather, work, and pray. they understand that they are part of the entire story” (117). woodard’s american apartheid offers readers a window into that story as well. her years of reporting and dedication to the stories coming out of native space are condensed into very readable, engaging, and informative passages that speak not only to the inevitable and far-reaching consequences of unrelenting materialism and greed in our time, but to the remarkable endurance of indigenous peoples against continuing settler-colonial infractions. drew lopenzina, old dominion university microsoft word galley main.docx transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 124 letter to a just-starting-out indian writer—and maybe to myself: stephen graham jones 1) this isn’t the native american renaissance. that was a great and essential and transformative movement without even meaning to be a movement, but that was a different generation, with different issues. you’re not resisting falling dead off the back of a horse anymore. you’re not resisting people wanting to call you billy jack. you’re not resisting the invisibility that comes from colonial myth-making so much as you’re resisting the voicelessness that comes from commodification. what you’re resisting is headdresses on reebok shirts. what you’re resisting is only being on longmire as some android who can’t use contractions. and, think about it: if you do stand up and try to fight for the same things those native american renaissance writers were fighting for, then you’re pretty much saying that they didn’t make any headway, that american indian literature hasn’t made any progress. 2) don’t be an elf. that’s what america wants you to be. elves are liminal beings. they live close to the spiritual source. they commune with nature. they’re stewards of the trees. they belong in the forests. they cry because of dr. pepper bottles in the creek. also, as it turns out, they’re made-up, they’re not real. if you’re an elf, you don’t exist, and like that america’s won, who cares if your profile is che guevara’d onto a t-shirt. one thing about those profiles? they’re silhouettes. they’re the shape of us but it’s that end of the trail mode, that says we’ve come as far as we can, and it was a good fight, but now it’s time to die, now it’s time to fade into that sunset looming behind us. and it’s such a picturesque compelling image that we even kind of hesitate, don’t we? learn not to hesitate. be faster than that. be so fast that the silkscreeners can't capture your image in polyester. either that or start your own tshirt shop. 3) sometimes the way not to be an elf? it’s to write about elves. go on, get out there, traffic in the genres typically denied to indians. that we’re not allowed to do fantasy or science fiction and the rest, it’s both stereotyping us and it’s primitivizing our writing: it’s saying we can’t play in the branches that come off literature with a capital l—we can’t go out on the stephen graham jones “letter to a just-starting-out indian writer” 125 branches because our literature is still ‘formative,’ it’s still in its infancy. not letting us write for the commercial shelves is saying we have to write ‘form’ before writing free verse, but it’s also getting to designate what that form is. resist that every chance you get. sneak over the line every time you can. write where you’re not supposed to write, and then move on, do it on the next shelf over too. and the next, on down the line. leave the whole bookcase red. 4) don’t ask for permission to do what you do. i’m not talking about permission from your family or friends, your clan or nation or chosen representative or role model or idol. i’m talking about the critics who give your work the seal of approval, where ‘approval’ means inclusion in the classroom. yes, it’s great to be in the classroom, it’s an honor, but it’s also great to be everywhere. really, it’s better to be everywhere. if you ask the critics be the main and only gatekeepers, then you’re chaining your work to the trends and fads of criticism— which is to say, you might be setting yourself up for not getting through that gate. trick is, don’t even worry about the gate. sneak down the road, jump the fence, and then tell everybody else how to get across as well. 5) understand that a lot of the time when your work is discussed, the question being asked about it isn’t necessarily going to be is it good? so many readers and critics and students and professors, they don’t engage the writing as art, they engage it as an ethnographic lens they can use to focus attention on peoples and cultures and issues and crimes and travesties and all the ‘other’ that’ll fit in a discussion. resist this too. resist this hard. insist that your work be dealt with as art, not as an entry point to a culture. but understand that the only means you have to resist this, it’s your writing, it’s your art. so write better. write in ways that refuse to submit to the kinds of discussions that neglect your work’s status as real and actual art. any discussion which doesn’t start with is it good, that means the presumption is that it is good, and that presumption, then, it’s usually wound up with the fact that you’re indian, meaning the argument is “indian is good,” which is another way of saying “authentic is good.” and this is so, so dangerous. 6) so, don’t ask for permission, no. but don’t ask for forgiveness either. you’re going to mess up. you’re going to say things you wish you hadn’t, or that you wish you’d said better. transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 126 it’s part of the nature of writing or speaking aloud that you misspeak, that you write a line you wish you could reel back in. just keep moving on. don’t let that flubbed line define your career, your stance, your identity. hide that flubbed line with ten thousand perfect bulletproof timeless lines. be a different writer each time you turn the page. anytime you see that dissection pin coming down for the center of your back, close your eyes and roll somewhere else. 7) understand that when the audience or the market or the critics refer to you as an “american indian writer,” that this is an attempt to dismiss you, to preserve you on a shelf, to prepare you for display. what you are is a writer who happens to be american indian—a characteristic that may define you as a person, yes, but you’re maybe also a basketball player, or a pretty good carburetor rebuilder, or maybe you can draw hands so delicately that we want to reach into the page to touch them. none of that gets turned into an adjective in front of “writer,” though. neither should “american indian” or “native american” or “blackfeet” or whatever. indians having to have pedigrees to get into the show makes racehorses or dogs of us. and it means we have to carry some version of our registration around with us too. 8) understand that the market, the publishing industry, it’s going to want to package you as “exotic,” as somehow foreign and alien on a continent you didn’t need anybody’s help finding. always resist this. always displace that alien-ness back onto them. but in doing so, be careful of pretending that you didn’t cut your own teeth at the cineplex, at the local comic book shop. it’s completely okay to let john rambo be your hero, instead of crazy horse. to say otherwise is to let america tell you this is for us, this is for you. take whatever you want, and take it precisely while the guards are watching. dare them to tackle you in the aisle. then come back the next day with a hat on, do it all over again. 9) in the same way, don’t let people shame you about not being an expert on your own culture. you don’t have to be. did you sign up to be the official record keeper or historian for your nation, or for all of the nations? you didn’t sign up for anything, really. you just happen to be who you are. maybe you speak your nation’s language, maybe you don’t. maybe you stephen graham jones “letter to a just-starting-out indian writer” 127 grew up on the reservation, maybe you didn’t. maybe your blood’s at some level the government prefers, maybe it isn’t. maybe your nation signed a treaty back when, maybe it didn’t. maybe your cheekbones or your hair are what somebody wants to call ‘wrong.’ the people who care about that? they’re the ones who want to put up a higher fence around whatever country club they’re already in. trying to meet their criteria, then, it’s asking to be let inside, so you can keep others out. try try try not to start playing that game on the page. yes, if we all still had our language, that would be all right. it wouldn’t be bad to, you know, have all our own land back either. yes, things have been stolen and yes we need to hold onto things, and how you feel about that will serve as fuel for your words, definitely. just be wary of ever allowing yourself to think that your “indian experience” matters any less than any other indian’s experience, or any other model of “indian experience.” that creates hierarchies, which leads to the authenticity shuffle, which is an ugly, ugly dance to do for all the people who really want us to do it. us doing that dance, it keeps us looking at each other, not the world. 10) don’t have a checklist to address in your writing. yes, have a social agenda, a list of grievances. pissed off is far and away the best place to write from. if you don’t have an axe to grind, you don’t need to sharpen it with your words. always keep that axe close at hand. but don’t let it reduce your writing to thinly-disguised reform. the real reform, it’s that you, who are supposed to be invisible, who’s supposed to just be a silhouette on a t-shirt, a painting in a motel, a design on a blanket, you have a voice, you can speak, you can make wonderful challenging art. and remember that it’s always about the art. if it starts to be about you and your ‘identity’ or any of that, then people aren’t engaging your words on the page, they’re looking up between every sentence, for you. write better, then. make them unable to look up. 11) step on everybody’s toes in the room, always. chances are you’re young, can outrun whoever takes offense. but some of those old cats are still pretty fast, too, so be ready to fight as well. 12) step on form’s toes. just be prepared for people wanting to read this innovation as a callback to the oral tradition or an appeal to a different aesthetic. unless that’s true—and i’ve transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 128 never known it to be—please don’t ratify that. but don’t speak against it either, as you’ll be protesting too loudly, and people will nod, say behind their hands, “look, the indian thinks she’s trying to be modern, but really she’s still ancient.” ‘ancient’ is where the world wants us to be. ancient things are buried in the past, ancient things belong in museums. you’re doing new things on the page. just keep doing them. 13) you don’t have to be able to define what an indian is in order to write “indian.” putting a definition on us, that’s playing their game, that’s submitting to being an entry in an encyclopedia. that’s saying yes, you drew the boundaries well, i will live just in this little block of text. instead, just, you know, write. if you are indian, whatever “indian” might be, then whatever you do, that’s indian as well. you can’t not do it. it only messes your writing up to try to adopt a persona or put on a headdress to write. when you do that, your voice will probably get all noble and stoic, and then, yes, you may as well be falling dead off the back of a horse. where you’ll land will be a john wayne movie. and that’s a bad place for an indian to have to spend forever. it’s a bad place for an indian to even spend ten minutes. 14) you don’t have to answer who are you writing for? but it is a good question to keep in mind. another good question: who are you writing against? 15) your writing doesn’t have to be ‘responsible’ as regards representation or culture or any of that. that’s not part of your charge as a writer. your charge as a writer, it’s to be sincere, whether you’re writing about six-armed martians or your uncle that time he said he could change the brakes with a blindfold on. any art that tries to be responsible, it stops being art. art isn’t responsible. art challenges, art breaks things, art leaves before the tab’s been paid. and hopefully it does some good as well. hopefully it breaks the right things more often than it breaks the wrong things. but sometimes you just have to break everything, too. 16) i don’t know what to call this exactly, but when you meet somebody who’s into a certain type of music, say, then you spend the first little bit of discussion establishing your bonafides, don’t you? sure, i know zep, who doesn’t, but let’s burrow down in the garage of 1978 some, be sure we’re each actually committed to this. same thing happens when you’re from a stephen graham jones “letter to a just-starting-out indian writer” 129 certain region, or when you grew up without money, or when you play basketball or hunt or used to cheerlead or any of that. it’s natural. it’s how we judge whether you’re worth talking to on this subject. it’s how we navigate tastes, so as to avoid blunders later on. all of which is good and fine and unavoidable. but please note that this is happening in american indian writing more and more, where the first little bit of a piece isn’t the writer telling the story, but the writer establishing he or she’s really indian, by showcasing “expected indian things,” exhibits 1 through 8. this is often cleverly disguised—until you start noticing it. and it seems benign. it’s not. what it is is submitting to the process of legitimization. it’s taking a blood quantum test on the page. it’s having to ‘prove’ ourselves. it’s asking the audience to please now turn to the author photograph, to see if this is a real true indian or not. and, at that point? you’re already losing. instead just assume the indianness. of everything. overwrite the world with us. because we are everywhere. we’re in the soil, yes, but we’re in the future too. insist upon that. 17) please please please let there be bad indians? the cruelest form of essentialism is that which we lay on ourselves. and it’s our knee-jerk response, too. have the indians be the heroes? sure, of course. if it feels like resistance, it must be resistance. but if we’re always the good guys—which, in indian stories often translates out to ‘victim,’ as being the hero in a trauma drama isn’t really the same as putting on a superhero cape and saving the day—then we may as well sign up to be noble as well. and understand that us being the bad guys sometimes, that means that somebody who’s not indian might be a good guy. granted, your writing might not be as simple as ‘good guys vs. bad guys.’ but at some level, that’s always exactly what it is. never mind that you used up all your grey crayons drawing this situation out, and stole your kids’ grey crayons too. yes, steal back the comic narrative if you can do it honestly—steal back everything you can, then put it in a pile and burn it—but your writing, if it’s sincere, then it’s going to go where it goes, too. your job as a writer of real words, it’s to follow those words, these characters, and to render them so real and so true that the reader forgets she’s reading about these supposedly exotic “indians” with all these complicated, ‘tragic’ issues, and starts instead just reading about people. gerald vizenor says that being indian is an act of the imagination. i’ve always been drawn to that, but until writing all this out, i don’t think i ever really understood it. i’m starting to, though. it’s not exclusively an act transmotion vol 2, nos 1&2 (2016) 130 of the imagination on our part, but on the readers’. through our words, our art, we infect the world with not what we are—we’re not a ‘what’—but with who we are. microsoft word proof.docx transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 1 consuming, incarcerating, and “transmoting” misery: border practice in vizenor’s bearheart and jones’s the fast red road1 cathy covell waegner drawing on gerald vizenor’s complex notion of “transmotion” and concepts from carceral theory, an intertextual reading of two rich debut novels by first and second-generation postmodern native writers, namely gerald vizenor’s seminal bearheart: the heirship chronicles (1990; first published in 1978 as darkness in saint louis bearheart) and stephen graham jones’s the fast red road: a plainsong (2000), reveals systemic miseries and strategies for combating them. in the two novels, brutal imagery and experience of cannibalization, enclosure, and displacement menace the native protagonists, but, paradoxically, these strong images also offer modes of resourceful and imaginative action—for my purposes here particularly at borders: territorial, historical, and ethnic—which enable totemic laughter and viable native “survivance,” to use vizenor’s own much-quoted term. in bearheart, the invasion by authorities of a sacred anishinaabe venue of cedar trees at what is now the us/canadian border jumpstarts a perilous journey by cross-ethnic native pilgrims south and west to the states carved out of former mexican territory. desperate misery, sexual violation, and devouring of all types reign in the post-apocalyptic landscape as the thirteen pilgrims are eliminated one by one in a novelistic instrumentalization and challenge of the infamous “ten little indians” ditty. the journey climaxes in enslavement and inquisition in the palace of the governors in santa fe, the adobe building constructed in 1610 for the first spanish governor of the colonial area, which has flown a sequence of national flags as probably the oldest public building still in use in the americas. in vizenor’s novel, five hundred years of conquest and oppression in the new world threaten to repeat themselves. in the fast red road, the characters voraciously consume drugs, alcohol, diverse products of popular culture, even “beef-fed-beef” and (hallucinated?) body parts. the young man of indeterminate indigeneity appropriately named pidgin and other characters are constantly imprisoned in trailers, bathroom stalls, bedrooms, bomb shelters, or padded cells. pidgin invariably loses grotesque bets he is drawn into, an ironic riff in the novel being “the indian always loses.” in his dizzying zigzag journey back and forth across the southwest, particularly cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 2 crossing repeatedly the border between texas and new mexico, pidgin heads “towards the fugitive myth of old mexico” (44) to find the hideout of the “strange outlaws” (319) in a sepiatone photo, among others the mysterious “mexican paiute” and pidgin’s dead but frequently re-embodied mother, named marina trigo, the outlaws’ “indian princess” (90). pidgin passes through actual and virtual sites significant for the native history of oppression and achievement, thus having the opportunity to draw strength from his ethnic past and to break out of the constraints that hinder and haunt him. recent carceral theory tells us that the mapping of imprisonment must include a differentiated study of practice as well as of enclosed space and enforced borders. the border crossing in the two books at hand enfolds centuries of efforts to separate and eventually eliminate indigenous people, as well as discriminatory practice based on dangerously fixed stereotypes, demarcation of ethnic boundaries, and binary “terminal creeds” that gerald vizenor has critiqued in his oeuvre. pidgin’s miserable but epiphanic realization in yet another ‘win-orlose’ trap that he “was consumed” (153) reverberates on levels of imagery, narrative strategy, historical figuration, and imaginative protest in a synergetic analysis of the two experimental and engagé novels.2 the legitimacy of such an analysis is perhaps supported by jones’s remarks in a newly published interview, in which he emphasizes that he has long venerated vizenor as his “hero of heroes”; when attempting to publish his first novel, jones dedicated it to vizenor: “then [the publisher] got back and said, ‘hey, look, gerald vizenor is blurbing this!’ because he was my hero of heroes, you know, i had to sneak in and change the dedication away from him because i thought that looked too much like i was trying to lure him in or something, when really i was just trying to impress him, i guess. i still am, i suppose” (“observations” 46-47). jones has, however, clearly pointed out generational differences; in his address to nals 2016, published in transmotion 2 (1-2) 2016, he advises a “just-starting-out indian writer” not to feel obliged to repeat the themes and approaches of the “native american renaissance” from the late 1960s 80s: “you’re not resisting the invisibility that comes from colonial myth-making so much as you’re resisting the voicelessness that comes from commodification” (“letter” 124). thus the fast red road, published more than two decades after bearheart, places more explicit emphasis on the native as commodity, ‘media-tivized’ in film, television, popular song, and advertisement or logo. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 3 although both authors and their wide-ranging canons resist easy classification, these two novels bear strong postmodern thrusts with their dark playfulness, narrative inventiveness, and genre mixture. vizenor (anishinaabe, white earth nation) overtly indigenizes the postmodern mode in his applications of “trickster discourse,” the “trickster” being both a version of naanabozho, the disrupting, liberating “woodland trickster” of oral native tale-telling (narrative chance 192) and a sophisticated narrative strategy: “the trickster is a chance, a comic holotrope in a postmodern language game that uncovers the distinctions and ironies between narrative voices” (192); combined, these two applications project a “comic tribal world view” (191).3 in the first scholarly volume devoted to jones’s works, the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion (2016), editor and chapter-author billy j. stratton reveals jones’s novel to be a “loosely based counterpart” to thomas pynchon’s postmodern ‘classic,’ the crying of lot 49 with its ironic quest and conspiracies, “intersections of chance events,” radical intertextuality, and parodic humor, which jones (blackfeet) “indigenizes” through his crossblood characters and native reterritorialization (stratton 94-95).4 a. robert lee’s contribution to the mediating indianness volume (2015) has elegantly argued in favor of calling much of jones’s canon “native postmodern” (e.g. 73)—as well as vizenor’s—because of its “re-mediation of [native] past into present” (86) and such features as “time-fold and overlap of voice,” often with “storytelling whose native implication takes on added, not less, strength from its postmodern styling” (lee 78, 82). in stratton’s dialogic interview with jones, referenced above, in the 2016 fictions volume, jones isolates a productive “uncertainty” (“observations” 56) as the guiding feature of postmodernism: “we always know literature is a construct, so we can never trust it. i do believe in that: i think stories are constructs. what else could they be? but just like in math, if you multiply two negatives, you get a positive. i think in fiction, on the page, if you multiply two lies, you can get a truth” (56). in both novels, this productive “uncertainty” is profitably exacerbated by the narratorial preference for porous borders over fixed boundaries with regard to characters’ ethnic identities, time frames, narrating voices, genre choices, and objects of satirical treatment.5 after a discussion of relevant concepts of incarceration in connection with border practice, i will consider five venues of comparison between the two novels, analyzing them in the light of the thematic complex of consumption, imprisonment, and border transgression, finally relating them to gerald vizenor’s evolving notion of “transmotion.” the comparative cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 4 venues bear these labels: “cedar circus and trailer amid bomb shelters: sanctuary and entrapment”; “clovis: from origin to border”; “governors’ palace in santa fe and horrorshow buffet: 500 years revisited”; “public space of interstate and rodeo: cannibals and clowns”; “wounded knee: does ‘the indian always lose’?” in scott christianson’s historical account of the american carceral system, tellingly titled with liberty for some: 500 years of imprisonment in america, he traces the way jails have served to enforce the practices of cross-ethnic or gender bondage and the authority of euroamerican masters or lawmakers. as an early instance, during the massachusetts standing council’s 1636-37 war of dominance over the pequots, the puritans held a pequot ally, chaussop, in boston’s prison, then removed him to castle island for a lifetime sentence of slavery (40). christianson reminds us that “colonial america had more jails than public schools or hospitals” (60), a priority that supported the legalized dispossession of native lands and the lucrative global economic system based on slavery. the development of the modern prison system, which michel foucault’s influential study discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (1975) sets forth as emerging in the late 17th-century, arose from—among other developments like the reduction of corporal punishment as public spectacle—the urge to draw a strict border between transgressors and the society at large through close surveillance; in general the undesirable offenders were the hegemonically disadvantaged. foucault’s accompanying theory of “heterotopias” draws attention to “counter-sites” that simultaneously represent, contest, and invert “other real sites” in a culture (“of other spaces” 24); particularly his “heterotopias of deviation” (25) such as prisons and asylums underline the porousness of the thick walls encircling the inmates: “heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable” (26). the agency, albeit severely limited, of the oft subaltern prisoners, and subtle ways they can take advantage of that porousness has moved into the focus of recent carceral theory. in her 2015 study carceral geography: spaces and practices of incarceration, dominique moran stresses “embodied practice and perception” on the part of the prisoner to analyze “the intertwinings of self and [prison] landscape” and the “performance [of these intertwinings] via everyday practices such as walking and visualizing” (130). such “embodied practice and perception” thrive in liminal or intermediary spaces like the prison visiting room, or “transcarceral” events such as home furloughs, or even “mobile” transcarceral events like transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 5 transportation to and from the prison and electronic monitoring (93). the carceral experience inscribes itself on the bodies of the prisoners as stigmas that extend beyond the actual period of imprisonment; one of moran’s examples is the “blank ‘yard face’” (100) that might have functioned during the actual time in prison as an expression of concealed aggression, fear, or resignation. the blank expression can also cover up a confusion about ‘inside’ vs. ‘outside’; incarcerees use the idiom ‘on the inside,’ although they are ‘on the outside’ of normative society. moran refines the notion of the mutual interpenetration of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ in her understanding of “the contested nature of the prison boundary” in “bordering practices” related to the prisoner as a legal entity, for example “legal status, disenfranchisement, and restriction of citizenship” (102, emphasis in original).6 jennifer turner suggests that the dialectical inside/outside axis has been complicated by the historical transition from visible to invisible modes of penal punishment in which the connective “interface” (for example, visiting areas or encounters with guards as spaces of exchange for legal and illegal goods, 8) plays an increasingly complex role, while simultaneously the ubiquitous appearance of penality in film and television has provided a meta-level of high visibility (2). furthermore, turner pays attention to the entanglements of the temporal ramifications of incarceration with the spatial: in the prisoners’ perception, “on the ‘outside’ the world progresses—technology develops, children age—but on the ‘inside’ there are connotations of time standing still, a lack of progress, or even backwardness” (12). for prisoners with life sentences or, by extension, for ethnic groups that might perceive themselves as entrapped in ghettos or reservations, the absence of temporal limitedness increases the strength of the bars and the taint enclosing the ‘inside’ prison environment, despite the presence of interstices with the ‘outside.’ the social, political, and even economic determination of the border between ethnic transgressors and the dominant society has been well documented in the punitive turn: new approaches to race and incarceration (2013), particularly with regard to the high numbers of prisoners of ethnicity, especially african american prisoners, in the united states. the volume traces the historical path from the rise of the highly profitable international slave trade to (repeated) trends in disproportional incarceration of african americans that the book views as a contemporary form of forced bondage, legally sustained. marlon b. ross describes the volume as focusing on the “macro-narrative of the institutional, discursive, and historical development of the prison as an apparatus of state power or dominant ideology” (qtd in mcdowell, et al. cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 6 “introduction” 15). in his contribution to the volume ross points out that, as the editors put it, the prison has become a “cultural commodity, the imagery of which is marketed for mass consumption” (mcdowell, et al. 4). mass media traditionally played an influential role in propagating a “carceral divide”: “the scripts of prison dramas—loaded with a history of class, gender, and racial biases—inevitably insist on alien insiders (the imprisoned abnormal) versus familiar outsiders (we the normal)” (ross 241-42). however, a literary tradition deconstructs the ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ division; ‘chief bromden’ as the narrative touchstone in ken kesey’s 1962 novel one flew over the cuckoo’s nest set in a heterotopic, imprisoning asylum is a prime example.7 ross claims that the ever increasing presence of a differentiated “carceral imaginary” in literature, film, and television is currently having the effect of lending fluidity to the barrier, moving toward a recognition that the imprisoned and the ‘free’ possess “a common culture across and despite the carceral divide” (258). a 19th-century incarceral strategy particularly directed toward subduing resistance by native american peoples to westward colonizing expansion involved the shipping of native ‘renegades’ to military forts on the east coast, removing them from hotspots of confrontation and imprisoning them closer to administrative power centers. black hawk (sauk) and other war leaders of the “british band” were incarcerated in “fortress monroe” in hampton/virginia after their defeat in the 1832 so-called black hawk war centered in what is now illinois.8 fort marion in st. augustine/florida was utilized for three waves of imprisonment: in 1837 osceola and other fighters and family members in the second seminole war;9 in 1875-78 plains captives from the red river wars—72 arapaho, caddo, cheyenne, comanche, kiowa people; 1886-87 more than 490 apaches from the present-day state of arizona, many belonging to geronimo’s chiricuhua band. especially for the latter two groups from the west, disorientation and illness in a new and debilitating climate, after the traumatic transcarceral transport in fetters or with train windows nailed shut, claimed many of the prisoners’ lives. the plains warriors were supervised by richard henry pratt, who had engaged in crushing native rebellion in the west in 1867-75, including fighting with african american ‘buffalo soldiers.’ paradoxically, the captives’ removal to and isolation in a physical heterotopia was gradually intended to serve the purposes of educative assimilation. pratt thus encouraged the two-way porousness of the prison walls, inviting educators to teach literacy classes in the fort and encouraging the prisoners to take on paid-labor tasks in the vicinity of st. augustine and tout handcrafted artifacts in the town, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 7 including their precious “ledger drawings,” which i will refer to later when presenting vizenor’s “transmotion” theory.10 for pratt, the logical extension of this ‘pedagogical’ incarceration was the establishment of boarding schools for native children, and he actively solicited boys and girls from reservations in the west to attend his now infamous carlisle indian industrial school founded in pennsylvania in 1879, yet another institutional heterotopia designed to re-form indigenous people. indeed, pratt’s illogical and pernicious watchword distinctly announced a veritable capital punishment: “kill the indian in him and save the man.”11 we can view the permeability of the walls of seaside forts and the boarding schools as being imposed programmatically by the hegemonic surveiller-practitioners, placing the indigenous inmates in the quandary of how to negotiate this porosity in ways which could allow them worthy transcultural development in identity and community. drawing on homi k. bhabha’s potent concept of a porous and liminal “third space” at the interstices of colliding cultures, kevin bruyneel (the third space of sovereignty, 2007)12 bases his recommendation for the postcolonial politics of u.s.-indigenous relations on an understanding of boundaries between national and indigenous sovereignties as productively fuzzy; despite the settler state’s historical attempts to isolate and control native american nations on sharply determined reservations, contemporary native americans can call for and implement practices of sovereignty that work against strict binary distinctions on both spatial and temporal axes: “in resistance, indigenous postcolonial politics seeks to resignify settler-state boundaries as the domain of subaltern, anticolonial activity rather than as sites of connection and separation between seamlessly bounded states, people, structures, and histories” (20, my emphasis). i will argue that the concept of transmotion supports just such a dynamic resistance to binary thinking and politics, thinking that promotes a battle of sovereignties and containment— including control of the practices and directions of the leaks in that containment—of groups and ideas considered threatening or undesirable by those wielding power. patrick wolfe’s new warning, however, in the settler complex: recuperating binarism in colonial studies (2016) needs to be taken into account: a warning that deep binary distinctions are merely camouflaged by society’s “recurrent cycle of inducements” offered to indigenous individuals and groups to break down the walls of enclosure, inducements that in fact seek “to neutralize the native alternative” (5). nonetheless, as i hope to show, the transmotive hoist of the two novels at hand cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 8 is foregrounded and counters the potential of defeat programmed into a head-on confrontation between binary opponents with unequal power quotients. my first comparative venue in the two novels, vizenor’s “cedar circus” and jones’s “trailer amid bomb shelters,” concentrates on the slippage between protective sanctuary and consuming entrapment. bearheart begins with an urgently lyrical preface, a “letter to the reader,” in which the narrator st. louis bearheart recapitulates his abusive indian boarding school past in minnesota. during his questionable schooling following pratt’s model of forced assimilation through ‘educative’ isolation from native home-culture, bearheart seems to have spent more time locked in dark closets than in the classroom, cruelly “chained at night to a stone in the cowshed” (viii).13 to counter this, he heightened his anishinaabe clan’s totemic association with the bear, growling and laughing as—not “like”14—a bear. in the “letter to the reader,” the first-person singular “i” of the narrative voice is intermixed with a tribal “we,” fusing the otherwise stark switch to the narrative proper, which recounts bearheart’s “heirship” from the four generations of human-bear ancestors all named “proude cedarfair.” the cedarfairs and their families live in a circle of ancient cedar trees in the headlands of the mississippi river situated in a tribal pre-us/canadian-border territory. vizenor telescopes past, present, and future in the struggle of the cedarfairs to maintain and protect their ceremonial sanctuary from early missionaries, national and state governments, later from “treekillers” (7) in general, and finally unscrupulous authorities seeking basic fuel in the chaotic landscape of a dystopian north america that has exhausted all other natural resources. to escape from the authorities’ claiming the trees in the cedar refuge at all costs, including their setting fire to the cedarfairs’ cabin with the native family supposedly entrapped within, crossblood fourth proude and his wife rosina trick these murderous consumers and begin a quest to locate the transcendent “fourth world” in which “evil spirits are outwitted in the secret languages of animals and birds” (5). louis owens’ perceptive understanding of vizenor’s employment of the “metaphors” of the “mixedblood and the trickster” is still incisive. the mongrel-hybrid trickster with his “harsh laughter” is a “central and unifying figure in vizenor’s art,” an “imaginative weapon,” that seeks “to shatter static certainties,” to “overturn all laws, governments, social conventions,” a trope that “soars to freedom in avian dreams and acrobatic outrage” (other destinies 225-227).15 granted, a spectrum of manifestations of the “tricker” paradigm is embedded in the novel, from the evil gambler (to be mentioned below) to owens’ paragon, mixedblood shaman fourth proude, who transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 9 is “transcendent in [his] goodness, wholeness, wisdom and courage” (“‘ecstatic strategies’” 141). fourth proude and rosina liberate themselves from their now lethal homespace through trickery; the slide between refuge and entrapment is also emphasized in jones’s the fast red road in pidgin’s trailer home encircled by bomb shelters rented out to random sojourners. pidgin’s mother marina died right before his birth and, following his father cline’s death by suicide in the adjacent shed, pidgin’s uncle birdfinger, his father’s twin, moves into the trailer and appropriates both the space and pidgin himself, along with having claimed marina’s preference. the adolescent pidgin temporarily escapes for seven years, but finds himself back in the wretched, foul-smelling trailer when he returns for the interment of his father’s corpse, which has been used in scientific experiments for a decade. the majestic marijuana plant that has grown through the roof of the trailer, the fast-food trash, and the countless empty beer cans attest to the consumption of drugs, unhealthy food, and alcohol that lame the inhabitants of the trailer. in the nearby field is buried an unlikely landlocked submarine, pointedly named the uss tommyhawk, in which pidgin seeks refuge before returning to the trailer and in which he later finds himself imprisoned for days unable to open the hatch, desperately “licking wetness off relict fiberglass” (56). it is in one of the bomb shelters that a traveling salesman named litmus jones gives pidgin the sepia photograph showing pidgin’s parents with their band of 1970s postal outlaws posed in front of the adobe wall of their hideout. pidgin hopes to locate this elusive hideout, which we could call the “cedar circus” of his heritage and which might provide a more satisfying psychological sanctuary than the trailer home of devouring and death. as an overall pattern, the colonial exploiters and settlers, whom wolfe rightly insists on calling invaders,16 disrespected the spatial territories, intruding upon the ‘sanctuaries’ of native american groups, and subsequently aimed to enclose, often at a distant location, these groups, fixing them spatially, temporally, legally, and identitarially in what the settlers saw as—for themselves—safe enclaves. through the protagonists’ peripatetic, back-and-forth experiencing of safe spaces and traps, vizenor and jones strikingly demonstrate the two-way, negative and positive slippage between sanctuaries and prisons. despite the overarching historical pattern of the colonizing consumption of native land, food sources, and environmental resources, fourth proude (and his narratorial inventor bearheart) and to a certain extent pidgin can stand for the cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 10 agency of native individuals and groupings to instrumentalize this slippage in their favor as they seek or create their “cedar circuses.” the town of clovis provides a second comparative venue. during their pilgrimage to the ancient cultures of what is now the american southwest, the pilgrims of bearheart join a socalled freedom train in new liberty, oklahoma, traveling to santa fe, “the place where the new nation and government would be declared” (218) by dangerously right-wing “whiterulers” (220). when the train with its illegally hoarded fuel crosses the texas-new mexico border near clovis, it passes by impoverished, uprooted migrant hordes wandering west, pursuing the faint shadow of the outdated paradigm of “go west” to seek economic opportunity: “from clovis the freedom train followed the highway where thousands of people were walking” after the failure of the us federal government (220). vizenor’s allusion to clovis recalls the archeological findings near that town in the 1930s documenting the “clovis man,” among the earliest prehistoric indigenes, back to which 80% of north american native peoples can trace their ancestry.17 the distinctive “clovis points” or spearheads, chipped or “knapped” from stone or chert, and fluted, evidence the skill with which the ancient hunters obtained their subsistence from mammoth meat. the bearheart train stops at nearby fort sumner in what was the parched bosque redondo reservation where, as vizenor tells us, 8,000 tribal people were incarcerated for five years, with kit carson having forced “the tribes on the long walk to bosque redondo where thousands died” (220). the juxtaposition of post-apocalyptic, displaced, walking persons with the southwestern native ‘trail of tears’ against the background of the nomadic prehistoric hunters breathtakingly creates, within a few sentences, a narrative cross-section of the past and future history of mankind as one of developing oppression with crescendos of violence. this impression is reinforced when the freedom train turns out to be an unconscionable trap to import slaves into the revitalized government seat in santa fe: “‘we have become prisoners on a freedom train,’ proude said while he pulled and chipped at the siding in an effort to make an escape hole” (222), the image of “chipping” linking back to the ancient clovis hunters’ craft. the cedar pilgrims’ story moreover exposes the constructedness of the imposed geographical borders, which cut up the indigenous homelands into straight-sided federal states and in doing so displaced native peoples. jones chooses clovis/new mexico as the main setting of his novel. the protagonists, a number of whom are based in clovis, constantly arrive in and leave the town; their journeys transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 11 north to utah, east to texas, west to the pueblo areas, for instance, always return to the node of clovis. the town is presented on one diegetic level as a center of stereotypical “redneck” consumption with its sleazy bars or restaurants such as “the gorge” and a grocery store cum drug-dealing center called “squanto’s,” the customers cruising along the main street in pick-up trucks, radios blaring western/country evergreens. pidgin searches for the refuge of his parents’ “goliard”18 band in his hometown of clovis, but it seems to be an unlikely venue for the formation of a 1970s activist, post-office robbing band that writes medieval poems signed with an indigenous logo as graffiti on public restroom walls. while looking for the clandestine goliard hideaway, pidgin damns stifling clovis for being geographically and culturally nada, and thus the source of his own insecurities: “but there was nowhere, there was clovis” (59). the narrative contrasts pidgin’s underselling of clovis with the venue’s archeological importance. one of the law-breaking goliards, the native “skunkheaded” larry (147), whose tribal identification seems to be laguna (90), at other times acoma (e.g. 127), is currently called atticus wean and owns a large construction company in clovis. now an economic opportunist, he attempts to sell, for the highest immediate price, the gigantic snail fossils that his bulldozers uncover. yet this devious “skunk” larry is also a masterful tale-teller, recounting a tribal myth that references the clovis man crafting arrows with “knapped” points. larry describes how the indigenous “knapping man” (249) wants to free his people from the darkness of a solar eclipse, shooting an arrow that “leaves a hole of light in the sky” (249). this strong image weaves the indigenous strands of the novel with the goliard outlaw band, who are associated in the narrative with such apocalyptic typology as a glowing disc of atmospheric light, and the ‘clovis comet impact theory’ that has given rise to such science fiction novels as aliens in clovis (2004). narrow-sighted pidgin does not realize that clovis, for him the “unemerald city” (269) of childhood frustration and pain, is not a dead-end dungeon, but rather hovers in the liminal space between worlds and borders. light can be cast on pidgin’s discomfort in clovis by considering the affective component of imprisonment, including the relationship of the prisoner and the prison with its dialectic between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ addressed by moran and turner. society’s valuation that those ‘on the inside’ of the prison are ‘outsiders’ seeps through the porous walls of the heterotopia to the inside—along with articles of consumption, notably drugs (“displacing criminal bodies” 11)—and adds to the prisoner’s disorientation. for native americans, not only cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 12 the settler and military revenge of open warfare but also painful physical displacement—which vizenor evokes with the references to fort sumner and bosque redondo—as a solution to native resistance to land-grabbing and destruction of environmental resources such as the buffalo transitioned to less visibly punitive but confounding strategies like the land allotments and boarding schools. unsure of his ethnic, family, and community filiations, pidgin has internalized the inside/outside disorientation and, at one level, keeps returning to clovis, for him a dystopian and simulated hometown, in a form of self-punishment, not cognizant of his deeper connections to the ancient site; after a nightmare ride as a hitchhiker, pidgin leaps out and “stumbled from mile marker to mile marker to home, to clovis (130), the “land of disenchantment, the greatest medicine show on earth” (269). pidgin is not bodily present at the clovis “horrorshow buffet” (17) that opens the fast red road and that i am matching with the governors’ palace in santa fe in bearheart. both venues incorporate the five hundred years marked by the controversial 1992 quincentennial. the misnamed “freedom train” brings vizenor’s starving pilgrims to the historic governors’ palace in santa fe, where they are enslaved by the white leaders striving to replicate post-columbus imperial history; those dangerously ambitious leaders claim: “four hundred years after santa fe was founded we are going back like the first governors and captain generals to build an empire in the new world… to declare a new nation from the old ruins” (219, vizenor’s ellipsis). to eliminate incipient transgressive behavior, these new “captain generals” interrogate the pilgrims one by one, physically and psychologically torturing them, slicing off ears, pulling out eyeballs, asserting betrayal of one pilgrim by another. a climax of ingenious transmotion—as we will see—enables their escape, ushered in by the seven “clown crows” and encouraged by the intake of a native halogenic plant drink: in a spectacular exemplum of visualizing the intertwining of “the incarcerated self and landscape” (carceral geographies 130), the group imaginatively moves back through the many generations of the users of the palace in a swirl of time and space to reveal a formerly used fireplace and smoke hole, through which all of the surviving cedar pilgrims but one escape. in jones’s novel fragments of the quincentennial constantly resurface. the grotesque opening chapter of the fast red road portrays ravenous travelers engorging at an all-you-caneat buffet in clovis. only two of them realize, however, that the cuts of meat are human, for instance a “tawny forearm” with the word “punta” tattooed on it, or, at second narrative glance, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 13 the word “pinta,” the name of one of columbus’s three original ships (16). this beginning chapter with its “horrorshow buffet” (17) of cannibalization as well as the final chapter in the book are narrated largely from the third-person point of view of litmus jones, the white vacuumcleaner salesman who, oddly enough, of all characters most effectively engages in ethnic practices, performing a sweat lodge ceremony, drawing pictograms, winning dog-fight bets, leaving a red “coup” handprint on pidgin’s shoulder, and winning a blues contest. in a commentary on the fast red road, author jones has written that the character litmus jones “was getting to kind of be the puck [in the novel]” (faster, redder road 7), a jester-trickster figure who significantly propels the narrative and initiates transformations and insights.19 the (crossblood) natives in the novel, in contrast, avoid answering the ubiquitous question “what tribe are you?” (e.g. 138), or proffer contradictory responses in different contexts.20 in the buffet scene, “five hundred years of history were slipping away” (17) for litmus jones, who locks eyes across the meat troughs with an old shoshone man, seth, while the latter has just forked the “tawny forearm” onto his plate; but it is “pasty-faced” (20) litmus jones who re-envisages the figurative consumption of the ‘new world’ natives by columbus and the following waves of european colonizers. litmus jones mouths “not again, please, not again” (17), whereas seth relives a wartime survival event 34 years previously in which he traumatically ate “human flesh in bite-sized portions” (17)—while trapped in that now landlocked submarine tommyhawk where “man ate man ate man, according to rank” (280). furthermore, it is traveling salesman jones, not pidgin, who joins the expert car-stealer, native charlie ward, wheeling out of the novel in pidgin’s dubious inheritance, the beloved ford thunderbird that belonged to pidgin’s deceased father cline and was the location of cline’s suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. the parodic surfacing of limbs of the columbus crew is a striking element in author jones’s project of, as stratton puts it in the title of his 2016 book-article, “reterritorializing the american west,” to free it from the euroamerican conqueror/settler overlay of what vizenor calls “manifest manners,”21 “the continuance of the surveillance and domination of the tribes in literature” (manifest manners 4), in discourses that prioritize european perspectives of dominance, such as, in stratton’s argument, the binary between european civilization and native savagery (“‘for he needed no horse’” 92). columbus’s presumption, as recorded in his writings, of cannibalism being practiced by the native caribe people is referenced in author jones’s horrific smorgasbord and then dramatically reversed in litmus jones’s ‘hallucination’ to cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 14 imply the colonizers’ ‘cannibalism’ of native cultures, part and parcel of the conquering and settling of the american continent to fulfill the supremacist political ideology of manifest destiny. stratton perceptively takes his reading of the cannibalism image a step farther, seeing that “the colonial narratives of discovery and conquest [that led to] the theft of land, to the warfare and massacres that inescapably form the backdrop to american frontier history and the west [were] fed back to native people as a hegemonic form of sustenance” (93-94). shoshone seth’s participation in world war ii, probably as a code talker (17), and the trauma of the trapped crew could not begin to change the fixed hierarchies and internalized prejudices of the participants after the soldiers “filed [back] into this [unchanged] world through a hole,” the submarine hatch (280). of the many ‘horror shows’ in both novels, the abject events taking place in vizenor’s bearheart on the freeways “where millions of lost souls were walking to nowhere” (98), might remain most vivid in the mind’s eye of the reader; i pair these interstates with the public space of the rodeo in the fast red road, both peopled with cannibals and clowns. the actions “walking and visualizing” that theorist moran suggests as ways to transcend the boundaries of incarceration become a visceral free-for-all on the freeways in vizenor’s novel as a plethora of deformed humans, body parts eaten away by toxic rain or congenitally missing because of chemically poisoned nutrition, wander along the interstates; a group of them attacks and gnaws one of the pilgrims to death. in other cases, victims are routinely but viciously murdered and cut swiftly into pieces, their flesh devoured or bartered. the “witch hunt” restaurant captures women it marks out as witches, and, after torturing them and hanging them from the rafters, sells their ground-up bodies in takeaway orders. the cannibalistic wiindigoo figure of anishinaabe oral telling appears to have become ‘everyman.’ christopher schedler has developed a convincing reading of bearheart as a strong critique of “wiindigoo sovereignty,” a model of native sovereignty based on “exclusion/assimilation” that vizenor “associates with the cannibalistic consumption of the wiindigoo” (“wiindigoo sovereignty” 41). surely the selfserving and literally blood-oriented human consumption by the interstate stalkers in bearheart denies any form of solidarity or affiliation that is non-binarily “community-mediated and practice-based” (41). in contrast to the brutally exploitative freeway cannibals, the clown figures in vizenor’s novel play a systematically more positive role: the “clown crows” guide and warn the pilgrims, transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 15 not only on the treacherous interstates; the cedar wanderers themselves, many of them with caricatured body figurations such as huge feet, are frequently called “clowns”;22 and the wise pueblo fools, flaunting corn tassles and oversized penises, painted contrastingly for “opposite directions and seasons” (236), brazenly tease the weary pilgrims near the end of the journey and give them the unwelcome advice to travel “backward” (238) or upstream—this propitiously leads the remaining pilgrims, however, to the entry to the fourth world in the ancient pueblo bonito in chaco canyon, an area of high pre-columbian significance. proude appears to recognize it as “the ancient place of vision bears”; “the tribes traveled from here with bears” (241). the impertinent clowns and fools serve to subvert fixed order, using raucous laughter as a key tool. vizenor has asserted the significance of these figures: “the idea is to balance adversity with humor; thus the important function of the clown or fool in tribal cultures” (“gerald vizenor: ojibway/chippewa writer” 168). the rodeo in jones’s the fast red road is only slightly less dangerous than vizenor’s highways. hungry pidgin eats all the leftovers of “beef-fed-beef”—hawked as “double the flavor” (146)—that he finds in the stands as he watches the star attraction end in bloody death for both horse and rider. despite his compulsive gobbling, pidgin is as horrified by the vision of the “solipsistic food chain, self similar at every link” (146) as he is by the gruesome battle in the rodeo ring. his discomfort at having been pursued by taunting heyoka clowns and pinned down by a face-painting woman is increased when he realizes that he himself appears as an incongruous postmodern clown; pidgin is dressed in overly large stolen clothes, his face not painted native style but rather like the hard-rock icon paul stanley with stanley’s signature white face and black star surrounding one eye (162). pidgin has come to the rodeo in the hopes of finding the mexican paiute who exhumed and carried off his father’s corpse, but the ineffectiveness of pidgin’s foolish and erratic behavior prevents him from confronting the paiute. rather than ‘tricking’ others through self-confident laughter, pidgin is himself the butt of others’ scams and mocking; as such he is vulnerable to the assimilative and controlling power of wiindigoo-suction. as jeopardous as the interstate and rodeo are in the two novels, the fifth and final venue of comparison with its double historical resonance is even more chilling: wounded knee. the wounded knee massacre on 29 december 1890 has become the marker in the national imaginary of the closing of the american frontier, the presumed subduing of the native people, cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 16 and the supposed justification of the federal government’s at least two major violations (1877, 1889) of the land settlement agreed upon with the sioux in the 1868 treaty of fort laramie; each violation drew smaller and smaller circles around the sioux nations’ allotted living space.23 second proude cedarfair, the protagonist’s grandfather, was killed at wounded knee in 1973, the time of the american indian movement’s declaration of “a new pantribal political nation” there, for the gratuitous reason, according to the tribal government policeman who relentlessly shot him in the face, chest, and back of the head, that “he would not stop walking toward wounded knee” (14). second proude “fell forward on the stiff prairie grass and moaned his last vision of the bear into death” (14). surely, for many readers the searing iconic pictures of the native people murdered at the historical wounded knee massacre in 1890 come to mind, literally frozen in the december snow in postures of motion as they fell, mowed down by the 7th cavalry’s rifles. i believe that vizenor, with this strong visual image of second proude’s death, wants to both underscore the blatant and inhumane injustice of the federal government’s actions leading up to and during the 19th-century wounded knee massacre and to criticize the american indian movement’s 20th-century strategies, including adherence to the rhetoric of “tragic victimry,” which vizenor has always abjured.24 tribal government officials, depicted as often corrupt and opportunistic, and their police are also castigated in bearheart; it is the tribal chairman himself with the telling name of jordan coward and his “assistants” who light the fire in the cedar circus, the chairman screaming “‘burn those goddamn cowards… burn those cedar savages out of here,’” his face turning “pale from the exhausting pleasure of his evil” (33). surely it is no coincidence that second proude is shot by a tribal policeman, recalling the murder of sitting bull by indian police on 15 december 1890, just days before the first wounded knee. but trickster fourth proude manages to dismantle the association of wounded knee with the end of free-living native americans and to reject the cloak of “tragic victim” through his besting of authorities who seek to eliminate him. he outwits his pursuers, including jordan coward, when he leaves the cedar circus on his ancestral lands in minnesota, and indeed through his connection with the tribal cosmos and a “teasing whistle on the wind” (132)25 he outplays the powerful evil gambler in a central confrontation in the novel in good cheer, iowa. after ceremonial preparation, he manages to enter the fourth world via the “vision window” during the winter solstice and to leave tracks in the snow for rosina to follow. fourth proude is accompanied on his “magical flight” (242) by the fellow pilgrim unawa biwide, “the one who transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 17 resembles a stranger” (first mention 75), who has demonstrated moran’s carceral practices of “walking and visualizing” in preparing for the “flight,” as vizenor/narrator bearheart lyrically recounts: biwide “practiced walking in darkness and listening to escape distances and the sound and direction of the winds” (242). the other pilgrims have fallen prey to the dangers along the way, exacerbated by their own weaknesses of greed, one-sided lust, fear, and adherence to fixed stances detrimental to native vitality, what vizenor calls “terminal creeds,” such as the hegemony of the official written word over tribal orality, essentialist notions of native identity, or belief in an inevitable vanishing of native culture. i have subtitled (with a skeptical question mark) the wounded knee venue with jones’s ironic refrain of “the indian always loses”; jones alternates this with a bawdy version that pidgin, as a native porn-film actor, finds particularly relevant: “the indian always gets it up the ass” (115, 165). the semantically passive form “gets it” is of significance, since pidgin is remarkably passive and indecisive throughout the novel. things happen to him; his momentum is that of inertia, not proaction. he views himself as a cinematic victim: “he could feel it all behind him, pushing him forward, and it was like he was a movie hostage, a damsel tied to the front of a train, the train collision-bound” (139). in an ominous situation pidgin adopts the mask of moran’s incarceral “blank ‘yard face’”: “pidgin looked straight ahead, just waiting, preparing himself for whatever miscarriage was next” (140). his most trenchant action is to pull the trigger on a threatening custer morph, but ironically he shoots the wrong person. at the end of a long chapter in the novel stressing pidgin’s incapacitating inner struggles with its title “pidgin agonistes,” he follows the mexican paiute, who is carrying the remnants of larry’s corpse, to a quonset warehouse in clovis; pidgin discovers that the corpses of all the goliard outlaws are half buried in an expanse of white styrofoam, with a “mummified arm reaching up” (271), restaging one of the photos taken the day after the wounded knee massacre in 1890 with the frozen bodies partially covered by snow. the narrative implies that the paiute locks pidgin in the quonset hut with the appalling scene, in perpetual incarceration. it is difficult to imagine a more graphic narrativization of a life-denying “terminal creed”: pidgin’s consuming obsession with his parents’ past leads him to the fatal statis of a grotesque wounded knee tableau, which, if allowed to have the last word in the novel, could connote the final enclosure of the last free natives, in which pidgin is permanently bound. still, the novel continues on for two more chapters and the mexican paiute, who escapes through a secret trapdoor, carries an enigmatic cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 18 “canvas roll” with him (272), here and at other points in the novel. the reader of the two novels at hand could speculate that this is a ceremonial medicine bundle, like the one that fourth proude carefully keeps by his side and draws strength from throughout his travels until his movement into the transmundane fourth world. by himself pidgin cannot find energy in totemic ritual or in imaginative action or in bear-clown laughter, but through his connections with story-telling atticus wean, ethnic boundary-violating litmus jones, joy-riding charlie ward, and possibly the ritual-staging mexican paiute, he can be viewed as having the potential to do so in a bizarre team, along with vizenor’s narrator bearheart and his protagonist fourth proude cedarfair. vizenor wrote bearheart before he had verbalized his powerful and productively slippery theory of “transmotion,” which encodes border crossing and imagination on a number of levels. i venture to say that writing this novel and subsequent ones, as well as his early volumes of haiku poems, urged him to amalgamate the prongs of his concept of “transmotion.” he describes a genesis of the notion in a 2013 essay titled “native cosmototemic art”: “the shadows [of movement] in native stories and painted scenes give rise to the theory of transmotion, an inspired evolution of natural motion, survivance and memory over time, and a sense of visionary sovereignty” (42, my emphasis). the ledger paintings by the imprisoned plains natives in fort marion on the coast of florida serve in “native cosmototemic art” and elsewhere in vizenor’s writings as exemplary of this combination of movement, vision, and continued native presence,26 as do other cultural products—both material and oral—which encode vital “creases of motion”: “the criteria of transmotion are in the stories of trickster creation, the birch bark documents of the midewiwin, song pictures, beaded patterns, winter counts, painted hides, ledger art, and other creases of motion in virtual cartography” (fugitive poses 178). these material and oral products are listed in chapter 5 of fugitive poses (1989) called “native transmotion,” probably vizenor’s first complete essay on the topic. in that chapter, vizenor assures his readers that vital “creases of motion” do not only manifest themselves in visual, material, and oral art, however; the triad of movement, vision, and continued native presence that appear in oral narration surface in contemporary literature too: “native stories sustain the reason of survivance and traces of transmotion endure in contemporary literature” (184). his term “performative transmotion” (183) implies that the continual practice of reiterating and remixing that triad of movement, vision, and continued presence is what lends it “shared power” (183). authors should be wary of relying on similes transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 19 using “like,” however, which cannot have the transforming and transmotive power of the metaphor: “the literal similes [using ‘like’] are mere comparisons of generic animals and humans, not a wise or tricky perception of native transmutation or aesthetic figuration” (“native american literature, introduction,” n.p.). “motion is a natural human right that is not bound by borders” (fugitive poses 189), vizenor tells us, seeming to refer to all people. but his focus with regard to “motion” is on native “cultural motion” (“literary transmotion” 27) which was curtailed in basic ways by historical removals to bounded areas or by the establishment of ever diminishing reservation spaces. as important as “motion” is in and of itself, in a recent essay titled “literary transmotion: survivance and totemic motion in native american indian art and literature” (2015), vizenor clearly draws the distinction between native “motion” and “transmotion,” the latter of which incorporates an imaginative meta-level: “walking is a natural cultural motion, and walking in a song is visionary transmotion” (27). “aural transmotion” (“native american literature, introduction” n.p.) also emerges in the telling and altered re-telling of a story, a process central to native oral narration: “the stories of native creation and trickster scenes were seldom told in the same way” (“unmissable” 67-68). in the transferral of cultural practices and knowledge into aesthetic, communicable forms such as songs, stories, artwork, poems, or novels, motion thus takes on sharable meaning. i believe we can heuristically although tentatively distinguish between (a) transmotion in literature and (b) literary transmotion: (a) meaningful motion—such as wandering becoming a pilgrimage27—can appear intrinsically within a work of art; (b) transmotion is also reflected in the process of literary creation and genre ‘transgression,’ for instance in the conversion of the framed snapshot of transience in a haiku poem into the nonlinear strategies of a postmodern novel.28 the importance of irony in producing incongruous humor29 is both culturally and literarily of productive significance for vizenor’s native transmotion. irony is an effective tool for countering “the crave of cultural victimry,” which must be “outwitted, ridiculed, and controverted” (“unmissable” 65). “academic, artistic irony” is even specifically protected in the constitution of the white earth nation, which vizenor principally drafted and which was approved by the white earth nation through referendum in november 2013 (although not yet implemented).30 traversing mapped borders is basically motion, but the freedom to traverse these borders, a freedom vizenor often terms “native liberty,”31 is a component of transmotion, and provides cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 20 the basis of “sovereignty” that, as schedler apprehends it, encompasses mobility, affiliation, and community. likewise, the liberty to cross notional lines emerges in transmotion, which deborah madsen epitomizes as “the freedom to move across physical and conceptual boundaries” (“the sovereignty of transmotion in a state of exception” 23). blaeser eloquently champions vizenor for applying this transmotive freedom as a disrupter of “false frames of separation”: literal boundary lines such as international borders across tribal homelands or demarcations between reservations and the rest of the united states; racial barriers encountered by native people, including vizenor’s anishinaabeg ancestors; and the invented breech between reality and imaginative experiences [as well as the boundaries of language] are among the several separations or confinements he investigates in his writing. (“the language of borders, the borders of language in gerald vizenor’s poetry” 1) motion as meaning, the transcendent momentum of motion, the resistance to inertia: vizenor does not shy away from the abstract word “transcendence”32 in his discussions of the creativity, the transformation, the imagination involved in crafting and enabling transmotion. vizenor defines a “native literary aesthetic” as the transmoting, even riskily “pretentious” defiance of imposed boundaries and enclosures, enabling a “mighty turn”: “native literary aesthetic transmutes by imagination the obvious simulations of dominance and closure, and that mighty turn must be shamanic, godly, and pretentious” (vizenor, “native american literature, introduction” n.p.). imagination transmutes the native visionary—both as artist and as figure in artworks— who, like fourth proude, can transport himself through ritual, ceremony, meditation and/or imaginative creation into another, a more free realm and location. through the solidarity of imaginatively rescrolling centuries of prejudicial history (and ceremonially imbibing native drink), vizenor’s pilgrims can transmotionally escape from the misery of their captivity in the governors’ palace of the spanish conquest. in jones’s novel, the apparently aimless driving in a “joy ride” ends in palo duro canyon, where the whispers of spectral horses surround pidgin and charley, transporting pidgin (and the reader) into corporeal awareness of the infamous historical massacre of one thousand native ponies there and working against pidgin’s deracination;33 pidgin’s initiation to the atrocities of palo duro makes him a conceivable (though, as we have seen, ultimately failed) candidate for the transmotive experiences from fugitive to quester or transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 21 shaman, which fourth proude through his immediate native “heirship” has readier—though never easy and automatic—access to. the wisefoolery and convention-cracking of the clowns and tricksters—as well as that of the authors vizenor34 and jones—give them the freedom to critique fixed, dominant attitudes that have driven and sustained colonialist superiority, attitudes challenged in recent writing on the carceral, and to act in transmotional defiance of illegitimate, authoritarian border-guards and energy-sucking cannibals. in jones’s book a stolen pontiac trans am takes on a cartoonlike but transmotive life of its own, defying hundreds of police cars and helicopters, leaping over a roadblock, sliding into a secret entrance to pueblo country, dramatizing the line in a quoted tv script, “get back on that good red road and burn some serious rubber” (258). the scriptwriter’s comment on his paradigm for “burn[ing] some serious rubber” on the “good red road” is telling: “‘they got around,’ he said, ‘the old old indians’” (260). as vizenor’s and jones’s novels so abundantly and complexly demonstrate, the ‘new new indians’ too “get around” in their own vibrant and meaningful ways. notes 1 the original version of this paper, containing numerous visuals, was presented at the american studies association annual meeting in toronto/canada in october 2015; the theme of the conference was “the (re)production of misery and the ways of resistance.” the paper was embedded in a panel organized by dorothea fischer-hornung (heidelberg university) and chaired by gerald torres (cornell university) titled “in/cisions and de/cisions: oppression and resistance in native and latino american border narratives.” 2 the manifold images of incarceration in the two novels could support a fruitful reading of the works as postmodern forms of the “captivity narratives” of early american literature, recently critiqued by stratton in buried in shades of night: contested voices, indian captivity, and the legacy of king philip’s war (2013). 3 the scholarly discussion as to whether the “trickster” in “trickster hermeneutics” can be considered indigenous is summarized valuably in david j. carlson, “trickster hermeneutics and the postindian reader: gerald vizenor's constitutional praxis,” specifically 13-14 and 37 (note 1). 4 stratton’s sagacious chapter titled “‘for he needed no horse’: stephen graham jones’s reterritorialization of the american west in the fast red road” is, as far as i know, together with grace l. dillon’s erudite contribution to the fictions of stephen graham jones volume, “native slipstream: blackfeet physics in the fast red road” (343-356), the first academic treatment of jones’s initial novel. 5 in a conscientiously structured book article, breinig points out the traps involved in labeling bearheart a “satire.” the contradictions manifested in “the multidimensionality of myth and the concept of the grotesque” (98) productively complicate the characters’, author’s and reader’s cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 22 ability “to take a satirical stand against what is destructive on a personal or communal level” (100), although this stand is called for by vizenor’s project. 6 vizenor was intrigued by the complex case of “ishi,” ostensibly the last of his tribe (probably yani), who was imprisoned because of his indefinable legal status and his (to his captors) incomprehensible language: when ishi appeared in oroville, california, at the age of about 50, the sheriff “put the indian in jail not knowing what else to do with him since no one around town could understand his speech or he theirs” (quoted in manifest manners 131). ishi as a bordercrosser embodied worthy survivance despite his unworthy treatment: in vizenor’s words, “ishi came out of the mountains and was invited to a cultural striptease at the centerfold of manifest manners and the histories of dominance; he crossed the scratch line of savagism and civilization with one name, and outlived the photographers” (manifest manners 127). 7 ross does not mention kesey’s one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, but michael greyeyes (“inside the machine: indigeneity, subversion, and the academy”) bases his autobiographical account of seeking liberation within his professional career on a re-telling of bromden’s perceptions and insurgent actions. 8 fort monroe sensationally illustrates a transformation from prison to sanctuary. less than three decades after the virginia military fort served as a prison for black hawk, it became a federal free-space refuge, a heterotopia of protection, for thousands of slaves fleeing from nearby plantations during the civil war years. 9 during seminole leader oseola’s highly publicized incarceration, touted in postcards for the burgeoning florida tourist industry, approximately 19 warriors and family members mysteriously managed to escape from the well-guarded fort. 10 i deal much more thoroughly with the phenomenon of native imprisonment on the east coast in my essay titled “‘digging a hole in the water’: re-functionalizing seaside forts on the ethnic shore” presented at the mesea conference in warsaw in june 2016, with possible publication in the mesea conference volume. the presentation was part of my double panel called “littoral loopholes: palimpsestic trajectories on the ethnic shore.” an important component of the essay was a comparison of pratt’s description of the native prisoners’ attitudes and adjustments to the littoral in comparison to diane glancy’s moving re-imaginings of the plains captives’ alienation and liminality in her fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education (2014). 11 this motto for complete assimilation of native children into mainstream american society is found in an address to the “nineteenth annual conference of charities and correction” in 1892: “…all the indian there is in the race should be dead. kill the indian in him, and save the man” (first paragraph). available online: for example, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/. 12 bruyneel is referencing bhabha’s the location of culture (london: routledge, 1994) with its development of a “third space” approach to literary and cultural productions that opens up “these structures to readings that work against pressure to homogenize or unify representations and identity” (bruyneel xviii-xix); bruyneel states that he “similarly aims to resist the idea that boundaries stand as homogenizing or unifying impositions on identity, agency, and sovereignty” (xix). 13 in the 1978 publication, the introductory chapter is not framed as a “letter to the reader,” but rather bears the title of the book, darkness in saint louis bearheart. the revised (1990) introductory chapter, in addition to taking on the double narrative function of (1) an intrinsic letter to the reader of saint louis bearheart’s manuscript and (2) a letter on a meta-level to the reader of vizenor’s novel, weaves in more “vizenorisms” such as “interior landscapes” (ix) and transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 23 “terminal creeds” (xi); generic “birds” becomes vizenorian-trademark “crows” (e.g. viii) and “mixedbloods” becomes ”crossbloods” (e.g. ix). elizabeth blair’s comparison of the two works unearths other changes, and her close analysis is still very useful. the rest of the novel, the text of saint louis bearheart’s the heirship chronicles: proude cedarfair and the cultural word wars, has not been changed, although it is called cedarfair circus: grave reports from the cultural word wars in the 1978 edition. 14 vizenor takes the stand that a simile with ‘like,’, which tends to compare animals and humans in “a mundane similitude,” is, in contrast to metaphor, rarely transmotive (“native american literature, introduction” n.p.; “ordinary comparative similes” in “unmissable” 63). for further discussion, see my section on transmotion later in this paper. 15 owens bases his delineation on vizenor’s own claim that the “crossblood” is a trope of boundary-crossing strength and survivance, consonant with that of the trickster: “the crossblood, or mixedblood, is a new metaphor, a transitive contradance between communal tribal cultures and those material and urban pretensions that counter conservative traditions. the crossblood wavers in myths and autobiographies; we move between reservations and cities, the stories of the cranes with a trickster signature” (interior landscapes 262-263). 16 in the settler complex (2016), the late patrick wolfe reiterates his long-term insistence on “invasion”: “behind all the indeterminacy, the frontier is a way of talking about the historical process of territorial invasion – a cumulative depredation through which outsiders recurrently advance on natives in order to take their place” (1). 17 a recent report has been published by the smithsonian: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-firstculture-3825828/?no-ist. i am aware of the skepticism with which material-culture finds and archeological/ethological treatments can be greeted, as summarized by stratton: “…the meaning of native material culture in the human sciences…has the effect of eliding native subjectivities” (“‘for he needed no horse’” 91). but in this case, native larry’s “tribal story” (249) of the “knapping man” in clovis times as told to pidgin might be seen as injecting a measure of this subjectivity. 18 the goliards of medieval times were peripatetic, renegade clerics and students who wrote satirical and bawdy poems, mostly in latin, often with political protest. the largest collection of their poetry is carmina burana; larry “transposes” the carmina burana texts to graffiti on bathroom walls (222). it is tempting to see jones’s novel as a grand collection of such carnivalesque, irreverent, obscene songs. 19 the 2015 volume of jones’s short stories edited by theodore c. van alst jr., provocatively named the faster redder road: the best unamerican stories of stephen graham jones, contains an excerpt from the fast red road, indeed, the “horrorshow buffet” scene. the excerpt is followed by a comment jones wrote for the faster redder road in which he reveals that litmus jones became more and more important to the narrative as the novel was being written. the surname jones is apparently not coincidental, since stephen graham jones also tells us in his commentary that the fast red road can be seen indirectly as an “autobiographical novel,” even a “memoir” of sorts, and that he wrote it when he was “a lot more certain” than today that he could “change the world, man, with just words” (7). 20 when the native truck driver tallboy asks “what tribe” he is, pidgin says “piegan, pronouncing it like pagan… he [later] told tallboy he wasn’t really piegan, and tallboy told him he wasn’t really from jemez, nobody was” (138-9). similarly, pidgin asks charlie ward cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 24 “what tribe he was”; charlie responds “peruna, then changed it to old crow, then shook the question off” (32). pidgin tells the rodeo clown’s seducing wife that he is “kutenai” (159). at age 16 pidgin searched for his tribal roots in vain; he “followed his mother’s surname to a deadend at browning montana” (132). the author jones acknowledges his piegan blackfeet ancestry. the piegan nation was divided by the national border line between canada and the usa. 21 the locus classicus of the term is vizenor’s manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. vizenor includes the carceral “surveillance” in his explanation, quoted above. 22 the cover of the novel as originally published features an astonishing historical photo (1906 [apparently not 1900 as indicated in the novel’s imprint]) of an elaborate fourth of july parade in little fork, minnesota. grotesque clownlike people with painted faces wearing outlandish outfits and playing makeshift instruments in addition to what appears to be a large standing bear (person in costume?) pose for the camera. surely vizenor imagined his circus pilgrim-migrants in similar carnivalesque garb and posture. the photo can be viewed in the minnesota historical society’s online archives. 23 in his eminently knowledgeable contribution to the routledge companion to native american literature (2016), david j. carlson has shown how the 1868 treaty of fort laramie has played a central role in much native activism, treaty literature, and autobiography, particularly beginning in the 1970s with the “trail of broken treaties” march to washington, d.c. organized by the american indian movement in 1972 (chapter 9, “u.s.-indian treaty-relations and native american treaty literature,” 111-122, specifically 118-120). 24 vizenor’s chapter called “march 1973: avengers at wounded knee” (229-241) in his interior landscapes: autobiographical myths and metaphors (1990) reveals the affectations and dishonorable underside of many of the aim members and their movement. vizenor mercilessly satirizes the arrival of 600 aim militants at the leech lake reservation ostensibly to fight for treaty rights; one “shy student with a gun” from kansas, named delano western, dressed like a red-neck bandito with a bayonet, repeatedly and ridiculously uttered “his death wish”: “we came here to die” (232-233). 25 chris lalonde begins his carefully woven article on vizenor’s literary activism with an analysis of the trope of the teasing whistle as the signature of the trickster (madsen and lee, eds., gerald vizenor: texts and contexts). 26 vizenor’s “native transmotion” chapter in fugitive poses praises the ledger drawings as “the continuance of a new warrior tradition” (178): “native transmotion races as a horse across the page, and the action is a sense of sovereignty” (179). the recent essay “literary transmotion” shows unabated interest, with the long note 1 supplying historical depth. in 2005 vizenor published a poem called “prison riders” based on several drawings of colorful mounted horses by one of the fort marion captives, matches (chis-i-se-duh), cheyenne, in which the first-person persona achieves a transmotive escape from incarceration and anthropological fixity through imagination and art: “i ride out of prison / on a painted horse… / my visionary mount / always captured / in prisons and museums…” (williams, et al. 59). in blue ravens the artist-protagonist aloysius is introduced to ledger drawings: “the blue horses were totems of native visionary artists. …making medicine [o-kuh-ha-tuh, cheyenne prisoner in fort marion]…had created an art book of seven paintings with many horses, red and blue, in a magical gallop above the earth” (77). 27 vizenor describes n. scott momaday’s journey to see his grandmother’s remembered landscapes as “a story of native transmotion, a pilgrimage” (fugitive poses 184). transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 25 28 see my book-article “gerald vizenor’s shimmering birds in dialog: (de-)framing, memory, and the totemic in favor of crows and blue ravens” in däwes and hauke, eds., for a discussion of this conversion. 29 a spectrum of culturally-anchored native humor is put forth perceptively in gruber, humor in contemporary north american native humor (2008). the incongruous and often grotesque native humor involving the trickster is documented impressively with regard to visual art in ryan, the trickster shift (1999), and to oral tale-telling in ballinger, living sideways (2004). louis owens’s astute afterword to the 1990 edition of vizenor’s novel (247-254) furnishes a valuable summary of “the compassionate trickster – outrageous, disturbing, challenging” (253). 30 “the freedom of thought and conscience, academic, artistic irony, and literary expression, shall not be denied, violated or controverted by the government” (chapter 3, article 5: “the constitution of the white earth nation.” gaa-waabaabiganikaag / constitution of the white earth nation). http://www.thecwen.com/cwen. accessed december 5, 2016. 31 one of vizenor’s books published in 2009 is titled native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance (university of nebraska press). 32 in “literary transmotion,” for example, vizenor writes that “native american creation stories, totemic visions, sacred objects, dreams and nicknames are heard daily and forever remembered as transcendent traces of cultural survivance and continental liberty” (2); “[s]acred objects are perceived in transmotion, spiritual transcendence, and inspired by heart and spirit, not by the mundane cultural notice of provenance and the fixity of museum property. sacred medicine bundles, for instance, are singular sources of shamanic power” (15). 33 stratton reads the haunting palo duro event as one of jones’s many “reminders of colonial history and traumatic events that are embedded and inscribed on the land,” woven into a multileveled novelistic tapestry (“‘for he needed no horse’” 102). 34 in an early piece (1980), vizenor’s relays his response to being called a trickster: “the idea of tribal trickeries suggests corruption to non-indians, but in tribal societies, the ‘trickster’ is a culture hero. …it has been said that i play the role of trickster in my writing, but i do not impose my vision of the world on anyone. i feel a compulsion to write, to imagine the world around me, and i am often surprised by what i write” (“gerald vizenor: ojibway/chippewa writer” in katz, ed. 168). works cited ballinger, franchot. living sideways: tricksters in american indian oral traditions. u of oklahoma p, 2004. blaeser, kimberly m. “the language of borders, the borders of language in gerald vizenor’s poetry.” the poetry and poetics of gerald vizenor, edited by deborah l. madsen, u of new mexico p, 2012, pp. 1-22. blair, elizabeth. “text as trickster: postmodern language games in gerald vizenor’s bearheart.” melus, vol. 20, no. 4, 1995, pp. 75-90. cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 26 breinig, helmbrecht. “satirical ambivalence and vizenor’s bearheart.” gerald vizenor: texts and contexts, edited by deborah l. madsen and a. robert lee, u of new mexico p, 2010, pp. 86-105. bruyneel, kevin. the third space of sovereignty: the postcolonial politics of u.s.-indigenous relations. u of minnesota p, 2007. carlson, david j. “trickster hermeneutics and the postindian reader: gerald vizenor's constitutional praxis.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 23, no. 4, 2011, pp. 13-47. ----. “u.s.-indian treaty-relations and native american treaty literature.” the routledge companion to native american literature, edited by deborah l. madsen, routledge, 2016, pp. 111-122. foucault, michel. “of other spaces.” diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, 1986, pp.22-27; translation from the french by jay miskowiec of foucault’s 1967 lecture. glancy, diane. fort marion prisoners and the trauma of native education. u of nebraska p, 2014. greyeyes, michael. “inside the machine: indigeneity, subversion, and the academy.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 26, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1-18. gruber, eva. humor in contemporary native north american literature: reimagining nativeness. camden house, 2008. jones, stephen graham. “letter to a just-starting-out indian writer—and maybe to myself.” transmotion, vol. 2, nos 1&2, 2016, pp. 124-130. journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/266. accessed december 5, 2016. ----. the fast red road: a plainsong. florida state up, 2000. ----. the faster redder road: the best unamerican stories of stephen graham jones, edited by theodore c. van alst jr., u of new mexico p, 2015. lalonde, chris. “‘he made a teasing whistle on the wind’: situating the literary activism of gerald vizenor.” gerald vizenor: texts and contexts, edited by deborah l. madsen and a. robert lee, u of new mexico p, 2010, pp. 152-165. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 27 lee, a. robert. “native postmodern? remediating history in the fiction of stephen graham jones and d. l. birchfield.” mediating indianness, edited by cathy covell waegner, michigan state up, 2015, pp. 73-89. madsen, deborah l. “the sovereignty of transmotion in a state of exception: lessons from the internment of ‘praying indians’ on deer island, massachusetts bay colony, 1675-1676.” transmotion, vol. 1, no. 1, 2015, pp. 23-47. https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/113. accessed december 5, 2016. mcdowell, deborah e., claudrena n. harold, and juan battle, eds. “introduction.” the punitive turn: new approaches to race and incarceration. u of virginia p, 2013, pp. 1-25. moran, dominique. carceral geography: spaces and practices of incarceration. ashgate, 2015. owens, louis. “‘ecstatic strategies’: gerald vizenor’s darkness in saint louis bearheart.” narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian literatures, edited by gerald vizenor, u of oklahoma p, 1989, pp. 141-153. ----. other destinies: understanding the american indian novel. u of oklahoma p, 1992. ross, marlon b. “law and dis/order: the banefully alluring arts of the carceral imaginary.” the punitive turn: new approaches to race and incarceration, edited by deborah e. mcdowell, et al., u of virginia p, 2013, pp. 1-25. ryan, allan j. the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art. u of british columbia p, 1999. sarkowsky, katja. alternative spaces: constructions of space in native american and first nations’ literatures. universitätsverlag winter, 2007. schedler, christopher. “wiindigoo sovereignty and native transmotion in gerald vizenor’s bearheart.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 23, no. 3, 2011, pp. 34-68. stratton, billy j. “buried in shades of night”: contested voices, indian captivity, and the legacy of king philip’s war. u of arizona p, 2013. ----. “‘for he needed no horse’: stephen graham jones’s reterritorialization of the american west in the fast red road.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion, edited by billy j. stratton, u of new mexico p, 2016, pp. 82-110. cathy covell waegner “consuming, incarcerating, and ‘transmoting’” 28 ---and stephen graham jones. “observations on the shadow self: dialogues with stephen graham jones.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion, edited by billy j. stratton, u of new mexico p, 2016, pp. 14-59. turner, jennifer. “displacing criminal bodies: spectacle, crime and punishment in the tv sitcom the visit.” aether: the journal of media geography, vol. 7, 2013, pp. 1-17. http://ojs.lib.ucl.ac.uk/index.php/aether/. accessed december 5, 2016. vizenor, gerald. bearheart: the heirship chronicles. u of minneapolis p, 1990 (originally published as darkness in saint louis bearheart by truck press, 1978); afterword by louis owens: pp. 247-254. ----. blue ravens: historical novel. wesleyan up, 2014. ----. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. u of nebraska p, 1998. ----. “gerald vizenor: ojibway/chippewa writer.” this song remembers: self-portraits of native americans in the arts, edited by jane b. katz, houghton mifflin, 1980, pp. 163168. ----. interior landscapes: autobiographical myths and metaphors. minnesota up, 1990. ----. “literary transmotion: survivance and totemic motion in native american indian art and literature.” twenty-first century perspectives on indigenous studies: native north america in (trans)motion, edited by birgit däwes, karsten fitz, and sabine meyer, routledge, 2015, pp. 17-30. ----. manifest manners: narratives of postindian survivance. u of nebraska p, 1994; preface by gerald vizenor 1999. ----. “native american literature, introduction.” ken lopez bookseller, 2006. http://www.lopezbooks.com/catalog/na6/static/?refp=2. accessed december 5, 2016. ----. “native cosmototemic art.” sakahàn: international indigenous art, edited by greg a. hill, candice hopkins, and christine lalonde, national gallery of canada, 2013, pp. 42-52. ----. “prison riders.” native american voices on identity, art, and culture: objects of everlasting esteem, edited by lucy fowler williams, william wierzbowski, and robert w. preucel, u of pennsylvania museum of archeology and anthropology, 2005, p. 59. transmotion vol 3, no 2 (2017) 29 ----. “trickster discourse: comic holotropes and language games.” narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian literatures. u of oklahoma p, 1989, pp. 187-211. ----. “the unmissable: transmotion in native stories and literature.” transmotion, vol. 1, no.1, 2015, pp. 63-75. https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/143. accessed december 5, 2016. waegner, cathy covell. “gerald vizenor’s shimmering birds in dialog: (de-)framing, memory, and the totemic in favor of crows and blue ravens.” native american survivance, memory, and futurity: the gerald vizenor continuum, edited by birgit däwes and alexandra hauke, routledge, 2017, pp. 102-116. ----, ed. mediating indianness. michigan state up, 2015. ----. “red demons and lumpy indian burial grounds: (native) gothic-postmodernism in stephen graham jones’s all the beautiful sinners and growing up dead in texas.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion, edited by billy j. stratton, u of new mexico p, 2016, pp. 194-217. wolfe, patrick, ed. “introduction.” the settler complex: recuperating binarism in colonial studies. u of california at los angeles american indian studies center p, 2016, pp. 124. microsoft word galley main.docx   transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 43   honoring the disappeared in the art of lorena wolffer, rebecca belmore, and the walking with our sisters project deborah root it is 2002, and lorena wolffer lies on a bed. she slowly sits and begins to remove her shirt. she reveals her breasts to the audience, and then bends to remove her trousers. as she caresses her body the background music fades and we begin to hear the monotone voice of a police report. wolffer pulls out latex gloves and displays them to the audience before putting them on. the reports of dead women continue, and we hear details of the victims’ clothing. one is six months pregnant, raped and strangled. wolffer removes a pen and begins to carefully mark her body, as if to prepare it for an autopsy, making lines around her breasts, between her legs, her neck. every now and then she stops, and sits in a meditation pose. then the marking continues, and the lines become something else, less medical and more a circumscription of the parts of the body that are a focus of rage and desire. finally she closes the pen and replaces her clothes, slowly transforming herself into an ordinary woman again. she shrouds herself with black blankets and wraps a sheet around her neck and head, covering herself completely. in performances like mientras dormíamos (el caso juarez) (2002-04), mexico city artist wolffer locates a mystery at the heart of violence, a black hole of negation, and a paradox. it is a place where desire and hatred are closely intricated, where society’s violence against women is cut into the flesh. physical wounds kill and main. yet psychic wounds are inscribed as well, wounds from silence, from memory being driven deep inside into a place of suffocation and emptiness. and this violence not only marks the body of the individual, but the body of the nation as well. the title of wolffer’s piece translates as “while we were sleeping,” and speaks to the hundreds of women murdered in cuidad juarez, a city on the border between chihuahua and texas. this border is lined with maquiladoras, or factories, where poor, mostly indigenous, women come to find work. it is a place where the atmosphere of violence is palpable, and fear permeates the energy of the streets. one is struck by the contrast with el paso just across the river, bright and shiny and dead in another way. people all across the globe know what’s going on here. everyone has seen images of the black crosses that have been painted on telephone deborah root “honoring the disappeared”     44   poles as memorials to juarez’s murdered women. everyone deplores the ongoing murders and disappearances, but it seems impossible to stop the killings. how can we understand this? wolffer is telling us that, at some level, we choose not to see; we prefer a kind of unconscious dreamstate, which allows us to sleepwalk through what is taking place on the margins of society. but who is this “we,” and why are we sleeping, still, when so much information about what is happening is at hand? we can no longer say we don’t know what’s going on—what is at stake in our silence? there are days when the bad news is overwhelming, the bad images, the killings and bombs, the acidification of the seas. it sucks you in, and can make you feel helpless. twenty-four hour news and internet feeds promise connectedness, but it is a connectedness that circulates around bad energy, and ultimately tempts us to hole up and shut the world out. it is easier to sleep. but isolation is deadly; isolation is the enemy for many of us who live outside the communities in which the disappearances of first nations girls and women are taking place, it can be a bit too easy to veil the reality of what is happening, and to imagine the extreme violence in juarez, vancouver, winnipeg and elsewhere in canada, as something that happens to “them”, to poor women, streetwalkers, aboriginal women, mexicans, a displacement that derives from a deep fear of our own complicity, and a fear of waking up to the ways in which “them” and “us” might be linked. as our eyes skim across new reports, it can be reassuring to focus on the facts of place and circumstance where these things happen—places far away from our own worlds. in this way we distance this violence from our everyday lives, and assure ourselves that it has nothing to do with us, not really. i don’t know anyone who’s been murdered; it’s possible i’ve met one or two who’ve disappeared, but they’ve not been part of my daily world. like most of us i’ve had friends who’ve suffered abuse and sexual assault, friends who’ve not received adequate responses from the legal system. and i’ve known a few who did what they had to do to survive. but my relation to the social and historical structures that subtend both systematic violence and its elision, is at most peripheral and, like most other non-natives who inhabit these lands, i’ve benefitted from these structures. and because of this distancing, it can be harder for those on the outside to connect the dots and see that the violence that happens to “them” is related to the violence that happens to “us”, to all of us, native and non-native, urban and rural, male and female.   transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 45   and there are differences in the way violence circulates around each of us. the killings and disappearances of poor, indigenous women reflect both a long history of racism and colonialism, and the existence of what artist christi belcourt, an organizer of the walking with our sisters project, calls a “parallel universe,” in which the official response to missing aboriginal women is often indifference, with no amber alerts issued for missing girls, and missing person reports refused by the police. when native women go missing there tends to be less fuss in the media than when non-native, middle-class women disappear.1 the unwillingness of media to provide consistent and in depth coverage of missing and murdered indigenous women makes it easier for those of us outside the families and communities to slumber through the violence, and to refuse the connection between “them” and “us.” but what is this connection, which so many of us have been encouraged to sleep through? certainly, sleeping through the violence enforces the distinction between “us” and “them.” if this separation between us were to collapse, we’d all have to consider the implications of colonial history and the ongoing struggles around first nations sovereignty and land rights. foucault wrote that what takes place on the edges of empire reveals the nature of that empire.2 “empire” can be a state of mind—a focus on money and privilege, or on the activities of celebrities—but it also remains a system of political power, with police and armies, politicians and cartels. with respect to the juarez killings, if we recognize the united states as an empire, the countries that lie on its borders can show us something about the structures that make its authority possible. would the u.s. exist without mexico (and canada)? empire is also a center, a place where wealth and power congeal, a constellation of big cities, places where, for some of us, comfortable lives seem distant from disappearance and murder. and so we tell ourselves the system works, and has the potential to be reasonably fair. the center’s shininess can disguise the brutality at its edges that inevitably subtends imperial power. and so i ask: would the present social system exist without the women murdered on its margins? if we are all implicated by what happens elsewhere, then the killings in juarez, vancouver, on the highways lacing the country together, in eastern ontario (where i live), all reveal that our lives are underlain by systems of violence that are closer to home than we may wish to think. they reveal a truth about the disposability of women; of certain kinds of women, and of all women. the center does its best to show the benign face of power, but the disappearances and dead women strip away the mask, revealing the reality that lies underneath. deborah root “honoring the disappeared”     46   * * * * like wolffer, artist rebecca belmore puts her body on the line in vigil (2002), a street performance honoring the disappeared and murdered women of vancouver’s downtown eastside. at least fifty women had disappeared from this poor, urban neighborhood in the years before the killer’s arrest in 2002, and many of the women who died had been working the street, or were addicted to drugs. many were first nations women doing what they could to survive. for years families and people in the community had been aware of the disappearances, and had long called for police action. there had been vigils by family members and activists. when the killer was finally arrested in 2002 many stories emerged of police refusing to listen to people about what was happening to the women on the street, and ignoring information that might have led to the killer. in 2010 the vancouver police department issued an apology to the families. belmore’s performance took place on the vancouver sidewalk where many of the women were last seen before their disappearances. she laid out objects in plastic bags, then scrubbed the sidewalk, then lit votive candles. once the setting was created, she stood. belmore looked down at the names of the missing and murdered women, which she’d written on her arms, then shouted their names one by one, as she drew roses across her mouth, ripping the petals off with her teeth. she then lifted up a red dress and pulled it over her jeans and tank top. she rinsed her mouth. wearing the red dress, she picked up a hammer and a bag of nails and walked over to a nearby telephone pole. she nailed several parts of the skirt to the pole, then yanked at the fabric, desperately trying to pull herself away. finally the fabric tore free, although scraps of the dress remained affixed to the pole. belmore stood and faced the audience, now dressed in her underwear. the video installation based on the performance, the named and the unnamed, was in part a screening of the documentation of vigil. but shining through the projection of this documentation were about fifty lightbulbs set behind the screen, providing a moving reminder of the spirits of these women.   transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 47   in her discussion of vigil, artist and writer lara evans suggests that, even before they went missing, the women’s social invisibility meant that they had already disappeared, or been disappeared: consider… that belmore is using cut flowers rather than live plants. one of the authorities’ justification for not taking any action regarding these disappearances for so long is that, in some respects, the women had “disappeared” already. they left their home communities, often a reserve, for the big city. they were, in a sense, cut off from their homes, their sources of cultural sustenance. the women who disappeared were supporting themselves through prostitution.3 i am reminded of how the verb “disappear” functions, particularly in the latin american context, as a politicized, transitive verb—one is disappeared, usually by the state or its minions. if the women of vancouver’s downtown eastside had already been disappeared, by virtue of their invisibility with respect to non-native, so-called “respectable” society, we can ask by whom, and in whose interests. the answer is more than the killer who was prosecuted and convicted in the courts. in the early 90’s michael taussig wrote about the activism of the mothers of the disappeared in latin america, arguing that the political disappearances in the continent’s various dirty wars, and the fear generated by these, became a way to break and fragment collective memory, and to “refunction” it into something private. [it] best serves the official forces of repression when the collective nature of that memory is broken, when it is fragmented and located not in the public sphere but in the private fastness of the individual self or of the family. there it feeds fear. there it feeds nightmares crippling the capacity for public protest and spirited intelligent opposition.4 in this sense belmore’s naming of the disappeared becomes a powerful act of resistance, an insistence that these women lived, despite what happened to them, to their communities. by using their bodies to reveal violence and its consequences, artists such as wolffer and belmore also remind us of its intimacy, even when violent acts occur in larger historical and socio-political contexts, and underline the paradox of desire and disposability, intimacy and fear. by manipulating her nude body, wolffer underlines the way violence can also come from someone we know and often love. but whether it comes from a stranger or an intimate enemy, deborah root “honoring the disappeared”     48   hatred remains linked to desire, with the connection between the two operating through bad intensity. another paradox, and one that, for many, cannot be said. looking at the documentation of these performances, i am reminded of kafka’s in the penal colony, which he wrote in 1914. in this story, a machine called the harrow inscribes the condemned prisoner’s sentence on his back, eventually killing him. the machine works slowly and the prisoner, unaware of the nature of his transgression, understands only at the moment of death his crime and sentence. i ask myself: what is the crime? being female? aboriginal? and yet belmore’s action of writing the names of the dead and disappeared on her arms becomes a refusal of kafka’s harrow, instead revealing that what was done to “them” is written on “us”, whether we see it or not. * * * * after the arrests in vancouver, and after an inquiry into the various permutations of police inaction, there was some hope for change. despite the example of juarez, where talk and more talk has done little to stop the killings, some of us imagined that in canada, the authorities would no longer drag their feet when women were at risk. after all, hadn’t the vancouver police department issued an apology? we hoped lessons had been learned. but soon stories began to surface about more missing aboriginal women, well over a thousand by now. this time, there’s been more media attention (although not enough), along with grassroots actions, including vigils and marches across the county. there are campaigns that try to stop the disappearances, and the systemic racism that underpins them, and to reveal how these women have been treated by the justice system. information has been gathered by organizations such as the native women’s association of canada, which runs the sisters in spirit database, and amnesty international canada’s no more stolen sisters campaign. social media has been active as well. you can google missing and murdered indigenous women, and there is a twitter feed (#mmiw), along with various facebook groups. the information is out there.   after years of calls for a national inquiry, which would coordinate data about disappearances across provincial and territorial jurisdictions, in august 2016 canada launched a   transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 49   public inquiry into the missing and murdered women. in october, prime minister trudeau attended the annual vigil for mmiw on parliament hill and spoke of reconciliation between native and non-native communities. so we’ll see—thus far, the inquiry’s slow process has caused some concern, as has the lack of an explicit mandate to examine police conduct and the criminal justice system. but learning “the facts” of these disappearances, collecting information and investigating systemic causes, apportioning blame, and saying what must be done is only one way to deal with these issues. it’s less easy to sit with the idea of these women’s lives, allowing room for positive energies to circulate, and for a kind of healing. a starting point might be to ask what are the effects of these disappearances? christi belcourt of the walking with our sisters project says that each missing woman leaves behind a large ripple. these touch the families and communities to which the women belonged most intensely, but also affect the larger society. for one thing, the disappearances bring home the question of how to confront—if that’s even the word—extreme violence without being poisoned by it. it’s true that it can be an effort to keep going, to believe that violence can be stopped, that the weight of colonialism and related structures will give way to something more positive. people have utilized a range of strategies to engage with these issues, including political activism, art practice and ceremony. many of us are taught that these are discrete entities—but what if the three were brought together? walking with out sisters began in 2012 as an ongoing community project, in which beading groups come together to create moccasin vamps to represent and honor the lives of the missing women (and sometimes children). by early 2015 1810 pairs of vamps had been beaded, with beading groups springing up in territories all across the country, and exhibitions of the work taking place in many venues. helpers install the work according to teachings from elders, who transport the bundles from place to place. all work is collective, and there is no government funding for the project. these vamps are not stitched onto moccasins, but remain incomplete, like the lives of the women. exhibiting this work involves more than simply installing an art show. in non-native spaces such as art galleries, the gallery directors must give over to the wwos organizers—for deborah root “honoring the disappeared”     50   instance, smudging must be allowed, despite fire codes. and the installing itself is a careful process. volunteers gather the medicines and prepare them, then tape the floor and lay the red cloth, then create paths, then place the vamps and other sacred items. in this way the walking with out sisters installations become more than art exhibitions, but rather are ceremonies in themselves, focusing on memory and respect, and including honor songs and other commemorations of the disappeared. belcourt’s understanding that being for something creates different results than being against something becomes a way of dealing with the disappearances, and of refusing the despair that attends such tragedies. fear is a function of isolation, and out of that comes passivity. of all the consequences of individualism, this can be the worst, because it means that we cannot share our stories, or find paths away from hopelessness. for belcourt, bringing ceremony into the process changes everything, and in this sense the shows are not exhibits, she says, but ceremonies that allow “a grieving, a re-setting of a broken bone,” an acknowledging of those lives. and most important is kindness—that, she says, is the key principle of the project. one of the ways walking with out sisters creates different results is by refusing or ignoring categories that separate different spheres of activity: art, ceremony, activism, commemoration. by enacting the connectedness between different elements of experience and spirituality, the project keeps the missing as part of the circle and turns the viewers into participants, eliciting a response that engages many layers of consciousness and breaks down the distinction between “them” and “us,” helping each of us to understand that even if the disappeared are not our relatives, we are connected. the artist can weave the strands together in a way that’s sometimes harder for the rest of us, and reveal connections that a newspaper report cannot. in mientras dormíamos wolffer makes the connection between her (healthy) body and the bodies of women subject to police autopsies. in vigil and the named and the unnamed belmore takes the responsibility for naming the disappeared; their names are written on her body, and have become part of her. by shouting their names, she not only breaks the silence, but sends these names out into the air, creating another ripple effect. walking with our sisters also commemorates the disappeared, so that the names will not be forgotten, but these community ceremonies do more than show that they are not forgotten; it is the power of the name itself, a refusal to accept the disappearance, and the isolation this absence seeks to enforce.   transmotion vol 1, nos 1&2 (2016) 51   this allows real movement, rather than something that stops in a black hole of negativity. perhaps art is a way to confront evil acts without being drawn into the abyss; perhaps it’s a way to go around the outside--not to confront the bad, but to sketch a path away from it. and as the exhibition moves, more space becomes native space, and even if this is temporary a trace of that ripple remains. note: some of the material on lorena wolffer appeared in: deborah root, “the body engraved: performances and interventions of lorena wolffer,” c magazine 105, spring 2010, pp. 17-26.   notes 1  there are many parallel universes, juarez being an example. on a visit there in 2007, i spoke briefly to a young oaxacan woman and her brother who had traveled to there to find work. the girl stared into the distance as her brother told me he hoped to keep his sister safe. it was like talking to soldiers on their way to war. juarez was one of the scariest places i’ve been in; the violence was thick in the air, and the city and surrounding desert felt like a vortex of bad energy. yet there are many good people working there and, for some, it’s a place to live, like any other. 2 in a sense “woman” exists at the border of empire, something deleuze and guattari understood when they talked about devenir femme as a way of escaping the fixity of power, the molar lines that emanate from the center. 3 lara evans, notartomatic blog, (notartomatic.wordpress.com, 05/08/10). “rebecca belmore: vigil: the named and the unnamed.” 4 michael taussig, “violence and resistance in the americas,” the nervous system (routledge: new york, 1992), p 48. microsoft word 347-2081-1-ce (proof).doc transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     139 no takebacks stephen graham jones 1. we didn’t build the app to kill anybody. it wasn’t even our idea to build it, exactly. one day rj’s dad was just standing there in the kitchen with us after his work, and he pretty much foisted the idea on us. his tie was two-fingers loose and he was digging in the refrigerator for a beer. rj and me were sitting on the island (me) and the counter (him), texting. or, if i’m going to be honest here, for the first time in somewhat-recorded history, we were pretending to text. that beer, rj’s dad was sure, had been there this morning? yeah. anyway, he finally settled on some orange juice straight from the carton, and then he was just standing there with us like i said, doing that thing where he thinks we’re all hanging out, being cool. at least he tries, though, right? more than i can say for my dad, who runs the house like a military barracks, telling us when we can and can’t be at ease, soldiers. interrogating me about my plans for the future if he ever finds me just sitting on the counter one fine lazy summer day. to be specific, and blip back to rj’s kitchen, the last fine lazy summer day before senior year started. “so . . . ” rj’s dad said, wiping the extra-pulpy orange juice from his top lip, “what are you two troublemakers brewing up this particular afternoon, now?” i didn’t look up, couldn’t, was too busy processing his ‘brewing’ and what it might or might not mean. whether it was some kind of coded approval or explicit accusation or what. “you know,” rj answered for both of us, shrugging to make it stick. rj’s dad nodded, took another deep glug, and then asked if we had that red light, green light one yet? we looked up to him with reptile eyes. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     140 “that app,” he said, about the phones we were still working, and his eyes, they were all glittery with possibility. i did a short little mental groan, here. kind of squinted in anticipation. talking software outside your age group always feels like trying to use sign language through the bars of the gorilla cage. “it’s free, see,” rj’s dad went on, “this computer kid from palmdale, he made it for his little sister one afternoon, because he was supposed to be babysitting her but wanted to play online or something. there’s an article in the paper today, yeah?” “the paper,” rj repeated, his sentence the blade on some construction tractor, scraping bottom. his dad was impervious, though. had too much momentum. was probably going to say ‘computer kid’ again, even. “all you do is stop moving the phone when the light goes red, then on green light you—” “cool,” i said, sliding down from the island. “red light, green light, right?” i pretended to be calling it up on my phone. on the way out. “not really,” rj’s dad said, his tone downshifting a bit. “but that’s not the point. the point is that that app, it’s the new babysitter. all the parents are downloading it for their babies now. three hundred thousand so far. and counting.” he let that hang. “dollars?” rj finally asked. “downloads,” his dad said, licking his lips, excited. “and you know what? each one of those downloads has his name on it. that afternoon watching his little sister, it got him into mit, yeah? full ride.” “ah, the ride . . . ” rj said, sliding down from the counter now as well. this was where all of his dad’s casual just-hanging-out stories always ended up: some kid getting a full ride to college. but still. three hundred thousand downloads? with how many screen refreshes per session? probably a million impressions, easy. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     141 and even at a tenth of a cent per—you could do some serious bank that way. all we needed now was the app. # rj’s great idea was “naked leapfrog.” i wasn’t against it, especially as it involved asking lindsay from chem to help, but when my mom found our storyboards on the kitchen table that night, we had to have another sit-down with my dad when his shift was up at ten. it went the usual way. the only reason i got to keep my phone was by arguing that i was testing code on it, for my college applications. rj chimed in too, and threw in a corvette if the app really took off, if my dad was interested in looking cool. “a sports car,” my dad said, and leaned back in what he called his spartan chair. his no-nonsense chair. rj shrugged, the left side of his mouth eeking over a bit, and, as it turned out for the next twenty minutes, my dad actually had a thought or two about sports cars. complete with anecdotes and horror stories and statistics. there was maybe even some kind of insurance quote in there. i apologized to rj with what of my face i could—we’ve been friends since third grade, so he got it—and then, slouching across the dark driveway to recompose ourselves in the bushes (one cigarette, maybe two), ash out on rj’s old dog’s real headstone again, rj said, “dude, if only we could have seen that one in the rearview,” and i kind of looked behind us, had to agree. people have gotten rich on worse ideas. # most of what we needed for the app we could scavenge from stuff already on the market, though a couple of those took enough hours to crack that night that we probably should have just written them ourselves. “and we can’t ask lindsay?” rj said, his game keyboard glowing up his face like this was a campfire story we were telling to each other, conditional by conditional, curly bracket by curly bracket. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     142 “she’ll be all over us once the cash is rolling in,” i told him. we hunched back to the coding. the app we were building was going to be the definition of elegance. just because it was so simple, or could be, if we wrote it straight. not a game, not some stupid trivia, no overlooked system utility or navigation aid for amateur seamstresses, and definitely not another porn scrubber or privacy screen. a camera. just that. it wasn’t supposed to kill us. # what our app would have going for it was what rj called the ‘chill factor.’ it was what he’d wanted to call the thing, even—nobody else was using it for an app yet—but i talked him down from that particular ledge, pulled us back to the realm of the sane: ‘no takebacks.’ even though takebacks was pretty much exactly what our app was about. rj’s complaint about wishing we’d seen my dad’s corvette lecture coming? we were marrying that to a handheld device, then, if everything panned out, amping it up into a portable haunted house. the idea was that, when you had that feeling somebody was behind you, just kind of lurking, waiting—simms in marketing taught us this last year: find something everybody alive shares, then winnow that down to a product they can buy—when you had that feeling, you could just ‘check your messages’ or whatever (this is you, calling the app up) then lower your hand back down, the phone still palmed there, and snap a pic of the world directly behind you. which you could already do, sure—the problem with global anxieties is that there’s usually a global fix already in place—especially if you had the know-how to reassign your shutter to a mechanical button. but, as we tested and found, it took some pretty serious skill and no small amount of dumb luck to keep that camera straight up and down. pushing that mech button, it turned out it wasn’t just your finger muscles that got involved. your whole hand tensed up, whether you told it to or not, and right at the wrong moment: when you were pushing the button. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     143 if you hack into the image stabilization routines and crank them up, they can scrub most of that motion out, yeah. but that just leaves you with a fairly clear shot of whatever you’ve got in the frame. which is to say that, when you’re not looking, your aim tends to be off. big surprise, i know. it turned out we were real good at snapping pics of the floor or the ceiling or our own asses, but hardly ever got what was behind us lined up properly. our revolutionary solution, then, was to hook a line or two of code between the phone’s gyroscope and the camera’s shutter, so that the image would only capture when the phone was straight up and down, perfectly vertical, giving it a straight look back. as for lateral, though, the side-to-side—well, the app was going to be free, right? the only thing that could correct for that would be . . . a bluetooth tie-in with a near-eye device strung up like a periscope? some infrared sensor to square the phone with the room? a fisheye lens? we could fake the fish-eye trick anyway, just stretch the image, let it distort out, but that wouldn’t change the original field of view, would just suggest it had been wider than it was, and the market was already spilling over with this kind of sleightof-hand tomfoolery. finally we just stole another of rj’s dad’s garage beers, smuggled it to the bushes, toasted cedric (the dead, headstoned dog), and started in with the field trials. the app worked perfectly. better than we could have dreamed. a thousand people should have thought of this already. we took turns trying to sneak up on each other, caught ourselves on film each time, without having to look back. and it was good we ran the tests, too, or we never would have figured out to make the flash optional, and, in case there were some legacy phones out there not playing the game (ours did), we fiddled with the autorotate, to keep the image from getting flipped, because, when you’re trying to catch some slender dude ghosting up behind you, you don’t need to be worried about if you’re phone’s upside down or not. the lateral still sucked, of course, but what we’d lucked into there was that, when the washed-out, black-and-whited image of us playing backdoor ninja was only half in the image, it was approximately eighty-five times creepier. score one for the good guys. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     144 so we went back to the drawing board (rj’s basement room, the door locked), put a fat-fingered toggle on the flash, dialed up the contrast some, and then spent the rest of our last before-school weekend trancing on how to layer in random pics from the phone’s gallery, the same way those ‘zombie yourself’ apps stenciled gore over your face. the difference there, though, was that those apps were more participatory, always asked you to position your face in the dotted green lines, please, and, even with that kind of help, still, the final image kind of sucked. the other problem was the random pics being sucked from the phone’s gallery. what if, instead of a snap of your mom cooking hamburgers—we’d just copy her outline over, fill the rest with textured shadow—what if what the app sucked across to pretend was sneaking up behind you, what if it was a pretty sunset, an idyllic windmill? so we killed hours and many many braincells coming up with just five stock images to bundle in with the app: a girl crawling on the ‘wall,’ a guy just standing there, a hand starting to reach around some corner, a pair of floating eye smudges, and a simple wisp of smoke you could take to be whatever you wanted, or didn’t want. and we figured how to fade them into these ‘takeback’ shots like they’d been there all along. it was spooky as hell. except. one thing you learn, coding, is that there’s always an ‘except.’ it was rj who stumbled onto it: when you download those stupid rotating wallpaper apps or one of those ‘innocent maze with a jack-in-the-box zombie’ numbers, there’s always that download lag, where the server’s sneaking those hidden images across. it wasn’t so much that we were worried about people watching the progress bar, keeping a close eye on the running printout right above it—we would, but that was us—it was that, sneaking stuff into somebody’s memory like that, caching it they-don’t-know where, that was a porn move. and even if it was just a machine reviewing our app, not a real person, still, that kind of underhandedness, even if it was all in good fun: we were going to get filtered. never mind that, after our app cycled through all five sneak_up images, the joke’s tired, the app deleted, only rated on how it ended, not how it was. we stole another beer, considered things. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     145 no, a windmill wasn’t scary, even if it was three foot high and sneaking up behind you in the hall. no, it wasn’t scary to see that same girl crawling along the side of the hall. what we finally settled on, though it was going to slow the process down, was upping the array of stock images from five to a cool hundred, and rigging the recursion such that it would iterate through however many images we made available, really. we were in it for the long haul, after all, and rj was a serious whiz with fake randomnocity, and me, my job was to strip each of these images down to the bare bones. my goal was to get each down to about five kilobytes, but the wall i ran into was, of course, pixelation, which, unless you’re somehow in the game, isn’t all that scary. so what i finally lucked onto was letting the images swell back up to a whole fifteen kilobytes—they were all greyscale, had some definite blur built-in—but then just scaling them down to micro. bam: seven kilobytes per, about. we had to dial the smoothing up a bit to compensate, but all in all, it was working. all that was left was to push these little sneak_up images into some buried directory online, .htaccess it for all time (though ‘lindsay’ could probably break in . . .), and we were on to the second round of trials. the app was light, it didn’t glitch, it had a hooky name, some promised fun, and we’d left some space at the bottom of each image for all the banners that were going to run. “so?” rj said, standing up from his bed. “it’s sunday night,” i told him. our eyes were bloodshot, our fingertips raw, our pores were exhaling cheese puffs—another weekend gone, lost forever between two curly brackets no one would ever properly appreciate. but it had been worth it, too. screw college, right? rj walked me across his driveway, my dad’s security light popping on as soon as we stepped up onto the concrete. the app was on both our phones, of course, and our laptops too. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     146 “don’t take any pictures i wouldn’t,” rj said, stopping at the free-throw line to sail an imaginary one in, and i saluted him, spun slow and fake-drunk on my heels—just another sailor, looking for my gangplank home—and leaned into whatever my dad had waiting for me after not checking in all weekend again. tomorrow was the first day of senior year, though. there was nothing he could do to me that would matter. 2. by wednesday, rj was a ghost. not literally (not yet), but that was kind of just his place in the cafeteria, in the halls, in the parking lot. usually, i’d be right there with him, but somehow the life sciences i was having to make up from sophomore year, it had taken off. mostly because i wasn’t the only one having to make it up. lindsay was in there too. my new lab partner. it was taking me longer and longer to get ready each morning. my dad would grumble over the breakfast table about the girl i was becoming, and how pretty i was getting, and i’d just chew, swallow, and float to second period again. i’d like to say i had no illusions about lindsay and me, about homecoming and prom and life, but it went way past that. i was neck-deep in that particular fantasy, and sinking fast. at lunch i found rj, leaned in, told him my plan. “her?” he said back. her phone was newer, brighter, better, was supposed to be harder to hack. i wanted to try the app there, if she was game. “maybe we’ll play some naked leapfrog too,” i told him, shrugging, trying to come off more lecherous than i was. “i put a text button on it,” rj said back. “link-with-attachment, right?” i said, suddenly concerned. he didn’t dignify that. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     147 of course it would be link-with-attachment. trying to build our own cute little text program inside our app, we’d have to be poring through different carriers’ protocols, asking permission for this, not stepping on that. “what about the lonely brigade?” i asked. it was our code for the social networks. “you think?” he said, kind of doing his sneer thing. we were really talking now. like it had always been. “why not?” i said. “that’s where we want the pics to show up, don’t we?” “there’s no revenue for second-hand impressions,” he said. “you know that, right?” because there would be no real way to track them. “but we can brand them, anyway,” i said. “just clear-letter, discrete. directing them back to the app, keeping it part of the chain, all that.” rj shrugged one shoulder, was watching somebody across the cafeteria. it was lindsay. i could tell by the way he let his eyes keep skating past her. “remember that toddler game?” he said, coming back to me. “that my dad said?” “red light, green light. go directly to college.” “that’s all he could use it for, wasn’t it? for his mit application. because— putting banners on it would be stupid, wouldn’t it? who advertises to babies?” i blinked, focused. he was right again. “but we’re not like that,” i said. he shook his head no, agreeing with me. but still. that guy, that app, he was our origin story. and now it was hollow. now he was somebody we’d make fun of. “think the app’ll scare her?” he asked then, catching my eyes for a flash. “you sleeping, man?” i asked back. “jump right out of her pants, right?” he went on, then lifted his chin to get me to look. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     148 it was lindsay, maybe two steps from us, balancing her water-with-lemon, her salad. she smiled, twirled past, biting her lip in hello and doing something impossible with her eyebrows. “life science,” rj said, not watching her walk away. “what’s homework going to be like for that, you think?” “exactly,” i said, and brushed past him, my eyes glued. # two days later, rj started texting me some of the new takeback images he was generating. i was in the library with lindsay and two of her friends. but mostly with lindsay. at least in my head. so far i’d agreed to show her where she could nab papers online, places the faculty didn’t know about. i was going to show her where all the good music and movies were, too, but was going to space it out some. surprise her on thursday with what wasn’t in the theatres until friday, that kind of stuff. you use what you’ve got, i mean. this was my one chance. and now rj was helping. i looked at the image he’d flashed across, then lowered it under the table, scanned both ways to see if any teachers were close. “what?” lindsay said. her dad wouldn’t let her load any apps he didn’t scan first, as it turned out. the human virus checker, as it were. but when you’ve got a daughter like that. “give me your number,” i said to her—that easy—and bankshot the image off a tower two miles a way, drilled it back under the table, to her phone, balanced right there on her thighs. it was a takeback pic, sure, but rj had done something different, had twisted the code back on itself somehow. behind the washed-out version of his long hallway was the crawling girl. she wasn’t on the wall anymore, though, but the floor. and not floating two feet above it like transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     149 could happen, but right on the surface of the carpet, reaching forward along it like a cat, her face just blank. lindsay dropped her phone. it rattled under the table. more, i texted back to rj. we were going to be so rich. i thought that was the only way things could go, yeah. there’s going to be an empty seat at graduation now, though. maybe two. # by the beginning of the next week, rj was a star, at least on the cell networks. instead of a ghost, now he was dragging a fuse. like he’d weighed his options, studied the landscape of his life, considered the future, and made the measured decision that senior year, we were all going to know his name. one way or the other. let me say here that i never took credit for the images he was getting the app to produce. i’d had a hand in the initial program, had spent a hurried two hours parsing through the code with him on saturday, his dad grilling steaks for us in the backyard, but that was just maintenance and bugkilling, trying to get it all to spec before we took it live. before we could do that, though, we had to nab a domain—it was actually available, and, because it was for ‘college,’ his dad floated us twenty-four months on his card, base package—we had to stake out some freebie bulletin board, complete with setup and faq threads, each of us set up as boss moderators. we were also supposed to write up little backstories for ourselves, to attach faces to the app. “if you have time, i mean,” rj had said from behind his laptop, about that. it was like we were playing battleship. “ha ha,” i said back, and never looked up. “so is this the end of our summer romance?” he said back, and this stopped me. i looked around my screen, was about to say something back—no idea what, but i could feel the words in my throat—when his dad ducked in with news about those steaks, how if you don’t pay at least glancing attention to the corporeal, then you risk getting lost forever in the abstract—his usual out-loud bumpersticker—and i forgot what rj had said. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     150 that night it came back, though. two-thirty in the morning found me at our living room window, no lights on behind me, to give away that i was there. in the bushes there was the cherry of a cigarette, rhythmic like a heartbeat. except slower. more deliberate. and at the wrong height for rj. unless he was breaking his own rules, using cedric’s custom little headstone as a bench he was. i hugged my arms to my sides, felt the coldness of my phone press into my bare skin. without looking back, i glowed the phone on, opened the app, and lowered my hand, the picture snapping once the phone was straight up-and-down enough. the picture was empty, of course. just our couch, that stupid floor lamp i used to think was a robber. the doorway to the left of it, black and yawning. i deleted it. # probably the scariest image rj sent to me that week, that he fully knew i had to show to lindsay, who was going to cc the whole class, it was one of his dad that he’d doctored. it was in the hall again, like the rest—my guess is he was using his mom’s tall mirror at the turn into the living room to orient, keep the lateral in check—but it was different in that it was just static. over our cheese-puffed, brainstormy weekend, we’d agreed that the suggestion of motion, of something approaching the phone, that that was all kinds of scary. better than something you were walking away from, anyway. but this one, this time, it was what he was walking away from. it was his dad, way back by his bedroom—rj’s mom’s long gone, of course; i don’t even remember her, so much—and he was just sitting against that wall, his legs splayed out in front of him, his head cocked over, an obvious kind of stain on the wall. lindsay looked up to me in life science when she saw it, and i looked away, wasn’t thinking about money so much anymore. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     151 that afternoon, i found reasons to be outside, stayed there just piddling until rj’s dad pulled up, lifted his briefcase to me on his way in. i waved back, looked back to my house, and went inside to check if rj had uploaded that particular shot to the hidden directory. he hadn’t. it was just the stock hundred we’d come up with together. they seemed so tame now. i was about to back out of that terminal—already had, really, had to key back in— when i caught the tail-end of that list of files i’d just called up. the count was a hundred, like i’d been expecting, and they were named sequentially after the sneak_up lead-ins—clever clever—but there was another directory there now. inside the protected directory. i tried “lindsay” as password, but it wasn’t her this time. i tabbed up, then, went root to try to at least see how many characters this password might have, but i suck in the shell, and the architecture, it was all different now, was some kind of chutes and ladders game, a labyrinth, one with dead-ends and bottomless wells and something that, when i tried to open it, locked up my system. what had rj done? i rebooted, was about to just rush that file system, hit it with everything i had, but then that image of rj’s dad was in my head again. the bedroom door. the door to rj’s dad’s bedroom. i pulled my phone, called the picture up. the doorway was on the wrong side. wasn’t it? yes. i’d practically grown up over there. rj’s dad had encouraged it, even, after his last encounter with my dad. but how could it be on the wrong side? i stood, walked out into our own hall. it wasn’t as long as rj’s, and had tables and junk all cluttered in it, but still. i stood at the end, right by my doorway, closed my eyes and took a takeback pic. just normal. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     152 i looked through the walls, to the memory of rj’s house, and then to this hall. the mirror. he had the mirror. i dragged my mom’s in from her closet—she was out walking, like always, ‘because it was daylight’—set it up against the turn into the living room. already i didn’t like this. i could see myself too well. like i was at the end of the hall, waiting for myself. but screw it. this wasn’t for me, this was for the app. this was for rj. i walked up to my reflection, held my phone down and backwards, snapped another pic. nothing. just the usual. i turned around, sure i was missing something—did rj’s dad have some old brown-and-white photographs framed on the wall on the left side?—and lowered my phone, didn’t realize the app was still on until i felt the camera burr, the image processing. i held it up. it was my hall, reversed. except i was standing there right in the middle of it. “what are you doing?” i said out loud, to rj, and just then my dad stepped into the hall in his workshirt, looked from the mirror to me and didn’t even say anything. just brushed past, shut his door behind him. # the day lindsay gave me a ride home was the day rj had to spend in the main office. there were counselors and principals and even a city police. it wasn’t for the takeback shot in circulation today—a benign old image of cedric he’d blacked-out, let bleed at the edges, like he was loping up behind, his mouth glittering—but for the one of his dad, shot in the head. “what do you think they’ll do to him?” lindsay said, both hands on the wheel. “he’s just screwing around,” i told her. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     153 still, the support forum on our site had a few members now. from school, mostly, because he’d put the brand on the bottom of the images he was texting. when lindsay pulled up to my curb, i didn’t get out at first. i turned to her, was in some level of prep for asking her to maybe hold back on forwarding any more of the messages, that i needed to talk to rj first, but then her face was right there. i bumped into her, pulled back smiling. and then we sort of kissed. i rose from the car, drifted across the lawn, and, once the front door was closed my dad clapped me on the shoulder and then shook my whole body. it was in congratulations. “a real piece,” he said, my mom standing right there in the kitchen doorway, “you need any, you know, any—” but i was already in my room by then. that night i trolled through our hidden directory again, was going to crack into that area 51 if i had to use a crowbar, but then there was a new version of the app waiting right there, shuffled in with the images. i put it on my phone, laid back on my bed so there’d be nothing behind me, and clicked through. all that was different was the theme. we’d had it just standard silver and blue, tried and true, but now all the backgrounds were shades of black, and all the words— there weren’t many—were a deep maroon. the update log in the readme said that it had been blacked out for night use. so that glow from the screen wouldn’t give you away. i looked to the front of the house. to me, standing in the window, looking into my phone’s bright display, having to squint from it after studying rj in the bushes for so long. the next day he was back in the halls, no problem. the first text he sent explained that he was having to throttle back for the moment. so it was going to be dead dog pictures for the foreseeable future. that’s a complicated word to text, too, ‘foreseeable.’ stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     154 the attached image was another cedric snap, in the same backwards hall, his toothless old mouth glinting in the washed-out sixty-watt. he was closer now. # “how are you cloaking yourself?” i asked him, finally. we were in the bushes, standing on a bed of cigarette butts. our beers were balanced on the headstone. rj had carried them right out the front door. “how am i what?” he asked back, squinting through the smoke. “you’re using the mirror,” i told him. he cocked his head over, said, “that one?” we stepped out of the bushes and he hit his flashlight widget. his mom’s ancient old mirror was leaned up against the side of the house. “it was sucking the light away,” he said, then leaned back to the headstone. “your dad throw a fit?” i asked. because his dad always did, when it came to his mom’s things. “i told him it was scaring me,” rj said, pinching his cigarette away like a tough guy, grinding it out on the bottom of his shoe. “why, you want it?” i looked out to the black monolith of his house, not a single light on. four hours ago, his dad had got back from work for the ten-thousandth time. i shook my head no, i didn’t want it. “so we ready to go live then?” he said. “sure,” i told him. “whatever.” he nodded cool, we touched beer cans, and then he was gone, back to it, and i was still standing there when my phone got a text. lindsay, probably. test tomorrow. i was half right. it was a long shot, blurry, from a made-up number, but still, you could just make out the two of us in her car, her mouth pressed against mine in the daylight, right there by the trashcans and the mailboxes, where rj and me had used to build big complicated ramps to launch our bikes up into the sky. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     155 only one of us came down, though. i’m sorry, rj. # two days later, two days before it happened, lindsay edged down beside me before life science, tipped her laptop over so i could scope it. it was the bulletin board site. mine and rj’s support thread, the faq, the bio of the app, all our best guesses at marketing. “it’s just for college,” i told her. “no, look,” she said. there was a new thread. it was the series of cedric pics, like, if you glued them to the corner of a tablet of paper then flipped through them, you could see him creaking along again. it was the next step. our pie-in-the-sky idea with the app, it had been to take not one shot, but five or six in a burst, then plant the same sneak_up image into each, a little closer, a little bigger, and then, when the user opened that file, thinking they were just getting a static pic, they’d instead get an image that all of the sudden stuttered ahead, so much closer to them. that was the pay version, of course. because you’ve got to have a pay version. but now rj was giving it away for free. “no, this,” lindsay said, and scrolled down. it was some kind of blog, or a long post. no: the bios we were supposed to be attaching. the faces behind the app. i don’t remember rj’s exactly, word-for-word, and it’s gone now, of course, is evidence in some file cabinet, has been scrubbed from the net, but i wouldn’t want to remember it in that much detail, either. because rj couldn’t scare us with pictures anymore, what with everybody watching, he was using words, now. trying to come up with a story to explain why cedric was dogging him like that. it wasn’t even close to how it went down, though, the cedric thing. i mean, i had been there for it, kind of. it was right after rj had moved in beside us, when his mom was still around. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     156 then one day, maybe after they’d unpacked their last box, she just wasn’t. even though her car keys were on the hook, her shoes in their place, her sunglasses (it was summer) by the sink. there was never any note, any atm photo, any goodbyes. in the middle of it all, too, when everybody in the neighborhood was volunteering their house to be searched—except my dad, of course, who knew his rights, and didn’t so much need the law knowing about his gun collection—in the middle of all that, cedric had turned up dead. it was bad timing, but he was old, so it made a sort of sense, everybody guessed. especially if he was grieving. what didn’t make sense—to my dad, at least—was the granite mini-headstone rj’s dad came home with. for the dog. after his wife had already obviously split with the vacuum cleaner salesman. but—this is still my dad—anybody who’d commemorate an animal like that, maybe his wife was just being reasonable, right? and i’d never even once seen a vacuum cleaner salesman. and, the whole thing—cedric, rj’s mom—that whole first impossible year of craziness, of running to the door every time it rang, of buying longer and longer cords for the phone, it was never something rj and me talked about. how do you, right? still, that was where we met, right there at that dog funeral, so it’s not like we could forget it either. my mom had walked me across to stand there with the new kid while rj’s dad droned on and on about the dog, really talking about his wife. finally, i’d even cried, and rj had edged over, stood close enough to me that we were kind of touching. ever since then, you know. joined at the hip, all that. battleship combatants for life. but friendships forged over a dead pet, i guess they’ve got a built-in expiration date. this re-do rj had spun up of what happened to cedric, and just to sell a piece of software, just to make everybody in senior class finally notice him—it had to be over, me and him. and cedric was the tame part, too. the real story was what had really happened to his mom that day, what the neighborhood had been waiting to find out for years. but rj and his dad didn’t even have a garbage disposal back then, i don’t think. maybe a therapist would see some kind of transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     157 call or plea in what-all rj made happen to her in his fake bio, i don’t know. that doesn’t mean he’d turn his back on rj for even a moment, though. according to the post, cedric hadn’t died of old age or, as rj’s dad wanted, of sadness either. his spirit wasn’t out wherever rj’s mom was now, keeping her safe. the way rj had it, it was the rings that had killed cedric. and the necklaces. the earrings. three brooches, a handful of bracelets, because garbage disposals can’t chew metal. but neither could cedric, so it had to be forced down with this little minilouisville slugger he had. piece after piece, all rj’s mom’s jewelry. a little internal bleeding for the family hound—i remember that part. and not on purpose. when i was done with it that first time, that only time, i shook my head no, my eyes wet, and pulled lindsay’s laptop shut as gently as i could, like i didn’t want everybody to hear. “do you want to just sleep at my house?” she said, the worry there in her eyes. “my parents are, you know. this weekend.” i swallowed, tested my voice in my head before using it, asking if she wanted me to bring a movie, something like that. “can you get any, like, anything to drink, you think?” she said. “you like beer?” i asked back, still not looking right at her but into the future. anything was possible. 3. that afternoon—this was friday, the friday before the rest of my life—rj opened their utility door, caught me at his dad’s refrigerator, my arms clinking with garage beer. “i’ll pay you back,” i told him. “remember zelda?” he said back, not even a little concerned about the beer, or his dad. “which one?” i asked. we’d raced through them all. “fourth grade,” he said. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     158 nes. his dad had insisted we start there, even though it had already been a serious antique by our third grade. he was right, too. it was the right place to begin. i got the last beer i could carry, balanced it on top and eased the refrigerator door shut with my calf. “gannon with two n’s . . . ” i said, then looked all the way up the steps to him. “so, this mean you’re back, man?” “where have i been?” he said, something mocking in his voice. “we need to take it live,” i said, catching a beer, and he heard the goodbye in my tone, opened his hand for me to waltz out into whatever this night held for me, and started the garage door down before i was halfway across the drive. because i was suddenly sure that if i looked back, i’d see cedric trotting up out of the past, barely going to make it under the door, i looked back, fumbled the one bottle that kept getting away. it shattered at my feet, the door sealed itself to the concrete, and i wanted so bad to scrape that brown glass over, into the little gutter rj’s dad always edged between the drive and the grass, then maybe get the hose to take care of the guilty smell. but lindsay. lindsay lindsay lindsay. and rj’s dad knew we were into that beer anyway, didn’t he? he had to. it was understood. just before she picked me up, my dad surely driving home from his shift, his face grim as ever, his talk radio whispering to him—i was having to time this so perfect—my phone buzzed with a text. it was the lamp in my living room, the image i’d deleted. it was just standing there. different anonymous number. i looked to rj’s house and the one light that was on, it went off. pulling away with lindsay, then, we passed rj’s dad, and, right before she turned right for her house, i caught rj’s dad’s brake lights flaring. so he wouldn’t run over that shattered bottle on his concrete. so he could get out, be sure he was seeing what he was seeing. so he could walk inside, ask rj what he knew about this, rj looking up at him from his laptop, a tolerant grin already pasted on his face. i shut my eyes, rubbed a cold beer against my face, and i’m sure it goes without saying here that, when we got to her place, her parents were gone like she’d said—that transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     159 was never the part anybody lied about—but four of her friends were there, and they had brought movies. they held their hands over the back of the couch for the beer, laughed and giggled, and i slept in lindsay’s little brother’s bedroom, could at least say now that i had spent the night at lindsay’s, even if it was in dinosaur sheets. but i walked home the next morning without waking any of them, telling myself in my head that this was part of it, that this is how you grow up, that you can’t be a complete adult until you’ve acquired the requisite amount of shame, and all i was doing was placing one foot in front of the other, so that i heard that distinct little pop at nearly the exact moment i realized i’d just stepped up onto my driveway. that pop, that shot, it had come from next door. from rj’s. it was the sound the counselors and principals and police had all seen coming, that they were probably all ready for. i stepped back to the middle of our yard, could feel the parentheses forming around my eyes, the hole starting in my chest, in my life, and then, like he’d been listening for this to happen for nine years now, like he could already see rj’s dad slumping down against the wall by his bedroom, my dad straight-armed our door out, was walking down our flagstones with purpose. down along his right leg was the revolver he kept tucked into the seat of his nononsense chair. in the bushes then, i heard something, a rustling, and my face prickled, my eyes caught on fire, and i knew as true as i’ve ever known anything that cedric was about to push through, that his mouth was going to be bright with jewelry, and for a moment i even saw just that—the gold, splintering the early morning light—but then it was rj, half his face dark with blown-back blood, his chest rising and falling, his dad’s small pistol already raised, his pace quick behind it, like he’d told himself he couldn’t do this, but maybe he could if he just walked really fast and pretended it was all a movie. he was already pulling the trigger too, and it was soundless, or, all i could hear, it was all the women’s rings he was wearing, clacking against the trigger guard. the first shot hit our brick wall where the roses used to grow, and the second whipped into the grass by my right foot, and the third slapped into my dad’s shoulder, stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     160 spun him around a little, this sideways red plume hanging behind him now, just like a paintball that had gone all the way through somehow. this had been coming too long for that to slow him down, though. he was walking and shooting as well, pointing his gun like a finger at rj, like it was some hard-earned truth he was telling him here. like this lecture wasn’t over yet, son. they met on the oil-stained concrete of our driveway, almost gun-to-gun, and neither stopped until they were empty, and just before rj slumped over, back into the bushes, the best parts of him spread all over my yard, he looked over to me like he was seeing me over cedric’s grave for the first time, seeing that he wasn’t going to have do this alone after all, and i could see in his eyes that he was saving me, with this. from my dad. that our summer romance wasn’t over yet. and then the rest. our app, dead. our web page, dead. rj and my dad, dead. cedric’s grave empty. the school in mourning, extra counselors bussing in, news vans lurking. my mom getting a triangle flag she just put in the top of the closet. somebody down at the grocery store saluting me so that i had to duck down an aisle i didn’t even want. over, done with, gone, end of program, reboot. except. three days ago, thumbing through my app drawer, i lucked onto ours. the last version rj had rigged, the black-backgrounded one, with the maroon letters so faint you had to kind of just trust they were there. it was a terrible design. the old people would hate it. it was going to go viral. i’d never even tried it, though. i hovered the pad of my thumb over it, knew i was going to light it up, that i had to, for rj, that i owed him that, but then made the command decision that if i could see the scaffolding first, the haunted house wouldn’t get to me. i sucked the app onto my laptop, scrolled through the code, lost myself in the elegance again, the simplicity. the innocence, right? all it was was a camera with a different trigger, then a bit of post-capture image processing, a harmless call out to a transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     161 hidden directory. it might get us into some school for marketing, but, as far as programming went, it was practically juvenile. it might get me into marketing school, i meant. and then i found rj’s last fix. he’d commented it out, even, in case we wanted to go back. our routine was, when combing each other’s lines, the second one through would erase the notations as he went. it meant this version, technically, it wasn’t complete yet. i arrowed my cursor up to his trailing escape slash, highlighted the whole note, inverting the text of the last thing he’d said in here . . . what? two weeks ago? i unpacked his cryptic timestamp in my head. the first week of school, yeah. when i was in life science, getting a lab partner. i bit my lower lip in, shook my head. who even timestamps their comments, right? rj, that’s who. he always did it, for—his words—his posterity’s sake. and then he’d reach back into his pants, for his ass, and try to slap me on the shoulder, really rub his hand in. i backspaced the comment, left the cursor blinking there at his new line, his last innovation. all it did was pull a horizontal flip on the image. the easiest thing in the world. it was why his hall had started turning up backwards. it was software, not the mirror, not the hardware. i saved it, then saved it again to make it stick. the cursor just blinking up at me like i was being stupid here. it was right. but still—something didn’t fit. it wasn’t area 51, either. area 51 had been hidden in the hidden directory, and the hidden directory was gone, burned down by the police to keep sickos from leaving digital roses on its stoop. at first i thought it was that one line of code—code that was explicitly just reversing whatever the camera had captured—it wasn’t nearly enough to scrub rj from the image, from the reflection he was backed up against to reverse his hall, but then i had to thump my temples with the heels of my hands: there was no mirror, idiot. get off that horse already. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     162 and then one of those moments of calmness hit me, where i could feel myself breathing, could feel the rasp of all those air molecules diving down my throat. yes. i fumbled my phone up, my fingers shaking, and peeled through the texts he’d sent. the images. they were all in our forever-long thread. i snapped it off to give me a useable scrollbar and paged through, holding all those air molecules in now. it couldn’t be, though. each image, each snap he’d taken of that long hall behind him, each time, the lateral was perfect. the center of focus, the bullseye, it was that back wall where they’d found his dad. in every image, there was the exact same amount of wall on each side, like the perspective, it had to be perfect to tunnel through this. had he—had he cropped all the images, then loaded them back on his phone to blast to me and the rest of the senior class? but, he would know that the same angle, the same positioning, that would kill the scare just the same as using the same five stock images. then it must mean he’d masking-taped around his feet on the carpet, stood in the exact same place each time, and, i don’t know, used a magic marker on his mom’s mirror, one that would match up with the back of his hand to get the phone in the same place time after time. except there was no mirror. stupid, stupid, stupid. and even if he’d done that, still, it would take fifty images to get one that had the exact same angle as last time. i was breathing hard now. too hard. was he using one shot of the empty hall as backdrop to them all? it was the only thing that made any kind of sense. i dove into the code again, deeper than deep, looking for any routine that would allow sampling from the same background. nothing. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     163 of course he could have done it all on his laptop, right? to what purpose, though? he was more careful than that, would never make a background come off re-used and tired. then there was only one other option. he’d cracked the side-to-side thing, just not commented it out. or he’d lucked into it, maybe pasted one algorithm before instead of after another, so that it got first bite at the variables, and that had made all the difference. there was nothing in the code, though, even when i used some ancient perl to compare the old app to the new one. except for that one line, and the style junk with the colors, which was in the stylesheet anyway, they were the same. i slammed the laptop, paced my room, pushed my phone against my forehead like i could force myself to think, here. if you’ve never cried a bit from coding, then you’ve never really coded. it goes the other way too, though. the rush of cracking it, of cueing into the beauty, the truth, it’s all the heroin any junkie could ever need. and i was so close. and rj, he’d been there already, i could see that now. it was where all his calmness had come from. take my dad’s beer, it doesn’t matter. go with her. let’s take it live, infect the world with it. i stopped pacing, stared into my phone. that was it. i was just looking at the scaffolding, was stuck behind the curtain. maybe the key was in the product, though. i touched the app, breathed life into it, and was going for the living room, to snap a takeback pic from the front window, see if it would lateral up with the one i’d taken before, but of course that one was gone, deleted once and then deleted again, when it showed back up, ha ha, rj. and the living room would probably be too big anyway. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     164 instead, i just stepped out of my bedroom, into the hall. it wasn’t as long as rj’s, but it had to be the standard width. there had to be a standard width. maybe that mattered. i pulled my door shut, turned around to face it, lowered my phone to vertical and let the shutter snap. then i cocked my wrist forward, disturbing the gyroscope, and dropped it down straight again, the camera burring completion in my palm. of course. i did it again, to be sure, and again. we’d never built in a kill switch. i was going to have to go back in, release the gyroscope after the first pic. if i didn’t, the processor would lag, trying to run postproduction on a stack of polaroids. you can’t think of everything, though. before opening my door again, i checked behind me. just to be sure. nothing. i crashed on my bed, my back wedged into the corner like always, headphones cupping my ears, and checked the images. they were empty. i mean, my hall was there, and there was a smudge of disturbance at about chestlevel, telling me something had tried to load in there. but it had aborted. this is the way it goes, yeah. you duck in for a quick-fix, just to see how something works, and then nothing’s working. it was probably the banner’s feed slot that was jacking with the fade-in, too. i was strict with always using all jpeg or all png or all gif in whatever i wrote, but rj always said he could keep it straight, it’s not like he was going to do something global with them all at once, right? except the app was doing something global with the array it was pulling from the hidden directory. oh, wait: the hidden directory that wasn’t there. of course it couldn’t load the images. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     165 still, the way we’d written it, there should have been a big distortion in the hall, not a small, unenlarged one. and, if this app was going to work, if it was going to generate revenue, then that banner needed to quit jacking with things. and, because we didn’t have sponsors yet, the banner rj had dummied in, just to make sure it fit, it was zelda. the old one. it made me lean over, see if my nes console was still in the corner somewhere, tangled in its cords. maybe one last turn through hyrule would be the right send-off for rj. the right thank you. because—it’s stupid, but we’d never really left it behind. that first day rj’s dad had mentioned red light, green light to us in the kitchen? why i’d been the one sitting on the island, not rj, it was because of zelda. in the nes version he’d introduced me to in third grade, he’d always been fascinated with the boulders, with how, if you walked around some of them three times, then came back the other way, a door would open up. for us in elementary, the same way the floor lamp in my living room had always been the robber, come to take me away, his kitchen island had always been our boulder. one time, spending the night, he even told me that’s where his mom had really gone, he was pretty sure. that he had walked wrong to the refrigerator, gone back for the butter he’d forgot by the toaster, then gone back the other way around the island, made some secret door swing open in her closet, and she had just reached through, fallen the rest of the way. it’s stupid, but it’s real. or, it was to us. “you shit,” i said to him, just out loud, for making me think of all that again, but then . . . could that be it? this app had lived on rj’s rig at the end, after all. what if the little image-reverse he’d built in, what if that was link, turning back to go the opposite way around the boulder now? what if the doubletwist plus one necessary to open whatever door, what if it was just holding your phone upside down (1), backwards (2), and then flipping that image (3), which was already under so much strain just to stay straight? that was just three things, though. the boulders always required a fourth. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     166 i checked my phone just before it shook in my hand, reminding me the images were ready—rj’s idea. i scrolled through them, still empty, and then the phone shook again, which was one more time than we’d coded for. had rj sneaked a reminder vibration in as well? but where? it would be scary, though, like the app was insisting, was trying to warn the user. but one thing at a time. i slammed the pics onto my laptop to try to figure if that distortion in the air could help me diagnose things. it didn’t. the scaled-back pictures that shouldn’t have been there, as their directory had been burned—there they were, stacked on my desktop. i clicked the top one, had a bigger screen now, and could zoom, see that it was just the crawling girl, scaled back to bugsize, hanging there in the air of the hall, not even remotely scary. “are you local or what?” i asked the top one, and thumbed through my phone’s cache. no. i wheeled the crawling girl close then far, close then far, like she was coming for me. it wasn’t scary. still, before getting back to the real work of the night—it was completely possible my phone had cached those hundred images in some way i was too tired to lock onto—i decided to make sure the sampling was truly random, anyway, wasn’t just the first few from the array. because that wouldn’t be nearly so easy a fix. cracking rj’s fake randomness, the 128 bit keys he liked to paste in, pretend he was hinging stuff on—it would be easier to just start over. and maybe those keys were the source of the problem, even. or the secret to keeping the lateral straight. the top pic i’d already been seeing, of course. crawling girl. next was the shadow fingers we’d rigged reaching around a corner, but, just like all the sneak_up images in rj’s hall, the app had placed them perfectly somehow, right on the edge of the doorway opening onto the living room. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     167 maybe the width of the hall did matter. i nodded, went to the next. it was the smoke. like a progression. maybe that was a good idea, too, if we ever did that fake animation on the paid version: sequence the stock images, build some logic in that wouldn’t let this one pop unless that one had. i clicked ahead, looking at my door instead of the screen for no real reason, and, when i came back to the laptop i felt a new hollowness in the deadspace behind my jaws, pushed the screen away so hard it shut. my lungs were trying to hyperventilate or something. no, my head, my head was doing that. same difference. i looked to the door again. it was still shut. i came back to the laptop, its side-light telling me it wasn’t asleep yet, no. that it was waiting for me. what i’d seen, what was there, it was—but it couldn’t be. a boy, about twelve. washed-out and black and white. skinny, shirtless, his pants just hanging off him. rj in sixth grade? i wanted it be him, yes, because our summer romance wasn’t over. then he could be the fourth time around the boulder, right? the app only hits hyperdrive or whatever after satisfying 1, 2, 3, and a strange fourth, which, like cedric had been for him, could be somebody close to you, dead. a blood sacrifice, to lubricate those doors that shouldn’t open. but it wasn’t rj. rj would never pull a lampshade over his head and stand there like that, just waiting for me to see him. it was my dad when he was a kid. i knew. all his anger, his rules, his haircuts and talks, it was all there in the empty spaces between his ribs. the muscles that hadn’t grown in. the bruises, the white lines of old cuts, burns above the sleeve lines. i shook my head no, please, not him, not this. stephen graham jones “no takebacks”     168 anybody but him. but it couldn’t be, either. i was still being stupid, like with the mirror. had to be. i breathed down to a rate that didn’t scream panic, watched my hand cross that bedspread space between me and the laptop, and opened it. the image was gone, the hall empty again. was that worse or better, though? “mom?” i called out, then called again, louder, and then my phone shook in my hand again, stiffening that whole side of my body. “no, no,” i said to the phone, and only opened it because i was afraid it was going to ring if i didn’t, which would definitely set me screaming, kickstart the kind of feedback loop i could never claw my way back from. there was no image on my screen, no lamp-headed boy. just the app, waiting, primed. insisting. i turned the phone around, to see the lens—maybe rj had figured out how to sonar the flash to control the lateral?—and just when it got vertical enough, it snapped a takeback pic of me. i dropped it again, but it was still plugged into my laptop. the image resolved on my screen. it was me, like it should have been, but behind me, instead of the glare of my wall, my posters, my bulletin board, there was all this open space. years and years of emptiness to fall through. and then the light on my ceiling fan sucked back into itself. i opened my mouth to scream but before i could the bulb flashed back, dying, bathing the room in its fast blue light. standing at the end of my bed was the lampshade boy. i straightened my legs, pushed back, away from him, and my phone rang. it was the single loudest thing ever. i fumbled it up before its ringer could split the world in two, slammed it to the side of my head and, in her sleep voice, my mom asked if i’d been calling her, if i needed anything, where was i? transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     169 i tried to say something, to tell her, to tell her all of it, but, in the glow of my laptop screen, in the light from my phone, the room was empty again. for now. microsoft word carocci.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     127   review essay: changing debates in museum studies since nagpra titles under review: w. richard west. the changing presentation of the american indian: museums and native cultures. washington: university of washington press, 2000. 119 pp. isbn: 9780295984599. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/wescha.html maureen matthews. naamiwan’s drum: the story of a contested repatriation of anishinaabe artefacts. toronto: university of toronto press, 2016. 356 pp. isbn: 9781442650152. https://utorontopress.com/us/naamiwan-s-drum-2 chip colwell. plundered skulls and stolen spirits: inside the fight to reclaim native america’s culture. chicago: university of chicago press, 2017. 336 pp. isbn: 9780226298993. http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/p/bo21358784.html cultural politics after nagpra (the native american graves protection and repatriation act) have generated a flurry of scholarly and public interest in indigenous affairs all over north america since the act was passed in usa in 1990. covering more than simply burials, exhumations and repatriations, this historic piece of legislation was meant to provide a framework for re-assessing power imbalances between museums and indigenous north american communities, which for many decades were left out of even the most basic decisions about the fate of their cultural heritage lying in museums, storage facilities, and research laboratories. the three books here reviewed together offer an interesting snapshot of the historical contingencies that characterised subsequent phases of public and academic debates surrounding issues of repatriation, ethics of museum display, and the private/public face of these intricate matters in the period after nagpra, which in these volumes covers over forty years. each of them, in its distinctive way, addresses key questions about the multiple, and often clashing, interests of the many players involved in legal negotiations and museum practice, actors who are ultimately driven by very different priorities, values, ethical principles, and distinct perspectives on the world of humans and their relationships to things. the first of the three to be published is the changing presentation of the american indian (2000), which focuses on images and representations, a concern typical of canonical cultural studies approaches of the 1990s. the second is namiwaan’s drum (2016), which deals with the controversial repatriation of a ritual object to a band of canadian ojibwe, and the third and final one, plundered skulls (2017), concerns the politics of repatriation of both human remains and cultural objects from the perspective of an anthropologist directly involved in negotiations. the last two books radically move away from the cultural studies model to fully embrace anthropological theory (namiwaan’s drum), and what could be a scholarly version of investigative journalism (plundered skulls). the strategies each book takes to talk about these topics are substantially different in style, genre, and pitch. the older one is an edited collection of essays that provides an overview of different regional cases interspersed with essays of more general, and introductory nature. the max carocci “changing debates in museum studies”     128   second is a solid ethnography of a repatriation case in one of canada’s several ojibwe bands that is strongly rooted in new theoretical and methodological approaches. the third, and most recent monograph, is an account of four cases of repatriation from different indigenous north american communities that rests on more modest theoretical premises – in fact one could say that is mostly descriptive, but instructive nonetheless. going chronologically, the changing presentation of the american indian gathers papers from the homonymous symposium that happened in 1995 at the nmai, and it is divided into six chapters. it has an introduction by richard west (cheyenne) former director of the national museum of the american indian (nmai), and an afterword by professor richard hill sr. (tuscarora) (who interestingly is not mentioned in the front page index!). some of the essays are by indigenous authors such as curator james nason (comanche), member of the board of directors of the warm springs museum janice clements (warm springs), and director of the mille lacs indian museum joycelyn wedll (ojibwe). the remaining papers are by nonindigenous contributors such as established curator of american indian art david penney, former director of museum of anthropology at the university of british columbia professor michael ames (who died in 2006), and former director of the minneapolis institute of arts evan maurer (retired in 2005). essays in this collection are different in length, thematic scope, and regional coverage. the book starts with a foray into visual representations of american indians in a conventional historical trajectory that much owes to previous illustrious studies by chiappelli, honour, and berkhofer, and optimistically ends with the hope that the future will take indians outside the cabinets of curiosities, which as transpires between the lines, do not seem to be too different from museums, after all. each of the essays has its own unique intellectual gravitas. some papers are longer and more academic, others are short and descriptive. seen as a collection, these contributions result as the product of a distinct historical period dominated, as it was, by the cultural studies paradigm. so issues of perception and representation, topical between the mid-90s through the mid-2000s, feature prominently as the guiding principles of this collection edited by the very museum in which the original symposium took place. undoubtedly useful for the cases included in the discussion, the book exposes to the wider public concerns and ideas about now not-so-new perspectives on museology, with a deliberate emphasis on indigenous north american cultures. examples from the plateau region (clements) and the great lakes (wedll) fluctuate between more speculative chapters, some of which indicate how provocative questions advanced by these thinkers about issues that were relevant in the mid-90s paved the way for new themes that in later years would become as controversial and topical as the public debates on representations had been in previous decades. michael ames for instance alarmingly asked in his essay ‘what happens to museums when their objects becomes the speaking subject?’ surely referring actual human persons, native americans as the focus of scientific enquiry, this question aimed at recovering the presence of real people behind the things that helped create cultural representations. in an almost prophetic mode, ames’s question anticipated the move towards a distinctively indigenous cultural activism that now presents museum professionals with an analogous question, perhaps yet more disconcerting for institutions. it is a question that, while putting “things in museums” again as the focus of enquiry, does not so much envisage them as objects of transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     129   study, but rather as active agents within negotiations. this is the idea that thoroughly permeates the second book here considered, maureen matthews’ naamiwan’s drum: the story of a contested repatriation of anishinabe artefacts, published by university of toronto press sixteen years after the publication of the first but almost twenty years after the very first symposium conversations took place that eventually ended up in the nmai book. naamiwan’s drum is a compelling tour de force across the difficult theoretical terrain that sits within the boundaries of anthropology’s most recently discussed ideas: the animacy of things, and the ways in which this concept may relate to notions of personhood and agency in art circles and museums alike. evidently proficient in navigating anthropology’s intricate arguments on the matter, the author (a journalist turned anthropologist) skilfully interweaves theory with a detailed account of the adventures of an ojibwe drum once used in the midewiwin ceremonies in the nineteenth century. aided by ojibwe texts, matthews builds a case for the necessity of anthropological fieldwork in museum dealings regarding repatriation. bringing into the discussion linguistic data through translations and lengthy explanations of ojibwe cosmological principles about animacy, action, and volition, she lodges her treatment of this complex case study in firm ethnographic evidence taking readers on a captivating journey through the various phases of what could be rightfully regarded as a cause célèbre of repatriation of cultural property in north america. what this book does excellently is to uncover in subtle ways how objects are actors in the drama of repatriation whether one takes a first nations’ perspective or not. readers need not be persuaded by the argument, promoted by some indigenous groups, that things have agency, but maureen matthews’ composed style guides us to reflect on the effects that objects have on real life situations whether one believes that drums ‘choose to go home’, or are taken back by human actors. although the thorny issue of philosophical incompatibilities and the (im)possibility of building bridges between different ontologies and epistemologies outlined in this book may stay with us for a long time, the book demonstrates the relevance of fine-grained research for the recovery of dignity and pride for disenfranchised groups whose cultural heritage may reside in what euro-american parlance are called things. the recovery of indigenous epistemologies and ontologies discussed in namiwaan’s drum is just one step among the many needed to recuperate a sense of control over community lives promoted by the proverbial notion of ‘selfdetermination’ first uttered in the mid-70s under nixon’s policies, and then further endorsed by the following presidents. what this book also does is to follow the invitation of a new strand of anthropology associated with the so called ‘ontological turn’; it takes indigenous views and perspectives seriously, and encourages all its readers to do the same. this is an imperative that come through very strongly in matthews’ book, one that re-orients once again anthropological practice, this time towards a new engagement with ethical issues. several of these issues are taken up by the third and last book published of the three. this volume addresses these current museological concerns through a passionate engagement with human remains, living statues, and once again, the utterly confused category of what most of us call ‘objects’. plundered skulls and stolen spirits: inside the fight to reclaim native america’s culture takes the reader on a journey in time and space to appreciate the intricacy of repatriation claims, at once singular and universal. the singularity of each of the four cases brought to bear to the author’s arguments is indicative of the very different views in different tribes on what max carocci “changing debates in museum studies”     130   repatriation is actually for. going from the southwest to the northwest, and from the plains to the southeast, chip colwell (curator of anthropology at the denver museum of nature and science) recounts with systematic precision the events that eventually led to the repatriation of distinct items to various indigenous communities. the cases chosen to illustrate native north americans’ universal concern with repatriation are: the so-called zuni war gods; a prestigious tlingit blanket; native scalps from the great plains; and a prehistoric skull from florida. clearly supportive of the claims, colwell calls for a respectful treatment of both people (whether dead or still living), and ‘things’, which also in this book once again emerge as more than passive objects. one of the most significant contributions of the volume is its capacity to persuade outside observers that objects that are often seen as mere things are in fact bursting with life. their power for native americans should thus not be underestimated in order to honour indigenous peoples’ right to culture, and in order to offer them and their relatives a respectful, dignified, and humane treatment. while generally sympathetic, the author presents the cases with detached objectivity, giving insightful and useful information about each instance treated in the book. each example benefits from additional supporting material from other repatriation cases, which helps readers to contextualise the dealings in the broader framework. overall the book is easy to read, and is accessible to a wide audience that is not accustomed to following intricate scholarly arguments. it may, on the other hand, have a very deep emotional impact, especially among those who are not familiar with euro-american cruel, brutal, and discriminatory attitudes that have tinted much of the history of their relationships with native americans. without ever descending into sensationalistic tones, the author exposes delicate facts about massacres, beliefs, desecrations, and illegal activities, deploying evidence with a measured distance that is difficult to argue against. native american voices are given plenty of space to support their cases. they emerge as strong and determined and this is what the author wants use to perceive as a way to sensitise the public to the deep ethical implications that these, like many other cases, present us with. all three books essentially touch upon moral and philosophical questions about agency, authority, and communication. what may be interesting, and perhaps intriguing for some readers, is that two of these books expand commonsensical ideas about these three themes, including in the discussion objects as actors. especially the two most recent publications make abundantly clear that in indigenous north american communities objects are often seen as living entities rather than inert matter. this perspective, while paramount for claimants from the source communities, may not necessarily be adopted by museum professionals and academics working with native north americans. yet, as it becomes clear reading plundered skulls and naamiwan’s drum, museum directors and curators now have to be aware of this crucial aspect of the relationship between native americans and what those specialists might think of as ‘objects,’ in order to conduct effectively negotiations with indigenous groups in the new regime created after nagpra. the three books overall convey that the new state of affairs, while generating the conditions for fresh approaches to intercultural communication, is also the source of intense debate, one that can be frequently tinted by heartfelt reactions from both sides. luckily, at least one of the three books (naamiwan’s drum) avoids facile polarizations, by presenting the multiplicity of voices that make up the cacophony of positions taken by the many individual and institutional actors involved in the debates over objects’ repatriation. although different transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     131   viewpoints are obvious in the other two books, the implications these have for negotiations are left more implicit, whereas in naamiwan’s drum they are the core of the matter. irrespective of the level of explicitness of such arguments, one could say that all three books are fundamentally about the status that things and persons, however loosely conceptualised, have in museums. the changing presentation of the american indian however stands in stark contrast to the two later books because its treatment of things is firmly articulated around the idea that objects are functions of cultural representations, or at best metaphors, or symbols for other places and times (penney). early conversation of the role of objects in museums did not touch upon the animacy of objects, possibly because research about this fundamental aspect of native philosophies had not been thoroughly investigated, and certainly was outside cultural studies’ main concerns and expertise. it took academia and museums years to absorb the lessons derived from anthropological work on these matters, and the latter volumes show the effects of this important shift on twenty-first century’s cultural climate. whatever areas these early debates left untouched, they were historically necessary. postcolonial critiques of museum approaches to things came from literary and cultural studies that ultimately interpreted cultural facts as texts to be decoded along power axes that operate on the continuum between hegemonic and subaltern positions. as a result, the the changing presentation of the american indian, recently reissued by the university of washington press, now reads and feels like it belongs to a former period in which criticism centred round notions of representations and resistance, one that however tended to polarise positions in antagonistic competitions over the right name and represent. as such, this book should now be treated as a document of, or as reference for, the historical developments of repatriation debates over its long history. although sharing the overarching theme of things in museums, the three books provide different perspectives of what a ‘thing’ is and does, and this is probably the most significant contribution to museological literature produced today. whereas things in the changing presentation are instrumental in eliciting questions about the authority to speak for entire communities and worldviews, in the two later books things are understood in their ontological complexities across linguistic registers and worldviews. readers will learn that whether displayed or reclaimed, perceived as things or ‘other-than-human’ beings, objects are the main characters in the three books’ stories. two of the books (plundered skulls, and naamiwan’s drum), explicitly make the theme of objects’ agency and personhood the core of their most poignant arguments about repatriation, ethics, and conservation. upon reflection, what is at stake for all the three is the ability of certain arguments to convince, and in so doing, to allow the wider public to understand indigenous peoples’ world views and perspectives on material culture, heritage, and more specifically what euro-americans understand as objects. if properly contextualised, these three volumes can lift native north american world views from epistemological oblivion to the limelight of intense philosophical ponderings common nowadays among museum curators, directors, and conservators dealing with indigenous communities. truly, if we see the three books together as signposts of historical changes in museums’ attention to indigenous claims, we can see their collective value as opposed to what they can each contribute to the current debates in their own right. seen in chronological perspective, the cases described in the three books mark subsequent epistemological shifts by means of salient examples from zuni requests for their max carocci “changing debates in museum studies”     132   sacred items in the 1970’s (plundered skulls), to naamiwan’s drum’s monographic treatment of a divisive dispute over ritual implement between different ojibwe groups in the mid-2000s. in highlighting different viewpoints, rhetorical strategies, discursive, and epistemological domains embraced by the various constituencies, the three books not only put in sharp focus the difficulties in entertaining efficient inter-cultural communication, but underline the crucial issue of fragmentation of knowledge, authority, cultural competence, and language proficiency among indigenous constituencies. what surfaces from the reading of these books is that far from being homogeneous entities, tribes, linguistic groups, and urban communities are extremely diverse. what the books highlight however, is that repatriation claims and controversies over the treatment of indigenous cultural material are further complicated by the uneven perceptions of the same matters among museum specialists. the different levels of accommodation of repatriation claims by various institutions is, in fact, evident in plundered skulls. what is more, and this is probably one of the most relevant points for all the three books, each constituency holds a different view on what museums are and they are supposed to do. this obviously has implications for museum policies and protocols, which ideally ought to be flexible enough to be able to contingently adapt to the multiplicity of scenarios presented by the extreme heterogeneity of indigenous communities. in addition to being a warning to museum practitioners, consultants, and collectors, the three books collectively stress the role of indigenous agency in reshaping decision making processes over the repatriation of objects. or, readers are left to wonder, is it the objects themselves that are now finally asking ‘to go back home’? max carocci, goldsmith’s college microsoft word andrews.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 237 heid e. erdrich new poets of native nations. graywolf press, 2018. 304 pp. isbn 978-155597-809-9. https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/new-poets-native-nations after all these years, this sudden wealth. those are the first words of mick mcallister’s review of carriers of the dream wheel and voices of the rainbow, both published in 1975 (360). those books are considered landmarks in american indian literature because they made available to the general public the work of many poets that public may not have known existed. those two volumes demonstrated the existence, the richness, and the diversity of native voices. we can revise mcallister’s opening exclamation to talk about heid erdrich’s anthology of native poetry: after all these years, this continued wealth. like those 1975 anthologies, new poets of native nations demonstrates the richness and diversity of poetry from indian country (and beyond). these poets continue the legacy of those voices gathered in 1975, but they add to them in several ways, including their explicit declarations of nationhood, their use of native languages, and their formal sophistication and experimentation. new poets may seem like “sudden wealth” if only because the previous substantial anthology of us native poetry was published in 1988 (according to dean rader, quoted in erdrich’s introduction). closing this 20-year gap also makes new poets, like its 1975 predecessors, a potential landmark. the publicity material from graywolf press uses that word to describe the book, and several of its many positive reviews have echoed that language. those earlier anthologies were landmarks for introducing readers to many poets they would not have encountered otherwise. several of those poets went on to become canonical authors for college courses in american literature: simon ortiz, leslie marmon silko, n. scott momaday, joy harjo, etc. new poets, as its name indicates, does not include those names; it contains only a selection of poets who published their first poetry book after 2000, regardless of age or experience. so some of them are new to book publishing but not necessarily new to poetry. some of them have found some fame already. layli long soldier, natalie diaz, and tommy pico, for example, have won awards for their poetry books and have received attention in popular media outlets; also, they have wikipedia entries devoted to them. other poets here may have won awards but they have yet to receive such broader recognition; no wikipedia entries for sy hoahwah, tacey m. atsitty, or julian talamantez brolaski, for example. at least not yet. scott andrews review of new poets of native nations 238 (perhaps that is a good task for someone’s native literature class: create wikipedia entries for these and other native writers.) so what has changed for native poetry since 1975? a lot, of course. too much to consider here. but i can focus on a couple of developments. one of the earliest rhetorical and interpretive maneuvers in american indian literary criticism (and one of the most persistent) was drawing connections between contemporary literature by native people and oral traditions. kenneth rosen did that in his introduction to voices of the rainbow: “for some readers it may be helpful to place these poems on the oral/written continuum so central to american indian literatures in general, and to indian poetry in particular” (xx). the phrase “oral tradition” does not appear in erdrich’s introduction. perhaps it is ironic, then, that the poems rosen selected were influenced by the aesthetics of native orality and yet none of them make significant use of a native language. that absence may be a sign of colonization’s impact, but it does not make the poems less valuable or diminish them as acts of cultural and personal resistance. and yet perhaps it is also ironic that erdrich does not use the term “oral tradition” in her introduction and yet native languages frequently appear in this collection. if the absence of native languages is a sign of colonization’s impact at the time of voices of the rainbow and carriers of the dream wheel, their presence in new poets of native nations is testimony to acts of sovereignty in native communities within the united states (and elsewhere). for example, gwen westerman has a poem entirely in dakota. “owotaŋna sececa” is presented on one page and its english translation, “linear process,” appears on the following page. westerman’s poems skillfully inhabit particular moments in time but also often evoke the transcendence made possible through our connection with ancestors. that connection and devotion is represented by westerman’s speaking and writing in dakota. margaret noodin’s poetry comes in twin columns: the left in anishinaabewomin and the right in english. for example, “agoozimakakiig idiiwag/ what the peepers say” describes the emergence of frogs from their hibernation and suggests several kinds of renewed singing. there is the literal renewal of the frogs singing in the spring, but there also are the growing voices of native poets singing in the aftermath of colonization, and there is the singing of the people learning their native languages. noodin’s poetry is lyrical and wise, and it is frequently about the mysteries of being and of language itself. cultural continuity and contemporary presence are essential to indigenous survivance, and several poems in new poets reflect that in their relation not to orality but in their relation to typography, to print culture. for instance, in long soldier’s “whereas re-solution’s an act,” she presents legal / treaty language with blank spaces to be filled in by the reader: “whereas native peoples are [ ] people with a deep and abiding [ ] in the [ ]…” (25). she presents legal / treaty transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 239 language as a trap designed to reduce native concepts into simplistic ones, and so her poem removes them to protect them (although the missing words are provided on the following page). and “obligations 1” and “obligations 2” descend their pages so that the reader can trace different connections among the words, creating different poems, sort of like a “choose your own adventure” poem. performing such a poem in a spoken forum is hard to imagine; it is made for the page and to be seen / read. another example of the influence of print culture is from craig santoz perez, a poet from guåhan (guam). his poem “i (tinituhon)” is presented as a series of paired characters evenly spaced in lines across the page: letters, punctuation, numbers, and symbols. at first scan, the poem’s subject is not apparent since no words are readily visible. the poem requires the reader to slowly follow the characters, piecing together the words they form across the gaps. again, this is a poem made for the page, to be deciphered with our eyes rather than our ears. erdrich’s collection makes clear that indian county is digital. several poems make use of texting conventions, again literature we consume with our eyes rather than our ears – although it is true social media conventions have invaded our actual speech, since people do say “hashtag this” or “hashtag that” or “omg” or “jk.” excerpts from pico’s books irl, nature poem, and junk include conventions created for cell phone keyboards. his poems, which oftentimes originate from his twitter account, consistently use n for and, ndn for indian, r u for are you, etc. while pico’s poems are presented in the sassy slang of his poetic persona teebs, brulaski’s entries mix text-message influences with elevated vocabulary. her poem with the wonderful title “what do they know of suffering, who eat of pineapples yearround,” uses misspellings that look like text-messaging shortcuts or that suggest emphatic pronunciations. the poem starts with “lrsn,” which suggests “listen” but also with some warping, the way “club” becomes “clerb.” it includes cd for could, whos instead of who’s, yr for your, and yet it also includes words such as battlements, pulchritudinous, and edifices in a kind of mock-epic tone (135). although there are some “new” poets that i wish had been included in new poets, i realize that some choices had to be made. i realize that i am fortunate to live in a moment exploding with bold and exciting talents. including every deserving poet would have made a book too thick to pick up. personally, i am happy hoahwah is included and the he continues to explore the comanche gothic (my phrase, not his) that he started with velroy and the madischie mafia (2009). his poems are gruesome, comical, and mystical. their subjects include a comanche princess who drags herself from the grave, a decapitated head singing to itself, and the threat of being eaten by a “raccoon-witch-cannibal-monk” (151). i don’t know that this macabre fun is present in carriers of the dream wheel or voices of the rainbow. these new poets of native nations carry their voices into an indigenous future that settler colonialism tried to foreclose and that mainstream publishing too seldom recognizes. i will end this review with the last lines of karen wood’s “the poet i wish i was,” which i believe speak to the need for writing an indigenous future. it is a list poem in prose that concludes: scott andrews review of new poets of native nations 240 14. however good we are, we can’t change the beginning or the middle – we can only try to rewrite the end (237). scott andrews, california state university, northridge works cited hoahwah, sy. velroy and the madischie mafia. west end press, 2009. mcallister, mick. review of carriers of the dream wheel ed. by duane niatum, the first skin around me: poems by native americans, edited by mark vinz & james l. white, and voices of the rainbow, edited by kenneth rosen. western american literature, vol. 11 no. 4, 1977, pp. 360-362. project muse. https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.1977.0030 niatum, duane, editor. carriers of the dream wheel: contemporary native american poetry. harper & row, 1975. pico, tommy. irl. birds llc, 2016. ---. junk. tin house, 2018. ---. nature poem. tin house, 2017. rosen, kenneth, editor. voices of the rainbow: contemporary poems by american indians. seaver books, 1975. microsoft word mish.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 181 notes toward a review of irl and nature poem by tommy pico tommy pico. irl. new york: birds llc, 2016. 98 pp. isbn: 978-0991429868. http://www.birdsllc.com/catalog/irl tommy pico. nature poem. new york: tin house, 2017. 136 pp. isbn: 978-1-941040-63-8. http://tinhouse.com/product/nature-poem-by-tommy-pico/ tommy pico’s recent collections resist reviewing for three reasons: one, they’ve already been reviewed in some of the best journals and magazines in america; two, excerpts from his writings do not fully demonstrate the artistry and power of his collections, and three, the intertwined complexity of the two collections leads to shape-shifting—in the first reading, the two books reveal only what they wish to while whispering among themselves and casting spells that take effect in future readings. in subsequent readings, new meanings are created, the world expands and explodes, and the conversation continues. because the experience of reading the two collections together is one of shift and shimmer and slip, this will not be a final, comprehensive review of these two collections—instead, these are notes toward a review. perhaps because of the amplitude of nature poem and irl, thematic elements and stylistic choices are often the primary concerns in previous reviews—the use of text message style, the fast, sometimes shallow, and not always satisfying rhythms of city life, of gay life, of urban ndn-ness—there is no doubt that pico has offered an epic (irl) and an ecologue (nature poem) for our time. in this review, i’d like to look more closely at the stunning poetry of pico’s two books, the many moments of sheer beauty and pain for which the ground has been carefully prepared by a poet very much in control of his craft. the purpose of this review is to highlight pico’s mastery of poetics—his status as cultural-icon-in-the-making will take care of itself among at least two generations of ndns, especially urban ndns, as will, perhaps, among queer communities, the creation of a presence not unlike allen ginsberg’s (whose ghost, summoned or not, inhabits the books). pico’s work is as multilayered, hypertextual, and allusive as any of the great poets’ work—eliot, of course, comes to mind. moreover, pico’s allusions engage at least as large a field as eliot’s: contemporary pop culture and music; poetry of many eras, capital “h” history, native american history, kumeyaay culture, greek myth, gay culture, social media, puns, linguistics, etymology, and more. looking up text message abbreviations, pop cultural references, and allusions in pico’s poetry might make one wonder why the books weren’t published—or simultaneously published—as online/digital media hypertexts instead of only in print. perhaps, though, an audience that needs to look up the references is not the audience pico is addressing. in pico’s writings, inside the world of text message abbreviations and twitter hashtags and an ongoing conversation with his muse, something like emblem poems arise, poem-sections which often use emblem structure—description / invocation of a thing / idea followed by meditation on the thing / idea—except, in pico’s works, especially in irl but also in nature poem, the descriptions / invocations and meditations happen cyclically, recur in different forms, and are jeanetta calhoun mish review of irl and nature poem 182 sometimes repeated. one might also call irl an emblem-poem because its form and style reveal the shape of a hyper-connected world where selfhood is continually renegotiated in conversation with real-time feedback from social media—on the page, irl looks like a scrolling series of text messages or a twitter feed. the following excerpt reveals the emblem-structure while also offering an example of the text-message style of the text. the influence of muse is not unlike being under the influence, the way a poem is spontaneously drunk on robert graves. ……………………. the temple of muse is all around you. don’t patron ize me, tradition is a cage conflict constant . . . (irl 31) “tradition” in both culture and poetry is a common theme in pico’s writings: how to resist it, how to work within it, how to make it new. in nature poem, social-media-speak is also used; one piece begins, “the fabric of our lives is #death” (32) and each line of this page and a half poem ends with the same hashtag, a device, epistrophe, both emotionally devastating in its repetition and disturbing in its accuracy—death sells and is cheapened on social media. irl and nature poem both make use of text-speech, approach many of the same themes, and are narrated by “teebs,” (pico’s irl nickname), but differ in their formal choices, density / intensity, and tone. irl uses short lines and is composed as one long poem; its density and intensity lend it the feel of an epic, and the tone, while it varies and ends on a note of personal integration, is, overall, one of loneliness and alienation: i am so good at being alone. all i need is my phone. subway, elevator, drifting off in a convo—no one really seems to notice, occupied by their own gleaming pool of longing. (irl 32) pico’s facility with sonics is displayed here, in the repetition of “o” sounds that intensify the representation of loneliness. nature poem appears on the page as a series of individual poems that are nonetheless intertwined and that work best when read as part of the whole. the lines are longer than those in irl, often crowding the edge of the page, and the tone is somehow more hopeful, more kind to its narrator. throughout the book, the narrator of nature poem explores the many reasons he can’t write a “nature poem”: colonialism, noble savage narrative, loss of land, loss of culture, the fact that “nature” contains much more than a pretty landscape and includes the often ugly and mean actions of human nature. pico notes in a rumpus interview that this book is an attempt “to rewire transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 183 and channel the sense of cultural loss that i feel into a new kind of culture, without losing myself or having my identity subsumed into a monolithic ‘indian’ identity” (knapp). i can’t write a nature poem bc it’s fodder for the noble savage narrative. i wd slap a tree across the face, i say to my audience. (np 2) pico’s wry sense of humor is often showcased by his line breaks—breaking the line after “savage” complicates the idea of the sentence because it appears that nature poems are fodder for the noble savage” poet; on the next line the completion of the phrase “noble savage narrative” turns this section to a critique of representation, not of (or maybe in addition to) those who represent. in both collections, pico’s use of texting acronyms / abbreviations pushes poetic compression near its limit. while e.e. cummings wasn’t composing text messages, his use of abbreviation, of compression in context, word choice, and “story” could be thought of as antecedent to pico’s use of texting-language. in pico’s work, abbreviations and acronyms seem to collapse the difference between sign and signal and noise, context and interpretation, a collapse that reflects the shifting contemporary boundaries between self and other, between private and public, and, for pico / teebs as for many of the social-media generation, the real-time necessity to negotiate several different constructions of self: ndn, gay, urban, rez kid, child of colonialism-influenced family dysfunction, and more. leaving yr status up to the feed, open to the scroll, who do you want knowing you r suicidal? the obvi answer is every body, but the whisper is more particular. ppl lean in. ……………………. . . . who r you trying not to text talk ……………………. what texture of the grey audience puts the “firm” in affirming? (irl 39) as an added difficulty to his generation’s all-consuming media-tion, the narrator teebs, like many young, contemporary, urban ndns (pico’s usage), struggles to integrate his kumeyaay culture, heritage, and history with the fast-paced, tech-mediated life he lives in new york. in a hooligan interview, pico states, “i think one of the problems i had to overcome was the idea that being indigenous and contemporary were two different things” (haparimwi 8). part of pico’s jeanetta calhoun mish review of irl and nature poem 184 project is rectifying or integrating, for himself and for others, the terms “indigenous” and “contemporary.” and, perhaps surprisingly, for series of writings in which self is constructed through media, teebs’ complex identity is abundantly embodied: his native body, his gay body, and his grappling to make them one. . . . we are mixed (blood) but full ndn. i cd see my date says, squinting half asian? tho everyone can yell i mean tell i’m a fag part of me in sharp relief, a part of me half hidden. (irl 42) in this excerpt, pico tweaks a common trope used in mixed blood native poetry to express teebs’ divided self, a fascinating revision which leads to philosophical questions about selfhood as it is expressed through the body as well as interrogating recent claims that racial identity is commensurate with gender identity and that both are merely or only performative. pico has stated in several interviews that his work is influenced by a.r. ammons’ poetry—in the case of irl, particularly ammons’ tape for the turn of the year, a long poem composed on an adding machine tape. ammons is present in the text as well, often in references to another book-length poem, garbage. moreover, ammons’s compositional style interspersed his meditative, culturally-critical poems with what robert b. shaw called “jokes, slang, ironies . . .” a description that would serve pico’s work as well. however, pico’s deft handling of “real-time” description, meditation, negotiation, and politically-charged issues calls to my mind lyn hejinian’s my life. juliana spahr describes hejinian’s work as influenced by “language philosopher ludwig wittgenstein’s aphoristic statement that ‘the limits of my language mean the limits of my world’” (103). today’s ascendency of messaging and other written forms of internet communication seems to confirm wittgenstein’s statement—the networked world is large and interconnected and requires code-switching and constant attention to / policing of language. in irl, the ubiquity of text is imaged as the writing-over of self, of memory: . . . i see so much text all day—the door way of my memory has shit typed in raleway all over it i see fonts in my dreams oily strings of letters in the corners of ppls mouths . . . (irl 23) transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 185 the remarkable imagery in this excerpt figures text as invading the deepest aspects of personhood and as disgusting “oily strings of letters,” an illness perhaps, affecting everyone. the challenge is to construct a language sufficient to inscribe yourself into the feed while, at the same time, “saving something for the self,” (irl 79). one way to remain intact in the world of text is to allow one’s sorrow and cultural terror its expression: the seam of my skin bursts open routinely. it’s a condition. in the valley i lived in for thousands of years, in trad itional times, i’m sure i would have been a mourner, called on to cry bc i do it all the time. (irl 86) there are few metaphors that capture existential sorrow better than the “seam of my skin” splitting along the fracture lines of of one’s psyche. there is also the play on skin / skins and the recognition that the speaker would have had an honored place in his kumeyaay traditional community. love, which the narrator teebs seems always to be searching for, is one respite, one small bastion against the world and its demands: knowing the moon is inescapable tonight and the tuft of yr chest against my should blades— this is a kind of nature i would write a poem about. (np 26) in addition to hejinian and ammons as influences, there is an aura of ginsberg and june jordan in these two collections, the latter poet one whom pico often names as a major force in his poetic ancestry. both poets are present in pico’s deep critique of america and in the straightforward, yet lyrical approach to the critique: . . . america never intended for me to live so the we never intended to include me. (irl 70) nothing can fall that wasn’t built except maybe my self-esteem bc i have a hunch i was born with it intact but then america came smacked me across the face said like it (np 26) not only does this poem revisit teebs’ defensive announcement about slapping a tree “across the face” in an earlier poem, but america as dominatrix will surely be recognized as one of the most apt and satisfying metaphors ever found in a poem. jeanetta calhoun mish review of irl and nature poem 186 while reading tommy pico’s irl and nature poem, i was exhilarated and astonished. i felt as if i had washed up on the shore of a new country of language, a new continent of metaphor, a making that is likely not available to me but one which i nevertheless recognize as masterful. to preemptively rebut any future criticism which might claim that pico’s writing is all social media style and no poetics and to acknowledge pico’s reference in irl to a similar critique of another american poet’s collection, i’ll quote one last poem here, a poem that says, quite clearly, that tommy pico can write that kind of poetry if he wishes and with as much craft as anyone else. i’m old women scattered along the creek my little hands squeeze my little mouth shut drawn into nooks within the valley like a sharp breath while shaggy men on horseback following the water seek brown bodies for target practice strong brown backs for breaking (np 45) while tommy pico can write a conventional poem, there are few, if any, american poets today who can compose in his 21st century aesthetic. if you have not yet read irl and nature poem, i urge you to do so as soon as possible because between the covers of these collections is where the future of american poetry is being birthed. jeanetta calhoun mish, oklahoma city university haparimwi, charlene. “inside issue #18: getting to know tommy pico.” hooligan magazine, 29 apr. 2017, issuu.com/hooliganmag/docs/18. pp. 4-11. e-magazine. knapp, michaelsun stonesweat. “the saturday rumpus interview with tommy pico.” the rumpus, october 15th, 2016, therumpus.net/2016/10/the-saturday-rumpus-interview-withtommy-pico/. accessed 15 mar., 2018. web. pico, tommy. irl. birds llc, 2016. print. pico, tommy. nature poem. tin house books, 2017. print. spahr, juliana. “lyn hejinian.” dictionary of literary biography: american poets since world war ii. ed. joseph conte. vol. 165. detroit: gale, 1996. 102–107. print. microsoft word 246-2113-1-pb (1).docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 1   playing in the digital qargi: iñupiat gaming and isuma in kisima inŋitchuŋa1 katherine meloche never alone was released in 2014 as a collaborative project between upper one games, the first indigenous-owned game development company in the us, and cook inlet tribal council, in anchorage, alaska. the project began after the council contacted the company to develop a storytelling game that honours iñupiaq values and would center iñupiat, the language of iñupiaq peoples (“interview series: ishmael hope”).2 the cook inlet tribal council and upper one games base the game on the oral story “kuunuksayuka” from unipchaaŋich imaġluktuġmiut: stories of the black river people by robert nasruk cleveland. “kuunuksayuka” tells the story of a young boy who finds the source of an unrelenting blizzard impacting his community (“the story of kunuuksaayuka (part one)”). never alone adapts the story to a puzzle-platform game where nuna, an iñupiat girl, and her arctic fox companion have to navigate the sea ice, encounter friendly and threatening beings, and overcome obstacles in order to find the source of the storm. as nuna and fox progress, they unlock “cultural insights,” which are short videos where elders and community members explain key cultural concepts that relate to the task that nuna and fox are currently facing. the response to never alone as an interactive form of storytelling is compelling and attends to the ways “kuunuksayuka” is conscientiously reimagined (gaertner n.pag.). in his blog post entitled “how should i play these?: media and remediation in never alone,” new media scholar david gaertner considers the innovative use of technology to adapt the story as an act of remediation, which “makes never alone legible as uniquely iñupiaq storytelling” (gaertner n.pag.). gaertner states that “it deconstructs the tradition/innovation binary and brings video games to bear… as an important extension of iñupiaq culture” (gaertner n.pag.). he highlights the inclusion of “‘old’ forms of western media,” like the use of documentary shorts, and the use of “elements of iñupiaq culture,” like the aesthetics of scrimshaw art, as forms of remediation that honours the continuance of storytelling practices (gaertner n.pag.). this act of remediation mitigates the community’s anxiety over adapting the story to a game form that asserts visual katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 2 sovereignty (gaertner n.pag.). while gaertner carefully delineates remediation’s alliance with inuit storytelling and song practices, i would like to extend his examination to argue that never alone is an adaptation of gaming culture in the arctic. it is not a direct adaptation or remediation of a particular traditional game, but a continuance of values and relationships to people and to place that is performed through play. adaptability is an ongoing traditional value that informs inuit self-determination (martin, 2012 100) and never alone engages with the politics of selfdetermination by adapting traditional gaming values to a digital form. in so doing, it also participates in the changing landscape of game development by taking control of how—and on what terms—inuit are represented in popular culture.3 never alone reinterprets the values, experiences, and social structure of traditional inuit competition for iñupiaq communities. iñupiaq self-determination is extended to a global audience through the shift to digital gaming technologies. therefore, i will discuss the nuances of inuit sovereignty and self-determination, never alone as an adaptation of gaming traditions, and an analysis of the game’s challenge to settler-colonial claims to the arctic. aulatsigunnarniq: playing at the borders of inuit self-determination sovereignty or self-determination in the northern circumpolar is multiple and layered. iñupiaq are inuit peoples within the united states; however, the inuit homelands encompass the majority of the northern circumpolar (martin, stories 12). inuit have many languages and dialects within this diverse geographical landscape and must engage with the enforced governance of several settler-colonial states including denmark, russia, canada, and the united states. the differences are stark even in north america between the canadian and the united states’ governments. while the creation of nunavut in 1999 through the nunavut land claims agreement enabled inuit to engage in a territorial governmental representation (“qtc final report” 36), iñupiaq in alaska are one of many alaska native regional corporations formed through the alaska native claims settlement act (ancsa) in 1971 (“ancsa regional and language map”). inuit political representatives united across international borders in the late-twentieth century to protect inuit interests. the inuit circumpolar conference, now known as the inuit circumpolar council (icc), first met in barrow, alaska in june 1977 (martin, stories 13). “a circumpolar inuit declaration on sovereignty in the arctic” was signed by the chair of the icc transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 3 and representatives from alaska, canada, greenland and chukotka in april 2009, which positioned sovereignty as a mode to assert inuit’s ongoing right to self-determination within and across various settler states (“a circumpolar inuit declaration on sovereignty in the arctic”). the icc wished to unite the voices of inuit to advocate for their rights at a national and international level (martin, stories 14). partnership and collaboration are founding principles for inuit identity, which seeks to position inuit as valuable and indispensable participants on the international political scene. though they state that sovereignty in the arctic is “evolving,” the icc indicts the ongoing erasure of inuit self-determination and interests by settler states (“a circumpolar inuit declaration on sovereignty in the arctic”). inuit nationhood in the late 20th and early 21st centuries relies on the flexibility and adaptability of inuit self-determination to position inuit peoples as indispensable “active partners” in debates about resource extraction and global warming (“a circumpolar inuit declaration on sovereignty in the arctic”). inuit selfdetermination relies on ongoing knowledge and experience, which is redeployed within international political debates to ensure inuit interests. inuit concepts of traditional self-determination disrupt southerner’s paternalistic control. in contrast with settler states, inuit definitions of sovereignty do not include imposing strict borders. in her article, “inummarik: self-sovereignty in classic inuit thought” inuk author rachel qitsualik states that inuit have asserted sovereignty for millennia (27). she uses the term “aulatsigunnarniq” to describe sovereignty, which translates to “the ability to make things move” (26-7).4 the literal meaning of the term conceives of sovereignty as an ongoing relationship with nuna, the land, and does not include the use of strict borders. unlike settler-colonial states who rely on fixed borders to assert claims over land, borders are not useful to inuit who must travel across large expanses of land when hunting migrating herds (26-7). traditional selfdetermination continues in another form in the present through the icc, in which inuit political representatives in the icc strategically erase imposed borders to create a unified political voice throughout the northern circumpolar. traditional self-determination is conceptually complex and layered. inuit selfdetermination as expressed through “aulatsigunnarniq” entails that individuals develop their isuma, or mental awareness and intelligence. anyone who has earned mental maturity by listening to and acting upon the wisdom of elders will have their autonomy respected (martin, stories 55). anthropologist jean briggs, explains that katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 4 people who have isuma demonstrate this fact by conforming voluntarily, by obeying their ‘leader’ willingly when told to do a task and with increasing maturity by foreseeing the needs and wishes of others…at the same time, they will strongly resist, by passive withdrawal or polite circumvention, any encroachment on their legitimate areas of privacy and self-determination. (quoted in martin, stories 56) keavy martin observes that “[t]he social protocols built around this concept thus strike a delicate balance between respecting personal autonomy and heeding the advice of those in a position to offer it” (56). inuit sovereignty as expressed through “aulatsigunnarniq” continues to navigate personal and collective responsibilities. yet, honouring those responsibilities is difficult within a complex social structure that includes nuna, the sentient land, animals, and more-than-human beings (qitsualik 27). qitsualik explains that humans must help facilitate a harmonious relationship with a sentient land or face the dire consequences of failing ones on-going responsibilities (27). the “ability to make things move” gestures towards self-determination’s complex balance between mature thought, individual respect, and collective responsibility within a multilayered cosmology. games play a central role in the social fabric of inuit daily lives. in pre-settlement life, communities hold celebrations in a large qaggiq (pl. qaggiit), or a large snow house, often at the center of camp (bennett and rowley 227; 239).5 this gathering space is used for work, or “for dancing, feasting, and playing games” (239). the games played within the qaggiq are easily played in enclosed spaces, though rules and particular aspects of traditional games would differ between regions and communities. some games are for entertainment and help establish good relationships, celebrate seasonal feasts, or mark a particularly successful hunting season.6 for example, wrestling or jumping games in which players must jump several feet in the air to kick a target are physically strenuous, technically precise and condition the players for the physical demands that hunting requires (auksaq). players are also aware that games help maintain good relationships within a complex cosmological structure and that playing specific games at seasonal hunting grounds help ensure an upcoming hunting season’s success (bennett and rowley 396). other times, tests of strength, such as boxing, fisticuffs or song competitions, are used to settle disagreements between individuals or help reestablish social harmony between visiting communities (133-4). though these games are related to the practical nature of living a subsistence lifestyle, traditional inuit games also embody a holistic understanding of living well transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 5 in the arctic, and reflect the dynamism of inuit self-determination in which individuals learn from experience and exercise mental awareness to maintain healthful relationships to community and employ the wisdom of others within a complex cosmology. aulatsigunnarniq, or the ability to change quickly for the continuance and well-being of all, illustrates the perspective needed to understand inuit self-determination, yet the “ability to make things move” also addresses the mental and physical dynamism needed for inuit games. one must be physically and mentally agile to win. i argue that we can read never alone as a digital expression of aulatsigunnarniq, because it literally creates movement on the screen with video animation. nuna and fox traverse the screen as they jump over obstacles, resist the wind’s force, and swim waterways. however, it is the player—or players—that compel nuna and fox’s movements. it would be easy to assume that the player is the ultimate sovereign who can control their subjects at will. yet, the game undermines colonial concepts of domination by reminding the player of their overlapping responsibilities to the characters, to community, and to the land. the following section will explore the game’s ability to shift the player’s understanding to play according to iñupiaq game values. as a digital form of competition, adapting aulatsigunnarniq requires a player to recognize their broader responsibilities to win. “a recognition of life and vitality”: gaming conventions across the northern circumpolar never alone does not require that players physically jump, run, or move their bodies like traditional games. instead, its structure mimics foundational values and social relations that contextualize inuit games found in a qargi (the community house). ishmael (angaluuk) hope, a writer and storyteller for the game, states that turning “kuunuksayuka” into a video game “elevate[s] and celebrate[s]” cleveland as a world-class storyteller (“our team”). the adaptation perpetuates “[p]ieces of the old-time nourishment of the qargi, the community house... the joy of the feast of wisdom lingers, and this video game offers a tasty morsel, enough to know and to remember what we’ve been hungering for this whole time” (“our team”). i am interested in hope’s comparison of the game to “the qargi, the community house” that offers nourishment, well-being, and joy for the entire community. i believe that the game creates a digital qargi, through its structure to evoke the rich social context in which games are played. for instance, the digital qargi encourages players to also foster relationships in their own lives. when two players engage is co-op mode to play nuna and fox together, they are invited to make community by katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 6 playing the game and learning in the same space, thereby evoking the social dynamics of a qargi. as we have seen from the previous section, qargi’s, or qaggiq in inuktitut, form the social and material context for traditional games. a qargi’s ability to transform into a place to work, hold feasts, welcome visitors and play games highlights the ways never alone is not simply a site for a competition to play out, but also a space in which relationships are fostered, strengthened and delineated. the evocation of a qargi with never alone elicits the richness of relations through gameplay, yet it is also important to note that the qargi is flexible on iñupiat terms. the game’s overarching structure is similar to a multipurpose qargi. never alone brings many voices together through the game’s structural elements. the game allows a player to play both characters by toggling through each task or play in a two player mode with a friend. the game includes short documentary films, or “cultural insights,” that are unlocked when a task is completed or when an owl is found in the scenery. cultural insights explain elements and figures directly depicted in the game such as the northern lights or the manslayer, an iconic figure in many iñupiaq oral stories. they also explore topics that directly affect iñupiaq communities, such as subsistence living, the value of sharing, or the ways global warming impacts the community’s relationship with the land (never alone). as a digital qargi, never alone is a space for learning, for play and perhaps a space to foster relationships. the game emphasizes the complexity of community within iñupiaq knowledge systems as well as the responsibility that these relationships entail. the cultural insight “the heartbeat of the community” evokes the richness of community in the qargi (never alone). fox and nuna have just met the owl man who asks the pair to retrieve his stolen drum. if they return the drum, the owl man promises to help her find the one who has destroyed her village. once nuna and fox set off on their mission, the cultural insight is unlocked (never alone). the video focuses on the importance of the drum to iñupiaq people and broadly to other indigenous peoples in alaska (never alone). cultural ambassador cordelia qignaaq says that the drum is “a recognition of life and vitality” for the community (never alone). the explanation of the drum’s importance to connect communities contextualizes the owl man’s desire to retrieve his drum and echoes nuna’s obligation to try to restore order to her community. through the drum, nuna, fox and owl man’s mutual communal responsibilities to each other and the land connect. “the heartbeat of the community” includes direct performance of drumming to the transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 7 camera to compellingly create a qargi space. the video shows old footage of feasts with drummers and dancers in celebration. yet the video ends with james mumigan, an iñupiaq cultural ambassador and a voiceover actor for the game, performing a drum song directly to the camera (never alone). the song lasts for only twenty seconds, but mumigan sings and drums with such enthusiasm that his drumming stick breaks. as he finishes the song, mumigan looks at his now broken drumming stick and to the floor where a piece has landed and jokes “[m]an, i went at it and look what happens” (never alone). the incident makes mumigan and the filming crew erupt in delighted laughter and reveals a moment of spontaneity in an otherwise planned shoot (never alone). mumigan’s performance engages the player within the broader context in which socially fulfilling games should be played. games exist alongside singing, drumming, and laughter, which signifies the “life and vitality” of the community (never alone). mumigan’s performance also seems to be creating a qargi space for the video game itself, in which games are engaged in a complex web of responsibilities and relationships. the qargi is multipurpose and it appears that never alone, with its inclusion of community speakers, elders, songs, and games, is formulating a digital qargi. the digital qargi also demands a reflection on the bonds and responsibilities fostered through the game’s narrative and gameplay. the game’s title echoes the qargi’s focus on uniting community. kisima inŋitchuŋa translates to “i am never alone” and seems to question the strength of relationships through trials and distance. within the game, fox always accompanies nuna and helps her through many challenges. nuna and fox also interact with spiritual beings on the land and a sentient arctic landscape. nuna is, therefore, “never alone” even if it appears that she is the only human. an array of beings and relationships surround and accompany her throughout her journey. yet, the absence of nuna’s human community is the game’s narrative focus. nuna must leave her community in order to find the source of the blizzard that torments them and affects their ability to hunt. she may be separated from her human relatives, but the love she has for her community compels her to move forward. “community” within this game space is much more flexible as it unites kinship networks between the land, animal and morethan-human beings, the spirit world, and humans. i find the kinship networks and ongoing responsibilities to community that nuna practices fascinating and question how the game might compel non-inuit to consider their responsibilities to the north or may be a way for inuit in the south to maintain relationships through play. these concerns are taken up in the article’s final katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 8 section. “but the girl wondered…”: representing and testing isuma in never alone arctic games test physical endurance and help prepare individuals for the physical exertion of living a traditional subsistence lifestyle. however, what tests the protagonists or the player(s) in never alone? nuna certainly uses every physical skill she has learned as a young person: she must run quickly, navigate ice, aim accurately with her bola, but the player is also certainly using a particular kind of skill. they are not moving their bodies to prepare for activities on the land. instead of physical trials, i argue that never alone is testing the player’s isuma, mental strength, flexibility, and endurance. jean briggs explains that isuma: refers to consciousness, thought, reason, memory, will… saying that a person has isuma is equivalent to saying that he or she exercises good judgment, reason, and emotional control at all times… the possession of isuma entails a person to be treated as an autonomous, that is, self-governing, individual whose decisions and behaviour should not be directed, in any ways, outside the limits of the role requirements to which one is expected to conform. (quoted in martin, stories 55) the ability to be a “self-governing” person who understands the complex relationships between themselves and all beings on the land demonstrates self-determination in the arctic that supports inuit knowledge systems. as a game that moves its challenge from the physical to the mental, never alone forces the player to exercise their mental abilities instead of their physical skills. the player’s mind must be adaptive enough to succeed in nuna’s world. never alone’s premise certainly engages with many aspects of isuma including maturity, cleverness and understanding. nuna searches for the source of the storm, must overcome obstacles, and form good relationships with animals and more-than-human beings. nuna interacts with more and more beings on the land throughout the game and she must judge whether they can either help or harm her. for example, the owl man asks for nuna and fox’s help and she must outsmart the meddlesome little people who have stolen his drum (never alone). this premise demonstrates an awareness of the ways nuna’s actions affect multiple people beyond herself and her community. players must also learn how to cooperate well with others whether they are working with fellow players or an ai. players must also learn how to foster cooperation between fox and nuna. for instance, players who try at first to leave fox transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 9 behind will soon realize that they cannot succeed if they try to only help nuna. i myself tried to make nuna abandon fox at the beginning of the game, because he seemed too slow. but after being mauled repeatedly during my first encounter with a polar bear, i realized that i needed to collaborate with fox to outsmart the bear and escape. clearly, i identified with nuna because she is a human character, and i assumed she would be the dominant figure, while i relegated fox, an animal, as simply a cute sidekick. i assumed human superiority and i did not at first recognize the importance of collaboration. fox’s cleverness and ability to interact with the spirit world is essential to nuna’s, and, by extension, the player’s success. the player must be sure that both characters continue to help each other if they are to succeed for the good of the community. the game’s ambiguity forces players to develop their isuma. the keystrokes to jump, run, and climb are straightforward, yet there is very little instruction on how to overcome obstacles, know where spirits are hiding, or how nuna and fox should work together for any particular task. everything must be learned through trial and error, much to the players’ possible frustration. the minimal instruction forces players to learn from first-hand experience and develop the mental skills and fortitude to think independently. players learn quickly that refusing to collaborate with those around them results in nuna and fox’s failure and death, as i learned through my own mistakes. though it is not immediately clear, privileging nuna as the primary player because she is human cuts players off from engaging with the spirit world. without fox, the spirits that carry nuna and fox over chasms and ice walls remain invisible. yet by playing nuna and fox in collaboration and practicing patience, players can reflect on their actions, demonstrate maturity and selflessness and hone their isuma through experience. the game’s divergence from traditional platformer levels and lifecycles erases clear markers for success and it is this structural ambiguity that further challenges players’ isuma. there is no “game over” option to tell players when they should stop playing or to inform them of the level reached. players will fail indefinitely until they succeed at their present challenge. this design choice is in stark contrast to earlier platformers that depend on marked or tiered levels to mark progression and limited lifecycles to distinguish successful players from their competitors. never alone chooses to test players to continually try to learn from their mistakes, reflect on their actions, and change their approach. dying several dozen times in a row—as was my experience—could make players angry at the game itself. though i did not stop playing, i can imagine that many players may have become frustrated and walked away thinking that the katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 10 game is flawed. but players who do this are not developing their isuma and are emotionally immature. the game does offer a “pause” function, like many traditional platformers, and it is invaluable for players who need time to reflect during the game’s long duration. often, i would pause the game when overcome by frustration and failure and use that time to reflect on my action to consider a change in approach to succeed. the game’s demand to persevere in spite of failure is embedded in its very structure and presents failure and death not as a punishment, but as an opportunity to develop knowledge and hone skills through practice. the demand on one’s mental fortitude reflects isuma’s demand for maturity and self-control of one’s emotions (martin, stories 55). moreover, the game treats its players as autonomous beings. it honours their sovereignty. it does not interfere in the players’ constant failure by ending the game after a certain number of losses, and it does not dictate directly how a game should proceed. instead, it presents unlimited amounts of space for practice and embeds “cultural insights” of elders and more knowledgeable community members from whom wise players can learn. never alone wants its players to succeed, but players must change their approach and develop their isuma to have the maturity to apply the wisdom of others. the order of challenges embeds learning from experience as a foundational value for the game’s design. for example, nuna and fox’s encounter with the manslayer is similar to a previous polar bear den challenge where nuna and fox have to dodge the bear’s attacks. in the manslayer encounter, they are trapped in the trees as manslayer tosses fire at them from the ice (never alone). as the fire burns the branches, nuna uses her bola to break the branches to crash through the ice. if a player is successful at dodging his charges, then they will eventually overcome the manslayer when he falls through the ice and drowns. this challenge is similar to the earlier obstacle in which nuna and fox entice a polar bear to charge them (never alone). by dodging the bear’s attacks, the player forces the bear to eventually break a hole in the ice wall creating an opportunity for fox and nuna to escape the bear’s den. in both obstacles, nuna and fox must work together to use their opponents’ strength against them. however, unlike the polar bear who is protecting his den, the manslayer is a threatening figure that decimates nuna’s village and wants her bola, one of the only tools she has on her person (never alone). manslayer is threatening beyond nuna’s ability to survive on her mission. in the accompanying cultural insight, amy fredeen explains that in iñupiaq stories, the manslayer “risks the livelihood of individuals and the whole community. and so, the manslayer is a way to say, ‘don’t act only for transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 11 yourself. always hold the community in your heart’” (never alone). it is imperative that nuna and fox mature as the stakes of each obstacle intensifies. by remembering the tactics used against the bear and the similar design of previous obstacles, players can use past experience to overcome present challenges. obstacles are structured for players to “exercise good judgment, reason, and emotional control at all times” (martin, stories 55); however, some obstacles are premised on the failure to use isuma as a warning for stubborn players. throughout never alone, nuna confronts several polar bear challenges, which i read as her ongoing underestimation of the bear’s intelligence and strength. as a child, nuna may have limited experience engaging with polar bears by herself, yet that inexperience leads her to mistake the extent to which a bear will go to pursue its prey. the game opens with a polar bear attack, which the narrator calls a moment of “real danger” (never alone). as nuna runs away, fox appears and players can lure the polar bear onto thin ice, trapping it in water. this action allows the players to flee as the narrator remarks that, “she is lucky to be alive” (never alone). the first polar bear attack highlights the extreme consequences of engaging with the land with little experience. the polar bear encounter sets off a chain of events in which bear attacks are frequent dangers. i am inclined to read it as a singular bear who is intent on not losing its prey (never alone). when a second bear attack occurs after nuna and fox walk on thick ice from the water, a bear follows close behind from the sea already angry intending to attack (never alone). the recurrence of the bear following its prey through any obstacle demonstrates the ways inexperience may result in ongoing dangers in a landscape that requires both mental and physical strength and knowledge. the recurrence of the polar bear is a palpable consequence to inattention and inexperience. however, the game also situates the polar bear within inuit traditional knowledge. polar bears are not senseless animals. in inuit qaujimaningit nanurnut: inuit knowledge of polar bears, hunters and trappers in gjoa haven, nunavut explain that polar bears are the only animal beings that possesses isuma and so “as polar bears were understood to be omniscient,” they had to be respected (75). polar bears are autonomous intelligent beings who can strategize attacks on unsuspecting prey, have awareness of humans and seek revenge (82). the bear is certainly clever and demonstrates a keen knowledge of the landscape and anticipates its prey’s movements. as the bear emerges from the sea and ambushes nuna and fox again and again, the polar bear is enacting a knowledge of human beings from past experience that allows it to katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 12 anticipate nuna’s travels and the best way to surprise her. the narrator explains the importance of respecting a bear’s isuma, “if you outsmart a polar bear there is no time to relax. a hungry bear will not give up easily!” (never alone). the narrator’s warning foreshadows that nuna and fox’s escape is temporary because a pursuer will persevere through momentary failure when they are driven by hunger and intelligence. the game’s focus on the polar bear’s cunning and nuna’s ongoing failure to anticipate its actions enables the game to formulate obstacles around traditional inuit understandings of polar bears. these obstacles are not simply thrilling experiences where players must overcome a harsh landscape. instead, the obstacles seem to complicate inuit and arctic animal relationships. the bear, though fearsome, is not framed as a malicious creature. the narrator contextualizes the polar bear’s actions as driven by hunger and not by a love of killing. the third obstacle with the polar bear illustrates the games’ prioritization of inuit values and relationships to arctic animals. as nuna and fox “stumble” into the polar bear’s den, the narrator states that, “[the bear] was not happy to discover uninvited guests” (never alone). by describing nuna and fox as “guests,” even comically, the narrator is positioning the bear, fox and girl as possible relations under better circumstances. though the bear attacks them several times over the progression of the game—as was my experience—nuna and fox succeed by distracting the bear together and enticing it to charge at the ice-ledge they are standing on. nuna and fox are lucky to escape, but the polar bear den obstacle questions the ways good relationships based on respect, even between hunter and prey, should be followed. “we are not a museum piece”: navigating cyber-territories and colonial glitches the following section will discuss the connection between games and inuit politics that continually shift to respond to the present need of inuit. never alone echoes the assertion of inuit self-determination through remediating organized traditional sports. circumpolar arctic games competitions emerged in tandem with an articulation of inuit nationhood through the icc in the 1970s.7 these international competitions allow inuit to unite from across the circumpolar in an act of friendly competition that asserts their knowledge and experience in the northern circumpolar. the competitions also combat settler-states’ denial of inuit self-determination and push back against governmental control of circumpolar territories. never alone echoes the arctic games competitions’ global reach by explicitly marketing transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 13 the game to a global market. the creators call never alone, the first “in an exciting new genre of “world games” that draw fully upon the richness of unique cultures to create complex and fascinating game worlds for a global audience” (“crafted in partnership”). this statement echoes the circumpolar games’ desires to foster a global interaction on inuit terms, yet it does so by moving competition from the physical domain to digital territory.8 the game is available to purchase digitally through all major game consoles and operating systems. it, therefore, invites players from around the globe to enter the digital qargi as it is adaptive and malleable to any device. the game’s engagement with a global audience surreptitiously undermines common assumptions of competition made by qallunaat,9 or non-inuit, worldviews. instead of creating a game that relies on the dynamics of dominance, the removal of life, or a disconnection from responsibilities to place, never alone grounds a global audience in a game that relies on collaboration and the values of iñupiaq people. in so doing, the game practices aulatsigunnarniq as a decolonizing manoeuvre by purposely ignoring colonial borders that cross-cut the globe and reaches beyond international borders to foster relationships on iñupiaq terms. the focus on a global audience could obscure the needs and intent of the iñupiat community who commissioned and co-produced the game. nevertheless, intentionally reaching out to a global audience enables the creators to choose the ways they represent themselves or their creations while also ensuring that the community benefits economically from a global market (gaertner n.p.). never alone is conscious of the ways in which it is widely available, yet it prioritizes the importance of affirming the interests and relationships of iñupiaq communities through gaming. as a digital game that reaches out beyond iñupiaq boarders, never alone critiques settler claims to the arctic. asserting sovereignty through games and competition could mirror the colonial power dynamics of fighting over land and territory. that is certainly a qallunaat view of competition. however, in allen auksaq’s documentary “stories from our land vol. 2,” inuk athlete johnny issaluk explains that games are a way to welcome visitors within arctic communities (auksaq). i find this form of welcoming fascinating as it engages sports and games within the practice of fostering good relations. competition, therefore, is a subtle way to assert self-determination, because in playing a game, guests are firmly aware of the host’s rules and must play by them to win. competition in this sense is a playful form of sovereignty that untangles competition from domination. this is evident through never alone’s evocation of isuma where the player must shift their understanding to win. yet the polar bear den challenge is katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 14 one of the most explicit commentaries on settler colonialism in the arctic. if we recall the scenario, the bear is angry at nuna’s and fox’s rudeness as they stumble into its den unannounced. it then charges the pair, who must dodge its attacks (never alone). the bear’s den has become a space of occupation where nuna and fox transgress the bear’s territory. reading the obstacle through a settler colonial lens highlights the importance of respecting the wishes of a host as the bear den becomes a metaphor for the occupation of land. consequently, the game asks its players to be respectful guests that listen to the advice and wishes offered by their hosts. never alone invites players to become guests in a friendly form of competition within a digital territory. public reaction to never alone has been polarizing and negative critiques of the game design carries an undercurrent of colonizing rhetoric. while wired writer matt peckham and kotaku reviewer evan narcisse praise the game for its stunning animation, endearing characters, and engaging storytelling to teach players about iñupiaq culture respectfully (peckham n.p.; narcisse n.p.), daniel hindes at gamespot heavily criticizes the game’s simple nature and allegedly “glitchy” gameplay (hindes n.p.). hindes describes the glitches as “unresponsive controls,” “slow and unwieldy” movement, and controls that lack “precise timing,” which leads to the characters’ death and the player’s failure (hindes n.p.). the latter criticism troubles me because its simple nature and technical issues are the primary criticisms (hindes n.p.). such a criticism echoes colonial discourses because it implies that iñupiaq people, while good storytellers, are less sophisticated game-developers for digital games. yet, katarina soukup argues that inuit have readily embraced technologies from the south and adapted them quickly to best serve their needs, which creates a “contemporary aesthetic that is rarely understood or valued—since the outside world prefers the classic symbols of ancient/traditional inuit culture associated with otherness” (n.p.). i have never experienced any “glitchiness” myself and so the criticism seems to uncomfortably echo stereotypes that inuit, while simple and kind, are not accustomed to the “sophisticated” technologies from the south. perhaps the “glitchiness” critique is produced through the discomfort that southern players feel when their understanding of northern peoples is challenged. southern players choose to critique the game’s alleged failings instead of pausing to reflect on their own responsibilities that are raised in the game. i believe, however, that the glitchiness critique reveals the ways technological inequalities in the arctic is a means of colonial control. internet access is exorbitantly expensive transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 15 in the arctic where schools, businesses and homes cannot afford the high premiums for dial-up internet (nix n.p.). broadband internet access is not available in northern alaska or on many native american reservations creating a “digital divide” along colonial axis (tveten n.p.). in “inuit cyberspace: the struggle for access for inuit qaujimajatuqangit,” alexander, adamson, daborn, houston, and tootoo state that the lack of internet access in the north is akin to settlercolonial removal from digital territories, because indigenous peoples in the north cannot “both draw upon and contribute to the digital world” (241). never alone pushes back against digital exclusion. it was produced in conjunction with e-line media, a company from the south, precisely because creating the game’s high quality graphics in the north would be economically unwise and enabled digital self-sufficiency by controlling how they are represented. while i am skeptical of criticism that focuses so narrowly on the game’s supposed glitches, such critique does require a frank conversation about affordable internet access and available digital training throughout the arctic. conclusion as a settler from southern canada, my familiarity with inuit literature and politics has influenced my experience playing the game. yet, inuit traditional knowledge states that knowledge is gained experientially within a community-land-based context (“what is traditional knowledge?”). while i have experiential knowledge of inuit communities through travel, such direct knowledge is insufficient and overshadowed by my clear reliance on texts. though this article is a process of reading a “text,” never alone is a participatory narrative that invites players into a readable experience. in “the sovereign obscurity of inuit literature,” keavy martin has similarly reflected on the limits of the english language to describe the variety of stories and songs in inuktitut. while inuit traditional knowledge privileges experience, martin states that much of inuit literature’s strength is its opaqueness, which resists being legible to outsiders (20). she states, “‘[l]iterature,’ in other words, is a term that asks readers, listeners, and viewers to pay particular attention to the way in which information is conveyed—whether it be written, spoken, carved, or sung” (20). literary texts, whether they are carvings, songs, written, or digital texts have the capacity to command the attention of an outside audience though they are created primarily for an insider audience (21). in the case of never alone, we can think of it as a game based on traditional gaming dynamics, which allows outsiders to join in the game. katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 16 non-inuit players or players who are unfamiliar with the northern circumpolar may find the game conceptually challenging. yet, my experience of never alone as a digital qargi may seem false to iñupiaq communities who could read the game quite differently and my argument may not resonate with the entirety of the inuit homelands across the circumpolar. however, i think understanding the game from an inuit-specific context challenges settler/southerner players who believe that they understand iñupiaq culture and communities already. if their isuma is challenged, even non-iñupiaq players who successfully complete the game may realize that they do not know iñupiaq communities at all. once they decide to enter the digital qargi, players must recognize that the qargi is a space for work and labour as well as for play and should prepare for the work that awaits. in closing, i would like to reflect on a passage from ken buck’s “northern games,” an nfb documentary about the 1980 northern games in arviat, nunavut. an unnamed speaker observes, all of these games fit into a one-life story, and it’s hard to explain. hard to explain. our style of sports is to be good at every little thing and if somebody beat you, you just go over there and shake his hand. this is somebody better than you. that’s our style of sport. you gotta be thinking all the time, every part of your body, even your mind. lotta times, if a guy moves slow, if he’s a quick thinker, he don’t have to move fast. (buck) the comment certainly focuses on the importance that humility and maturity plays in competition. these values foster relationships with visitors from across the arctic and seem to reflect the ways games are being deployed to unite inuit. the observation that these games and their importance is “hard to explain” is certainly appropriate for never alone. the expansiveness of never alone fits the digital game within the “one-life story” of traditional games. however, players unfamiliar with inuit knowledge frameworks cannot easily explain the ways in which never alone’s adapted story, obstacles, and cultural insights fit together. it requires players to think deeply about their relationships and responsibilities to inuit as never alone encourages players to be “quick thinkers” within the digital qargi. notes transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 17 1 this paper is developed from a panel organized by david gaertner for the indigenous literary studies association’s 2016 conference. i would like to thank david gaertner, warren cariou, maize longboat, and naithan lagace for their own compelling examinations of never alone. a version of the conference paper was published on our panel’s blog (meloche n.pag.). i would also like to thank colleague brandon kerfoot for his ongoing conversations about inuit literature and the significance of polar bears to the game’s design and gregory blomquist for reading an earlier version of this article. 2 throughout the article, “iñupiaq” refers to inuit from the north slope region in alaska. “iñupiat” is singular, while “iñupiaq” is plural. “inuit” is used within the broader context of inuit peoples throughout the northern circumpolar. the singular of “inuit” is “inuk.” 3 naithan lagace and maize longboat both contextualize their analysis of never alone within a longer history of indigenous representative self-determination in videogames in their blog posts “never alone and the impact of digital indigenous storytelling” and “never alone: rendering digital gaming spaces open for indigenization” respectively (lagace n.pag.; longboat n.pag.). 4 it should be noted that knowledge is localized and a variety of languages and dialects across the circumpolar means that terms and knowledge may differ from region to region and even between communities. though i cite inuit scholars who use inuktitut terms, terms to describe sovereignty exist in iñupiat as well, which are not addressed in this article. i hope to reflect on the game’s engagement with broader notions of inuit self-determination by drawing the game into conversation with inuit scholars in nunavut. 5 a community house is called a “qargi” in iñupiat and serves a similar purpose as qaggiq in nunavut. 6 for studies on traditional iñupiaq and inuit games, see application of a theory of games to the transitional eskimo culture by robert glassford or inuit (eskimo) games by f.h. eger. johnny issaluk wrote games of survival: traditional inuit games for elementary students as a guidebook for inuit children to practice traditional games in schools. 7 the development of a united inuit political voice with the icc emerged in tandem to game organizations like the arctic winter games, established in 1969 (“background of the arctic winter games.”), and the northern games, established in 1970 (“history and philosophy”). the arctic winter games bring together athletes from across the circumpolar to play winter sports as well as traditional inuit and dene games. events like the one and two-foot high kick, the alaska high kick and the one-arm reach all demonstrate the importance of endurance, flexibility, agility and strength (auksaq). these are foundational values for not only subsistence lifestyle, but also the continuance of inuit self-determination. arctic games have emerged as a way to express inuit nationhood as it brings together peoples from across the circumpolar that asserts values of “cultural awareness and understanding,” “fairplay,” and “personal [and] community development” through competition (“arctic winter games: role & purpose of the games”).   8 never alone is part of the growing movement of indigenous games that use indigenous knowledge systems as a foundation and pushes back against popular stereotypes. in so doing, these games dismantle demeaning depictions of indigenous people and assert sovereignty in the digital sphere. games like qalupalik by pinnguaq technology inc., spirits of spring by minority media and invaders by elizabeth lapensée use game platforms to imagine indigenous futures as complex continuations of kinship ties and relationships to place and storytelling (muskrat katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 18 magazine). 9 “qallunaat” is the inuktitut word for “white person” or non-inuit. inuk author mini aodla freeman explains that “qallunaat” has a richer meaning in which, “the word implies humans who pamper or fuss with nature, of materialistic habit. avaricious people” (life among the qallunaat 2015, 86). of importance for this article, “qallunaat” describes a worldview that is often in conflict with the interests of inuit. “southerner” is used as an alternative term and describes those living south of inuit territories.   works cited aodla freeman, mini. life among the qallunaat. eds. keavy martin and julie rak with norma dunning. u of manitoba p, 2015. alexander, cynthia j., agar adamson, graham daborn, john houston, and victor tootoo. “inuit cyberspace: the struggle for access for inuit qaujimajatuqangit.” journal of canadian studies, vol. 43 no.2, 2009, pp. 220-249. “ancsa regional and language map.” ancsaregional. ancsa regional association, 2014, http://ancsaregional.com/ancsa-map/. accessed 30 june 2016. “arctic winter games: role & purpose of the games.” arctic winter games, 2014, http://www.arcticwintergames.org/role_purpose_values.html. accessed 25 may 2016. auksaq, allen. “stories from our land vol. 2strength, flexibility, and endurance.” national film board of canada, 2013, https://www.nfb.ca/film/stories_from_our_land_vol2_strength_flexibility/. accessed 06 may 2016. “background of the arctic winter games.” arcticwintergames. n.d., http://www.arcticwintergames.org/about.htm. accessed 30 june 2016. bennett, john and susan rowley (eds.) uqalurait: an oral history of nunavut. mcgill-queen’s up, 2004. buck, ken. “northern games.” national film board of canada, 1981, http://www.nfb.ca/film/northern_games/. accessed 23 may 2016. “a circumpolar inuit declaration on sovereignty in the arctic.” inuit circumpolar council canada. n.d., http://www.inuitcircumpolar.com/sovereignty-in-the-arctic.html. accessed 30 june 2016. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 19 “crafted in partnership.” neveralonegame. e-line media, 2016, http://neveralonegame.com. accessed 30 june 2016. eger, f.h. inuit (eskimo) games: book one. 3rd ed., x-press, 1979. gaertner. david. “how should i play these?: media and remediation in never alone.” ilsaneveralone, 26 may 2016, https://ilsaneveralone.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/howshould-i-play-these-media-and-remediation-in-never-alone/. accessed 30 june 2016. glassford, robert gerald. application of a theory of games to the transitional eskimo culture. dissertation, u of illinois at urbana-champagne, 1971. hindes, daniel. “never alone review: forever alone.” gamespot, 20 november 2014, http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/never-alone-review/1900-6415968/. accessed 27 june 2016. “history and philosophy.” northern games, 2016, http://www.northerngames.org/history.html. accessed 30 june 2016. “interview series: ishmael hope.” neveralonegame. e-line media, 30 october 2014, http://neveralonegame.com/interview-never-alone-writer-ishmael-hope/. accessed 30 june 2016. issaluk, johnny. games of survival: traditional inuit games for elementary students. inhabit media, 2013. keith, darren, jerry arqviq, louie kamookak and jackie ameralik and the gjoa haven hunters’ and trappers’ organization. qaujimaningit nanurnut: inuit knowledge of polar bears. gjoa haven hunters’ and trappers’ organization and the cci press, 2005. lagace, naithan. “never alone and the impact of digital indigenous storytelling.” ilsaneveralone, 26 may, 2016, https://ilsaneveralone.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/neveralone-and-the-impact-of-digital-indigenous-storytelling/. accessed 1 july 2016. longboat, maize. “never alone: rendering digital gaming spaces open for indigenization.” ilsaneveralone, 28 may, 2016.  https://ilsaneveralone.wordpress.com/2016/05/28/neveralone-rendering-digital-gaming-spaces-open-for-indigenization/. accessed 1 july 2016. martin, keavy. “the sovereign obscurity of inuit literature.” the oxford handbook of indigenous american literature, edited by james howard cox and daniel heath justice. oup, 2014, pp. 15-30. ----. stories in a new skin: approaches to inuit literature. u of manitoba p, 2012. katherine meloche “playing in the digital qargi” 20 meloche, katherine. “sovereign games: traditional gaming and online competition in kisima inŋitchuŋa.” ilsaneveralone, 26 may, 2016, https://ilsaneveralone.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/sovereign-games-traditional-gamingand-online-competition-in-kisima-innitchuna/. accessed 1 july 2016. muskrat magazine. “indigenous video games you should download.” muskrat magazine, 1 april 2016, http://muskratmagazine.com/indigenous-video-games-youshould-download/. accessed 30 june 2016. narcisse, evan. “never alone: the kotaku review.” kotaku, 17 november 2014, http://kotaku.com/never-alone-the-kotaku-review-1659789150. accessed 27 june 2016. never alone. upper one games and e-line media, 2014. nix, naomi. “alaska’s disconnected schools.” the atlantic, 16 december 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/alaska-schools-internet/420648/. accessed 22 february 2017. “our team.” neveralonegame. e-line media, 2016, http://neveralonegame.com/our-team/. accessed 30 june 2016. peckham, matt. “never alone is a harrowing journey into the folklore of alaska natives.” wired, 21 november 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/11/never-alone-review/. accessed 27 june 2016. qitsualik, rachel a.“inummarik: self-sovereignty in classic inuit thought.” nilliajut: inuit perspectives on security, patriotism and sovereignty, edited by scot nickels, karen kelley and carrie grable. walter and duncan gordon foundation, january 2013, pp. 2334. “the story of kunuuksaayuka (part one).” neveralongame. e-line media, 6 october 2014, http://neveralonegame.com/kunuuksaayuka/. accessed 30 june 2016. tveten, julianne. “on american indian reservations, challenges perpetuate the digital divide.” arstechnica, 31 january 2016, https://arstechnica.com/informationtechnology/2016/01/on-american-indian-reservations-challenges-perpetuate-the-digitaldivide/. accessed 22 february 2017. soukup. katarina. “report: travelling through layers: inuit artists appropriate new technologies.” cjc: canadian journal of communication. vol. 31, no. 1. 2016, transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 21 http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1769/1889. accessed 22 february 2017. “what is traditional knowledge?” alaska native science commission. n.date. http://www.nativescience.org/html/traditional_knowledge.html. accessed 20 february. 2017. microsoft word longboat.docx maize longboat review of never alone 179 reset and redefine: never alone (kisima ingitchuna) and the rise of indigenous games “one of things i think a lot of people need to understand is we aren’t a museum piece. the iñupiat people are a living people, and a living culture. even though we’re in northern alaska, which covers this vast area from nome all the way over to the canadian border, there is this extreme value of interconnectedness and interdependence.” —amy fredeen (iñupiat), “a living people: a living culture” cultural insight, never alone (kisima ingitchuna), 2014 indigenous storytelling within video games forces players to immerse themselves within ancestral worlds that have existed since time immemorial. coming straight from community members, youth and elders alike, the videogame landscape has witnessed an explosion of indigenous-centred narratives in games produced over the last decade. never alone (kisima ingitchuna) (2014) is but one example of indigenous storytelling in videogames, but it is certainly a visually stunning and narratively riveting piece of oral tradition. as an integral part of the fluid social landscapes that make up turtle island, indigenous communities are proving to be frontrunners within the development and execution of the ground-breaking digital experiences that videogaming provides its players. never alone is a two-player cooperative, 3d platformer1 video game published by the indigenous owned and operated upper one games, a subsidiary of e-line media. released on 18 november 2014 to the steam store for both windows and mac os x operating systems, never alone is a game developed in collaboration with the iñupiat, an indigenous peoples native to what is now known as northern alaska. close to 40 iñupiat elders, storytellers, and community members contributed to the development of the piece, which is as much a game for entertainment as it is a tool for teaching and learning. this review sets out to unpack the narrative and presentation of never alone to give rich cultural context into iñupiat life. the game insists on showing players how the iñupiat of cook inlet are choosing to promote their distinct cultural expressions through self-representation and self-articulation for the benefit of all members of their community. as both a video game and representative documentary of iñupiat lifeworlds, never alone demonstrates the potential that videogames hold in creating digital spaces for redefining damaging indigenous stereotypes found in gaming narratives and resetting the cross-cultural capacities of videogaming as a medium of social sharing and adventure. redefining indigeneity through storytelling in never alone on its ice-covered surface, the virtual setting and narrative of never alone could be considered by many to be quite ordinary: marketed with an easily-understood plotline that features a hero on an adventure with their trusted (and very cute) companion. however, the game disrupts its own marketed simplicity even before you take your first steps as the narrative’s heroine, nuna. never alone opens with a simple menu that prompts players to begin their journey with the option of watching the first two of twenty-four “cultural insights” available for viewing as part of the game. titled “a living people, a living culture” and “it would be really nice to hear a story” respectively, these cultural insights of never alone centre the voices and reflections of iñupiat community members to communicate their culture’s reliance on their traditional knowledge of the interconnectedness of humanity’s relationship to the natural transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 180 world. these insights show the prevalence of storytelling and the ongoing transmission of iñupiat cultural knowledge through oral tradition. the story of nuna and fox are foundational to how the community sees themselves. right away, players are strongly encouraged to engage with a video game in a way that does not only require them to simply run and jump through the challenges presented by the game design itself, but to also watch and engage with a living iñupiat community. when players first enter the game world, they are first greeted by the melodic voice of iñupiat storyteller and narrator, leo oktollik, who begins the narrative in the traditional language of his community though a cut scene where he shares: “i will tell you a very old story. i heard it from nasruk when i was very young” (walkthrough part 1, 0:18-0:26). from this acknowledgement of the story’s retelling, players are introduced to nuna, the narrative’s protagonist, who sets off to find the cause of a supernatural blizzard that has plunged her community into immobility and despair. nuna is faced with the brutal challenges of the alaskan arctic and when hope is all but lost she is rescued by fox; both characters become each other’s companion and most treasured friend during the first stages of their adventure. because both nuna and fox are meant to each be played by a different player with their own set of controls, players learn very early that the relationship between nuna and fox is a truly reciprocal one. there are several key elements to the game mechanics that point to the concept of reciprocity that is shared by iñupiat cultural traditions and highlighted through the previous cultural insights. each playable character has a unique skillset that requires players (playing both solo and cooperatively) to value both characters equally. nuna harnesses the power of a bola, one of the traditional hunting weapons of the iñupiat people, to open pathways so that the two may progress. the nimble-bodied fox is able to scale tall obstacles that nuna is unable to climb herself by using his claws in order to reach higher places and open alternate routes for nuna to follow. this key concept of interconnectedness is one that i wish to highlight in both never alone’s narrative and its mechanics because the game’s story immerses players within the characters’ relationship, while also requiring players to control both characters equally in order to progress. players of never alone are encouraged to balance nuna and fox’s heroic identities while also coordinating the character’s puzzle-solving abilities. much like the two characters’ reciprocal interdependence on one another extends to the presentations of player success within the narrative, so too are they seen through the possibilities for player failure in the game’s practical sense. the alaskan arctic setting is shown to be as hauntingly beautiful as it is perilous for nuna and fox, as one wrong move and a chilly gust of the arctic winds can easily sweep the characters to their demise. upon failure resulting in either of the characters’ death, players are forced to start the segment over again until they get it right and are able to successfully move on. because both characters must be played to each of their strengths to compensate for their individual weaknesses, the life of the human protagonist, nuna, cannot be valued more than the life of fox due to his status as a representative of the animal world. never alone blurs the lines of what is commonly understood in western renderings of the natural world order, as fox cannot be read of as a one-dimensional character whose only purpose within the story is to serve the bidding of his “master” and solve puzzles so that she can move on with her quest. there is no master-slave narrative within never alone, only the love for life in all of its forms. the game makes sure to spotlight the exceptional actions of the seemingly ordinary maize longboat review of never alone 181 characters of nuna and fox who persevere onward when constantly faced with near certain death. nuna and fox meet for the first time (upper one games llc, 2014). it is important to note the prevalence of the more-than-physical world within the story and game mechanics of never alone. once nuna and fox set out on their journey to put an end to the eternal blizzard in order to ensure the survival of their community, players are introduced to the various spirits that appear throughout the narrative. some of these spectral characters within the game are “helping spirits” that take on the visual identity associated with several beings like loons and trees, who then help nuna and fox to access pathways they would not normally be able to reach on their own. fox acts as a liaison between the physical world of humanity and the spirit world that seamlessly co-exist in the breathtaking visual graphics of never alone. as a storytelling element of the narrative specifically, the idea that fox acts as a physical bridge between nuna and the spirits themselves is openly presented by the voice of the game’s storyteller, stating that “the girl understood that helping spirits are among us. being different, that fox revealed to the girl just how beautiful those helpers were” (walkthrough part 1, 6:547:04). never alone also upholds the relevance of the spiritual world in a practical sense when players control fox, as they must learn how to lead many of the helping spirits in different directions so that nuna may actually reach them herself. the spirits that do appear in the game are also not one-dimensional in their relationships to fox and nuna. during one sequence of the game, players are presented with the challenge of dodging the northern lights which are depicted as green, phantom-like spirits that swoop down from the sky and snatch up the heroes if players are not careful enough to observe their movement patterns. furthermore, it is eventually revealed that the unrelenting blizzard that is plaguing their community is being caused by the smashing and shoveling work of a giant ice man: a supernatural figure that signifies yet another representation of the cross-over between physical and spiritual worlds. not only are players introduced to the iñupiat cultural traditions that conceive of the human and the animal worlds as sharing complete interdependence with one another, but they are also shown the allpervasiveness and diversity of spirituality that exists in arctic landscapes as seen through the game’s portrayal of the northern lights and the giant ice man. the game’s narrative requires transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 182 players to engage with a certain kind of worldview that the iñupiat conceptualize through oral traditions that form the very foundation of their arctic lifeworld. extending my summary and analysis of never alone from the specific to the general, the game does a commendable job at breaking down typical or common tropes often found within adventure narratives; especially in the medium of mainstream video games and other interactive media. although the game may be marketed as such a narrative, nuna cannot be so simply understood as prototypical hero in this story. for one, she is female, and an incredibly young one at that, appearing to be no more than twelve years old. this sharply contrasts the various adventure-hero identities that players are used to connecting with in other games in the platformer genre. nintendo’s super mario brothers, being the most well-known example of a platform game, centres the narrative on working-class, mature men (mario and his brother/sidekick luigi) who are out to save a kidnapped princess from a one-dimensional villain character. nintendo’s mario character, and the platform games he is featured in, set the bar for independently-published titles like never alone. in contrast to mario however, never alone’s protagonist nuna is not only a young girl, but also a woman of colour from northern alaska who lives a life that is centred on upholding the well-being of her personal community as well as the balance of the natural world to which she and her family are connected with. the reasoning behind her choice to embark on a perilous adventure into the arctic tundra is not to find a potential lover, but as a necessary responsibility to keeping the physical and spiritual worlds from falling out of balance. unlike many other typical adventure narratives similar to super mario brothers, the story and game mechanics of never alone also rely on the cooperative utilization of two playable characters’ skills in order to complete the game. this foundational component of the game, along with the often-occurring cultural insights throughout, strongly encourage players to critically engage with iñupiat values, gender systems, and worldviews to deconstruct and intervene from within the framework of videogaming as a genre. more of this kind of work is sorely needed in a genre that has been geared toward a white, hetero-patriarchal mainstream culture since video games were popularized in the late 1980s. nuna and fox are truly exceptional characters, communicating in many ways including their physical actions, facial expressions, and vocal explanations. their unbreakable bond is something tangible that all players are able to experience for themselves, in one way or another. resetting cultural contact zones with indigenous game-making by no means does never alone as experiential and consumable media exist within a vacuum of relevancy that stays strict to the iñupiat of cook inlet. as a contemporary method of passing down oral tradition within iñupiat communities, it is also a globally-commercialized game. the game’s global influence is clearly shown in the multitude of reviews by game critics and the distribution of its license to buyers from all over the world. renisa mawani’s writings on the racially-diverse and heterogeneous “contact zone” of british columbia in her book titled colonial proximities: crossracial encounters and juridical truths in british columbia, 18711921 can help to further unpack what it means to now have an indigenous-made video game that exists to be accessed and critiqued by a mainstream gaming audience. in her conception, the colonial contact zone acts “as a space of racial intermixture – a place where europeans, aboriginal peoples, and racial migrants came into frequent contact” in conceptual and physical geographies (mawani 5). cyberspace occupies a somewhat paradoxical position in mawani’s conception of what a contact zone is, as it is neither solely a conceptual framework or a physical maize longboat review of never alone 183 location that can be touched barring server infrastructure. the digital seems to exist as if from nothing. it appears to just be there, on your computer monitor. this all-new digital contact zone that never alone belongs to is created in the digital marketplace where the game is sold, as well as in its physical grounding in the north alaskan roots of iñupiat oral tradition. furthermore, mawani asserts that contact zones also exist “as a variegated site that was generative of multiple racial identities” (mawani 5). knowing that video games have held presences within indigenous communities since they were first marketed to public consumers, it is important to note that the intercultural aspect of videogaming has also existed through portrayals of culture within those games. these kinds of cross-cultural connections are incredibly relevant when trying to understand the history of video gaming in indigenous communities today, as indigenous people are also engaging with video game narratives that communicate stereotypical representations of indigenous cultures as monolithic and undeveloped. what happens when the opposite occurs and the indigenous voices contained within video games, like they are in never alone, engage with players that are not only from iñupiat communities, but from all over the world? cultural contact zones found within video games are now being reformed in order to centre indigenous voices in a way that has been done only limitedly thus far; giving us a glimpse of what is yet to come for indigenous gaming as a genre. analyzing the digital platform where never alone is both marketed and reviewed helps to conceptualize the ongoing formation of digital contact zones sparked by indigenous-made games. the steam store is an online marketplace that carries over sixty-four hundred different video games and is the primary platform for windows and mac os x users to purchase a digital copy of never alone. steam lists that the game carries sixteen supported languages (for the game’s interface and subtitles) that range from french to japanese, and swedish to korean. with such a wealth of supported languages, the story of nuna and fox is being featured on a truly international and multicultural platform. additionally, eighty-four percent of over two thousand user reviews of the game left positive recommendations about their experience playing it. as the user “burn” states in their review of never alone on the steam store: at first i complained ‘this isn't a game, it's a short documentary,’ but once i finished the game i joyfully realized ‘this isn't a game, it's a short documentary.’ there should be more educational games like this on the market! stop the dragon slaying, mercenary heroes, revenge and love stories and give me more games about real people, their lives and their culture (“burn” 2015) albeit one-dimensional in its analysis of never alone as strictly an “educational game,” user burn highlights something that many other reviewers, both positive and negative, fail to address in their criticisms about their experience with the game. statements like those made by user “forestlily418” who states: “i was so excited when my friend bought me this game… however, i cannot recommend this game as it is hardly what i'd call playable. the glitches are rampant and the controls are terrible,” and user “vladeck2204” who echoes “[b]eautiful idea let down by unresponsive controls. at one point the game turns from pure enjoyment to pure frustration,” simply focusing on the game’s mechanical shortcomings and not on the exceptional narrative of the game itself (forestlily418 2015) (vladeck2204 2015). when talking about the global culture of videogaming today, it is so important to consider the reception that games get in a multinational market. with an eighty-four percent positivity score, never alone succeeds in transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 184 immersing the living culture of the iñupiat directly into the homes of gamers from all over the world. both nuna and fox evade the northern lights together (upper one games llc, 2014). so why is there so much praise for a game that has its fair share of mechanical bugs and a simple story? although never alone is indeed gorgeous in its visual effects and riveting in its various educational aspects, the game helps to break down real life barriers that tropes of indigenous peoples have created and that have existed in video game narratives since their popularization. as of right now, the centres for video game development and creation for mainstream consumers exist in metropolitan japan and the continental united states. like the popular depictions of “indians” through the medium of film and hollywood culture, damaging and stereotypical portrayals of indigenous peoples, primarily young women, have contributed to building a tumultuous history in mainstream video game culture. the most infamous of these games was published by mistique in 1982, entitled custer’s revenge, where “the goal of the game is to guide the mostly naked general and his erect penis through an onslaught of arrows toward a native american woman named revenge who is tied to a post on the far side of the screen” to “even up an old score” by raping her (shaw 20-21). as conceptually heinous and unacceptable as this so-called “game” is, custer’s revenge serves as an example of the lengths that global video game culture has had to come in the past several decades. certainly, the climate of indigenous presences in video gaming has steadily become more representative of actual living and breathing indigenous communities by featuring indigenous identities as the protagonists of blockbuster titles such as ubisoft’s assassin's creed iii (2012) and sucker punch’s infamous: second son (2014), but the overall trend of these one-dimensional, masculine heroes in gaming does nothing but tokenize their identities as simple plot devices. through the active work of indigenous-lead production companies like upper one games, video games that centre the voices of indigenous peoples and their cultures move past what is portrayed by mainstream gaming companies to show precisely how indigenous communities are actively engaging with new media to further their own peoples’ needs and interests. prevalent examples of the important work that is currently being done by indigenous game designers include games like otsì: rise of the kanien’kehá:ka legends (2009), a first-person perspective game with a mohawk protagonist that was developed by students at the kahnawake survival school, as well as minority media’s maize longboat review of never alone 185 empathy game2 titled spirits of spring (2014) that tells the story of an indigenous boy’s journey to take a stand against bullying. still, never alone separates itself by featuring the young, female protagonist character of nuna. the game is one of the most recent, movement-leading examples of how indigenous communities are currently deconstructing the mainstream gaming industry’s negative stereotypes to serve their own purposes of cultural revitalization, intra-community education for younger generations, and the re-education of the global gaming public. as we have previously found through the close reading and subsequent analysis of never alone, it is hard to define its scope of influence as both an aesthetically amazing, visually-based video game and a documentary through its inclusion of the cultural insights portion of the project. it seems as though both aspects have had varying impacts on the gaming community in that the documentary-style cultural insights are trivialized as a backdrop to the artistic quality of the ingame narrative, imagery, and characters. i propose that this sort of mental separation between player reactions to the game are problematic because it fails to see that never alone is truly interconnected in its entirety. if this game is truly meant to bring about an increased global awareness of indigenous cultures from indigenous peoples themselves, the playable game and the cultural insights cannot be judged separately. ludology and narratology are relatively new academic fields that engage with the contention of mechanics and narrative within videogaming.3 harsha walia’s writings on art as activism in her book undoing border imperialism rings true for this particular debate, as never alone as a whole can be thought of as one of the “creative tactics” she credits as holding incredible power in social justice movements (walia 177). walia notes that “moving beyond the regurgitation of dogma or circulation of petitions, the tactics of vibrant social movements have included flash mobs, murals, performance, art, social media,” and other forms of nuanced creative work (walia 177). considering the fact that the iñupiat community has utilized the video game medium, foreign to indigenous community practices in many ways, their desire to represent themselves within a genre that has done so much to erase indigenous peoples as a whole communicates how never alone has the capability of subverting dominant narratives in meaningful ways. as it is stated on the publishing company's website itself: at upper one games, we weave timeless, living stories into dynamic, engaging and fun games that encourage discovery and exploration. we are confident our products will excite, inspire and connect people throughout the world (upper one games 2014). certainly, the purpose that never alone has been meant to serve is embodied by the company’s statement. but as a piece of visual, interactive, educational, and narrative art, never alone also exists as a creative tactic for iñupiat activist work to be upheld in rewriting the script of damaging indigenous representations in video games. indigenous communities only just beginning to explore the potential for video games to communicate their teachings, worldviews, and issues relating to the concept of indigenous authenticity within this digital medium are often questioned. if indigenous literature has difficulty being duly recognized within a global canon, how can forms of digital storytelling within video games like never alone be fully recognized as indigenous knowledge? much like the debates of indigenous authenticity within literary discourse as exemplified by jace weaver transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 186 (cherokee), craig womack (creek-cherokee), and robert warrior (osage) in their book titled american indian literary nationalism, the written works of indigenous peoples continue to be discredited of their relevancy in expanding the global literary canon. i see much of the same rhetoric happening in the production of never alone in its contributions to the canon of videogaming today and the boundaries its presentation oversteps in the preexisting definition of what indigenous peoples are supposed to look like when confined to a simple portrayal within a video game. the remarks of simon j. ortiz (acoma pueblo) in the closing chapter of the book deconstructs the idea of authenticity in indigenous literary expression as follows: along with their native languages, indian women and men have carried on their lives and expressions through the use of the newer languages… it is entirely possible for people to retain and maintain their lives through the use of any language. there is not a question of authenticity here; rather, it is the way that indian people have creatively responded to forced colonization. and this response has been one of resistance (ortiz 257). the two heroes brave the frigid arctic waters (upper one games llc, 2014). parallels between literary and video game discourses are certainly bridged by the presentation of oral history that is a living part of never alone’s iñupiat community. not only is the story of nuna and fox relevant in representing indigenous peoples on their own terms for their own motives, the entirety of never alone serves as a foundational building block in cementing indigenous presences within video gaming on the terms of indigenous communities themselves. the discussion of indigenous literary nationalism can be applied to further encompass indigenous oral histories that are not relegated to a sequence of words on paper. never alone does its storytelling through the actions, expressions, and exclamations of the story’s characters alongside the game’s breathtaking visuals, soundscape, narration, and cultural insights strategically placed throughout. more spaces can and must be made for indigenous communities to engage and experiment in creative media to tell their stories for the world to hear. reimaging indigenous futures in videogaming maize longboat review of never alone 187 never alone (kisima ingitchuna) is a game that holds a very near and dear place to my heart. it is my hope that i have been able to communicate some of the most significant aspects of its narrative as iñupiat oral tradition through my close reading and analysis, as well as its presentation as a globally-marketed video game through my additional reflections on its position within the discourse of indigenous videogaming. as an indigenous gamer myself, i recognize the need for games like this to exist in other communities and it fills me with joy knowing that this is only one of the very significant first steps in getting more indigenous storytellings into the hands of gamers worldwide. i also recognize the value in now having something tangible that the iñupiat community can take back to their youth to spark opportunities for educating the next generation that will immerse themselves in and learn from video game narratives. growing up, i was only able to access the stereotypical portrayals of indigenous peoples through mainstream video games while also being heavily influenced by american and japanese cultural motifs found within those games. through a recent discussion with a colleague i was asked the following question that has stuck in my mind ever since: “what would you think of this game if you played it growing up?” i wish that i could have an answer to that right now, but all i know is what i am aware of in the here and now. what i know is that the significance of never alone in its ability to carry on indigenous knowledge through a digital medium is an invitation for further cross-cultural sharing between indigenous game creators and players from all walks of life. there is profound power that has only recently become unlocked through the work of communities like the iñupiat of northern alaska; allowing more potential for cultural education, cultural tolerance, and cultural revitalization. maize longboat, university of british columbia notes 1 a platformer (or platform game) is a genre of video game which requires players to guide an avatar along suspended platforms, over obstacles, or both to advance within the game. learn more about platformers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/platform_game 2 empathy games are an emerging genre of videogame storytelling that works to elicit empathic reactions from their players. this type of videogame almost always employs rules that do not empower the player, making in-game choices matter. learn more about empathy games here: http://www.iac.gatech.edu/news-events/stories/2015/5/empathy-big-thing-video-games/407491 3 narratology refers to both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception. learn more about narratology here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/narratology. ludology is a discipline that deals with the critical study of games and gaming. more specifically, it focuses on game design, players, and their role in society and culture. learn more about ludology here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/game_studies works cited "a great story has the ability to move the audience in many ways." upper one games. upper one games, llc, 2014. 10 dec. 2015. <http://www.upperonegames.citci.org/>. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 180 “burn.” "review for never alone (kisima ingitchuna)." steam community. valve corporation, 23 june 2015. 10 dec. 2015. <https://steamcommunity.com/id/burn86/recommended/295790/>. “forestlily418.” "review for never alone (kisima ingitchuna)." steam community. valve corporation, 23 september 2015. 10 dec. 2015. <https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198141815402/recommended/295790/>. never alone (kisima ingitchuna). version 4.3.7. unity technologies aps, 2014. mawani, renisa. colonial proximities: crossracial encounters and juridical truths in british columbia, 1871-1921. vancouver: ubc press, 2009. shaw, adrienne. gaming at the edge: sexuality and gender at the margins of gamer culture. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2014. “vladeck2204.” "review for never alone (kisima ingitchuna)." steam community. valve corporation, 23 june 2015. 10 dec. 2015. <https://steamcommunity.com/id/vladeck2204/recommended/295790/> walia, harsha. undoing border imperialism. edinburgh: ak press, 2013. weaver, jace, craig s. womack, and robert allen warrior. american indian literary nationalism. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2006. microsoft word hudson.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)       159   deanna m. kennedy, et al., eds. american indian business: principles and practices. university of washington press, 2017. ix-221 pp. isbn 9780295742090 http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/kename.html in the process of reviewing this book i shared it with a colleague of mine – an indigenous australian woman working in the field of economic development. i thought she would be interested in the concepts as she grapples with many of them in her job. i knew what i thought of the book and i was interested to see if our views aligned. her response – “this is amazing work and so true” – confirmed my own thinking. this book is more than just a collection of principles and practices relating to american indian businesses: it speaks of the wider issues facing many indigenous people establishing and running their own business. the legacy of colonialism and the displacement and destruction of traditional forms of governance, economy and culture, is one shared by most indigenous people. for centuries, first nations people have fought to “hold on to their culture, land and natural resources” in the face of increasing encroachment by government and industry (kennedy et al ix). despite growing recognition of their sovereign rights, the systematic economic marginalisation of indigenous people continues to this day in the stereotypes applied to their businesses and the discrimination they face in accessing finances. therefore, although this book focuses on american indian businesses, the experiences and learnings it contains are relevant to any indigenous person or community operating or looking at establishing a business. the book is also valuable to non-indigenous people as it will help them understand the barriers and challenges faced by american indians (and indigenous people more broadly) in developing business enterprises and viable economies in their communities. the editors’ goals in compiling and writing this book were to “contribute to learning about unique aspects of american indian business” and to provide “different cultural perspectives that could lead to richer conversations about different business approaches.” (kennedy et al xxii). in this regard, the book succeeds, as many of the chapters are devoted to explaining the distinct and valuable aspects of american indian culture in relation to business. for example, chapters 3, 4 and 14, make the case for business models based on core indian cultural values and content. the book explores the complexities inherent in operating in two worlds and how to reconcile cultural values and practices with the demands of business. the paradox in having to simultaneously collaborate and compete with neighbouring tribes and to negotiate with rival tribes to develop partnerships and regional economic development opportunities. it discusses how stereotypes – both internally and externally imposed, frequently see “indian-nous and business as antithetical on one another….” ( xii). however, the book exposes the fallacy of such thinking, by providing concrete examples of how american indians have always been entrepreneurially minded and how historically, individual forms of business coexisted alongside communally run businesses. for example, in chapter one, the authors cite r. j. miller (2001), who reports that indian cultures have always: “fostered, encouraged, and supported their tribal people in private economic endeavours.” (4). chapter two also argues that private business activity at the family level has traditionally existed within american indian tribes and that the indian reorganization act (ira) changed the paradigm by placing all the responsibility for economic activity on tribal governments (16, 23). sara jane hudson review of american indian business   160   the value of this book is that the authors do not shy away from discussing some of the more sensitive issues facing many american indian tribes today. in particular, the tendency for some people to want to pull down those who stand out and succeed. this concept is referred to as “social jealousy” and has been likened to crickets or crabs in a bucket where any cricket that tries to climb out of the bucket is pulled back in by the others (33). this is an issue also faced by aboriginal people in australia and one of the many challenges indigenous people experience running their own business, particularly if it is successful. because of this, and other issues, many indigenous entrepreneurs are making the decision to locate their business off reservations. yet, this only further compounds the problem. the fewer small business there are, the fewer role models there will be. according to harrington et al in chapter 3, there is an absence of small businesses on reservations and indian people own private businesses at the lowest rate per capita of any ethnic or racial group in the united states (32). however, antipathy towards private business owners is not the main reason for the lack of businesses on indian reservations. the primary cause is the us government’s policy of holding tribal land in trust, which makes it virtually impossible for on-reservation entrepreneurs to secure start-up financing, as they cannot use their houses as collateral (85). as a result of the absence of private enterprise, indian reservations suffer from economic leakage – where the majority of indian dollars are spent purchasing consumables off the reservation (84). just as economic development can contribute to a virtuous circle (x), the absence of economic activities leads to a downwards spiral wherein because there are few employers there are fewer jobs available, which results in high unemployment and low family incomes. due to the difficulties residents face in trying to secure employment on reservation land, indian and indigenous communities worldwide are “bleeding young people into surrounding societies (ix).” although this all paints a pretty depressing picture, the benefit of this book is that it is not all doom and gloom. in fact, the authors seem to go out of their way to inspire readers with what is possible given the right conditions. rather than simply listing a litany of problems as many books about indigenous people tend to do, the authors provide numerous practical examples of how american indians could improve their economic development outcomes. in chapter 4, stewart, a professor of entrepreneurship, outlines the need for a business strategy to help managers identify their area of competitive advantage. according to steward, american indians cultural capital is a particular resource that could be leveraged to set them apart from their competitors (48). he suggests focusing on one strategy not multiple strategies as companies that try to do both often end up “stuck in the middle” and being mediocre on both fronts (52). in addition to providing advice on business strategies, the book also provides a number of questions and exercises to help people understand the concepts and apply them to real-life situations. for example, in chapter 9, black and birmingham, discussing american indian leadership practices, provide five group or individual exercises that people could do to practice their disciplining, business analysis and decision-making skills. in chapter ten, authors claw, verbos, and rosile discuss the concept of a living code of ethics (148), which promotes doing business in a way that honours american indians’ ancestors (156). underpinning the ethics discussed are the seven grandfather/grandmother teachings which are: wisdom is to be shared; love is to honor others and care for them; respect is to honor all creations; bravery is to persevere transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)       161   in the face of adversity; honesty is to tell the truth; humility is to remember we are not greater or lesser than others; and truth is for american indians to honor who they are and have integrity (146). how these ethics could be applied to different areas of business, such as sales and marketing, finance and accounting and human resources, are discussed. a practical exercise is included at the end of the chapter to help people work through the four possible ways that laws and ethics intersect (158), and to help them reflect on how following the seven grandfather/grandmother teachings could help improve their business practices. chapter 11 also focuses on providing advice to improve the management of a business – in this case a health program. the way the advice is given is unique as it uses traditional storytelling methods to help people learn about organisational management. the story of mouse and coyote is engaging and easy to follow and successfully demonstrates the importance of certain business concepts such as strategic planning, goal commitment and how to address underperforming staff (172). overall, this book is an extremely valuable resource, particularly as until recently there has been limited research on the contributions of american indians, and indigenous people in general, to business. some people may not agree with the promotion of business and in particular individual business enterprise in this book. those people may see it as assimilationist. yet, while having reservations about the ulterior motives behind policy makers’ promotion of the advantageous aspects of commercial activity by indigenous people could be warranted, there is demonstrable evidence that indigenous people are conducting business on their own terms and in their own way. rather than seeing business enterprise as a foreign concept imposed on indigenous people, this book highlights how indigenous knowledge is part of the philosophy of economic development in american indian communities. sara jane hudson, the centre for independent studies microsoft word larre.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   144   michael snyder. john joseph mathews: life of an osage writer. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2017. 264 pp. isbn: 978-0806156095. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/2198/john%20joseph%20mathews john joseph mathews: life of an osage writer is the first book-length biography of the osage writer, author of wah’kon-tah (1932), sundown (1934), talking to the moon (1945), life and death of an oilman (1951), and the osages: children of the middle waters (1961), to mention only the most famous of his writings. john joseph mathews, who was born in 1894 in pawhuska, indian territory, and died in 1979 in pawhuska, oklahoma, was one of the major native american writers of the pre-native american renaissance era, along with d’arcy mcnickle and john milton oskison. these authors have attracted scholars’ attention for quite a few years now, and a biography of mathews fits nicely into this scholarly production. by meticulous research in mathews’s diary and personal collections, and thanks to correspondence and conversations with family members, michael snyder has been able to produce a biography in which the reader gets a glimpse at the writer’s intimate life and shortcomings. these the biographer exposes honestly, as when he writes about how mathews seems to have concealed his first marriage and the children he had with his first wife, children that he did not see for about a decade (72). the passages about mathews’s private and intimate life, however, are not the most appealing and sometimes come close to speculation, as the biographer admits (139). a few remarks on the writer’s psychology, however, gleaned through testimonies left by family members can sometimes shed light on his work, as when he is described as an “elitist” (107). although snyder defines mathews as a regionalist writer in a more and more standardized nation, a writer who “influenced later generations of writers, including kiowa author n. scott momaday, larry mcmurtry, and cormac mccarthy” (63) and who even formed a “southwestern regionalist circle” (69), the reader might wish the biographer had dwelt more on mathews’ work than on his life. at least, more attention could have been focused on how his life nourished his work. in any case, the passages dedicated to the life of mathews’s children or to what he may have thought about his gay dentist (174-175) are unnecessary. mathews was a cosmopolitan world traveler who studied at oxford and traveled through europe and parts of africa, a life he could afford mainly thanks to the osage headright payments (42). he was also a sportsman, in the rooseveltian tradition of the turn of the century: he hunted in scotland, in africa (50-51), and of course in his osage blackjacks, in the masculine conviviality that sportsmanship implied (179). some of his first stories were animal or hunting stories. what is remarkable, and what should prove very useful to future mathews scholars and readers is that snyder brings the reader’s attention to many short texts that mathews published in periodicals such as sooner magazine. many of them are animal or hunting stories and form with talking to the moon a coherent body of nature-writing. if snyder does not proceed to analyze these texts in detail, his bibliography of “works by john joseph mathews” (235) will prove to be a valuable guide to future students of the osage writer. michael snyder has also researched the role mathews played in osage politics as a member of the osage tribal council and a supporter of john collier and the indian reorganization act. lionel larré review of john joseph mathews   145   mathews lived at a time of great changes for the osages, a time when they were rushed into the capitalistic euro-american world, notably after the discovery of oil in their underground. this is illustrated by what aging chief fred lookout said to him and other young councilmen: “you are young men. you have the thoughts of white men but you have the interest of your people in your hearts. do what you think best. you know how to say things so that people will understand. old men should advise young men, but those things which we meet today are not the things which i know about. the things which i know are gone. if you let your white man tongues say what is in your hearts, you will do great things for your people” (83). if we are to believe snyder’s sources, it was as he was travelling the world, and particularly when he met kabyle tribesmen in the algerian desert, that mathews realized he should take an interest in osage culture. belatedly, then, he started to focus his attention on his people, meeting the elders of his tribe, working at the creation of a tribal museum, and researching for what would become his last book, a history of the osages published in 1961. in “an american land ethic,” n. scott momaday wrote that “once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth… he ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it” (45). after seeing the world, mathews did dwell on the osage landscape, in both meanings of the word: he inhabited it, in a little sandstone house he built in the blackjacks; and he turned his thoughts towards it. it can be argued that mathews’s literary work, including the biography of “oilman” e. w. marland, is the result of the attention he paid to the landscape that gave birth to the osage culture, a process he analyzes in talking to the moon (1945). as snyder writes, when mathews became “a professional writer,” between 1929 and 1934, he wrote nature and osage stories, published in sooner magazine. mathews firmly believed that the land expressed itself through everything that stemmed from it, including culture and people. the “people of the hills, the blackjacks, the shortgrass, the desert, and the mountain creeks have not yet interpreted the soil through their own idioms, metaphors, dialects, and song,” mathews wrote in an article quoted by snyder (141). throughout his work, mathews attempted to understand what the soil said through these manifestations, that he called “ornamentation” in talking to the moon: i had thought … that i might find some connection between man’s artificial ornamentation and the useless ornamentation among the creatures of my little corner of the earth. i realized that man’s artistic creations and his dreams … as well as his fumbling toward god, must be primal, possibly the results of the biological urge which inspires the wood thrush to sing and the coyote to talk to the moon” (talking to the moon 3). michael snyder writes the most interesting pages when he touches upon this close relationship between the land and the writer’s work, and that he endeavors to analyze it. in spite of the shortcomings mentioned before, this biography of john joseph mathews does give a positive impression that the osage writer’s work, taken as a whole, forms what leanne howe later called a tribalography (172). it is definitely a welcome addition to scholarly sources about john joseph mathews and pre-native american renaissance literature. lionel larré, université bordeaux montaigne microsoft word mackay.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     168   kathryn troy. the specter of the indian: race, gender and ghosts in american seances, 1848-1890. new york: suny, 2017. xxx + 201pp. isbn 978-1-4384-6609-5. http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6414-the-specter-of-the-indian.aspx kathryn troy’s book, though published in an indigenous studies context, quite possibly invites rejection by indigenous readers and anyone sensitive to the impact of indian stereotypes on indigenous peoples and cultures in the colonial period. this hard to swallow quality is due to a methodological choice that troy appears to have made early in her study: she treats the “indian” ghosts and spirits summoned up by 19th century mediums as entities that were entirely real, at least to the people witnessing them. as she puts it in the introduction, “to assert at the outset that all spiritualists were knowing frauds is risky and counterproductive” (xiv). yet for any indigenous reader it will be hard to read a passage like the following, printed as a verbatim account of a spiritual message, as being the words of a native spirit: me see among the thorns many beautiful gems, soul gems that sparkles brighter than the sun. me see they spirit covered with dark shadows, but me is not hindered from seeing they pure spirit, it is much beautiful and me can see what your noble soul would do if unshackled… me sees much me no tell for want of your words (59) this sort of racist “little plum” mock-pidgin is common among the 19th century spirits troy surveys, as is a sort of hyperinflated and grandiose rhetoric in the mode of chief seattle’s (si'ahl) well-known yet highly disputed speech. readers can also expect to encounter lithe indian maidens, brave warriors, and dead war chiefs issuing words of reconciliation from beyond the grave. troy is not a spiritualist herself, however, and the historical research that has gone into this book is methodical and thoroughly interrogated. it is therefore obvious that her intention is not in any way to validate the racist stereotypes that swam through the minds of 19th century charlatans and the self-deceivers and dupes that they swept up in their wake just to show my own atheist and anti-spiritual bias for a moment. rather, her taking of spiritualist publications at face value allows her to entirely avoid the tricky ground of intentionality, and instead to use manifestations of indian spirits (the inauthenticity of which should be immediately obvious to any reader) to map out the psyches of a group of mostly wealthy, liberal, middle and upper class white americans in relation to the genocides and land expropriations taking place in the country. the result is a fascinating case study of settler guilt made manifest in a freudian sense, which eventually reveals some unexpected effects on actual native american peoples of the period. only by taking these ghosts seriously, troy argues, can we properly account for their effect on people who witnessed séances or read the various spiritualist newsletters. a ghost, after all, is not the same as a dead person. as a liminal presence, neither dead nor alive, the spirits summoned up by mediums served to attest to their audiences that there would be consequences for genocide, and these would not be the consequences of a white-first version of christianity. american spiritualism put itself forward less as a religion than as a form of rational james mackay review of specter of the indian     169   enquiry. as troy notes and then extensively shows, “spiritualists defined the phenomena they witnessed and interpreted them through the lens of accepted contemporary sciences.” as such, when spiritualists encountered solemn warnings from the celestial spheres that white americans would suffer serious consequences for their actions in the destruction of indian nations, these were far more specific in their call to action than general ethical condemnations or christian preaching would have been. equally, the existence of indian ghosts served, at least at first, as a counter to the eliminationist settler logic analysed by patrick wolfe and others. native americans could not be simply and permanently disappeared from the land, nor could their cultures be assimilated: rather, for the spiritualists, indians would be an ever-present call to repent, rather in the manner of jacob marley. knowledge of what was happening in the celestial spheres was necessarily incomplete, fragmentary and on many occasions contradictory. just as with ufo sightings or satanic child abuse panics, the very fact that such contradictions were being discussed and analysed within the community fed into the narrative that the movement was at base scientific. one element that was especially hotly debated, in a country plunging into and then recovering from the civil war, was that of race. troy follows robert cox in arguing that most spiritualists were persuaded by the messages from beyond that race eventually became irrelevant as spirits progressed through the celestial spheres, and that the afterlife would be “devoid of distinctions and categorizations based on differing religious or political affiliations” (68). as indian chiefs were seen as spiritually strong and/or pure, they progressed unusually quickly to the higher spheres. though many historians have stated that indian spirits mainly functioned to “forgive” whites, troy notes that this forgiveness was targeted: only spiritual investigators with the wit to listen, understand and act were sent messages of benevolence. it needs to be mentioned that this was not a fringe movement. hardcore spiritualism certainly counted several hundred thousand adherents, while as many as eleven million people – out of a population of no more than twenty five million – held at least some spiritualist beliefs, attended the occasional séance or semi-regularly read spiritualist publications. a significant number of us citizens, therefore, were able to experience cheyenne chief white antelope, who had been murdered in the sand creek massacre, telling the still-living colonel john chivington that he would not gain access to the higher spiritual realms after death, as his victims had, but would continue to “walk the earth in shadows and thorns will spring up and pierce his feet” (83). and troy’s research demonstrates that many of these spiritual researchers felt themselves impelled by indian spirits to take action to try to actively aid living native peoples and cultures. spiritualist editorials fulminated against indian wars, cast doubt on reports of indian savagery, publicised the crimes of chivington and sherman, and happily reported the shade of custer admitting his guilt and shame. white wealthy do-gooders with a strong urge to help but no real knowledge of the cultures and communities that they wanted to aid – just their own projections and imaginings made manifest in ectoplasm, hair snatched from the spirit realm, and the sound of leather moccasins in the dark of the séance room? what could possibly go wrong? troy demonstrates that leading spiritualists such as colonel samuel tappan, husband to cora hatch (one of the most renowned mediums in transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     170   the country) took an active role in the various “friends of the indian” societies. spiritualists raised funds and lobbied congress until something was done to avert the terrible fate that their spirit guides warned faced the united states. the form that that “something” took, however, was the foundation of boarding schools at carlisle and elsewhere, and the creation of programmes to turn indians into self-sufficient smallholders. as troy puts it, “the dawes act made a reality all that spiritualists hoped to accomplish on behalf of indians” (149). while spiritualist influence may have been a brake on overtly genocidal actions (i here follow wolfe’s distinction between genocide and settler colonial eliminationism), much as today’s superficially woke “colour-blind” white activists may help to forestall the rise of neo-nazism, spiritualists failed to understand the impact of seemingly benevolent enforced assimilation. troy’s well-written and thoroughly researched study, rather depressingly, suggests that the energies from the colonial guilt physically intruding into the séance room was simply diverted into another part of the elimination process. james mackay, european university cyprus microsoft word higue.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 196 kathy jetnil-kijin ̄er. iep jāltok: poems from a marshallese daughter. tucson: university of arizona press, 2017. 81 pp. isbn: 9780816534029. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/iep-jaltok climate change; sea level rise; nuclear detonations; these are the topics commonly affiliated with the marshall islands in western popular media. but it is with the image of a basket that kathy jetnil-kijin̄er weaves her personal and ancestral history of the marshall islands and asserts a textured narrative of grief but also resilience, empowerment, and hope. the marshall islands are an island nation in micronesia that gained independence in 1979. with a long history of their islands being co-opted by foreign nations for different military purposes (military supply bases, airfields, bomb testing sites, etc.), the marshallese live daily with the effects of colonialism. however, iep jāltok, the first book of poetry by a marshallese writer to be printed by a united states press, powerfully charts a new course of marshallese history and futurity. indeed, the printing of the collection itself is now part of marshallese survivance, as it gains a wider audience for the experiences that jetnil-kijin̄er documents. readers of transmotion, a journal inspired by the work of gerald vizenor who first gave scholars the important term “survivance,” may be assured that the spirit of that term pulses powerfully through this book. this collection has four sections: iep jāltok, history project, lessons from hawaiʻi, and tell them. iep jāltok takes its name from a reference to marshallese matrilineal society. the epigraph, which quotes the only marshallese-english dictionary in print, explains that iep jāltok is “a basket whose opening is facing the speaker. said of female children. she represents a basket whose contents are made available to her relatives.” two concrete poems entitled “basket” bookend the collection, while doubles are a theme in the first section. after the first “basket” poem, the collection begins with two origin stories: those of lōktan̄ūr, a mother figure from marshallese cosmology who introduced the marshallese to the sail; and the sisters liwātuonmour and lidepdepju, who are viewed as the mothers of the chiefly lineage and represented as two sacred stones. focusing on pairings, jetnil-kijiner asks her readers to question binaries so often associated with colonialism—modern/timeless, progressive/past, oppressor/oppressed, civilized/uncivilized, and colonizer/colonized. this first set of poems tell two histories: lōktan̄ūr—which is told in in two parts, then liwātuonmour and lidepdepju— about two sacred stones; by using duality, she explores the defining characteristics of marshallese society and values over time, giving marshallese cosmologies due space against the influences of religious colonialism. in one of the poems, jetnil-kijin̄er retells the desecration of lidepdepju (her stone was thrown into the sea by a western missionary); the form of these poems is striking, visually resembling a dictionary entry. through form and content, each delineation of the terms reveals a fraught relationship over the place of origin stories in contemporary society— after independence, but also after the onset of colonialism. the section history project outlines the marshallese interactions with and effects of western militarization. in the poem “hooked,” jetnil-kijin̄er presents the story of a man who ultimately loses his limbs to diabetes after becoming addicted to fatty canned foods—foods that had only become introduced because the west’s use of the islands for warfare had decimated the local food supply and the islanders were forced to accept western preserved foods. her critique of these subtle but destructive western influences continues in “the letter b is for” which explains rebecca hogue review of iep jāltok 197 the etymology of the marshallese word “baam”—“as in / kombaam ke? / are you contaminated / with radioactive fallout?” (19). this chilling example of western militarism’s effects is a found poem, as the content of the verse is adopted from the marshallese-english dictionary’s sample sentences of the word. the effects of the bombs leave irrevocable traces on both language and body, and the corporeal influences continue in “fishbone hair” which tells of the loss of her niece from cancer. in this section’s central poem, “history project,” jetnil-kijin̄er integrates these personal and national histories, reminding the reader not only how the personal is politically powerful, but how the political is always personally felt. the poem explores jetnilkijin̄er’s childhood, when she explored the marshallese history with western nuclear testing while completing a school history project competition. through the inclusion of primary source quotations in italics, the poem mixes her personal experience of learning the history alongside the atrocities of western military negligence and the horrors of marshallese familial destruction. the speaker’s project on nuclear detonations in the marshall islands “for the good of mankind” repeats the foreboding words of the united states military officer who, without a translator, convinced the chief of bikini atoll to allow the testing of atomic weapons on the island, promising that their sacrifice would lead to “the end of all wars” (keju-johnson 15). by the end of the poem, when her project has been reviewed by the judges and is misunderstood, these detrimental miscommunications in which the marshallese lose are repeated once again. perhaps best known from this collection is her poem “dear matafele peinam,” which she performed in 2014 at the opening ceremony of the united nations secretary-general’s climate summit. this poem, in an apostrophe to her infant daughter, promises that she will fight to protect her from the foreboding messages about the threats that climate change and rising sea levels bring to their islands, asserting: “no one’s moving / no one’s losing / their homeland / no one’s gonna become / a climate change refugee” (71) but in the next stanza with a turn to the history project of the rest of her collection, she explains, “or should i say / no one else” (71). once again jetnil-kijin̄er instructs her audience on the history of the pacific over the last two centuries—one of desecration, development, and displacement. she then switches her address to her fellow peoples of the pacific: “to the carteret islanders of papua new guinea / and to the taro islanders of the solomon islands / i take this moment / to apologize to you / we are drawing the line / here” (71) in a turn to indigenous solidarity, she acknowledges that the threats of climate change expand beyond her family, beyond the marshall islands, and beyond the pacific. in this rousing call to action, jetnil-kijin̄er leaves her reader with images of resistance and protest, of solidarity and organizing: “and there are thousands / out on the street / marching with signs / hand in hand / chanting for change now / and they’re marching for you, baby / they’re marching for us” (72-73). it is no surprise that after jetnil-kijin̄er’s performance of this poem at the united nations, she was described as “the poet [who] brings world leaders to tears.” this moving debut should be admired, relished, and read in classrooms far and wide. it provides a rich and detailed survey of marshallese pasts, presents, and futures told through one insightful activist’s study of history, linked with her personal experiences. through its intimate portraits of her own journeys and those of pacific peoples, iep jāltok intertwines vulnerability with empowerment for an inspiring message of survivance. as jetnil-kijin̄er expresses triumphantly in “dear matafele peinam:” we deserve to do more transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 198 than just survive we deserve to thrive. (73) rebecca hogue, university of california, davis keju-johnson, darlene. “for the good of mankind.” pacific women speak out for independence and denuclearisation. zohl de ishtar, ed. christchurch, nz: the raven press, 1988. microsoft word mackay.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 222 terese marie mailhot. heart berries: a memoir. london: bloomsbury, 2018. 126 pp. isbn 9781526604408. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/heart-berries-9781526604408/ indigenous pain is, let’s face it, a saleable commodity. 101-year-old chief red fox makes up stories about buffalo bill and mourns the passing of a dying race. tears trickle down italianamerican actor iron eyes cody’s face as he stares sadly at the flotsam of civilization. faux navajo writer nasdijj squeezes three increasingly terrible books from his imagined damaged boys and increasingly graphic descriptions of brutal child abuse. nothing better for wide sales to a settler audience than confirmation of native peoples as fucked-up beyond repair, fading out a little slower than originally projected (they’re not in those robes on that lone horse staring out at the prairie any more, nor did they wend their slow way into the hills leaving only kevin costner to tell the tale), but inevitably crushed by the oncoming of brute white reality nonetheless. gerald vizenor, patron trickster saint of this journal, wickedly mocks such representations in the work of david treuer, noting that “any sentiments of native survivance are overturned by woe and mordancy” (“aesthetics of survivance” 15). so when diana evans in the guardian reviews terese mailhot’s book by saying “this is a slim book full of raw and ragged pain, the poisonous effects of sexual abuse, of racial cruelty, of violence and self-harm and drug addiction,” the praise for the author’s ability to striptease her damage sets off warning bells. not that the pain was not (is not) real. not that the author is undeserving of wide, full, deep, unstinting applause simply for being able to get up in the morning, after enduring a childhood of neglect and abuse both physical and sexual, not to mention the ptsd, the bipolar disorder, the loss of a child taken away by court order for his own protection. not even that there is no value to forcing the reader to understand the viciousness and ugliness of the lives of many women of colour. but – look. i’m a white cisgendered man who tries to think about and promote first nations and other indigenous writing for a living. there’s a reason i have to be suspicious and interrogate texts that appeal to my european heart, and in particular those texts that draw on deep wells of pain, just as i needs must be suspicious of my own reactions to native-authored texts that adopt mystical tropes. heaven forfend i should enact the stereotypical unthinking liberal audience. here’s another red-flashing-light-klaxon-alarm-bell moment: the book is actually addressed to a white liberal male audience, the author’s real-life partner, casey gray. if there’s one thing that might truly scare a reader off, it’s promoting the father of your child as some form of white saviour. real-life or not, such a narrative is toxified by the figure of harper lee’s well-meaning atticus finch, his story overwhelming the narrative of tom robinson (and all the other tom robinsons), and further toxified by all finch’s many descendants, played by sandra bullock or daniel day-lewis, nobly helping the hapless sacrificial lambs on the altar of a better america. any alert reader will have guessed this isn’t building to a condemnation of mailhot’s book. far from it. this is a love letter. rather, i want to sketch some of the obstacles mailhot needed to james mackay review of heart berries 223 avoid in writing in the currently popular form of the agony memoir, a form which has roots in american literary culture that stretch back way, way past oprah, past dave pelzer’s ayn randian self-help in a child called “it”, through allen ginsberg’s “scribble down your nakedness,” through lowell and plath, and into the impact of freudian psychoanalysis on a protestant culture. the game, always, is to explore scar tissue that is entirely individual to the writer but in such a way as to avoid a parade that comforts the reader, allowing wild flowers to grow in strange formations from spilled blood, like the bear in mailhot’s book who “put her claws into a strawberry patch and produced ripe berries” (13). elissa washuta managed such a trick a couple of years ago in my body is a book of rules (2014) by varying her style and subject from chapter to chapter, deconstructing her own rape and bipolar condition in such a way that only the most determined reader could make it out with a simplistic narrative of obstacles transcended. casting herself as the subject of a law and order episode, annotating every medication prescribed over a year, placing her own story alongside the media narratives of kurt and britney, washuta’s text defies the reader not to notice the craft at work, the intelligent mind guiding the story. terese marie mailhot’s craftsmanship is less ostentatious than washuta’s: no complete changes of style from chapter to chapter, here. and there is a redemption narrative of sorts buried beneath the veneer, of a violent father, a shower, a recollected image of his pubic mound, a memory finally confronted and brought to light. a child lost, another child conceived and eventually, fiercely, loved. a broken girl brought to tragic wisdom through self analysis and writing classes at iaia, through a final accounting of the love and wreckage of parents rendered inadequate by the aftermaths of colonialism and their own demons. but what marks this book out from so many agony narratives is the sheer dexterity of its writing, the product of much hard work and skill. sentences lull you into thinking you know where they will end, then reach out and shock you with the wrong word, a sudden swerve into indirect metaphor or simile, an unexpected verb. (of casey) “the man i had been conditioning was not happy with me” (10). (of her new baby) “his skin is milk, and his body feels electric and unforgiving” (80). (of food) “my mind is overwhelmed with breakfast alone” (25) (of bad sex) “i remember that i was wearing black lace and new stockings. i wasn’t stable, but men don’t usually care about that” (15). this book is already on hollywood actress-sponsored book club lists, the new york times bestseller list, native american literature 101 syllabi, and on the bedside table of just about every literary critic and scholar i know. it doesn’t really need a review in a minor online academic journal (even if we were honoured to run an early version of one chapter in a previous issue, which you should read right now if you’re still on the fence about the incredible artistry of this writer). it will in years to come be analysed to death for the subtle ways it employs stó:lō storytelling, for the ways it explores a trauma specific to first nations women in an era of #mmiw, for the sense of survivance it profoundly embodies in refusing either to sugar-coat the transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 224 author’s own prickly messed-upness or to pretend that chaotic childhoods lead eventually to stable adults, no matter the amount of therapy. it will hopefully be recognised for its sabotage of white saviour narratives – casey turns out to be mostly a selfish if sometimes loving jerk – and the ways in which the author insists on the specificity of her narrative, refusing the reader the right to call this anything so banal as a generational statement of indian pain. my hope is that in amongst all such thematic readings there will always be space to discuss the craftsmanship of the sentence in terese marie mailhot’s work. mailhot truly shakes up the english language, makes it strange, in the way that only the most talented writers can. for a first book, this is an extraordinary achievement. james mackay, european university cyprus works cited evans, diana. “heart berries by terese marie mailhot review – a raw, rich indigenous memoir.” the guardian, 4 august 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/04/heart-berries-by-terese-marie-mailhotreview. ginsberg, allen. “scribble down your nakedness,” the montreal star, 11 november 1967 lee, harper, to kill a mockingbird. j. b. lippincott & co, 1960. pelzer, dave. a child called “it.” hci, 1995. vizenor, gerald. “aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice.” in survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor, university of nebraska press, 2008, pp. 1-24. washuta, elissa. my body is a book of rules. red hen press, 2014. microsoft word hess.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 198 yael ben-zvi. native land talk: indigenous and arrivant rights theories. lebanon, nh: dartmouth college press, 2018. 276 pp. isbn: 9781512601466. https://www.upne.com/1512601459.html in native land talk: indigenous and arrivant rights theories, yael ben-zvi brilliantly employs euro-american human rights theories to examine and compare the distinctive resistances of african and indigenous americans to colonization. delving into a remarkable and varied array of resources—petitions, letters, newspaper articles, and speeches, among others—to examine euro-american rights claims, ben-zvi inventively applies these theoretical histories to the petitions and appeals for freedom and land made by indigenous and african american peoples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (roughly 1760-1840). the author closely analyzes aspects of settler rights claims and indigenous and african american histories of resistance (or, as she terms them, “unsettlement projects”) that have received little scholarly attention, aligning the resistance of the latter communities with settler dehumanization and violence. ben-zvi focuses on rights claims based on birthplace, stating that both colonization and what she casts as the separate resistances of african (“arrivant”) and indigenous americans were based in nativities: “native land talk explores the historical legacies of struggles over the political significance of belonging, attachment to land, indigeneity, and diaspora” (5). ben-zvi’s text clearly presents the british history of positive birthright rooted in feudalism, and its asserted extension across the atlantic to constitute “subinfeudation…the dominant logic by which settlers” established rights over indigenous peoples (24). native land rigorously analyzes the british judicial precedents, colonial codes, and settler assertions—what ben-zvi describes as “a unified discourse of rights theories”—used to construct a eurocentric, imperial ideology of oppression, violence, and dehumanization; ben-zvi does the groundbreaking work of examining how settlers employed this discourse. her meticulous analysis of european rights as interpreted and extended by settlers is matched by her reflection on related texts and events worthy of close historical analysis. ben-zvi offers a close reading of olaudah equiano’s interesting narrative, for example, as well as the writings of sixteenthand seventeenth-century mohegan leaders (her engagement with the history of brothertown on oneida land is particularly valuable) and other indigenous and african american petitioners and negotiators. the strange dichotomy between settler indifference to ancestral african american graves and their fascination with indigenous american ones (a fascination that ultimately required the passage of nagpra [the native american graves protection and repatriation act]) is carefully detailed. perhaps most captivating and original is her discussion of “divergent geopolitical perspectives, spatial practices, and perceptions of native status in the 1785 negotiations over cherokee lands in hopewell” (124). in explicating the history of exploitation and land theft through european mapmaking and contrasting it with cherokee perceptions of space, the author engages indigenous perspectives, brilliantly employing cartography and transnational methodology. benzvi’s meticulous research also presents a nuanced critique not only of jeffersonian philosophy and jackson’s willful flouting of the united states supreme court but also of recent supreme court decisions (ginsburg’s majority opinion in city of sherrill v. oneida indian nation, 2005) reaffirming the theft of indigenous land. janet berry hess review of native land talk 199 native land talk also admirably attempts to construct a more sophisticated paradigm for discussing human rights, one that breaks through “the mutually exclusive native/settler and black/white binaries” (67). ben-zvi rightly asserts that “it would be wrong to assess…[resistance] from perspectives that privilege the settler regime’s orders of history, place, causality, and belonging” (210). indeed, this is the major purpose of the text: to give voice to enslaved african americans, freedmen, and indigenous americans subjected to and resisting colonial violence. her frequent citing of their words enriches the text, as when, for example, she invokes a letter from 1793 by a confederacy of indigenous nations critiquing u.s. expansionism: “divide, therefore, this large sum of money, which you have offered to us, among these people. …we are persuaded they would most readily accept it, in lieu of the lands you sold them” (149). her citation of well-researched, early african american petitions is equally incisive and moving, as when she cites peter holbrook’s petition of 1773 thanking god for “lately put[ting] it into the hearts of multitudes on both sides of the water, to bear our burthens” (94). ben-zvi’s summation of the european response to these heartfelt pleas is artful: “indian removal confined indians to the past through the trope of inevitable disappearance, while african colonization removed african americans to an abstract, timeless africa that seemed antithetical to eurocentric progress” (6). at moments, however, native land talk slips into the construct it challenges, forcing indigenous and african american voices into eurocentric constructs. although ben-zvi critiques other scholarship for “requiring analyses based on eurocentric politics and law as though this is the definitive, exclusive perspective from which rights can be studied” (4), native land talk employs euro-american notions of human rights to interpret african american and indigenous worldviews. while she uses the words of indigenous peoples found as “fragments in settler publications,” there is little invocation of indigenous oral history or contemporary tribal perspectives or beliefs. similarly, she discusses african american petitions in terms of their adoption of euro-american ideology, rather than attending to the scholarship on unique diasporic cultures and philosophies. as a consequence of ben-zvi’s employment of european rights discourse, she explicates john locke and an interpretation of the biblical book of lamentations, for example, rather than mohegan indigenous cultural perspectives in interpreting mohegan texts. the issue of eurocentric language is also at play: in stating that “settlers produced indigenous dispossession in order to repudiate indigenous unsettlement initiatives” (126), she might more simply state that the actions and words of settlers justified their violence in the face of resistance. in arguing that the presence of ancestral graves served indigenous americans as “trope,” “political logic,” and “spatially embodied history” that “shifted the logic” of “partus sequitur ventrum,” ben-zvi also runs the risk of imposing eurocentric logic upon non-european individual human subjects. ancestral graves were not merely “central discursive elements” (191), but a part of sacred landscapes inseparable from indigenous culture, language, and belief. muscogee and cherokee peoples did not precisely “use the dead to affirm the ongoing histories of their homelands, and…invalidate settler geopolitics” (208); rather, they honored their ancestors as part of a vast spiritual, cultural, and linguistic system, referring to graves not as a “tactic,” but as a wholistic means of referring to this system. to her credit, the author acknowledges that ancestral graves “facilitated complex, dynamic links between the people’s past, present, and future on its homeland” (197). in juxtaposing the rights claims of african and transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 200 indigenous americans, too, ben-zvi also minimizes moments of collaboration and common purpose (the african american alliance with the seminole, to name just one). yet ben-zvi’s emphasis upon the importance of the individual—particularly those marginalized by european rights theories and a unified discourse absent of “cultural, geopolitical, or historical particularities” (31)—remains clear. as she states, “human agency interacts with its enabling environmental conditions, thereby becoming meaningful in local, specific ways that resist eurocentric definitions of human rights” (30). ben-zvi’s invaluable analysis of early african american petitions and indigenous american letters and commentary, citing the individual voices of disenfranchised and marginalized peoples, brings home the argument she paraphrases of the odawa leader, egushawa: “land could not be abstracted from its relations to the communities that inhabited it, giving it specific socio-historic-political meanings” (142). in her close attention to individual voices preserved in little-discussed historical documents—her careful analysis and naming of individuals who attempted to negotiate with or resist domination and violence—ben-zvi makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on african and indigenous american agency within the history of colonialism and to scholarship bringing forward specific african and indigenous american voices that resisted euro-american violence. janet berry hess, sonoma state university microsoft word editorial.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) i editorial it’s quiet outside. my pyjamas are running to holes. the dog has run off with my favourite slippers, and i’m completely out of orlik golden sliced pipe tobacco. but my family say they never know what to get me for christmas. the year is ending well, however, because i’m sitting here putting the finishing touches to our 8th issue (well, 7th if you count the vol 2 double issue as a single) and reflecting on the 4th year of transmotion’s endeavours. it is an incredible privilege editing this journal, spending so much time reading the insightful work of indigenous and nonindigenous scholars, catching glimpses of the incredible new indigenous writing happening out there, and feeling awestruck—if also a little overwhelmed—at the sheer quantity of new books that are sliding off the humming presses at a rate of knots. so. much. talent. it is hard to keep up, as the delayed release date of this issue testifies. to complicate matters, in the past year, two of the editors have become department chairs, while one has moved institutions, leaving the fourth with a whole lot of work to do! as a result, we have decided it is time to take on more editorial assistants. alla holovina has continued to do excellent work with our book reviews (how many, you ask? why, only 27 this issue), and we will be joined next issue by bryn skibobirney (university of geneva), cmarie fuhrman (university of idaho), and ying-wen yu (university of arizona). this input is invaluable and allows us to continue taking in articles, reflective essays, fiction, and as many book reviews on new fiction and scholarship as possible. in addition, the wonderful miriam brown-spiers (kennesaw state university) has agreed to join us as a fifth editor. we are both delighted and 100% confident that all of this new input will keep the journal fresh, lively, and… on time. this just happens to be the fourth guest-curated/-edited issue we have produced, as well, and we are deeply grateful to those who have sought to work with us. as you know, open access is crucial to our mission, and it is gratifying to see just how many others are drawn to the platform for the easy dissemination of high quality scholarship and writing that will remain permanently free to the end user. when we wrote the editorial to that double issue in 2016, we celebrated the fact that we were able to make more of the online platform, including various media. we continue that here with pieces that make strong use of images and visualizations, and one that incorporates sound files. if you’re reading this in pdf… sorry. we can still do more, so if you’re out there making film, animation, doing audio work of any kind, seeking to do something interactive, or simply want to use lots of great pictures, we have the capacity and the will to make all of that work. we’re not blowing our own trumpets—we’re just pinching ourselves that we have this opportunity. so to this issue. our huge appreciation goes to melissa michal slocum for both suggesting and editing this special issue. she has worked with us very carefully—and patiently—on a topic that will always be difficult, and she has done so with commitment and passion, and openness to the americas more broadly. her article opens the issue and also acts as a strong introduction to the three articles that follow it by maría regina firmino-castillo, molly mcglennen, and stephen andrews. we’re delighted to be able to include in this issue a stand-alone article by annmarie de mars and erich longie from 7th generation games, a timely piece on perseverance and the potential implicit in an apparently unusual combination: dakota culture, video games, and mathematics. an insightful and deeply engrossing explanation of their work on educational games among fourth and fifth grade students in two reservation schools, their study supports the transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) ii proposition that “teaching traditional values, particularly perseverance, can impact native american student achievement through increased effort.” the reflective piece in this issue, gary f. dorr’s “mind, memory and the five-year-old,” is a moving contemplation on the experience of adoption, the comfort of family, and the ambivalence of shame. two fiction pieces complement this: “the seed runner” by jenny davis and “pretend indian exegesis” by trevino brings plenty. davis’s story places us in a dystopian future that echoes a familiar past—of detention and state control—in which the protagonist’s running ability holds hope for the future. “pretend indian exegesis,” meanwhile, showcases brings plenty’s dry humour in this excoriating critique of the pretend indian, “a formula. a phantom entity in the community.” the 27 (yes, 27!) reviews that follow tie up this issue with a real sense of the astonishing depth and variety of contemporary indigenous writing. -- transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ‘about’ section). david stirrup december 2018 theodore van alst james mackay david carlson microsoft word jacobs.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 216 robbie richardson. the savage and modern self: north american indians in eighteenth-century british literature and culture. toronto: university of toronto press, 2018. x+247 pp. isbn: 9781487503444. https://utorontopress.com/us/the-savage-and-modern-self-1 robbie richardson is a lecturer in eighteenth-century literature at the university of kent. his recent monograph, the savage and modern self: north american indians in eighteenthcentury british literature and culture, is based upon his doctoral thesis. dr richardson is a canadian mi'kmaq who wound up pursuing his research overseas, much as i – a cherokee from the united states – have. and he clearly has the same passion that i have for studying early modern european and indigenous interaction within europe. indeed, this is what sets his study apart from so many earlier investigations, and it is a valuable contribution to a growing field. the ongoing “beyond the spectacle: native north american presence in britain” project at the university of kent, together with recent publications such as colin g. calloway's white people, indians, and highlanders: tribal peoples and colonial encounters in scotland and america (2008), and kate fullagar's the savage visit: new world people and popular imperial culture in britain, 1710-1795 (2012), demonstrate the increasing interest in this area of study. this work provides essential nuance to the pioneering studies of scholars such as robert berkhofer (1978) and karen ordahl kupperman (1980) and expands our knowledge of indigenous interaction and representation in the early modern atlantic beyond the english colonies and simplistic dichotomies. richardson examines the use of “indians” in negotiating elements of early modernity and shaping new formations of subjectivity within british eighteenth-century literature, an oft overlooked period in comparison to colonial literature. he writes that these depictions of “indians” “critiqued and helped articulate evolving practices and ideas such as consumerism, colonialism, ‘britishness,’ and, ultimately, the ‘modern self’” (3). he concludes that “the modern … does not set itself against the ‘savage’ north american in the imaginative works which this study covers, but instead finds definition in imagined scenes of cultural contact” (3). richardson traces the evolution of this use of the “indian” and is largely successful in describing particular “sites of encounter”: such as the press coverage of the iroquois delegation of 1710 and in captivity accounts as well as other, more clearly fictitious, works from the period, such as plays and novels. indeed, the wide variety of genres covered is one of the strengths of this work. numerous little-known pieces of literature and individuals have been brought to light and properly contextualized, rather than reduced to the level of listed anecdotes, as was the case in earlier studies covering indigenous representation. this includes the fascinating figure of william augustus bowles, the “ambassador from the united nations of creeks and cherokee to the court of london” in 1790-1 (155), whose claims to ambassadorial status were rejected, and i am indebted to dr richardson for his work in this area. research into early modern cross-cultural diplomacy within europe, in which the normative practices of the parties concerned are often highlighted in such encounters via conflict and the resultant mediation, have tended to focus on disputes over protocol between various, officially recognized european representatives or on embassies from the east, as opposed to the west. richardson's coverage of the bowles embassy will further my own investigations into the fine line between formal and informal cross-cultural diplomacy. at the same time, however, the wide variety of subject matter brings to light the book’s primary flaw: it is not an entirely convincing analysis because it lacks cohesiveness. this can thomas donald jacobs review of the savage and modern self 217 be attributed to various factors. i believe that the fact that it is, in part, based on articles published over the course of his doctorate (x) has resulted in the same narrative breaks that so many thesis publications demonstrate. in addition, the last chapter, while a spellbinding examination of eighteenth-century british interest in and imagining of “indian” material culture, feels out of place with the rest of the volume, which focuses on literary sources. then there is richardson’s use of foucault's genealogy as the basis for his methodology. it lends itself well to erudition, but is not always an aid to clarity of continuity. as such, it is somewhat at odds with his attempt to sketch a kind of evolution in the use of the “indian” in forming the subject – although, as richardson says, his text “does not pretend, of course, to have the breadth of a complete genealogy of the indian in the eighteenth century” (6). and indeed, there are noticeable gaps in the work. for example, the chapter, “becoming indians,” in which bowles is discussed, posits that “[u]nlike earlier examples in the century of fluid subjects who could cross cultural boundaries, bowles is self-consciously driven by ambition” (159) and that this was the time at which “the hybrid figure who appropriated aspects of indian culture” emerged (165). yet in 1730, another british subject, alexander cumming, appeared in london at the head of a different – much more celebrated – cherokee delegation and seems also to prefigure bowles, to an extent. he too was driven by ambition, manufacturing tales of an elaborate ceremony that made him the spokesman for the cherokee (pratt, 1998; chambers, 2014; leann stevens-larré and lionel larré, 2014), and although cumming did not – so far as i am currently aware – adapt any aspect of “indian” dress as bowles had, he did lay claim to an “indian” identity of sorts. while richardson briefly mentions this earlier delegation (69), he does not examine it in any great detail. this is unfortunate, as an analysis of the press surrounding the 1730 embassy would, i think, have helped to join together disparate chapters. for example, there were many similarities between the coverage of the 1730 cherokee and 1710 iroquois delegations. indeed, richardson cites the latter in the first chapter as a template for later encounters (25). an examination of the 1730 embassy would have helped bridge the gap to the second chapter, in which he discusses the “indian” as a cultural critic. in fact, one of the more interesting pieces of literature concerning the 1730 delegation is a satire on the aristocracy that appeared in issue number 100 of fogg’s journal on august 22 of that year. i do not think this particular lacuna in any way undermines the evolution that richardson has sketched out, but filling it in over the course of his future research will perhaps add additional nuance and further support for his thesis. lastly, the hardback volume is attractively packaged, and printed on recycled paper using vegetable-based inks. considering the inroads that e-publications are making in academic publishing, and as someone who still prefers to have a hard copy of what they are reading while not wanting to contribute to environmental problems, i greatly appreciate the publisher's selection of materials. however, other choices within the body of the work are less salutatory. while the table of contents is fairly clear, and the volume contains a useful bibliography and index, the list of illustrations is confusingly subdivided by chapter, and – more problematically – the citation formatting is clumsy. the combination of in-text citations and endnotes has not resolved the problems usually experienced with the selection of one or the other. it is still necessary to page back and forth in order to obtain a complete reference, and the in-text page citations, while decidedly clearer with regard to what they refer to, break up the flow of the text and form a distraction – at least to this particular reader. for all of the above reasons, i would much prefer that academic publishers simply use footnotes. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 218 such minor quibbles aside, which in all fairness probably relate more to my own research interests and editorial pet peeves than to richardson’s, this remains a significant and valuable contribution to the literature on british identity formation, as well as the body of work concerning native american presence in europe. it is not understating the case to claim that the “red atlantic” as a field of study has thus far been rather lopsided in favour of the american colonies. and when developments elsewhere have been discussed, they have generally centred on economics or the columbian exchange. it is time to redress the balance by demonstrating that the figure of the “indian” – whether real or imagined – also played an important role in intellectual developments in other regions of the world. finally, dr richardson was completely successful in producing a work that questions, and ultimately undermines, both our notions of fixed identity and the place of “indians” on the margins of modernity. thomas donald jacobs, university of ghent works cited berkhofer, robert. the white man’s indian: images of the american indian, from columbus to the present. knopf, 1978. calloway, colin g. white people, indians, and highlanders: tribal peoples and colonial encounters in scotland and america. oxford university press, 2008. chambers, ian david. “alexander cumming – king or pawn? an englishman on the colonial chessboard of the eighteenth-century american southeast.” journal of backcountry studies. vol. 8, no. 1 (2014): 35-49. fullagar, kate. the savage visit: new world people and popular imperial culture in britain, 1710-1795. university of california press, 2012. kupperman, karen ordahl. settling with the indians: the meeting of english and indian cultures in america, 1580-1640. new york: rowman and littlefield, 1980. pratt, stephanie. “reynolds’ ‘king of the cherokees’ and other mistaken identities in the portraiture of native american delegations, 1710-1762.” oxford art journal. vol. 21, no. 2, (1998): 135-150. stevens-larré, leann and lionel larré. “a mad narrator as historian: sir alexander cuming among the cherokees (1730).” les narrateurs fous / mad narrators. edited by nathalie jaëck, clara mallier, arnaud schmitt, and romain girard. publisher city: maison des sciences de l'homme d'aquitaine, 2014. 127-146. microsoft word weaver_replacement.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 305 rani-henrik andersson, a whirlwind passed through our country: lakota voices of the ghost dance (norman, ok: university of oklahoma press, 2018), 432 pp, $39.95. https://www.oupress.com/books/14988100/a-whirlwind-passed-through-our-country benjamin r. kracht, religious revitalization among the kiowas: the ghost dance, peyote, and christianity (lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 2018), 354 pp, $75.00. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496204585/ accounts vary as to when wovoka, the paiute prophet, experienced his vision and under what circumstances. james mooney sets it as early as 1887, while he was chopping wood. andersson in a whirlwind passed through our country states it was in 1888 (he does not discuss the circumstances). other sources say it was on january 1, 1889, when he fell into a trance during a solar eclipse. while almost all agree that while unconscious he met with the christian god, andersson says the “great spirit.” a date earlier than 1889 seems unlikely because there is general agreement that the vision quickly spread beyond wovoka’s paiute community. for indians confined to reservations, it was a message of hope. it preached a new religion and a dance (in form a ute round dance). if performed in accordance with the teachings, it would usher in an indian world status quo ante. white control over them would end. the earth would renew itself. game, including buffalo, would again be plentiful. most importantly, all the ancestors who had died since the coming whites would be “raised up.” vittorio lanternari calls revitalization movements such as these “religions of the oppressed.” the movement spread like wildfire in the west. rapid transmission was facilitated, ironically (as gerald vizenor has pointed out), through the use of english. as did other revitalization movements, the ghost dance of 1889-1890 underwent local variations as it spread, being interpreted according to the values of particular tribal communities. on the plains, the locale for both andersson’s book and kracht’s religious revitalization among the kiowa, a key change was the addition of the ghost dance shirt, a regular buckskin shirt upon which mystical symbols (thunderbirds, crosses, crescent moons) had been painted. the garment was said to render its wearer impervious to harm by bullets. this addition would lead to a misunderstanding with tragic consequences. wovoka’s vision was a pacifistic one. be ethical, treat whites well, do the dance until the inversion came. some whites feared the ghost dance as a unifying force among indians and wondered why a pacifist religion would need shirts to protect them against bullets. the agent on the pine ridge panicked and requested the military. the army sent the 7th cavalry, still stinging from custer’s defeat fourteen years earlier. it triggered events that resulted in the wounded knee massacre in december 1890. jace weaver review of a whirlwind passed through our country and religious revitalization among the kiowas 306 andersson provides a compact introduction. despite the minor deviations noted above, the biggest omission in his book is any mention of the 1889-1890 movement’s antecedent. it treats wovoka’s vision as though it were sui generis. “raising up” movements, as i call them, are common enough in the indigenous world, the salient feature that ancestors will be resurrected. wovoka’s movement, however, was virtually identical to one twenty years earlier, the prophet wodziwob’s ghost dance of 1870. the similarity is more that coincidental. one of wodziwob’s chief lieutenants was tavibo, commonly accepted as wovoka’s father. it is a lapse not shared by kracht. andersson’s introduction aside, the bulk of the book is a compilation of contemporary accounts of the ghost dance among the lakota. some of these have been previously published. others appear for the first time in print. even in those published before, andersson’s fresh, modern translations here restore not only readability but nuance. in the process, it provides much needed context to the movement that has often been ignored by scholars. in his brief, but excellent foreword, anthropologist raymond demallie, best known for books on the lakota, including the sixth grandfather, his restoration of neihardt’s interviews with black elk, writes that, despite the gallons of ink spilled in publications about the ghost dance, most scholarship has assumed there was a singular lakota point of view. he states this neglects “the obvious fact that the lakotas, like any other group of people, had differing opinions based, for example, on social, religious, and economic factors.” andersson’s translations demonstrate that, even about something of extreme import—like the ghost dance—there was no single view from a homogenous group. (p. ix) kracht examines the particularities of the ghost dance within one tribal nation, the kiowas. although he does so, his book is much broader than that. he also discusses another important syncretic religious movement the native american church, which uses peyote as a sacrament. peyote is a mild hallucinogen native to mexico. under its influence, adherents have visions of jesus. unlike the ghost dance, which was suppressed after wounded knee, peyotism and the native american church were tolerated by whites because it was seen as a quietistic response to reservation life. james mooney, however, the earliest scholar to study wovoka’s ghost dance, was fired from his longstanding position with the federal government in the bureau of american ethnology because of his support for the native american church. members of the native american church disagree among themselves as to whether it is a christian denomination. kracht, however, also examines kiowa participation in mainstream christianity, especially the indian missionary conference of the united methodist church, and how they have made it their own. in that regard, his book contributes to the spate of scholarship in the past several decades on native american christianity (a subject too often overlooked), including mark clatterbuck’s crow jesus and the late historian homer noley’s first white frost. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 307 of these two books, kracht’s is the more seamless. andersson’s book, however, with its modern look at lakota texts on the ghost dance of 1889-1890, is an important corrective. despite any failings, both books contribute to the understanding of american indian religious traditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. jace weaver, university of georgia microsoft word coutts.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 219 jennifer s.h. brown. an ethnohistorian in rupert’s land: unfinished conversations. au press, 2017. 360 pp. isbn 978-1-77199-171-1. http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120267 it is possible to read an ethnohistorian in rupert’s land: unfinished conversations and, without knowing the author, soon recognize the voice of jennifer brown. her style is unique––from her elegant writing, as seen in her use of metaphor and thought-provoking chapter titles, to her penetrating analysis of indigenous societies and the oftentimes fluid, intercultural spaces of contact zones. comprised of eighteen essays written over four decades, an ethnohistorian in rupert’s land nevertheless maintains the style of “unfinished conversations”: questions are raised, debates are continued, and stories evolve. to some extent, brown’s approach is left openended and, while sources are well interrogated, she asks readers to think in different ways as she writes of questions unanswered or queries never posed. in studying different forms of evidence– –written, oral, and material––brown is always “reading voices,” looking for subtexts, connections, and consequences. as brown writes, the essays in the book are linked by “threads of interest and concern” (7), but share a consistency based upon the close study of texts and the “weaving of words” from many sources and many forms. all are focused upon the large expanse once known as “rupert’s land,” the territory that encompassed the lands drained by hudson bay and home to, among others, the cree and ojibwe peoples, who inhabited/inhabit what is now western canada and parts of the northern united states. in providing her insights into the discipline of ethnohistory, brown describes her own background as a student, teacher, and writer. the eighteen essays included in the book were chosen by brown because they have retained interest, not only for herself, but for other scholars. more than just reprints, brown has updated many of these works with recent research and fresh observations; for instance, her later work with the mushkego storyteller louis bird is nicely woven into many older texts. the pieces are organized under six different themes, though there is, unsurprisingly, much overlap. each of the six sections is introduced by a short summation of the articles contained therein, providing the thematic link between each of the pieces. the first section, “finding words and remembering,” includes one of brown’s better-known pieces, “the blind men and the elephant: touching the fur trade” (61-67), an updated version of a keynote talk given at a 1990 conference. ensuing sections on fur trade marriage and family, indigenous families and kinship, women’s stories in the fur trade, cree and ojibwe prophets, and, lastly, life on the berens river in manitoba, round out the collection and demonstrate the breadth of brown’s scholarship as well as her own involvement in the oral and community history of that particular region. this last section, and especially the final article, “fields of dreams: a. irving hallowell and the berens river ojibwe,” demonstrates brown’s long interest in the 1930s work of anthropologist a. irving hallowell and reveals brown’s willingness to study not only the texts of fur traders and storytellers, but those of anthropologists and ethnographers as well. while the articles in this collection provide a broad overview of brown’s ethnohistorical writing and teaching, they only scratch the surface of the contributions she has made to fur trade history, women’s history, and indigenous studies in canada. like her colleague and friend, sylvia van kirk (whom brown talks about and cites throughout the book), brown’s work has changed the robert james coutts review of an ethnohistorian in rupert’s land 220 course of these historical topics; in fact, brown and van kirk have been given due credit for helping to create modern scholarship on gender, marriage, kinship, and family in the pre-20thcentury indigenous west. their work has provided much of the impetus for the great expansion of scholarship in gender and family that we have witnessed over the last few decades by scholars such as brenda macdougall, heather devine, carolyn podruchny, nicole st-onge, and adele perry. to some extent, the works of macdougall, devine, et. al., have replaced the regional, national, and international economic models––such as the economic and geographical studies by authors like arthur ray, frank tough, and patricia mccormack––that were once crucial to the investigation of indigenous history in the west. at the local scale, at places like fort chipewyan or the late 19th-century communities of northern manitoba, the works of ray, tough, and mccormack helped explain interand intra-group economies; on a global scale, they demonstrated how local economies fit within an international capitalist framework, especially in relation to global fur markets. for ethnohistorians, however, the focus has been upon such topics as ethnicity, kinship, and the establishment of racial and sexual hierarchies. demographic studies, the analysis of ethnic and cultural persistence, and the pursuit of racial and ethnic roots– –what cultural historians and anthropologists call “ethnogenesis”––have dominated these perspectives. what is often missing, however, is an appreciation of the community or region within the context of market capitalism, of class division, and how indigenous peoples influenced and were influenced by local, national, and global economic forces. arguably, the more recent emphasis in indigenous studies on community, family, and cultural forces––specifically, the attempt to explicate the formative nature of indigenous societies as the key to understanding the history of the west over a number of centuries––was motivated in part by a reaction to the traditional views inherent within the old metropolitan and frontier schools of canadian history and their opposition to viewing indigenous cultures within the context of european and canadian expansionism. in the process, economic history moved from the attention of historians to that of economists who developed mathematical models that proved intimidating to many historians. as the american historian william sewell has argued, cultural history that had once been interwoven with the economic aspects of social change had, by the 1980s, reacted against economic determinism, quantification, and the positivist outlook that had once united social and economic history (sewell 146-47). by discussing the link that once existed between cultural and economic history, i mean only to comment on the role of ethnohistory in the study of indigenous pasts. i do not intend to criticize or undermine the brilliant work that jennifer brown has pursued over many years nor the critical importance of the cultural and kinship dynamics within cree and ojibwe societies and with european and canadian newcomers that is on display in an ethnohistorian in rupert’s land. brown’s ability to read between the lines of texts of all kinds is without parallel in canadian ethnohistory. the articles are a pleasure to read, full of insight and analysis, and written with the agreeable style of a born communicator and teacher. a mentor to so many, there is almost a direct line between her writing and the family and kinship scholarship of today. brown’s work continues to impress and influence. robert james coutts, university of manitoba transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 221 works cited sewell, william.“a strange career: the historical study of economic life.” history and theory. vol. 49, no. 4, theme issue 49 (dec. 2010): 146-66. microsoft word 524-2843-1-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 110 nemuel island tommy orange “i want to feel the approach of sleep as if it were a promise of life, not rest.” ―fernando pessoa, the the book of disquiet his name is nemuel island, and he is convinced that this, the fact of his full name being what it is, permanently damaged his life—as a burn victim might feel about their post-burn seen face. to hear his own name has always meant he is alone. on an island. ruined. half of him is native american—cheyenne if you’re asking—but he looks white. the simple chance of having less melanin distributed to him—both his sisters are brown—and there you have it, a boy and then a man struggling to understand what him being native american and not looking like it could possibly mean, and why fight for it? meanwhile his name is nemuel island. most people don’t have to navigate or the negotiate the fact of having an uncommon name. in fact most people, statistically speaking, are johns, juans, muhammads, etc. nemuel is a name from the bible which means: the sleeping of god. nemuel sits up in bed thinking all the time because he can’t sleep. thinking does not bring sleep but sleeping isn’t not thinking either. sometimes he dreams of not being able to sleep—sitting up in bed worried and thinking. everything feels impossible. he believes everyone is happier and sadder, both hate and love themselves more than we’re comfortable admitting. admission itself feels impossible. because we don’t know what we aren’t willing to admit to ourselves just like we don’t know what we don’t know. all of which makes him both happier and sadder than he’d like to admit. he got a phone call from his sister recently. when was that? they used to talk more and now they don’t. time slips more often than it ticks or tocks or stops. she tried to point back. at what happened to them. meaning their childhood. let’s say experience. “uh huh. yeah. no i get it,” nemuel had said, with the tv on some judge show. he stepped outside for a smoke. tommy orange “nemuel island” 111 “look up historical trauma,” she’d said. “all we been through doesn’t come from nothing,” she said. “that was a long time ago. people think we’re complaining,” nemuel said, as he walked away from the open windows of the house. he normally doesn’t smoke unless the sun’s down. now it was in his eyes so he looked down at the broken ground there. rootbusted, cracked bark, hungry crimson streams of redbrown anttrails. memory is quicksand when it catches you, or you catch it. him and his older sisters used to be afraid of the silver reflection in their dad’s glasses while he drove and didn’t speak. their mom bent the silver light away from them when she turned around smiling, telling them there wasn’t far to go, but not saying how little left there was to go after nemuel had asked too many times. she looked away from that old indian sorrowrage—like he wasn’t there anymore. their dad could just say a few words, even just one to make them all go quiet the whole way— wherever they were going. “no you’re right,” nemuel said to what his sister had said about how much it matters, what happened to the people you come from. “but what can we do?” he asked. he really didn’t know what. he still doesn’t. he didn’t say bye on accident before hanging up. he drove to the store more to get out of the heat than to shop. he wandered the aisles. stopped here and there not looking for anything. to stand still in a grocery store—or perhaps anywhere—isn’t allowed. or would maybe be frowned upon. regarded with suspicion. risks possible scorn. loitering comes from a german word he can’t say that means: to make smaller. his eyes slid over the blur of random colors—at his many boxed choices. at the deli window he kept thinking: it’s okay—about what he didn’t know. he thought: there there. there were an unreasonable number of flies around the deli area as if some fresh dead meat lay nearby. he swatted at the flies repeatedly but never made contact. he wondered if there is some thing too big to see, comprehend, like what humans are to flies, swatting at us all— annoyed at our buzzings and wanderings in a room bigger than the world. in a deliverse we don’t know about. changing our fates with their swatting influence—ending our lives over nothing. he thought about how we ourselves are invisible. too big to see. to comprehend. and how we wander aisles and rooms we think are worlds, hoping hands too big to see won’t crush us. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 112 † nemuel sits at his computer watching a video of himself several years back when he was thinner, when there was more brightness in his eyes. he hates something about his mouth, the way it moves when he talks, when he sees it in videos. his mom just now emailed the video without any note about why she’d sent this particular video. this makes him watch it again and again like the secret to why she sent it is in there somewhere. but he hates to see himself talk over and over. still, he keeps watching. he’s talking to someone outside of the shot. he smiles like he knows more than who he’s talking to. nemuel doesn’t remember this moment, or who he was talking to. like was he talking to his mom or was she recording it? he was thinner then, but his cheeks were so big. his eyes too small. and his crooked bottom teeth jut out. he never should have stopped wearing his retainer. it was that he couldn’t keep it on at night, the version of himself he could barely claim was him, that version of him who closes his eyes to the world nearly every night, lies down—leaves. the etymology of the word when he looked it up says old english has it meaning: “repose of death.” that dead or zombie version of himself, sleeping nemuel, he would pull his retainer out of his mouth and throw it. nemuel would find it the next morning in the corner of his room—dry and with that sick spit smell all things get when spit dries on them. nemuel switches from watching the video of himself his mom sent him to watching the news. why he keeps watching the news is similar to why he kept watching the video of himself his mom sent mysteriously. to find something there. instead of nothing, plus fear. fear from an unknown place is maybe dread, and dread at nothing is maybe the way it feels to live now in this year in particular—or maybe every year for all of time? what nemuel knows is that he can’t stop watching. he wants be wrong about them being wrong. he wants to be told it’s not fake, with fake news headlines, with a news report about a news report from a disreputable station. he wants to read fake news about fake news to get at what fake news is, how to avoid our need for the truth behind its fakeness so bad we can’t stop participating in it. he wants to be told he hasn’t known anything. all this time. he wants who tells him to say it with blood in their eyes because they can’t sleep either. he wants it to be—if not right or true—than just okay, the actual way it is tommy orange “nemuel island” 113 now. from the left, right—from a mountain on the moon. because what it looks like. what it looks like it has to be, is the end. nemuel grew up afraid of the end. because of religion. church people were all hoping the end would come. to leave this old world behind. get to a better one. can anyone blame them for that? when he grew up and stopped caring what church people thought, what his parents thought, he noticed there were still religious devotees everywhere. he was one himself. rare moments he could feel it in his pulse. things getting bigger and smaller and keeping still for moments at just the perfect size. the thing he was and is and has to be. nemuel noticed there is another kind of sleep. that we all practice a private religion, privately. bow our heads to it. bend like the air from sound—sight unseen. pray with our teeth. in how we chew. in how we stay hungry. in the why of why we keep breathing without even meaning to. he believes in words. language. he says this to himself out loud because he believes in the power of saying things out loud: “past-participle accelerator, help us go from going to gone without the crushing kinds of pain.” † sometimes he walks at sunset to watch the gradient color and light drop behind the mountains. after the sun sets he gets that kind of sad related to feeling like you’re not ever actually here enough to feel what it means to actually be here. that feeling like you’re gone already, or like you don’t belong, or like you’ve done something wrong. he’s grateful for gratitude when he feels it, and the presence of mind that comes when he’s trying to stay present. but he can’t get around this removed feeling. like he once belonged somewhere, but was moved, removed, and not told that he couldn’t come back, but like things happened in such a way that there was no place to go back to. he’s still just thinking and it’s not doing anything. or is he? when we only think we’re thinking, what else could we be doing, in such a world as this, than dreaming. microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 45 laughing in the dark: weird survivance in the works of bunky echo-hawk and daniel mccoy jr.1 kristina baudemann “we are locked in darkness with wicked words. … listen, ha ha ha haaaa.” gerald vizenor, bearheart: the heirship chronicles [1978; 1990], vii-viii 1 and the trickster keeps shifting: introduction in the trickster shift (1999) canadian scholar allan j. ryan created a comprehensive framework to conceptualize humour and irony in north american indigenous art. in dialog with indigenous artists and writers, art historians, actors, scholars, and elders, ryan identified the many layers of “a distinct comic and communal attitude … that can be legitimately labelled ‘native humour’” (xii): “emerging from these conversations was the conviction on my part that there was indeed a sensibility, a spirit, at work and at play in the practice of many of the artists, grounded in a fundamentally comic world view and embodied in the traditional native north american trickster” (xii). drawing on anishinaabe artist carl beam’s comment on a “trickster shift” (3) in indigenous art—a transformation of the tricky character from oral stories into contemporary artistic practice—ryan shows that trickster humour ranges from subtle to biting and bitterly ironic. in their works, artists such as beam, gerald mcmaster (cree), james luna (luiseño), edward poitras (métis), shelley niro (kanien'kehá:ka), and lawrence paul yuxweluptun (coast salish/okanagan descent) humorously subvert stereotypical representations of natives, which engages viewers in the long overdue conversations about misconceptions of native realities. even though the term is not mentioned in the trickster shift, the humorous elements ryan discusses effect survivance, gerald vizenor’s (anishinaabe) now well-known neologism for active native survival through creative resistance, humour, and irony. two decades after the publication of the trickster shift, subversive humour continues to be a significant component of the works of many native artists who draw on new and different material—from new media to different pop cultural elements—thus widening the representational range of trickster humour in the visual arts. this paper is concerned with the kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 46 humorous effect of outrageous and grotesque elements in the works of bunky echo-hawk (yakama/pawnee) and daniel mccoy jr. (potawatomi/muscogee creek). echo-hawk’s gas masks as medicine series or mccoy’s insulin holocaust (2011) seem to offer pessimistic visions of the end of our worlds in toxic waste. however, rather than proclaiming total catastrophe and the futility of resistance, these paintings effect weird survivance—a term that i will explain in this article—through dark humour. ryan’s 1999 work already hints at a link between survivance and disturbing, non-cathartic representations of violence, war, depression, illness, and death: in the trickster shift, ryan reads the “black humour” (98) of native artists such as mcmaster or poitras as strategic resistance to their representational disenfranchisement, arguing that elements which are both disturbing and funny serve “not so much to undercut seriousness … but to intensify it graphically” (98). turning to weird survivance means acknowledging this link and thus explicitly including the more macabre pieces of native art in the vizenorian paradigm of survivance: mccoy’s and echo-hawk’s art effects survivance through dark humour without mitigating the horrors of reality. 2 the art of the inescapable: pushing for weird survivance gerald vizenor introduced the term survivance as part of a terminology that has come to be known as “vizenorese” (blaeser 71). as the term for creative resistance through trickster humour, survivance is both the core and the effect of vizenorese. however, vizenor’s use of the term is more complex than that. with reference to postmodern theory in general and jacques derrida’s poststructuralist semiotics in particular, vizenor suggests that survivance is the transformational experience effected by trickster discourse, a narrative strategy that draws on postmodern collage, native storytelling, and humour and irony to reveal the colonial stereotype of the indian as a simulation, an empty, colonial sign without referent (‘essence’/‘meaning’/‘truth’) in reality. like derrida’s différance, survivance oscillates between the fixed meanings of its constituents (‘survival’ and ‘resistance’). it plays on both while ultimately signifying neither entirely. vizenor explains that survivance means “an active sense of presence” (vizenor, “aesthetics,” 1) of native voices in the absence of traceable, that is, textual, evidence which removes both storyteller/writer and readers/audiences into a textual universe in which meaning can never be absolute and the representation of native people is always already defunct, or incomplete. the reader, then, perceives the world as constantly shifting. survivance ultimately defies clear definition: “the shadows of tribal memories are the active silence, trace, and différance in the literature of transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 47 survivance” (manifest 71). vizenor’s terminology echoes a postmodern suspicion with the idea of authenticity, while refusing to discard the possibility of culturally-specific representation. an element of violence is innate in the mechanics of survivance. after all, as derrida has frequently suggested, shifting the gaze to the level of textual/visual signifiers always involves the idea of dangerous movement and violent erasure. as derrida states in writing and difference, “death strolls between letters” (writing 87). once meaning is perceived as constantly shifting, rather than fixed, readers and viewers are thrown into a world of insecurity. nevertheless, violence on the level of representation seems incompatible with the spirit of survivance: gruesome, vulgar, and inexplicable elements are usually neglected in discussions of the term even though the stories vizenor has referred to as “the literature of survivance” (manifest 63)—featuring, for instance, vizenor’s own works—contain disturbing elements, such as graphic scenes of violence. vizenor’s debut novel darkness in saint louis: bearheart (1978) serves as a case in point: the titular ‘darkness’ can be associated with the different characters’ violent experiences which are intermixed with scenes of “wild humor” (owens 247).2 drawing on vizenor’s notion that “[s]ome upsetting is necessary” (coltelli 172), louis owens (cherokee/choctaw descent) consequently identifies “surprise, shock, outrage” (248) as major elements of vizenor’s trickster spirit (248): “whether in traditional mythology or vizenor’s fiction, the trickster challenges us in profoundly disturbing ways to reimagine moment by moment the world we inhabit” (248). nevertheless, academic discussions rarely focus on this core aspect of survivance. scholarly contributions frequently reproduce the commonly accepted notion that survivance consists in the subversion of tragedy and victimhood through a humorous and positive story about native presence. vizenor himself, in “the aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice,” the core essay of the 2008 collection survivance: narratives of native presence, seems to have moved away from the notion of survivance as something that is itself hollow and can never give essence—a play on shadows and simulations that dissolves static and clichéd representations of native people in wild laughter. instead, vizenor stresses the spirit of resistance, a belief in democratic values, and positive animal metaphors. survivance, then, is an ever-shifting concept that has become a household term in indigenous studies and returning to its margins might be worthwhile—to the dark alleys of native humour and bizarre scenes of resistance in native painting for kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 48 which the term survivance as it is commonly understood in current academic discourse might seem, at a first glance, entirely inappropriate. survivance works, among other aspects, through what ryan termed the “varying strengths” (ryan 168) of “toxic humour” (168)—“a form of humour based on toxicity” (farmer qtd. in ryan 168), meaning that “[y]ou have to laugh because there is nothing else to do but laugh at [the situation] in order to face the reality of it, in order to get past it” (farmer qtd. in ryan 168). as various scholars have pointed out, laughter at the grotesque and the bizarre is an integral part of humour’s subversive and liberating effect. blake hobby, for instance, stresses that darkness in general is a key element of comedy: “all humor involves negations, absurdities, and dark truths about our lives, including our inability to defeat death and the conflicted way we cope with this darkest of all dark realities” (57). this darkness finds expression in the “dry, sardonic wit” (ryan 267) of native artwork addressing war and genocide. métis artist jim logan, for instance, calls the joke in his piece unreasonable history (1992) on natives in world war ii “sadistic” (qtd. in ryan 254), a “relief of anger, i guess, frustration” (254). logan discusses the fantastic scene in his painting that depicts the violent conquest of rome by a native american army: “ah, it wasn’t even a joke … to kill somebody is sick … but [it’s] the thought behind it. if you lighten anything up in these times of trauma and despair, then you laugh about stuff like that because it’s reflecting on the reality of the situation” (qtd. in ryan 254). the laughter, then, does not result from the sight of a gruesome image or idea, but from the artist’s “bizarre, off-the-wall sense of humour” (qtd. in ryan 267) that is “a little strange to live with,” to adapt maxine bedyn’s words to our purpose here (qtd. in ryan 267). while native humour has been described as “a positive, compassionate act of survival” (vizenor qtd. in ryan 4), the comic worldview of an indigenous-centred universe nevertheless subsumes horrible realities that must be confronted, understood, and even processed in the communal spirit of creative resistance and dark laughter. the oed does not know the term dark humour, but defines “black humour” as “[c]omedy, satire, etc., that presents tragic, distressing, or morbid situations in humorous terms; humour that is ironic, cynical, or dry; gallows humour.” merriam-webster defines “black humor” as “humor marked by the use of usually morbid, ironic, grotesquely comic episodes.” according to these dictionary definitions the comic might be said to subsume the tragic; black or dark humour emerges as a product of the artistic arrangement of gruesome elements. it is the ‘thought behind it’ that makes representations of illness, death, or violence transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 49 appear humorous: while the gruesome elements alone would not provoke laughter, it is the artistic arrangement that does. in order to acknowledge that survivance can involve dark humour and bleak imagery one might consider worthwhile the introduction of a new term that directs the scholarly gaze to the artistic handling of the grotesque and bizarre elements. during the 2016 international conference for the fantastic in the arts (icfa) roundtable discussion on survivance, stina attebery suggested the term weird survivance as descriptor for yakama/pawnee artist bunky echo-hawk’s gas masks as medicine series. echo-hawk’s scenes might at first strike viewers as bizarre: they feature people and animals wearing gas masks in neon-colored landscapes. positive animal metaphors are a core feature of vizenorian survivance, which is why some might consider it a definitional leap to locate echo-hawk’s representations within this tradition. his animals appear unsettling: the blue and neon-green horses in such paintings as tribal law (2003) or in the pursuit of justice (2010) can be understood as metaphors for a poisoned environment. the qualifier ‘positive’ is therefore not what first comes to mind when faced with their empty eyesockets and irradiated hair. some of daniel mccoy jr.’s (potawatomi/muscogee creek) paintings might similarly be called disturbing, from the very titles such as insulin holocaust to the artistic compositions constituted by a wild melee of images, from skulls and whiskey bottles to internal organs. echo-hawk’s and mccoy’s works challenge fixed expectations about native people and native art through a mode that might be termed weird survivance. this mode includes, for instance, the artists’ use of the grotesque, meaning, their integration of “figures that may distort the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature,” and which appear unpleasant or frightening (“grotesque”). echo-hawk’s and mccoy’s compositions furthermore integrate elements of the absurd (“abandoning logical form” [baldick 1] to express a human perception of the universe as chaotic and life as futile), and the uncanny (a depiction of quasi-human or quasi-animal figures that causes unease, repulsion, or fear). with the help of these techniques, the artists create bleak images, giving a face to such dark realities as environmental catastrophe, the toxicity of western societies, human diseases, and the lingering persistence of human crimes like corruption, murder, and rape. some of their artworks might outrage viewers and make them sick to their stomachs. considering echo-hawk’s and mccoy’s artworks in the context of weird survivance means acknowledging the importance of shock—the ‘upsetting’ vizenor suggested in winged words—as well as the fact that a confrontation with dark realities might not immediately be kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 50 deemed positive and liberating by all viewers. weird survivance asks viewers to accept the strangeness, complexity, and surrealism of the portrayed scenes: in the works of echo-hawk and mccoy jr., for instance, their symbolism cannot be entirely deciphered but might ultimately be understood as an expression of an inherent weirdness in the viewers’ own world.3 the artists thereby raise awareness for political issues—such as native and human rights—and impending threats to individuals and society, from diabetes to climate change. weird survivance describes a mechanics of the grotesque, surreal, outrageous, and darkly humorous in indigenous visual art that renounces what vizenor terms tragic wisdom, a firm belief in the allegedly innate victimhood and backwardness of native cultures. the discomfort these images cause in their viewers can provoke dark laughter. weird survivance, then, is to be taken with a grain of salt: the technical term blends a feeling of strangeness and unease with the vizenorian paradigm of survivance; it speaks to the recognition that, as an artistic technique affirming native presence and cultural resurgence, survivance can become a little weird. in other words, it can become impolite, unexpected, or even disgusting—as in jeff barnaby’s (mi’gmaq) short film the colony (2007), where a man severs his leg with a chainsaw; in stephen graham jones’s (blackfeet descent) novel the fast red road: a plainsong (2000), where the native protagonist participates in the hilarious/horrifying rape scenes of an underground porn film that re-enacts the history of colonization; or in wendy red star’s (crow) photograph the last thanks (2006), where a group of plastic skeletons with colourful paper headdresses participate in a bizarre thanksgiving meal alongside the artist, a darkly comic scene that addresses mainstream culture’s perverted fascination with native death. the art of weird survivance makes viewers question what they perceive as weird and why, thus drawing their attention to the inherent weirdness—the unnaturalness—of a colonial world. it highlights affective responses to a reality that is always slightly off, from joyful mirth to the darkness of an oppressed mood and the hollow emptiness of depression. in the following analyses, i will single out dark humour as a distinctive trait of weird survivance and thereby highlight the mechanics of outrage, puzzlement, disgust, resistance, and renewal in the works of bunky echo-hawk and daniel mccoy jr. 3 laughing in the dark: toxicity and healing in the works of bunky echo-hawk the humour in bunky echo-hawk’s acrylic-on-canvas paintings ranges from cutting to subtle and dark, the latter especially in stark contrast to the bright colors, the blue, purple, neon pink, yellow, and green, that have been described as “blocks of blinding color” (froyd). transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 51 down and out (2011) shows a native man decorated with eagle feathers and sporting a mohawk who is resting his head in his palm and holding a sign that says “homeless veteran need ride to indian territory.” if yoda was an indian he’d be chief (2004) features the character yoda from the star wars franchise universe wearing a headdress, gaze lost in the starry sky. echo-hawk’s most famous piece entitled triple threat (2011) shows an athlete with a firm grip on his basketball, eyes narrowed in determination and ready to dribble, pass, or shoot.4 these pieces comment on aspects of contemporary native north american lives. as echo-hawk says in his artist’s statement, “it is my goal to truly exemplify the current state of native america through art” (bunkyechohawk.com). the bright colors of the compositions break with realism: triple threat and if yoda was an indian, for instance, appear as dreamscapes. the vibrant reds and blues of such works as down and out or war-whooping with cope’s (2013) are reminiscent of 1950s and 1960s advertising—colors also familiar from pop art—and in stark contrast to the subject-matter alluded to in the images, such as poverty, homelessness, and mindless consumerism. echohawk’s compositions criticize the commodification of indigeneity while celebrating aspects of indigenous popular culture, from cope’s dried sweet corn to star wars, basketball, and name-brand sneakers. as olena mclaughlin puts it, “by merging american pop culture with native experiences,” such artists as “echo-hawk and [steven paul] judd encourage their audiences to reconsider native american history and position indigenous peoples as active participants in the present. … in the process of subversion, images of popular culture the artists use become props for native discourse” (31). bunky echo-hawk is an oklahoma-based artist whose work has been called native pop and hip hop. he attended the institute of american indian arts in santa fe, new mexico, and works as an artist, writer, photographer, and art instructor. his works have been showcased in exhibitions across the united states as well as overseas. echo-hawk has also done murals, skateboards, clothing, and digital collages. he cofounded nvision, a nonprofit organization for native artists “who focus on native american youth empowerment through multimedia arts” (bunkyechohawk.com). in interviews, echo-hawk frequently stresses the importance of activism to dispel oppressive myths about native people for the sake of creating better futures. echo-hawk is a member of the confederated tribes and bands of the yakama nation and a traditional singer and dancer for the pawnee nation of oklahoma (bunkyechohawk.com). curator alaka wali stresses that echo-hawk draws on his traditional kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 52 heritage but “speaks in a contemporary idiom”: “look at the skateboards. look at the nike shoes. … indians are not about the past. they’re about the present and the future.” echo-hawk has stated that he first and foremost addresses native audiences, stressing that he creates art “for the advancement of our people” (“bunky echo hawk”): “i live for our youth. i live for our future. … i live to be a voice. i live to see, in my lifetime, change for the better. i live for proactive action. this is how i’m living. how are you living?” (“bunky,” beatnation.org). echo-hawk’s notion of ‘proactive action’, which can be defined as “taking the initiative and anticipating events or problems, rather than just reacting to them after they have occurred” (“proactive,” oed online), is reminiscent of survivance, a key aspect in echo-hawk’s activist art. in fact, with echo-hawk’s work, the vizenorian “traces of tribal survivance” (manifest 63)—the presence of real native people beyond their representation in the artwork—is literalized: during artistic performances, echo-hawk takes his audience’s questions while painting and thus engages them in the process. art is thus defined as a community-based event rather than a pastime of elites. the artwork itself is unburdened from having to mimetically represent native cultures as proof of their enduring existence. echo-hawk has stressed the “positive message” (“bunky echo hawk”) in his paintings which might strike viewers as odd considering his representations of poisoned environments and neon green skin that glows toxically. however, a subtle and dark humour pervades echo-hawk’s compositions that overrides tragedy without downplaying environmental catastrophe, neocolonial oppression, and tribal corruption. his gas masks as medicine series effects weird survivance through the dark humour of portraying native warriors as survivors in a poisoned environment. the figures look eerie: their facial features are hidden behind gas masks that appear as blends of protective technology and futuristic devices that have become a part of the wearers’ bodies. in in the pursuit of justice (2010) that shows a rider on a horse, the horse’s face looks like it has melted into the gas mask, its muzzle grotesquely warped into the filter cartridge canister, and its eyes eerily widened into black holes. the painting appears in monochromatic green. the gas mask might be interpreted as a signifier for the toxicity in the horse’s and rider’s environment that makes visible through artistic means the pollution extant beyond the canvas in the viewer’s own world. the bright green and neon yellow in echo-hawk’s paintings of gas masks are not symbolic of a vibrant nature, but of radioactivity via analogy with pop culture representations of radioluminescence, such as homer simpson’s glowing, poison-green fuel rod from the transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 53 opening segment of the tv show the simpsons. in pursuit, then, the toxicity is everywhere, seeping through clothes and skin and consuming every other shade of color. the existence of horse and rider within this hostile environment creates a complex image of resistance and complicity. represented in a position of power, high up on his horse and complete with suit and tie, the rider seems fluent in the language of the corporations responsible for the corrupted environment, while simultaneously equipped with the knowledge—and the technology—to resist and survive. in the language of echo-hawk’s paintings, signifiers of indigeneity such as headdresses, eagle feathers, mohawks, native patterns, and ceremonial objects denote a native warrior status—echo-hawk’s ‘modern warriors’ in our poisoned, postapocalyptic world.5 as wali explains, “bunky echo-hawk sees himself as a modern warrior, following in the tradition of pawnee warriors. although he’s not a fighter … with a military weapon, he sees himself as fighting for the dignity and well-being of his people” (wbez). as the rhetoric of modern warfare suggests, under echo-hawk’s brush, the canvas itself becomes a weapon—surely a symbolism that should be approached with caution—to provoke and outrage. echo-hawk’s paintings envision a path of determined, if not violent, resistance against colonial oppression; nevertheless, they capture the complexity of indigenous and nonindigenous relationships that cannot be reduced to binary positions such as colonizer/colonized or victim/perpetrator. the prevalent irony in pursuit is that of an unexpected form of indigenous survival, not only rejecting the still widespread stereotype of native backwardness, but representing the gas masks as indigenous technology. the signifiers of radioactivity and toxicity may cause ‘harsh laughter’: yes, the painting tells a story of active survival, but to what end when the world is no longer livable? echo-hawk’s image of horse and rider in a poisoned landscape is reminiscent of lawrence paul yuxweluptun’s representations of chemical fallout as dalíesque melting tribal symbols in native winter snow (1987) (273) and bob boyer’s (métis/cree) ironic depiction of acid rain as pretty droplets of color in let the acid queen rain: the white goop devours all (1985) (274). “toxic humour doesn’t get much stronger or more literal than this,” ryan states about yuxweluptun’s and boyer’s work in the trickster shift. the same might be said about echo-hawk’s uncanny warrior and eerie horse in pursuit, or his representation of a toddler wearing a gas mask in inheriting the legacy (2004). with these images, echo-hawk draws attention to environmental catastrophe, locating the reasons in neocolonial capitalist politics, while hinting at the possibility of kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 54 change through resistance. the modern warrior in prosecution rests (n.d.) carries a briefcase: the painting shows a lawyer who has suited up for court, the gas mask on his face symbolizing both toxicity and the wearer’s resistance to it. the eerie blue horse outfitted with a poison-green gas mask in tribal law (2003) appears immobile in a toxic landscape. it seems to be watching the spectator, which rounds off the unsettling scene. one might imagine echo-hawk’s blue horse to be both an ironic take on the movement and energy of pop chalee’s (taos pueblo) the blue horse (1945) or franz marc’s large blue horses (1911), as well as a continuation of their natural beauty in a toxic future. while echo-hawk’s representations reveal the effect of human pollution on the natural world, his paintings nevertheless imagine the endurance of animals. as the series title suggests, the gas masks signify healing—good medicine. the term might be understood as referring to the effect of the paintings on their viewers. the unsettling depictions of enduring survival effect weird survivance: the viewers laugh darkly about the fact that in our chemically poisoned world, humanity as a whole has become the endangered species physically unfit for survival that the western world believed indigenous people to be. the bizarre figures in echo-hawk’s paintings, then, both estrange and empower. the neoncolored natives outfitted with radiation protection gloves and gas masks are metaphors of environmental pollution. however, their transformation on canvas into strange warriors in an irradiated landscape also gives hope for an enduring existence into the future through creative resurgence. as echo-hawk explains, “i get inspired and motivated to do my art from injustice in indian country. there are a great number of atrocities that our people faced … throughout the past five hundred years and my fuel for my art comes from how those atrocities affect us today as americans, … as native americans” (“bunky echo hawk”). echo-hawk’s paintings juxtapose the reality of these atrocities with the possibility to overcome. as echo-hawk notes about his struggle to represent fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in illustrations for the american indian science and engineering society, “it was really hard to stomach, for me to even try to draw it—so what i ended up doing was trying to draw something that was more empowering” (wbez). these words might be applied to his gas masks as medicine series as well. gas masks and neon colors as weird survivance constitute a form of empowerment through dark laughter that spites death and disappearance while refusing to mitigate the horrors of our everyday world. echo-hawk thus works to upset viewers and hopefully startle them into action, on the one hand acknowledging the toxic transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 55 futures in stock for subsequent generations, on the other hand refusing to give up without a fight. 4 low-rez rock ’n’ roll: humour and weirdness in daniel mccoy jr.’s native lowbrow weird survivance takes the form of vivid color and a relentless flood of images—rendered in acrylic on canvas and pen-and-ink on paper—in the works of potawatomi and muscogee creek artist daniel mccoy jr. in his paintings and drawings, the darker realities of contemporary indigenous life in the u.s. combine to create fantastic and strange worlds. mccoy’s compositions deal with such themes as alcohol and drug abuse, illness, loneliness, the damages done by consumerism, and the psychological distress of living in a colonial society. in the letter, a 2011 collaboration with topaz jones (shoshone/lummi/kalapuya/ molalla), scenes of “angst and heartbreak” (meredith) unfold around a large, human heart that looks as if it had just been extracted from a body: the aorta is still attached to the organ and dripping with blood. andrew jackson meets voltron (2009) shows general andrew jackson facing the superhero from the 1984 animated series voltron, defender of the universe, a revisionist take on indian removal and the u.s. american genocide of native people. as mccoy notes in his artist’s statement, “i paint so i can leave an imprint of my existence. i enjoy the process immensely. i re-create past triumphs, current disasters, as well as inspiring stories in my works. my interest in exposing truth on my past, spirituality, and dreamtime recollections has taken form in the work lately” (mccoy). daniel mccoy jr. is a santa fe-based artist whose work has been featured in various art shows across the u.s. and won major awards, including best painting at the santa fe winter indian market (swaia) in 2011 for the indian taco made by god. mccoy graduated from the institute of american indian arts in santa fe, new mexico. he is a member of the potawatomi nation. for his art, he draws on a variety of styles, from native american flatstyle art—discernible in his highly detailed, colorful scenes that fuse traditional patterns with contemporary themes and artistic styles—to album covers and underground comic books. the influence of the latter is visible on the levels of content (provocative themes like sex, drugs, etc.), representation (comic style, use of speech/thought bubbles etc.), as well as technique (the delicate ink patterns that provide shape and depth to mccoy’s drawings, reminiscent of the ink work of keno don rosa or ed roth). mccoy is a fan of h.p. lovecraft’s stories and grew up with science fiction, but he credits his father, daniel kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 56 mccoy sr., with being the biggest source of inspiration, saying that “he was [an] automotive pin striper and a very good artist in his own right. i owe my talent to him, he introduced the airbrush, h.r. giger, and frank frazetta to me as a child. my other favorite artists include robert williams, joan hill, rick griffin, woody crumbo, johnny tiger jr., jerome tiger, robert crumb, jack kirby, and recently arik roper and jus oborn. i was heavily influenced by heavy metal and rock music from the 70ʼs and early 80ʼs, in particular the darker themed music. i hope to work for an artist one day still, possibly find some great band that needs great art for their albums” (personal communication, 29 jan. 2016).6 mccoy’s works are rich in detail and color, the arrangement of image on top of image reminiscent of lowbrow, an underground art movement also known as pop surrealism that emerged out of 1950s and ’60s counter cultures such as the punk, rock ’n’ roll, and hot rod scenes. lowbrow artists like robert williams set out to upset preconceived notions about art with their vulgar and grotesque paintings. like williams, mccoy both engages and unsettles the viewer through a sheer flood of visual stimuli. mccoy’s style has been called low-rez, a term popularized with the exhibition low-rez: native american lowbrow (2012, santa fe, nm), and which featured mccoy’s works alongside native artists such as ryan singer (diné), april holder (sac and fox/wichita/tonkawa) and chris pappan (kaw/osage/cheyenne river sioux).7 “beneath the thin crust of conformity that characterized mid-century america lay a bubbling cauldron of weirdness,” larry reid remarks about the emergence of lowbrow. emphasizing the weirdness—a confusing number of grotesque shapes and their unexpected arrangement—is similarly worthwhile when looking at mccoy’s paintings. in the amazing couch (2005), a man is lounging on his couch, a bottle of beer in one hand, tv remote in the other. the thought bubble over his head is crammed with gaudy images, such as a bottle of jägermeister, a melee of buildings, a boy in bed sick and, top centre, a hand pouring beer out of a coors can right into a funnel that is sticking out of a disembodied liver. the man seems to be enjoying this hodgepodge of personal memories and images seen on tv on his amazing couch—except that he’s clearly dead. his grinning skull and skeletonized hand imply zombification through mass media images. the bizarre difference between the man’s driedout shell and the vivid images that, even post mortem, keep rushing in on him, provoke ‘harsh laughter,’ a self-conscious chuckle at having one’s own, dark reality represented on canvas. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 57 like many of mccoy’s works, couch could be imagined as a panel from a comic strip, and therefore as an individual scene in an ongoing story. furthermore, there is always a sense of vulgar satisfaction at breaking the rules and upsetting viewers with macabre scenes. as mccoy says, “i like to get back at enemies, ex-wives, figures in the wrong, and general acts of poor ethics. without saying a word, i can get my revenge” (personal communication, 29 jan. 2016). however, he also stresses the importance of balance and healing which he equates with “[m]oving from a square structure with doors to circular structures. many problems arose when the modern western dwelling was introduced to the native americans, alcoholism, secrets, rape, and abuse came with what happened behind closed doors” (personal communication, 29 jan. 2016). different from hedonistic pleasure or iconoclasm for the sake of chaos, mccoy’s works effect decolonization through weird survivance. anger and outrage at colonial cruelty and ongoing grievances are outbalanced by the urgent wish for change. painting (in) a native-centred world transforms lowbrow. the wild rush of images not only unsettles viewers but also educates them about their realities and hopefully startles them into action. mccoy’s particular set of influences, then, is discernible in a dark form of humour, a visual language of dry wit and biting irony in which he is fluent, and which is informed by historical, political, and social issues. for instance, the grotesque red figures of two naked people, a man and a woman, in insulin holocaust (2011) might incite laughter that becomes stuck in the viewer’s throat once the painting’s dark theme is recognized. the figures’ mouths are screwed open around the ends of a giant hot dog that connects their expressionless faces. the woman seems to be pregnant. the couple is surrounded by images of junk food and cheerful cartoon faces, uniformly colored in shades of blue and grey. a cake is folded into the space between their bellies, a large burger covering up the lower parts of their bodies. a giant syringe can be seen floating into the picture from the top left; a skull in the top centre crowns the composition, red sparks glowing in its dark sockets. mccoy’s painting perfectly visualizes the relentless agony of diabetes suggested by the title. the word holocaust moreover hints that the introduction of junk food might be understood as a systematic crime against humanity—an apt signifier although its borrowing and estrangement from historical and religious contexts might upset viewers and cause them to recoil. mccoy sees the overwhelming presence of injured bodies in native societies—from rape and alcoholism to health conditions like obesity and diabetes—as yet another facet of colonization: “with flour and processed foods came diabetes and weight troubles. … history kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 58 repeats itself indeed” (personal communication, 29 jan. 2016). by translating this horror into art, mccoy’s representations confront viewers with the strangeness of their own reality, with their own complicity even, and thereby undermine viewers’ attempts to distance themselves from the subject-matter. the indian taco made by god (2011) features outstretched arms reaching for a piece of frybread, another ironic comment on consumerism in native america. as america meredith points out, “underneath the dazzling colors and masterful graphic strokes lies [sic.] questions. why does indian country fetishize a food so unhealthy, born of poverty and privation? nostalgia for comfort food is a running theme in mccoy’s work— frito pies, spam, commodities—but we are what we eat.” similar to couch and holocaust, weird survivance in taco is created through the depiction of dark realities in mccoy’s very own visual language. the indigenous-centred narratives he imagines on canvas clearly speak of the horrors of history and the often incomprehensible cruelty and stupidity of human conduct in general. however, the sheer pleasure of exploring the details of the paintings invariably engage the viewer, from the masterful brushwork, bright colors, and the odd internal organ, to what meredith calls “mccoy’s flair for visual puns”—she mentions “the clouds [that] resemble bubbles in hot lard” in taco—that make for “a clever joke.” with mccoy’s paintings, viewers have to make an effort to reassemble fragments of a narrative on their own terms. unlike mccoy’s characters that often appear as passive victims in a chaotic world, viewers are moved into a position of power. mccoy’s impertinent narratives surprise and shock; the problems native people in north america face on a daily basis are loud and inescapable. however, mccoy’s art also provokes laughter that empowers because it is incompatible with the wish to wallow in self-pity. instead, it makes viewers aware of their own trickster streak, not only their capacity for wickedness, but also for resilience. that dark chuckle, then, constitutes the first step toward acknowledging, facing, and tackling larger problems. it moreover signals an acceptance to be teased, criticized, and called to action—a positive feeling and rush of energy necessary to face the darker realities of our world. 5 chance connections and black humour in his anthology of black humor (‘l'anthologie de l'humour noir,’ 1966) french surrealist writer andré breton sounds exceedingly vizenorian when he introduces the concept of black humour as “[c]hance encounter, involuntary recall, direct quotation?” (xxiii): “to take part in transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 59 the black tournament of humor, one must in fact have weathered many eliminations. black humor … is the mortal enemy of sentimentality” (xix). as mark polizzotti points out, breton assembled his infamous anthology in the wake of the second world war and included, alongside artists and writers such as rimbaud, swift, picasso, and dalí, five germanspeaking authors, suggesting that while the horrors of war make carefree jest impossible, there is a dire need for communal ‘harsh laughter’ at the ironies of history and the cruelty of human nature, a transformative chuckle that empowers because it is a sign of resistance (polizzotti viii–ix). breton urged quick publication of the book in 1940 (polizzotti viii–ix), noting that “[i]t seems to me this book would have a considerable tonic value” (qtd. in polizzotti ix; italics original). dark humour is a defining element of the mechanics of weird survivance in the works of bunky echo-hawk and daniel mccoy jr., and it similarly engages the viewers of the artwork in communal ‘harsh laughter’ at perverted food culture and environmental catastrophe. grotesque or uncanny figures command our gaze for the weirdness in our everyday lives, for what is off, unhealthy, or simply ironic. the empowering element and sense of resistance reside exactly in the fact that while producing humorous images the artists nevertheless succeed in conveying the horrors of colonial history, environmental pollution, illness, and depression. drawing on a multitude of influences, echo-hawk and mccoy surprise and even outrage their viewers, a necessary “upsetting” (vizenor in coltelli 172) that precedes all change. resisting sentimentality and victimhood, the gas masks as medicine series and works such as insulin holocaust depict natives at the centre of their own worlds and stories, in a position of power despite injury, and of responsibility for the world for the sake of future generations. notes 1 i am indebted to stina attebery for providing feedback while i was developing this article, and for giving me permission to use her phrase weird survivance. i take full responsibility for my definition and suggested use of the term. the title of this essay borrows from, and suggests the influence of, mark polizotti’s introduction to andré breton’s anthology of black humor (1966; 1996) entitled “laughter in the dark.” 2 this work was re-issued in 1990 under a new title—bearheart: the heirship chronicles— that would be more memorable to readers since it emphasized “one strong word” (vizenor in vizenor/lee 95). 3 the weird in weird survivance might therefore be understood in analogy to the notion of weirdness in new weird fiction. this umbrella term groups together fantastic literary works that engage in mapping out worlds as unsettling and mysterious (i.e. weird) as the readers’ own realities. in his much-quoted definition, u.s.-american author jeff vandermeer defines kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 60 the new weird as having “a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects” (xvi); furthermore, “new weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. as part of this awareness of the modern world, new weird relies for its visionary power on a ‘surrender to the weird’ that isn’t, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in antarctica” (xvi). the term has been used to describe the fantastic and bizarre elements in the fiction of such authors as china miéville, m. john harrison, and michael moorcock. 4 triple threat is part of the series skin ball dedicated to native athletes and was reproduced on t-shirts and sneakers for the nike n7 series. 5 for a more detailed discussion of echo-hawk’s use of pawnee regalia and pan-indigenous symbols, see olena mclaughlin’s insightful article “native pop: bunky echo-hawk and steven paul judd subvert star wars” (2017) in transmotion 3.2. 6 for more details on mccoy’s life and art, please refer to alicia inez guzmán’s 2018 interview with the artist in the/magazine, at themagsantafe.com/danielmccoy/?fbclid=iwar2wccl1svj184hskfzqog9lf0wn2bqflww1iunnfkkuxysngd8zoqnncu. some of mccoy’s works can be found on artslant.com. 7 april holder’s representation of blood-smeared, mangled native zombies in relics of an undead culture and chris pappan’s native american porn stars series also make wonderful examples of weird survivance in native visual art. see also: chrispappan.com; april holder can be found on artslant.com. works cited baldick, chris. “absurd, the.” the oxford dictionary of literary terms, oxford university press, 2008, pp. 1–2. “black humor.” merriam-webster.com. merriam-webster, 2018, www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/black%20humor. accessed 18 jan. 2019. “black humour.” oxford living dictionaries. oxford english dictionaries, 2018, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/black_humour. accessed 18 jan. 2019. blaeser, kimberly m. gerald vizenor: writing in the oral tradition. university of oklahoma press, 1996. breton, andré. anthology of black humor [‘l'anthologie de l'humour noir’]. 1966, translated and with an introduction by mark polizzotti, city lights books, 2009. “bunky echo-hawk.” beatnation: hip hop as indigenous culture. www.beatnation.org/bunky -echo-hawk.html. accessed 18 jan. 2019. coltelli, laura. winged words: american indian writers speak. university of nebraska press, 1990. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 61 derrida, jacques. writing and difference. 1967, translated by alan bass. routledge, 2005. echo-hawk, bunky. bunkyechohawk.com. n.d. accessed 13 oct. 2016. froyd, susan. “q&a: bunky echo-hawk on sharing art and ideas with the people.” westword, 15 feb. 2012, www.westword.com/arts/qanda-bunky-echo-hawk-onsharing-art-and-ideas-with-the-people-5802563. accessed 18 jan. 2019. guzmán, alicia inez. “daniel mccoy.” the/magazine, 27 nov. 2018, themagsantafe.com/ daniel-mccoy/?fbclid=iwar2wccl1svj184hskfzqog9lf0wn2bqflww1iunnfkkuxysn gd8zoqnncu. accessed 18 jan. 2019. “grotesque.” merriam-webster.com. merriam-webster, 2018, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/grotesque. accessed 18 jan. 2019. hobby, blake. “dark humor in cat’s cradle.” dark humor, edited by blake hobby and harold bloom, infobase publishing, 2010, pp. 57–66. “bunky echo hawk.” youtube, uploaded by longhousemedia4, 23 july 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6bkotb3_uw. accessed 18 jan. 2019. mccoy, daniel, jr. daniel mccoy jr artworks. n.d., www.danielmccoyjrartworks.com. accessed 13 oct. 2016. ---. personal communication. 29 jan. 2016. mclaughlin, olena. “native pop: bunky echo-hawk and steven paul judd subvert star wars.” transmotion, vol. 3, no. 2, 2017, pp. 30-52. meredith, america. “review |euphoric recall: new work by daniel mccoy.” ahalenia: native american art history, writing, theory, and practice, ahalenia, 6 june 2011, http://ahalenia.blogspot.com/2011/06/daniel-mccoy-euphoric-recall.html. accessed 18 jan. 2019. owens, louis. other destinies: understanding the american indian novel. university of oklahoma press, 1992. polizzotti, mark. “introduction: laughter in the dark.” anthology of black humor, by andré breton, city lights books, 1997, pp. v–x. “proactive.” oxford living dictionaries. oxford english dictionaries, 2018, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/proactive. accessed 18 jan. 2019. reid, larry. “mid-century dementia and bad ass low brow.” pop surrealism: the rise of underground art, edited by kirsten anderson, ignition publishing, 2004, n.p. ryan, allan j. the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art. university of washington press, 1999. kristina baudemann “laughing in the dark” 62 vandermeer, jeff. “the new weird: ‘it’s alive?’” the new weird, edited by jeff vandermeer and ann vandermeer, tachyon publications, 2008, pp. ix–xviii. vizenor, gerald. bearheart: the heirship chronicles [darkness in saint louis bearheart, 1978]. 1990, 4th reprint, university of minnesota press, 2006. ---. manifest manners. narratives on postindian survivance. university of nebraska press, 1994. ---. “the aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice.” survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor, university of nebraska press, 2008, pp. 1–23. --and a. robert lee. postindian conversations. university of nebraska press, 1999. “bunky echo hawk: modern day warrior.” youtube, uploaded by wbez, 3 oct. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1a3wwdjwco. accessed 18 jan. 2019. microsoft word de vos.doc transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 205 walter d. mignolo and catherine e. walsh. on decoloniality: concepts, analytics, praxis. duke university press, 2018. 304pp. isbn 978-0-8223-7109-0. https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-decoloniality duke university press’s new series on decoloniality, of which mignolo and walsh’s text is the first product, aims “to interconnect perspectives, expressions, thought, struggles, processes, and practices of decoloniality that are emerging in and from different corners of the globe” (1). counter to the order of the subtitle, the opening volume is organized so as to emphasize the centrality of praxis in decolonial thought and work. after the co-written introduction, the first section, by walsh, focuses on “decoloniality in/as praxis,” discussing examples of decolonial praxes in different locations, while the second, by mignolo, theorizes and historicizes decoloniality and “the decolonial option.” the book is closed by a conversation between both co-authors, collecting final (as for now) thoughts. the chapters have many intratextual references, showing intricate relations between the ideas and the praxes discussed in different parts of the text. written in a reflective style, it should invite the reader into the conversation and the praxis of decoloniality. however, the theoretical section builds heavily on mignolo’s field of semiotics, which could trouble the accessibility of the argument for uninitiated readers. central to walsh and mignolo’s approach to decoloniality is the emphasis on relationality, conceptualized through “vincularidad.” walsh and mignolo learned the term from “andean indigenous thinkers, including nina pacari, fernando huanacuni mamani, and félix patzi paco” (1); its use makes visible the genealogy of on decoloniality’s project. “vincularidad” names the relations between all living beings and the land. in the north american context, this belief is often referred to via the lakota concept of mitákuye oyás'iŋ, commonly translated as “all our relations.” in this spirit, the aim of both this volume and the following texts in the series is to offer insights garnered from local, specific praxes and analytics, which could relate to or correlate with praxes and analytics in other locations, rather than claiming universal applicability of its terms. mignolo and walsh want a discussion of “pluriversal decoloniality and decolonial pluriversality” (2) – that is to say, multiple decolonial approaches from multiple locations through multiple conceptual frames, enacted through embodied ways of knowing rather than the “dislocated, disembodied, and disengaged abstraction” of western so-called universals (3). buried in the middle of section ii, chapter 6 (“the conceptual triad”) is a statement by mignolo that gets to the heart of on coloniality’s argument and purpose: liberation is through thinking and being otherwise. liberation is not something to be attained; it is a process of letting something go, namely, the flows of energy that keep you attached to the colonial matrix of power, whether you are in the camp of those who sanction or the camp of those sanctioned. (148) similar to the current conversation in american indian/first nations studies, the emphasis of on decoloniality’s project is on something akin to resurgence, termed “re-existence” by walsh and the organizing theme of her section. “re-existence” centers a strengthening of indigenous practice and praxis over a focus on decolonization. rather than fixating on what the (settler) colonial needs in order to be convinced of indigenous freedom, the aim is to achieve liberation through strengthening indigenous existence and re-existence. the goal is not “decolonization,” a laura marie de vos review of on decoloniality 206 point that is both an end and a new beginning, often mandated by a state which still exists within colonial terms (both walsh and mignolo refer to african countries as still having been built on colonial terms rather than by indigenous government structures and/or geographical organization and consequently doomed to fail in their decolonial promise). rather, as in the quote above, “decoloniality” is a continual process of “delinking” (see mignolo’s earlier work) from the “colonial matrix of power” and “relinking” to indigenous ways of knowing and structuring the world. decolonization is action; theory is made through action or “embodied practice” (35). this, so far as the “colonial matrix of power” exists in its global encompassing structures, is a daily assignment, a way of being, a way of knowing, a constant struggle against cooptation and for indigenous ways of knowing and being. walsh, in her section, offers examples of decolonial praxes less known to english language readers. she discusses “amawtay wasi (house of wisdom), the intercultural university of indigenous nationalities and peoples of ecuador” (69) which failed in its decolonial purpose to be recognized by the state as a university and was eventually closed by the state. this case study is contrasted with “mexico’s universidad de la tierra (university of the earth),” which never aimed for state recognition (72). contrary to amawaytay wasi, “unitierra” as it is known, is conceptualized “not from but with indigenous struggles and postulates of knowledge, in conversation with other forms of critical thought and liberation-based theory and praxis” (73). this learning through “deschooling” (73), or learning entirely without the western-style institutions of learning, is decoloniality in action. another key concept to the praxis and theory walsh and mignolo discuss is that of “modernity/coloniality,” a “compound expression” which conveys the notion that “there is no modernity without coloniality” and which functions in this text as the shorthand for the “colonial matrix of power” (4). mignolo, in his section, offers a history of the construction of the “colonial matrix of power” (a concept coined by aníbal quijano; those familiar with mignolo’s work will recognize quijano, who has been at the center of mignolo’s work since the 1990s) and of how languaging (“enunciation”) is the true regulator of power: mignolo argues that the way the world is known directly correlates to the way the world is owned and controlled. specifically, western naming and mapping are what establish western pronunciations of ownership and control. the historical evidence used to ground this assertion is that other peoples had traveled the world and made maps before the 1500s, but it was europe’s claims to knowledge and the spreading of a european version of knowledge through maps and written accounts that made it possible for european settlers to “discover” the lands and waters and, thus, to claim them for themselves. the decolonial response to this epistemic colonialism (which, in this argument, is the precursor of all colonial power), is something mignolo calls “epistemic reconstitution,” which he defines as “to delink from the cmp [colonial matrix of power] in order to re-link and to re-exist” (227, 229). this re-constitution and re-existence should be grounded in the local knowledge and worldview, resist the power of modernity/coloniality’s epistemology, and so necessarily be pluriversal, depending on location. mignolo’s section moves through a lot of history and a lot of places to be able to make and support its claims about the historical development of the colonial matrix of power; consequently, it lacks nuance in some places and could irk a reader with in-depth knowledge of some of these particular moments, places, or histories. speaking about praxes and analytics based in the location of its authors as intellectuals from (mignolo) or based in (walsh) central and south america, the book’s/series’ argument has a geographically global scope and, historically, goes back to the origination of the human. this transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 207 introductory volume addresses some other worldviews but is fairly limited in its discussion of north american thinkers, despite its focus on “the americas” – referred to as “abya yala” by walsh, “the name that the kuna-tule people (of the lands now known as panama and colombia) gave to the ‘americas’ before the colonial invasion”) (21). aside from a quick reference to glen coulthard’s work on the politics of recognition in canada, leanne simpson is the only other north american indigenous thinker with whom this volume engages. that said, the organization of the book, theorizing through praxis and focusing on resurgence/re-existence, recalls winona laduke’s work, as well as many others currently practicing and writing about indigenous resurgence practices in what is currently referred to as north america. with the theoretical and structural connections seemingly so present, and both authors’ obvious connections to north america (mignolo is argentinian but works at duke university in north carolina, u.s., and walsh is american but works at the universidad andina simón bolívar in ecuador), one might wonder why the authors chose not to spend a bit more time and space on the peoples of that geographical area. throughout their writing, mignolo and walsh repeat the important claim (seated in the theory and practice they discuss) that they do not want to represent all indigenous peoples and knowledges, but that they instead start from their localities, in central and south america, to make larger claims that could be true more generally, without claiming universality. referencing leanne simpson’s work on resurgence sets up the option to a clear parallel between this work and the north american indigenous theories and praxes on resurgence: from theorists like sium and ritskes and many others to lived resurgence, like the annual canoe journey in the u.s. pacific northwest or the centering of indigenous language learning in many first nations. walsh and mignolo’s praxis and theoretical framework offer a localized approach to decoloniality that can only deepen the understanding of the need for native resurgence and reexistence in all their particularities and makes another opening for international indigenous nation-to-nation relations beyond the nations in what is currently considered north america. perhaps the following books in the series will take up some of the leads presented here. as the first book in the decoloniality series, it sets the tone and terms; it opens the conversation on decoloniality that is relevant globally as the right rises and the colonial matrix of power is only strengthened through global capitalism. on decoloniality brings important insights to the fore from locations not as well-known by english-reading theorists who might not concentrate on colonial language areas other than english. this work’s focus on re-existence and decoloniality as a verb (rather than decolonization as an end goal) is timely also for those working in native american and first nations studies, as walsh and mignolo offer a plurality of options for relating, learning, and sharing in the work of decoloniality. laura maria de vos, university of washington microsoft word 464-3563-1-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 31 what ma lach’s bones tell us: performances of relational materiality in response to genocide maría regina firmino-castillo acknowledgements: ta’ntiixh to the many persons whose knowledge and ways of being in the world lent life to the ideas in this article: nan xhiv tzunun (juana brito bernal), pap xhas matom (jacinto brito bernal), pap xhasinib’ (jacinto santiago brito), maxho’l (lalo velasco ceto), petrona tzunux chivalan, mariano brito santiago, tohil fidel valey brito, violeta luna, daniel guarcax, gloria chacón, melissa michal slocum, and amauta o.m. firmino. any errors and omissions in the following are my own. dedicated to ma lach (maría santiago cedillo) and nan xhiv tzunun (juana brito bernal). introduction i was invited to a funeral in 2014, but the bodily remains inside the casket had been stripped of its itiixhil tiichajil—in ixil maya, its animating force—almost thirty years before, at the height of the guatemalan army’s genocide against the ixil maya.1 in the casket was a skull with perforations where bullets had entered it; there was also a femur and smaller bones i do not know the names of. but i do know the name of the person these bones once belonged to: ma lach (maría santiago cedillo); she was the mother of mariano, my husband’s cousin. at the funeral, ma lach’s bones were carefully arranged in the casket by a forensic anthropologist, who, with great sensitivity, told the story of what had happened to this body—the body that is/was/and had been ma lach. he indicated where bullets had entered and exited and described how remnants of cloth attached to bone helped identify the person the bones belonged to. these bones held traces, genetic and other, that allowed for ma lach’s return home to her relations. ma lach was a set of bones that returned, first to her son, and at the end, back to the earth. this body, the osseous remains of a disinterred corpse, had once been a person; that day, she was remembered, prayed for with song, and cried over. she was still mariano’s mother, and, as in life, she was still part of this earth. in 2013, about a year before ma lach’s final rites, i was invited to another funeral. this time it was pap lu, the father of our friend, pap xhasinib’ (jacinto santiago brito). he had recently been found, and brought home, by the same forensic team. like ma lach, pap xhasinib’s father had also been a victim of this genocide. his casket was larger than ma lach’s, and sealed. it was painted turquoise blue and draped with a red hand-woven textile. at the foot of the casket maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 32 were bottles of distilled cane liquor that guests brought to share during the wake. throughout the night, pap xhasinib’ took a bottle around the room, serving each guest and drinking with them. late into the night, he reached my husband and me; passing the bottle, and pouring the clear liquid on the ground, he explained: “we are the earth. our bones are the minerals. our flesh is the dirt, the rivers, our blood. who am i to know!? but that’s how it is. this is why we offer our liquor to the earth before drinking.” ma lach and pap lu’s transitions from persons animated by itiixhil tiichajil, to bodies, to cadavers, and then to hidden bones that become forensic evidence, and finally to ‘things’ such as minerals, rivers, and earth lead me to ask: what is a body? what is a thing? what is a person? what degree of itiixhil tiichajil survives through these changes? and what ontological categories are troubled by ma lach and pap lu’s bones in these performances of life, death, and survival? in what follows, i draw from freya mathews and mario blaser’s critiques of genocide, modernity, and coloniality, in addition to the unpublished writings of raphaël lemkin on colonialism (in docker), to interrogate three ontological tenets associated with genocidal coloniality: that some persons are things, that matter is inert, and that some humans are independent from an ecological matrix. i examine these tenets through the lens of guatemala’s recent counterinsurgency war (1960—1996), focusing on the genocide against ixil maya communities during the height of the war (approximately 1979-1985). since 2010, my husband, ixil artist tohil fidel valey brito, and i have worked with community members and leaders on a variety of multidisciplinary projects in response to the after-effects of this genocide.2 i will share stories from our work in which performance posed insistent challenges to genocidal coloniality’s three tenets fig. 1 pap xhasinib' and author in paxil cave. photo by herbert reyes, 2011. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 33 through embodied enactments of the inextricable relational ties between human and other-thanhuman persons and entities in an agentive and person-filled material world. three moments of performance, ranging from the quotidian to the ceremonial to the experimental, will be highlighted: performing name exchange with a wild edible plant important to survival during wartime famine; performing chaj (ceremony) to address collective trauma from the 1982 mass killing at xoloche’; and, finally, performing experimental theater in collaboration with mexican artist, violeta luna, and ixil performance ensemble, teatro tichiil. i reflect on two terms prevalent in mayan languages—kamawil, or living object, and kab’awil, “double gaze” (adrián inés chávez in chacón)—to explore the potential of mayan ontologies of materiality and personhood to counter the colonial project’s construal of (some) persons as bodies only, to be used and disposed of as objects, in a world of inert matter. i conclude by noting that this centering of persons (human and other) as relational beings underscores the ontological workings of what gerald vizenor termed “survivance,” understanding it to be an active resistance to the three tenets of coloniality through the embodied and storied insistence on complex relational personhood and the continued enactment of “transmotion” as inextricable relationality within a living and agentive material world. i am a guatemalan-born and u.s.-based transdisciplinary artist and writer. my ancestors are southern european and, most probably, pipil/nahua; and i have kin, through marriage, who are ixil. it is from this circle of family and collaborators (who are artists, farmers, ritual officiants as well as intellectuals), that i first learned about the ways that performance—whether gathering edible plants, conducting ceremony, creating theater, pouring libation, or living in community— creates relationships that weave together life worlds, or ontologies, in resistance to genocidal coloniality’s three ontological tenets, which i will discuss in the next section. ontological tenets of genocidal coloniality genocide, which is always and already embroiled in coloniality and empire, is not only the destruction of people’s bodies. it is an ontological violence that perpetuates three tenets which coloniality is built upon: some persons are only bodies; all matter is inert; and some humans are independent of an ecological matrix. as jurist raphaël lemkin (in docker) argued in his late unpublished writings, coloniality has an “inherent and constitutive relationship” with genocide (97). to lemkin, genocide was not an isolated occurrence of mass killings; it was part of a maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 34 drawn out process spanning centuries, involving mass killings as well as various forms of destruction aimed at a people’s “attachment to and imbrication in a nurturing cosmos” (in docker 97). furthermore, this genocidal destruction of cosmos, lemkin (in docker) observed, is accompanied by the violent imposition upon genocide survivors of “the national pattern of the oppressor” (83). writing about modernity/coloniality, anthropologist mario blaser argued that its violence is simultaneously ontological and ecocidal, with “nonhuman others” forming “part of how colonial difference gets established” (12). the colonial domination of people through genocidal violence is also enmeshed with the imposition—partial or whole—of specific ontological frameworks that deny agency and subjectivity to some humans, to most animals, and, as environmental philosopher freya mathews (reinhabiting reality) noted, all matter. this attempt to render human persons and non-human persons into objects and to treat all matter as inert describes the complex ontological violence that has marked the history of guatemala for the last five centuries. as i will discuss below, this type of ontological violence has continued in the ixil region during the height of the so-called counter-insurgency war of the late 1970s and early 1980s. the massacre at xoloche’. the attempted construal through violence of persons as things and world as object was at play in the massacres committed between 1981 and 1983 at xoloche’, an ixil hamlet outside of nab’aa’. nab’aa’ (or nebaj in its hispanicized version) is located in guatemala’s cuchumatánes mountain range at an elevation of over one-thousand nine-hundred meters. the town is part of what the guatemalan army termed the “ixil triangle” (manz 96), and is comprised of nab’aa’, along with the neighboring towns of chajul, cotzal, and numerous hamlets, including xoloche’, all dispersed throughout the highlands and valleys. the so-called triangle’s population is of some 148,670 inhabitants: ninety-one percent identify as ixil, with the remaining nine percent identifying as either k’iche’, kanjobal, mam, or non-indigenous (fundación ixil). the following is a description of the events of november 19, 1982 at xoloche’ written by pap xhas matom, a principal in the b’oq’ol, q’ezal tenam oxlaval no’j council of principals thirteen no’j:3 when the milpas [maize fields] were already in full harvest, the army executed its criminal implementation of a scorched earth plan and policy: the army forced sevtransmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 35 eral hundred ixiles who were forcibly conscripted into the civil patrol (pac) to tapiscar [harvest] all the corn in xoloché and its surroundings, with the promise and deceit that everything they gathered would be transported by helicopter and distributed among the population under army control. once it was piled up in a true volcano of maize, the army set fire to it. until now we do not have an estimate of the amount, but the fact is that the red heap of xoloche’ maize was visible from the area of salquil grande [approximately twenty-five kilometers away].4 according to pap xhas matom, and as documented by colectivo memoria histórica (208-213), once the maize was amassed into a large pile, nan elsi’m, a blind grandmother, protested aloud. the “volcano,” consisting of maize, woven cloth, baskets, pottery and other things, was doused with gasoline and set afire. nan elsi’m continued to protest, while others cried silently. soldiers silenced nan elsi’m with a blow, possibly killing her prior to throwing her into the flames; it is also possible that she died in the flames. those who tried to pull her out were shot dead and thrown into the fire as well. the surviving population was forced to watch. this is how pap xhas matom’s account continues: the army threw garments like güipiles [blouses] and the red cortes [skirts] of nebaj into the burning maize, as well as people’s cadavers, among them an elder from nebaj named elsi’m, who had lost her sight due to old age. prior to this, the army left activated grenades between the ears of corn, targeting those who attempted to extinguish the fire. and so other ixiles died when the grenades exploded upon attempts to remove them. though i focus here on events at xoloche’, it is important to note that this massacre was not an isolated occurrence. a united nation’s commission documented the destruction of four-hundred and forty-four villages in the mayan highlands during the war, resulting in the internal displacement of more than a million people and the death or disappearance of at least two-hundred thousand (comisión para el esclarecimiento histórico). the effects of this collective trauma are difficult to quantify, or to describe, especially considering ways that trauma persists in our embodied memory across generations (brave heart). trauma as loss of relationality. what eduardo duran described as the “soul wound” resulting from centuries of genocidal coloniality in the americas is not just a matter of unresolved historimaría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 36 cal trauma; it is also unresolved grief over the wounding of the earth upon which one depends (16). this starts to describe what happened at xoloche’, except that the relationship is also one of ontological equivalence between people and maize. according to tohil and pap xhas, destroying maize is tantamount to destroying people. a philosophy of regeneration based on an ontological intimacy with maize and its biotic cycles is recounted in the ixil oral tradition and performed in rituals associated with the growing cycle. maize is the substance from which we are created, and upon death, our bodies return to the earth to nourish new generations. paxil, located on the outskirts of nab’aa’, is a geologic formation mentioned in the popol wuj5 as the place where maize and other important crops were first revealed to humans by their elder brothers: fox, coyote, macaw, and raven. in the spring, seeds to be planted are blessed among the stalactite formations that resemble cobs hanging from the cave’s ceiling. such is the respectful intimacy with maize that it is a txaa (transgression) to leave a fallen kernel of maize on the ground, as it is txaa to build a chicken coop or latrine on a piece of land that had once been used to store harvested maize. it is, likewise, a transgression to burn maize fields. the destruction of maize is comparable to the destruction of people, for it is the materia prima of human life. as maxho’l explained to me, the ixil phrase “kat oojisa un yooxhil” (“my vital force has left me”) is uttered after an earthquake, or other comparable shock in which the ground— ontological, and that is to say, also material, telluric, relational, and social—upon which one stands is shaken. if one does not call one’s yooxhil6 back into one’s body after a terrifying event, one is condemned to a limbo state of surviving, but not fully living. de-animated, the person becomes just a body, a relatively inert object, eventually a corpse. the body, without its yooxhil, ceases to sustain life, eventually causing the death of the person. disembodied, the yooxhil wanders about, requiring ritual performance to bring it back to its corporeal home, re-incorporated into the body to re-constitute, reanimate, and regenerate the person. we exist because we are embodied, and our bodies are inextricably enmeshed in a complex self/world with beings who are different, but constitutive of our subjectivities and identities. they are beings and entities with whom we engage—exerting a mutual and ineluctable influence. these relational ties are always and already present, but not always acknowledged. therefore, one’s manners of recognizing and enacting them are varied and have material effects in the world. not acknowledging these inextricable relational ties can cause disharmony in our relationships to others, human and non-human. the yooxhil wanders about outside the body, potentransmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 37 tially causing the death of the person; however, the return of the yooxhil—though it entails a reembodiment—is never a matter of individual healing, nor does it involve a transaction solely between the yooxhil, the body, and the person. it is a process that requires embodied re-enactment and performative re-acknowledgment of what is always and already there: an inextricable relationality. performance and genocidal coloniality: embodied assertions of inextricable relationality in thinking about performance and resistance to colonial violence, the centrality of the body has been well-theorized, especially by performance studies scholar, diana taylor. despite the seeming ephemerality of performance, the body constitutes a way of knowing that taylor has described as an enduring “repertoire” able to survive written archives of knowledge and attacks upon it by colonizing forces. she offers an historical example of this observation. the codices of pre-invasion mesoamerican societies stored a vast array of knowledges, but spanish forces destroyed entire libraries, prohibited indigenous systems of writing, and violently persecuted native intelligentsia who were not willing to become informants. though embodied forms of knowledge transmission—such as ritual, dance, drama, etc. —were also criminalized, “[t]he space of written culture then, as now,” wrote taylor, “seemed easier to control than embodied culture” (17). as taylor’s analysis implies, embodied knowledge survives colonial violence as long as there are living, performing, bodies that remember their own agency (31). one of the cases through which taylor developed her thesis is an analysis of the danza de la conquista, a theatrical dance ritual with roots in the iberian peninsula’s performative representations of the 1492 expulsion of muslims and jews by castilian catholic forces. the dance is performed to this day in mesoamerica and in the andean region and is syncretized with various pre-invasion ritual performances. as paul scolieri documented, castilian spanish forces used this dance to compel new imperial subjects to portray their own subjugation. on the one hand, the scenario of conquest represented in the dance is a “reiterative humiliation of the native populations” (taylor, 30). on the other hand, the danza is characterized by veiled meanings and parodic reversals that mark it as a dance of resistance, despite its origins and the intentions of the dance’s originators. taylor argued that the danza’s agency does not derive from its satirical content or “‘hidden transcripts’” (citing james scott), but from the embodied agency available even in the most strictly scripted scenarios “to rearrange characters in parodic and subversive ways” (31). this does not imply, maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 38 however, that merely having a body constitutes agency. for taylor, performance’s subversive power stems from the body’s capacity to change what is written down, that is, what is discursively established. this points to another way that embodiment is a source of resistance. it subverts the “colonialist discourse” which constructs the indigenous body as an inert object lacking voice and agency (taylor, 64). through the performers’ insistence on agency—even if satirical—the danza overturns the idea of indigenous person as merely a body—or object— contesting colonial constructions of indigenous passivity and otherness. the indomitable capacity of embodied memory to counter erasures—whether they be colonial or indigenous—of ontologically challenging identities is powerfully articulated by zapotec muxhe (third gender) performance artist, lukas avendaño in this way: “what we can’t find in my peoples’ codices…. you will find here, in my body.”7 though surviving zapotec codices do not feature the muxhe person (and we do not know if they once did, given the near total destruction by the spanish of zapotec texts), avendaño’s performance puts forth in the world that which relentlessly exists. merely inhabiting the muxhe body is an ontological defiance, but narrating and performing it into being is an act of insistence and affirmation of the ontological complexity that always and already exists. avendaño’s work is an indefatigable reembodying, remembering, and reminding of what may have been twice erased: the ontological survivance (and not just survival) of non-binary genders in indigenous and non-indigenous ontologies. avendaño’s performances onstage and offstage of being-muxhe expand the ontological possibilities of our world. avendaño’s statement, which i consider embodied theory, implies that there is an agency of another sort that is experienced even before accessing the body’s capacity to change a story. prior to the embodied epistemic act taylor writes about, an ontological agency is activated when the colonized subject—discursively constructed as body only, that is, as object—remembers themselves to be a person. by person, i invoke sylvia wynter’s insight that the human being is not a noun, but a verb—praxis—a nondual composite of both bios (biology) and mythos (story) (wynter and mckittrick, 33-34). we are not inert objects, or bodies only, as colonial ontological constructions would have it. i will return to this nondual conception of personhoods below, but for now i want to underscore the following: for performance to be agentive in the face of ongoing genocidal coloniality, remembering and enacting personhoods as performative praxis in opposition to colonial objectification might be a first step toward overturning the three tenets of transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 39 the colonial project. below, i will share a story of how this happens in the everyday performances of living and surviving; this story complicates and expands what it means to remember oneself as person in a way that powerfully challenges the second and third tenets of the colonial project: that the material world is inert and that (some) humans are independent of an ecological web. the secret names of plants: ontological relationality. in the spring of 2013, tohil and i accompanied nan xhiv tzunun (juana brito bernal), my chuch (mother-in-law), on a walk in the countryside to visit comunidad en resistancia flores de turanza,8 a settlement near nab’aa’ founded by “retornados” (returnees). they were people who, at the height of the war, were forced by the army’s scorched earth campaign to flee their homes, finding precarious refuge in the mountains, the ixcán jungle, or in méxico. this military strategy of scorched earth, massacres, and forced displacement was described by the counterinsurgency state as “drying up fig. 2 nan xhiv tzunun. photo by herbert reyes, 2011. the pond to get the fish,” the armed insurgents (cultural survival; steinberg and taylor). in the process, however, the genocidal campaign nearly destroyed the pond. along with genocide, ecocide was committed as well, resulting in deep transformations in the agroecology of the region and the disruption of ritual practices associated with the agricultural cycle (wilson; remhi in steinberg and taylor, 48). this impact on mayan spirituality was not only an aftereffect of displacement; it was a strategic attempt, on the part of the army and the oligarchy in maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 40 whose interest it operated, to destroy the ontological relationship of highland mayans with the land. but relational ontology and praxis continued to be performed in ceremony and in quotidian performances which accompany many daily activities that sustain life, especially in wartime, such as gathering wild edible plants. along the path to turanza, nan xhiv showed us the plants she ate in order to survive during her own time in the mountains. as a young woman in the late 1970s, she fled nab’aa’ after the army targeted her for assassination due to her political organizing, involvement in the catholic church, and later, in the ejercito guerrillero de los pobres (egp, guerrilla army of the poor). she and her family were exiled in méxico, nicaragua, and finally, cuba, returning only after the signing of the peace accords in 1996. while we walked the path to turanza, we came upon a certain vine. she directed her voice toward the plant, pronouncing: “in tzuk; ax xhiv’— así se le dice a la planta, intercambias tu nombre con la planta!” (i am tzuk; you are xhiv—this is what you say to the plant, you exchange names with the plant!). and then she carefully bent back a stem to pull away a set of tender leaves and shoots, telling us how delicious tzuk can be and how it helped her survive famine. but she also warned us that when gathering from tzuk, one must exchange names with her lest the leaf become bitter in one's mouth.9 through tzuk, we have a point of entry for an ixil ontology. as suggested by nan xhiv’s interlocution with tzuk, here is a recognition of subjectivity and agency in the many plants one must address with a regard for their itiixhil tiichajil—also called yooxhil or tichiil—which is described as that which gives a being its vitality and strength. it is customary to thank a host at a communal meal for the increase in tichiil when the food is deemed to be nourishing. when someone asks about one’s well-being, one can reply with these words, indicating that “there is a future,” one can expect to survive, to thrive even, as nan xhiv explained. a maize plant, when it is healthy, strong, tall—when it promises a good harvest—can be said to have tichiil (felipe brito, personal communication). i concede that there may be a difference in meaning between the words itiixhil tiichajil (tichiil), and yooxhil, but i have not been able to discern this through my consultations with friends and research collaborators. maxho’l (lalo velasco ceto) asserts that the three are synonymous (firmino castillo, maxho’l, et al., 63-65). this is supported by the ixil oral history transcribed and translated by ayres, colby, colby, and ko’v, in which itiixhil and yooxhil are both translated as “espirito”—as in the spirit of different animals, but also the spirit of money transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 41 (286-287 and 290-291), and by implication, other material and symbolic objects. itiixhil / tiichajil / yooxhil may be a quality of organic or inorganic matter. it can also be the quality of a collection of organic and inorganic objects, such as those that constitute a place. a place can also have yooxhil, and it is the root of yooxhib’al, an ixil word for ceremonial ground (firmino castillo, maxho’l, et al., 31-32). there are other plants in the ixil world that also require specific gestures or terms of address to show respect, gratitude, or to elicit desired medicinal or culinary qualities. when we reached turanza, we visited pap cax chaas (gaspar cobo), one of nan xhiv’s cousins, who told us many stories of how trees, tubers, wild greens, and other plants conspired to help the ixil during the war. pap cax and nan xhiv conversed at length about giant trees that gave refuge from bombings, tubers that multiplied even after being unearthed and chopped to bits by soldiers, and the many wild edibles that provided nourishment during the war. on another occasion, nan xhiv ko’t (maxho’l’s mother) told us about chaapa tze’, a tree with writing on its leaves and with fruits of all kinds growing from its branches. it was the source of strength and knowledge for the people. but since the war, nan xhiv kho’t told us, chaapa tze’ has gone into hiding deep into the mountains. the tree would only return, she stressed, through the frequent performance of chaj (ceremony) (nan xhiv ko’t in firmino castillo, maxho’l, et al. 59-60). nonetheless, even from afar, the tree is still connected to the people: the tree is like the energy of the day. we don’t see the energy, but it’s there. the tree is not in sight, but the plants are still here despite the absence of the tree. we’re also part of the tree, the serpents are part of the tree, all living beings are part of the tree. (nan xhiv ko’t in firmino castillo, maxho’l, et al. 61)10 the relational ontology developed through performative gestures such as name exchange, chaj, storytelling, and other practices, create and sustain an agentive material world. in addition to name exchange with plants, there are inorganic beings such as topographical features, natural phenomena, and cycles of time which are ritually engaged and referred to as kub’al (father) or chuch (mother). these are beings with consciousness, agency, and who exist in relationship to humans; if they are not recognized properly in ritual or treated with respect in the small performances with which many quotidian activities are executed, they make their presence known through material effects ranging from changes in a plant’s flavor or medicinal properties, to fruits rotting on a vine, to nuchal cord births, poverty, and other outcomes. these performances maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 42 are daily acknowledgements of an agentive material world, performances which contest genocidal coloniality’s second and third tenets: that all matter is inert and that humans exist independently of a material and ecological nexus. in the following, we will return to xoloche’ to see examples of how genocidal coloniality’s ontological tenet of de-realized matter is challenged collectively, via ceremony as a performative enactment of human and other than human relational personhoods. xoloche’: performances of relational personhoods. on november 18, 2012, survivors of xoloche’ gathered to remember the massacres that occurred thirty years before. the emblematic moment in the many violent events that occurred there from 1981-1983 was what survivors called “la quema del volcán de mazorcas” (the burning of the volcano of maize). pap xhas matom, one of the organizers of the commemoration, invited us to the gathering. one of the goals of this event was the revival of memoria histórica (collective historical memory) of the war through chaj (ixil ritual) at the site. the creation of a ritual context for collective grieving and remembering is of crucial importance, given the public denial of the genocide by state discourse and the culture of silence that, to this day, keeps children of survivors from knowing their histories. in this sense, the chaj at xoloche’ was an act of healing historical trauma and an effort to make visible what state forces deny. it was also an effort to heal peoples’ relation to the land that had also suffered the trauma of the war. in line with these goals, pap xhas and other organizers petitioned the mayor’s office to officially declare xoloche’ a sacred site. in total, about two hundred people gathered on that day in a clearing at the end of the fig. 3 the four colors of maize. photo by the author, 2014. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 43 road leading to nab’aa’. around the clearing there were a few simple homes built of cinder block with tin roofing; nearby there was a small gorge leading to a forested area. the earth on the cleared ground near the gorge was dark, almost black, and many small pieces of charred maize could be seen there. while we waited for the activities to start, pap xhas invited tohil and me to gather some of the charred maize. others did the same. the activities took place near a large tree that stood to the side of the clearing, about five hundred feet away from the homes. pap xhas spoke, as well as other dignitaries and survivors, but the focus of the gathering was the chaj which i will not specifically describe here, for i have not received permission to do so. i will, however, offer a general description of the sequence of events, emphasizing the presence of nonhuman persons in relationship with humans through the performative dialogue that constitutes this ceremony. in general, chaj consist of a b’aal vatz tiixh laying out offerings on the ground in a circle. candles are arranged by color and in correspondence with the cardinal directions: red in the east; black in the west; yellow in the south; white in the north; and green and blue in the center. in between the cardinal direction candles and around the green and blue ones are placed offerings of incense made from tree resin and tree bark, ocote (resinous kindling pine), panela (molasses sugar), cacao or chocolate, and sometimes sweet bread, tobacco, honey, and flowers. the candles are lit to start the ceremony. often, but not always, the cardinal directions are greeted by kneeling and facing each direction in turn (and in a counterclockwise motion) while the ritual officiant opens the chaj and greets all the directions before starting the calendar round. the ritual officiant greets the creators, the mountain beings, and the protector of the day. then the recitation of the calendar round commences, with the naming and greeting of the thirteen permutations of each of the twenty days in the tachb’al amaq’ tetz ixil (ixil ritual calendar). at the recitation of each of the twenty days, offerings are made of sesame seed, incense grains, candles made of wax and tallow, liquor, and other gifts for the day-beings, mountain-beings, and ancestors to partake in. at specific times, the ancestors, as well as important mountains and other topographical features, are named, greeted, and addressed. all the beings invoked in a chaj are persons or person-like; they are invited to be present (or acknowledged to already be present) and invited into dialogue. the ritual officiants dialogue with the fire, which is at once its own being and a vehicle for the other beings to speak through. b’aal vatz tiixh often wave their hands at the fire, or snap their fingers over it in a circular maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 44 motion, imploring the fire to speak through its flames and its changes throughout the unfolding of the chaj: flames rising and spiraling; flames gradually extinguishing; fire emitting smoke— white, grey, or black; materials exploding into sparks and crackling; embers and flames changing colors and manifesting forms; fire melting wax and charring offerings in ways that are discernible to experienced b’aal vatz tiixh. they are attentive to the signs in the flames, the smoke, the burnt offerings, and changes in the surrounding environment (for example, an insect flying into the flame, a dog’s approach, changes in the clouds or the weather, etc.). a chaj ends when the fire extinguishes of its own accord. often, a b’aal vatz tiixh stays with the fire, keeping vigil until all the embers die down. in this particular chaj, many ritual officiants were present and supported each other. at the end of the ceremony, we were invited to pass the charred maize seeds we had gathered earlier over the dying embers. the aromatic smoke enveloped my open hand upon which were the five or six grains of maize; i moved my hand in a counterclockwise circular motion over the smoke, careful that the grains not fall on the ashes and embers left by the fire. afterwards, with a few grains of charred maize enclosed in a fist, pap xhas explained to me that these seeds—burnt by the army, but consecrated in the chaj—represented the ixil knowledge that survived the war and centuries of colonial violence. what once could not fit in the palm of one’s hand was now reduced to a few charred grains. but even if just one seed remained, pap xhas explained, it was enough to start, again. though i was moved by the chaj and all i was learning and honored to experience, i could not help but ask myself (i dared not express my doubts then): how does one regenerate the world from just a few seeds? what was before cannot return; even if it could, how would it stand up to new dangers? i do not have answers to these questions that still haunt me. but perhaps the point is not to regenerate what was once before, but to experiment, to respond, to retry, again and again, even if one seed is all that is left. after all, this is how the world was made in the first place. accessing kab’awil, embodying kamawil the first experiments. through an experimental process of trial and error, a council of creatorbeings—tz’aqol, bitol; alom k’ajolom; and tepew q’ukumatz—made humans. the first were fashioned from mud, but were not firm enough and dissolved. the second were made of wood, transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 45 but these humans were ungrateful towards their creators and abusive to the other beings on earth. in other words, they not only ignored the creators, they also objectified the world. as a consequence, all the animals, trees, mountains, household objects, and even their homes and hearth stones hurled themselves at the wooden humans until they were destroyed. the council of creators, undeterred, tried again, this time with maize. with help from the animals, the materia prima was sourced from a single seed of white maize ensconced under an immense rock in a mountain in the eastern quadrant of the world. a rain-being sent a lightening bolt to cleave the monolith, exposing the maize, but also charring it. it is from contact with fire that the other three colors of maize—yellow, black, and red—emerged. ixmucané ground the corn nine times; she mixed it with water and kneaded it into the dough from which tz’aqol bitol; alom, k’ajolom; and tepew q’ukumatz created the first four humans, our ancestors.11 in this narration of our human beginnings, there are pairings of things seemingly in opposition, but related to each other, and couplings of seemingly distinct entities which are, nonetheless, part of a complex unitary being. for example, the creation of humans is paired with the destruction of the eastern mountain where the primordial maize seed was hidden. the grandmother, whose name, ixmukane, means tomb (sam colop, 22), grinds the primordial corn for human life to emerge; grandmother tomb grinds it nine times, suggesting nine months of gestation (sam colop, 129). here there is an inextricable relationality between life and death that is not denied, but acknowledged, narrated, and performed. similarly, in the popol wuj, the creator beings’ names are presented in “couplets,” an example of “association parallelism” that is common in mayan languages (sparks and romero, 13). strategic juxtapositions of things that exist in associative and agentive relationship to each other (15) underscore the relational, rather than the essence of any one thing. so we have tz’aqol bitol (the creator of raw material as well as the one who builds from that material); alom, k’ajolom (the one who impregnates and the one who conceives); and tepew q’ukumatz (majestic plumed serpent, the relationality between terrestrial and celestial spheres) (sam colop, 20-22). this juxtaposition of things that might seem opposed is represented by the mayan terms kamawil (living object) and kab’awil (double gaze). these are at the core of an ontological relationality based on the enactment of a simultaneous recognition of two things: of the animacy and agency of matter in a living world and of the personhood of humans and non-human others who are part of this living material world. in many mayan languages, including ixil and k’iche’ maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 46 (in addition to guatemalan spanish), kamawil refers to what are called, in english, precolumbian objects or archeological artifacts, and thought of, within a non-mayan context, as inanimate things. but in mayan contexts, when kamawil are found in the ground, often while planting, or on other occasions, they are kept by ritual specialists as objects of power and invoked as embodiments of the old gods (dioses viejos) (pap xhasinib’, personal communication).12 colonial era and some contemporary commentators report that kamawil simply means “idolitos,” little idols, (mondloch). but as mondloch indicates, kamawil is a derivation of the word “k’ab’awil” (177), which sergio romero describes this way: “k’abawil is a pre-christian [k’iche’] noun referring to divine essences such as deities, ritual objects, caves, and so on” (629). kab’awil has a well-established contemporary usage as well. josé roberto morales sic, after daniel matul, explains that kab’awil is the basis of a theory of knowledge that allows us to “understand and value” the “simultaneously multiple and unitary context which we inhabit” (250).13 it is, according to morales sic, the “double gaze, the long view, the near view, the gaze back, and the gaze forward” (250).14 in her indigenous cosmolectics: kab’awil and the making of maya and zapotec literatures, gloria chacón offers a thorough intellectual history of the term, from its precolonial origins to present day deployments by maya intellectuals: [k]ab’awil’s transformation from its glyphic etchings in stone and its painted replicas in codices to its present significance, suggests a relationship with the cosmos that goes back in time to the pre-classic era and a resistance to the experience of coloniality in mesoamerica. in its late twentieth and twenty-first century deployment, kab’awil straddles spiritual practice, politics, gender, aesthetics, philosophy, and a social experience. chacón describes kab’awil15 as “a vision that duplicates,” countering the binary logic and teleological dialectics of western philosophy while extending a non-binary theory rooted in a mesoamerican genealogy of knowledge/being that she and other maya scholars are dedicated to articulating. chacón notes that kab’awil presents a challenge to ontological/epistemological frameworks of modernity and coloniality that predate feminist, deconstructionist, and postcolonial critiques. after chacón, arturo arias associates the concept with k’ot, the bicephalous bird in many maya oral traditions (including the ixil) that has “‘one head looking at the sky and the other at the earth’” (117). transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 47 though further research is required on the connection between the terms kamawil and kab’awil, i speculate that kab’awil, as double gaze, conflated with kamawil, as animate, agentive object, suggests an ontological status for matter (at least some matter) quite distinct from what freya mathews (for love of matter) described as the “derealization” of matter under “european epistemological colonialism” (175). in this ontological and epistemological condition, matter is “perceived merely as the inert backdrop to our meaning-making” (reinhabiting reality, 12), while “[o]ther-than-human subjects”—whether organic or inorganic—are silenced (for love of matter, 176). if one of the violences of coloniality is this derealization of all matter, then kamawil, as living object, and kab’awil, as double gaze, are both at the core of an ontological relationality based on the recognition of the animacy of the world and the personhood of humans and others. in generative juxtaposition, kamawil/kab’awil, especially when enacted in performance, overturn the three ontological tenets associated with genocidal coloniality: that some persons are things, that matter is inert, and that some humans are autonomous of an ecological matrix. trans-temporal experiments. with every performative gesture, no matter how small, in which the agency and animacy of the material world is recognized, the charred seeds of xoloche’ are activated. life is breathed into them, and this is a way to start again, over and over, keeping the world alive. i witnessed one of these small gestures during my engagement in a performative theater workshop conducted by mexican artist violeta luna in nab’aa’ in may of 2011. performative theater, in the manner presented that may, is a practice outside of the ‘traditional’ ones discussed above. yet kamawil and kab’awil manifested—briefly and unexpectedly—to reveal the potential of experimentation to elicit of ways of being and knowing that persist despite attempts to overturn them. performing kamawil. mexican performative theater-maker, violeta luna, came to nab’aa’ via my invitation and that of pap xhas matom.16 she presented nk 603: action for performer & ecorn (which will be discussed below); luna also offered a workshop on performative theater in a bee-keeping cooperative’s large tin-roofed meeting space. over the course of three days (with maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 48 one rehearsal day), the workshop was attended by approximately fifty participants, most of whom were ixil and k’iche’ youth. in the workshop, luna structured situations for participants to develop their own movement vocabularies and narrative structures by way of experience, observation, improvisation, dialogue, and experimentation. on the second day, luna organized participants into dyads of active and passive partners. the active participant in the dyad consensually manipulated the body of the passive one in order to make a human sculpture, using props—everyday object such as ears of corn, ceramic bowls, censors, grinding stones, etcetera— to set in the gesture. luna invited participants to create a museum full of statues, or a “mayan temple.” after the active members of the dyad finished creating the statues, they walked around the room to see what others had created; later, the roles were reversed. petrona tzunux chivalan, a young k’iche’ secondary school student, and her performance partner, an ixil student named vez,17 chose to work with the following objects: dry corn husks fashioned into a skirt, peacock feathers, and a basket containing dry ears of corn in each of the four directional colors: black, white, yellow, and red. vez dressed petrona with the corn husk skirt and peacock feathers, and positioned her kneeling down on a petate (straw mat), with back straight, though inclined slightly forward at an angle. he placed the basket of maize in her hands and positioned her arms as if offering or presenting the basket of corn. violeta asked participants to hold the gestures for a few minutes, long enough for all who were not embodying sculptures to visit the “temple” or “museum” of statues, which varied greatly in the use of fig. 4 petrona tzunux chivalan. photo by violeta luna, 2011. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 49 objects and gestures. suddenly, not completing the time allotted for this part of the exercise, petrona giggled—collapsing out of her form. she apologized, and explained that she needed to “become a girl again,” adding that she “felt shame because she felt so much pride.”18 petrona’s statement, which could easily be attributed to adolescent timidity, is, i contend, more than that. it is suggestive of two mayan concepts related to the foregoing discussion: kamawil (living object) and kab’awil (double gaze), terms at the core of an ontological relationality based on the recognition of the animacy of the world and the personhood of humans and others. apparently, petrona was simply embodying a statue, but this was not a a mere object, or inert matter. she was embodying a kamawil: an instance of living matter, and also a divine entity entered into relationally through our gestures toward them, through the stories we tell, and through our experimentations to embody them and know them through performance. in petrona’s case, this kamawil was “la diosa del maíz” and became the basis for the performance her group developed and presented during the course of the workshop. as i suggested earlier, this exercise might seem experimental in terms of quotidian practice (not only in nab’aa’, but almost anywhere outside of the life of a practicing performing artist); yet, it resonates with a long-standing practice in mayan performance. as bassie-sweet noted about classic maya ritual performance, humans “assumed the traits and power of the deity or were temporarily transformed into the deity” (2) by the wearing of objects associated with divinity and the use of embodied practices. furthermore, bassie-sweet suggests that the category human/divine was fluid due to the performance practices by which ontological categories were transcended. and as the archaeological record and contemporary practices show, the categories animal/human, object/anthropos, and element/person are also fluid; through performance, a human being becomes any one of these, or at least steps out of their selves to consider the reality of another. this, in itself, is a pluriversal practice that pushes against the imposed universalities of the west and its rigid divides between seemingly antipodal things that are, in a relational ontology, inextricable connected. in the popol wuj, the divine being associated with maize is hun-hunahpu (taube, 175), father of the hero twins, and represented as male. in petrona and her group’s reworking of the deity for the play she and her group developed in the workshop, maize—as deity, as human, and as plant—takes on a feminine form. but this is not an arbitrary reassignation; this fluidity across ontological categories has precedents in mayan languages, oral, and written traditions, including maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 50 the popol wuj, and in the daily performances of living. bassie-sweet notes that what archeologists and epigraphers call “mayan corn god” (also “god e”), as depicted in codices and the archaeological record from the classic period, is male. he is represented, however, wearing a diamond-patterned skirt associated with female lunar deities. bassie-sweet also notes that in the popol wuj, the first human lineage heads are referred to as “mother-father” and that in many present-day maya communities primordial ancestors and some ritual specialists are also referred to as “mother-father” (2). this is the case in ixil, with the word mamkuk’uy meaning “primordial grandmother-grandfather” (firmino castillo, maxho’l, et al., 19). and it is this putting together of disparate things, making new things from them, taking these apart, and making yet other things, that is an experimentation in world-making based on the double vision of kab’awil. this simultaneous holding together of seeming disparate things, like a couplet of apparently distinct ontological states, was present in violeta luna’s workshop when petrona embodied a kamawil of the maize goddess, sparking in her a simultaneous feeling of pride and shame, and i would venture, of being human and being divine, being maize and being kamawil. what brought this on was her engagement in embodied experimental practice that ruptures the colonial quotidian to open a space for accessing a relationality rooted in ways of being that are not precolonial, but decolonial and even anticolonial, and always and already present and available. experimentation, as much as tradition, is a way to remember, create, and embody these relational states that can bring forth other possible worlds. within the ontology of the kab’awil, this simultaneity is not contradictory nor are these states—divine, maize, human, kamawil—necessarily distinct. indeed, in ixil, k’iche’ and other mayan ontologies, these categories are not so separate. as discussed earlier, humans and maize share an ontological intimacy expressed in the popol wuj, in the oral tradition, and, most importantly, in ordinary and extraordinary (i.e., experimental) praxis. “la diosa del maíz” intuited the kab’awil nature of maize and the gamut of beings it is in paradoxical association and opposition with, according to mayan narratives and, as will be discussed below, in its plant biology. the very biotic cycle of maize shares in the gender fluidity performed by “la diosa del maíz;” it also depends on the enactment of interspecies relational intimacy. corn is a selfpollinating plant, with both “male” (inseminating) and “female” (inseminatable) parts on the same plant which must come into contact for pollination. in ixil planting practices, this happens transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 51 most efficiently by human intervention. during maize’s maturation, a system of red root-like appendages develop at the base of its stalk, reaching into the ground. as my husband’s uncle, pap cul (personal communication) explained, this is maize’s vaginal opening. we must help maize reproduce by sprinkling its own pollen, the semen, onto the sticky fluid found there. humans, who are made of maize, are essential to the maize’s reproductive cycle. in turn, maize is central to ours, for without sustenance, there is no life. finally, as much as maize embodies life, it also carries within both its biotic and myth cycles, death and regeneration. the popol wuj tells how hun-hunahpu is vanquished by the lords of the underworld, who hang his decapitated head on a gourd tree. the decapitated head spits into the palm of xkik’, one of the daughters of the underworld lords, thereby engendering the hero twins, hun-ajpu and ix-b’alam kiej. they, in turn, vanquish the lords of the underworld through a performance in which they kill each other, only to be reborn again and again. the lords demand that this be done to them, too. the twins acquiesce to the demands, but they fail to resuscitate the lords. like the hero twins, maize must also pass through cycles of death to engender life. part of its growing cycle entails an important human intervention: the turning down of the green ears of corn when it is at the ripest point, causing the corn to dry on the stalk prior to harvesting. this is a sort of decapitation of the plant to ensure human wellbeing (otherwise, the ears of corn open, remain tender, and are eaten by birds) (tohil fidel valey brito, personal communication). along similar lines, after harvest, the remaining corn plant is sacrificed, destroyed and burned to fertilize the soil with its ashes prior to the planting of a new field of corn. so, in maize, too, there is an oscillation between death, life, and regeneration. in what follows, we will see how violeta luna’s performance of nk 603: action for performer & maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 52 e-maíz performs this kab’awil quality of maize while addressing new challenges faced by both humans and our plant relatives. nk 603: performing kab’awil. on the 28th of may, 2011, in nab’aa’s municipal meeting hall, violeta luna performed her nk 603: action for performer & e-maíz. this performative theater work is named after nk-603, a genetically modified maize strain developed by the monsanto corporation to be resistant to the glyphosate-based herbicide, roundup. this herbicide has been found to be a carcinogen, while the introduction of genetically modified maize and other seeds has caused disastrous ecological and economic consequences, especially for subsistence farmers in nab’aa’, all over mesoamerica, and the world. luna performed this work before an audience of close to five-hundred townspeople, most of whom were maize farmers and their families.19 her body painted dark purple is black maize she is dressed in a husk skirt, and at the start of the performance, she is both maize and woman and the interdependence between them. on her bare back is painted a resplendent maize stalk, and over her breasts white maize seeds are affixed over her purple flesh. some young men in the audience whistle at the semi-nude luna. she silences them with a menacing glare. despite some audience performances of toxic masculinity, with her hat, rebozo, and bowl of seeds, she inspires awe, and the audience is quiet, even reverent for the rest of the performance. she moves with the bowl of seeds in her hands; her fig. 5 violeta luna performing nk603 in nab'aa. photo by herbert reyes. 2011. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 53 gestures evoke prayer, planting, and tichiil, vitality. at this point in the performance, her presence and movements suggest maize’s growing cycle and its relationality with humans. as the performance progresses, a new kind of human-maize relationality erupts. this is foreshadowed by audiovisual projections which signal geopolitical interventions, such as the north american free trade agreement, and petri dishes, microscopic views, and other imagery reminiscent of biotech engineering. the projections are on luna’s maize body and in the space around her, suggesting that the effects of these geopolitical and necro/biopolitical forces extend beyond the boundaries of her skin, reaching also beyond the edges of the stage, touching the members of the audience. clearly, another, more dangerous relationality, is afoot. a table is set up with metal instruments that are ambiguous, a cross between torture and medicine. luna as maize/woman gags her own mouth with her long black braids. a man in a lab coat approaches. this is usually a member of the community where the performance takes place; in the nab’aa’ performance, it is pedro velasco of teatro tichiil. she puts on a metal-spiked fig. 6 violeta luna in nk603 in nab'aa'. photo by herbert reyes, 2011. maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 54 fig. 7 violeta luna and pedro velasco in nk603 in naa’baa’. photo by herbert reyes, 2011. fig. 8 violeta luna performing nk603 in nab’aa’. photo by herbert reyes, 2011. corset; he fastens and tightens it around her torso with heavy silver duct tape, contorting her waist into an impossibly small circumference. she adjusts a metal dental dam clamp onto her face, distorting her mouth into gruesome form. then there is a syringe with red liquid, which she teases the audience with: will she inject it in her eye, her cheek, elsewhere? she jabs the hypodermic needle into her arm, releasing the unknown red liquid into her flesh, looking severely at the audience. one feels indicted. it is difficult to watch luna as maize doing these things to herself, aided by the scientist whose face is familiar. this is not a facile us/them indictment. we are all complicit in this violence. at this point in the performance i look around to see audience reactions. i think i see a grandmother weeping; maybe i am weeping. the children look frightened. i am worried that this transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 55 performance will provoke a scandal, with the nudity, the violence, and a theatricality not common in nab’aa’. suddenly, there is a transition signaled, again, by audiovisual elements, with the soundscape growing in intensity. imagery that evokes the zapatista movement (ezln) provokes maize/woman to remove the bindings from her body. the same man-in-lab coat/community member now helps luna cut the tape off her torso, but this looks difficult and dangerous; the huge metal scissor could easily slip and cut into maize/woman’s flesh. but it does not. the tape corset is removed; we see its underside where the resplendent maze that was painted on her back is now imprinted on the corset. what did biotech take from maize/woman? remnants of the resplendent corn are still on her back, but it is smeared, distorted. luna releases her braids and ties a red bandana around her face, in the same manner that ezln members protect their figs. 9 & 10 violeta luna performing nk603 in nab’aa’. photograph by herbert reyes, 2011. identities. the performance ends with maize/woman brandishing a machete, gesturing to the resistance of indigenous mesoamerica against new forms of violence. there is more to say about luna’s work in nab’aa’ and the performance of nk603 before an audience of war survivors, their children, and their children’s children. but it must wait for another telling. for now, i want to return to the thread that connects petrona’s embodiment of a kamawil, and its sparking of kab’awil and luna’s embodiment of kab’awil as maize/woman. both were trans-temporal responses to current conditions through embodied enactments of maya epistemological/ontological resistance. by retelling the popol wuj on their terms—with a female maize deity rather than male— petrona’s performance responded to the erasure of mayan historical narratives by colonial and neocolonial state discourse in national schools that obviate these histories and present maya and other indigenous peoples in the past tense, only. in luna’s maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 56 performance of nk603, maize is human, and human is maize; both are agentive in the face of technoscientific and necro/biopolitical eruptions in our shared natural and fig. 11 petrona tzunux chivalan offering candles in paxil cave, associated with the mountain where the first maize emerged. photograph by herbert reyes, 2011. political histories. the performing into being of a kab’awil/kamawil ontology of relationality between humans and maize within an agentive material context represents a re-realization of matter and an expanded sense of personhood—both human and other than human—that has the potential to contest the three tenets of genocidal coloniality. conclusion to conclude, i want us to return now to ma lach and pap lu’s bones and the stories performed in relation to them. it is their bones that led me to the foregoing reflection on the relationalities humans have with each other, with other organic beings, and with matter in general. those bones led me to ask what these relationalities have to do with surviving genocidal coloniality. those bones return to the earth and become, as pap xhasinib’ reminded me at his father’s funeral, the veins, flesh, and bones of a living, breathing earth. as such, i consider these bones, which are now reinterred in nab’aa’s municipal cemetery, as kamawil, “idolitos,” that is, objects of power, granting, perhaps that “vision that duplicates” (chacón n.d.), that is, allows for increasing complexity. ma lach and pap lu’s bones are the traces of persons who lived, who had names and engendered children. but they are also forensic objects that establish the cold facts of genocide. at the same time, around ma lach’s bones took place a ritual of collective mourning—both pertransmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 57 sonal and impersonal—for many at the funeral, including her son, hardly got the chance to know her in life. nonetheless, the bones stand in for the relationships she had, and may have had, had she lived her life in full. as pap xhasinab's libation, and the concept of kab’awil, suggests, these relationships include humans, but also others. he compared bones, flesh, and blood with minerals, earth, and rivers. though a seemingly simple act, it performatively theorized the relational ontology that constitutes the ixil world, created through a web that entangles persons, but also other kinds of bodies and things. the itiixhil tiichajil that animates flesh and bone to make persons exists in humans and other animals, but also in the surrounding mountains, rivers, and forests of the ixil world. petrona and luna’s performances, nan xhiv’s name exchange with tzuk, pap xhasinib’s libation to the earth/body, and the xoloche massacre survivors’ dialogue with fire to heal from the genocidal fires of three decades before, are each, in their own way, performances of kab’awil. this ontological insistence, through small quotidian acts, collective ritual, and staged experiments in performance, is a way of accessing kab’awil through kamawil. that is, it is a way of accessing a double-vision and even pluriversal vision via living-matter in resistance to genocidal coloniality’s construal of all matter as inert and (some) persons as bodies only to be used and disposed of as objects. this underscores the ontological workings of what gerald vizenor termed survivance, meaning “more than survival, more than endurance or mere response” (15). it is more than mere existence, but what precisely does survivance entail? the foregoing reflection suggests that survivance is a continuous and insistent enactment of indigenous worlds through all means—from the small performances of daily existence to experimental aesthetic overtures, to more direct resistance when necessary and possible. another signature term of vizenor’s is an important part of this ontological insistence and resistance: transmotion. visionary and performative “transmotions” enact, wrote vizenor, “a dialogical circle” of relationality and resistance, and “not a monotheistic, territorial sovereignty” (15-20). this suggests transmotion to be a constantly dynamic and trans-temporal acknowledgment of our inextricable relationality with and in a living, agentive material world. transmotion has the qualities of kab’awil; it is double-headed and double-edged, requiring great care and responsibility in its wielding—like a wild edible plant named tzuk. notes maría regina firmino-castillo “what ma lach’s bones tell us” 58 1 the united nation’s historical clarification commission found that the guatemalan army committed genocide against groups of mayan people under the pretense of counterinsurgency. between 1982 and 1983, an estimated fifteen percent of the ixil nation was killed by the guatemalan army, with sixty percent of ixil towns and hamlets destroyed and sixty percent of the population displaced (comisión para el esclarecimiento histórico). 2 for more on our work, see firmino castillo, maxho’l, et al. (2014) and firmino castillo (2016). 3 no’j is a day in the tachb’al amaq’ tetz ixil (ixil ritual calendar) associated with the woodpecker as well as wisdom and knowledge; thirteen refers to the potentiality of the day no’j. the b'oq'ol, q'ezal tenam oxlaval no’j, as a governing body with authority over local affairs specific to the canton xo'l salch’il, is named for the attributes of the day no’j. 4 translation is mine; original in spanish. pap xhas—who had been a combatant in the ejercito guerrillero de los pobres (egp, guerrilla army of the poor) at the time—did not witness the events first-hand; his summary is compiled from oral histories he collected from massacre survivors. 5 for a complete version of the popol wuj, a colonial era text translated into spanish from the original k’iche’, see the version by luís enrique sam colop. 6 yooxhil is synonymous with tichiil, a gloss of the more formal itiixhil tiichajil, which i mentioned at the start of this article. 7 original in spanish; translation is mine. 8 community in resistance peach blossoms; turanza is the ixil word for peach. 9 in this text, i capitalize tzuk given its treatment in ixil as a proper noun. i also refer to tzuk in the feminine pronoun, following nan xhiv’s practice. 10 original in spanish; translation is mine. 11 the foregoing narrative combines content from the following: luís enrique sam colop’s direct translation of the colonial era popol wuj from k’iche’ into spanish, karen bassie-sweet’s summary of the classic period maya creation narratives culled from the archeological record, and ixil oral tradition. 12 sometimes kamawil are found while looting pre-columbian graves and archaeological sites, and they are sometimes illegally sold to collectors in violation of guatemala governmental decree 26-97 (articles 11 and 24). 13 original in spanish; translation is my own. 14 original in spanish; translation is my own. 15 kab’awil is not italicized here, in the discussion of chacon’s text, following and respecting her convention. 16 violeta luna’s visit was made possible through the auspices of the cooperativa apícola santa maría nebaj (beekeeping cooperative of santa maría nebaj), teatro tichiil of nab’aa’, and other mayan organizations, including fundamaya, escuela normal bilingüe intercultural, and tvmaya. also, felipe brito and pedro velasco, of the cooperativa apícola santa maría nebaj, were extraordinary in their support of this project, having founded their own theater group named teatro tichiil a few years earlier. 17 vez is a pseudonym, as i do not have contact with the young man and therefore did not secure his permission to use his name in this article. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 59 18 petrona’s original statement was in spanish: “siento vergüenza por sentir tanto orgullo.” 19 nk 603 was opened by four short theater works developed by workshop participants mentioned earlier; musical performances by ixil vocalist, evelyn pérez, ixtab ali’ob’: las hijas de ixtab, a “post-industrial” punk-goth ensemble from guatemala city; and a magic show by a local teacher. for more on luna’s residency in guatemala, see diario de centroamérica, may 20, 2011. for more on luna’s nk 603: action for performer & e-corn see: http://www.violetaluna.com/nk603.html, and http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/fr/enc09performances/item/100-09-violeta-luna/100-09-violeta-luna. the work is also described in woynarski (2017). 60 works cited avendaño, lukas. facebook post. www.facebook.com/photo.phpfbid=10206675518758607&set=a1060968696437.11532.1 592541818&type=3&theater. 2015. accessed 8 nov. 2015. ayres, glenn; colby, benjamin; colby, lore; ko’v, xhas. 2001. “el hombre que fue al inframundo porque se preocupó demasiado por la pobreza: texto ixil de nebaj.” tlalocan: xiii. 2001. pp. 267-312. https://revistasfilologicas.unam.mx/tlalocan/index.php/tl/article/viewfile/162/162. accessed 2 jan. 2018. bassie-sweet, karen. “corn deities and the complementary male/female principle.” presented at la tercera mesa redonda de palenque, july, 1999. 2000. pp. 1-19. www.mesoweb. com/features/bassie/corn/media/corn_deities.pdf. accessed 20 dec. 2017. blaser, mario. storytelling globalization from the chaco and beyond. duke university press, 2010. brave heart, m.y.h. “oyate ptayela: rebuilding the lakota nation through addressing historical trauma among lakota parents.”.journal of human behavior and the social environment 2(1/2). 1999. pp. 109-126. https://doi.org/10.1300/j137v02n01_08. accessed 23 dec. 2017. chacón, gloria e. indigenous cosmolectics: kab’awil and the making of maya and zapotec literatures. university of north carolina press, 2018. colectivo memoria histórica. el camino de las palabras de los pueblos. iniciativa para la re construcción y recuperación de la memoria histórica, 2013. comisión para el esclarecimiento histórico. guatemala, memoria del silencio. ciudad de guatemala: oficina de servicios para proyectos de las naciones unidas. 1999. https:// web.archive.org/web/20130506010504/http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/mds/spanish/ toc.html. accessed 19 june. 2011. congreso de la república. ley para la protección del patrimonio cultural de la nación: decreto número 26-97 y sus reformas. ministerio de cultura y deportes dirección general del patrimonio cultural y natural departamento de comunicación social. 2004. cultural survival. “guatemala: counterinsurgency and development pole strategy.” cultu survival quarterly. resettlement and relocation issue, part 1. 12(3). september 1988. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/counterinsur gency-and-development-pole-strategy-guatemala. accessed 13 dec. 2017. docker, john.“are settler-colonies inherently genocidal? re-reading lemkin.” in empire, 61 colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history. edited by a. dirk moses, berghahn books, 2010. duran, eduardo. healing the soul wound: counseling with american indians and other native people, multicultural foundations of psychology and counseling series, book 5, teachers college press, 2006. firmino castillo, maría regina, maxho’l (lalo velasco ceto), et al. uma’l iq’: tiempo y espacio maya’ ixil. cholsamaj, 2014. firmino castillo, maría regina. “dancing the pluriverse: indigenous performance as ontological praxis.” dance research journal, vol. 48, no. 1, 2016, pp. 55–73., doi:10.1017/s0149767715000480. fundación ixil. informe de diagnóstico: descripción de la situación del área ixil a partir de la revisión de documentos y diagnósticos identificados. chajul, guatemala. 2010. http:// limitlesshorizonsixil.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/informe-de-diagnostico-de docu mentos-fundacion-ixil.pdf. accessed 7 may. 2016. lemkin, raphaël. axis rule in occupied europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress. washington dc: carnegie endowment for international peace. 1944. www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/axisrule1944-1.htm. accessed 2 jan. 2018. luna, violeta. nk603: action for performer & e-maíz. performative theater work. concept / performance/ costumes: violeta luna; video concept and collage: roberto gutierrez varea & mickey tachibana; original music: david molina. 2008. manz, beatrice. refugees of a hidden war. the aftermath of counterinsurgency in guatemala. state university of new york press, 1988. mathews, freya. for love of matter: a contemporary panpsychism. suny series in environmental philosophy and ethics. suny press, [2003] 2012. — . reinhabiting reality: towards a recovery of culture. suny series in environmental philosophy and ethics. suny press, 2005. mondloch, james. uwujil kulewal aj chwi miq’ina’. cholsamaj, 2007. morales sic, josé roberto. “religión y espritualidad maya.” in mayanización y vida cotidiana: análisis específicos, volúmen 3, mayanización y vida cotidiana: la ideología multicultur al en la sociedad guatemalteca. edited by aura cumes santiago bastos, flacso guatemala, centro de investigaciones regionales de mesoamérica, centro educativo y cultural maya. cholsamaj, 2007. pp 249-284. (remhi) recuperación de la memoria histórica. guatemala, nunca más. impactos de la violencia (tomo 1). informe remhi. odhag [oficina de derechos humanos del 62 arzobis pado de guatemala], 1998. romero, sergio. “language, catechisms, and mesoamerican lords in highland guatemala: addressing “god” after the spanish conquest.” ethnohistory 62:3, july 2015. pp.623 649. doi 10.1215/00141801-2890273. accessed 2 jan. 2018. sam colop, luís enrique. popol wuj. cholsamaj, 2008. scolieri, paul a. dancing the new world: aztecs, spaniards, and the choreography of con quest. university of texas press, 2013.steinberg, m. k. and taylor, m. “the impact of political turmoil on maize culture and diversity in highland guatemala.” mountain research and development, 22 (4). 2002. pp. 344-351. www.bioone.org/doi/full 10.1659/02764741%282002%29022%5b0344%3atiopto%5d2.0.co%3b2. accessed 12 august. 2014. taube, karl. “the classic maya maize god: a reappraisal.” proceedings of the fifth palenque roundtable, 1983. edited by merle greene robertson and virginia m. fields. the pre columbian art research institute,1985. pp. 171-290. http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/pub lications/rt07/maize.pdf. accessed 25 dec. 2017. taylor, diana. the archive and the repertoire: performing cultural memory in the americas. duke university press, 2003. vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. university of nebraska press, 1998. wilson, richard. maya resurgence in guatemala: q’eqchi’ experience. university of oklahoma press,1995. woynarski, lisa. “ecological health in violeta luna’s nk603: action for performer & e-maíz” in applied theatre: performing health and wellbeing. edited by veronica baxter and katharine e. low. bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 230-233. wynter, sylvia & mckittrick, katherine. “unparalleled catastrophe for our species? or, to give humanness a different future: conversations.” sylvia wynter: on being human as praxis. duke university press, 2014, pp. 9-89. microsoft word low.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 247 diane glancy. the keyboard letters qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm. poetry society of texas, 2018. 74 pp. isbn 978154322804 diane glancy gives her book, the winner of the 2016 catherine case lubbe manuscript prize of the poetry society of texas, the exceptional title the keyboard letters qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm. this innovative collection includes poems, notes, short prose (preface and backmatter are essential to the whole), allusions to paintings, and texts. the sum is a cartographer’s manual to the 21st century. pieces calibrate backroads of texas, their trajectory, with stopover points at the new bedford whaling museum to see exhibits of the pequod (or did melville mean pequot?) and the middle eastern country of jordan. christopher columbus’s ship is a moving point/target. in the acknowledgements, glancy writes about some of her influences: “a visit to the dali museum in st. petersburg, florida. a list of the most important discoveries of the world. a pbs television program on mathematics. a stormy day in north texas. . .” (66). these are very personal to her experience, so the book has a journal-like quality; this is a log of her physical and imaginative explorations. sequences are not exact. mashups of locations, fictional characters, real people, bible verses, inventions—all these contribute temporal axes to the project. repetition of some of these, like rural texas and the invention of moveable type, wend through the sequence. these motifs create subtextual timelines. chronologies collapse in the organic process of this “clump” of writing. glancy describes her process of writing, “sometimes a lot of things come together and congeal in clumps, which become a group of poems” (66). the resulting book is a word-bundle, with layers of denotive directions that lead outward. a guiding theme throughout is the process of metaphor. glancy writes about “a walk on a rural road when i saw a deer head looking from the edge of the woods. for an instant it seemed like a puppet—a cartoon on a child’s program. something unreal. the question came—how can what i see be trusted?” (66). images like that deer suspended in the poems, frozen in place by imagination, and in words. an example is the cover photograph of the book, which is a rusty tine found in the fields of rural texas, transformed by metaphor into a fox’s head: “in the field i find a metal piece / triangular as the head of a fox / but smaller” (“the normal god,” 23). the poet explains it is a “point blade” from a discarded hay-cutter implement. the poem juxtaposes metaphors from this hayfield, where once indigenous people “crossed the prairie and stand there,” still present to the dog who senses them. she concludes with uncertainty, a lost glove. a stray cat killed by a predator— as if they were connected in a plain and unforgiving world. (24) the indeterminacy is the final thought, the inability of the narrator to find facts beyond language whose syntax creates inaccurate connections in a “plain” reality. the poet interrogates, along the way, her writer’s tool, roman alphabet of the english language—what joy harjo calls “the enemy’s language” to emphasize it as an agent of colonization. (harjo’s timbre of protests underlies the book.) the title of the book is a genius move. at each touch the quotidian keyboard under the narrator’s fingers, under all our fingers, generates code strings. the keyboard alphabet is wired directly into language reflexes. denise low review of the keyboard letters 248 left in random order, letters spell chaos. strung together, letters can at best create slippage, a continuous and impermanent etymology. unmoored fragments of writing are the residue of fractured lives for all post-contact inhabitants of north america. moveable type, a metaphor for displacement and an agent of displacement, unhinges sign systems. the second half of the title is unpronounceable, despite its visual familiarity, which forces readers to confront the scrambled chaos of the abstracted alphabet. yet it is, like the dislodged metal point of the haying implement, the tool available to writers. glancy writes about her intention that the book “acknowledges the infinite variety of the combinations of the alphabet that enable our different searches for meaning” (iii). among the seekers of meaning in this book are captain ahab in the novel moby dick and salvador dali, the painter. none of the seekers can avoid the splintered nature of language. synesthesia is a signature technique in the keyboard letters, as one sense suggests another. in the preface, the author writes, “poetry after all is a vehicle after a whale” (iii). “vehicle” deconstructs into a vague mode of mental transport. yet in common usage it is a motorized conveyance for land use. the metaphor “vehicle” suggests the movement of the imagination across oceans and geographies. glancy is, indeed, an inveterate traveler, usually by car. the front windshield is a lens for many of these poems, and her optics shifts the view to a visual panorama. the poem “i-35 from north texas through the flint hills of kansas” exemplifies her skewed perceptions from the driver’s seat. it begins with a comparison of the late winter view as flattened into one sepia hue: “in march the land is tan as hide.” on the journey, she barely avoids an accident, recovers, and continues, distanced by her car’s armor. she concludes the poem: ahead of me now, a thin haze of smoke from range burning. a round sun leans on a hill to the west. to the north, the moon faint as a spot of snow. maybe the outcropping of rock along the embankment is safe. nothing but plainness, and the moving toward survival. (46) “ahead of me now” shows the writer’s directional movement in a timeline, without judgement, stated with an eerie calm after the near-miss collision. the near-likenesses of the metaphors parallel the near-miss of the car wreck. scale in the imagery distorts, as the sun “leans” like a person on a piece of furniture. the roadcuts alongside the car are foregrounded with the sun, despite the vast difference in distances between these physical objects. the moon is far away, a normal perception, but its descriptor “snow” changes a visual image to tactile iciness. throughout the poem, which is a first-person testimony, the truth has slippage, not outright falsehood. truth is “plainness” (who has not said the plains are plain?), and again, as in “the normal god,” glancy uses the term “plain” for reality beyond metaphor-ed words. also “plain” are jumbled combinations like qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm. along with repeated motifs and mixed senses, glancy uses transpositions to create connections. her poem about christopher columbus’s lies about his voyage—“he wrote the versions of his voyage / until he wondered at the truth of multiple possibilities”—is expressed in terms of salvador dali’s painting the discovery of america (48). history is at a distance; the transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 249 italian’s version of that history is at another distance. columbus lies until it is a “habit” and the next lie is “the way a painter far down the road / would paint his landing / with all the clutter he could manage” (50). dali’s third-distant account is even less based on what truly happened. another poem that uses stunning transposition is “he was crucified, placed in a tomb, backed-out,” based on dali’s painting the sacrament of the last supper. this painting alludes to leonardo da vinci’s last supper, but with the crew of moby dick’s pequod seated at the table. glancy’s version is removed from the biblical event by even more multiple degrees of separation. her poem notes, “war coming from different translations” (45). one of my favorite poems, among many, is “a harness for the visible world,” which riffs on a bowl of pistachios on a table: the nuts look like something from the sea, mollusca—a large group of invertebrates—oyster, clam, mussel, snail, slug, squid, octopus, whelk, most of them in shells, having gills, a foot, a mantle. (38) most of the poem appears to be about what the poet sees beyond the table, outside her window, an autumn scene of fall leaves, “minnows in a stream of branches” (38). a bird’s nest is like a northern plains bull boat made with buffalo hide. then the poet’s reflection meanders to a central image—“pistachio shells upside-down on the table / are small, overturned rowboats” (39). the narrator navigates this “interchange,” “while the world drifts again from what it was. resolute / and disappearing” (39). all the images in the poem, and the poet, are undefined and impermanent. the repetition of forms, like the hard shell of a pistachio, occurs in natural forms across environments. yet all physical structures dissolve in time. this is a book to read, and reread, as an ars poetica. underlying the european, middle eastern, and north american cultural references is an understanding of the unadorned facts of what survives in this apocalyptic, for native peoples, existence. in these days of instantaneous satellite maps, nothing remains remote, not even glancy’s setting of the north american grasslands. the maps, however current, cannot keep up with the incomprehensible reality of the land in time. in this etch-a-sketch mapping, nothing remains for long. glancy writes of this in “the beginnings of disintegrated, a short poem of four lines: send help i am here in these googled doors one story starts another disappears. (21) denise low, baker university microsoft word gates.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 212 angela hovak johnston, editor. reawakening our ancestors’ lines: revitalizing inuit traditional tattooing. inhabit media, 2017, 70 pp. isbn: 978-1-77227-169-0 our libraries and book stores are well stocked with publications about the sociology, anthropology, archaeology and history of tattooing around the world. however, the one reviewed here is quite unique. it is the result of an eight year-long personal project by inuit artist angela hovak johnston to revive the tattooing tradition of inuit women in nunavut, canada. this traditional art had almost disappeared after it was banned by missionaries and residential schools, and it seemed even more threatened when the last inuit woman to carry such body prints died in 2005. this was the trigger for this project, which lead johnson and her acolytes to work together in the tattoo revitalization project: marjorie tungwenuk tahbone, a traditional inupiaq tattoo artist from alaska who taught johnston the hand poking and hand stitching tattooing techniques; denis nowoselski, a contemporary tattoo artist from yellowknife; cora de vos, an inuk photographer from alberta; and elder alice hitkoyak ayalik from nunavut. the anthropologist and archaeologist in me regrets that the author did not wish to use traditional materials to revive this ancestral art, preferring metal, cotton and ink to bone, sinew, oil and soot. however, the goal was not to replicate this art in all its details, but rather to revive an old technique and resurrect, by the same token, a form of expression almost gone. traditionally, these tattoos were a rite of passage to puberty, indicating that a woman was ready to endure pain, give birth, and take care of her husband and children. as catherine niptanatiak, one of the participants in the project, points out, the tattoos also served as a spiritual protection against the forces of nature (20). for others still, they were simply made to look beautiful. this book presents a portrait of about thirty women of all ages (from thirteen to seventy-three years old) from the village of kugluktuk, nunavut, who agreed to be tattooed by tahbone and johnston in 2016. it is their stories that are told through "the personal journeys of the modern inuit women who inherited the right to be tattooed for strength, beauty, and existence, and to reclaim our history" (4). some of these women also learned how to use this traditional art during the project, contributing to its revitalization and perpetuation. a majority of the women chose to receive modest tattoos with simple, yet elegant designs, which are worn with obvious pride: "i can’t explain the feeling of pride i have for my facial tattoos" (24), says colleen nivingalok, another participant. it is this sense of pride, in addition to the smiles and the joy in the women’s eyes, that de vos managed to capture in her magnificent photos, along with female solidarity. the women in this book all look amazingly beautiful, proud and strong. some photos also show tears and suffering, and some testimonials are quite moving. for example, april hakpitok pigalak talks about an elder who once came to tell stories to a group of young children, but when asked to talk about an old tradition, she refused and remained silent, because she had always been told to no longer practice it (18). many participants emphasize the importance of reconnecting with their culture and ancestors, of passing on their knowledge and traditions to their children and grandchildren. this is probably the reason why so many of the designs they chose represent relatives and siblings. some others are abstract or symbolic representations of the natural elements of the landscape where they live or from which they come. janelle angulalik explains that “since i got my tattoo people say i christian gates st-pierre review of reawakening our ancestors’ lines 213 look like my granny and my dad” (34), while jaime dawn kanagana kudlak says that “my aunty emily is the second person so far to get this tattoo. […] since i got this tattoo, i can feel our connection is much stronger” (32). for mary ann kilak niptanatiak westwood, it was important to “continue with some of our traditions and also have what grandmothers had” (42). although i acknowledge that johnston is an artist, not a writer or a scientist, i do believe that one important thing missing from this book is an historical or anthropological introduction to the inuit traditional art of tattooing. it would have provided a useful context to understand the importance of tattooing among ancestral inuit societies. perhaps the author could have sought the help of an academic collaborator in this domain to write that up. moreover, while some stories are powerful and moving, they are frequently too short, mostly taking up three or four paragraphs only. as a reader i wanted to know more about these women. what is their life history? do they come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds? how were they chosen to participate in the project? what do other, non-tattooed, people of their community think about tattooed people? in my view, the most interesting testimonials are the few that are slightly longer (though still only one page long), such as that of wynter kuliktana blais, who talks about her balanced life between the contemporary and the traditional worlds. also, the book is almost entirely focused on the positive aspects of the project, which is legitimate, but one wonders what were the problems, obstacles, frustrations, or surprises that must have occurred while running the project, or during its preparation phase. why did it took eight years to realize, for example? why were such issues completely omitted? was it for fear of possibly ending with a less positive or optimistic message? while this book will be of special interest to most native peoples, i suspect that non-native students, teachers, and academics in the social sciences and the humanities will also find pleasure and interest in reading it, as will the general public since it is simply written, jargon-free, richly illustrated, and affordable. i am also delighted to think that it will bring an unfamiliar aspect of inuit culture to the attention of many readers. however, the latter should pay close attention to the author’s polite call for non-inuit people not to receive or replicate tattoos with traditional inuit designs, so that they will not interfere with this unique and important effort to reappropriate and revitalize an esteemed tradition that was almost lost. christian gates st-pierre, université de montréal microsoft word sullivan.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 264 gloria elizabeth chacón. indigenous cosmolectics: kab’awil and the making of maya and zapotec literatures. university of north carolina press, 2018. 243 pp. isbn: 978-1-46963679-5. https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636795/indigenous-cosmolectics/ the slim size of this volume belies the immense amount of research that went into its creation. gloria e. chacón offers a look at maya and zapotec literature through the lens of kab’awil, an indigenous paradigm that takes into account both the past and the future. in spite of her detailed scholarship, chacón writes clear prose that will enlighten the specialist and student. chacón approaches indigenous literatures from her perspective as an immigrant and academic in the united states with indigenous and campesino roots. she creates her own term to describe this study, cosmolectics, which she describes as “tying together the fundamental role that the cosmos and history, sacred writing and poetry, nature and spirituality as well as glyphs and memory play in articulating maya and zapotec ontologies” (12). chacón bases her cosmolectics on kab’awil, an indigenous concept from the early classical period. the complexity of kab’awil – portrayed variously as a preclassic maya glyph with a smoking mirror, a postclassic god of divination, a god and then devil during catholic conversion, and a double-headed eagle in guatemalan textiles – serves the author well as a way of seeing that is not limited to the binary. borrowing the image in textiles as a god with two faces (16), kab’awil becomes chacón’s metaphor for a way to read contemporary indigenous literature without ignoring the past. by employing kab’awil, she is able to overcome not only temporal limitations but spatial ones, since the concept spans the arbitrary boundaries of nation-states thereby linking indigenous communities. this guiding metaphor also questions the categories of genre and gender. the authors chacón studies blur the lines of the oral and written and criticize sexist practices while acknowledging a debt to their cultures. in spite of the complexity of this premise, chacón writes not to elude the reader but to be understood. she begins each chapter by explaining what she intends to show and ends with a conclusion that reiterates her insights and connects them to the following chapter. throughout the book, the author uses kab’awil as her method as well, reading broadly across geography, time, and genre in order to present a more well-rounded view of indigenous literature. in chapter one, “literacy and power in mesoamerica,” the benefit of kab’awil hindsight demonstrates that literacy did not originate with colonization. in addition to hieroglyphs and an oral tradition, maya and zapotec have a long-standing alphabetic writing tradition. in other words, contemporary authors don’t have to ignore or supersede previous practices but can instead connect to a rich legacy. all the while, the author forces us to rethink how we anthologize and read latin american literature. chapter two, “the formation of the contemporary mesoamerican author,” reads short stories and their authors through the lens of kab’awil. just as she argued in chapter one that the imposition of literacy can be seen as a way to homogenize culture and reduce cultural and linguistic complexities, chacón shows in chapter two how education can be used to assimilate indigenous communities. never willing to flatten human ingenuity, however, she acknowledges that indigenous writers have taken advantage of literary grants and language classes without clare elizabeth sullivan review of kab’awil 265 forsaking the oral tradition or other legacies. that’s because the authors in question don’t necessarily see the past as disconnected from the present. this also informs chacón’s reading of how communal voices supposedly transformed into individual authors, since writing continues to serve both functions. and, she argues, it is their refusal to settle for simplistic categories that makes their writing dynamic: “they vehemently contest the entrenched historical and cultural opposition of tradition versus innovation, written versus oral expression, modern versus premodern. these issues generate significant tensions in their literary productions” (67). chacón proves herself to be a careful reader of literature since she doesn’t simplify or flatten character, plot, or description. in the process, she complicates our understanding of what constitutes indigenous literature. chapter three, “indigenous women, poetry, and the double gaze,” forms the heart of the book. since it’s the longest chapter, chacón has the opportunity to analyze poetry in detail and also to show how these poets are living out kab’awil cosmolectics. according to intersectionality theory, women indigenous poets could be seen as the perfect victims. they have been deprived of educational and economic autonomy while at the same time being asked to carry the burden of preserving a monolithic indigenous image. but the kab’awil perspective turns this victimhood on its head: “symbolically, then, women’s ancestral authority trumps dominant and uninformed claims of the linguistic inferiority of indigenous languages. the double gaze allows them to revisit the past in order to change the present” (75). for example, maya poet enriqueta lunez pérez dares to awaken god in her poem “la jti jbe’ svayel kajvaltik/ depserté a dios.” in contrast to a christian conception which requires the intervention of a male priest, here a female poetic voice bargains with god in words and actions reminiscent of the reciprocity of maya spirituality. writing gives them the power to change the present without ignoring the past. chapter four, “contemporary maya women’s theater,” explores indigenous theatre and performance. just as chapter two debunked the myth of literacy as a fruit of colonialism, chacón shows that performance existed before plays were imported to make converts to christianity. but she is equally concerned with how theatre as a living and spontaneous art form can operate to change harmful conditions. like literacy education, state-sponsored theatre has been a tool to reinforce ideology. but the genre also gives playwrights and performers the freedom to contest stereotypes and develop human potential. of the group fortaleza de la mujer maya (maya women’s strength) or fomma, chacón says: “the ‘double gaze’ activated in the plays allows fomma to engage with city and countryside, land and body, men and women, past and present” (112). while modern nation states often limit indigenous power by attempting to relegate them to the past, the raw spontaneity of theater reveals culture and community in the present without ignoring complications and conflicts. chapter five, “the novel in zapotec and maya lands,” begins by examining the role of the indigenista novel and critiquing its limited way of portraying indigenous people by looking down upon them from the outside. these novelists often had a political agenda but, while they decried exploitation of indigenous people, they left no room for those same people to cross national or temporal boundaries. meanwhile, emerging zapotec and maya novelists become agents of change via writing that refuses to buy into traditional political systems or national agendas. yet, chacón is not unrealistic about what literature can do to achieve its far-reaching goals: “both novels postulate that real autonomy will have to come from indigenous transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 266 communities and not as dictates from political and economic models of either the first or second worlds. and yet, these novels can only point to the absence of alternatives, since autonomy is still in the making” (150). once again, a kab’awil stance allows novelists the creative flexibility to question genres and genders, tradition and innovation in ways that reflect the complexity of their lives. throughout the book, chacón also educates the reader on indigenous languages and literacy. as she points out, indigenous writers are almost always required to be their own translators. but the process of self-translation does not occur in a clear-cut way. some poets learned spanish before their indigenous language; others create simultaneously in two languages. once again, chacón honors the complexities of cultures and of human beings. though she analyzes the production of various maya and zapotec writers in detail, she does not claim that they represent indigenous people or even their own language group. their individuality is also a source of power and creativity. as such, she introduces voices that have gone unnoticed in international letters and even in their own regions. while she recognizes the diversity among languages and even literature written in a given language, she does not have the space to analyze these languages in depth or even to point out the vast difference between languages in a given family, such as valley and isthmus zapotec which are not mutually intelligible (although she mentions such distinctions in a note). still, she translates all the literary selections and quotes into english herself, using her knowledge of the maya yukatek language and zapotec and maya culture to elucidate these selections. in indigenous cosmolectics, chacón displays a wide knowledge of what’s happening in contemporary indigenous literature, but her limited focus on several maya and zapotec authors allows her to examine these texts in detail and depth. i am immensely grateful for her exhaustive research and clear writing on a topic that i have only begun to explore and that should be shared with literary students and scholars on an international level. like kab’awil, the story of this book looks both backward and forward, and ends where it began, questioning how literature and politics at once restrict indigenous writing and allow it to grow. clare elizabeth sullivan, university of louisville microsoft word 648-3378-1-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 142 pretend indian exegesis the pretend indian uncanny valley hypothesis in literature and beyond. trevino l. brings plenty social media avatars of the pretend indian variety disrupt flow, but it’s only a pebble unripppling in a massive confluence. pages or profiles enhanced by indian imagery are bait to attract a group of people to add or like them. it’s the selfie ethnic-wound licked by its victims, used by its predator. ~ we have the academic indian lecturer who is not tied to any indigenous community. a system validates them and meets inclusion requirements of diversity and multiculturalism. would this create an indian if nonindians who bestow indianhood unto them validate them? they are suspect when they have never stated any story at the beginning of their career of indianness. they steer in tribal educational systems only to later find themselves some sense of indian descendancy. ~ we are told to be brave in writing and in telling our stories. is it braver for a settler-colonial operating writer to colonize a native american narrative? to pepper their work with enough suggestion to have its readers conclude its authorship true. to wear an underrepresented people's skin is enticing. i get it: to feast on struggle, to explore imagined roots; to lay the foundational work for academic jobs and publishing opportunities. ~ if i'm to consider myself a native american writer, a pretend indian is taking my potential success, taking trevino l. brings plenty “pretend indian exegesis” 143 away and dismantling opportunities for my peers and future generations. i guess this makes my work a consumable flavor for a pretend-indian-ethnicmunchhausen individual. i'm not offended. i acknowledge tactic, another tendril to colonization. we know the dangers of inviting a settler-colonial agent into the group. we hope they don't steal our stories, we hope better of them, we hope they don't set to default and rip apart communities. we hope they don't prove a disappointment. ~ then the pretend indian’s work is published, then they are hired to a coveted academic position, then there is a movie or made-for-tv-show about their overcoming adversity as a native american surviving in two-worlds. then they zach morris the shit out of their story (see episode “running zach”); then they thunder heart a vision to the stronghold; then they john dunbar a blanket and woman; etc…. so i guess what are the next steps? are they allowed back into the group after their abusive behavior? ~ to honor ancestors is to absolve the vague indian family lineage narrative, vifln. it served, for whatever mental health reason, a family-held origin connection to place. to honor that vague story is not to exploit it, but leave it be. no documented records, adoption, or severed family oral history clouds the vifln. the concerted effort to genocide a people and the continued erasure from intuitions and dialogue, we get that. how does a vifln decolonize and strengthen resistance to the dominant settler-colonial narrative? one could construe the vifln as another tactic for colonization. vifln is a shadow untethered to communities and people. it continues to say the past when indigenous people live now and are futurebound. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 144 honor how the current tribal group identifies itself. if they say descendancy (patrilineal or matrilineal) or blood quantum as part of its identification, this is your language. know who you are related to in the group identified. who are your relations? they make who you are, they are the stories championed in your narrative. if you don’t know your relations, leave them alone. don’t bother them. don’t parasite the experience. vifln is not the language of abundance; it doesn’t instill thrivance for a people. generate your own vifln ceremony to unsettle it from your mind. be critical of your vifln. everyone else is because it’s not just a feeling, it’s deeper and more widespread than that. ~ as shitty as it might sound, there is a part of me that appreciates the pretend indian, pi. they are tricksters who antagonize a hard belief. i have to check my eye roll when they relay their noise. in hearing them i imagine a live choose-your-own-adventure-story unfolding. usually, they start out west with tribal affiliation, but if you press them for more details of the claimed identity, their claim starts to move east and/or becomes more fantastic and prestigious. it's an inverse manifest destiny masticating people's stories for how the pi builds cultural cache. it's a deep seeded white privilege thing to feel underrepresented as a luxury; slumming tragedy and exploring plight. when they say it's not our way to do something, in my mind i think, don't include me in your "our way." i know they feel privileged when i discuss decolonizing settler-colonial institutions with them. this validates them in thinking they are part of the group when really i might be talking about them indirectly. i appreciate the pi as the ultimate assimilated indian. their vague descendancy is magical. i imagine unicorns with the story or those rumored ancestors walked with dinosaurs. trevino l. brings plenty “pretend indian exegesis” 145 i do fear the pi, they can pass for non-natives. in that, they can be deadly. they can use your information to pad their story. it's literate scalping. they collect their bounty. they ingest you entrails and all. rim the skull's eye cavity. they wrap your skin over their face, tongue the inside of your mouth. they cultivate your image. prop you up in bed and slide their body next to yours. wireframe your brown body seated in a landscape of their own invention. i can appreciate that kind of image colonization. ~ the pretend indian does not fear tribal disenrollment. ~ how does the pretend indian decolonize? ~ to say they have indian blood in their family without evidence or actual tribal criteria eligibility, the pretend indian has this story to feel more american than plainwhite. the pretend indian, in all their heart, is transethnic. ~ the pretend indian, in exploring their native roots, emerge from their chrysalis thinking themselves butterflies when they actually are moths. ~ if native americans are 1% in the u.s. population, the pretend indian is the 1% of said 1%. but a 1% based on a story or a feeling. so a 1% imagined. ~ transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 146 the pretend indian is an alt-reality. their operating system is calibrated through a magical pan-indianism experience. a pretend pan-indian; a pan-pretend panindian. there is nothing to stop the pretend indian from grabbing on to other identities. the pretend indian collects other natives on social media to validate their existence. the pretend indian steals native dialogue to better hone their rhetoric. the pretend indian feeds on brains. i cringe when the pretend indian poet drops native words/themes in their work. then say we are all related. no. i don’t think so. you are all on your own. that’s all you. that’s your hot mess. i can’t wait until we are postpretend indian. “it’s not working,” i will tell them, “all of it. jus’ stop.” the pretend indian is a construct of non-natives poorly imagined people. a coffee table book people. ~ p.i.: i heard my great-great-great... grandmother was indian. me: mine was too. now leave me alone. ~ the pretend indian has their identity as a core belief, which generally is difficult to change. i get it. the imagination of a story took root. and when inserted into an urban community, there is general acceptance or at least some tolerance. the pretend indian uses the identity to build themselves into the urban community narrative. this is a bit more difficult to do in a direct indian nation; there are people who will remember you and your family depending on the strength of the community. because i can't pass for white, i'm deadly aware wherever i go to not stand out much, to be cautious in my actions. trevino l. brings plenty “pretend indian exegesis” 147 to be a pretend indian to an individual who might suffer personality disorders must be some sense of relief. to be special among other white people while still benefiting from a racist system, it's like a life "theme" or "flavor." i get it. i could, if my ethics were absent, pass as some other native american theme or flavor. but what would the benefit be? be critical of the vague indian family lineage narrative. as in this case, a memoirist uses that narrative to become an authority to write of an indian relationship without appearing to be a white captivity story. ~ the pretend indian gets a double whammy. they get to enjoy the wonderment, delight and dangers of a narrative from a people who are the subtext of the american dream: genocide. and not really be a part of the said group, only their wet dream of their participation in that group. then discard that not to be bothered with further inquiry into the indian group. then pretend indians rage hard. pretend indian anger at those indians who call them out. is it lateral oppression/violence when it is pretend indian on indian prejudice? is it “divide and conquer” tactic when indians fight among pretend indians? the pretend indian is the kitsch and tchotchkes of the american experience. it feels like sand in one’s underwear when indians hear the pretend indian talk about us. the indians, in their mind, tell the pretend indian, whatever you are saying, that’s not my tribe. that’s all you, creeper. ~ the pretend indian wants all the indian glory without all the indian gory. ~ transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 148 the pretend indian doesn’t correct the mistake when referred to as native american. the pretend indian will go into details about their features that might hint of an imagined indian. the pretend indian secretly wants to kill any indian that questions the pretend indianness. ~ construct the perfect indian name. must have a christian worldview. mammals are cool. reptiles not so much. nature references must be indian poetic; very bland. nothing scientific. no john quark-dust or jane quantum –leap; no john gravitational-lens. maybe jane schrodinger's-cat. maybe. ~ the pretend indian is a formula. a phantom entity in the community, just as real as their story. the pretend indian is a zero multiplied by everything. ~ imagine two pretend indians seated across from one another. is it an identity doppelganger fairytale; mirrored motions and phrases? how do two pretend indians greet each other? would they become feral and claw at each other? or spontaneously combust at any indian utterance? do they just nod at each other knowing they are both pretend indians? ~ what indian accoutrement does the pretend indian pocket? stone, bone, feather, leather, or made in china relics. how pretend intertribal is the pretend indian? do they think collecting indian names is like collecting magic or pokémon cards? collect and trade or sell. ~ to begin with, poetry is a hard sell. very few invest in it unless they are craft practitioners. in an anthology trevino l. brings plenty “pretend indian exegesis” 149 collection, to have the pretend indian’s work next to your work – it cheapens the experience. if i were to explore seemingly cultural themes then to read the pretend indian’s similar work, there is the cultural mockery. ~ can an indian pretend indian? can they racially be of the group and ethnically not, but be a pretend indian indianhobbyists? can they be intertribal, but not of the infatuated ethnic target? does coupling up with a targeted group also lend one full reign of cultural practices of said group; a mutual orgasmic cultural knowledge acquisition. knowing indians don't have the same political power as settler pocs, does this make it easier to pillage indian knowledge after having implanted themselves into the targeted group and then assume the group is milquetoast? taking knowledge, labor, worldview, intellectual and cultural property is a colonial act, but isn't this interpretation of property a colonial attribute too? does the idea of "nothing about us without us" or "stories about us without us is not for us" ("us" being the targeted group) still apply if one has used a consultant for a project? the consultant used as a buffer and validation of the project and the scapegoat if the project is criticized. do accolades for the project get a pass if other indians praise it? does the offended group have any recourse to defend their cultural property if “they” other indians applaud the project? should the offended group stay silent to the deafening praise of the project because if the project is uplift with its creator, it benefits all? ~ did the pretend indian become a us citizen in 1924? the militant pretend indian is scary but mostly confusing. the pretend indian is about wolves. the pretend indian wolf is so sacred. i can’t even. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 150 ~ the pretend indian is the dreamcatcher on the rearview mirror. the pretend indians’ ancestry tall-tale gets so vast, …again. i can’t even. ~ the pretend indian’s drunk indians are the drunkest, most tragic, but proudest indians to shed a single tear when garbage is thrown at them. ~ the pretend indian is the error message in a universe that has error correction compensation code. if you don’t like the pretend indian, this validates their pretend oppression. ~ the pretend indian is a micro-aggression. the accumulative effect compounding on a targeted community until justified outrage strikes. as damaging as the indian mascot issue, the pretend indian causes psychological distress. their actions are a taunt waving white privilege. the pretend indian author gets off on his actions. their conflated fabricated blurbs indicate a pathology hell bent on damaging a people’s spirit to gratify self. the masturbatory nature of what he flaunts as a white male who can yell racism if criticized but ignoring the fact that it is racism that positions him seemingly untouchable. he systematically uses gaslighting tactics every time. it's too easy to digitally manufacture plausible deniability or credibility. ~ ethnicity is just a flavor. anyone can identify as any ethnicity. this is the heart of my pretend indian, pi, series. we see the john smelcers, the rachel dolezals, trevino l. brings plenty “pretend indian exegesis” 151 the andrea smiths, the ward churchills enter targeted communities. they stir any deemed detractors, agitators into their gaslighting web and continue to move forward with their agenda. often positioning themselves in authority to dictate what indians are allowed to do or what a community can achieve. the tactics used are systemic and if challenged the pi falls back on their white fragility to mask perceived persecution. these individuals find there really isn't a border to contain whatever identity they wish to profess their persona. they are okay not to correct someone if they are mistaken as part of the group. these pi’s fluidly move in communities and hide in the complications of indian identity. other indians or other folks with their agenda are quick to point out the plausible tracks for the vagueness of the assumed identity. people were adopted out, people had to hide their race on historical documentation, whatever the muddiness is on any historical record, these are dragged out and propped in the conversation. the pi shines brightest in this fogginess and in-fighting. there is a special kind of shittiness expressed by some pretend indians. usually, if they spend any amount of time with indians, an interior indian seeds itself in the pi and begins to wildly bloom. next thing we see is the pi try on cherokee, lenape, lakota, or etc… bloodlines to aid their personal narrative. they gather information from grandmother internet. they start to incorporate “we” when around other indians. a nation of pretend indians rises. and they delight in the plight-skin of their identity conquest. the pi is a bizarro-world indian. the pi is pleather. the pi is the great gazoo indian popping into one’s life to remind you they are there to shit on everything, dumb-dumb. this is why it’s important i have in my bio some indication of my tribal enrollment; my citizenship to my nation and the sovereignty it represents. not everyone has this significant qualifier. but this might be labeled bullytactic because the pi is triggered and will lash out (white transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 152 fragility). but it’s none of my business if the pi feels usurped by the indian enemy. it’s confusing, i know. ~ ~ the speaker of this piece of writing is lakota who sometimes self-identifies as indian, american indian, native american, and indigenous. they have heard of stories of indian blood in their ancestry going back ten generations, which contributes to their current native roots presupposition. the speaker is an enrolled cardcarrying member of a tribe and a native nation citizen. microsoft word 537-article%20text-3661-1-9-20190106.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 56 untranslatable timescapes in james welch’s fools crow and the deconstruction of settler time doro wiese what happens if alternative worldviews on time and temporality expressed in literature circulate on a global literary market? many scholars like david harvey, frederic jameson, franco moretti, or immanuel wallerstein have argued that, when literary works circulate beyond their culture of origin, culturally specific viewpoints are reduced in favor of western hegemony. as arjun appadurai has pointed out, this analysis comes into being because global transactions are considered to go hand in hand with social and epistemological exclusions (2). others, like jodi byrd, james clifford, anna lowenhaupt tsing have, however, challenged this position by emphasizing the unpredictable outcomes of globalization processes. this article on untranslatable timescapes in james welch’s fools crow enters into the debate to explore the ways in which the novel deconstructs the temporal foundation of euro-western modernity1—“settler time,” as mark rifkin has recently called it. in fools crow—written by world renowned writer james welch, himself of blackfeet and a'aninin origin and part of a literary tradition that has been called the native american renaissance (see lincoln)—pikuni protagonists are guided by dreams, visions, myths, and prophecies that cannot be integrated into a euro-western understanding of time that emerged when the nexus between coloniality, rationality and what has been called modernity was established during the european renaissance in the sixteenth century c.t. (see dunbar-ortiz 32-45; quijano 168-69). dipesh chakrabarty has pointed out in provincializing europe that the globally hegemonic euro-western notion of temporality—itself part and parcel of an assemblage of power aimed to exploit and dominate non-europeans on a global scale— constructs, enlivens, and enacts time as being disenchanted, secular, continuous, empty, homogeneous, and progressive. in the following, the untranslatability of fools crow’s temporal notions will be seen as a marker of cultural difference, indigenous cultural autonomy, and what rifkin has called “temporal sovereignty.” fools crow’s pikuni temporalizations resist settler time and enact temporal notions in which past, present, and future are consistently shaping and shaped by interactions between spiritual, human, and animal entities. the novel thereby harbors a fundamental untranslatability in its heart: its forms of time cannot be integrated, assimilated, or appropriated for the settler-colonial temporalizations of “development, modernization, and doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 57 capitalism” (chakrabarty 71). this is the case because the euro-western notion of time established with and alongside colonial modernity/rationality suggests a linear and forwardfacing progression distinguished, as bruno latour has pointed out, from what is deemed “non-modern”; a “modern” understanding of temporality is of “time that passes as if it were really abolishing the past behind it” (latour 68). in this version of temporality, progress becomes the motor of a moving history that pushes ever onward, a representation that relies on a spatialization of time. this representation is part of what links the coercive, colonial appropriation of land to concepts of historical, cultural, social, political progress, while such a practice is, on the contrary, violent, murderous, even (historically and contemporaneously) genocidal. such notions of time, belonging to euro-western modernity and to capitalism’s attempt to coordinate and synchronize labor, production, and services globally (see negri; galison), cannot conceive of the past remaining or returning, or of enduring orders of time. temporalities that construct time differently are seen as modernity’s excluded, irrational, othered counterpart. when welch integrates pikuni temporalizations into his rendering of blackfeet history, he therefore challenges modern euro-western temporality and its mythical narrative of progress, which is crucial for the all-encompassing social formation called capitalism, too. rifkin points out that, in contrast to euro-western forms of temporalization that emerged with the paradigmatic epistemological shift called modernity, indigenous narratives and sensations of time, such as those depicted in welch’s fools crow, can include “the presence of ancestors,” “memories of prior dispossessions” and their “material legacies,” “knowledges arising from enduring occupancy in a particular homeland, including attunement to animal and climatic periodicities,” “knowledges arising from present or prior forms of mobility,” “generationally reiterated stories as a basis for engaging with people, places, and nonhuman entities,” “the setting of the significance of events within a much longer time-frame,” “ceremonial periodicities,” “influence and force of prophecy,” and a “palpable set of responsibilities to prior generations and future ones” (19). in the following interpretation, i read the untranslatable temporal notions displayed in fools crow—that cannot be integrated into euro-western understandings of time and are therefore unappropriable—to advance insights into the temporal economies and hegemonies of eurowestern knowledge-production. i argue that the readerly encounter with notions that are untranslatable to euro-western frames of being and understanding—instigated by globallycirculating novels like fools crow—can eventually provoke important insights. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 58 untranslatability limns and contours euro-western knowledge, shows its limits, and dethrones it from its claims to being self-evident, naturally-given, and universal, instead of limited in scope and hegemonic. such an encounter with untranslatability has the important effect of relativizing the importance of euro-western knowledge, and of bringing the unique achievements of, for instance, indigenous peoples to the fore. 1. resisting erasure through untranslatability james welch’s fools crow is simultaneously an impressive exercise in revisionist historywriting and an empowering act of decolonialization. set around the mid-19th century in what is nowadays montana in the usa, the novel interweaves different narrative genres with each other to establish a panoramic view on the blackfeet nation’s pre-contact way of life and its endangerment through the onslaught of euro-american settlers and their life-styles. fools crow tells the story of a young blackfeet called white man’s dog (later renamed as fools crow) and his tribe, the lone eaters. elements of the coming-of-age-story are brought together with world-views as established in blackfeet traditions, while the larger narrative frame with its frequent references to historical customs and events qualifies fools crow as a historical novel, too. welch’s novel establishes an exclusively indigenous-centered literary world that asks of euro-western readers to defer their expectations and to embark instead on a narrative journey told through blackfeet eyes. consequently, euro-western readers have to renounce their hegemonic understanding of the world, and are specifically challenged in their apprehension of what it means to be modern. the latter is the case because euro-western modernity, as bruno latour has argued in we have never been modern, relies on a notion of linear and progressive time that allows a distinction from what is deemed non-modern. the timescapes of fools crow dismantle and resist this epistemology, since the novel brings to the fore the idea that linear, progressive time and blackfeet temporalizations do not cancel each other out. while the development of the character fools crow is told in a linear, progressive fashion, the wisdom that he acquires in his coming-of-age and that he integrates into his life concerns ancestral time. as i will show in the following, welch’s literary timescapes in fools crow are decolonizing thought, because they bring forms of time together that are mutually exclusive in the euro-western modern conception of time. in other words: welch’s timescapes constitute a specific untranslatability in his text that helps to limn and contour the limits of euro-western knowledge. since my essay centers heavily on a particular notion of untranslatability, i firstly want to delineate the twist i give to this concept, before i embark on a close-reading of the doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 59 different forms of time and temporalization displayed in welch’s novel. in recent years, untranslatability has become a prominent concept in comparative literature and in translation studies. this is the case because untranslatables—words and concepts that often remain untranslated in other languages like the german “bildung,” or the nuu-chah-nulth “potlatch”—highlight the fragility inherent in sense making. untranslatables make it apparent that translations are risky and difficult since they are threatened by failure, namely to provide (the illusion of) equivalent meanings of linguistic utterances stemming from different cultural contexts. the possible failure and difficulty to make sense reminds listeners or readers of the heterogeneity of languages, textual traditions and practices, cultures, and discourses, and reveals translations to be translations. therefore, untranslatability can bring about important insights into multiple linguistic and textual epistemologies. according to lawrence venuti, the highlighting of the difference interrupts established euro-western hegemonies, and is therefore a preferable practice when translating. untranslatables are remainders of cultural difference that remain unappropriable, but present in target cultures. readers, when confronted with untranslatables, have to accept the untranslatables’ independence of the target culture’s linguistic, textual, and epistemological values. it is the reader’s task to find sense-making approximations to untranslatables, while they are simultaneously confronted with the impossibility of finding a precise equivalent to the untranslatables’ original meaning. time and its textual representation through temporalizations are important concepts for organizing individual, social and economic life. if concepts of time remain untranslatable to another culture, it means that important aspects of the source culture’s organization have remained independent of the target culture and can hint at cultural autonomy. it is of great importance that welch’s novel is situated in a time and a place that is linked to one of the founding narratives of the usa, the frontier narrative, that was forged in the second half of the nineteenth century during the colonialization of the american west. it is paramount to understand that the frontier narrative is a mythscape that bears little resemblance to historical reality. a mythscape is “a discursive realm, constituted by and through temporal and spatial dimensions, in which the myths of the nation are forged, transmitted, reconstructed and negotiated constantly” (bell 75). the american west is such a mythscape, since it constructs, at the crossroads of geographic location and historical time, an invented national and whitened settler persona that supposedly is “restless, inventive, acquisitive, individualistic, egalitarian, democratic” (ridge, “turner” 692, qtd. in moore 9), and whose “manifest destiny” consists in the taking of land whose indigenous inhabitants are transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 60 seen as “savages” whose lives and forms of life have never existed and/or will perish. in this uttermost violent construction, “the frontier is the outer edge of the wave [of settlement], the meeting point between savagery and civilization” (limerick, “frontier” 255, qtd in moore 10). as david l. moore (4-13) has shown, “the frontier” erased the past, present and future of indigenous peoples from its inception, an erasure best captured in the image of the “vanishing indian.” this violent ideological construct denies “the death of millions of tribal people from massacres, diseases, and the loneliness of reservations” (vizenor 4) as well as their resilience and survivance. the violence of settler colonialism is not simply forgotten. rather, a colonial aphasia takes place, which disconnects events and their discursive remembering; a colonial aphasia which generates “an occlusion of knowledge” (stoler, no page). therefore, many native american writers and scholars, including joanne barker (lenape), vine deloria, jr. (yankton sioux) linda hogan (chickasaw), joy harjo (muscogee), stephen graham jones (blackfeet), simon ortiz (acoma pueblo), louis owens (choctaw/cherokee), leslie marmon silko (laguna pueblo), james welch (blackfeet/a’aninin), erika t. wurth (apache/chickasaw/cherokee) advance the circulation of alternative (hi)stories of the conquest and expansion to the american west. they breach against the aphasic rules of the cultural memory of the usa, and enforce a revision of historical events. the removal of indigenous peoples from their land, treaty violations of the us government, violent warfare, transfer of epidemics, the enforced boarding schooling for indian children to break the hold of tribal life—these histories are just some of the events that many native american writers place squarely back on the map of national consciousness by making them central in the stories they tell. in fools crow, welch shows the livability and multiplicity of preand decolonial indigenous ways of life and depicts the resilience and the survivance of the pikuni in the face of settler encroachment, destruction of livelihoods, ecocide, epidemics, and massacres. welch’s novel resists the erasure, captured in the image of the “vanishing indian,” that is inherent in the settler colonial master narrative of discovery and conquest, and recovers the past, present, and future of the blackfeet peoples. therefore, his novel has been lauded as “the most profound act of recovery in american literature” (owens 166). welch recovers a point of view that is independent from hegemonically dominant narratives, including their forms of temporalizations. it runs counter to established hierarchies, and recovers knowledges, realities and epistemologies that have been repressed and denied. in this way welch refutes the master narrative of discovery and conquest that gives the introduction of doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 61 new customs, along with their social, political, and cultural instruments, a sense of inevitable temporal direction. instead, welch frames events by depicting indigenous perceptions, experiences, and interpretations of happenings. furthermore, as christopher nelson has pointed out, welch shows “the multiplicity and uncertainty within a specific pikuni community and individual” (32) when confronted with changes caused by settler encroachment. these changes, whose consequences are depicted in the novel, include infectious diseases like smallpox, for which traditional indigenous medicine knows no cure (indigenous people had never before been exposed to these viruses prior to contact with european settlers). throughout the novel, different stances and directives on how to deal with encroachment are discussed and enacted. some pikuni believe that it is futile to resist, as the white settlers outnumber them; others want to fight them to maintain traditional forms of life. welch is “opting […] to explore ethical values and ethical strategies of natives themselves […] whose themes assert survivance, renewal, hope, egalitarianism, autonomy, and engagement” (rader 2). and while welch does not omit any of the life-threatening characteristics of settler colonialism, he nevertheless ends his novel with the timeless, prophetic image of indigenous children playing and laughing. the novel’s main character, fools crow, watches them during a vision quest at this closing and comes at the very end to the conclusion that “though he was […] burdened with the knowledge of his people, their lives and the lives of their children, he knew they would survive, for they were the chosen ones” (390). 2. visions, myths, and prophetic time before delving into the particular form of futurity that welch offers at the end of his novel fools crow, i want to demonstrate through a close-reading of its fourteenth chapter how the novel’s forms of temporalization remain untranslatable to a hegemonic euro-western understanding of time. in chapter 14, the main protagonist fools crow and his wife red paint are on a getaway from daily life in the lone eaters’ camp. they have retreated into “the backbone” of the world (rocky mountains) to clean the mind and renew the spirit (welch 159). after a hunting excursion, fools crow falls asleep and is visited in his dream by raven, a creature that had earlier on helped him to find his bearings in the world by calling on him in his sleep and sharing secret wisdom with him. in this particular dream, raven approaches him because there is a napikwan (white person) living in the backbone’s forest who is wastefully killing animals, shooting them and then leaving them to rot. raven urges fools transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 62 crow to stop the slaughter by killing the man, since he threatens the existence of fools crow’s animal brothers. while initially afraid of the consequences that could arise for killing a white man, fools crow ultimately agrees with raven’s argument that he has been chosen for the murderous task by sun chief himself, who is, in the pikuni belief system represented in the novel, the creator of the world. at night, raven whispers an insinuating dream into the napikwan’s ear. the next day fools crow executes the plan, but nearly gets himself and red paint killed because he underestimates the wickedness of his adversary. what does this episode tell us about blackfeet ways to understand the world, and how does this understanding challenge euro-western epistemologies? first of all, it needs to be stressed that, by integrating the trickster raven into a dreamlike story, welch refutes notions of linear development and progression. when talking to fools crow, raven frequently points to events that took place a long time ago, his stories span several generations and seem to transport timeless truths. this qualifies raven’s stories as myths. while mythical stories, like other narratives, certainly have a plot, they are often read as transferring timeless transcendent meanings. in the definition of levi-strauss, a myth “always refers to events alleged to have taken place long ago. but what gives the myth an operational value is that the specific pattern described is timeless; it explains the past as well as the future” (205, qtd. in barry 3). the social and individual value of myths resides precisely in their ability to guide understandings of the world, to provide cues for the interpretation of events and phenomena, and to give guidance for the ethical conduct in relation to other beings and the world at large. the timelessness of mythical stories is constituted because myths are, among other things, metanarratives. as metanarratives, myths thus do not belong to an order of time. this quality of myths clashes, however, with euro-western understandings of time emerging with modernity/coloniality that reflect irreversibility, forward movement, and progress. latour argues that temporality encompasses numerous interpretations of the passage of time, especially through the persistence of objects and ideas. in the modern euro-western conception of time, there is, as already mentioned, a complete break from the past (latour 69). when welch integrates traditional myths into his rendering of blackfeet history, he thereby challenges euro-western modern temporality, since it is a time immemorial that informs present decisions and actions. sioux, laguna, and lebanese scholar paula gunn allen reads welch’s novels, including fools crow, as dream/vision rituals that are “structured along the lines of the vision rather than on the chronological lines of mundane or doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 63 organizational life, and the structure of the works holds the major clue to the nature of the novels as primarily tribal documents” (93, qtd in barry 10). furthermore, time is, in welch’s account, not the homogeneous, empty, objective time of euro-western industrialization as diagnosed by walter benjamin (252), nor the world-wide synchronized clock time introduced globally in the nineteenth century to facilitate shipping and global trade (west-pavlov 14/15). time is dynamic and performative, it inheres in processes of becoming and is derived from close observation of natural processes. fools crow, for instance, perceives the passage of time in the following manner: they had been in the mountains for eighteen sleeps, and now the moon was approaching the time of the first frost on the plains. in the mountains, the quakingleaf-trees were already turning a faint yellow. cold maker would soon be stirring in the always winter land. (160) in this description, the approach of the winter, personified by cold maker, is predicted with the help of a moon calendar, and through the perceiving and reading of variable signs like the foliage. furthermore, the existence of a divine cold maker gives a dynamic aspect to a season. a time with a certain quality—winter—can directly interfere in the lives of humans and animals alike. the unpredictability of time maker’s actions influences how time is perceived, namely as performative and interactive, as it is paramount to attune one’s actions to him. this is a time that one inhabits, that is part of the fabric of one’s life, while it also exceeds the human scale. this local, interactive, participatory, performative, embodied and personified time is very different to the “coordinated universal time” of euro-western modernity: the latter “tends to suppress local differences as it draws the entire globe into a single unitary temporal system” that serves capitalism’s global trade (west-pavlov 22). ultimately, the instruments available for representing the “coordinated universal time” exist because they support a smooth workflow on a global scale, while human beings are cogs in a much bigger capitalist production machine. the notion of time displayed in welch’s fools crow is inimical and untranslatable to the rigid, objectified, disembodied clock-time of eurowestern modernity. last, but not least, chapter 14 attests to a strong connectedness between humans, animals, and spiritual beings, which are all part of creation. this depiction is very different from judeo-christian understandings of human beings’ place in creation that have developed since the european renaissance. one of the most striking passages in the judeo-christian transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 64 creation story is the creation mandate that invites the first human beings to fill the earth, and to master it and to rule over everything that is alive: be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (king james bible, genesis i, 28) in green exegesis and theology, richard bauckham argues that a careful exegesis of this passage demonstrates that it could and should be read in the light of the responsibility of human beings towards creation, the role of humanity’s stewardship, ordered by divine will, towards the plentitude of life on this planet. however, contemporary global warming, largescale livestock farming, and the imminent sixth extinction highlight, in contrast to human stewardship, the language of global capitalism’s necropolitical exploitation of life. it would be shortsighted to see religious beliefs alone as responsible for the ecological catastrophe that human beings have brought upon this planet; this is much more the outcome of “the modern ideology of progress […] modern individualism and materialism, industrialization and consumerization, the money economy and globalization—in short the whole network of factors that characterize modernity” (bauckham 19). however, as bauckham also points out, christianity has been complicit in an hierarchical, anthropocentric view on life that evinces domination and that is thoroughly enmeshed in the idea of modern time as irreversible progress. “[i]t remains significant,” he writes, “that much christian thought in the modern period went along with major aspects of these developments in modernity and itself gave them a christian justification” (bauckham 19). this cannot be said about indigenous beliefsystems that have historically been, and continue to be, employed to defend the environment.2 when welch shows the interconnectedness of spiritual, animal, and human actors, he ties them in with long-existent traditions of indigenous thought and belief-systems that sioux and laguna writer and scholar paula gunn allen has described as “a place in creation that is dynamic, creative, and responsive” (83). building up on this observation, it is also striking to notice that fools crow sees the killing of the white hunter as justifiable on the grounds that the latter threatens to extinguish different animal species when he kills them, out of bloodlust and without any need. killing the white hunter means to live in accordance with a divine order, testified by raven and fools crow’s belief that this action is the wish of the divine sun chief. the story by the lone eaters’ council supports the position that fools crow has acted in the right way. after some deliberation, the council agrees that fools crow has done “a brave and good thing, for surely this napikwan was possessed of evil spirits,” and they state, doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 65 “as sun chief honors you, so do your people” (177). in the interpretation of nora barry, the description of the white man as an evil presence, alongside the fact fools crow kills him out of spiritual, not political reasons, attests to the novel’s status as a “survival myth” (3), since “fools crow’s actions are closer to those of a mythic culture hero’s killing of a monster than to a blackfeet warrior’s killing of an enemy” (10). the whole dreamlike quality of the story told in chapter 14 supports this analysis. in general, chapter 14 shows that the shared ecosystem, in welch’s depiction of the pikunis' belief system, is of as much importance as an individual life. its protection is paramount for all species’ survival, since it guarantees ecological equilibrium, maintains biodiversity, and ensures lasting food security, as the lone eaters’ council observes, too. “to most of them it was a good and just act,” welch writes, “for the white man had been killing off all the animals, thus depriving the pikunis of their food and skins” (176). this larger context comprises the spiritual world, personified by the sun chief and the biosphere on which human beings depend as much as plants or animals. ancestors and ancestral knowledge are as much a part of this assemblage as considerations of the future, for raven, as he talks to fools crow, also shares his reminiscences of the dreamer’s grandfather and argues that he needs to think about his unborn child too. raven’s argument places fools crow within a dense network in which past and future actors and actresses take part. when the lone eaters hold council, it is of great importance for everyone to draw conclusions from past events and insights as well. this, however, is very different from hegemonic, anthropocentric and future-oriented understandings of life in the euro-western history of ideas. according to bauckham, the early european humanist movement that instigated the renaissance, influenced by greek and roman philosophical traditions, and the coeval changes in scientific and religious understanding are crucial for the idea that “human dominion becomes an historical task, to be progressively accomplished” (49). historians like thomas kuhn, who researched the transition to modernity in the sciences that took place during the european renaissance, corroborate this position. kuhn describes the copernican revolution as a paradigm shift in scientific practice, in which individual observations suddenly became central, superseding the idea of godly creation whose immensity cannot be adequately understood. bruno latour’s research critiques modern temporality as a construction that wants to abandon the past as much as nature (nature being seen as belonging to the past that humans need to leave behind) (latour 71). reinhart koselleck analyzes how the concept of history as the german epoch transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 66 “neuzeit” [literarily “new time,” i.e. modernity] was coined in the 19th century to signify a specific understanding of time and history, in which time becomes “an agent in its own right” (lim 80): “time is no longer simply the medium in which all histories take place,” he writes. “history no longer occurs in, but through, time” (koselleck 235). this means that by the 19th century, the euro-western idea of time consists of a one-directional line that runs from the past, to the present, into the future. it is a line in which history and nature belong irrevocably to a past that needs to be abandoned. as bliss cua lim has pointed out in translating time, the “socially objectivated” (10) euro-western notion of time cannot be reconciled with temporalities that conceive of duration—that is of being in time, in which remembrances of the past, the lived present and the anticipated future are constantly interchanging with each other. while modern “homogenous time translates noncoinciding temporalities into its own secular code” (12), this translation can be incomplete and has been met with social, political, cultural, and temporal opposition. welch’s insistence on reconstructing, portraying, and fleshing out a pikuni form of time is an example of such a resistance which points to the existence of temporal understandings prior to, during, after and independent of euro-western epistemologies in modernity/coloniality. his employment of timeless, mythical characters like raven, his engagement with blackfeet spiritual understandings about the interconnectedness of all living beings escape empty, homogeneous, progressive time. one must stress, however, that the resistance displayed in welch’s fools crow is not one that antagonizes its readers. as the german translator of fools crow, andrea opitz, has pointed out, the novel sets up a dominant precolonial indigenous space to which eurowestern readers need to adapt by revising preconceived and hegemonic ideas about indigenous peoples (137). the novel can achieve this when euro-western readers are willing to endure epistemologies that are different to their own, of which blackfeet understandings of time constitute just one example. andrea opitz names the book’s specific use of descriptive names for animals, seasons, and characters, specific forms of spatialization, and untranslatable cultural notions that readers themselves might bring to the text. for opitz, who grew up in germany, these are ideas she acquired by reading karl may’s novels about an entirely invented 19th century american west and by watching their film adaptations. by establishing an intradiegetic world solely based on indigenous perceptions, fools crow asks euro-western readers to become foreigners to the depicted space, which cannot be owned or appropriated by them because knowledge about it belongs to those native peoples who have lived there all along. doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 67 3. concluding with a vision of hope before the character fools crow comes to the conclusion that the pikuni will survive, he returns from a vision quest that reveals events in the future of his pikuni nation to him. by good fortune in this vision quest, he stumbles upon the entrance to the land of eternal summer, in which the mythical ancestor of his tribe feather woman lives. on a hide whose paintings come to life when he takes a closer look, she reveals what will become of his people. there and then, he sees how his people lose their land, their customs, their religion, their health, their language, are forced into boarding schools, are put into strange clothes, are coerced to become christians, but nevertheless survive. “as he sat in his hopeless resignation, he heard the sound of children laughing and he recognized the sound he had heard since entering this world” (welch 357). the hide also reveals that the buffalo will vanish. “it was as if the earth had swallowed up the animals,” welch writes. “where once there were rivers of dark blackhorns [buffalos], now there were none” (356). however, the last sentences of the novel render a vision in which the buffalo return: far from the fires of the camps, out on the rain dark prairies, in the swales and washes, on the rolling hills, the rivers of the great animals moved. their backs were dark with rain and the rain gathered and trickled down their shaggy heads. some grazed, some slept. some had begun to molt. their dark horns glistened in the rain as they stood guard over the sleeping calves. the blackhorns had returned and, all around, it was as it should be. (welch 392) this vision concludes the novel on a note of great hope and image of survivance, for here the means of livelihood on which all indigenous nations of north america’s plains and great basin depend have returned, accompanied by an ethical affirmation that this outcome is desirable. the return of the buffalo indicate ways for indigenous traditions and culture to return once the conditions that made traditional customs possible are restored, while the ethical judgment points to the survivance of the pikuni protagonist’s life ethics. it is also noteworthy that welch, by employing the image of the returning buffalo, alludes to a powerful indigenous prophesy by the lakota leader and healer black elk, who said that when the buffalo return the “sacred hoop” will be mended and the indigenous nations will regain strength (neihardt). in the interpretation of paula gunn allen, the sacred hoop represents, in the belief system of plain indians, the harmonious interconnectedness of all things that exist transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 68 in the world and the universe at large. in this vision, the buffalo is much more than a consumable creature; it is a relative to human beings that cannot be owned and has its own proper place in creation that must be respected and cherished. the return of the buffalo in the ultimate vision of welch’s fools crow has therefore a deeper sense than biological restoration of a species that nearly became extinct because of large-scale commercial hunting, which decimated its numbers from an estimated 25-30 million to less than one hundred by the 20th century (see taylor). it is the restoration of a world in which the connections between the sun, the rain, earth, animals, and humans are reestablished; these elements are again in harmony with each other, “as it should be” (welch 392), while it demonstrates that ethical consciousness passing this judgement will endure. it is noteworthy that the ultimate vision in fools crow differs from foresights that the novel’s main protagonist fools crow received during a vision quest when he had seen revelations about the future of his tribe on feather woman’s hide. the leather tapestry did not show a world “as it should be” (welch 392), but rather a world deprived of direction and dignity; however, feather woman teaches fools crow another lesson when he visits her, and this teaching is crucial for the novel’s ending. feather woman has endured harsh punishment for a transgression against divine rules: the supreme powers expelled her from the house of the sun, the moon, and her husband morning star, and separated from her son star boy, who also goes by the name poia. her exile has caused her great grief, and at every new dawn, she begs her husband morning star to take her back. but when the protagonist fools crow asks why she still beseeches morning star to allow her passage across the sky so she can reunite with her son and him, feather woman tells him that, “one day i will rejoin my husband and son. i will return with them to their lodge and we will be happy again—and your people will suffer no more” (352). and while nothing in the story suggests that feather woman has reason to believe she will finally be united with her family, she does not give up hope. it is this hope that keeps her going, a hope that even makes “her eyes bright again, the eyes of a young one” (352). i would like to suggest that the novel’s ending performs this sustaining hope too. for hope brings a radical futurity into being. it is a force to be reckoned with, a power that rallies against all odds, that helps the body and soul to endure, that buoys the spirit and makes way for the impossible to happen. josé esteban muñoz has eloquently described this kind of hope when chronicling the political striving and will of lgbttiq people, a longing and a desire that “allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. the doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 69 here and now is a prison house,” he writes. “we must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there” (muñoz 1). muñoz’s cruising utopia captures the possibilities inherent in hope and the longing for a future that is not yet in the present, which cannot be deduced from the signs of the past and present conditions in which one is trapped. this futurity requires a collective, capable of feeling and thinking beyond existing restrictions, for it to be realized. a certain discontent with the present, a belief that possibilities inherent within the present are not yet exhausted, must exist to propel this collective utopian longing forward. the limitations imposed on people with non-heteronormative sexualities and nonconformist genders can lead to this longing for a different future, for which no blueprint exists. it might also entail the longing for different forms of sociality and economies as well, since neither gender nor sexuality can be separated from socio-economic reality. as joanne barker has pointed out, euro-western ideas about sexuality and gender became hegemonic through imperialism and colonialism and affect indigenous peoples strongly since they require “indigenous peoples to fit within heteronormative archetypes […] culturally and legally vacated” (3). in the case of indigenous peoples, the cultural, political, and economic processes led to a dispossession of their land; the destruction of livelihood, ecocide, epidemics, and massacres effected genocide in the americas. indigenous (and) lgbttiq people, have been the target of colonial forms of oppression and imaginaries “that justify hierarchies of subjectivity, economical and political as well as epistemic orders associated with these subjectivities” (schiwy 272). as an alternative to oppression, a desire for a different organization of personal, social, political, economic life to the current settler colonial and capitalist one are evoked, for whose invention the ideas and traditions of indigenous peoples remain crucial. as kahnawá:ke activist and scholar taiaiake alfred puts it when arguing for the need to recover “indigenous culture, spirituality, and government” (4): in fact, it is one of the strongest themes within native american cultures that the modern colonial state could not only build a framework for coexistence but cure many of its own ills by understanding and respecting traditional native teachings. pre-contact indigenous societies developed regimes of conscience and justice that promoted harmonious coexistence of humans and nature for hundreds of generations. as we move into a post-imperial age, the values central to those traditional cultures are the indigenous contribution to the reconstruction of a just and harmonious world. (6) transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 70 as i have shown, welch establishes a narrative world in his novel fools crow that effectively disrupts the master narrative of discovery and conquest, with its innate assumptions of temporalization best captured in the irreversible progress narrative that underlies contemporary capitalism. by offering alternative visions of the future in which indigenous people are crucial for restoring justice and harmony, he counters the violence of settler times and points towards indigenous principles of persistence and resistance that have been there all along. as i have pointed out elsewhere, disruptive narrative elements in novels of the native american renaissance serve the important function of reminding euro-western readers “of the survivance of american indian nations in general and of their distinct storytelling traditions in particular” (wiese 88). euro-western readers confronted with novels written by indigenous authors, as these traverse the globe through translations and by electronic availability, have to acknowledge their “undeniable presence within what is considered the center and the periphery,” as well as the importance of indigenous knowledge present in society, which testifies to “indigenous persistence, resilience and creativity” (wiese 88). literary discourse is therefore a powerful tool to re-signify indigeneity and to overcome what the anishinaabe writer and scholar gerard vizenor has called “the static reduction of native identities” (142). in textbooks and in popular culture, the depiction of indigenous people as backward and primitive continues, a form of representation that constitutes violence because it prevents the carving out of temporal spaces in which the multi-layerdness of physical, natural, social, historical, and individual time can emerge. in this regard, mark rifkin’s recent research into settler time brings a long-neglected question to the fore: how can indigenous peoples claim temporal sovereignty if common representations construct them as vanishing, and therefore as belonging to the past? how can they claim to be present within historical and contemporary state formations if the cultural hegemony of the modern, nationalist, capitalist narrative denies them contemporaneity and futurity? settler time fiercely excludes traditions and visions that undermine euro-western modernity’s foundation, yet euro-western modernity’s exclusions, inhibitions, and definitions are not allencompassing. indigenous cultural autonomy and resistance has been there all along and makes itself felt in the temporalities shaped, enacted, incorporated, made sensual and constructed in james welch’s novel fools crow. when welch shows indigenous change, continuity, and survivance alongside an ongoing settler colonialism, when he demonstrates that the present cannot be separated from the past, he does more than posit an alternative doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 71 model of time. by employing indigenous peoples’ notions of time and temporalizations, he inserts untranslatable elements into his novel. these untranslatable elements, while being present in the texts, cannot be transposed into euro-western temporal epistemologies that rely on the idea that the present is severed from nature as well as from the past. he thereby demonstrates that euro-western understandings of time are historical, not eternal or naturally-given, that they are possibly globally hegemonic, but not universal and allencompassing. by undermining settler time, welch undermines and resists the very foundations of euro-western modernity, pointing towards an indigenous cultural autonomy and being-in-time that have been there all along. notes 1 i use the term euro-western instead of euro-american to acknowledge that the assemblage called modernity is nowadays, through its nexus with capitalism and (neo-)colonialism, a global force. furthermore, as cherokee scholar daniel heath justice has argued, the term euro-american is “another appropriation by the colonizers of indigenous presence” (xvi) that i would like to avoid, specifically because the novel i deal with takes place in north america, but circulates on other continents, too, through its translations into languages like french and german. 2 the united nation division for social policy and development of indigenous peoples (desa) has pointed out on their website (https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/) that, according to front line defenders, “281 human rights defenders were killed in 25 countries in 2016 […] most of the cases were related to land, indigenous and environmental rights.” because indigenous peoples often live on land that is rich in natural resources, their lives, cultures, and belief systems are threatened by corrupt state and non-state actors alike looking to profit through “land grabbing, natural resource extraction, mega projects and deforestation activities on their land and territories.” https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wpcontent/uploads/sites/19/2016/08/indigenous-human-rights-defenders.pdf (last visit: march 21, 2018). works cited alfred, taiaiake. peace, power, and righteousness: an indigenous manifesto. new york, n.y.: oxford university press, 1999. allen, paula gunn. the sacred hoop: recovering the feminine in american indian traditions. boston, mass.: beacon press, 1986. barker, joanne. critically sovereign. indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. durham and london: duke university press, 2017. barry, nora. "’a myth to be alive’: james welch's fools crow” melus 17(1), 1991/92: 320. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 72 bauckham, richard. living with other creatures: green exegesis and theology. waco, tx.: baylor university press, 2011. bell, duncan s. “mythscapes: memory, mythology, and national identity.” the british journal of sociology 54, 2003: 63-81. benjamin, walter. “theses on the philosophy of history.” in illuminations. edited by hannah arendt, translated by harry zohn, 253-265. new york: schocken books, 1968. byrd, jody a. “(post)colonial plainsongs: toward native literary worldings.” unlearning the language of conquest, edited by don t. jacobs. austin: university of texas press, 2006, 82-92. ---. the transits of empire. indigenous critiques of colonialism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011. chakrabarty, dipesh. provincializing europe. postcolonial thought and historical difference. boston and oxford: princeton university press, 2000. clifford, james. the predicament of culture: twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1988. --routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1997. ---. 2013. returns: becoming indigenous in the twenty first century. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2013. deloria, vine, jr. the nations within: the past and future of american indian sovereignty. new york: pantheon books, 1984. ---. behind the trail of broken treaties: an indian declaration of independence. austin: university of texas press, 1985. dunbar-ortiz, roxanne. an indigenous peoples history of the united states. boston, ma: beacon press, 2015. harvey, david. spaces of global capitalism. towards a theory of uneven geographical development. london: verso, 2006. harjo, joy. how we became human. new and selected poems, 1975-2001. new york, london: w.w. norton, 2004. hogan, linda. mean spirit. berkeley: ivy books, 1990 jameson, frederic. 1992. the geopolitical aesthetic: cinema and space in the world system. bloomington: indiana university press. doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 73 ---, and masao miyoshi, eds. 1998. the cultures of globalization. durham: duke university press. jones, stephen graham. ledfeather. salt lake city, ut: fiction collective 2, 2008. justice, daniel heath. our fire survives the storm. a cherokee literary history. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2006. koselleck, reinhart. futures past: on the semantics of historical time. new york: columbia university press, 2004. kuhn, thomas samuel. the copernican revolution: planetary astronomy in the development of western thought. cambridge: harvard university press, 1957. latour, bruno. we have never been modern. translated by catherine porter. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1993. levi-strauss, claude. structural anthropology. vol i. trans. claire jacobson and brooke grundfest schoepf. garden city: doubleday, 1967. lim, bliss cua. translating time. cinema, the fantastic, and temporal critique. durham and london: duke university press, 2009. limerick, patricia nelson. the legacy of conquest: the unbroken past of the american west. new york, london: w.w. norton, 1987. lincoln, kenneth r. native american renaissance. berkeley: u of california p, 1983. moore, david l. that dream shall have a name. native americans rewriting america. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2013. moretti, franco. “conjectures on world literature.” new left review 1, 2000: 54‐68. ---. distant reading. london: verso, 2013. morson, gary saul. the shadow of time. new haven and london: yale university press, 1994. muñoz, jose esteban. cruising utopia. the then and there of queer futurity. new york and london: new york university press, 2009. negri, antonio. time for revolution. london: continuum, 2003. neihardt, john g. black elk speaks. being the life-story of a holy man of the oglala sioux. albany, n.y.: state university of new york press, 2008 [1932]. nelson, christopher. "’created in words’: theorizing (postmodern) native american survival through story in james welch’s fools crow." cultural critique, vol. 81 no. 1, 2012, pp. 31-69. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 74 opitz, andrea. “james welch's ‘fools crow’ and the imagination of precolonial space: a translator's approach.” american indian quarterly, vol. 24, no. 1, 2000, pp. 126– 141. ortiz, simon. 1981. "towards a national indian literature: cultural authenticity in nationalism." melus 8 (2), 1981: 7-12. ---. “memory, history, and the present.” across cultures, across borders. canadian and native american literatures, edited by paul de pasquale, renate eigenbrod, and emma larocque, 143-153. toronto: broadway press, 2010. owens, louis. other destinies: understanding the american indian novel. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1992. ---. mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1998. ---. 2001. “as if an indian were really an indian: uramericans, euramericans, and postcolonial theory.” paradoxa: studies in world literary series 15, 2001: 170-183. quijano, aníbal. “coloniality and modernity/rationality.” cultural studies 21 (2/3), 2007: 168 -178. rader, dean. engaged resistance. american indian art, literature, and film from alcatraz to the nmai. austin, university of texas press, 2012. ridge, martin, ed. frederik jackson turner. wisconsin’s historian of the frontier. madison: wisconsin’s historical society press., 1986. rifkin, mark. beyond settler time: temporal sovereignty and indigenous selfdetermination. durham, nc: duke university press, 2017. said, edward. culture and imperialism. new york: knopf, 1993. schiwy, freja. “decolonialization and the question of subjectivity. cultural studies 21 (2/3), 2007: 271 – 294. silko, leslie marmon. 1974. laguna woman: poems. new york: greenfield review press. ---. ceremony. new york: penguin, 1977. ---. storyteller. new york: seaver, 1981. ---. almanac of the dead. new york: simon & schuster, 1991. ---. sacred water: narratives and pictures. tucson: flood plains, 1993. ---. yellow woman and a beauty of the spirit: essays on native american life today. new york: simon & schuster, 1996. ---. gardens in the dunes. new york: simon & schuster, 2000. doro wiese “untranslatable timescapes” 75 ---. the turquoise ledge: a memoir. new york: viking, 2010. taylor, scott. buffalo hunt: international trade and the virtual extinction of the north american bison. ed. national bureau of economic research, 2007. http://www.nber.org/papers/w12969 (retrieved feb-4, 2018). the holy bible: king james version. dallas, tx: brown books publishing, 2004. tsing, anna lowenhaupt. 2005. friction: an ethnography of global connection. princeton, nj: princeton university press, 2005. ---. the mushroom at the end of the world. on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. princeton, nj.: princeton university press, 2015. venuti, lawrence. the translator’s invisibility: a history of translation. new york: routledge, 1995. ---. the scandals of translation: towards an ethics of difference. london, new york: routledge, 1998. venuti, lawrence, ed. the translation studies reader. london, new york: routledge, 2000. vizenor, gerard. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln, usa: university of nebraska press, 1989. wallerstein, immanuel. world-system analysis. nc: duke university press, 2004. welch, james. fools crow. london, new york: penguin, 1986. west-pavlov, russell. temporalities. london: routledge, 2012. wiese, doro. “peripheral worldscapes in circulation. towards a productive understanding of untranslatability.” in peripheral visions in the globalizing present: community, contestation, critique, edited by esther peeren, hanneke stuit, and astrid van weyenberg. boston and leiden: brill, 2016, 75-90. wurth, erika t. crazy horse’s girlfriend. chicago, ill: curbside splendor publishing, 2014. ---. buckskin cocaine. vermillion, s.d.: university of south dakota press, 2017. microsoft word shuck.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     187   shauna osborn. arachnid verve. mongrel empire press, norman, ok. 91 pp. isbn: 9780997251715. http://mongrelempire.org/media/press-kits/arachnid-verve-by-shauna.html from fingers from feathers black & red ink drips across the page1 if writing a review were like sitting on a jury it would be rare for indigenous writers to get a fair trial. i point this out as a way to introduce my bias in this case. i’ve been aware of shauna osborn’s work for some time, if i weren’t i wouldn’t qualify as a peer. in this corner of poetry we review our relatives. oklahoma poet carroll arnett / gogisgi pointed out some time ago that if you live in the “two worlds” there are very “few of us” (qtd in sanchez 144) so, grab a coney and a fried pie and let me give you a tour of arachnid verve, from someone who has deep roots in a different small oklahoma town nearby. osborn is a numuunu and german poet and this is her first full-length solo collection. my first reaction to this book was, “seriously? why have a glossary and notes?” i don’t like that kind of translation. too many people come with their begging bowl to poems and ask to be given something in exchange for limited effort. i think that poetry deserves deep reading, investigation and empathy. in particular i resist the notion that work that is culturally unfamiliar to larger populations owe the readers a free ticket. then i grumpily read the glossary. i still resist them, but it is difficult to get too unhappy with a glossary whose clarifications include “my pussy,” “to eat toothpaste on toast” and “slow moving warfare marked by repeated stalemate” (89). there are also notes. the poet has made things easier on the reader. “if you were a man,” the poetry avatar is told in the two part poem “double standard,” and later, “cause that’s the way it is” (p 8-9). frustration is measured in chopped potatoes, “furious thick brown skinned cubes” (9). the human identity in many of these poems is an escape artist. she, like the spider in the poem “truss,” is “persistent & intractable” (23). external and judgmental forces create and try to enforce shackles, but locks are picked, handcuffs slipped, and the heroine continues her curious investigations. in “altitude,” “i recognize that my stubbornness, will be the end of me” but in a subsequent section of the same poem, “only clever prey survive” (29-32). “guionista sangre (blood writer)” may be the clearest thesis statement of all. the poet with “ink maps […] carved into her flesh” (81). she is “covered with paths […] cultural maps.” these poems come from the body of the poet like the spider silk or other, more difficult extractions. “we’ve never been taught geography never known the contours of ourselves” (82). the landscape of body; the identities of women; iconic images of what power looks like in a female form: the poet runs her stories over the topological evidence, finds the unspoken there. “song for nina,” exhorts “tell me i’m beautiful, tell me i’m real,” because the witness is “right alongside me, and you knew” (69). the poem is lean, almost stripped. it’s a cry for recognized identity “in our voice our tongue” (70). in the book’s quest, this issue of identity, of beauty, drives on through line break, broken glass and damage and calls for someone powerful to speak. in an environment of erasure and self-imposed invisibility, that of women, that of native people, that of poverty, this voiced wish itself is a truth telling. kim shuck review of arachnid verve     188   some wounds are so deep, have caused so much damage that it is difficult to even begin the conversation. in “wing,” “someone left an intact left wing on the sidewalk. there are no signs of foul play-” (76). what mayhem caused this? there isn’t enough left to evaluate the crime scene. there is just a beautiful artifact, posed in a public place. the poet wants to change the wing, “strap it onto my arm,” or “carry this wing” (76-77) there must be some way, in this vista of the avatar’s “beautiful war scarred students,” to assemble something vital from all of these pieces. invoking social media in a review of a poetry book is probably unforgivable but i’m going to do it. every day on every group page that filters into my social media there are dozens of challenges to the authenticity, the reality, of some writer or other who claims a western-hemispherian identity. it is a prevailing topic, like weather we might not have chosen, and like hard weather it has also swept away some bridges and caused some to drown. for good reasons and for bad ones this issue comes up and up. i have seen the authenticity argument explored in poetry, in prose and in rant. if i look at my newsfeed right now i feel certain that there are a few of these conversation threads underway. when an indigenous poet contemplates their reality, that contemplation is freighted with more than some residue of a traumatic reading of pinocchio. in arachnid verve osborn remains very raw on this subject. the poet isn’t protecting herself or the community in this book any more than in the explorations of poverty or of being a woman. the word is thrown around too often with respect to poetry but this work displays a deep emotional honesty that is recognizable. this material is not easy. i was always going to love this book. osborn has a muscular, grown woman style of writing that speaks to me. these poems work hard, they sweat, they have unreasonable relatives, they wear jeans and old boots, they aspire, they read widely and they bleed. this book is an antidote. in a world moment where so many women ask to be allowed to speak, these poems stand, feet planted, in the very center of territory they know is theirs. these poems tell you exactly what they think. osborn exists as witness for self and fellow travelers. in our own languages, somewhere in the broken glass, next to the scars or down the bike path next to the disembodied wing, there is a place where we are beautiful, whole and real. kim shuck, california college of art                                                                                                                 notes     1  sauna  osborn,  from  antes  taabe  (before  the  sun).   sanchez, carol lee, from spirit to matter: new and selected poems, 1969-1996. san francisco: taurean horn/out west, 1997. microsoft word tatonetti.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 153 review essay: weaving the present, writing the future: benaway, belcourt, and whitehead's queer indigenous imaginaries billy-ray belcourt. this world is a wound. frontenac house poetry, 2017, 63 pp. isbn: 978-1-927823-64-4. https://www.frontenachouse.com/dd-product/this-wound-is-a-world/ gwen benaway. passage. kegedonce press, 2016, 120 pp. isbn: 978-1-928120-08-7. https://kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/81-passage.html joshua whitehead. full-metal indigiqueer. talon books, 2017, 119 pp. isbn: 978-1-77201187-6. https://talonbooks.com/books/full-metal-indigiqueer joshua whitehead. johnny appleseed. arsenal pulp press, 2018, 223 pp. isbn: 978-155152-725-3. http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.php?index=479 in ohlone-coastanoan esselen writer deborah miranda’s remarkable tribal memoir, bad indians, two-spirit ancestors ask: who remembers us? who pulls us, forgotten, from beneath melted adobe and groomed golf courses and asphalted freeways, asks for our help, rekindles the work of our lives? who takes up the task of weaving soul to body, carrying the dead from one world to the next, who bears the two halves of spirit in the whole vessel of one body? where have you been? why have you waited so long? how did you ever find us, buried under words like joto, like joya, under whips and lies? and what do you call us now? never mind, little ones. never mind. you are here now, at last. come close. listen. we have so much work to do. (32) the writers i engage in this review, billy-ray belcourt (driftpile cree), gwen benaway (anishinabe/métis), and joshua whitehead (oji-cree) are taking up this important work, listening, theorizing, creating, (re)membering, and, to use miranda’s words, “weaving soul to body” while they travel, as queer, trans, and/or two-spirit people, through the twenty-first century. in doing so, this younger generation of artists weave indigenous futures with a ribbon gifted them by those queer indigenous writers who have passed on––including paula gunn allen (laguna pueblo/sioux), beth brant (bay of quinte mohawk), connie fife (cree), maurice kenny (non-citizen mohawk), carole lafavor (anishinaabe), and sharon proulx-turner (mètis nation of alberta)––as well as those like chrystos (menominee), qwo-li driskill (non-citizen cherokee), janice gould (koyangk'auwi maidu), tomson highway (cree, barren lands first nation), daniel heath justice (cherokee nation), miranda, greg scofield (métis), and so many more, who continue to construct powerful indigenous imaginaries in the twenty-first century. perhaps the single clearest point that arises from re-reading these four books back-to-back is that this new generation of lgbtq/2s indigenous intellectuals is on fire. they write poetry, fiction, essay, and theory, give innumerable interviews and readings, hold conferences, present talks, take ma and phd exams, mentor each other and their peers, teach in classrooms, workshops, and through informal interactions, tweet funny and painful observations about their lives, and, far lisa tatonetti review essay: weaving the present 154 beyond stagnating in academia, work with and for indigenous communities and lgbtq/2s indigenous youth. writers like benaway, belcourt, and whitehead inhabit and create incredible energy and possibility: the four books discussed here manifest this truth. benaway, a two-spirited trans poet whose new book, holy wild, will be published before this review goes to press, was awarded a 2016 dayne oglivie prize for lgbt emerging writers from the writers’ trust of canada. currently a phd student in the women and gender studies institute at the university of toronto, she has earned accolades for passage, her second book, which is a collection structured around movement and water, as the title suggests. the five sections of the book––each named after one of the great lakes––travel through a painfully recalled childhood, a divorce, and the author’s embodied experience of love, sex, and life as a two-spirit trans woman. benaway’s work is both lyrically gorgeous and haunting; while aesthetically beautiful, her poems detail childhood abuse from a father who refused to accept his child’s non-cis identity, clearly showing the tyranny and danger present in the normative demands of heteromasculinity. as she writes in “gills,” “you hit me for as long as i can remember / with whatever was at hand . . . . // you said i disgusted you, / . . . . / never wrestling with my brother / or catching the baseballs you threw” (27). bearing witness to physical and psychological violence, then, is part of the project of passage, a book that asks how one might “mourn the unspoken,” and also “how to witness / be honest with the dead” (45). the layers of memory and articulation unearthed in each section propel the speaker toward a reclamation of “the sovereignty of truth / of saying it happened” (50). benaway is not the first indigenous writer to do such important work, as tanana athabascan scholar dian million reminds us. million calls such essential witnessing “felt theory,” describing it as a way to articulate indigenous realities and subvert academic gatekeeping that would deem the deep emotions like those seen in passage as something less than academic. in sharing this often-difficult narrative, which entangles connection to land and water together with themes of abuse, transphobia, and transformation, benaway’s text speaks about the power of story to engender wholeness, to “weave soul to body” and chart a new route forward. in charting this route, passage also, then, maps a narrative of survivance. in “if,” for example, benaway writes: if exploration isn’t always conquest if discovery can be shaped of visions, if instinct is another word for truth. if passage is more than movement, i’ve already made it back. (10) thus the movement of passage is not necessarily away from, but through and, ultimately, to a sense of self as a two-spirit trans woman. while aspects of this path to self-discovery––or perhaps more appropriately a path to revealing the self there all along––can be found throughout the collection, the two final sections of the text––“lake erie” and “lake superior”––particularly highlight tropes of transition and change. for example, considering lake erie’s path from pollution to reclamation, the speaker notes, while “you grow / verdant again, / . . . . / i’ve changed too, / no longer a child/ a woman with / blue eyes” (71). as this stanza suggests, benaway’s focus on her decision to make visible her womanhood marks the affective link between the human body and the more-than-human world; here, water = body = life. in this transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 155 equation, to be trans is a movement, a change, a place of growth that mirrors the shifts of land and water that indigenous people have recognized/been part of for millennia. as benaway says in “ceremony,” one of the final pieces in the book, these poems bear witness to such connections. they are “the voices / / of [her] grandmothers,” and, as a result, become “an offering,” “a promise,” and a blessing (110-11). thus, while an incredibly personal book from a self-described feminist confessional poet, passage, in its lyric beauty, its bravery, and its testament to survival and rebirth, is a gift to readers as well. benaway and billy-ray belcourt often reference each other’s work and the lyric brilliance i mark in benaway can also be seen, in a significantly different narrative form, in belcourt’s debut collection, this world is a wound. i first encountered belcourt when he gave a paper at the 2015 native american and indigenous studies association conference. he was an undergraduate at the time and his presentation on indigeneity, sexuality, and haunting was one of the most thought-provoking papers i heard at a conference filled with high-powered indigenous intellectuals. belcourt quickly found his place among them, winning a rhodes scholarship to oxford, completing a master’s degree in women’s studies there, and starting a phd at the university of alberta. in 2017, he published this world is a wound, which, among many other awards and nominations, won a prestigious griffin poetry prize in 2018. belcourt crafts numbered lists and prose poems and often eschews punctuation and capitalization in his powerful meditation on the intersections of violence, love, and the body. rather than considering the physical space of embodiment, belcourt explains in his epilogue that “this world is a wound is a book obsessed with the unbodied” (58). what does it mean, he asks in poems like “the oxford journal,” for a native person when a “sense of loss . . . tailgates their body” (48), when “death and indigeneity” are conceived of as “co-constitutive categories” (58)? belcourt writes his way to and through questions of disembodiment even as he bears witness to settler attacks on the bodies of indigenous people like colton boushie, christian duck chief, and barbara kentner, as well as to the violence of settler systems that can only imagine death for indigenous people. the latter is seen in poems like “god’s river,” which recalls when health canada sent the wasagamek and god’s river first nations, not requested healthcare provisions, but body bags in the wake of a 2009 swine flu outbreak. in the face of this systematic failure, belcourt writes, i “think maybe / reserve is / another word / for morgue / is another word / for body bags / call it home anyways” (29). at the same time, like benaway, belcourt offers not just the pain and daily trauma of ongoing colonization, but also a litany of beauty and humor when he considers what it means to queer, indigenous, and twenty-something in the 2010s. in “the creator is trans,” for example, he imagines a eulogy constructed “with phrases like / freedom is the length of a good rim job / and the most relatable thing about him / was how often he cried watching wedding videos on youtube. homonationalism, amirite?” (24). this mixture of sex, pop culture, high theory, and humor is classic belcourt, whose vast intellectual range is informed by a deeply caring ethos and, at times, comic self-deprecation. his poems move with a rapid-fire pace from the erotic as healing, heartbreak, and/or a mode of disappearance, to academia, contemporary politics, and indigenous polities. this world is a wound follows passage in its marked interest in the body/unbodied and the intersections of the body in relationship. both texts offer overt engagements with sex, love, and indigeneity in the twenty-first century, but belcourt’s perhaps more directly considers how the lisa tatonetti review essay: weaving the present 156 parameters of these vital interchanges are mediated by the technological realities of the current era. while the explicit references to the erotic aren’t new––writers like beth brant and chrystos have published in a collection of lesbian erotica, maurice kenny published in gay zines like fag rag, and oral traditions thrive on earthy jokes––the movement between cyperspace, dating/hookup sites, and daily life marks a new space of contemplation for queer indigenous literature. whitehead’s poetry and prose further bears this out. how does one represent oneself, read others, find connection, fuck and get fucked in the bluegreen glow of the digital present? like belcourt, whitehead, too, addresses these questions of technological mediation and (dis)embodiment. for whitehead, who is currently a phd student at the university of calgary, we see this focus in both his debut poetry collection, full-metal indigiqueer, and his first novel, jonny appleseed. far from being some utopic version of a present in which electronic interactions allow for an escape from racism and ideological violence, whitehead reveals how grindr and other online sites for dating, hookups, and webshows reanimate colonized ideologies––as the protagonist of jonny appleseed comments: “these men are all too easy; they’re all a bit voyeur and a bit voyageur” (151). though full-metal indigiqueer and jonny appleseed are, of course, vastly different––they are poetry and novel, code and story––they overlap in meaningful ways both with each other and with belcourt and benaway’s texts. in an essay entitled “the body remembers when the world broke open,” belcourt comments that: in supposedly reconciliatory times like ours, indigenous artists are burdened with answering the call to envision a good post-colonial future, but we are still hurting in the present and we are not finished trying to figure out how to activate collective survival. whitehead speaks to this over-determined queer indigenous present by considering intersections of loss, pain, and hope. in fact, as the book jacket to full-metal indigiqueer explains, whitehead creates “a sex-positive project that sparks resurgence” “for those who have, as donna haraway once noted, ‘been injured, profoundly.’” a brilliant, experimental journey through the present and the future, full-metal indigiqueer–– which was shortlisted for the stephan g. stephansson award and indigenous voices award––is narrated by a hybridized indigiqueer digital trickster, zoa, who communicates in code, hashtags, and textspeak. if benaway is overtly confessional, and belcourt occasionally confessional, zoa offers us something new––the third-person confessional––as they rocket through life, a “steeltown ndn moloch / [a] supersonic thunderbird / [a] graveyard scrapyard cyborg” (“thegarbageeater” 35). in the process, zoa writes the present and initializes an indigiqueer future. this collection demands and rewards reader participation: full-metal indigiqueer is not for those hoping to sit back, skim, and be spoon-fed ancient native wisdom (a fact equally true of every text reviewed here). when opening the collection, readers follow a trail of code encased in white circles that gradually increase in size on an otherwise entirely black page. this visually provocative introduction leads us to zoa, our guide through whitehead’s world. in the first section of the text, zoa finds their name, initializes their programming, and hurtles into a queer coming-of-age journey filled with first encounters and the deeply evocative presences/absences experienced by the queer indigenous speaker. we see, then, a story of adolescent parties and first transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 157 sexual encounters (“what i learned in pre-cal math”), of seinfeld and indigenous erasure (“latenight reruns”), of a repeatedly declined walmart receipt and the anger and embarrassment of poverty (“in(debt)ured servant(ude)”), an indigenous epic poem (the fa--[ted] queene, an ipic p.m.), and a list of the names of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people that includes the name of whitehead’s grandmother and ends with a call to arms (“the exorcism of colonialism”). across these snapshots of life and love runs an ongoing refrain––“i am”––that, like a ribbon, weaves these pieces together, and, to return to miranda, brings “the two halves of spirit in[to] the whole vessel of one body” (32). throughout the collection, whitehead plays with form in a myriad of ways. along with the previously noted work with images in the book’s introduction, he eschews capitalization and punctuation––as do both benaway and belcourt to differing degrees––substitutes numbers for letters, deploys long strings of colons/code, uses swathes of whitespace, overlaps text and image, and often omits spaces between words. “the perseids,” for example, begins with these three lines: “:: :: :::: :: :::initiation:: :: :: :: ::: : ::: :virtualrealityrequest:: :: :: ::: ::: :: :: :: :: sequence: / :: :: ::1: :: ::: :00: ::: :: :: :1: :: :: :: : : : :: : : :: :: :[de]colonialreservations: :: :: :: :: ::: ::: ::: / :::initiatingprojectionsquence: ::vr: :::request:::: :10011:: ::::apocalypseinitiated: :: :: ::” (37). whitehead uses these formal variations to great effect: his poetry, like his line breaks, stretches understanding to interweave the deadly serious with the playful. undoubtedly, full-metal indigiqueer rewards multiple readings. i turn to jonny appleseed, whitehead’s scotiabank giller prize-nominated novel, to briefly discuss the other side of the dual offerings whitehead published in 2017-2018. whitehead’s novel follows the life of the titular character, jonny, after his move to winnipeg from the peguis first nation reserve (whitehead’s own) following his kokum’s death. the narrative subsequently passes back-and-forth between several days of the narrator’s life during which he raises money to return to the reserve for his stepfather’s funeral to flashbacks of jonny’s childhood and coming-of-age on that reserve. as a sex-worker and a self-described “urban ndn, two-spirit femmeboy” in time-present of the novel, jonny moves between his love for his best friend and sometimes-lover, tias, and a range of clients who seek him out on online platforms to fulfill their fantasies and emotional/physical needs (45). these encounters allow jonny to capitalize on non-native fetishization of indigenous people and also to inhabit gender in ways he has sometimes been denied in other contexts. jonny appleseed specifically counters harmful iterations of cishet masculinity by offering a narrative in which jonny’s mother and kokum recognize and support his femininity. whitehead crafts female approval as a contrast to the violence jonny experiences at the hands of schoolmates and, in some cases, male relatives who demand he conform to a rigid cishet masculinity patterned after violent hegemonic norms. as a response to such demands, jonny forwards a two-spirit ideology that affirms non-cis identifications; powerful dreams of twospirit people promote healing and integrate genders and sexualities that now might be perceived as queer into the oji-cree context of the novel. as a whole, whitehead’s creative work addresses both how understandings of two-spirit circulate in contemporary cree culture and also how two-spirit folks, in the form of his fictional character, jonny, and his poetic avatar, zoa, run up against very real barriers of homophobia, lisa tatonetti review essay: weaving the present 158 misogyny, and settler hegemony that cause a non-cis femme person to be attacked for rejecting a violent masculinity. while two-spirit roles and identities have at times been simplified and romanticized, whitehead extends no such trite answers; thus, his readers encounter twenty-first century two-spirit realities, which are named and highly valued in his writing, and they simultaneously see the infiltration and violent ramifications of judeo-christian prohibitions against queerness. passage, this world is a wound, passage, full-metal indigiqueer, and jonny appleseed represent just one aspect of the rich and complex worlds engendered by these authors’ lives, writing, and activisms. i want to urge you, then, not only to read the texts discussed here, but also to seek out that wider intellectual community. thus i offer just a few pieces for further reading. in the past year belcourt has published numerous essays including (but by no means limited to), for canadian art, “settler structures of bad feeling” and “what do we mean by queer indigenous ethics,” co-written with lindsay nixon (cree-métis-saulteaux curator, editor, writer, and mcgill art history phd student). in this same period, benaway’s long-form essay “between a rock and a hard place” won prism international’s 2017 grand prize for creative nonfiction, and her powerful 2018 essay on her experience of surgery, entitled “a body like home,” is no doubt soon to follow. benaway also edited and wrote an introduction for a special issue of indigenous trans/queer/two-spirit writing and art for this: progressive politics, ideas, and culture that highlights the work of emerging writers, like the aforementioned nixon, whose memoir, nîtisânak, was released september 2018 by metonymy press, and kai minosh pyle (métis/anishinaabe) among others. (pyle was first runner-up for the prism international prize.) meanwhile, joshua whitehead’s open letter on his rejection of a major award nomination, “why i’m withdrawing from my lambda literary award nomination,” offers a highly nuanced theorization of the difference between cree two-spirit and trans ideologies. i began this essay by noting “this new generation of lgbtq/2s indigenous intellectuals is on fire.” i conclude by arguing that, in their essays and the four books reviewed here, gwen benaway, billy-ray belcourt, and joshua whitehead craft some of the most important creative and theoretical interventions in indigenous studies today. lisa tatonetti, kansas state university works cited belcourt, billy-ray. “settler structures of bad feeling.” canadian art, january 8, 2018. https://canadianart.ca/essays/settler-structures-bad-feeling/. ––. “the body remembers when the world broke open.” arts everywhere: musagetes, feb 8, 2017. http://artseverywhere.ca/2017/02/08/body-remembers-world-broke-open/. belcourt, billy-ray, and lindsay nixon. “what do we mean by queer indigenous ethics?” canadian art, may 23, 2018. https://canadianart.ca/features/what-do-we-mean-by-queerindigenousethics/. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 159 benaway, gwen. “between a rock and a hard place.” prism international, vol. 56, no. 2, 2017, pp. 45-56. ––. holy wild. book*hug, 2018. benaway, gwen, ed. “celebrating indigenous writers and artists: a special feature.” this: progressive politics, ideas, and culture, september 4, 2018. https://this.org/2018/09/04/celebrating-indigenous-writers-and-artists-a-special-feature/. million, dian. therapeutic nations: healing in an age of indigenous human rights. university of arizona press, 2014. miranda, deborah a. bad indians: a tribal memoir. heyday press, 2013. nixon, lindsey. nîtisânak. metonymy press, 2018. pyle, kai minosh. “autobiography of an iceheart.” prism international, vol. 56, no. 2, 2017, pp. 11-22. whitehead, joshua. “why i’m withdrawing from my lambda literary award nomination.” the insurgent architects’ house for creative writing, march 14, 2018. https://www.tiahouse.ca/joshua-whitehead-why-im-withdrawing-from-my-lambdaliterary-award-nomination/. microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 23 indian made: reframing the rhetorical parameters of indigenous aesthetics courtney cottrell the oneida nation museum (onm) anticipates moving into a new building in 2021. this has been a long-awaited and hoped-for move, once postponed in favor of building a nursing home for tribal elders. the new building will be more accessible to tourists and have space for both exhibitions and collections storage under one roof. a large and daunting project for a small, dedicated staff, the onm contracted me to prepare the collections for their physical move. having worked with the onm as an intern, volunteer, and consultant in the past, i was eager to help a museum that has helped build my career. now as i stand in front of an extensive art collection recently acquired by the museum, swimming in options of how to best tackle packaging, tracking, and moving, i’m struck by a thought about art aesthetics. the new collection is by oneida artist, david ninham. it was donated by ninham’s surviving parents and consists of roughly 200 pieces of art. some native artists are wary of placing their work in a tribal museum for fear of it being tagged solely as “native art” rather than “art;” a niche that can be near impossible to get out of. however, by placing ninham’s art in the onm collection, the family was ensuring that oneida citizens would be able to see the evolving nature of contemporary art made by a fellow community member. the influence of his art on younger generations, and other oneida artists could be invaluable. as a prolific artist, david ninham created works of art out of everyday objects he collected. he used thumbtacks, bottle caps, spools of thread, can tabs, and toy cars not only to create breathtaking landscapes but also to depict celebrities with stunning accuracy. one of my personal favorites depicts a naked man sitting on the american flag, holding his knees to his chest. his body language suggests he is trying to protect himself as streaks of color stream towards him from every direction. when you look closer, the man is made out of toy soldiers painted flesh color, and the streaks are painted bullets in various gauges. the title of this piece is the war on terror. i imagine this piece can speak to the countless number of native veterans who struggle with ptsd. the number of veterans that identify as native american is courtney cottrell “indian made” 24 astounding. the oneida nation can boast that they have tribal members who have fought alongside other american soldiers in every single u.s. conflict. another one of ninham’s pieces that is a staff favorite is titled a night in paris. it features a likeness of paris hilton, great-granddaughter of the hotel mogul. hilton’s likeness is made by gluing painted condoms to a large piece of dense foam painted black with a border of small fake $100 bills. from a distance, it looks like a portrait of paris hilton, but as you step closer, you realize what materials ninham used. as viewers realize what the portrait is made out of, they understand that the title of the piece is playing off both the medium and the subject matter (image 1). (image 1: a night in paris, photo courtesy of the oneida nation museum) a night in paris stands just over four feet tall. the other 200 or so pieces range in sizes from five feet to small picture frames. but it isn’t necessarily the size of the art that causes problems for the move. the 3-dimensional nature with varying depth of many of the pieces has slowed progress in storing these works on a small museum budget and with a lack of space. ideally, i would be able to pack each piece in its own customized storage container with space transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 25 between each piece. but more striking than the collection management issues, is the seeming lack of an “indigenous aesthetic” attached to these pieces. having been acquired by a tribal museum dedicated to sharing and informing the public about their history and culture, the lack of visual cues to an indigenous aesthetic was striking for possible future exhibits featuring david ninham’s work. questioning the indigenous aesthetics of ninham’s art would not typically cross my mind. ninham was an artist and a member of the oneida nation. he also clearly depicts topics discussed heavily in native communities like veterans with ptsd and critiques on capitalism.1 but a few years ago, i was mediating a possible acquisition for a sizeable ethnographic museum in germany. i sent the curator of the americas collection names and contact information of numerous native artists who would be more than happy to sell the museum a piece of their art for display. i pushed for a particular artist because the art was truly exceptional and something i had not seen in my travels to dozens of museums in germany. unfortunately, there was a remark made by the museum to the artist that suggested their work was not “indian enough,” an interesting phrase for a european museum to make about a native artist from a list compiled by a native american. this mediation has haunted me ever since. i felt guilty for putting the artist through those interactions even though i was trying to promote their work to an international audience. since learning about the museum’s comments about the authenticity of a native artist, i cannot walk through a contemporary native art exhibition without thinking about those comments. as i stand in front of this extensive collection of ninham art, owned by a tribal museum, made by a tribal citizen, i wonder what native art is? are there indigenous aesthetics that can readily pinpoint a work of art as native? and who gets to decide what this aesthetic looks like? by viewing indigenous aesthetics as a process (leuthold 2), we can trace ethnographic museum approaches to acquiring native art historically. looking at the history of collecting native art illuminates how limited the examples of native art are in most major museums. had museums consulted with more native voices, this narrow scope would have been avoidable. this article is doing just this—calling museums out for not utilizing native participation in the discourses surrounding indigenous aesthetics. it does so by looking at more native-centric standards for recognizing and promoting numerous indigenous aesthetics in the conclusion.2 but in order to broaden our understandings of indigenous aesthetics, we must first define it. courtney cottrell “indian made” 26 steven leuthold, a historian of art and design, characterizes an indigenous aesthetics in his book indigenous aesthetics: native art, media, and identity (1998). for leuthold, indigenous aesthetics encompasses experiences as well as expressions held by indigenous peoples. leuthold acknowledges the intercultural nature of contemporary indigenous aesthetics due to long histories of contact, immigration, missionaries, and colonialism. however, the critical aspect of leuthold's understanding of indigenous aesthetics is that they are social processes interrelated with other social systems (politics, economics, spirituality, etc.) within indigenous communities. leuthold takes inspiration from hopi and miwok writer/poet wendy rose and her understanding of art and the artists’ role in society. rose acknowledges the community-oriented focus of indigenous aesthetics as well as their function and beauty (412). leuthold takes rose's social rules for indigenous aesthetics and explicitly states that aesthetics must be continuously redefined through their interactions within social systems, shifting the focus away from individual artists to experiences and environmental emphases. art historian, david penney, discusses a similar approach in his book north american indian art (2004). penney recognizes that no single indigenous aesthetic standard can be defined. instead, indigenous aesthetics are culturally based expressions. he suggests that representations of a group or community, even through art, have their own “cultural system of aesthetics” (penney 10). because they are culturally based, there is a need to identify and recognize native participation in the discourse surrounding native arts.3 this article takes leuthold’s, rose’s, and penney’s understandings of indigenous aesthetics as culturally and historically relevant and intimately intermingled with other sociopolitical systems and applies this understanding to the collections held by the oneida nation museum. it begins to urge ethnographic museums to recognize individual native artists’ contributions to indigenous aesthetics as well as the community’s involvement in art. by turning to the onm's standards for acquiring art, i hope to add to the understandings of indigenous aesthetics that avoid essentializing indigenous aesthetics and native art. this is especially important when we consider that essentialism is often linked to claims of authenticity. for native artists, the consequences of essentialization of an identity, as we will see in this case, an indigenous aesthetic, "risks drawing boundaries around authenticity that exclude people within [their] own community” (onciul 165).4 transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 27 brief history of indigenous aesthetics the buzz around indigenous aesthetics started in the 1960s and 70s when a perceived threat of non-conformist native art started to pop up in the ethnic art market. of course, indigenous aesthetics far predates this time, but artists behind the works that started the buzz were finally being recognized in a larger arena. these artists wanted to explore their personalized sense of art and show that native americans were and are part of the present and not some mystic past (bolz and könig 18). santa fe, new mexico in particular, is acknowledged as a place where contemporary native art began to emerge through the santa fe art institute and the institute of american indian art (iaia). most notable for revolutionizing contemporary native art was luiseño (payómkawichum) artist, fritz scholder. scholder (1937-2005) was not only an enrolled member of the luiseño tribe, located in california, but he was also of german descent.5 although he may not have grown up in a native lifestyle, his work holds great significance for fighting native stereotypes and moving native art in new directions that engaged not only native traditions, environments, and teachings, but also had a political and activist edge (steffen 2015). one style readily identifiable as scholder’s are his images of native americans wrapped or draped in american flags; a commentary on nationally held stereotypes about native americans. along with his paintings, scholder was also an accomplished sculptor. one of his most famous sculptures is displayed in the george gustav heye center of the national museum of the american indian in new york city. titled future clone, the sculpture was featured in the 2010 film black swan. scholder’s unfamiliar style caused quite a stir in the native american art market and inspired many others. some of scholder’s contemporaries and students include tom wayne ‘t.c.' cannon (kiowa/caddo), kevin red star (crow; https://kevinredstar.com/), linda lomahaftewa (hopi-choctaw; https://lomahaftewa.weebly.com/), and billy soza war soldier (cahuilla/apache). each of these artists’ new, non-conformist art left gallery owners feeling uneasy (bolz and könig 19). their indigenous aesthetics spoke to social and political problems of native peoples, often at the hands of non-natives. while the ethnic art market and gallery owners felt uncomfortable with these changes, the artists felt they were finally able to depict reality without displacing traditional artistic mediums. the artists found a coexistence between tradition and reality in their art. courtney cottrell “indian made” 28 many of the museums i visited in both germany and the u.s. display originals or prints of scholder’s work. my methodology for understanding native american representation in ethnographic museums included walking through exhibition halls with the curators who envisioned these halls and talking about their message. i would ask what they had hoped to accomplish and what they were able to accomplish. two curators, one at the berlin ethnologisches museum and the other at the museum für völkerkunde hamburg, boasted that their scholder art was displayed prominently in their contemporary art sections. at hamburg, there were only three pieces displayed in the contemporary native art section, one of which was scholder’s buckskin indian. additionally, scholder’s indian portrait with tomahawk was used as the cover art for berlin’s exhibition catalog, native american modernism: art from north america, that supplemented the contemporary native art exhibition written by the curator and museum director (bolz and könig 2012). the popularity of scholder’s work in germany could be due to his german ancestry and the german fascination with native north america. germany hosts clubs dedicated to the fascination of native american history, culture, and materials. often referred to as german indian hobbyism, the hobby is over a century old and allows germans and other europeans to embody their interest in native americans.6 but, specifically, scholder's popularity may also stem from a popular exhibition and accompanying catalog presented in stuttgart called indianische malerei in nordamerika, indian painting in north america, in which scholder’s work was highlighted (schulze-thulin 1973; bolz and könig 2012). now, scholder's work sits prominently in contemporary native art exhibits alongside other politically charged paintings by native artists, many of whom found inspiration through scholder. however, acquiring scholder’s art and displaying it does not ensure the museum’s or the public’s understanding of indigenous aesthetics. it does, however, suggest that museums seek out artists that have already been vetted and valued by other museums and art connoisseurs. this sharing of contemporary artists displayed across museums alludes to a cultural capital boost for the museum as a repository. it does not mean museums are actively trying to understand and promote indigenous aesthetics, though this can also be the case. an essential aspect of this cultural capital is visitor expectations and their influence on acquisitions. visitor expectations are both fostered by and reinforced by ethnographic museums. when visitors enter the museum, their previous experiences in other museums have set up transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 29 standards by which to judge the current exhibit they are viewing. exhibitions provide visitors with examples of how to judge and value quality and taste. they take these experiences and build upon them as they view more exhibits and judge more art. when we begin to see exhibits as sites for manufacturing taste for visitors and swaying public discourse, we see that museums "configure particular ways of knowing and perceiving" (macdonald 95). however, they are also conscious of the fact that visitor expectations drive interest and revenue. therefore, some acquisition decisions consider visitor expectations, expectations that were already fostered by previous visits to other museums. this circular process of acquiring and displaying contemporary art that may interest visitors in order to interest more visitors can limit the scope of new art acquisitions in terms of imagery, type, and medium. in other words, museums foster visitor taste in contemporary native art, which then dictates the museums’ acquisition policies that include the same or similar contemporary art/ists that visitors expect to see. imparting taste on publics for what they can expect to see, judge, and value in native north american exhibitions as something worthy of display is what anthropologist corinne a. kratz calls “rhetorics of value” (22). “rhetorics of value” are communicated through the choices museums make in what they display, how they display it, and even how they determine what to acquire. every museum reserves the right to determine what to acquire for their collections based on collection need, exhibition narratives, and personal preferences held by curators, directors, and museum boards. i acknowledge that it is challenging to acquire new art and artifacts when prices are always on the rise and museum budgets are often shrinking. the determining factors, therefore, are based on things like visitor expectations and cultural capital.7 desirable purchases that may push the boundaries of what we consider contemporary native art are too risky for museums which are forced to be more discriminatory in their acquisitions. often times, a shared taste between museums looking to maintain their social and even political capital through the status of their collections becomes the distinguishing factor in deciding what art/artists to acquire. by focusing on which contemporary artists other museums acquire, native art continues to be valued through a western connoisseur’s gaze.8 analyzing indigenous aesthetics through western aesthetic standards only reinforces the priority western aesthetics receives over courtney cottrell “indian made” 30 indigenous art forms. the consequences of which include freezing indigenous peoples in a distant past, misrecognizing indigenous representations, and limiting the type of art native artists are recognized for. in this way, western connoisseurship has assumed an early responsibility of defining, conserving, and marketing the future of the world’s arts and continues to maintain control over the definition of indigenous aesthetics. this does not mean that museums have not found new ways to incorporate indigenous aesthetics into their exhibitions. john paul rangel explores how one museum, the museum of contemporary native arts (mocna) in santa fe, nm, not only encourages the recognition of indigenous perspectives of aesthetics but actively promotes these perspectives. they do so by first calling out dominant stereotypes and intervening through the promotion of indigenous ways of knowing as a decolonial methodology.9 through the examples of art at mocna, rangel argues they try to move beyond the label of "cultural art forms" as either contemporary or traditional and focus more on expressions of cosmologies, belief systems, values, traditions, and ideologies all mingled with language, community, and place (40). a second example of museums trying new ways of incorporating indigenous aesthetics can be found in the series of co-curated exhibitions by the chicago field museum. native artists were asked to co-curate an exhibit that featured not only their artwork but also the field’s collections in some way. the first three artists the field partnered with were: bunky echo-hawk (yakama and pawnee), chris pappan (kanza), and rhonda holy bear (lakota). bunky echo-hawk, well known for his politically charged imagery, created an exhibit that showcased his work critiquing contemporary native issues. issues such as environmental pollution, endangerment of native communities through chemical waste sites, and historical and modern genocidal practices were presented. along with the exhibition, echo-hawk had a special seminar where he created art in front of and with the help of audience members.10 a blog by field curator, alaka wali, was also posted to the field website discussing some of the topics raised by the exhibit in more depth.11 chris pappan’s co-curated exhibit also critiqued western societal practices of representation, but more subtly than echo-hawk’s. pappan is known for his ledger art, which is a plains style of narrative art illustrating stories and events. most notable about ledger art is its connection to the imprisonment of 72 native men at fort marion following a series of uprisings between plains tribes and the u.s. army in the mid 1780s. while imprisoned, these native men transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 31 produced a large number of drawings on ledger paper. they were encouraged to draw by u.s. army captain, richard pratt, which would be the foundation of pratt’s education plan to assimilate native americans by “kill[ing] the indian in him, and sav[ing] the man” (pratt 260).12 pappan created ledger style art that interacted with the outdated displays at the field museum by printing them on semi-transparent laminate and laid them over display cases. for example, a buffalo hide commissioned by the field museum in 1904 depicts cheyenne war stories by kiowa artist silver horn titled tipi liner (image 2). the hide depicts u.s. soldiers riding horses in blue uniforms pointing guns at native warriors both on horses and on foot. it also depicts natives warring with other natives and even a group of native men on someone’s trail. on the plexiglass that separates visitors from this field artifact, pappan placed a transparent rainbow above a group of natives wearing robes in a semicircle. the display of pappan’s art was meant as a critique of traditional museum displays, which for the field have not changed since the 1980s in half of the americas exhibition. (image 2: tipi liner with pappan art overlay, photo by author) rhonda holy bear’s art, unlike echo-hawk’s and pappan’s, incorporated multiple mediums to make miniature figures of some of the most iconic looks to originate from plains tribes. her figures wear intricate beadwork, quillwork, and bone on their clothing while others wear miniature feather headdresses. visitors can find life-size examples of holy bear's art in the courtney cottrell “indian made” 32 field museum’s collections allowing her art to meld well with the field’s ethnographic displays. visitors can shift their attention seamlessly from her contemporary artwork to the museum artifacts that have similar designs and materials to compare, contrast, and appreciate the delicacy of her work on a miniature scale. though these contemporary native art exhibitions created an innovative way to bring a diverse set of voices and indigenous aesthetics into the exhibition hall, there was a theme that emerged from these three temporary exhibits: each was overtly native. echo-hawk’s art is overtly native in its imagery, featuring natives wearing large headdresses along with gas masks. pappan’s ledger art is a continuation of a plains artistic and narrative style readily identified as native american. and holy bear recreated miniature versions of iconic fashion and artifacts from the plains, also readily identifiable as native american. therefore, the incorporation of these three native artists ensured that visitors could identify the art immediately as native art. the art points to its indianness and emphasizes the ethnic and racial difference of these three artists and their work on display. however, as we have already seen in the first example from the oneida nation museum and as we will see in a second example from onm, the art itself does not need to look native to be incorporated and be recognized as an indigenous aesthetic. viewing indigenous aesthetics as indigenous rhetoric, we can see native art as something that can be read, something that speaks about people and speaks to people as a strategy of and for rhetorical sovereignty (lyons 449450). by claiming one’s own identity through art by drawing on experience, worldview, and commitment to bettering one’s community, art becomes an act of sovereignty for native artists no matter what form and imagery it takes. in viewing contemporary native art in this way, we can see how art is a mode by which native americans communicate self-determination to influence public discourse and educate audiences about their needs, values, and worldviews. this does not imply that all native art needs to be political nor that echo-hawk’s, pappan’s, and holy bear’s art does not do this. by broadening understandings of indigenous aesthetics, i hope to force art enthusiasts to move beyond what is visually and therefore overtly native. to instead look at and analyze what the artist themselves might have been thinking about, identifying with, and hoping to accomplish through their art. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 33 considering indigenous aesthetics in this way means the pieces acquired and displayed as art may not look like what is expected, but they still speak to particular lifestyles and histories deemed essential not only to the artist but perhaps also to the community. they are narratives of survivance that speak directly to indigenous rhetorics surrounding colonization and decolonization, kin networks, and sovereignty.13 above all, they are choices that speak directly to self-representation efforts. the next section looks at the oneida nation museum’s display practices for native art, focusing closely on one exhibition about lace-making, the aesthetic beauty of lace, and its function for oneida women at the turn of the 20th century. oneida nation museum the oneida nation museum, located in oneida, wisconsin, serves the oneida nation, part of the iroquois confederacy or haudenosaunee.14 the current onm building opened in 1989 with a small collection loaned and donated by tribal citizens.15 it was among the first tribal museums to open, with only 25 tribal museums preceding it. between 1994-95, the collection at the museum grew dramatically when the oneida nation of wisconsin purchased a large collection from the turtle museum. the native american center for the living arts, or the turtle museum as it was dubbed because of its architectural design shaped to look like a turtle, was located in niagara falls, new york. funded through a grant, the turtle museum had unforeseen budget problems after the grant trickled away, forcing it to close its doors in the mid-1990s. the majority of its collections were sent to auction. after integrating the turtle museum collection into the museum in wisconsin, the onm made a strategic plan to become the leading research archive for all things onʌyoteˀa·ká· (oneida) and to some extent, haudenosaunee. the onm is working towards this aim by creating an accessible and digital repository of the photograph and archive collections as well as a researchable database of all three-dimensional objects in the collection for safe and easy access by visitors, researchers, and tribal citizens. i have been collaborating on this project for over thirteen years, and we are taking the upcoming move as an opportunity to finish uploading all current collections to promote the new museum. in conjunction with this large digitization project, the current onm staff are busy updating the current exhibition space on a quarterly rotation. every three months, a section of the exhibits are updated, and within 12 months, all the exhibit cases are changed. this curation plan courtney cottrell “indian made” 34 stems from the desire to continuously draw community members into the museum and is also due in part because of the small size of the museum (a 1500 square foot room, divided into sections by half-walls). the onm’s exhibition mission is to present oneida culture and a broad history of the oneida and haudenosaunee through storytelling, visual engagement, and interactive activities. when visitors enter the exhibition, they are greeted by skywoman and the creation story. they move counterclockwise through the museum, walking through a small replica of a longhouse with interactive stations and staged living conditions before entering themed portions of the exhibition. currently, a contemporary cornhusk art section featuring community artists immediately follows the longhouse structure and moves seamlessly into oneida history and politics.16 these displays are focused on oneida involvement in us military services, language revitalization, land loss, and sovereignty. the exhibition ends by bringing visitors’ attention back to community members’ accomplishments and talents with more contemporary art displays. each of the contemporary art sections in the onm highlight local oneida artists. photos of the artists are displayed next to their artwork and narratives that are unique to the artists. some of these narratives illustrate how the artist came to that particular type of artwork. others showcase what inspires their artwork. while others portray personal details of the artists' life, such as where they grew up in the community and even health concerns that are preventing them from continuing their art. but what ties each of these narratives together are stories of how the artist’s identity has driven their art. when acquiring contemporary art collections, the onm practices what could be construed as a lenient acquisition policy even while dealing with the same obstacles larger museums face such as lack of funding, lack of staff, and lack of space. for many museums, lack of funds, space, and staff means being selective when it comes to objects that do not meet the museum's collection or educational missions. however, due to native american mistrust of museums as colonial institutions, tribal museums receive less donations than non-native ethnographic or regional museums. this lack of contributions (whether monetary or physical items for the collections) forces tribal museums to focus on creating trust and establishing a rapport with community members in ways that large ethnographic museums do not have to do. because tribal museums welcome donations from the community through seemingly more transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 35 lenient acquisition policies, de-acquisition policies become just as crucial for maintaining a healthy collection. the onm’s unit of measurement for determining what to acquire is based on current tribal citizenship and descendant standards that are determined by the tribal governing body and their constitution. current citizenship requirements are based on blood quantum set at a fraction that took into consideration the (then) current make-up of oneida citizens and considered future generations’ ability to meet these standards.17 blood quantum requirements also took into consideration the resources the tribe had at the time, the rate in which the tribe would grow both in terms of citizenship and as a business, and how many citizens those future resources could accommodate. descendants (those who do not meet the minimum blood quantum but are descendants of an individual who does) are tiered differently in terms of the social services and benefits they can receive but are still community members. the onm, as part of the cultural heritage area under the governmental services division of the oneida nation's organization, uses these citizenship requirements to create a consistent standard for museum acquisitions. the acquisitions affected by these criteria are artifacts, art, and archives that do not directly illustrate or discuss oneida history or culture.18 determinations for what to acquire is made on a case-by-case basis by a collections advisory team. the collections advisory team consists of the business committee secretary or appointee, manager of the cultural heritage area, museum director and assistant director/collections manager, tribal historian, records management director, tribal historic preservation officer (thpo), tribal archivist, and cultural advisor(s). these individuals, who are all oneida citizens, bring their expertise to the meeting, including knowledge about tribal history, culture, collections management, and preservation. this small team suggests that only a few individuals determine what enters the museum and therefore, what represents the oneida people. however, to say that they are setting precedents for what it means to be oneida through the acquisition of certain items or collections into the museum does not mean that only a small group of people are determining what it means to be oneida. instead, these individuals were hired and placed on the collections advisory team because of their expertise. they are individuals who know oneida culture because of their commitment and upbringing in the community, they have been doing this work for a long time, and they are individuals who received graduate degrees in related fields and have decades of courtney cottrell “indian made” 36 training and experience. and most importantly, their expertise and experiences are based on communal standards and understandings of what it means to be oneida. in terms of an indigenous aesthetic or taste, the museum leaves that to the artists’ discretion. the onm does not discriminate based on what they think should represent oneida art. instead, they acknowledge the diverse and ever-changing nature of art, even by native artists like david ninham discussed in the introduction. additionally, because the onm is trying to brand themselves as a repository for oneida and haudenosaunee culture, lifeways, and history, they allow oneida and haudenosaunee artists to determine what this looks like artistically. in this way, the onm is serving the oneida community as it determines what it means to be oneida for themselves. besides david ninham’s work and its acquisition by the onm as an example, the onm is broadening its own understanding of indigenous aesthetics through a recent display in 20162017. it displayed some of the collection’s lace table runners alongside community members’ lace handkerchiefs. the exhibit case was titled "extravagant strings: the story of oneida lace makers" and it told the story of how lace-making became a lucrative art for oneida women (oneida nation museum 2016; image 3). (image 3: “extravagant strings: the story of oneida lace makers,” onm, photo by author) transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 37 the text panels for this display explained the interesting history of lace-making in native communities and how it was not just a craft that was lucrative for native women, but how it was historically acknowledged as an art form. the display credits sybil carter as the pioneer who brought lace-making to native reservations. carter was a missionary and a socialite from the east coast. she learned to make lace as a child but did not pick it back up until she was a missionary in japan. while in japan, carter realized that lace was a profitable craft and also thought it would be an excellent way to continue her missionary work upon her return to the states. eventually, the sybil carter lace association, which existed between 1904 and 1926, organized and paid for the lace-making supplies and classes that reached reservations across the united states. her first lace-making class was on the white earth reservation in minnesota in 1889. within four years, she had opened new lace-making schools on native reservations across wisconsin into minnesota, and as far west as california. by carter's death in 1908, schools were operating in wisconsin on the oneida reservation, numerous anishinaabe reservations, and on the ho-chunk reservation. east of wisconsin, schools also ran on the onondaga and seneca reservations in new york, and west of wisconsin, schools operated on arapaho, kiowa, and paiute reservations, along with various californian mission groups. it was the order of the sisters of holy nativity in fond du lac, wi under the direction of bishop grafton who hired sybil carter and her fellow hampton institute teacher, cora bronson, to teach the oneida of wisconsin how to make lace (jenson 1901).19 history becomes hazy when crediting a specific individual with bringing lace-making classes to the oneida outside the broad episcopal missionary work. besides bishop grafton, notable names include a miss hemingway and missionary frank wesley merrill who traveled to new york to raise funds for the mission and helped transport some of the lace directly to the sybil carter indian lace association for sale. lace-making classes began in august of 1898, and by september of 1899, the class had grown to 75 oneida women. initially, sybil carter's mission was to civilize native women and make them "abandon traditional patterns of indian life" by teaching them how to care for their homes.20 the sybil carter lace association wanted classes to be held outside of native homes for presumed cleanliness reasons, but there were no buildings suitable to teach the number of oneida women who wished to make lace. instead, the women were allowed to work on their lace from home, which enabled them to work on their own time and around their other courtney cottrell “indian made” 38 responsibilities. even though they were allowed to bring their lace home, betty mclester and judy skenandore recall "the women often repeated the phrase, ‘jiot kout sa-tso-bulon' or ‘be always washing your hands'" to ensure the lace was clean and profitable (mclester and skenandore 160). not only was it profitable through sales, the women did not have to purchase the materials to make more because the sybil carter lace association used the profits from the finished products to buy more materials. most of the finished products were sold in a new york city office with small private lace events held in affluent households. unfortunately, however, because white women only worked these sales, the sybil carter lace association was accused of underpaying the native workers even when all proceeds went back into the industry, and oneida women had control of their output.21 merely five years after the lace-making industry began in oneida, josephine hill [webster], a former student at hampton institute and daughter of chief cornelius hill, took over the supervision of the work in oneida, placing it firmly in the hands of oneida women. lace-making brought in between fifty cents and a dollar per day. it is said that in oneida alone between october 1900 and july 1901, the 150 women making lace made $1125.22 amelia wheelock jordan reminisced to ida blackhawk in august of 1941, saying “we used to get a good price for our lace. i made about twelve to fifteen dollars a week” (lewis 201). in an interview between tillie baird and josephine hill webster, webster recalled sending in “the finished work every two weeks, sometimes one to three hundred dollars’ worth of finished work in one sending” to distribute to the lace makers (lewis 408n24). it was no wonder women who made lace made more money than farmers, and one did not need to be an expert lacemaker. according to kate duncan, lace sales at the turn of the century were helped by the ethnic nature of the lace makers because “sentiment was strong towards helping the indian” (34). this is surprising because the majority of the designs, which were generic european designs, did not visually suggest that they were made by native women. today, due to generic designs, it is hard to determine if existing lace in both private collections and museum collections are in fact native-made without a complete provenance. however, there are still examples where native women would incorporate everyday items like flowers, carpets, and even church windows along with native motifs from beadwork, native infants in cradleboards, canoes, and bows and arrows. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 39 even though many of the designs were duplicated from european lace, native lacemaking stood out across the globe and won many awards. native lace won awards at the paris exposition in 1900; the pan-american expo in buffalo, ny in 1901; at liege in 1905; milan in 1906; and the australian exposition in 1908. it even won the grand prize at the 1904 louisiana purchase exposition. native women’s lace was so sought after that the oneidas even presented an outstanding piece of alter lace to the cathedral of st. john the divine in new york city when it opened in 1911. sybil carter died in 1908, a year that marks the beginning of the decline in lace sales. partly due to carter’s connections, but also because fashion changed frequently, lace became all but obsolete by 1926. in oneida, a recent attempt was made by elizabeth benson mclester who tried to bring the craft back. she was relatively successful by making a crafting circle that got together weekly to do various crafts, including lace-making, beadwork, basket making, knitting, and cornhusk dolls, among others.23 although lace-making is not typically a craft associated with native american artistry, it is being recognized as such in a tribal museum and was acknowledged in a world arena through the paris exposition. this speaks to the recognition of a seemingly non-native art form that is being presented as having an impact on the local community and therefore being adopted as an art form. for oneida community members who have grown up knowing the history of the community and the work of the local episcopal church in the late 19th century, lace as an art form is not out of the everyday ordinary. lace was appreciated for its beauty and became a staple for producing economic independence not only for the women who made lace but for the oneida community they served. contemporary art displays like the lace exhibition at onm are impactful for their role in promoting survivance narratives of groups coming together and thriving through lace-making. contemporary art displays at onm are upholding the ideals and beliefs of the oneida in and of wisconsin (ackley 259). whether lacework, beadwork, cornhusk dolls, sculptures, or paintings, the displays at the onm are meant for an audience who understands, appreciates, and upholds the diversity of oneida talents and expressions of their identity. the role of the museum is to help visitors celebrate those oneida accomplishments and diversity past, present, and future through an ever-evolving oneida aesthetic. courtney cottrell “indian made” 40 rhetorical sovereignty and indigenous aesthetics the various examples used in this article illustrate different aesthetic standards for acquiring and displaying native art. the difference between the onm and the non-tribal museums is an exercise in what native scholar scott lyons calls rhetorical sovereignty. lyons writes about rhetorical sovereignty as a response to the historical mistrust natives have towards the written word, mainly english writing. the distrust stems from a large number of dishonored treaties written in english and forced assimilation through writing, reading, and speaking english in boarding schools. lyons then defines rhetorical sovereignty as “the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse” (449-450). we can apply rhetorical sovereignty to the onm as it broadens what an indigenous aesthetic for the oneida community and individual oneida artists looks like, who the audience is, and what the message might be. when indigenous aesthetics are determined by the native artist, it allows the artist to express their own beliefs, identities, and even critiques of non-native society through their art. they are able to experiment with mediums and imagery. and they are free to explore their beliefs and opinions through their art. this allows places like the onm to promote indigenous aesthetics by using the sovereign nations’ (oneida nation) citizenship standards which determines who is and who is not oneida (e.g., david ninham’s work) and to display historical moments that have impacted the community (e.g., lace-making at the turn of the century). in this way, the onm and their artists are better equipped to decolonize their museum and use it in ways that benefit the oneida community. by incorporating an indigenous aesthetic, tribal museums like onm are already “sabotag[ing] colonial systems of thought and power for the purpose of liberatory alternatives” (martineau ii). native scholar and all-around artist, jarrett martineau, calls this fugitive indigeneity. and the onm is practicing their own fugitive indigeneity by using colonial institutions (i.e., museums) and decolonizing them by determining what and how to represent their community, image, and native identity. notes 1 veterans in oneida are highly respected, and at one point, the onm had three displays honoring those who served. there is also a large memorial that sits off a county highway transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 41 between green bay and oneida that remembers those who served, those who are serving, and those who will serve. 2 for more examples of indigenous centric understandings of aesthetics see heather ahtone, “designed to last: striving toward an indigenous american aesthetic,” in international journal of arts in society 4, no. 2 (2009): 373-385, “reading beneath the surface: joe feddersen’s parking lot,” in wicazo sa review 27, no. 1 (spring 2012): 73-84; michael m. ames, cannibal tours and glass boxes: the anthropology of museums (vancouver: ubc press, 1992); jarrett martineau and eric ritskes, “fugitive indigeneity: reclaiming the terrain of decolonial struggle through indigenous art,” in decolonization: indigeneity, education & society 3, no. 1 (2014): i-xii; john paul rangel, “moving beyond the expected: representation and presence in a contemporary native arts museum,” in wicazo sa review 27, no. 1 (2012): 31-46. 3 for more examples of scholars calling for more native involvement in defining and identifying indigenous aesthetics see jane catherine berlo and ruth b. phillips, native north american art, second edition (oxford university press, 2014); edwin l. wade and rennard strickland, magic images: contemporary native american art (norman: philbrook art center and university of oklahoma press, 1981). 4 the same claims can be made for the exoticization of indigenous aesthetics. for further reading see ivan karp, “culture and representation,” exhibiting culture: the poetics and politics of museum display (washington, dc: smithsonian institution press, 1991); lisa chandler, "'journey without maps': unsettling curatorship in cross-cultural contexts," in museum and society 7, no. 2(2009): 74-91. 5 scholder himself often said he was “not indian” because of his upbringing away from luiseño life. see http://fritzscholder.com/index.php 6 for further reading see (ed.) colin calloway, gerd gemünden, susanne zantop, germans & indians: fantasies, encounters, projections (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2002); petra kalshoven, crafting “the indian”: knowledge, desire & play in indianist reenactment (new york: berghahn books, 2012); h. glenn penny, kindred by choice: germans and american indians since 1800 (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 2013). 7 this sentiment was reinforced during an interview with karl may museum curator robin leipold (2 june 2015). 8 for more information, see sally price, primitive art in civilized places (chicago, il: university of chicago press, 1989). 9 for more information of decolonizing methodologies, see linda tuhiwai smith, decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples (london: zed books ltd, 1999). 10 for the full video see https://vimeo.com/127636118 11 see https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/beyond-labels-bunky-echo-hawk-modern-warrior 12 pratt’s educational programming would later focus on children during the boarding school era; a period that continues to have ill effects on native individuals and communities. 13 for more reading about survivance, see gerald vizenor, aesthetics of survivance (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2008). for more reading about indigenous rhetorics see resa crane bizzaro, “foreword: alliances and community building: teaching indigenous rhetorics and rhetorical practices,” survivance, sovereignty, and story: teaching american indian rhetorics (university press of colorado, 2015). courtney cottrell “indian made” 42 14 oneida is one of six nations that make up the haudenosaunee. the others are cayuga, seneca, tuscarora, mohawk, and onondaga. 15 there is a discrepancy in the dates for the opening of the onm. kristina ackley states it opened in 1989 (ackley 257). however, museum personnel, including a previous director, said the opening of the museum occurred in 1976. this could be explained through a series of restructurings the museum has undergone. currently, onm is placed under a broader area called cultural heritage. cultural heritage currently oversees the museum, the library, the history department, and the language department. 16 until recently (2019), a six-foot-tall cornhusk man, the only one of its kind, was standing in the middle of this cornhusk exhibit. he has recently been taken down for some much-needed rest. 17 for more information about citizenship standards and blood quantum see norbert s. hill, jr. and kathleen ratteree, the great vanishing act: blood quantum and the future of native nations (fulcrum publishing, 2017). 18 the onm is not the only records repository for the oneida nation. there is also a records management department, which archives historical documents like correspondences, minutes of meetings, books, etc. the records management department, which has many of these documents available electronically for employees throughout the oneida organization and public access is forthcoming as well as history and library departments which have their own archival collections. the acquisition process, as it is outlined here, is for onm acquisitions only. 19 for more information from numerous oneida women's standpoints about their lace-making experiences see ed. herbert s. lewis, oneida lives: long-lost voices of the wisconsin oneidas (university of nebraska, 2005). 20 https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/organisations-and-movements/charities/sybil-carter-indianlace-association 21 see https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/records/newspaper/ba14787 and http://www.mnopedia.org/group/sybil-carter-indian-lace-association 22 for more information about what oneida lace-makers were earning from their lace, see frank wesley merrill, the church’s mission to the oneida (library of congress, 1902). 23 for more information about the contemporary revival of lace-making in oneida see betty mclester and judy skenandore “ten contemporary oneidas reminisce in nine accounts about the holy apostles episcopal church and the episcopal mission,” the wisconsin oneidas and the episcopal church a chain linking two traditions. ed. gordon l. mclester, et al. (bloomington: indiana university press, 2019). works cited ackley, kristina. “tsi?niyukwaliho?ta, the oneida nation museum: creating a space for haudenosaunee kinship and identity,” contesting knowledge: museums and indigenous perspectives. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009. bolz, peter and viola könig. native american modernism: art from north america. ethnologisches museum staatliche museeen zu berlin, 2012. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 43 duncan, kate c. “american indian lace making,” in american indian art magazine 5(3): 28 55, summer 1980. jenison, e. m. “oneida indian women rival europe in lace making” in milwaukee sentinel. october 27, 1901. kratz, corinne a. “rhetorics of value: constituting worth and meaning through cultural display,” in visual anthropology review 27(1): 21-48, 2011. leuthold, steven. indigenous aesthetics: native art, media, and identity. austin, tx: university of texas press, 1998. lewis, herbert s. and l. gordon mclester iii eds. oneida lives: long-lost voices of the wisconsin oneidas. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2005. lyons, scott. “rhetorical sovereignty: what do american indians want from writing?,” in college composition and communication 51(3): 447-468, 2000. macdonald, sharon. “collecting practices,” a companion to museum studies. ed. sharon macdonald. wiley-blackwell, 2011. martineau, jarrett. “fugitive indigeneity: reclaiming the terrain of decolonial struggle through indigenous art,” in decolonization: indigeneity, education & society 3(1): i-xii, 2014. mclester, betty and judy skenandore. “ten contemporary oneidas reminisce in nine accounts about the holy apostles episcopal church and the episcopal mission,” the wisconsin oneidas and the episcopal church: chain linking two traditions. ed. gordon mclester iii, laurence m. hauptman, judy cornelius-hawk and kenneth hoya house. bloomington: indiana university press, 2019. onciul, bryony. museums, heritage and indigenous voice: decolonizing engagement. new york: routledge, 2015. penney, david w. north american indian art. thames and hudson, 2004. pratt, richard h. “the advantages of mingling indians with whites,” americanizing the american indians: writings by the “friends of the indian” 1880-1900. cambridge: harvard university press, 1973. rangel, john paul. “moving beyond the expected: representation and presence in a contemporary native arts museum,” in wicazo sa review 27(1): 31-46, spring 2012. rose, wendy. “the great pretenders: further reflections on whiteshamanism,” the state of native america: genocide, colonization, and resistance. south end press, 1992. courtney cottrell “indian made” 44 schulze-thulin, axel. indianische malerei in nordamerika, 1830-1970: prärie und plains, südwesten, neue indianer. stuttgart: linden museum, 1973. steffen, jordan. “how native american artist fritz scholder forever changed the art world,” in smithsonian.com. smithsonian, 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/artsculture/fritz-scholder-native-american-artist-art-world-180957655/. microsoft word carlson.docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   185   gerald vizenor. treaty shirts: october 2034—a familiar treatise on the white earth nation. middletown ct: wesleyan university press, 2016. 125 pp. 978-0-8195-7628-6 http://www.upne.com/0819576286.html on the companion website for his new novel, treaty shirts, gerald vizenor notes that the book’s subtitle is intended to signal that each of its linked narratives offers a distinct view of native politics and governance. in suggesting further that the novel is at least partly an allegory (one that alludes to what would be his own one hundredth birthday in 2034), vizenor also hints at other, more personal connotations. to be “familiar” with something is know it through long association, to be in intimate or in close relationship with it. for vizenor, of course, a key index of the closeness of any relationship or the significance of any subject or story, is one’s willingness and ability to “tease” it, to test its limits and expand its possibilities. there is probably no recent subject that vizenor is more invested in and better positioned to tease than the white earth constitution, with its vexed (and currently thwarted) progress toward implementation. taking up this theme, treaty shirts is part roman à clef, part satire, and part political treatise, emerging in the context of profound uncertainty about the current direction of tribal governance. in a novel that embeds complex political theorization in a narrative displaying his characteristic spirit of invention, intertextuality, and play, vizenor probes the very meaning of constitutionalism, not just for white earth, but for other contemporary indigenous communities as well. readers familiar with the text of the white earth constitution, and with vizenor’s earlier writings on that text (both fictional and non-fictional), will recognize that heterogeneity and heteroglossia are central to his views regarding ideal forms of contemporary native polities. reflecting this core commitment, vizenor structures treaty shirts as a sequence of recursive meditations by seven different narrators, all of whom have been exiled from white earth after the termination of the nation through an act of congressional plenary power. in each chapter of the book we circle back temporally and repeat the moment of treaty abrogation and constitutional dissolution, rehearsing the build up to moment of exile. only at end of book do we move forward a bit, in narrative terms. in this respect, it becomes clear that the novel is a vehicle for thinking about different strategies for ensuring the survivance of an indigenous polity, and about moments of transition and transformation of that polity into new forms. the book challenges us, in this regard, to look beyond the apparent failure of particular decolonizing strategies and consider the imaginative possibilities revealed, or perhaps engendered, by those setbacks. as one of the exiles, savage love, notes “you can’t be exiled from liberty, from motion. resuming a state of motion is what makes exile into a presence, rather than an absence—an assertion of liberty in motion” (52. while the use of an episodic and circular plot and a rapidly shifting cast of characters is hardly an unusual technique in vizenor’s fiction, the level of commitment here to the gaps produced through the use of shifting third person limited point of view is perhaps a bit of a departure. through this narrative approach, vizenor signals to the reader that he is not necessarily trying to reconcile the theoretical tensions regarding the legacy of the white earth constitution and the fate of the white earth polity that emerge through the varied reflections of his point of view characters. rather he seems to be promoting what richard rorty (who is referenced in the text) david j. carlson review of treaty shirts   186   has characterized as the central importance of irony in contemporary political thought. in contingency, irony, and solidarity, rorty defines an ironist as someone who fulfills the following three conditions: “(1) she has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that arguments phrased in her current vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve those doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself ” (rorty 73). unwilling to invest in a priori conceptual certainty or absolutes, rorty’s ironist therefore uses dialectics as a preferred form of argument. the ironist sets about re-describing objects or events, often in neologistic terms, “with the hope that by the time she has finished using old words new senses or introducing brand-new words, people will no longer ask questions in the old words” (78). in this respect, rorty’s understanding of irony (one shared in certain ways by vizenor) is as an open-ended process of linguistic and conceptual transformation. vizenor’s protagonists embody many of the characteristics of rorty’s ironist, always resisting “terminal creeds” and consistently reworking their discourses and revisiting their memories of political experiences. where vizenor departs from rorty, perhaps, is in extending the ironic mode from the private and into the public sphere, or rather, in denying the existence of such a split. vizenor’s work has always attended to the important implications of irony in the realms of law and politics; this is one reason that irony stands as a explicitly protected form of expression in the white earth constitution. not surprisingly, then, a significant part vizenor’s project in treaty shirts is to “ironize” the white earth constitution, imagining its paradoxical ability to continue functioning both after having been abrogated unilaterally by the u.s. government and becoming deterritorialized, transformed into the charter of a diasporic group of anishinaabeg exiles. suggesting the absurdity and contradiction of the idea of being exiled from a terminated nation is just one facet of the vizenor’s subtle examination of these complex political ideas. on the novel’s companion site, vizenor describes treaty shirts as an “ironic declaration” that the ethos of the white earth constitution “is not determined by territorial boundaries.” in this respect, he signals that the book can be read as an ironist’s attempt to indigenize the very meaning of a constitution and to re-frame the present impass over the ratification and implementation of a particular, political document as part of a much longer historical process of transformation. the seven exiles/point of view characters of treaty shirts (identified through their nicknames) are archive, moby dick, savage love, gichi noodin, hole in the storm, waasese, and justice molly crèche. together, they embody a range of potential imaginative strategies for resisting colonial power structures, critiquing what vizenor terms “casino corruption,” and ensuring that the ethos of white earth constitution will continue to serve its utopian function in shaping a living polity. the first and last narrator, a poet, novelist, and the great nephew of clement beaulieu (vizenor’s alter ego in other works), archive is a repository of memory (historical, political, legal, and literary), all of which he constantly reworks in a spirit of derridean play. bearing a nickname given to him by the “tradition fascists” (vizenor’s critical term for those tribal nationalists caught up in their own orthodoxies and reductive forms of identity politics), moby dick espouses a form of indigenous modernism, which he articulates while teasing the memories of famous explorers. moby dick’s other primary distinguishing characteristic is his transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   187   great compassion, which he pointedly extends towards other “deformed fish,” despite the fact that this ethos renders him the target of shaming by other members of the community. savage love, an unpublished, experimental novelist linked to samuel beckett, trains mongrel irony dogs, thus recalling facets of vizenor’s “postindian” trickster discourse and its resistance problematic identity poses. and filling out our list, we have gichi noodin (the popular voice of panic radio), hole in the storm (an avant-garde painter and blood relative of dogroy beaulieu, the protagonist of vizenor’s earlier novel shrouds of white earth), waasese (a laser holographer whose aesthetic recalls in some ways the anishinaabe painter david bradley’s biting form of indigenous pop art), and an innovative legal thinker, justice molly crèche (whose courtroom becomes a space for the recognition of new totems and totemic relationships, and the critique of various forms of repression or subversion of those relationships—particularly on the part of the tradition fascists). through the series of chapters exploring the perspectives of these exiles, we encounter varied assertions of the importance of art and the central role of stories in the survivance of indigenous forms of governance. this, too, represents an implicit argument structuring the novel, one that is tied to its suggestive re-definition of indigenous constitutionalism. as the book progresses, the exiles’ stories suggest a number of key political insights: (1) the idea that sovereignty exists only in its assertion--in other words, that sovereignty is real only insofar as it is “performed”; (2) that a pivot to transnational, and transmotional, models is an important tactic in face of the nationstate centered structures of u.s. colonialism; and (3) that indigenous governance must blend contemporary structures with traditional systems of knowledge, in the way the white earth constitution engages with the anishinaabe concept of mino-bimaadiziwin. these ideas underpin some of the most provocative arguments voiced by characters in the novel, arguments that often seems to suggest that the “people” we perform ourselves to be, through things like written constitutions, cannot truly be bound either by territory or the legal forms/structures of the colonizer. in this respect, some might argue that the white earth constitution itself was/is simply an initial step (though perhaps a necessary one) toward the realization of what vizenor likes to call “continental liberty,” and a limited and provisional instantiation of a native political presence that u.s. settler colonialism only believes it can erase. in the spirit of ironic provisionality and open reflection, and also in the spirit of traditional storytelling, vizenor does not take a clear position on the competing political claims running through the novel. savage love, for example, seems somewhat dismissive of the white earth constitution, viewing it as compromised from the very start: the constitution was never a presence, only a collection of promissory notes and abstract articles, but those ratified egalitarian words have always been an absence, beholden to the territorial borders and jurisdiction provided by the treaty of 1867, and continued with the plenary power favors of the united states congress. the abrogation of the constitution was the start, not the end, not the absence and not the creation of a fake presence. the actual story of the constitution started with termination, the abrogration, not the delegate ratification or referendum by native citizens…the actual story of the constitution started with the exiles. (51). david j. carlson review of treaty shirts   188   in contrast to this view, we have archive, the only character who is given two chapters in which he is the focal point (and thus perhaps is the figure who comes closest to expressing an authorial viewpoint). archive emphasizes the continuity of indigenous peoplehood, a spirit of relationship and governance that makes itself manifest in different forms—treaties, constitutions, and other forms of stories--over historical time. it is archive who introduces the 1701 great peace of montreal (between the governor of new france and 1300 representatives of over forty tribal nations) as a recurrent motif in the novel. that treaty (both a text and event) is an embodiment of continental liberty that led to sixty years of peace. even if it stands as a positive example of the potential for the kind of mutual recognition that we sometime index through the concept of sovereignty, however, the great peace remains provisional and equivocal. tied to the history of the beaver wars and the dissemination of the fur trade throughout the lifeways of indigenous communities, this treaty also validated the “decimation of totemic animals,” something not to be forgiven or erased (18). archive insinuates that the ongoing stories of anishinaabe governance and sovereignty must come to grips with the full, problematic nature of the colonial past, and with the native role in that past. new totems may emerge, but they cannot overwrite this history entirely. archive also introduces us to the eponymous treaty shirts, which function both as allegorical symbols within the book and as vehicles for metafictive reflection. initially created by some of the delegates to the white earth constitutional convention, these unwashed shirts, worn at conferences and legislative sessions, are intended to serve as a kind of talismanic ward. in much the same way that the protective power of the ghost shirts worn by the lakota in the nineteenth century was revealed to be partial, however, the treaty shirts function in an equivocal way, particularly to the extent that they come to embody for some a static faith in fixed legal forms (forms which the novel suggests can be undone or abrogated). one detects complex irony in archive’s comment that “stories of the exiles in treaty shirts were eternal” in the way articles in constitutions always have meaning (14). this is, of course, true in certain respects, but only when one penetrates through the fixed forms of governance to the deeper stories defining the people that flesh out these forms. creation stories are visionary, archive notes, and thus are not concerned with “metes and bounds” (14). a naïve faith in the permanence and stability of timebound expressions of indigenous peoplehood (expressions like the white earth constitution itself), become in archive’s perspective, precarious. if, on the other hand, one invests in the idea that stories are the most fundamental and enduring form of government, one can work with and through a specific constitutional text without ever losing sight of the centrality of the political presence that is made manifest through it. an awareness of that presence, a faith in its persistence, and a willingness to work for its survivance, is, perhaps, the kind of “treaty shirt” that can provide the most effective shield in difficult times. it may be with this in mind that archive emphasizes the (fictional) creation of the white earth continental congress at the same moment when the white earth constitution was (fictionally) certified. why create a body whose typical purpose would be to create a constitution at precisely the point when a constitution would appear to many people to be complete? perhaps, through archive, vizenor is suggesting that the goal of indigenous politics (in contrast with the politics of settler-colonial states like the u.s.) isn’t to write and deploy stable governing documents, but rather to continually realize a spirit of self-constitution and engage in ongoing nation building. perhaps, to produce a full discourse of what many would today call sovereignty (but which another generation may name differently), the best approach is to celebrate and draw upon the full content of the indigenous political transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)   189   archive, an archive that now includes an innovative novel of ideas by the inimitable storier, gerald vizenor. david j. carlson, california state university, san bernardino works cited rorty, richard. contingency, irony, and solidarity. new york: cambridge university press, 1989. http://geraldvizenor.site.wesleyan.edu/papers/gerald-vizenor-on-the-constitution/ microsoft word mason.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 246 alexis c. bunten and nelson graburn, editors. indigenous tourism movements. university of toronto press, 2018. 268 pp. isbn 9781442628298. https://utorontopress.com/ca/indigenous-tourism-movements-2 the edited book is divided into three distinct components in the study of indigenous tourism movements: identity, political, and knowledge movements. the introduction does lay the foundation for the book in a concise manner. while i feel that it overstates the contributions the edited book offers and the scope of the gap that exists, i agree that most volumes on the topic have more of a business or tourism management focus rather than a critical social science approach. the authors identify two missing elements or limitations of their collection: a lack of indigenous contributors, and no analysis from indigenous asian perspectives. i would also add that no contributions were made from indigenous european perspectives either, although this is addressed somewhat in the epilogue. the authors state that even though indigenous scholars were approached to contribute to the volume, for various reason they did not. i found this aspect troubling and it also relates to what i consider a significant weakness of the volume – the lack of indigenous voices. i will provide a brief overview of each section and each chapter before returning to an overall assessment of the collection. -- identity movements chapter 2 (alexis c. bunten) this chapter is a reprint from an earlier book chapter. it focuses on the tjapukai aboriginal cultural park in north queensland, near cairns, australia. the author unpacks the relationship between the tourist gaze and the host’s manipulation of it. it is outlined upfront that the chapter does not draw on established relationships with local djabugay people. nor, it is also acknowledged, does it present the views of park employees or management staff, who in part decide on the representational imagery presented at the park and enact these cultural representations on a quotidian basis. the chapter is based on the author’s own experiences as an ethnographic researcher at indigenous tourism sites, which admittedly is extensive. methods utilized were analyses of the park’s website and reviewer comments on tripadvisor forums. two references, a total of two lines in the whole chapter, were from indigenous employees from the site. bunten clearly spends some time connecting localized issues to broader challenges faced by indigenous tourism sites and the global market spaces that they are competing in. the author discusses how playing to the tourist imaginary can be an implicit form of acceptance of the narratives of conquest that are perpetuated through and by colonial repression. she also demonstrates how within any indigenous community there are also those who consider cultural tourism sites as educational opportunities to open up dialogue and engage with tourists, and importantly, debunk stereotypical representations of indigenous cultures in australia. bunten views these tourist locations as powerful sites of cultural exchange and a means for local peoples to change perceptions of indigenous peoples. as with chapter 9, on inuit experiences in canada’s north, i would have liked to see an emphasis on how this is especially the case in rural and remote contexts where there are fewer opportunities for local peoples to engage with noncourtney mason review essay: indigenous tourism movements 247 indigenous peoples and international tourists alike, at least in situations where community members remain in control of their cultural representational productions. chapter 3 (salazar) chapter three provides a brief history of the maasai peoples in tanzania and also includes the contemporary issues impacting communities, some of which are directly related to the growth of tourism industries. although methods are presented overviewing participant observation and the interviews conducted through ongoing work with the maasai, no indigenous voices are present in the text nor is there content from interviews integrated. the chapter reads more like a literature review of works that assess the issues the maasai face, heavily drawing from the author’s previous work. however, the chapter does provide an interesting discussion about the mobility that tourism industries in east africa offer to some maasai who are benefitting financially from the commoditization and globalization of their culture. salazar spends some space debunking myths around the temporalized, pastoral maasai warrior, who is untouched from modernity, contemporary land use changes, and new tourism economies in east africa. in this aspect, the chapter was effective. chapter 4 (stocker) chapter four is based on fieldwork conducted in 1999 and 2009 in rural costa rica. although participant observation and interviews are profiled in a description of methods, this chapter mostly draws on anecdotal information presented by the author from research trips to chorotega communities. the main premise of the chapter is that during a period of cultural revival, local peoples used imagery that is connected to other indigenous communities in costa rica, or more broadly throughout central america, in order to meet tourists’ expectations of indigeneity: thus cultural alchemy becomes an impetus for cultural revitalization. stocker states that efforts were made to display indigeneity easily recognized by outsiders. throughout the chapter there is an uncomfortable tension around “authenticity.” the author seems to oscillate between celebrating the chorotega’s ingenuity for engaging with diverse forms of indigeneity and then critiquing the “authenticity” of their use of cultural insignia during this revival. as an example, stocker describes that the tradition of using jaguar themed tattoos or symbols had lapsed, so it had to be reinvented in the region, and that the increased visibility of this practice was partly due to the community’s interaction with local tourism economies. however, the jaguar, as an apex predator, of course would have featured prominently in chorotega imagery and oral testimony even though local or regional populations of the predator may have declined significantly. i am not sure the author relates this local history of the jaguar as this alone may explain, or at least in part, the decline and rise of its use in tattoos. stocker does not reveal the meanings that were generated from these cultural symbols, even if they are not “authentic” from her perspective. instead of using an anthropological lens to investigate the level of “authenticity” of the cultural symbols, it would have been much more effective if the author had asked local peoples about their perspectives and presented the findings in their own words. furthermore, this type of borrowing of global indigenous imagery occurs on a daily basis in indigenous tourism sites internationally. the author demonstrates this by including her descriptions of children “playing indian” and drawing from global popular forms and stereotypes of indigeneity in ways that shaped local identity production. the most interesting component of the chapter is the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 248 efforts of local indigenous peoples to recognize the value of their cultural practices and pursue new economic opportunities with non-indigenous tourism providers. by relying on symbolism of a pan-indian nature, the chorotega created capital with regional tourism producers as they were offering a product that had value to them. in this manner, as the author argues, performances of indigeneity became meaningful for both insiders and outsiders. political movements chapter 5 (theodossopoulos) this chapter considers the potential of indigenous tourism sites to shape the political representation of indigenous communities by assessing how the formation of national parks and related tourism opportunities have facilitated the embera in panama to remain on their lands. the research is based on 17 months of fieldwork spread over 7 years (2005-2012). the author discusses how, in response to the hunting and cultivation restrictions that came with the 1985 park formation, communities turned to tourism to replace subsistence practices that would have occurred inside the newly created park boundaries. tourism economies provided opportunities for communities to regularly engage in cultural practices that in some cases had lapsed, and to reinvest not only in cultural performances such as traditional dance and regalia, but also embera oral histories. theodossopoulos argues that tourism not only allowed local communities to escape the poverty instituted by national park restrictions, but also to position their cultures as an important part of the national tourism strategy as well as to produce an alternative source of economic growth. ironically, their role in national tourism could facilitate negotiations for expanded land rights and access. although perhaps covered elsewhere by the author, it would have been interesting to include a discussion of the types of impacts the displacement had in the community, or at least cover this literature from other international examples. while i realize the author’s fieldwork began after the initial displacement, this is not simply a case where some forms of subsistence and cultural practices are replaced by tourism economies. the histories of indigenous peoples in or around national parks globally are filled with marginalization and cultural loss precisely because subsistence practices of hunting, fishing, gathering, and sometimes agriculture, are the basis or oral histories and many other forms of linguistic or cultural practices. interestingly, in this case, not having access to traditional territories and sacred sites through displacement has engendered this loss, but it has also allowed communities to remain near their lands, as opposed to relocating to impoverished latino communities in regional urban centers. chapter 6 (giraudo) this chapter profiles cultural tourism in san communities of botswana. after a succinct history, the author includes a helpful section on the evolving discourses of indigeneity in africa. importantly, giraudo outlines why african experiences vary from those in settler-colonial states while also being impacted greatly by destructive european influences on the continent in how post-colonial african nations have defined, and continue to define, indigeneity. the author then profiles the opportunities brought by tourism and the types of san representations desired in these new economies. other than some references to newspapers and government documents, there is no discussion of methods or methodologies. similar to the previous chapter, this work courtney mason review essay: indigenous tourism movements 249 describes the national government’s interest in growing the cultural and indigenous tourism sectors which has provided some communities with new opportunities and encouraged the government’s rethinking about how it defines indigeneity and relevant policies that impact communities. this is a clearly written and valuable chapter. chapter 7 (douny) this chapter centres on dogon peoples of west africa in mali. the author concentrates on the processes by which authenticity is altered through the commodification of dogon cultural identities in performance for tourism industries. this chapter is basically an investigation into the “authenticity” of the performances and art provided for, and presented to, tourists. observations from the author are drawn from fieldwork conducted from 2003-2011. once again, no description of methods or methodologies is included. it would have been interesting to learn more about how the malian political crisis of 2012 impacted the region’s tourism industry and how the dogon have adapted to the absence of these relatively new economic streams of revenue. knowledge movements chapter 8 (bunn-marcuse) this chapter explores how indigenous artists exploited the growing tourism economies of southeastern alaska in the late 19th century. by examining the actual artworks and the circumstances of production through the journals of travelers to the region, the author outlines some of the strategies that artists employed to benefit from these new economies. these strategies are described as cross cultural encounters mediated by consumer demand. bunnmarcuse contends that indigenous perspectives are missing from the historical record and admits that much more work is needed with oral histories. this suggests that evidence or oral testimony can be vital to a more comprehensive understanding of these encounters. in this regard, the chapter does little to address this gap in scholarly knowledge. however, the author’s work does present new perspectives on the production aspects of the art to complement the literature that is dominated by the consumption or collector side. the chapter reveals that the tourism literature of the period presented alaska’s indigenous population as part of the “natural” landscape and a key element of experiencing the “wildness” of america’s newest acquisition. describing the complex engagement in these industries by indigenous peoples, bunn-marcuse states: “the reality was much more complicated, demanding a careful maneuvering between colonial demands, tourist expectations, and kinship obligations in order to navigate the colonial economy and chart the course for economic and cultural survival” (184-185). towards the end of the chapter, the author connects how forms of colonial repression impacted artists and performers who participated in the tourism industry. chapter 9 (graburn) in this short chapter, the author argues that there has been a breakdown of former colonial roles and hierarchies in the indigenous tourism economies of canada’s eastern arctic. the chapter does offer some interesting analysis of inuit tourism as well as the shifting dimensions of tourism transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 250 in canada’s north. as the number of inuit who live and work outside of nunavut are increasing, they now comprise a significant portion of the visitors who tour the region. although still informative, the sections on inuit hunting and fishing tourism economies, ecotourism, and park development are certainly outdated. this is particularly the case in the descriptions on conservation hunting of polar bears and indigenous protected areas formation, as there are several new updates on policy and community-based conservation models that would have been critical to include. for example, torngat mountains national park (2008) is referenced as the newest national park, but there have been numerous park developments of significance since then. the chapter does provide a solid history of inuit arts and crafts, but the methods outlined, the analysis of brochures created by the tourism industry and opinions of other non-indigenous scholars doing research in the region, are problematic. when referring to early tourism initiatives and the key roles of quallunaat (euro-canadians) graburn states: “these people were able to override rules and pull strings to get things done, but none of them did it for their own monetary profit” (215). no non-indigenous tourism entrepreneurs exploited inuit labour as carvers, performers, and service providers in the whole territory? this statement is incredibly naïve and contrary to the findings of previous research. unfortunately, i find this chapter outdated and severely lacking in indigenous perspectives. chapter 10 (palomino-schalscha) this chapter argues that it is through tourism organizations that mapuche/pewenche peoples in chile have defended their rights to their territories while adapting to neoliberalism and its impacts on local ecosystems. it is through tourism that these indigenous communities are making visible connections to traditional territories, asserting their rights, and reaffirming their knowledge of the land, including its human and non-human actors. the author provides a detailed discussion of the chilean government’s contradictory approach: implementing policies of development and poverty relief while simultaneously criminalizing indigenous protest and neglecting indigenous rights to lands and resources. readers will appreciate the history of natural resource extraction industries and the conflicts with indigenous communities. while profiling broader political movements that impact indigenous peoples, including legislation for the rights of nature in ecuador and the rights of mother earth in bolivia, the author links these issues to the localized context in alto bío bío. three quotes from community members were provided, but there is no methods section with any detail. at least some evidence of indigenous voice is in the chapter, but there is no indication of how this evidence was collected or shared. palominoschalscha asserts that through tourism, community members have increased their abilities to make visible and actualize their ways of knowing and producing new alternatives, or ways, of imagining their lands and their related cultural connections. overall, it is an effective chapter. epilogue (graburn) the epilogue begins with an interesting overview on the production of indigeneity in both russia and china. these are subjects that have received very little attention by scholars. graburn then discusses why only one indigenous scholar (the co-editor) was able to contribute to the ten chapters in the book. he suggests that it is the double burden that some indigenous scholars bear by doing both traditional academic work and community-based contributions to either the indigenous communities they come from or others that they have relations with. while i agree courtney mason review essay: indigenous tourism movements 251 with this point, i also suggest that the orientation of the book on a certain type of indigenous tourism is an issue and perhaps too narrow of a disciplinary focus may not have attracted indigenous scholars who work in this area, but are not necessarily anthropologists. there is also a lengthy discussion that profiles indigenous anthropologists who have received some recognition in their work over the last couple of decades and this will be informative to many readers. the epilogue does effectively summarize the contents of the collection. -- the biggest critique that many scholars will have of this volume is the overwhelming lack of indigenous voice or perspective, not just the lack of indigenous academics that have contributed. the chapters rarely present perspectives of indigenous community members, participants or collaborators. for example, numerous contributors profile their extensive experience (sometimes many decades) of working at community levels, but where is the voice of the peoples they collaborate with on their research projects? why are collaborators and participants not made co-authors or authors of their own chapters? i view this as an outdated way of doing anthropological work or research with indigenous communities and peoples. over the last few decades, there are collaborative ethnographies emerging from the discipline that are much better models of doing research for and with indigenous communities. the other critique that i have of the volume is that it suffers from an absence of methods or methodological descriptions throughout. many of the chapters force readers to take all information at face value as very little evidence is actually presented, other than referencing key works on the subject. i found this surprising and, at times, not very convincing. this is especially the case when the focus of the book is to examine the multiple challenges indigenous communities encounter through their involvement in global tourism structures. however, this edited collection does expand the scope of analysis on indigenous tourism movements, which is dominated by settler-colonial nations, especially canada, the united states, australia and new zealand. the concentration of the book on central and south america (panama, costa rica and chile) and the african continent (mali, tanzania and botswana) does support geographic and cultural diversity in indigenous tourism scholarship. due to the variety of case studies presented, the volume will have appeal to both general and academic audiences, although it is better suited to the latter. i anticipate that it will be of use as a course text for senior undergraduate and graduate classes, particularly with its international scope and the ways that the researchers profile and situate diverse indigenous communities. despite a few shortcomings, some of which i emphasize above, the book does uncover some of the mounting tensions and pervasive discontinuities in global indigenous tourism movements. consequently, the book makes a significant contribution to the literature on indigenous tourism, colonial histories of cultural repression, the production of indigeneity, nationalism, and the inequitable of political power structures that continue to marginalize and disadvantage indigenous communities internationally. courtney mason, thompson rivers university microsoft word kemball.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 300 evelyn j. peters and julia christensen, editors. indigenous homelessness: perspectives from canada, australia, and new zealand. university of manitoba press, 2016. 408 pp. isbn: 978-0-88755-826-9. https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/indigenous-homelessness despite the overrepresentation of indigenous people in the homeless populations of canada, australia and new zealand, studies of homelessness have so far failed to consider the specificity of indigenous homelessness in culturally relevant ways. arguing that homelessness is “endemic to experiences of colonialism” (323) and indeed rooted in colonial practices, editors peters and christensen have drawn together chapters which resituate the crisis of indigenous homelessness away from social pathologies, discourses of poverty, addiction and mental health. indigenous homelessness is a timely, important work which considers in detail a diverse range of indigenous perspectives, illustrative of the scale and scope of contemporary indigenous homelessness in order to address the prevailing “apathy and even passive acceptance” (10) that currently surrounds this phenomenon. indigenous homelessness is organised into three sections, which separately focus on homelessness in canada, australia and new zealand. introductory chapters usefully lay out the colonial and socio-economic contexts within each country, and the extent of what is currently known about indigenous homelessness, as well as current areas of focus for policy makers. whilst this structure enables detailed discussions within each national context, it does limit the extent to which comparisons can be made. one might have wished for a more balanced structure: nine chapters are devoted to canada whilst five chapters explore homelessness in australia and three chapters concentrate on new zealand. that being said, the book is structured with an accumulative effect in mind, meaning ideas and concepts initially raised in the chapters on canadian homelessness are brought into dialogue with the discussions focused on the other countries. indeed, this accumulative effect is most apparent in peters’s conclusion to indigenous homelessness, which makes some of the book’s most valuable comparisons. individual chapters, which might have adopted their own comparative approach, are unfortunately lacking in this edited collection but, as has been noted, this is an understudied aspect in homelessness scholarship and perhaps such comparative work might now follow on from peters and christensen’s work, utilising the methodologies and concepts raised in indigenous homelessness. peters’s illuminating conclusion identifies broad themes across the multitude of perspectives offered in the collection as a whole: legacies of colonialism; policy-driven homelessness; cultural survival and resistance; specificity of places and identities. addressing the complex challenges posed by indigenous homelessness, peters argues, requires a greater understanding of these themes as well as the willingness to confront the cultural assumptions and structural racism embedded within existing practices. peters advocates (as indeed does the book as a whole) for the involvement of indigenous people in community-engaged scholarship to build upon the findings within indigenous homelessness. the many settings, methodologies and culturally specific aspects of homelessness—be it “absolute,” “hidden,” “at risk of” or “spiritually” homeless—presented in peters and anna kemball review of indigenous homelessness 301 christensen’s expansive work are too varied to summarise here. there are, however, particular chapters that achieve an exemplary balance between local and global challenges posed by indigenous homelessness. employing a blackfoot (niitsítapi) conception of land lends belanger and lindstrom’s chapter, “‘all we needs is our land’: exploring southern alberta urban indigenous homelessness,” an important tribal specificity. yet their concern for the experience of “being homeless in one’s homeland” (163) and spiritual homelessness speaks to a wider problem shared by many communities discussed in this work. research such as this, informed as it is by brief considerations of similar work from other geographical contexts, provides an exemplary approach to addressing indigenous homelessness; local cultural frameworks and methods lead to discussions that have an empowering relevance which reaches to issues faced by indigenous populations more broadly. without adequate definitions and models of indigenous homelessness, public policy is not properly equipped to address it and even risks exacerbating the issue. greenop and memmott’s chapter, “‘we are good-heart people, we like to share’: definitional dilemmas of crowding and homelessness in urban indigenous australia,” illustrates this in relation to australian models of crowding. they find that statistical measures of homelessness and crowding are culturally constructed to extend anglo-australian norms of behaviour and housing use. the authors call for an evidence-based policy that does not assimilate cultural values and discuss positive indigenous practices behaviours surrounding sociality and mobility, caring for country and kin, that are mistakenly interpreted as examples of crowding. in the section on new zealand, groot and peters’s introductory chapter outlines the ways in which new zealand lacks a nationally coordinated response to homelessness. that the delivery of social housing and service provision appears to fall behind parallel efforts in canada and australia might explain the corresponding paucity of research into māori homelessness. whilst this third section of indigenous homelessness is unfortunately smaller than the preceding sections, the ideas presented are nonetheless significant to the field. in “tūrangawaewae kore: nowhere to stand,” brown comprehensively explains tūrangawaewae, the maori concept of having an ancestral place to land, before stressing the need for long-term strategies that might decolonise national policy and prioritise māori spiritual identification with ancestral landscapes. brown’s discussion covers a multigenerational experience, of both rural and urban homelessness, to provide a detailed account of the processes by which colonisation has caused indigenous homelessness in new zealand. if colonisation is in part, as contributors bonnycastle, simpkins and siddle argue, “a contest over whose knowledge matters” (117), then surely this necessary study is an important step in countering the underrepresentation of indigenous people in current studies of homelessness. prioritising indigenous concepts—from tūranagawaewae to home/journeying in the northwest territories and australian aboriginal structures of kinship—allows indigenous homelessness to assert how indigenous knowledge should matter to researchers and policy-makers facing the challenges posed by homelessness. indigenous homelessness succeeds in its exploration of pliable analytical concepts—such as “spiritual homelessness”—with which we can consider indigenous homelessness in specific local contexts. several contributors note the dangers of extrapolating findings from one geographic location to another, yet, as peters’s conclusion suggests, there are respectful ways in which the individual cultural experiences of homelessness can be connected across distinct geographies transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 302 because of shared colonial histories. readers of transmotion might want to consider ideas presented in this work in relation to indigenous homelessness amongst native american populations. certainly, the comprehensive examinations of homelessness in canada would seem applicable to a broader north american context. given the expertise of the editors, this book is of particular use for social and cultural geographers across all former settler colonies. across indigenous literary studies, researchers interested in indigenous wellbeing, identity through relationships to land and the continuing legacy of colonialism should welcome the important discussions presented in this edited collection. anna kemball, university of edinburgh microsoft word sear.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 274 marianne ignace and ronald e. ignace. secwépemc people, land and laws: yerí7 re stsq́eýs-kucw. mcgill-queen’s university press, 2017. 624 pp. isbn 9780773551305 https://www.mqup.ca/secw--pemc-people--land--and-laws-products-9780773551305.php this collaborative and interdisciplinary work by marianne and ronald ignace explores and documents secwépemc history, from the ice age through to the present. the 588-page text is not only impressive and powerful for the sheer depth in which it introduces and documents secwépemc history, enduring laws, language, and relationships to land, but also in the ways in which secwépemc voices past and present are represented and foregrounded throughout. structurally, the text is divided into 14 chapters; each chapter addresses a different aspect of secwépemc history, culture, laws, or language. together, the chapters progress chronologically from the ice age through to the present day, starting with chapter 2: “le q ̓7es te tellqeĺmúcw (the time of the ancient transformers)” and ending with chapter 14: “re stsq̓ey̓s-kucw wel me7 yews (stories from the past, laws and rights for the future).” as a whole, this work is too complex, intricate, and multi-dimensional to discuss in its entirety here, so in this review i focus on prominent themes that run throughout the text or important questions that it, as a whole, introduces, such as: the enduring relationship between homeland and lifeways; how secwépemc voices, scientific research, and written historical records are placed in dialogue; the embedded connection between secwepemctsín language and homeland; and, lastly, why this book was created and who it is intended to be shared with and used by. the most salient thread throughout each chapter is how secwépemc homeland has and continues to shape secwépemc lifeways, and in turn, how secwépemc lifeways have, and continue to, shape their homeland. the majority of the chapters are written and compiled by marianne and ronald ignace, however several chapters are written in collaboration with researchers from other disciplines, such as chapter 3: “re tsúwet.s le q ̓7es te stet̓ex7éms-kucw (what archaeology tells us about the initial peopling and life of secwepemcúĺecw),” chapter 5: “re styecwmenúĺecws-kucw (how we look(ed) after our land),” and chapter 6: “le q ̓7éses re scwescwesét.s-kucw ell re s7eykemín̓ems-kucw (trade, travel and transportation).” the book also includes several pages of colour images of the secwépemc territory, people, and culturally and historically relevant and referenced sites and objects. there is an extensive bibliography and reference index at the end of the text. marianne and ronald ignace start the book with “yerí7 re sqweqwentsín-kt (an opening prayer)” thanking and acknowledging the creator, secwépemc land, elders, and language. this prayer reminds the reader not only of the physical importance of secwépemc homeland and territory, but also that, as they continue reading, they are entering a space of secwépemc history shaped and mediated by secwépemc voices and others who collaborated to compile and share this knowledge. the foreword is written by bonnie leonard, tribal director of the shuswap nation tribal council, and she highlights that this work was created in order to outline the “shared wisdom of the elders” that is combined with “other more scientific aspects of learning, such as archaeology and ethnology” (xxxiii). leonard underscores that this book “was never intended to be a comprehensive rights and title resource but is meant to serve as a tool that can be utilized by many to gain insights about and understandings of the values and cultural importance of the secwépemc people’s connection to land and to their oral histories” (xxxiii). as victoria sear review of secwépemc people, land and laws 275 such, this text is quietly powerful in the ways in which it integrates secwépemc oral history, traditional stories, and personal accounts with historic documentation and written archives, as well as with scientific research from archaeology, ethnobotany, linguistics, and historical geography, in order to illustrate that these ways of knowing and documenting are not in opposition, but rather can work in complement to share the history of the secwépemc people as it has been told by them and as it has been understood by others. secwépemc voices anchor each chapter, and the discussion is framed by oral histories and traditional stories that have been passed down and shared by elders in their secwepemctsín language, as well as more recent personal accounts from secwépemc people that detail their own lived experiences and shared memories. as articulated by leonard, the work as a whole does not explicitly argue for secwépemc people’s rights and title to land or other cultural or physical resources. instead, it seems the goal of the book as a whole is to create a comprehensive resource about and for the secwépemc people that uplifts and foregrounds secwépemc voices and stories in order to illustrate and document the ways in which the secwépemc people have maintained a connection with their homeland, laws, language, and lifeways despite centuries of oppression and territorial contestation. a prominent theme throughout the text is the importance of secwépemc language in telling and understanding secwépemc stories, oral history, and intimate relationships with their land. besides the table of contents and the list of figures, the first section a reader sees is table 0.1, which lists the sounds of the secwepemctsín language written in the practical alphabet, followed by a section detailing the spelling conventions of the western dialect of secwepemctsín and providing a brief history of the orthography currently used to write the language. the placing of this section underscores the importance of the secwepemctsín language in understanding and articulating secwépemc ways of being and knowing, their relationship to the land, and their laws. when possible, secwepemctsín is included before english translations or equivalents; the chapter titles and many headings—as well as the introductory prayer, traditional stories, and personal accounts—appear first in secwepemctsín and second in english. when possible, locations are primarily referred to by their secwepemctsín or indigenous place name, and followed by the english place name in parentheses. throughout the book, the ignaces include tables highlighting how an understanding of the linguistic features of secwepemctsín can provide additional insight into secwépemc values, laws, and their understanding of and relationship to their homeland. for example, table 5.3 illustrates how calendar and place names often index seasonal activities (196-197); table 7.1 illustrates how secwépemc place names often identify specific locations associated with specific natural characteristics, activities, or events that took place there (237-239); and table 9.2 illustrates the meaning and importance behind personal names that are given and passed down through generations (355). the prioritization and use of secwepemctsín throughout the text also reasserts that, although the book is written in english, it is grounded in secwepemctsín language, oral history, and its intimate and enduring relationship to secwépemc homeland. even though each chapter is densely packed with historical, cultural, and scientific information as well as explanatory images, maps, diagrams, and tables, there is something deeply personal about how this knowledge is presented and how it might be used. if the long-term goal of this work is not to create a document that overtly argues for secwépemc rights and title to land or transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 276 documents the oppression secwépemc people have endured, then it opens up the possibility that this text, in fact, was not produced to be used in a wider political arena but rather was created for secwépemc people to share their history with each other. for example, the authors often use the first-person plural pronoun “our” to refer to secwépemc stories, practices, and events, and at times it is not clear whether “our” is exclusive of the reader and refers to the ignaces as members of the shuswap nation, or whether “our” is intended to potentially include a reader who too is secwépemc. explained in another way, at times i wondered whether i—as someone who is not secwépemc—was imposing on someone else’s story, which prompted me to contemplate what it means to be an invited guest in this process. in the last paragraph of the work, the ignaces answer the above question when they explain that “to make them accessible and to make them heard, we have turned the oral histories and stories of past generations of secwépemc people into written words. however, we hope that this way of commemorating them will inspire present and future generations of secwépemc to learn them, memorize them, and tell them to one another and the next generation in the spirit of oral tellings of the past. for all others, we hope that the stories and knowledge we have presented, never complete, have provided more than a fleeting glimpse at the depth, meaning, and wisdom that they have entailed for generations of secwépemc people” (501-2). even though this book was written to be read and used by both people who are secwépemc and people who are not, one last important accomplishment of this text is to (potentially) convey that this history is secwépemc people’s to share, not someone else’s to take or impose upon, which is a subtle, but nonetheless powerful, ending message. victoria sear, university of british columbia microsoft word bawden.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 182 furlan, laura m. indigenous cities: urban indian fiction and the histories of relocation. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2017. 354 pp. isbn: 978-0-80326933-0. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9780803269330/ in her first monograph, laura m. furlan challenges assumptions around native americans that often either render indigenous people invisible in cities or depict their urban experience as one of alienation. furlan instead questions what it means to be indian in urban spaces and, more specifically, how the city experience has been represented in native writing. furlan establishes that native authors have been creating works that demonstrate how indigenous people can (and do) thrive in urban environments as well as exploring notions around identity, nationhood, the histories of people and place, and the false dichotomy between the reservation (i.e. indian land) and the city (i.e. non-indian land). she argues that such works “reveal that political agency and cultural preservation are possible in the city” and therefore “represent a new direction in american indian writing” (furlan 3). indigenous cities: urban indian fiction and the histories of relocation (2017) subsequently makes a critical intervention in the study of native american literature, history, and culture. indigenous cities focuses on the writings of four authors publishing after the relocation period: janet campbell hale (coeur d’alene), sherman alexie (spokane/coeur d’alene), louise erdrich (ojibwe), and susan power (dakota). furlan situates the work of each author within its geography (san francisco, seattle, minneapolis, and chicago, respectively) and place history which provides a useful level of specificity. collectively, these writings demonstrate that cities do not only figure as dangerous spaces for native writers; cities, as imagined by these authors, also offer connection, agency, and freedom. the monograph is largely comprised of literary analysis, but furlan also explores how the urban indian experience is represented in art, film, and photography. this is a key strength of the monograph as furlan acknowledges how the ideas she traces in her key texts translate across different mediums. for example, indigenous cities is book-ended by analysis of the 1961 film the exiles by non-native filmmaker kent mackenzie. furlan uses the film to explore the themes of urban indian narratives and to problematise the powerlessness often attributed to indigenous people residing in american cities. furlan’s academic background in american studies as well as american indian literary and cultural studies make her well placed to write such an ambitious, interdisciplinary text. chapter one, which considers hale’s the jailing of cecelia capture (1985), exemplifies furlan’s ability to weave together a variety of analytical lenses including, but not limited to, gender, race, post-colonialism, transnationalism, and the diaspora. furlan excellently argues the importance of hale’s novel and attributes its relative obscurity (despite a pulitzer nomination) to “its redefinition of indian identity in the spaces outside of the reservation” and to how, according to critics at the time of publication, the text does not conform to traditional notions of “indianness” (39, 40). for example, furlan identifies cecelia capture as a “new kind of native subject” and argues that hale’s ground-breaking novel poses “a tangible challenge to the methodologies and expectations of theorists of american indian literatures” (40). cecelia capture was one of the first female protagonists in native american literature, and gender figures heavily in furlan’s analysis of this text. capture’s conflicting feelings about the reservation reflect the psychological problems created by romanticising a space that also figures as a site of loss and captivity (furlan 51). furlan connects hale’s novel with feminist writing more generally through its exploration of andi bawden review of indigenous cities 183 home as prison but asserts that the text is uniquely indigenous given how capture’s ideas are coloured by the legacies of settler colonialism. the healing potential of protest movements (the 1969-1971 occupation of alcatraz in particular) saves cecelia capture at the novel’s conclusion, and furlan convincingly argues that residing and moving within cities facilitates the networks and activism that give capture the agency she desires. chapter two explores alexie’s indian killer (1995), “what you pawn i will redeem” (2003), and flight (2007), all of which explore class, displacement, and marginalisation in american cities. furlan effectively conveys how alexie’s “engagement with homelessness serves to map his search for meaning in the urban experience” and how alexie softens his rejection of the city as an indigenous space over the course of his career (76, 85). within his writing, alexie makes homeless indians visible and, in doing so, points to the histories of displacement that underpin the expansion and continued existence of the united states. furlan’s reading of “homeless indians as ghosts,” and cities as the site of a contemporary ghost dance (with the mysterious “indian killer” as the manifestation of indigenous rage), is compelling (87). analysing alexie’s writings alongside chief seattle’s 1854 speech (in which he says, “[t]he white man will never be alone. let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.”) enables furlan to insist that alexie’s ghosts should be understood as having “something important to say” (seattle, qtd. in furlan 87, 88). geography and history are key to understanding alexie’s ghosts, and furlan argues that alexie uses them to “ironize the notion of vanishing indians” and to “remap the city by demonstrating how it is riven with past displacements in the present” (89). alexie’s emphasis on mapping establishes the urban landscape as a site of resistance and indigenous history, whether real (in the case of chief seattle) or magical (in the case of the disappearing/reappearing pawnshop). in chapter three, furlan uses erdrich’s the antelope wife (1998) to consider how erdrich re-narrativises the urban indian experience and provides an alternative to that presented by sociological studies and media reports of the 1970s, which over-emphasised desperation and alcoholism. furlan situates the novel within diasporic writing traditions and explores how movement and borders figure within erdrich’s work. erdrich’s urban indians are mobile and metropolitan, challenging the notion of “a fixed indian identity rooted in the past, unable to adapt to modern living” (furlan 165). multiple levels of movement exist within the antelope wife and the distinction between forced and voluntary relocation is key: the antelope woman, or “sweet calico,” is always moving but becomes lost and homeless through her captivity. furlan most explicitly engages with transnationalism in this chapter and argues that erdrich’s novel “unhinges the notion of indians as rooted peoples living on reservations, people with unchanging cultures, and suggests that these movements and circulations produce new versions of indian identity” (139). erdrich’s characteristically rich writing style enables furlan to demonstrate how hybridised cultural expressions (such as foodways) can reveal selectivity and agency rather than loss or disconnection. the focus of the fourth and final chapter of indigenous cities is power’s roofwalker (2002), a collection of short stories and essays that defies easy classification. furlan’s reading of roofwalker smoothly follows the previous chapter in its discussion of the (re)writing and (re)telling of history. (re)writing and (re)telling are common threads throughout indigenous cities, but roofwalker best lends itself to explicit discussion of these ideas given how power’s mother figures as an “archivist” of family and community history (furlan 191). in “museum indians,” power describes her mother’s protest against the fort dearborn massacre monument which portrays a white woman and child being saved from black hawk, a violent potawatomi leader (furlan 184). furlan situates the monument and power’s transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 184 depiction of her mother’s protest within the burgeoning scholarship on public commemoration (which is a highly contentious issue in the twentieth century) and effectively argues that power uses her writing to challenge the dominant narrative surrounding native american peoples and their histories. indigenous cities makes an important contribution to discussions around what it means to be indian in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. the monograph challenges us to think more carefully about the importance awarded to the reservation and how stereotypes work to deny indigenous modernity and mobility. indigenous cities will be an invaluable and accessible resource for students of american indian literature, culture, and history. furlan’s theorisations of diaspora, transnationalism, gender, place, and history in urban indian writing establish that she should be seen as an exciting voice in american indian studies. andi bawden, university of east anglia microsoft word carlson.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 195 john borrows and michael coyle, editors. the right relationship: reimagining the implementation of historical treaties. university of toronto press, 2017. 428 pp. isbn 9781442630215 https://utorontopress.com/us/the-right-relationship-2 a recent pattern in scholarly books focused on indigenous law and policy is for the author (or authors) to take a side in a key debate that largely structures the field. on the one hand, powerful arguments are regularly made that decolonization and the power of self-determination for indigenous communities must be pursued primarily by fully decoupling from western legal systems and norms. on the other side, one finds representatives of a more legal realist and reformist tradition, who point to the flexibility of legal systems and stress the possibility for change to be effected from within as well as outside of those norms and structures. to his credit, throughout his career anishinaabe legal scholar john borrows has managed to avoid the limitations of this binary. instead, his work has continually highlighted the ways that the legal nomos (past and present) of first nations peoples and the constitutional structure of canada have the potential to become mutually transformative. in the right relationship, borrows and coeditor university of western ontario law professor michael coyle have brought together a range of essays that embody that same spirit of creative legal thinking. focusing specifically on the ongoing importance of treaty relationships between first nations tribes and the national and regional governments of canada, the book’s contributors frankly, realistically, and sometimes hopefully assess the potential for treaty law to become a central tool for upending the repressive apparatus of settler colonialism in the modern state. the right relationship is divided into three sections, the first of which highlights the ways that a historically-informed perspective on treaty negotiations and colonial history, dating back to the eighteenth century, should significantly alter the way that treaty relations today are understood and pursued. borrows’s essay on “canada’s colonial constitution” draws attention to the ways that the constitutional order and narratives of the canadian state have mis-interpreted treaty history and forced first nations communities into primary political relationships with provincial governments, as opposed to with the central government in ottawa. this shoehorning of tribal peoples into the federalist structures of modern canada has buttressed colonialism by rendering it exceptionally difficult for tribal people to navigate overlapping jurisdictions and to assert the kind of nation-to-nation relationships clearly intended in the original moment of treaty-making. michael coyle’s contribution, “as long as the sun sets,” considers problems arising in the ongoing interpretation of treaty law in the canadian courts, an inevitable process owing to constantly changing contexts in which treaty provisions much be understood and enforced. similar to borrows, coyle argues that a historical perspective should inform contemporary practice. in particular, he suggests that the historical record clearly shows that all parties to colonial-era treaty making understood themselves not to be engaged into the creation of temporally bounded executable contracts, but rather in the creation of on-going diplomatic david j. carlson review of the right relationship 196 structures to allow for negotiated co-existence and mutual support—the kind of “right relationship” to which the book title alludes. a key problem, coyle notes, is that the canadian courts have employed a more static contractual-model in interpreting historical treaties, which is both a detriment to tribal communities and a source of ongoing political instability in the canadian state. the third essay in this opening section, kent mcneil’s “indigenous rights litigation, legal history, and the role of experts,” highlights one of the many challenges standing in the way of coyle’s and borrows’s more copious understanding of canada’s legal heritage. looking at actual case law and trial records, mcneil documents the ways that the court system relies in problematic ways on the testimony of expert witnesses (professional historians) with flawed or limited understandings of the legal issues at hand, allowing those experts to comment well outside of their actual expertise while also invalidating and silencing the voices of indigenous litigants. the essay’s specific examples of testimony by university of cambridge historian paul mchugh are persuasive accounts of the ways that bias is structurally embedded in the settler-colonial system. in providing that perspective, mcneil offers an important corrective for any reader who comes away from the first two essays with an overly optimistic view of the possibilities for changing the ways that treaties are interpreted by the canadian state. the problems of “relationship” are clearly at least as much political as they are strictly jurisprudential. this emphasis on the interplay of historical, legal, and political discourses and practices i have been tracing continues to emerge throughout the collection, both in the remaining essays in part i (by julie jai, francesca allodi-ross, and sara graben and matthew mehaffey) and in the final two sections. in part ii, “the role of indigenous legal orders,” contributors mark d. walters, aaron mills, heidi kiiwetinepinesiik stark, and sarah morales all highlight the vital need for indigenous perspectives to be examined and understood in order to actualize the kinds of treaty relationships that might be able to achieve a true “reconciliation” that goes beyond the current, often cynical papering over of ongoing settler colonialism. a major theme in this section is the need to complicate western legal understandings of “rights” as a form of individual property, complicating that notion through indigenous ideas like bimaadiziwin (the anishinaabe concept of a “good life” predicated on harmony between individuals, communities, and the larger world of natural “relations”) or ezhi-ogimaawaadizid (the anishinaabe imperative for those in positions of leadership to act in ways that recognize those for whom they are responsible). in part iii “’fitting the forum to the fuss,’” jacinta ruru, jean leclair, sara seck, and shin imai focus their critical attention on the sites of interpretation and implementation of treaty law. comparative perspectives are applied here to highlight the value of looking outside of current norms to find positive alternatives. ruru, for example, considers the establishment in 2014 of a new forum for the adjudication of treaty remedies in new zealand as a useful model for consideration in other contexts. seck’s essay explores some of the ways that norms from international law might be usefully leveraged in domestic legal contexts. but always running throughout the collection are the kinds of cautionary notes represented in leclair’s essay on “the potentialities and limits of adjudication,” insisting that we not lose sight of the fact that all legal interpretation takes place within the context of structures of power. leclair is able to show, transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 197 by reference to only a handful of recently-decided cases, that a clear-eyed and flexible strategy in litigation must be an essential part of the ongoing work of decolonization. while the overview i have offered here might seem to suggest that the right relationship is a book that will only be of interest to legal scholars or individuals working in public policy, nothing could be further from the truth. while the contributors are all legal experts, the essays are written to be accessible to general readers. each chapter opens with a helpful overview of the arguments being made, and the historical and legal context of each argument is presented fully within individual pieces. the discussions of indigenous understandings of treaties and treaty making and the intricacies of tribal-centric political thought (particularly anishinaabe thought) are also exceptionally rich. take as whole, then, the arguments presented in this volume are both extremely smart and balanced. they combine a realistic sense of the challenges of decolonization with a deep understanding of the ongoing vitality of indigenous law ways. in this respect, borrows and coyle have gathered together a group of voices that represent precisely the kind of well-informed, tough-minded optimism needed to underpin effective activism and advocacy. david j carlson, california state university san bernardino microsoft word revised-572-article%20text-3679-1-9-20190115.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 33 gerald vizenor's transnational aesthetics in blue ravens danne jobin more than any of gerald vizenor's previous work, blue ravens deploys a transnational aesthetic which playfully explores potential avenues for native ⁠1 sovereignty, a space of self-determination opened up by artistic production that juxtaposes an anishinaabe sensibility onto french war scenes and the urban environment of paris, thus imprinting native presence onto the land. it enables like-minded individuals to find refuge and create a new order in which native voices are heard and artistic influence is mutual as indigenous artists participate in the thriving cultural scene of interwar france. indeed, vizenor's fiction explores mobile forms of citizenship, which do not attempt to regulate subjects but allow a celebration of communal as well as individual identities. the novel showcases a native relationship to space transformed by indigenous art into inventive, transnational forms of aesthetic citizenship. it also outlines dynamic maps of transnational networks that nevertheless retain their indigenous, tribal-specific focus even as they open up the field for new exchanges with global spaces. the focus on anishinaabe art and writing demonstrates that tribal national specificities, when entering transnational space, can adapt and evolve without compromising their integrity. as this article will show, instead of breaking its ties to white earth, the protagonists' art transposes anishinaabe aesthetics onto parisian locales, thus exploring new forms of indigenous sovereignty that transcends political borders. in order to situate the critical contribution of blue ravens within transnational indigenous studies, i will call on hemispheric and transnational theories to help articulate international and global intersections, and i will also explore questions regarding the sharing of native space and the regulation of indigenous identities. to begin with, the novel underscores native american peoples' participation in transnational spaces by drawing from the experience of anishinaabe world war one soldiers. blue ravens is one of two recent novels to retrace the history of native north american participation in world war one, with joseph boyden's the three day road providing a canadian counterpart.2 when gerald vizenor researched the engagement of his family members in the great war, he discovered that two of his forebears were drafted to france, simultaneously coming across other names from the region and more specifically the white danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 34 earth anishinaabe reservation in minnesota. he then used these facts as a basis for his fictional narrative, which is partly biographical and thus offers insight into what the experience of fighting might have entailed for indigenous soldiers. however, the scope of blue ravens is much wider than a war narrative or an account of the legacy borne by war veterans, and in this respect differs markedly from other native novels focusing on combat or its aftermath. the narrator, basile hudon beaulieu, is a storyteller—or to use vizenor's term, a storier—who travels alongside his painter brother aloysius and narrates their encounters as well as aloysius's evolving portfolio. the narrative moves beyond a mere focus on mobility to illuminate art as a spatial practice that enables a dialogue between indigeneity and spatial practices in a foreign land. art is the center of focus, in the form of both aloysius's visual production and basile's writing, the novel itself. once the war is over, the beaulieus move to paris where they meet prestigious artists and achieve recognition within the art scene themselves. all the while, their connection to white earth is maintained through aesthetic transmotion, an assertive sense of movement tied to sovereignty through "native motion and an active presence," as vizenor defines it in fugitive poses: the connotations of transmotion are creation stories, totemic visions, reincarnation, and sovenance; transmotion, that sense of native motion and an active presence, is sui generis sovereignty. native transmotion is survivance, a reciprocal use of nature, not a monotheistic, territorial sovereignty. native stories of survivance are the creases of transmotion and sovereignty. (15, italics in the original) art, therefore, enables international connections and exchanges through unrestrained mobility as the brothers create art pieces based on anishinaabe aesthetics in various spaces. these aesthetics refer back to white earth as a central node, which shaped the beaulieus' artistic sensibilities and goes on informing their artistic production. thus, vizenor imbues art with the potential to transmit and transform native modes of creative expression in innovative ways that speak to transmotion and ensure survivance. padraig kirwan more specifically articulates the potential of art forms to assert relationships across and beyond boundaries as a way of reclaiming native space outside the reservation through "aesthetic sovereignty," which he defines as a "spatiallyinformed aesthetics" (sovereign stories, 27). kirwan reads native american texts as "expressions of tribal sovereignty" (23) that bear an "aesthetic" which not only expresses but also produces tribal autonomy (23), and thus articulates a critique of tribal nationalism in relation to transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 35 the "artistic, political, and cultural sovereignty” (37) found in literary works. the sovereign aesthetic which emerges can link "rhetorical sovereignty" with the current "political and legal debates" taking place in indian country (17) by providing “a deeper understanding of both the means by which political movements are supported by the discrete mobilization of spatialized metaphors in fiction as well as critical theory, and an appreciation of the ways in which native american fictionists create multifarious narrative spaces” (17). this helps conceive of a model in which the beaulieus are not merely transposing native artists into a foreign environment but actually engaging with the new urban space as promoting their indigenous sensibility through their artistic, imaginative engagement with particular locales. paris becomes an indigenised space as the beaulieus develop their artistic vision of white earth through their presence in the city of light, in turn inspiring international artists through their own production. one morning in paris, for instance, aloysius paints "a throng of blue ravens at the entrance of le chemin du montparnasse" with "abstract wings," "cubist beaks," and "baroque talons" in reference to apollinaire, picasso, and vassilieff (163). he thus adds his own indigenous art, with a touch of japanese rouge, to the street where international artists have their ateliers, referencing some of the masters who inspired him. as pamela wilson and michelle stewart point out in global indigenous media, maintaining a "local cultural distinctiveness" while also establishing a "transnational affiliation" allows an artistic support network to develop on a global scale and produces "works that question dominant worldviews while at the same time promoting a strategic, internationally conceived indigenism" (31). blue ravens provides a fictional example of the ways in which such a model might work. in a similar line, the first chapter of indigenous cosmopolitans by maximilian c. forte also asks what happens to indigenous culture and identity when being in the "original place" is no longer possible or even necessary, and whether displacement signifies a negation of indigeneity. forte wonders how being and becoming indigenous is "experienced and practised along translocal pathways", and how philosophies and politics of identification are constructed in translocal settings (2). these productive questions are key to a transnational reading of blue ravens as a narrative that creates a space for indigenous art in europe and encourages mobility for native subjects. vizenor's novel offers imaginative answers by staging an anishinaabe painter and a writer who employ aesthetic sovereignty to inscribe indigenous meanings onto spaces situated beyond the reservation, thereby re-envisioning them as native danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 36 spaces where new kinship networks between similarly-minded artists and war veterans become possible. vizenor has progressively been working towards transnational anishinaabe characters who use artistic expression to apprehend new spaces. his previous novel, shrouds of white earth (2010), also features an anishinaabe artist whose art is showcased not only in other states but in europe as well, thus crossing international boundaries in addition to artistic ones. griever: an american monkey king in china (1987) already manifested vizenor's international vision for native transmotion by showing how a white earth english teacher finds a place for himself as an anishinaabe trickster within chinese culture by embodying the mythological monkey king. griever, however, is based on the trickster tradition rather than the artistic, cosmoprimitivist angle increasingly developed in the author's recent work. in his article “wanton and sensuous in the musée du quai branly,” james mackay argues that, in shrouds of white earth, for instance, “vizenor is primarily concerned with challenging the colonially inflected power balance assumptions inhering in the word ‘primitivism’” in order to move away from a simple idealisation of the primitive (171). mackay explains that the main protagonist envisions a “new art theory, native visionary cosmopolitan primitivism, or cosmoprimitivism” to redress the assumption that although ledger art emerged decades before chagall came to be known, “the native artists are seen more as representative of ancient plains traditions while chagall alone is the innovator and colourist” (177). blue ravens, then, pursues this thread in its representation of a painter and a writer from white earth who become active participants in the avant-garde movement. in this novel, vizenor's cosmoprimitivism transforms indigenous aesthetics into a form of political subversion that inscribes a sense of native presence onto transnational locales as a way of side-stepping u.s. settler rule over restrictive reservation policies. enabling more inclusive models of sovereignty to move beyond such containment, the novel gestures towards a mobile, even international, vision of native space. as an illustration, when posted in france, aloysius paints "one, three, four, and seven blue ravens […] in the back of trucks on the rough roads to war, at meals, and even in the beam and roar of enemy bombardments" (126), thus inscribing a sense of native presence onto locales and events. this aesthetic anishinaabe space is constituted by the artist's relationship to a place as a form of self-definition re-enacted through art rather than a prescriptive model of enclosure within a static tradition. cosmoprimitive native art is both mobile and capable of asserting tribal sovereignty throughout the world while transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 37 conversing with other art springing from compatible perspectives. indeed, vizenor extends native sovereignty far beyond the reservation through a literary aesthetics that showcases art as a vessel for native transmotion, which envisions new forms of artistic citizenship—ways of belonging that are established through artistic practices rather than strict notions of membership. at a gathering of artists and writers in montparnasse, basile tells the stories of "native totems and animals, and the presence of animals and birds in art and literature," aiming to inspire others to reflect on "the visionary presence of animals," while aloysius discusses mongrel healers in the spirit of the fur trade, invoking a common history of exchange in order to stimulate the imaginative potential of the listeners (164). by so doing, the brothers not only call native presence into the parisian setting but inform the vision of other artists and writers around them and create a community of influence. in his review, jay whitaker comments on the autobiographical background of the novel, which is dedicated "to the memory of ignatius vizenor, the author's own great-uncle" and is "reminiscent of vizenor's early years, including the extended family and community contributions to his upbringing in the absence of a paternal figure, his military service, and his work as a newspaper writer" (228). whitaker also emphasises the author's contribution to indigenous politics through "transnational and transcultural interactions" that occur during the war when the brothers "meet and learn from oneida warriors on the front line" before making a place for themselves in paris: [t]he brothers, in their role as veterans, acknowledge that france is the place for them to explore and create their identities because the french soil and the french people remember the specific local traumas of world war i battles; the united states and the white earth reservation are in many ways too disconnected, despite the disproportionate ratio of casualties many native american communities endured during the war. france becomes the place where these brothers can best cultivate their native cultural productions and, in so doing, continue to form their anishinaabe identities even apart from their homeland. (229) france facilitates a particular relationship to place, as the events of the war impress themselves upon the land, and thus enable the beaulieus to bridge place and memory in accordance with "a naturally reasoned existence in relation to a specific surrounding" that is "inherently native" (229). as billy stratton points out, this perspective shares similarities with "what n. scott momaday terms ‘the remembered earth,’" a feature which vizenor transposes from minnesota to danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 38 other states and europe as well as japan and china (112). thus, the setting of blue ravens allows its main protagonists to demonstrate "the active presence of native people in urban spaces" while maintaining "their storied connection to the lands emanating from the white earth reservation" (112). the parisian setting also provides a visual and imaginative freedom that contrasts with the federal stronghold established on the reservation (113), thereby envisioning a native relationship to foreign lands that reasserts mobile indigenous practices. vizenor's "movement from hyperlocal to global sources of knowledge" is congruent with transmotion (eils et. al. 214). furthermore, in eils, lederman and uzendoski's interview article "you're always more famous when you are banished," vizenor expands upon his vision of native transmotion in relation to his entire corpus, as well as blue ravens more specifically, saying that more than being a geographical movement, transmotion allows a visionary, imaginative motion that participates in the "sentiment of continental liberty" for native people (225): you can live anywhere and have a story of presence on this continent, have a connection to the stories that created this continent—this hemisphere, actually—not just the metes and bounds and treaty borders and territorial boundaries. this is particularly critical for natives—especially in border states, where in the past they could cross. physically you had the motion to ignore territorial boundaries because your culture transcended it, but then with security problems, now you can't. my argument is straightforward: native transmotion is visionary motion, and transmotion creates a sense of presence. (eils et. al. 225-226) he goes on to argue that new language is required to convey this notion, a language "that allows history to include theory and emotive possibilities for which there are no documents and that are critical in understanding a people" (227). this quote describes the blue ravens project very accurately. through the beaulieu brothers' artistry, vizenor invents new literary possibilities that express transmotion as a way of piecing together the forgotten histories of war. for indigenous peoples, that imaginative creativity is foundational to a way of interacting with the land as well. vizenor extends this notion to sovereignty, stating: "i've only written about transmotion in the context of sovereignty—which is an abstract sovereignty—and literature," and explains that for pre-contact native peoples, sovereignty must have resembled transmotion, in the sense of visionary presence, more closely than contemporary political sovereignty, which is territorial. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 39 native relationship to the land was made of "reciprocal relationships" (226) and did not acknowledge borders: "natives had extensive, dynamic trade routes throughout the hemisphere: north to south, usually along rivers but also trails […] there were extensive trade networks" (227). therefore, although transmotion is not intrinsically territorial, but rather visionary, it also offers a lens through which to apprehend a native relationship to space that manifests itself dynamically in the land, according to principles of reciprocity and presence instead of ownership. these elements are key to a transnational reading of blue ravens because they underscore movement as an intrinsic part of native life across centuries. the novel maintains continuity with such mobile practices by foregrounding more recent developments such as the first world war, thus demonstrating that a narrative centred on the white earth reservation can also be transnational in its scope. the transnational elements of the novel serve to illuminate the common oversight of native studies in american studies. for instance, in their introduction to hemispheric american studies, caroline levander and robert levine propose a radical shift from regarding the united states as a somewhat unified and concrete entity by "moving beyond the national frame to consider regions, areas, and diasporic affiliations that exist apart from or in conflicted relation to the nation" (2) in order to approach american locales as "products of overlapping, mutually inflecting fields—as complex webs of regional, national and hemispheric forces that can be approached from multiple locations and perspectives" (3). indeed, just as america and the western hemisphere are inventions –politically and ideologically strategic ones (4), it is possible to see borderlands not just as restricted to the mexican-u.s. border but as moving throughout many locales in the u.s., canada, and south america (15). this latter point seems fairly obvious from an indigenous perspective that recognises that settler borders not only exist within the u.s. but also create arbitrary separations with canada and mexico that have direct implications for everyday life. however, while hemispheric americans studies aims to "chart new literary and cultural geographies by decentering the u.s. nation" (3) and "contextualiz[ing] what can sometimes appear to be the artificially hardened borders and boundaries of the u.s. nation or for that matter, any nation of the american hemisphere" (2-3), the volume gives little attention to native american viewpoints. indigenous peoples are marginally addressed in some of the volume’s chapters but the introduction tends to inscribe native americans within an danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 40 undifferentiated flow of discourses and movements. thus, although the book redirects critical attention toward a hemispheric frame of analysis, it does little to correct the oversight of indigenous perspectives pervasive to american studies. furthermore, as a counter-nationalist project, hemispheric studies also pose a threat to the native effort to centre tribal perspectives as a critical methodology. in order to disrupt and displace american studies as a monolithic site that perpetuates a colonial outlook, another more radical proposal would be to recenter indigenous perspectives instead, for instance by considering lisa brooks's questions in her introduction to the common pot. she asks, "what happens when the texts of anglo-american history and literature are participants in native space rather than the center of the story? what kind of map emerges?" (xxxv). in her response to the tribal nationalist project, shari huhndorf also attempts to correct this particular oversight in mapping the americas by inscribing native studies within hemispheric and transnational perspectives. as she points out in her critique of literary nationalism, "although nationalism is an essential anti-colonial strategy in indigenous settings, nationalist scholarship neglects the historical forces (such as imperialism) that increasingly draw indigenous communities into global contexts" (3). the challenge is therefore to consider global issues without decentring indigenous studies but instead to examine the questions that arise from the frictions of gender, culture, the nation state, and their geographical implications (4). this is why the nationalist project was followed by a transnational turn, prompted also by a new focus on urban indians and global tribal relationships (12-13). indeed, robert warrior's article "native american scholarship and the transnational turn" promotes an articulation of transnational theory that emphasises how "the effects of capitalism, which were once contained and constrained by the sovereignty of nations, now supersede and trump the power of states" with a reduced focus on the national boundaries of settler states (119), thus opening up the field of enquiry beyond boundaries: "at best, the transnational turn describes the reality of what we often seek in looking for ways to reach across borders and oceans in search of consonance and […] perspective" (120). warrior does not, however, decry native studies' rejection of transnational theory (120), although the contradiction between cultural studies' view of "nationalism as a pathology" and native studies framing it as survival (womack in warrior 121) can seem disorienting. for warrior, "a resistance to [or against] ideas like transnationality" is not only "intellectually defensible" but can provide "fruitful theoretical insight" (122). it is their very transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 41 refusal to engage with the terms of transnationalism that has enabled native scholars to articulate a nationalism "born out of native transnationalism, the flow and exchange of ideas and politics across our respective nations' borders" (125). although "the discourse on nationalism remains […] the domestic and international language in which native struggle is waged" and provides "a primary vehicle for fuelling indigenous imagination," there is scope to develop the field "toward a sense that encompasses not just north america, but the indigenous world more broadly" (126). huhndorf offers silko's almanac of the dead as an example of a native american novel in which global connections lay the basis for an anticolonial revolution in order to demonstrate how an indigenous agenda might reclaim worldwide networks. such shifts test parameters that are at the heart of contemporary american studies, where "[i]ndigenous transnationalisms in particular have extended existing american studies critiques of national identity and imperialism as they radically challenge the histories, geographies, and contemporary social relations that constitute america itself" (huhndorf 19). in her insistence on the use of visual representation as a central factor in colonisation as well as a tool for resistance to it, huhndorf includes maps as visual representations that can be subverted and recreated to support land claims and thus become the visual technologies of native politics (22). such maps extend far beyond reservation boundaries and surrounding mis-appropriated/occupied land to constitute highly dynamic maps of transnational indigenous networks that extend across the continent and hemisphere and run throughout the globe. just as tribal nations have always practiced movement and relationship, they continue to develop and recreate them in ways that mediate indigeneity across the world by asserting a sense of native presence in unexpected places. in blue ravens, a group of native men meet at café du dôme, calling it their "commune of native stories" and stating that the stories they tell each other in paris become "more memorable than at any other native commune" (240). this instance stresses not only the possibility of transnational native spaces but their vitality—in this case mediated through oral literature and basile's later recording of the encounter in writing. as a geographical extension of brooks's "common pot"—a space where resources are shared (3)—these connections create commonalities based on indigenous perspectives that maintain awareness of their roots in tribal traditions while opening dialogues with the inhabitants of markedly different spaces, from america to europe. brooks demonstrates that the frameworks developed by tribal nations were adapted to negotiations with the settler and still constitute a useful tool to redefine land use and sovereignty. art is well suited to danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 42 communicate in such a dialogical space. chadwick allen remarks that indigenous intellectual and artistic sovereignty is global in its scope (xviii), as is indeed the case in blue ravens where anishinaabe art writes meaning onto transnational spaces. in trans-indigenous, allen suggests that the prefix trans moves beside, through and across (6), thus representing movements susceptible to disrupt colonial order. allen also insists that local work is of global importance not in opposition to but rather because of its relationship to a particular place (135-136). although rooted in indigenous locales and their specific histories, indigenous art production speaks to global issues and enables the establishment of wider networks. however, he also remarks that there must remain a centre for art production to talk back to, even as other nodes emerge through exchange. critics, therefore, need to postpone the urge to generalise from the local to theorise an aesthetic (141), instead adopting a more mobile framework that sees the local in movement through a range of spaces, just as when the beaulieu brothers transpose anishinaabe artistic imagination onto transnational spaces. there is a notable difference between the pan-indian focus of allen's trans-indigenous, which describes exchanges between indigenous peoples across the globe, and the transnational scope of vizenor's work, where anishinaabe art is transposed onto non-indigenous spaces. as mixedbloods, the protagonists of blue ravens attempt to rethink france as a place of origins as well as a site that bears the traces of colonialism. the novel also tackles the question of belonging: leaving the reservation to establish themselves as artists in paris, anishinaabe characters suggest different networks of connection and kinship. besides sharing stories about their experience of growing up on white earth reservation, basile and aloysius do not refer to themselves as native american. instead, they rely on their art and storytelling to convey their particular outlook and sensibility as anishinaabe subjects. this refusal to converge with the discourse of identity politics suggests alternatives for native identities and relations. mohawk scholar audra simpson argues that on the kahnawà:ke reserve, people have recourse to their knowledge of a kinship network that enables them to recognise one another as tribal members regardless of official regulations regarding membership: "this archive of social and genealogical knowledge operates as an authorizing nexus of identification that also can and sometimes does refuse logics of the state" (15). the question of consent, of individuals and groups accepting the state citizenship offered to them, is at the forefront of conversations concerning membership (17). in effect, the granting of citizenship asserts the state's power (18), which tribal members can refuse to comply with "based upon the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 43 validity and vitality of their own philosophical and governmental systems, systems that predate the advent of the settler state" (19). when it comes to overlapping claims to territory, simpson argues that "[r]ecognition is the gentler form, perhaps, or the least corporeally violent way of managing indians and their difference, a multicultural solution to the settlers' indian problem. the desires and attendant practices of settlers get rerouted, or displaced, in liberal argumentation through the trick of toleration" (20). however, far from being benign, these tactics nevertheless conform to "settler logics of elimination" (12). in blue ravens, the beaulieu brothers never identify as american, and in fact often behave in ways that challenge federal regulations regarding native americans; for instance, they routinely cross reservation boundaries without asking for the agent's permission. what is more, the freedom they find in paris is positioned against restrictive reservation politics, suggesting that transnational practices correspond more closely to anishinaabe identities than the negotiation of indigeneity as limited to a reservation home base. the novel instead outlines a fluid relational network that starts by blurring the logic of blood relations as the only family model, history versus fiction and indigeneity as tied to the reservation. the first chapter establishes partial genealogies and a brief history of the vizenor and beaulieu families—gerald vizenor's ancestors (9-10/134). the past is thereby reimagined in ways that create new possibilities for the present and future. in blue ravens, family is not restricted to direct descendency and blood ties. the beaulieu brothers, it turns out, are not real twins since aloysius was adopted by basile's parents, who raised them as "natural brothers" (3). namesakes likewise share common characteristics, as though it constituted a kind of kinship (9). basile describes their identities as "steadfast brothers on the road of lonesome warriors, a native artist and writer ready to transmute the desolation of war with blue ravens and poetic scenes of a scary civilization and native liberty" (8). there is a sense that artistic engagement provides a new type of family, created by the meeting of aesthetic sensibilities. geographical movement the novel stages a series of movements: out of the reservation, across the atlantic ocean, and in the brothers' art itself, increasingly demonstrating the importance of mobile aesthetics in engaging with the french capital. from the start, the novel explores connections between the white earth reservation and other places, showing characters' mobile practices on the american continent. movement is at the forefront in blue ravens, not only in terms of aesthetics but also danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 44 more pragmatically as a form of geographical curiosity, which manifests in the brothers' refusal to be bound to white earth exclusively. early on, the beaulieus are connected to the world outside the reservation by the railway that brings travellers from winnipeg and saint paul, and takes the brothers from ogema station to minneapolis as they hawk newspapers (15). train rides enable the brothers to touch upon the essential quality of freedom, which motivates their art: the slow and steady motion of the train created our private window scenes […] we were eager captives in the motion and excitement of railroad time […] we decided then that we would rather be in the motion of adventure, chance, and the future. (27) the names and possibilities of other places stimulate their imagination and artistic sensibilities, seemingly offering alternatives to the constraints of life on the reservation. when the great white fleet leaves san francisco in 1908, aloysius paints blue ravens on the ship masts and renames it the great blue peace fleet in order to represent "a greater sense of peace than the voyage of dominance around the world by sixteen white battleships of the united states navy" (22). already, aloysius's art expresses a sense of native motion that counters federal attempts to establish dominance both on the reservation and internationally, while allowing the brothers to travel in imagination far beyond the boundaries of their known environment along with the painted ravens to "australia, new zealand, philippine islands, brazil, chile, peru" (22) years before they are drafted to europe for the war. from the beginning, a tight relationship between movement, art, and politics is cultivated. art is created in motion and, in turn, motion is represented through art, shaping the movement of aloysius's blue ravens. manifesting the impression of movement onto art, aloysius also uses the stone arch bridge over the mississippi as a setting for "a row of three blue ravens […] with enormous wings raised to wave away the poison coal-fire smoke" raised by the train (28). abstract art documents the artist's presence and is further reflected by basile's ekphrasis as he describes the scenes, writing his brother's art on to the landscape. movement prompts them to create and is then captured onto their creation, which remain mobile through their suggestive power. the brothers also visit minneapolis (39) to enable aloysius to meet other artists and show his own work. the beaulieus spend several formative years on the reservation before being drafted to france. once they arrive in europe, the narrative reimagines the stories of white earth veterans to stage an active native presence in the war. basile's narrative also shows a tendency to romanticise the french and stresses a particular sense of kinship due to the entanglements of transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 45 anishinaabe and french fur trade histories. the brothers express reverence towards "our distant ancestors, the fur traders" (107), and basile describes french officers as "courteous" but "firm," in contrast to the "arrogant poses and manners" of the british (101). the brothers paradoxically experience the approach of france by ship as a "magical return and at the same time a discovery" (107)—the magical return to the land of their french ancestors, and a native discovery of a different continent. three transatlantic crossings suggest longtime connections between europe and native america. jace weaver's the red atlantic traces the history of crossings in the atlantic, starting with viking settlements. weaver takes into account not just geographical journeys across the ocean but also traces the various ways in which these affected the wider native american population through economic and cultural exchanges. he shows that trans-atlantic relations are not limited to travels across the ocean but soon involved inland inhabitants via trade networks, forming a "multi-lane, two-way bridge across which traveled ideas and things that changed both europeans and american indigenes" (30). far from compromising authenticity, "the cosmopolitanism and hybridity of indians" actually demonstrates that "natives and their cultures had always been highly adaptive, appropriating and absorbing anything that seemed useful or powerful" (30). in short, "the red atlantic is part of a larger story of globalization and the worldwide movement western hemisphere indigenes and their technologies, ideas, and material goods" (32). weaver exposes many of the biographies that have been obscured, forgotten, or mis-remembered, revealing the erasure of indigenous political actors and especially women, and representing them as active agents. recentring the map across the ocean reframes the narrative of blue ravens as a series of crossings: in and out of the reservation, across the ocean to france, back to minnesota and to paris again, while also emphasising the continuous history of such migrations as reflected in the histories of french trading ancestors and indigenous movement and exchange throughout the hemisphere. basile and aloysius repeatedly affiliate themselves with their fur trader ancestors to designate france as a place of origin as much as a new land for them to explore, which playfully destabilises binary notions of settler discovery in opposition to indigenous fixity. war does not prevent the beaulieus from practicing their arts but, rather, motivates them to develop in new directions. they re-imagine their direct environment through their artistic production, which provides a means to shape stories and heal people and place from the events danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 46 of the war, while also shaping their experience. basile's war stories are published on the reservation, which prompts him to write and send his pieces regularly (97). basile also reads a translation of homer during training and service (103), inserting passages from the odyssey into his wider narrative, thus establishing constant parallels between the epic and the brothers' lives as soldiers (108). basile's book (and blue ravens), like the odyssey, is written in twenty-four sections (90). by reading homer in the trenches, he transposes another imagination onto the landscape, which provides another example of transnational exchanges, where an indigenous american in france is inspired by ancient greece and, through literary aesthetics, weaves these elements together seamlessly. reality is to be reinvented through art, storied imaginatively, in order to maintain a sense of presence and movement. traumatic events are re-imagined through visual aesthetics to convey resilience, and scenes are often depicted as paintings themselves (116). aloysius's use of woad blue, from a plant that was used to produce blue paint in europe before indigo was imported, shows that his development, or adaptation, of native knowledge in his new locale, creates connection between geographically separated forms of indigenous knowledge. its "elusive blues" produce "subtle hues, and the scenes created a sense of motion and ceremony" (126). the plant becomes part of the artist, whose blue tongue, acquired by mixing paint, earns him the nickname of blueblood (126). it integrates history when he paints blue wing feathers on the cheeks of seven soldiers for combat (129). the scenes they witness turn into art themselves, albeit without being romanticised: "the war was surreal, faces, forests, and enemies" (130). again, colours play a crucial role in aloysius's rendering of war scenes, each of them possessing special significance. as mentioned above, his blue ravens are associated with memory and remembrance, whereas black has more macabre connotations. in aloysius's palette, even "the night is blue" (2). during the war, the painter uses black in a painting for the first time to represent apartment buildings ravaged by german bombing (116-117). used as war paint, charcoal also washes away faster than the blue paint (132), the latter leaving more durable and stable traces. the trace of rouge in the paintings, first suggested by the japanese artist baske, is reminiscent of "the red crown of the totemic sandhill crane" (120). war paint is also used on the reservation when a french banquet is reproduced by john leecy for war veterans (179), and later at the parisian art gallery exhibition, when aloysius paints a blue raven on his hand and another on basile's face (276). depictions of french war scenes both transpose reservation symbols and images onto the european landscape and act as signifiers of indigeneity in the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 47 parisian artistic milieu where they come to stand as a symbol for the mutilés de guerre. basile likewise travels in spirit through his descriptions: "i […] imagined that the war was over and we had returned to the livery stables at the hotel leecy. the maple leaves had turned magical and radiant in the bright morning light that brisk autumn on the reservation. the sandhill cranes were on the wing, ravens bounced on the leafy roads, and the elusive cedar waxwings hovered in the bright red sumac" (135). this scene reveals similarities in the beaulieu brothers' imagination, where the sense of aesthetics, colour, and vision is largely shared. basile's depictions often look like paintings: "i might have become a painter instead of a creative writer […] with a sense of color, tone, touch, style, and a choice of literary brushes" (205). the return to the reservation, inversely, brings the presence of french war scenes back to white earth: "the first world war continues forever on the white earth reservations [sic] in the stories of veterans and survivors of combat. we were the native descendants of the fur trade who returned with new stories from france" (140). continuity is thus maintained, even as the ocean is crossed for the second time, through the imaginative power of visual art and stories. of course, the veterans suffer from the violence that their participation as soldiers has subjected them to: "the allied casualties sustained to recover these common country scenes have forever […] haunted the memories and stories of war veterans on the reservation" (138). although it ends abruptly, the war leaves tangible traces on both the soldiers' psyches and the land. france, memory, and freedom following the war, france becomes a place of connection while the brothers experience rupture with reservation experience. even when warfare finally ceases, places are marked and will keep memories of the war, transforming human matter into life-sustaining food: "the native forests and field would bear forever the blood, brain, and cracked bones in every season of the fruit trees and cultivated sugar beets" (141); a sense of active remembering and processing is missing from their home in minnesota, where it is replaced by the patriotism, the "hoax, theatrical and political revision" (169) promoted by post-war u.s. politics. finding that their capacity to create has been affected by the war, they obtain furlough and leave for paris to pursue the "vision of art and literature” (144), where they encounter disfigured soldiers wearing masks and aloysius paints ravens with abstract masks (147) that counter the somewhat grotesque realism of the soldiers' prosthetics. he deems the hornbeam leg a soldier carved for himself "a work of art" (149), danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 48 emblematic of aloysius's desire to create an "abstract work of art" rather than an "aesthetic disguise" (150). war provides a productive site to engage with remembrance in the face of the absences created by conflict and loss, in that respect not unlike the ongoing experience of colonisation on the reservation. the need to envision a different future thus creates a bridge between the anishinaabe brothers and post-war french. ravens are painted on diverse quays and bridges, such as the pont des arts raven, which reveals "a native presence in our names, blue paint, and in my [basile's] stories" (151). thus, during their visit to paris, the brothers establish their presence as native artists through art, visiting the favourite meeting places of artists, such as café du dôme (152) and painting ravens in those locations (153) to act as "visual memories" (250). in café de flore one morning, the beaulieus envision their possible future as artists in the city of lights (153/154), and la rotonde becomes one of the few "sovereign cafés" where artists meet and discuss politics (157), and argue somewhat extravagantly, manifesting similar behaviour to the "native conduct on the reservation" (159). nathan crémieux's3 gallery provides a space where aloysius's art is admired and respected. knowledgeable about native art, nathan is moved by the blue ravens (155) and deems the art avant-garde (162), offering to frame and sell some of the paintings in his gallery (163). thus, he does not participate in "[t]he french romance of natives and nature [which] excluded the possibility of any cosmopolitan experiences in the world" (161). similarly, the musée d'ethnographie is criticised for abandoning native arts and sanctioning the theft of sacred artefacts (166), without mentioning "the voices of native artists," the "cosmototemic voices," thus adding a second crime: "the abuse of precious cultural memories" (166). france provides a space in which indigenous presence can take hold, provided it is tied to remembrance. there is a strong relationship between land and memory as the former carries indelible markers of the latter. for instance, by dying in combat, ignatius's spirit "returned to the earth of his fur trade ancestors" (164); showing that to the anishinaabe protagonists france is not an exile, but a return, a coming home of sorts. scenes of war cling to them, making the return to white earth difficult for the writer and artists: "aloysius painted nothing on our return to the reservation. he could not paint the reversal of war" (169). in sharp contrast with the freedom found in avant-garde paris after the war, their homeland is under strict supervision: "we returned to a federal occupation on the reservation […] neither peace nor the end of the war" (170). the gap between "federal and church politics on the reservation […] and the generous cosmopolitan world of art and literature revealed the wounds of my spirit" (170) is hard transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 49 to heal. despite recovering a "basic native sense of survivance," near bad boy lake, they know that there is no "truce of remembrance" or "reversal of war memories" (172) on the reservation, and long for the freedom found in france: "the anthem of fraternité, égalité, and liberté was necessary on the white earth reservation" (176). published under the title french returns: the new fur trade (177), basile's latest stories focus on native veterans, thus manifesting his will to bear the memory of france but also his hope to return to paris in the near future. considered the "best of the outsiders" on the reservation (183), they no longer fully belong to the community and cannot lose memories of the war (190) that generate fear and weaken stories (191). just as aloysius is determined to move to minneapolis "to meet with other artists, and encounter a new world of chance" (196), basile agrees that "for my brother and me, the reservation would never be enough to cope with the world or to envision the new and wild cosmopolitan world of exotic art, literature, music […]" (197). the letter from nathan crémieux telling them he has sold most of the raven paintings at his gallery (208) reveals a receptivity to the brothers' art, unequaled outside of paris, where their aesthetics of motion as natives intrigues and moves people. applying for passports (211), they embark on their "return voyage to france" (215), again framing it as a homecoming that recalls the "premier union" of french fur traders "with our ancestors the native anishinaabe" (255). james mackay has drawn attention to a tendency in native american literature to represent europe in a positive light, indicating that it serves the purpose of building an alliance against u.s. power by drawing on “the deep-rooted sense of tradition shared by indigenous and european peoples” (170). referring to vizenor’s previous novel shrouds of white earth, he notes that “the novel’s invocation of france must be understood as a subtle countervailing force to what might otherwise be a simplistic anti-colonial screed” (173). however, even as vizenor aims to “overturn the negative associations that inhere in the word ‘primitivism,’” he nevertheless “celebrates notions of shamanism and native visionary art” (177) that may end up “reifying the category” (171) and its colonial undertones. thus, once the war is over, what paris offers to the beaulieus seems to conveniently side-step the reality of colonisation; in opposition to the occupied space of the reservation, the city is largely idealised despite the protagonists' critique of ethnographic practices. transnational aesthetics finally, blue ravens suggests that an anishinaabe artistic practice can establish strong ties with danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 50 paris as well as create networks based on its aesthetic sensibility. art provides and maintains connection with paris by enabling an indigenous relationship to the urban space. in paris, nathan provides a safe environment for the brothers, becoming their promoter and protector as he denounces "the primacy of the primitive" as a product of "fascist sentiments" (221), believing that "natives had always been modernists" (222). in an echo of the paris school of art, nathan calls their art ecole indienne (225). rather than framing this patronage as problematic, the narrative describes the gallery as a dynamic space of openness that makes aloysius's art available to like-minded people and enables connection with other artists. writing in cafés and enjoying food provides another kind of home for the beaulieus. basile often writes in cafés, finding the freedom that was missing from white earth and meets up weekly with other natives at the café du dôme, the latter becoming a "new commune of native storiers that had started many centuries earlier on the mississippi river" (240). they establish a "commune of river veterans" who tease the two artists, a "native sanctuary" (246). these many parallels with life on the reservation demonstrate that, far from a rupture from their indigenous background, paris represents a fuller realisation of their artistic sensibilities while they retain their particularities as native artists. in some ways, the capital becomes an artistic reservation for the beaulieus, whose aesthetic heritage is honoured. audra simpson describes how in tribal contexts, the definition of membership can become a point of contention as to what the "terms of recognition" are: memory, blood, participation (40), or simply claims of belonging (41). simpson proposes the term of "feelings citizenships" as a means to describe the "alternative citizenships to the state that are structured in the present space of intracommunity recognition, affection, and care, outside of the logics of colonial and imperial rule" (109). distinct from membership (171), they represent "the affective sense of being a mohawk […] in spite of the lack of recognition that some may unjustly experience" (173). although not formally recognized by institutional structures, these living citzenships are narratively constructed, linked politically and socially to "the simultaneous topography of colonialism and iroquoia," creating "a frame of collective experience" (175) that functions in more fluid ways than institutional regulations of tribal membership. simpson's research speaks from the perspective of kahnawà:ke, where mohawks strongly resist canadian citizenship as it constitutes a direct threat to their sovereignty. in blue ravens, the beaulieus never identify themselves as american but, rather, as coming from white earth specifically, implicitly claiming anishinaabe citizenship as distinct from the settler state. what is more, they transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 51 use their connection to france and its avant-garde scene as a way of circumventing u.s. settler rule on the reservation in order to find free artistic expression. thus, despite emerging from a very different tribal context, and being less place-bound, the narrative also reexamines notions of belonging that are tied to citizenship, in this case through aesthetics. formative of the brothers' capacity to create networks around them, chance associations also carry over into the artistic process. first painted on newspaper print, aloysius's ravens are distinctively blue, a colour tied to memory and imagination. basile describes the blue ravens as "traces of visions and original abstract totems, the chance associations of native memories in the natural world" (1). whereas black "has no tease or sentiment," shades of blue "are ironic, the tease of natural light" (2). aloysius's ravens also stand out due to the types of paint he uses, "only natural paint colors" which his mother "made with crushed plums, blue berries, or the roots of red cedars" and by "boil[ing] decomposed maple stumps and includ[ing] fine dust of various soft stones to concoct the rich darker hues of blue and purple" (7). later in paris, he mixes natural pigments and honey (267). while aloysius experimented with his blue ravens, marc chagall was also creating "blue visionary creatures and communal scenes" (2). the same summer, henri matisse painted nu bleu, souvenir de biskra (1); and aloysius shared avant-garde, impressionist and expressionist features with pablo picasso's demoiselles d'avignon (8) long before they met in paris. thus, the anishinaabe painter's production is synchronistic with other innovative artists of the time, reflecting aspects of their genius even as it maintains local characteristics such as the paint he uses. while the beaulieus grow up as natives on an anishinaabe reservation, their creativity lets them participate in another community with which they share certain aesthetic sensibilities simultaneously, and without any contradiction. transmotion, it appears, can also entail that meeting of spirits across space. indeed, the brothers' claim to belonging to white earth, although confirmed by blood and kinship, develops a rhetoric that asserts their attachment to the homeland but also encompasses a sense of paris as a space compatible with their own indigenous heritage. indeed, the beaulieu brothers are not alone in perceiving the world through an anishinaabe lens: other non-native characters are open to different points of view and understand the beaulieus very well, perhaps fulfilling the notion that they have ancestors in common, a heritage to share—ties that are paradoxically stronger in france than in the u.s., where the reservation is described as politically corrupt, in contrast with "the liberty of france" (253). aloysius creates many paintings of danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 52 memory in parisian locales ("memorial bridges were portrayed in natural motion" (220)), as well as ironic re-presencing of natives from stolen stories: painted totem scenes (270), counterpoints to exposition universelle—the international exposition—and delacroix's natchez, thus indigenising the city as well as incorporating transnational influences. among them, basile calls apollinaire his "poetic totem" (213) while aloysius borrows from the japanese floating world tradition (226), echoing hokusai in his ravens merging with waves. this japanese influence on aloysius's painting was initiated years before, in saint paul, when the japanese artist yamada baske (44) invited the brothers to his studio. baske admired aloysius's ravens and understood them as "native impressionism, an original style of abstract blue ravens" (46). before parting, he gave "a tin of rouge watercolour paint" to the anishinaabe artist, advising him to add "a tiny and faint hue of rouge" to the blue scenes (47). this "master teacher" is the first artist who directly intervenes in the painter's technique, evaluating it with sensitivity and helping aloysius move forward with his art. the sense of movement manifested by japanese art is shown as compatible with the aesthetic transmotion of the anishinaabe painter, and reflects vizenor's longstanding interest in japanese art and literature. indeed, while serving in the us military, the author was posted in japan in 1953 and borrowed from the haiku tradition, which he described in "envoy to haiku" as "an overture to dream songs" (26), implying that certain aspects of japanese culture are highly compatible with his own anishinaabe background. the 2003 novel hiroshima bugi also bears testament to the enduring influence of japan in the author's work. such convergences manifest the transnational connections which artistic expression makes possible in vizenor's work. in blue ravens, basile's stories are likewise connected to parisian locales (284), ascribing meaning to those locales and affirming the artists' ties to place, thus suggesting a sense of belonging that is akin to simpson's "feelings citizenship" but no longer attached exclusively to a reservation community, an "aesthetic citizenship" which the brothers transpose through art onto transnational spaces that become indigenised. basile's statement that "the stories never seemed to really end that night" reasserts the sense of memory established by this coming together of artists and veterans in a "secure sense of presence", "a natural sense of solace" (285). the novel ends with a quotation from the last book of the odyssey: "never yet did any stranger come to me whom i liked better" (285) so that the scene ends in perfect transnational harmony, a meeting of souls around visual art and story. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 53 conclusion blue ravens turns towards france to situate the white-earth-based beaulieu brothers as artists at the heart of the modernist movement in paris. gerald vizenor's novel thus proposes a model for the creation of transnational network of aesthetic affiliations that refers back to a tribal centre even as it explores other places. this model creates cross-atlantic pathways that in some ways reiterate, and in other ways reverse, the spatial practices of the protagonists' ancestors. juxtaposing anishinaabe perspectives onto new territories through aesthetics and exchange as the brothers' art finds an appreciative audience in paris, the novel envisions a kind of indigenous space where artists and other art afficionados develop affinities with aloysius's paintings and basile's stories. non-native characters manage to eschew the trappings of authenticity and acknowledge the fluidity of blue raven paintings as participating in the avant-garde scene of paris as well as emerging from white earth in distinctive ways. the novel thus encourages readers and critics to rethink notions of indigeneity as bounded in place and provides useful elements towards a more transnational model for native studies; a shift that could bear particular importance for the many registered tribal nations without an official land base, as well as indigenous individuals who live away from their traditional homelands and/or communities. blue ravens thus asks productive questions about the significance of calling oneself anishinaabe when living in global spaces, arguing that the category holds meaning far beyond containment within reservation—or even continental—borders. instead, aesthetic practices that convey transmotion enable indigeneity to write itself upon transnational spaces and establish new networks of belonging. notes 1 in this article, i use the terms "native" and "indigenous" interchangeably to avoid repetition. while "native" always refers to north american indians specifically, "indigenous" can apply to global indigenous subjects more broadly. for more precision, i prefer to employ the term "anishinaabe" where relevant. 2 bearing in mind that there is now a serious controversy regarding boyden's claims to indigenous identity. 3 nathan is a french gallerist who admires aloysius's art and promotes his work by organising openings (where basile also reads his writing) and selling his paintings. he becomes the brothers' protector and introduces them to other artists, thus helping to establish their reputation in the parisian scene. while the narrative presents this relationship in a positive light, it nevertheless carries unsettling colonial undertones. danne jobin “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics” 54 works cited allen, chadwick. trans-indigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 2012. boyden, joseph. three day road. london: penguin. 2006. brooks, lisa. the common pot: the recovery of native space in the northeast. minneapolis: the university of minnesota press. 2008. eils, colleen, emily lederman, and andrew uzendoski. "you're always more famous when you are banished: gerald vizenor on citizenship, war, and continental liberty." american indian quarterly. 39:2 (spring 2015): 213-227. erdrich, louise. books and islands in ojibwe country: traveling in the land of my ancestors. washington, d.c.: national geographic. 2003. forte, maximilian c. indigenous cosmopolitanism: transnational and transcultural indigeneity in the twenty-first century. new york: peter lang. 2010. huhndorf, shari m. mapping the americas: the transnational politics of contemporary native culture. new york: cornell university press. 2009. kirwan, padraig. sovereign stories: aesthetics, autonomy, and contemporary native american writing. oxford: peter lang. 2013. levander, caroline f., and robert s. levine. hemispheric american studies. new brunswick and london: rutgers university press. 2008. mackay, james. "wanton and sensuous in the musée du quai branly: gerald vizenor's cosmoprimitivist visions of france." journal of postcolonial writing. 51:2 (2015): 170183. miner, dylan. creating aztlán: chicano art, indigenous sovereignty, and lowriding across turtle island. tucson: the university of arizona press. 2014. silko, leslie marmon. almanac of the dead. new york: penguin. 1992. simpson, audra. mohawk interruptus: political life across the borders of settler states. durham: duke university press. 2014. stratton, billy j. "book review of blue ravens by gerald vizenor." studies in american indian literatures. 27:3 (fall 2015): 112-132. vizenor, gerald. "the unmissable: transmotion in native stories and literature." transmotion. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 55 1:1 (2015): 63-75. ---. blue ravens. middletown, connecticut: wesleyan university press, 2014. ---. shrouds of white earth. albany, ny: state university of new york press, 2010 ---. hiroshima bugi: atomu 57. lincoln: university of nebraska press. 2003. ---. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln: university of nebraska press. 1998. ---. “envoy to haiku.” shadow distance: a gerald vizenor reader. ed. a. robert lee. hanover, new hampshire: wesleyan university press. 1994. 25-32. ---. griever: an american monkey king in china. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 1987. warrior, robert allen. "native american scholarship and the transnational turn." cultural studies review. 15.2 (september 2009): 119-130. weaver, jace. the red atlantic: american indigenes and the making of the modern world, 1000-1927. chapel hill: the university of north carolina press. 2014. whitaker, jay. "book review of blue ravens by gerald vizenor." american indian quarterly. 39:2 (spring 2015): 228-230. wilson, pamela, and michelle stewart. global indigenous media: cultures, poetics, and politics. durham and london: duke university press. 2008. microsoft word whetung.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 329 gordon henry jr. and elizabeth lapensée, editors. sovereign traces, volume 1: not (just) (an)other. michigan state university press, 2018. 112 pp. isbn 9781938065064. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-44bf the enduring and damaging colonial stereotype of the static “indian” who exists solely in the past is pervasive not only in mainstream contemporary literature, but also in wider pop culture narratives. however, when we centre indigenous knowledge, it is clear our ancestors were engaging with non-linear ideas around temporality, visioning methods to gain an understanding of the future, and maintaining multifaceted relationships with other beings in the universe. while colonialism has impacted many of these ontologies, contemporary indigenous artists are challenging imposed perspectives and redefining perceptions of indigeneity by drawing upon these concepts in creative ways. indigenous storytellers are reclaiming these innovative traditions, suggesting “we need to glimpse the old spiritual world that helped, healed, and honored us with its presence and companionship. we need to see where we have been before we see where we should go, we need to know how to get there, and we need help on our journey” (deloria jr. xix). as the late scholar vine deloria jr. emphasizes, indigenous peoples have always had an intimate and integral relationship with the cosmos that is rooted in our teachings, languages, and lived realities. ingenious and complex concepts of interrelatedness and continuity are embedded in indigenous storytelling. therefore, the awakening of indigenous futurisms in literature provides a pathway for indigenous storytellers to rekindle their ancestral connections to the universe while weaving in bold contemporary artistic techniques. sovereign traces, volume 1: not (just) (an)other, thoughtfully edited by gordon henry jr. and elizabeth lapensée, reveals the possibilities of redefining reality and strengthening indigeneity in literature today through indigenous eyes and voices. sovereign traces is an exciting compilation of fiction and poetry that honors indigenous storytelling while also embracing inventive approaches to visual expression through the medium of the graphic novel. the artists explore a variety of important themes highlighting multi-vocalic views, multi-layered techniques, and nuanced understandings of the raw realities of indigenous lives. the visual artists paired with each storyteller have meticulously crafted graphic worlds for the reader to interact with and become enmeshed. some of the visual artists, such as weshoyot alvitre’s illustrations in joy harjo’s “deer dancer” and delicia williams’s images in stephen graham jones’s “werewolves on the moon”, have created work more akin to what is familiarly seen in western comic books while other artists such as elizabeth lapensée in louise erdrich’s “the strange people” have employed more stylized illustrative techniques. the wonderful combination of powerful visuals and storytelling in each panel invites the reader to experience the depth of what is being presented with movement, feeling, and thought. each of the works, whether in the form of previously published short stories or poetry, has been adapted seamlessly in the graphic medium and have added nuances in this format. the artists in sovereign traces are not afraid to approach tragic issues around racism, intergenerational trauma, disrupted families, substance use, violence, and extractive relationships as experienced in indigenous communities. many of the storytellers delve into loss, struggle, and the examination of views around truths and untruths in profound ways. yet, the intensity within these works is balanced estrella whetung review of sovereign traces 330 with a focus on relationality, humility, transformation, and humor—teachings which underscore the idea that if we remember who we are as indigenous peoples, then we will find our pathways. many of the stories center kinship, family, and community ties in ways that prompt us to think about reframing our relations with our fellow beings—water, the land, and animals. the artists ask the reader to consider how we conceptualize kin and how we can strengthen our relationships with our extended families. what does community look like and how do we treat our relations? this is not understood as power over one another in a hierarchy, but a way of thinking that prioritizes reciprocity and integrity in which respect flourishes. throughout the works, the importance of family and intergenerational connections is articulated, and the artists examine the ways communities have been disrupted and changed over time. as the elder medicine man, snowbird, in richard van camp’s “mermaids” points out, he has no interest in monetary accumulation or other materially driven aspects of life, but longs for someone to visit with him that he could talk to and share tea (90). the act of visiting is not just a simple kindness for indigenous peoples, but a way of life. the emphasis is not on blood ties, but rather on embracing concepts of kinship to other beings in the universe. many of the stories present a self-reflexive journey in questioning what happens when we forget our responsibilities to our fellow beings. how does it impact us when we overlook our teachings around reciprocity and relatedness? as warren cariou posits in “an athabasca story”, sometimes you can howl at the land and ask for forgiveness, but she may choose to not answer you in return (53). sovereign traces is brave enough to question where we are at presently and to consider defining where we want to go as indigenous peoples. as argued by one of the characters in niigaanwewidam james sinclair’s “trickster reflections,” “‘tricksters aren’t real. they’re stories’” (59). what is real and what is merely a story? can a story be real and living, too? the characters include medicine men and non-human beings like trickster figures, animal relatives, and animated land. however, none of this is presented as strange or otherworldly, but as lived experiences evoking familiarity in our everyday lives. the artists implore the audience to reflect upon who has the power to decide what is tangible and felt. many of the works create space for examining struggles around identity and authenticity and challenge the accepted narratives perpetuated by the colonial world. in sovereign traces, indigenous artists are at the forefront centering indigenous perspectives and cultivating indigenous visibility. one of the most important aspects of indigenous storytelling is that it is a living process sustained by the breath of storytellers. we have our old stories, but we need new ones as well. sovereign traces should embolden us all to consider the possibility of using imaginative approaches to how we engage with historical, contemporary, and future pathways as indigenous peoples. after all, creativity and transformation are traditions, too. estrella whetung, university of victoria works cited deloria jr., vine. the world we used to live in: remembering the powers of the medicine men. fulcrum publishing, 2006. microsoft word murray.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 347 vivian faith prescott. our tents are small volcanoes. quill’s edge press, 2018. 44pp. isbn: 9780996742436. https://quillsedgepress.org i’m at playa, a residency in remote eastern oregon reading vivian faith prescott’s our tents are small volcanoes. my cabin sits on the edge of summer lake, a shallow alkali lake five miles wide bordered by the 1000-foot rim of winter ridge. i imagine the tents’ bright triangles as cryptic letters, carrying meaning, ready to spell words that instruct and soothe and sustain. the first line in the book—“during the last ice age we were stories” (6). examining the losses associated with sámi migration and forced assimilation, prescott writes the times before language, writes the old languages, the attempts to erase words that still exist, lie silent, layered in us, in the land, in our stories. prescott is a fifth-generation alaskan of sámi and suomalainen descent. she lives in a fishcamp in wrangell in southeast alaska, intimately connected to the land and sea. prescott’s poems create a world of seeking home, tracing loss, excavating and exhuming words, concepts left behind. she examines the power of english and sámi words, as in “oavlluš— depression or hollow with slushy snow in it” (14), where we are cautioned against “sharp unguarded words, especially on the tundra” like the ice that forms a muted space, “so weak it cannot bear us.” in “guoldu—cloud of snow which blows up from the ground,” the speaker loses sight of herself.1 prescott titles poems with north sámi words for the distinct conditions of snow, “njáhcu— thaw” and “spildi—very thin layer of ice on water or milk.” poems plumb the speaker’s personal history, sámi families’ history in alaska, looking across generations, centuries for clarity, for clues how they came this way. looking for the continuity, the lifeways that say this is how we travel safely, this is the wisdom that sees us through. prescott found the phrase “our tents are small volcanoes” in emilie demant hatt’s diary with the lapps in the high mountains (2013). the reference citations are an integral part of this work: what is found, unearthed, uncovered; what is named, claimed, acknowledged; an inverse of the process of erasing, obscuring, acculturating, assimilating, of disappearing, of ethnic cleansing. these poems, this process, is the antidote to erasure: poems and stories told in tents, lodges, shelters that hold families, people together. the poems carry elders’ truths and observation that “reindeer are happy when clouds / pull down to tundra” in “rodda—hard going (too little snow)” (22). prescott brings those truths side by side with the present, with choices about what we need, what we can afford. the book conveys a sense of movement, of the uncertainty of journeys, change and new beginnings. “drawing blanks” considers displacement, misunderstandings, and names the ethnocentrism in others’ view of “nomadic peoples. no madness” and “we say it is baiki, the home we carry with us” (21). prescott recognizes the power and necessity of reading tracks, of following language, old maps and memories. “sonnet for migrations,” the first poem, is set aboard ship, presumably on the ruby hansen murray review of our tents are small volcanoes 348 journey that brought sámi reindeer herders to alaska in the 1890s to care for reindeer being introduced to offset the decimation of the marine mammals. the campaign engineered by protestant missionary sheldon jackson to find reindeer and herders in scandinavia and transport them—across the atlantic, across north america by rail, to alaska by sea, and then overland to the yukon river—is almost unbelievable, yet totally familiar. he was another missionary/colonizer with a plan for indigenous populations that included the erasure of indigeneity. the poems carry movement, a desperate, delicate need to follow those changes, to make sense of them, to document the blanks, specifically in the poem “drawing blanks” (21) and also to “hold an aroma of memory,” as in “vouhttit—to observe and learn from tracks” (8). it’s snowing on summer lake, and i’m reading about the subtropical humidity of the arkansas river, about colonization and ethnic cleansing in the 1820s during the removals of choctaws, creeks and cherokee immigrants into osage land—land we osage had ousted the quapaw from earlier. in 1830 one of the steamboats bringing cherokees away from their homes to little rock was called the reindeer. americans had already embraced the animal—reindeer pulling santa’s sleigh appeared in "a visit from st. nicholas," known as "the night before christmas" in 1823—having fetishized and absorbed it into the culture by the time the sámis were immigrating with their animals to alaska. in eastern oregon, residents are taking time-lapse photos of clouds streaming over the ridges surrounding the lakebed. on clear days sunrise and sunset make kaleidoscopic images, and clouds draw shadows on the ridges. it’s satisfying to watch the clouds billowing across the land, to watch the full length of a day in the span of a few minutes. the sequence is beautiful, but i want to play it backwards, to reverse the patterns on dry grass, see puffs of clouds flow back up the ridge. prescott’s book is like watching colonization reverse itself, disappear. she is unraveling the binding, loosening the knots, the tight weave meant to cover history, to say that life as we know it now has always been. in “likewise great observers of omens,” among “hungry human herds” a shed skin appears as a frozen deer hide, a coat draping the back of a chair, a blue tarp flapping against a broken down snow machine (19). she is tracking people and relations, finding meaning, relevance. in “likewise great observers of omens,” it says: “when i left, we were still clans, birds spoke overhead and i held storms in my fist” (18). prescott holds “tight to the rim of this trail long disappeared” in our tents are small volcanoes, both the poem and chapbook. our tents are small volcanoes was published in 2018 by quill’s edge press, dedicated to publishing women over the age of 50, and was the editor’s choice in 2015-2016 quill’s edge press chapbook contest. prescott holds an mfa from the university of alaska as well as a ph.d. in cross cultural studies from ua/fairbanks. her previous chapbooks have dealt with cultural genocide in the hide of my tongue (2012), and with the sámi north american migration in traveling with the underground people. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 349 ruby hansen murray notes 1 the sámi words in these titles are italicized in the original text. works cited hatt, emilie dement. with the lapps in the high mountains: a woman among the sami, 19078. 1913. edited and translated by barbara sjoholm, university of wisconsin press, 2013. prescott, vivian faith. the hide of my tongue: ax l'óot' doogú. plain view press, 2012. ---. traveling with the underground people. finishing line press, 2017. microsoft word garroutte.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 277 julia christensen, christopher cox and lisa szabo-jones, eds. activating the heart: storytelling, knowledge sharing and relationship. waterloo, ontario: wilfred laurier university press. 2018. https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/books/a/activating-the-heart2 this new collection of essays takes up issues relevant to the conduct of research involving indigenous communities. the title phrase—activating the heart—summarizes a central message. the volume encourages researchers to move their inquiries beyond any posture of professedly disengaged, academic objectivity as they carry out their work. it urges them instead toward fully human encounters in which they and their indigenous participants endeavor to reveal themselves to each other and forge meaningful bonds. throughout, contributors focus on storytelling, in its many forms, as both research method and methodology. they argue and illustrate how that activity and the values that ground it can become vehicles by which both researchers and communities explore meanings that inform their lived experience, make such experience available to each other, and generate new meanings and opportunities. editors julia christensen, christopher cox and lisa szabo-jones observe that the volume aspires to influence not only research inquiry but also academic training: to "make room for a different kind of education, one that builds necessary ties between community and academia to engender a space for broader, non-oppressive education models" (xi). toward these ends, chapters "examine storytelling as a mode of understanding, sharing, and creating knowledge" (xii). separate sections of the volume take up each of these three intellectual tasks. the section on "storytelling to understand" begins with the essay "finding my way: emotions and ethics in community-based action research with indigenous communities." here, leonie sandercock—self-described "immigrant australian-working class white girl phd-ed and socialized into anglo-american academia" (7)—discusses her experiences collaborating with a first-nations community in british columbia via an "action research" project. having accepted an invitation to produce a documentary recording the "local history of conflict between indigenous carrier people and non-indigenous settlers" (3), sandercock describes the power of stories shared, and individual relationships forged, to influence dynamics within a divided community. simultaneously, she reflects on her evolving understanding of the ways in which she, herself, is implicated in the story she would tell. sandercock concludes that researchers realize the potentialities of their work in indigenous populations only within true partnerships—relationships requiring empathic response and a willingness for selftransformation. reflecting on her research experiences as a community outsider in the form of a story-poem, sandercock argues for "a different way of being in the world" than she had learned in her scholarly training: "you/i cannot be in community/without loving attachment" (23). she closes by describing the way that this decision has shaped her subsequent career decisions to allow ongoing contributions to the partner community. the subsequent essay, "notes from the underbridge," by christine stewart and jacquie leggett, sketches a range of strategies for knowing a place deeply (39) as preparation for learning and telling its many stories. their "poetics of attention" focuses on a space below a bridge in edmonton, alberta that shelters a number of people. many of them are displaced from inner-city eva marie garroutte review of activating the heart 278 areas by rising housing costs; many of them are indigenous. in this context, the authors seek a "precise and holistic way of attending to place" (30) by creating a series of "soundscapes" that they unpack and combine in various ways. in their recordings of "joggers, dogs, children playing, snippets of conversation, wind, bridge sounds, many birds, and the ubiquitous traffic," the authors find traces of stories (48). these are stories of land loss, treaties, persons rendered homeless within their own traditional homelands, economic shifts, poverty and incarceration, ancient patterns of interaction with the natural world and its creatures, and more. the authors' ideas for listening—not only to human speech but to all sounds—suggest a fascinating and (at least to me) novel approach to learning and telling stories that are firmly located in place. at the same time, it extends ideas about who (or what) counts as a "research participant" to an extraordinary and thought-provoking degree. the final chapter in the opening section of activating the heart features a highly technical discussion titled "re-valuing code-switching: lessons from kaska narrative performance." here, patrick moore argues against a tendency among academic researchers to devalue stories in which bilingual storytellers move back and forth between an indigenous language and english. this scholarly preference, moore judges, betrays an outdated notion of cultural authenticity that privileges cultural artifacts that can be construed as somehow uncontaminated by influences outside the culture of origin. in his contrasting view, movement between languages—a form of code-switching—can reveal stories within the story. these traces supply information about the speaker's personal history, for example, or the gender dynamics within communities that have distributed certain types of learning exposures unequally to men and women. code-switching across languages suggests, moreover, a storytellers' high degree of skill—the ability to identify just the right word, regardless of origin, to communicate a thought to a specific audience. these are reasons, moore concludes, to privilege rather than devalue bilingual texts and their tellers. this perspective easily generalizes, i would add, to research involving cultural objects other than texts. the second section of activating the heart takes up the theme of "storytelling to share" and considers the power of stories to "convey significant lessons, as well as to engage different audiences in knowledge exchange" (xv). this section opens with kendra mitchell-foster's and sarah de leeuw's "art, heart, and health: experiences from northern british columbia." it discusses a well-conceived "arts-based approach" for bringing together groups of persons residing both inside and outside of an indigenous community. these groups—one composed of persons who had or were planning careers in health and medical professions, one composed of members of a first nations reserve—engaged together in activities such as crafting pottery, masks, and narratives. building on the foundation of shared food and creative process, participants were then invited to tell stories, with special attention to their own ideas and experiences relevant to health and well-being (100). as one participant told facilitators, "making 'good art' was not the goal of artdays; instead, it was to explore the role of art in health and healing" (106). given my own professional commitments to culturally-relevant health research conducted in partnership with native communities, this chapter was a favorite. it leads readers to imagine similar projects for bringing together reservation residents with persons who, while existing largely outside those communities, may nevertheless prove vital to tribal life: providers of law transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 279 enforcement, legal and social services, educational or recreational opportunities, and the like. in my own experience, shared creative process allows for interactions that are not only mutually informative but also affirming and even joyful. such shared activities not only allow populations to communicate specific information and ideas about themselves. they also build a strong foundation of shared memory that can influence how people interpret future interactions of a more challenging variety. jasmine spencer's following essay,"'grandson, / this is meat": hunting metonymy in francois mandeville's this is what they say," addresses itself to very different way of sharing and responding to storytelling. it offers a highly technical application of the "cognitive linguistic theory of frame metonymy" to the storytelling of metis-chippewa trapper francois mandeville (1878-1952). this chapter draws attention to textual patterns, especially the teller's development of a recurrent motif (meat and the eating of meat), and will speak mainly to readers with very specific disciplinary expertise. pages of dense argumentation and analysis lead spencer to conclusions such as "the human as a positional construal of narrative topography must constantly be rearticulated" and that "[o]ntological sympathy—alignment, homophony, polyphony—is essential to the perpetuation of self and other" (139). volume editors characterize this essay as an invitation to see the story themes of hunting and trapping as "the generative spaces through which indigenous epistemologies spring forth" (176). that they offer no further elaboration will, however, make it difficult for many readers to judge exactly how this may be true. the final section of activating the heart explores the theme of "storytelling to create." it includes "sleepless in somba k'e," a short poem by non-indigenous author, rita wong. dedicated to the coney river, wong's exploration of "dimensions of community, environmental issues, and water-based ecology" encourages readers to meditate on how the river's story articulates with the stories of human and other-than-human lives. it exemplifies, the editors observe, storytelling as "a form of respect and reverence for the traditional homelands of the yellowknives dene, upon which [wong] found herself a visitor" (176). a following chapter by metis author bren kolson, "old rawhide died," illustrates the power of story to richly evoke place, time and relationships. told from the perspective of a little girl growing up in an indigenous community in canada's northwest territories, it relates how a radio storyteller became an important element in family life. the final chapter is zoe todd's "metis storytelling across time and space: situating the personal and academic self between homelands." identifying herself as an indigenous person (metis / otipemisiw) raised in her canadian homeland, todd describes her transition, almost two decades ago, to living and working in scotland. beginning with a story, she goes on to discuss the role of storytelling in helping her to define and shape relationships with colleagues and research partners. she also devotes considerable attention to thinking about how stories, and especially their roots in the natural world, have spoken to, reminded her, grounded her. her thoughtful reflections will interest the many indigenous people who likewise live and work away from their traditional homelands. eva marie garroutte review of activating the heart 280 the editors' introduction and conclusion highlight the contributions of the collected essays to larger ideas. here christensen, cox and szabo-jones conclude that, [a]cross the chapters, two main themes emerge: first, storytelling as an approach to knowledge sharing…and, second, storytelling as a political and epistemological act in taking back space for indigenous ways of knowing (and at the same time creating new spaces for other culturally embedded ways of knowing within the eurocentric academy" (171). the volume's development of the first theme is beyond argument. contributors have explored storytelling—what it can do and some innovative ways of doing it—in diverse, interesting and instructive ways. by contrast, its treatment of the second theme may engender some disappointment among readers who otherwise find reasons to praise this collection. while both individual chapter contributors and the editors return repeatedly to the theme of epistemology, no one supplies a formal definition. comments scattered throughout the work suggest to me that the authors typically intend the term in its most general sense to reference formal and informal philosophies of knowledge: the sets of assumptions circumscribing ideas about what knowledge is and how one gets it. definitional issues aside, i also found it somewhat challenging to unravel exactly how the concept articulates with the volume's other arguments. readers in search of clarity on this subject must put together discussions from different parts of the book. on the basis of such efforts, i concluded that the editors situate their own epistemological inquiries in view of what they seem to conceive as two broad and competing philosophies of knowledge. on the one hand, they assert that "[a]cademic research remains largely rooted in colonial ways of seeing and knowing (for example, privileging research methods and forms of communication geared towards acquiring information to provide concrete outcomes)." this orientation contrasts with their own, indigenous research priorities, which are "aimed at entering open-ended, long-term relationships" (xi). the editors identify additional distinguishing features of indigenous philosophies of knowledge when (in a reflection on the volume's title) they summarize that, "activating the heart through storytelling places emotion, relationships, reciprocity, recognition, and justice at the centre" of research interactions (178). they further underscore the idea of two distinct philosophies of knowledge with contrasts between such terms as "eurocentric scholarship models" (xiii) as over against indigenous "community-based knowledges" (xii). individual chapters in the volume elaborate the idea of a seemingly similar philosophical binary, as when mitchell-foster and de leew characterize "non-indigenous world views and ways of knowing" as focused on "the head" and indigenous views as focused on "the heart." while the first incorporates a "bias toward logic…and analytic thought," the second celebrates "feeling…and emotion" (91-92). such distinctions invite very significant questions. do we, as scholars aspiring to relate respectfully to indigenous philosophies of knowledge, really wish to sign over exceptional rights to "facts," "concrete outcomes," and "logic" to the "eurocentric academy"? do we truly accept that work within indigenous philosophies should be relegated so completely to the domain of emotions, values, and human relationships? transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 281 the fundamental problem here is that, by their repeated division of intellectual territory into these objective and subjective domains, activating the heart embraces the very epistemological dualism that it otherwise critiques as dominating conventional scholarship and squeezing out alternative, indigenous perspectives. epistemological dualism—with roots in the philosophies of descartes, aristotle, and plato and other western thinkers—posits that mind and body, self and other are irremediably separated. it consequently constitutes claims deriving from different types of observations as subjective and objective, which it treats as unequally reliable. within the confines of epistemological dualism, claims associated with the experiences and values that activating the heart picks out as defining indigenous research—emotion, relationality, reciprocity and the like—will always have the lesser part. to my mind, indigenous scholars and our allies can hope for more. but that will require us to interrogate epistemological dualism very explicitly and deliberately—and then to move outside it. as a co-author and i have argued elsewhere (garroutte and westcott 2013), explorations of indigenous storytelling can reveal assumptions about what knowledge is and how one gets it that are entirely distinct from—but no less intellectually defensible than—those embedded in dualistic philosophies of knowledge. we have argued, as well, that further such efforts may well open genuinely new possibilities for inhabiting the world and engaging its beings. in particular, they may point new ways to articulate claims originating within indigenous philosophies that are—to borrow a phrase from foucault's (1972) work in epistemology—"in the true," that exist within the category of claims recognized as candidates for adjudication and designation as knowledge. contributors to activating the heart repeatedly gesture toward a similar goal in calls for "a fundamental rethinking and reorientation around what constitutes knowledge in the first place, and how we might cease to privilege certain modes of knowledge sharing over others" (178). while their instincts are right, they do not move us closer to the goal. their resort to epistemological dualism prevents them from imagining such real departures from what they characterize as "colonial ways of thinking." none of this should detract from the volume's valuable lessons. its collection of interesting, wellwritten essays offer worthwhile reflections and creative strategies relevant to research interactions in indigenous (and other) communities. anyone hoping to conduct academic inquiry in indigenous communities needs to appreciate that they and their participants may hold very different views on the appropriate goals of interaction. they should be reminded that indigenous communities long ago tired of research that treats their members as "informants" whom researchers from "outside" impersonally tap for information that they go onto apply for their own purposes and exclusive benefit. they need to prepare thoughtfully for entering communities that have endured more than 500 years of invasion and assault and live with the ongoing consequences of such trauma—sometimes with despair and desperation but also with considerable grace and resilience. they should consider the ways that their own work as researchers might articulate with healing communities and with their own self-transformation. the discussions in activating the heart point, then, to issues that researchers hoping to work with indigenous communities ignore to the peril of their projects and the wellbeing of communities. it highlights challenges that attend the efforts of even the well-intentioned and eva marie garroutte review of activating the heart 282 and explores ways that storytelling, and the values that it implies, may help address them. in so doing, the volume invites both indigenous and non-indigenous scholars to take on these challenges, and it leaves them better equipped to do so. eva marie garroutte, boston college works cited foucault, michel. the archaeology of knowledge. new york: pantheon books, 1972. print. garroutte, eva m. and kathleen d. westcott. "'the story is a living being': companionship with stories in anishnaabe studies. centering anishinaabeg studies: understanding the world through stories, eds. jill doerfler, heidi kiiwetinepinesiik stark, and niigonwedom james sinclair. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2013. pages 61-79. print. microsoft word andrews.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     199   carter meland. stories for a lost child. east lansing: michigan state university press, 2017. (american indian studies series.) 157 pages. isbn: 9781611862447 http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-3fcd#.wtiypwt5mky readers of carter meland’s novel stories for a lost child will find themselves in a dilemma similar to the protagonist’s: how to understand the relationship among the various stories being told. those stories include sermon-like lessons for humanity delivered by bigfoot, the outer space adventures of two american indian astronauts trying to return to earth, and descriptions of some down-and-out native people in or around minneapolis. these are connected by thirdperson narration from the point of view of fiona, a teenager who has received a package of stories written by the grandfather she never knew. a letter in the package states they were written before she was born, and that they are being delivered years after his death. as she reads them, she looks for clues about the experiences and character of her grandfather, and she looks for how these sometimes strange stories can be useful in her own life and to understanding why her mother refused to tell fiona much at all about her grandfather. this includes her search for information about her anishinaabe heritage, which she feels was denied to her by her grandfather’s absence and her mother’s silence. this absence is described as a hole in her life: “… but there was a hole there, too, in her life, one her mom refused to fill and only ever barely acknowledged. her grandpa. the indian” (5). among the stories written by fiona’s grandfather are monologues by bigfoot. in chapters with titles including “swampbreath” and “feathertruth,” bigfoot, in his peculiar diction, preaches to humanity to be humble and connected to the land, to remain in touch with the immediacy of experience and greater truths embodied in the earth, plants, and animals but not in representations of them. having found a bird feather on the ground, he instructs humans on how to experience it properly – and how not to experience it. you say it smells like that angel you find in them words of men? men, that one soaring in the warm sun, rising from the words of men and away from the earth? men. i shake my head. i bare my teeth and knock fallen branch against sturdy tree. and knock again. and again i holler at the treeline. no, men, no! listen, men! smell that feather as it is, not as you with it were. don’t mistake the words of men for that feather truth. draw deep, men. (59) bigfoot may initially puzzle fiona, but he is given the last words of the grandfather’s package to her, and those words seem directed at her instead of humans in general. listen, little one, listen! little one, touch dreams, don’t measure them. walk with them. leave inches to men, leave beaten ground, leave men to scratch their chin. come! step long, little one, step far. leave men, live tall. (101) scott andrews review of stories for a lost child     200   other stories involve two astronauts, a dakota man and an anishinaabe man, as they explore outer space and then return to earth. their return does not go as planned, and they discover they have traveled back in time to an earth before turtle island had emerged from the ocean; this does not alarm them much, as they plan to simply retrace their path and get back to where they were before. perhaps echoing our recent emphasis on “water is life,” they load their ship’s tanks with this “first water” to take with them to the future – their present – because it is “powerful medicine” (67). still other stories are less fanciful and involve contemporary native people, whom fiona deduces include her grandfather and other relatives, and people from the distant past, including a french priest who may be her ancestor. some of the stories require her to determine whether they are fact or fiction, whether the protagonists are her grandfather, someone her grandfather knew, or a fictional character. initially fiona is frustrated by the stories. she had hoped for her grandfather’s life story more directly, for clear indications of how his life led to hers, and for how his life could provide answers to her questions: “sure, they were good enough, if you liked weird nightmare sorts of things, but they didn’t really tell her anything about him.” she had hoped for “some little half-hidden suggestion about her grandma or mom, some notion of what her grandpa did after he left them – or why he left” (35). as she progresses through the package from her grandfather she gets better at deciphering the stories and their lessons; the stories become more satisfying. she looks up information on the anishinaabeg online, information her mother has never shared, but that is not impactful as her grandfather’s stories, including those from bigfoot, also known as misaabe: “misaabe’s words told her more about where she came from than any facts, way more than her mom every shared, too” (80). eventually the stories overlap – but how they do that is best to not reveal here so readers can discover the connections on their own. some readers will enjoy the novel’s loose structure, while others may not be satisfied with the degree of closure the novel offers; how the stories help fiona better understand herself or her dilemmas is not always clear. for instance, the longest unit of the novel ends with a sense of satisfaction for fiona, but it involves friends of hers who see much more loss than she does. but to describe the stories more would risk giving away surprises or denying readers their own satisfaction in putting the pieces together alongside fiona. two of meland’s narrative choices present a valuable implication for readers: bigfoot and the astronauts of nasa (native american space adventuring). when fiona’s grandfather creates stories about these characters for her, he is reaching simultaneously into an indigenous past and into an indigenous future. he is evoking a very old body of indigenous narratives and indigenizing a body of contemporary narratives. with his native astronauts, the grandfather imagines a future that includes native people. these are valuable images for a young woman trying to understand her native past and dream of a native future. manipulations of time and space are important elements for indigenous futurism, according to lindsey catherine cornum. the native astronauts in stories for a lost child provide this, as they travel through space and time – from the future, into the distant past, into the grandfather’s present, etc. cornum explains, “we are always going back to the origin, our creation stories, as a starting point for moving forward, or up, or sideways. this mode of thinking can motivate us not only to consider how our actions will reverberate into the future, but also how they build on -or, transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)     201   as is all too often disregarded, erased or disrespected -the historical past.” meland does this through the grandfather’s stories that weave the historical past, the recent past, and the future into fiona’s present. scott andrews, california state university, northridge cornum, mary catherine. “the creation story is a spaceship: indigenous futurism and decolonial deep space.” voz-à-voz. http://www.vozavoz.ca/feature/lindsay-catherine-cornum microsoft word perttulo.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 214 mark van de logt. monsters of contact: historical trauma in caddoan oral traditions. norman, oklahoma: university of oklahoma press: 2017. xvii + 252 pp. isbn: 9780806160146 http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/2288/monsters%20of%20contact this book by mark van de logt considers the origins of monsters that occur in the oral traditions of the caddoan language-speaking arikara, pawnee, wichita, and caddo nations of the northern, central, and southern plains and the pineywoods and oak-hickory savannah of arkansas, louisiana, oklahoma, and texas. rather than viewing the monsters as signs of fantasy and myth in stories told by these people, the author convincingly makes the case that they are related to specific historical events and traumas whose origins occur after european contact in the midsixteenth century, during a period marked by invasion, war, colonialism, disease, enslavement, starvation, and death. in van de logt’s view, these stories started out as actual events from the observed past and became legends and myths as they were passed down over generations. thus, he argues, “oral traditions… [are] historical sources comparable in status to euro-american sources” (25). following a careful consideration of storytelling and historicizing oral traditions in part i, the monsters van de logt discusses in parts ii and iii of this book are specific to each caddoan indian oral tradition while the traditions themselves are related to each tribe’s unique history and historical experiences. for example, van de logt begins with the whirlwinds in the arikara oral tradition, arguing that the whirlwinds which came to destroy the arikara people represent a series of european-introduced epidemic diseases in the eighteenth century, particularly the smallpox epidemic of 1780-1781. these epidemics reduced the population of the arikara by about 80-90 percent. the destructive power of the whirlwinds and epidemic diseases greatly weakened arikara society, and the epidemics were, van de logt writes, a “disaster of cosmic proportions” (74). in the case of the pawnee stories in parts ii and iii, van de logt first addresses the flint monster who was terrorizing the people until a young hero killed the monster with a magical willow stick. van de logt hypothesizes that the flint monster is actually an armor-wearing spaniard or apache (or navaho) indian from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries who engaged in obtaining slaves for spanish markets in new mexico; the young hero may have been a french coureur de bois who killed the armor-wearing monster with a gun. from these story lines, it seems clear that european metal weapons played an important role in the history of caddoan peoples, as sources of material and spiritual power; subsequently, the pawnees in the early 1700s began to fight back against armor-wearing foes with firearms provided by french traders. the second pawnee story in the book concerns the story of scalped men who survived their mutilation and were transformed from people feared by the people into figures with sacred and spiritual powers. van der logt links the increased scalping of pawnee individuals to nineteenth-century genocidal attacks by the lakota and cheyenne––due in part to angloamerican colonialism, settlement expansion, and ready access to guns and horses––on pawnee settlements, their intent being “to wipe the pawnee from the face of the earth” (164). with the increased intensity of war between the pawnee and the lakota and cheyenne between the 1830s and 1870s, scalped men became likely sources of spiritual power. pahukatawa was perhaps the tim perttula review of monsters of contact 215 most significant scalped man because he became a great pawnee prophet who gave the people hope. the wichita story in part ii deals with an evil witch-woman who captured children, hairless and headless men who may have been monks, and the story of coyote and spider-man who rescued a child who was being tortured on an exploding pole (i.e., a cannon) by the evil woman. van de logt relates these stories to the 1758 attack by the wichita, comanche, and other “norteno” tribes on the spanish mission of santa cruz de san saba in modern-day central texas, as well as to the spanish and indian (such as the apache and osage tribes) slave trading common at that time. van de logt uses a painting, “the destruction of mission san sabá in the province of texas and the martyrdom of the fathers alonso de terreros, joseph santiesteban” (c.1765) to link the massacre to details in the wichita story, concluding that spider-man was a frenchmen who had provided guns to the “nortenos.” in 1541-42, the de soto entrada came among the caddo peoples living in what is now southwestern arkansas and east texas. two caddo stories concern a masked, old cannibal man who killed caddos with a mask that had a spiked iron nose, but who was eventually killed by the caddo with a corn pounder. van der logt suggests that the cannibal man may fit the description of a conquistador in the de soto entrada in caddo country and that the spiked iron nose may be part of a helmet or iron-tipped lance used by a conquistador during battles and warfare with the caddo at places such as the village of tula in southwestern arkansas. the spiked iron nose is, van de logt observes, “distinct in american indian monster iconography, appearing only in the caddo traditions” (136). the author relies on the accounts written by garcilaso de la vega many years after the de soto entrada to connect the iron-nosed cannibal story to entrada events, eventually concluding that in the caddo stories, the cannibals were spanish conquistadors and their brutal weapons were iron-nosed masks. monsters of contact provides unique insights about caddoan-speaking indian peoples following european contact as well as their perspectives, as expressed in oral traditions on historical events in the past. these events were traumatic, but at their core, van de logt argues that the stories about monsters pertain to different historic events unique to the arikara, pawnee, wichita, and caddo peoples brought on by european contact: “the differences in monster iconography show that each tribe had a different history to tell” (184). timothy k. perttula, archeological and environmental consultants, llc transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 40 on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript or jisdu fixes john locke’s two treatises of civil government brian burkhart at the time that he read john locke’s original manuscript, around the year of 1691, jisdu did not know the weight those printed words would have on his relatives, the cherokee people (anijalagi aniyuwiya). what jisdu did know was that locke was upset with the printing of his words, that the printers had made many mistakes. jisdu was of the opinion that such mistakes might explain what appeared to be quite a bit of nonsense in the printed material that was before him. since locke appeared otherwise to be reasonable and sensible, at least for a human, jisdu concluded that the errors made by the printers might explain what seemed like childish nonsense in the actual printed words he was reading. jisdu had also thought of a more sinister explanation for the bizarre nature of the book before him: it might be a didahnesesgi (a conjuring text), as these often “bear little resemblance to ordinary discourse” (kilpatrick 25). or perhaps it was even a didagalenvdhodiyi, “the most venomous” of the conjuring texts that was meant to separate things, where the things to be separated in this instance are the people and the land (kilpatrick 39). either way, jisdu set himself onto the life-long path of the fixing of locke’s manuscript. the corrections that jisdu made with his own hand to his personal copy of locke’s original manuscript were not set to type until 1831 when the cherokee had a printing press and after chief justice john marshall’s use of locke’s original ideas in the cherokee trilogy of supreme court cases had set the stage for the trail of tears. it was the confluence of those events that sent jisdu to my relative’s cabin on a cold december night in 1830. jisdu had just heard of the execution of corn tassel by georgia, which governor gilmer had done with haste to avoid a review from the highest court in the land—marshall had just sent georgia a writ to appear before the court to defend their racist and imperial incursion into the cherokee homeland. jisdu believed, and there is indication that he was correct, that if his corrected edition of locke’s original manuscript would have been published as a revised edition anytime between 1689 and the present (1830), the horrific events that were taking place in the cherokee nation at the hands brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 41 of the settlers of georgia might have been avoided, since these events were shaped by the settler logic and perhaps even settler witchcraft that was at the core of that original manuscript. part of this story is about jisdu, the cherokee rabbit trickster, and part is about my relative james dougherty, since it was grandpa james who was given jisdu’s copy of locke’s manuscript and the instructions on setting it to type in the winter of 1830. james dougherty was born in hightower on october, 17, 1785, a chickamauga cherokee village on the land of what is now rome, georgia. he was born eight years to the day of the famous battle of hightower where kingfisher was killed by the tennesseans and the village of hightower was moved up the river to what is now cartersville, georgia. as an eight-year old, james witnessed some of the conflict between doublehead and the ridge that spilled out from that fateful day, fateful for both men and even for the cherokee nation as a whole. i think those events of 1793 in his village helped set him on the path to the foreign mission school of cornwall, connecticut in 1802. the years that followed, under the benefactor elias cornelius, saw him study the venerable john locke and dine with virginia statesmen thomas jefferson and james monroe—the same jefferson who said that locke was one of the “three greatest men that ever lived, without exception” (jefferson). upon returning to his family in cherokee nation east, james began working with other christian educated cherokees to translate the new testament into cherokee using sequoyah’s syllabary. in 1828, he began working with boudinot and worchester on the cherokee phoenix newspaper. it was at that time that james encountered jisdu, and this mysterious manuscript was finally given printed life. in the story that grandpa james told, he spent several months, under the personalized instruction of jisdu, transcribing and setting to type this manuscript from the hand-corrected version that jisdu brought him. on march 18, 1831 (the day the cherokee nation v. georgia supreme court decision was rendered), he set the manuscript to type and printed it on the phoenix press. it is from james dougherty, my many times great grandfather, that this jisdu formula/manuscript comes to me. after producing it on the cherokee printing press in early 1831, he guarded it like one of the handwritten cherokee formula books that families kept and passed down for generations, as he perhaps hoped one day to bring this manuscript to the wide circulation he believed it deserved, or maybe because both grandpa james and jisdu considered this manuscript to be one of the idigawesdi (magically protective and transformative texts) that transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 42 have power to change the world and are inviolable and not to be knowingly altered by the descendants to whom they are passed. either way, it was so precious to grandpa james that it became one of the few items that made the journey with him to indian territory in 1838. it was passed down in the dougherty-langley family until it finally came to me. i present it here for the first time because as grandpa james said, “if this manuscript could have been included in the printing of the original two treatises, perhaps the horror of what is happening now with our removal might have been avoided.” what follows here is, first, my representation of the note from the hand of james dougherty that was included with the jisdu manuscript and, second, the original jisdu manuscript printed in 1831 but never before published. both are included here with very little editing on my part. a caution to the reader: jisdu has been known at times to manifest the ability to see the future as well as to speak to the future. he then often speaks in a dialectical form that is foreign to his contemporaries but well known to his future interlocuters. thus, it can prove rather difficult to situate jisdu’s corrections to john locke’s original manuscript into a particular time and space. brian burkhart january 20, 2017 los angeles, ca brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 43 § concerning this manuscript and its origin story § to the reader. i have attached a letter to this manuscript because bearing upon its face, it would appear to be more the offspring of an excited mind than the sober dictate of political philosophy. what appear as misrepresentations and illegal constructions of the writings of one john locke, a philosopher and physician, are rather the corrections of one jisdu, a rabbit and trickster. the annihilating sarcasms of the new editor of this revised edition, one rabbit trickster, to the performance of which he appears strictly to have adhered, might give cause to apply the epithet of calumniator upon him if it were not with highest spirit of friendship, truth, and love that he set forth to make these corrections to the manuscript of the man, whom he names as friend, john locke. the faithful followers of john locke will surely conclude that they have never witnessed a similar spirit of high resentment in the cause of one who names himself as collaborator else, in turn, fall to the irresistible conclusion that this edition strains completely the faculties of the human mind. only a hasty effort to establish conclusions to these questions will originate such preposterous allegations. in the support of the true position of original corrector and editor set forth by john locke himself, jisdu is in a supreme and immutable position, which it will test all the scrutiny of philosophy to overthrow. so far as virtue and ability are hand in hand, and accompanied by a strict regard to consistency, again in so far as virtue and ability will allow, i testify that this corrected edition of john locke’s two treatises on civil government is the true and faithful heir of the original manuscript set forth in the year 1689. altho’ some may proclaim an excessive use of liberty on the part of the editor, jisdu has every authority and cause to claim that his version of locke’s text to be the truer manuscript of all thus produced. if the reader has preference for the old one, let him with industry gratify himself in the enjoyment of the unfit claim of faithfulness to what is true and earnest from the start. yet if there has been no abandonment of the principle of faithfulness and a great disposition is manifested to approach transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 44 nearer to the true intention of the mind of the original author and the great philosophy to which his intention was directed, these printed words will find root in that man and grow to hitherto unseen bounds. if there are missteps and mislocutions in this edition of locke’s manuscript, let it be unequivocally acknowledged to be an unintentional trespass and laid squarely upon the shoulders of this human being. from the printer and translator james dougherty new echota, 1831 brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 45 two t r e a t i s e s o f government in the former, the false principles and foundation o f jani lagwv and his f o l l o w e r s, a r e detected and overthrown. the latter is an formula for the originary manifestation o f government from the land transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 46 book i an essay concerning certain false principles chapter i on property and self-solitude §1. the concepts of property and political power as they exist in the settler state of my future reader—that are as ubiquitous as the notion of the modern nation state itself—are so vile and miserable and so directly opposite to the dejadaligenvdisgesdi (responsibility for one another) of anigaduwagi (the people who come together as one) that tis hardly conceived that our author, jani lagwv, would plead for them. and truly i should have taken this treatise as persuading all beings that the land, the plants, and the animals are all natural slaves, for property and sovereignty (as the ubiquitous notions of power in the modern state) are nothing more than concepts of power and domination over, firstly, elohi (the land) and secondly other aniyvwi (people) who are variously called savage and heathen. the settler colonial logic of domination that shapes these seemingly common sense concepts does not arise out of a state of nature, as our author claims, because this state of nature conceptualized by our author is nothing more than the mirror by which the logic of domination conceives itself against a projected and imagined inferior other. §2. i cannot but confess myself mightily surprised at the vacuous locutions the author presents as an exercise of wit. rather than a serious discourse meant in earnest, which the manner of this author and the presentation of his manuscript would require, this treatise is mere noise meant to blind the people the better to brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 47 device them. instead of providing a bond of kinship for all human kind, as the author claims, this treatise provides but an ayelisgi (imitation or disease). ayelisgi is the unmooring of kinship from the ayeli, which is the center, the middle, or the nation. ayeli is grounded in elohi. in other words, what grounds the kinship of humankind to the center as a people is the land. the contrary doctrine of ayelisgi (of imitated kinship through abstraction and domination) removes from humankind even the possibility of kinship and founds the being of humankind in selfbanishment or solitude. in this solitude, human reason, human knowledge, and human power are also banished with the banishment of the other. where there is no kinship, there is no knowledge, no understanding, no human power that is not the imitation power of domination. chapter ii on the kinless conqueror and its origin in self-banishment §3. the kinless conqueror that defines the coming to be of civilizing power and property, in the mind of our author, is created in solitude, but a solitude that deceives itself as dominating power. as the roman empire becomes the christian empire, and as the dominating power of imperial conquering becomes the dominating power and authority of christendom, the kinless conqueror finds itself in a perpetual state of questioning: if i know the supposed heathen and savage as she actually is, do i lose the unquestioning power i have over her? if i move beyond the self-created shell of my dominating power to actually touch and see the other, do i lose my self-created power of domination? these questions resolve to one: am i truly king of all, or am i truly god on earth? this is the first skepticism. it is the skepticism of christendom’s adawi (adam) and kastadinv (constantine) but only reaches fruition in the inquisition’s gwedinadv (ferdinand) and isadela (isabella) and the valladolid’s segwvligeda (sépulveda). when the inquisition asks who among the converted are “stained by ancestral heresies” or when the valladolid asks “do indians truly have souls,” this is not a skepticism about the “enemy transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 48 within,” but a methodological skepticism whose end is the self-creation of the unquestionable conqueror (silverblatt 31-32). §4. this methodological skepticism is not directed toward the settling of the question of the savage and heathen other, but the settling of the doubt concerning whether the conqueror is truly god on earth. in order to banish the doubt concerning whether the conqueror is king, he creates a sphere in which he becomes unquestionable and undoubtable in order to become an ayelisgi (imitation) god on earth. the conqueror banishes the other from his sphere of being in order to banish the doubt of the conqueror as truly god on earth, to banish the doubt of the conqueror as king. after banishing the other from his sphere of being, he replaces the other with the inverted projection of the conqueror himself, the savage. the conqueror becomes what he is then, not through true power, but through complete solitude. all of being and knowing become a mirror for the idiosyncratic personalities and experiences of the kinless conqueror who has banished himself to his own solitude. the supposed enemy within of the savage and heathen other hides the true enemy within of the solipsistic universe of his own mind. §5. the savage other is manufactured, in part, for the purpose of creating a conqueror who can innocently save this ayelisgi (imitation) other. if the savage other violently resists the conqueror’s will, then the conqueror becomes the victim of the savage other. yet civilizing the savage or saving the heathen does alter the path of continued domination for the kinless conqueror. after civilizing and saving, the kinless conqueror must reveal the bad faith of his mission to civilize and save the savage other in the first place. the ceaseless striving to save the savage other even after she has been saved reveals the conceptual and structural fallacy of the mission as one of salvation at all since the states of being unsaved, uncivilized, and poor for the savage other are material and conceptual by-products of the states of being saved, civilized, and wealthy as created by the forced solitude of the kinless conqueror. this fallacy of the creation of value in absence brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 49 of actual kinship by the conqueror also reveals that the freedom and liberation the savage other is supposed to find after being brought out of darkness by the salvatory conqueror is not a true freedom or liberation—as these concepts must be borne out by reason or experience—but rather the freedom to be shaped in the image of the kinless conqueror, which is of course not a freedom at all, as our author well knows, but a perpetual state of bondage. §6. one world-leader of my future readers will propose to save a desert tribe in a foreign land by forcing upon them the so-called freedom of free enterprise or what is rather the bondage of global capitalism as they will come to know it. the real meaning of being savage, uncivilized, unfree, and so on, is then determined by the kinless conqueror, but not on the foundation of any principle of reason or experience but simply on the foundation of the idiosyncratic being of the kinless conqueror himself. all the savage other must do in order to continue to be savage is to lie outside of the sphere of power the kinless conqueror has created for his purpose (for my future reader this sphere of power manifests itself, in part, as global capitalism). the so-called reason of the kinless conqueror becomes the epistemological perspective of future philosophy. but is not an epistemological perspective of the kinless conqueror brought to bear on the savage other; the kinless conqueror is the epistemological perspective. there is no reason or epistemological perspective to bring to bear for there is no reason or epistemological perspective at all save the kinless conqueror himself in his solitude. segwvligeda puts it most directly in the valladolid when he claims that it would be wrong to exercise violence against the savage other if she were found to worship “the true god,” who of course is none other than the god of the kinless conqueror himself. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 50 chapter iii the kinless conqueror becomes the kinless knower or the second skepticism §7. when degatisdi (descartes) gives birth to the kinless knower (i think; therefore, i am) over five decades before the words of our author, this birth is a second birth of the kinless conqueror. the doubt that seemingly arises out of the ether in the mind of degatisdi while watching the candle wax melt in his study is not a true doubt as he himself admits. his methodological doubt and methodological skepticism arise from the same fear of the conqueror being found questionable. but rather than facing the other only to find himself wanting, the conqueror faces knowing the other, the world itself here, by attempting to defeat the doubt that his knowledge is king of all, that his knowledge is unquestionable, that he is god on earth. this is the second skepticism. the kinless knower rises above the skepticism of his unquestionable knowledge, following the manner of the kinless conqueror, by banishing the other, the body, the world. the kinless knower knows his own mind in its solitude and the other, the body, the world is imagined as mere form or shape that can only be measured by geometry. just as the kinless conqueror creates the illusion of power over the other by banishing her from his sphere of kinship and into the imagined realm of savagery, so the kinless knower creates the illusion of knowledge of the other, the world, by banishing her from his sphere of kinship and into the imagined realm of mere body, mere form, mere shape, mere emotion, mere desire (these are also variously called savage and heathen, but also female and natural). the world of knowledge, reason, power, agency exists alone in the mind and personalities of the kinless knower in his solitude. these exist in him by definition and not by reason lest the very question should be begged: by whose lights do you confirm in yourself alone all that is good, true, and powerful. this question cannot be asked of the kinless knower because he is both the light that shines and the seer of that light. brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 51 §8. the mind of the kinless knower over against the imagined mere form and body of the other as world is a mirror for the idiosyncratic personalities and experiences of the kinless knower who has banished himself to his own solitude. a ten year-old degatisdi entered the jesuit school of la flèche in 1606. in this school, he received a “modern” education that focused on the “rationalization” of practices of the catholic church. in this training, “each jesuit constituted a singular, independent, and modern subjectivity, performing daily an individual ‘examination of conscience,’ without communal choral hymns or prayers as was the case with medieval benedictine monks” (dussel 6) degatisdi was required to “withdraw into silence three times a day, to reflect on his own subjectivity and ‘examine’ with extreme self-consciousness and clarity the intention and content of every action, the actions carried out hour-by-hour, judging these actions according to the criterion [of service to god]” (ibid). these examinations were kept in a notebook that documented the errors made by the hour from morning to night. the philosophical codifying and justifying and attempted universalizing of these practices by degatisdi does not change but only attempts to hide their origin in the very particular idiosyncratic practices of those very particular jesuits at that very particular moment in time and space. §9. the duality of mind and body by which the kinless knower attempts to conqueror his doubt is also grounded in very particular and idiosyncratic practices of christendom. the duality of the soul and body is a foundational tenet of christendom, even if from one solitary spot on the tree of christendom. the soul is saved but the body is resurrected as the culmination of salvation. the soul of christendom becomes the mind of degatisdi and the solitary source of being, knowing and salvation, but only in relation to an imagined inferior other of the body and world. during the peak of the inquisition, the body becomes “the basic object of repression,” whereas the soul becomes “almost separated from the intersubjective relations at the interior of the christian world” (quijano 555). degatisdi, for the first time, systematized and “secularizes” the isolated experiences transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 52 within this particular branch of christendom at this particular moment in its history. the radical segregation and self-banishment of mind/soul from the broader world of other as body creates the context for the “scientific” theorizations on race and gender. nature, animals, plants, indians, sexuality, and so on are all body and thus inferior to the solitary conqueror/knower who is by definition all that is rational, civilizing, knowing, active, powerful, and true. through the “objectification of the body as nature,” the other as defined by race and gender and associated with body, and merely because of their manifestations of difference with the idiosyncratic features of the kinless conqueror/knower, is “condemned as inferior for not being rational subjects” (ibid). as they manifest any difference in nature with the idiosyncratic personalities and experiences of the kinless conqueror/knower, they become trapped in the being of body and the state of nature. the savage other, as such becomes “dominable and exploitable” and “considered as an object of knowledge” (ibid). §10. an author perhaps known to my future reader, will put the relational structure of manifesting universality over what is an idiosyncratic culture practice of christendom like this: “secularization was able to detach god from nature (which was unthinkable among indigenous and sub saharan africans, for example; and unknown among jews and muslims). the next step was to detach, consequently, nature from man (e.g., frances bacon’ novum organum, 1620). “nature” became the sphere of living organisms to be conquered and vanquished by man” (mignolo 87). secularity then hides the idiosyncratic nature of salvation in the supposed civilizing mission of the kinless knower to the savage other as nature and indigenous. amayeli (between the waters), called amayagni (america) by lagwv, becomes the land of nature or the exemplar of the state of nature for the world, and so it is in the salvation or settling of amayeli that the mirror of the kinless conqueror comes to be, and it is through this mirror that the kinless conqueror comes to see himself as he imagines that he actually is. hegali (hegel) has put it recently as this: “the human being acquires confidence in himself. man brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 53 discovers america, its treasures and its people, he discovers nature, he discovers himself” (dussel 13). chapter iv the kinless conqueror dominates the land by creating the savage and the state of nature §11. our author also describes amayeli (between the waters) or amayagni (america) as the context out of which civilization comes to be. “in the beginning all the world was america,” jani lagwv (john locke) beseeches his listener (ii.49). amayeli becomes the exemplar of the state of nature. “america is still a pattern of the first ages in asia and europe,” he pontificates, and so the anijalagi (cherokee) as well as the aniyonega (europeans) who come in contact with them “are perfectly in a state of nature” (ii.14). i do not think our author so little skill’d in reasoning that he would fall into the trap of the kinless conqueror, so i first supposed it but by oversight that he comes to this thought or it is again by way of the banishment to solitude that his mind is driven to this place. the reflections, for their part, as they occur in this text are not reflections of reason. yet they do create an ayelisgi (imitation) of power that imagines a justification on the basis of natural law for the appropriating without consent of the land of the anijalagi by the aniyonega as well as the justification for the denial of the sovereign authority of the jalagi ayeli (the cherokee nation) itself. §12. in nature, according to our author, “all men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man” (ii.4). thus, when the jalagi ayeli (the cherokee nation) simply defends its lands and people from the ayelisgi of domination by the yoneg, as they are defined as in a perfect state of nature, the jalagi are offenders of natural law and as such are “wild savage beasts” who “may be destroyed as a lyon or a tyger” (ii.16). the jalagi are offenders of natural law transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 54 in defending their people and land because as existing on a land that is yet in a state of nature, the jalagi have no people or land as they have no possibility of gover’ment or property. the force of these words are great for our author, since, during the time of the setting of these words to type, he served as secretary to the lords proprietors of carolina, secretary to the council of trade and plantations, and as a member of the board of trade. he was one of a handful of men who helped to shape the old colonial system of amayeli during the restoration, and on that basis felt the weight of the ayelisgi of settler domination. his part, in trying to lift this pretense, was a manufactured absence of a government and property system on the part of the aniyvwi of amayeli (people of america). my future readers may know a s(cholar of jani lagwv, who says of our author’s pretense: “locke’s concepts [of government and property]… are inadequate…” because “locke constructed them in contrast to amerindian forms of nationhood and property in such a way that they obscure and downgrade the distinctive features of amerindian polity and property” (tully 167). this scholar will be one among us, at least, who thinks that lagwv did, in fact, formulate his concepts of government and property through selfbanishment from the yvwi of amayeli (the people of this land). if this scholar is correct, we must conclude, no matter the great praise and wonder with which my future reader will view our author, that he is, in fact, a kinless conqueror and a mental wanderer on amayeli (this land). §13. the result of the self-banishment of our author from amayeli, in order to hide from the true other (the anijalagi as well as all the other aniyvwiya of amayeli) while maintaining an ayelisgi (imitation) other of the savage, is a manufactured state of nature for amayagni. in this manufactured state of nature, anijalagi (the cherokee) have no government or law and no private property, as is required in nature. the yvwi of amayeli (the people of this land) have no law but the law of nature and no authority but the singularity of each individual will. the law of nature is all that “restrain men from invading other’s rights,” and “the execution of the law of nature is… put into every man’s hands, whereby everyone brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 55 has a right to punish” offenders of natural law (ii.7). in nature, says our author, it is the individual who perceives what is right according to natural law, and it is the individual who is judge over controvers’s betwine himself and others, and executes punishments proportionate to the transgression of these natural laws. human beings in nature, says our author, are free to order their lives in accordance with natural law and are equal in the “power and jurisdiction” to govern the transgressions of this law. all human beings are then laws unto themselves in nature until such time that they freely release their “natural power” with the expressed intention of declaring “a common establish’d law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders” (vii.88). §14. likewise, there is no property in the state of nature because in nature “god hath given the world to men in common” to “make use of the best advantage of life and convenience.” “the earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being” (ii.26). “all the fruits and beasts belong to mankind in common,” which is an idea that i, jusdi, find so childish that it comes only with a giggle that i can even quote such nonsense on the part of our author since it portends that these “common men” own us rabbits as well as the grass we eat. rubbish! a particular person can only come to own a particular rabbit (balderdash!) from out of the commons by appropriation. “the fruit or venison which nourish’s the wild indian, who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common” comes to belong to the so-called savage when she “hath mixed [her] labour with it, and joined to it something that is [her] own, which is the “work of [her] hands” (ii.27). once the savage removes the fruit and venison from what is common to all, then that and only that which she removes becomes her own. when she is “nourished by the acorns” she gathers from “under the oak,” she is making those and only those particular acorns that she gathers and eats her own property. but though her labour remove these acorns from the commons, she can only take for her own as many acorns as that will not turn to rot. the savage in the state of transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 56 nature can never possess the oak ‘fore she can never appropriate the wood nor the deer that feed upon it, except in what she killeth and only that, from the commons as long as she is in the savage state of nature whereupon there is no power or law to bind all. until the savage gives up the “natural power” to establish laws that govern enclosed space removed from the commons, she has no property but what she now possess with her hands. until such time that natural power is given up and a common establish’d law is made over amayeli (this land), in amayagni “there could be no doubt of right, no room for quarrel,” and “no reason of quarrelling about title, nor any doubt about the largeness of the possession it gave” (ii.51). chapter v the kinless conqueror banishes himself from the land in order to manufacture the doctrine of discovery §15. this manufactured savage, who has no government, law, or land and who only comes into being through the self-banishment of the kinless conqueror, brings with it an ayelisgi of justification for her domination and for the free appropriation of her land and what is of her land: the acorn, the deer, and the gold. as lagwv puts it, predicting the future general long hair’s expedition into the black hills with the u.s. army corp of engineers in 1874 to freely appropriate the gold of the lakota aniyvwi, “the ore that i have digg’d in any place, where i have a right in common with others becomes mine” (ii.28). but our author is in conflict with one of the oldest and most fundamental principles of yoneg (western) law as spoken in the ritual incantations of latin thusly: quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari et aprobari debet (what toucheth all must be approved by all). this yoneg principle of law does not provide room for appropriation without consent. consent is, in the oldest of legal principles, the principle of law itself. as far as establish’d property law at the time of lagwv’s writing and back into time immemorial for the yoneg people, settlement and defense of that brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 57 settlement were understood by all to constitute occupation, and it was occupation, in this sense, along with long use that were the oldest and most settled principles of legal land title. §16. one of the examples of self-banishment that our author then tries to turn into a principle (which is of course, as a principle based in solitude and not in reason is not a principle at all) is that what shews where once a law is establish’d in europe there could be no appropriation without consent is that in these lands there is “controversie about… title’ and the “incroachment on the right of others” and individuals are “quarrelsom and contentious”, driven by “covetousness” as it regards possible land claims (ii.36, ii.51, ii.34). but in amayagni, by contrast (as it is he supposed in a state of nature), our author claims of any yoneg, “let him plant in some in-land place” where there are not current plants in the ground, that such would not give “the rest of mankind” any “reason to complain, or think themselves injured by this man’s incroachment” (ii.36). this result of this pretense by our author is the ayelisgi conclusion that where no foot of an actual yvwi (person) now standing is terra nullius or vacant land. this ayelisgi conclusion creates justification for the further ayelisgi conclusion that for any yoneg who comes upon the shores of amayeli that by the mere placing of his foot upon soil where there currently is no foot is establish’d a natural property right to that soil. under the accepted principles of occupation and long use (that are ironically denied to the yvwi of amayeli) is establish’d yoneg legal title to this soil under accepted yoneg principles of land title. by the early 1600s (and many years before our author puts these words to type) this so-call doctrine of discovery gave an ayelisgi justification of the assertion of sovereignty and property rights by any yoneg if the discovery, occupation, and defense of any part of amayeli was not already discovered by another monarch of christendom or warranted by a charter or grant from a king of christendom, such as the john cabot charter from king henry vii for plymouth and massachusetts bay colonies, which included the right “to subdue, occupy and transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 58 possess” the yvwi of amayeli, “getting unto us the rule, title, and jurisdiction” of their land (hakylut 21-22). §17. chief justice jani malsgwali (john marshall) of the yoneg supreme court in amayagni is currently ruling on issues of this so-called doctrine in the jaligi case against the state of georgia, but he is no stranger to ruling with the self-banishment of reason that our author transforms from the mere solitude of the kinless conqueror to an ayelisgi of justification for the domination over ayeli dunadotlvsv (nations) of amayeli (this land) and appropriation of their lands without consent. in the recent (1823) yoneg court case regarding appropriation without consent of the lands of ayeli dunadotlvsv of amayeli, malsgwali judges that the yvwi of amayeli are incapable of owning their lands and territories because they are what he calls “savage tribes.” the yoneg upon discovery of these “savage tribes” obtain “the exclusive right to appropriate [their] lands” (johnson v. m'intosh 585). the whole yoneg country, he proclaims as justification for this pretense, “has been granted by the crown while in the occupancy of the indians” (johnson v. m'intosh 579-80). of course this claim is manifestly and patently false just as is lagwv’s claim that the yvwi of amayeli did not object to the yoneg incroachment upon their land and sovereignty as so-called nature would have required them. but malsquali is not finished with his self-banishment of reason in this case. as his final ayelisgi justification he proclaims the “character and religion” of the yvwi of amayeli “afford an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of europe might claim an ascendancy” (johnson v. m'intosh 590). the yvwi “inhabiting this country,” he continues, “were fierce savages, whose occupation was war, whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest. to leave them in possession of their country, was to leave the country a wilderness; to govern them as a distinct people, was impossible, because they were as brave and as high spirited as they were fierce, and were ready to repel by arms every attempt on their independence” (ibid). the yonegs, he concludes, “were under the necessity either of abandoning the country, and relinquishing their pompous claims to it, or of brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 59 enforcing those claims by the sword, and by the adoption of principles adapted to the condition of a people with whom it was impossible to mix” (ibid). as with his predecessor, lagwv, malsgwali creates an ayelisgi savage other over which he can have dominion but only through the self-banishment of reason that is the defining feature of the kinless conqueror. chapter vi the self-banishment of principle in the concepts of civil government and property §18. and yet the jalagi in part and the yvwi of amayeli in whole did not consent to these pretenses on their sovereignty and property. the yvwi of amayeli do feel injured by “this man’s incroachment” onto their land and territories as the daily proclamations in the jalagi jsulehisanvhi (cherokee phoenix) will attest. the yvwi of amayeli did more than feel injured by the yoneg incroachment, our author knows. in stark contrast to the claimed lack of “no controversie about… title” and the “incroachment on the right of others” in a state of nature, the yvwi of amayeli (including the jalagi in the cherokee nation v. georgia case that is before malsgwali and the highest yoneg court in these lands) have presented legal challenges to every kind of incroachment on their rights and land as has been available to them. this contrast alone should render our author’s claims regarding a state of nature for amayeli as reasonless and without principle since in a state of nature it is necessary that there be no such controversie. the yoneg, for their part, shewed the pretense of their reason when they went to war with the pequot in 1636 over innumerable land disputes with these yvwi of amayeli. the mohegan, for their part, appealed to the privy council in london in 1670 against the colony of connecticut for their appropriating of mohegan land without consent. the mohegan continued their legal battles with connecticut for nearly 100 years. the actions of both yoneg, jalagi, mohegan, and many others alike shew the selftransmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 60 banishment of reason that appears as an principle of truth in arguments of our author on these accounts. §19. lagwv, himself, shows with great regularity, most often from his own words, the self-banishment of his reason. the fact that our author thinks one can only have settled legal property when one is “quarrelsom and contentious”, driven by “covetousness” alone threatens to shew the self-banishment of the so-called principles he espouses. lagwv also thinks that the jalagi ayeli as well as other ayeli dunadotlvsv of amayeli (nations of this land) do not rise to the level of nations with accompanying sovereignty because the authority by which the leaders of these ayeli dunadotlvsv (nations) operated was not absolute. he claims that although these “nations” were “ruled by elected kings,” these so-called kings have “very little dominion, and have but a very moderate sovereignty” (i. 131). the ayeli dunadotlvsv of amayeli lacked both the very particular moral qualities of the yoneg, such as being covetous, as well as the particular yoneg institutions, such as absolute or majority rule rather than consensus. rather than allowing for a kinship to a true other, lagwv banishes the possibility of kinship by claiming that these differences in values and institutions are not real differences. the ayeli dunadotlvsv of amayeli (nations of this land) have no need for these values and institutions because, our author claims, they have “few trespasses, and few offenders, and “little matter for covetousness and ambition,” and so no “need of laws” (ii.107). the reason the so-called savages have few trespasses and few offenders is that, according to our author, they have little property because their desires were confined “within the narrow bounds of each mans small propertie” (ibid). their “want of money” gave them “no temptation to enlarge their possessions of land, or contest for wider extent of ground” (ii.108). the idea is simply put thus: greed leads to money, and money leads to more greed and only on the basis of this unlimited desire to ever enlarge “their possessions of land” do individuals put themselves into the proper situation for creating a civil society. rather than being a function of the most idiosyncratic personalities of the yoneg, brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 61 lagwv defines these idiosyncratic personalities as universal and even necessary for the very possibility of civil society, real government, and true sovereignty. this is the work of the kinless conqueror in all of its true splendor: the creation of an entire universe of truth out of the single act of self-banishment. §20. this self-banishment work of the kinless conqueror as an ayelisgi justification of the operations of manifest destiny on amayeli was not new to the work of our author. lagwv merely adds philosophical clarity to this line of selfbanished reason in its operation on the land of amayagni. jani witlodi (john winthrop), the puritan lawyer from england who helped establish the second major incroachment onto these lands and territories (massachusetts bay colony founded in 1628), argued that the yvwi of amayeli could only possess what they were currently cultivating (even leaving their fields seasonally for the clam beds was enough to lose possession under his version of the kinless conqueror’s state of nature). he rejected the claim that ayeli dunadotlvsv of amayeli (nations of this land) held ownership of their lands and territories so that it would be illegal to “enter upon the land which hath beene soe longe possessed by others.” his ayelisgi justification for this rejection is the claim that amayeli is in a state of nature, under which “that which lies common, and that has neuer been replenished or subdued is free to any that possesse and improue it” (winthrop 140-41). in contrast, the ownership of a territory only comes into being when the enclosure and subduing of land by those who have unlimited desire to enlarge their possession make what lies in common scarce. yet the idiosyncratic personality of the kinless conqueror of greed is not the only yoneg idiosyncrasy required to own land. property rights, in witoldi’s humble estimation, require the very particular sedentary agriculture and improvement practices that are, of course, unique to the yoneg. the “natiues,” witlodi proclaims, “inclose noe land, neither have any settled habitation, nor any tame cattle to improue the land by, and soe have no other but a naturall right” (ibid). the childish perspective that produces the thought in witlodi that cows are required in order for yvwi to rise to the status of owners of their land and territories transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 62 is the final proof that only by complete self-banishment into absolute solitude does the kinless conqueror create a justification of his right to domination over the yvwi of amayeli and even elohi (the land itself). §21. the words of witlodi, lagwv, and malsgwali that claim ownership over amayeli (this land) through the creation of the kinless conqueror in his solitude are meant to be the actions of an didahnesesgi (putter-in and drawer-out of them), which is the worst and most powerful of evil conjurers. the repetition of these seemingly nonsense words are the practices of an uya igawasti (a speaker of destructive utterances that are meant to destroy the life-force of those conjurered over). the strangeness of lagwv’s text is perhaps not that strange at all, as didahnesesgi and uya igawasti formulas bear as little resemblance to ordinary discourse “as chaucer’s old english does to the writings of james joyce” (kilpatrick and kilpatrick 49). lagwv’s particular conjuring formula seems most like a didagalenvdhodiyi, “the most venomous” of conjuring text, which is meant to separate things, in this case the people and the land (k 39). lagwv’s conjuring text uses these strange and seemingly nonsensical utterances to put an ulsgedv (intruder or illness) into people and the land. this ulsgedv creates the symptoms of a real sickness yet this sickness is but an ayeligagi (an ayelisgi illness), which are not real ailments but imitation illness that are meant to bring one conjured over to a low place or a place by which they can be dominated. in order to repel the work of these evil conquerors, collectively known as anilisgvi (those who are thinking) one must put forth sacred protective formulas known as didagwahlvsdodi (to turn one aside) (a. kilpatrick 7). defensive in the nature, these highly potent protective formulas serve to shield yvwi from “the evil spirits of the north, south, and west, . . . and, from witches, and wizards, who go about on dark nights, in the shape of bears, hogs, and wolves to spoil people” (adair 185). brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 63 book ii on the origin of jalagi government out of the land or the formula for protection from the incantations of the kinless conqueror chapter i on the supposed state of nature and supposedly rising above it or the formula for telling the way it is gha! (listen!) unehlanvhi galvladi (provider above) nigvnadv higolodisgi (the one who sees everywhere) . . . . . . . doyugwudv dijanoja jadi (you tell the truth) . . . . . . . degvyadhvdhaniga (i have just come to question you) . . . . . . . usinuliyu sgwadvgohlaniga (very quickly, you have just come to let me know) transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 64 §22. let me begin to fix the words of this text that i have long suffered but have come to have some pity upon that may even raise to a slight affection. i, jisdu, will fix these words with some stories of my own, some stories that reveal a bit about anijalagi aniyvwi ale jalagi ayeli (the cherokee people and the cherokee nation). the lack of the idiosyncratic personalities of the kinless conqueror (which include a quarrelsome and greedy disposition, the desire to enclose and subdue the land (even requiring the placing of waga (cows) upon it), and even, i gather, a distaste for clams) do not remove the jalagi from having a meaningful civil society and a meaningful relationship to their land and territories. as we have seen from segwvligeda to degatisdi to jani lagwv, the ground upon which the notions of civil government and private property are based are settled in the kinless conqueror and his self-banishment from reason and into solitude. the kinless conqueror shapes the ontological foundation of the concepts of being, land, meaning and so on. the kinless conqueror shapes the fundamental conception of human being as a subjectivity that conquers its other. the kinless conqueror shapes the contours of all yoneg thought from jani lagwv to the present of my reader: the mind is set over and against the other of body, humans are set over and against the other of nature, the civilized are set over and against the other of the savage, reason is set over and against emotion, man is set over and against woman, and so on. human beings are taken out of the land and abstracted into concepts of planetary evolution, history, anthropology, and so on. this kinless conqueror becomes a dominating force that by being removed from the land is able to operate from above on the other, including the land itself. the land becomes conceptualized as an abstract object of domination. jani lagwvi defines property as existing only over land that one has enclosed, made private and exercised dominion and control over. my future reader can follow the line of the kinless conqueror through all the yoneg concepts of power as an abstracted or kinless power (removed from the land) that comes down from above. take the classic yoneg concept of poltical power: sovereignty. in latin, “sover” is over or coming from above, while “reign” is to have brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 65 dominating power over. sovereignty is then coming from above to exercise dominating power over. the very nature of power of sovereignty is being removed from the land in order to operate abstractly on it or over it through selfbanishment and solitude. chapter ii on nature and property from the perspective of selu, the corn mother or a formula for removing a foreign object introduced by a kinless conjuror gha! (listen!) jisgili gvhnagei svnoyu (black owl of night) janaqwi uhyoha (your heart it hunts) unvdodi dihahnesesgi hia (conjurors do this) halvgidiga ehlawe (you have just come to unquietly untie) nuvtanvda dudanvdhelidolvhi (the thinker before he goes away) §23. jani lagwv, all his protestations to the contrary, hasn’t the faintest notion of nature, even in the darkest recesses of his already clouded and transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 66 shadowed mind. he proclaims that as the “workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise maker” and “servants of one sovereign master,” “all men are naturally in… a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons” (ii. 4). this freedom for all human beings comes from their “sharing all in one community of nature,” which is a result of human beings not being “made for one another’s uses” in contrast to what our author calls “inferior ranks of creatures” such as yours truly, jisdu who are supposedly made specifically for these human beings and for whatever purposes they see fit (ii.6). but nature doeth not place the human in such high regard. human beings do not have dominion over elohi (the earth) and the animal spirits/powers who live in galvladi (above everything) at galagwogi (the seventh height). there is no state of nature where human beings are free to treat elohi and the animals as inferior property and so only order their actions in relation to what lagwv calls natural reason, which only takes regard for the mutual wellbeing of humans in their shared space of nature. the animals of elohi have great powers, and these powers exist above everything in the sacred stone vault. humans come into the space of elohi with unresolvable tension and conflict. the humans must track and slay the animals of elohi in order to survive. this disruption to the lifeways and the life-force of the animals brings the anger and antagonism on the part of the animals and the animal spirits/power down upon the human beings as they try to live upon elohi. the animal spirit/power brings sickness upon the human beings for the eating of their flesh and the wearing of their skin as clothing. the bear, the deer, the fishes, the snakes, the birds, the insects, and many smaller animals each bring different punishments upon the humans for their offense. but when the plants of elohi hear about the suffering the animal spirit/powers have placed upon the humans, they feel great compassion for them as they understand that the human beings are also trying to simply sustain their lives. they agree to “help man when he calls upon [them] in his need” (mooney 1891 319-321). the plants become mediators for this unresolvable tension between human beings and animals. brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 67 §24. but the plants must also sacrifice their flesh and bones in giving this help to the human beings, for all aniyvwi (persons) have flesh and bones. there are, in fact, four spirits in aniyvwi, even the plants. there is one spirit in the head or throat that is a spirit of thought and speech. this spirit materializes as saliva. there is another spirit in the liver, another spirit in the flesh that is materialized as blood, and finally a spirit in the bones that can materialize as semen. the most important plant for anijalagi is selu, and she is flesh and bones. selu is the word for the corn, the corn plant but also the corn mother. her two sons are aniyvdagwalosgi (the thunder people). one of these sons was born from selu and kana’ti but the other is wild boy who was spawned from the blood or the flesh spirits of the animals that the family killed and cleaned in the river, for it was from that very spot in the river that wild boy came to be. the two boys set free all the animals from the trap of kana’ti, their father, and so it came to be that they approached their mother, selu, with their hunger. she told her boys that even though there was no meat that if they waited she would return with something for them. selu took a taluja (basket) and went to the storehouse. the storehouse was high off the ground and required selu to climb a ladder to reach. selu climbed into the storehouse with an empty taluja and returned with a taluja full of selu (corn) and tuya (beans). the two boys wondered where all this selu and tuya came from so the next day when selu went to the storehouse, they followed her and watch through a hole in the log and clay wall. what they saw astounded and frightened them. selu stood in the middle of the room with her empty taluja. as she leaned over the empty basket, she rubbed her stomach. the taluja began to fill with selu. she then rubbed her armpits, and the taluja began to fill with tuya. the boys were terrified. they decided that their mother was a powerful didahnesesgi who was trying to poison them with this ayelisgi food, and so they must kill her for their own safety. selu could hear their thoughts though and told them they were planning to kill her. she told them “when you have killed me, clear a large piece of ground in front of the house and drag my body seven times around the circle. then drag me transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 68 seven times over the ground inside the circle, and stay up all night and watch, and in the morning you will have plenty of corn” (mooney 245). the boys killed their mother with their clubs and placed her decapitated head on the roof of the house with her face looking toward the west. the boys began to clear the ground in front of the house, but did not follow their mother’s instructions, and cleared only seven tiny spots rather than the whole ground. they dragged their mother’s body around the circle and, just as she had predicted, wherever her blood (the manifestation of her flesh spirit) spilled onto the ground, selu began to spring up. the boys sat and watched the selu through the night, and by morning, it was fully grown and ready to harvest. §25. the hunter must try to balance the contradiction of trying to respectfully kill and eat the animals that are needed to sustain life but in such a way that does not increase the ire of the animals and animal spirit/powers so as not to have the sustained life and life-force later taken away by some sickness brought on by animal revenge. the jalagi must balance this contradiction with their corn mother as well. just like with animals they hunt and eat, yvwi must try to respectfully kill and eat selu, the corn mother. selu is their mother, though, and so her role in the current and future material and spiritual life-force of anijalagi is most fundamental. the nature of kinship with selu is paramount to the life sustaining or life force milieu of elohi (the preconceptual intertwining of being and the land), because if the yvwi do not eat selu they physically die, or conceptually die in the sense of being out of balance with the preconceptual intertwining of people and land as elohi. the manner in which aniyvwi (people) continue to kill selu and drag her body across the earth so that when her blood pours onto the ground determines whether there is more corn and aniyvwi continue to live. as aniyvwi continue to kill selu, they take the ears of corn, they grind kernels and plant some kernels back in the ground so that selu will come back each time that they kill her and eat her. the process of killing and eating selu while returning some of her bones (the kernels) to the ground is hardly a simple material brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 69 process. firstly, the separation of aniyvwi from elohi in the construction of a concept of material processes that are separate from social and spiritual relationships is a creation of the kinless conqueror. secondly, in the context of elohi, aniyvwi take the flesh and blood spirit of selu and mix it with their saliva spirit in the eating and digesting of the flesh and blood and flesh and blood spirit of their mother. they also grind the kernels (the bone spirit) and place some of the bones back in the ground, which returns part of her regenerative or fertility spirit to elohi so that selu will regenerate. all the different spirits of the aniyvwi and their interactions with the spirits of selu are part of the normative structure of this foundational kinship for elohi (people and the land). not paying proper attention to any part of this normative kinship dynamic can create illness for the jalagi and disrupt the deepest life-force context for humans, plants, and animals on the land: elohi. §26. a jalagi was overheard some years back as he chastised his fellow anijalagi for their mistreatment of their mother selu, which he pointed to as the cause of their current suffering and misery: the disruption to their lifeways and the incroachment of aniyonega on to their lands and territories. it was 1811, some twenty years ago, at springplace, the monrovian mission of john and anna gambold, establish’d in the jalagi ayeli in 1801. this jalagi rebuked his aniyvwi (people) for planting the yoneg corn on elohi and for grinding selu’s bones in the yoneg grinding mills. he proclaimed to them that “the mother of the nation has left you because all of her bones are being broken through the milling.” get rid of the white man's corn, he says, and "plant the indian corn and pound it according to your ancestor's ways. she will return if you return to your former way of life.” he continues his rebuke, “[w]e are made from red earth but they are made from white sand. you may be good neighbors with them but you must get your beloved towns back from them. your mother is displeased” (mcclinton 64). these words by this jalagi are not primarily a contrast between aniyoneg and anijalag as different races or jalagi ways set over and against yoneg ways. what this jalagi is expressing is the “intimate knowing relationship” (as future oceti sakowin transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 70 philosopher vine deloria jr. will put it) of elohi as the preconceptual intertwining of jalagi aniyvwi ale jaligi elohi (cherokee people and cherokee land) in contrast to the kinless abstract understanding of people and land, of corn, agriculture, best practices, most productive use of the land and resources, and so on (deloria 2). §27. the land is also selu—not the earth in the abstract planetary sense but earth as elohi in the specific jalagi aniyvwi relationship to jalagi elohi, which includes land, history, and kinship. jalagi elohi is often conceptualized in relationship to selu or her sister plants. cherokee place names and cherokee towns are often named through correlates of selu. ajigvhnagesdhvyi (black cedar place), gidhayohi (cherry tree place), mulberry tree place, and honey-locust place are some common cherokee place names. selu is then both extended into the land and an extension of the land. the mulberry grove is an extension of selu but selu is also an extension of elohi as the intertwining of being and the land. this gives cause to our jalagi lecturer to say that anijalagi need to get their beloved towns back. the returning of these beloved towns is not another topic for our jalagi lecturer since the beloved towns are selu and selu is the beloved towns. the beloved towns are an extension of selu and the aniyvwi relationship to selu and the land as elohi, which is to say like selu these beloved towns are like an umbilical cord that maintains the life-force connection of elohi in the context of the intertwining of being and the land for anijalagi (the cherokee people). the property of beloved towns for the jalagi ayeli (the cherokee nation) only exists because anijalagi belong to elohi. the jalagi, selu, and the land are all intertwined in the context of elohi. property is then both originally and continually a matter of kinship and when property becomes a matter of domination, as in the words of our author, then kinship is destroy’d and then so goes the capacity of land to maintain the life-force connection that exists in the kinship intertwining of being and the land that is selu and elohi. brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 71 chapter iii on the nature of political power and sovereignty from the perspective of yvwi ganvhida, the river or a formula for going to water ka! (ka!) sge! (listen!) . . . . . . . yvwi ganvhidu jsahlidhohisdi (long person, you are in repose) gohusdi halisdisgi nigesvna (nothing can overpower you) . . . . . . . ha! gvwadonvdisesdi (ha! he will be able to do it) §28. the stories of selu and elohi teach us that human beings cannot meaningfully remove themselves from the conflictual intertwining of humans with plants and animals. one way that this conflictual intertwining manifests itself is in the particular conflictual intertwining of life and death (of needing to take life in order to sustain life or in general that for some things to live other things must die). but much more than this, the stories tell aniyvwi that they cannot meaningfully remove themselves from the deeper intertwining of being and the land that is the foundation of what is the material intertwining of life and death transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 72 as well as the material intertwining of humans with plants and animals. the material sense of the intertwining of life and death and humans with plants and animals are particular manifestations of elohi, which is the deeper preconceptual intertwining of being and land. human beings are, as manifestations of elohi, in inextricable kinship with the land. only through self-banishment or a solitude of pretense can a human float free from the land as our author attempts through the imagination of the kinless conqueror. knowledge is always a form of kinship. knowledge is an intimate knowing relationship. knowledge requires kinship and kinship not as an afterthought, but as fundamental and intimate aspect of all human being and knowing. in order to reach out and touch the other, in order to come to know her, in contrast to the self-banishment of the kinless conqueror, the possible knower must understand how she is already intertwining in intimate kinship relations with the other (either as people or land) she is trying to know. in order to know the other, the possible knower must first understand how she is related, and it is this kinship that is always the foundation and continual intimate manifestation of knowledge in the context of elohi as an intimate knowing relationship. §29. nature is not a background out of which civil society and governments arise as a julehisanvhi (phoenix) out of the ashes of conquered nature that the human takes dominion over. nature is not a place of perfect freedom nor a place of never-ending violence and chaos. nature is elohi and so the meaning of the concepts of government and property are both originary and continual manifestation out of the land as elohi. the land as elohi is the space where the jalagi people and the jalagi land are intertwined. this space is not merely historical or mythical, however, as it is both the original and continual source of life in all the material, spiritual, and social contexts. anijalagi, in contrast to lagwv’s founding of government and property in the attempted domination of the other and the land through the act of self-banishment by the kinless conqueror, ground and continue their notions of government, law, and property in the intimate brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 73 knowing relationship with the land as elohi. the concept of political power as sovereignty in the latin sense of removing oneself from the land in order to come down from above and have dominion over the other (both people and land) will not do. the ayelisgi power of the kinless conqueror operates, from the start, through the conceptual separating of humans from land. this conceptual separation opens a space for the conception of an abstract human subjectivity that comes to be through the conquering of the savage other. the idiosyncratic personalities and experiences of the yoneg cum kinless conqueror are then built into the very notions of the now universalized human being in such a way as to allow the yoneg cum kinless conqueror to interject his very particular identity and experiences from his being in the land of europe into the space between the jalagi people and the jalagi land that has been vacated by conceptualization of humans as separate from the land. the key to removing the sickness or ulsgedv (intruder) from elohi, which arises from an ayelisgi (imitation disease), is in addressing directly the kinless conqueror or the idea that humans are separable from the land. the first step in removing this ulsgedv from elohi is to reground the concepts of being, meaning, and even the land itself to elohi as the source of all power and life. political power as an original and continual manifestation out of the land will carry a force of power that does not serve to remove people from land, either as conceptual or physical acts. the political power that arises from a reconceptualization of power out of elohi will not have the force of domination but will carry with it an understanding of how a people can maintain a positive or non-dominating relation with their land or territory as a people and a positive or non-dominating relationship to other land and other people. political power in the context of elohi will be conceptualized as an original and continual manifestation out of the land in a material, spiritual, social, and philosophical sense. §30. one place to begin an elohi concept of political power is with the yvwi ganvhida (long person), which is the river. a river is a yvwi ganvhida (long person) moving through the land. the yvwi ganvhida exercises power on the land but does transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 74 not carry that power as an ungrounded, delocalized force of domination over the land but as a power that literally comes from and moves through the land. the yvwi ganvhida is not a kinless conqueror in the operations of his power in relation to the land around him. the yvwi ganvhida carves his way through the mountains, creating ridges and valleys, but without ever separating himself or imagining his being as rising above or floating free from the land. it is not strange then that ama, the word for water, can also be ama as a valley. from kinship with yvwi ganvhida in the context of elohi, as an intimate knowing relationship, humans can learn to exercise power or sovereignty through the land. just as yvwi ganvhida, in every step of its movement or exercising of power, remains in contact with the land—literally touching deeply and intimately the land as it goes—human beings must stay in intimate contact with the land as they exercise or articulate human power. i, jisdu, think that it is an understanding of this power that has the yvwi of amayeli (people of this land) walking everywhere. this is a sacred way of moving on the land for yvwi of amayeli, for exercising power, for connecting to power, for channeling power into a ceremony. the processions of yvwi of amayeli walking with their feet literally on the ground (sometimes barefoot on the ground, moving through the four directions, or from one place to another place) is not an accident or just some abstract ritual movement. this movement comes from a deep understanding of the nature of being and land where any understanding of nature, land, and being are originary and continual manifestations of elohi. my future reader will know that even after the invention of cars the yvwi of amayeli will get out of their cars and walk over ceremonial ground. that movement of placing your feet on the ground with every step is making yourself like that river or even like selu herself, root’d in the ground, but not root’d in the way lagwv conceptualizes political power coming out of an original state of nature that no longer exists and necessarily no longer exists in order for that power to first come to be. the manner of being root’d in the ground that yvwi ganvhida teaches through his intimate knowing relationship with humans is not a delocalized abstraction but a material brian burkhart “on the mysterious 1831 cherokee manuscript” 75 and spiritual grounding in the land that is both ancient and new and covering every moment between. the manner of being root’d in the ground that yvwi ganvhida teaches is a manner of being that comes out of the ground but is still always there in the ground as well. the people plant their feet as firmly in the ground as selu is firmly planted in the ayeli (center) of elohi. that's how anijalagi have power; that's how the river has power, that's how selu has power. what the aniyvwi of amayeli learn from the river is that they must stay in place even as they move across the land. and that is one of the foundational teachings from elohi about what nature is, about who human beings are, about what land is, about what political power is: all true power, knowledge, and being only exist out of and in inseparable kinship with the land. . . . . . . . yvwi ganvhidv (long person) hidawehiyu (great wizard!) agwadanadhogi dodasgwalehisodaneli (you are now going to elevate my soul) works cited adair, james. adair's history of the american indians. ed. samuel cole williams. reprint. johnson city: watauga press, [1775] 1930. deloria, vine jr. and daniel wildcat. power and place: indian education in america. golden: fulcrum, 2001. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 76 dussel, enrique. "anti-cartesian meditations: on the origin of the philosophical anti-discourse of modernity." human architecture: journal of the sociology of self-knowledge: 11.1 (2013): 1-40. hakylut, richard. voyages touching the discovery of america. london, 1850. jefferson, thomas. to richard price paris, january 8, 1789. 9 march 2017. <http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomasjefferson/jefl74.php>. johnson v. m'intosh. 21: us 543, 1823. kilpatrick, alan. the night has a naked soul: witchcraft and sorcery among the western cherokee. syracuse: syracuse up , 1997. kilpatrick, jack f and anna g kilpatrick. walk into your soul: love incantations of the oklahoma cherokee. dallas: southern methodist up , 1965. mcclinton, rowena, ed. the moravian springplace mission to the cherokees. abridged . lincoln and london: u of nebraska p, 2010. mignolo, walter. "dispensable and bare lives: coloniality and the hidden political/economic agenda of modernity." human architecture: journal of the sociology of self-knowledge 7.2 (2009): 69-87. quijano, anibal. "coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and latin america." nepantla: views from south 1.3 (2000): 533-580. silverblatt, irene. modern inquisitions: peru and the colonial origins of the civilized world (latin america otherwise). duke up , 2004. tully, james. "rediscovering america: the two treatises and aboriginal rights." locke's philosophy: content and context. ed. g.a.j. rogers. clarendon press, 1997. winthrop, john. winthrop papers. vol. 2. boston, 1931. 2 vols. works cited microsoft word stirrett.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 312 colleen cardinal. ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (raised somewhere else): a 60s scoop adoptee’s story of coming home. fernwood publishing, 2018. 207 pp. isbn 97817739205. https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh-raised-somewhere-else ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (raised somewhere else): a 60s scoop adoptee’s story of coming home (2018) calls upon readers to bear witness to the haunting effects of colonial trauma and systemic violence. this memoir retrospectively captures the painful life experiences of colleen cardinal and her grief as an indigenous adoptee and survivor of canadian child welfare. with truth, grace, and strength, the writing – which cumulates into a story of cultural reclamation and healing – commands your attention as a reader. from the outset, cardinal articulates her story as motivated by her intention to “honour [her] sisters’ stories and validate the experiences of the hundreds of other indigenous adoptees and foster care survivors of the 60s scoop” (4). the central elements of this novel are the cumulative impacts of colonization and residential schools, with specific attention to the effects of the canadian child welfare system on indigenous children and their kin. the writing is compelling, forthright, and at times heart-wrenching in the painful recounting of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. writing in the first-person tense effectively provides the reader a window into cardinal’s thought processes and emotions, thereby creating a strong sense of empathy and understanding in the reader. the novel is largely centered on vivid depictions of navigating and coping with violence, poverty, and misogyny through the representations of cardinal and her sisters’ experiences. crucially, however, the narrative is also a reminder of the perseverance and strength of the human spirit. in the concluding chapters, cardinal embarks on healing, and her rise as a public speaker, advocate, and co-founder of the indigenous survivors of child welfare network is inspiring. cardinal’s remarkable life journey is admirable for her ability to turn hardship, abuse, and trauma into a story of self-discovery and self-actualization. dr. raven sinclair, a sixties scoop survivor and a professor at the university of regina, writes a foreword about the historical context of the novel and offers a working definition of the sixties scoop within the first few pages. as articulated by sinclair, the sixties scoop refers to the mass removal of indigenous children from their families and communities during the late 1950s to the 1970s, who were subsequently placed in predominately white, settler homes, sometimes across the country or even abroad (1). in her first chapter, “taoeyihtamiwin: reckoning,” cardinal regrets that she has only recently become fully aware of the extent of the harm committed by the sixties scoop (5). as suggested by cardinal in the concluding chapter, this over-representation of indigenous children in the child welfare system is ongoing and pervasive. this somber account in the beginning of the novel importantly situates the significance of cardinal’s story and how it remains a relevant and pressing concern for both indigenous and non-indigenous people interested in social justice, human rights, and equality. it’s evident that a reader unfamiliar with the indigenous child welfare crisis in canada will come away from this book more informed and enlightened on the sixties scoop and indigenous child welfare displacement. cardinal’s reconnection with her biological family and rediscovering her culture and becoming involved in a class action suit launched by sixties scoop survivors against the canadian government assisted cardinal’s awareness of the impacts of the sixties scoop (7). as a reader, you are taken on a learning journey and, in the process, acquire insight into why removing natasha stirrett review of ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh 313 indigenous children from their communities and placing them into non-indigenous homes is harmful. tracing the trajectory of cardinal’s life from her early experiences as a child born in 1972 to her self-actualization as a sixties scoop advocate in adulthood in 2017 provides in-depth insights into indigenous adoptee perspectives and life outcomes. themes of violence, trauma, addictions, and racism are recurrent throughout the novel. the story is told in a candid tone that names unspeakable truths and brings to light the complexities of intergenerational trauma, colonialism, and indigenous-settler relations. in the book, cardinal reflects on the physical violence she endured at the hands of her adoptive father. she writes, “i cannot tell you how many times i cowered in my closet or in the front hall closet, trying to will myself invisible so that i didn't have to hear my father or be around him when he got angry or when i was in trouble” (20). moreover, she describes her adoptive father as a “cruel sadistic man who would lose his temper at the drop of a hat, and when he did i would see his face turn bright red, even into his scalp” (21). when cardinal finally meets her biological family she is confronted with how deeply colonial trauma has affected her family and other indigenous folks. she finds her family is living in a condemned house with no heating or electricity. cardinal learns that a lot of the people in their run-down neighbourhood “drank listerine, lysol, hairspray, cheap wine and even chinese cooking wine” (51) to cope with the pain of their own trauma. when her sister is murdered in a park, cardinal is inconsolable and wretched in grief. she writes, “grief has no timeline; it sat in my throat, left me on the verge of tears, and my words became bitter and angry” (64). while many aspects of the memoir are often unrelentingly brutal, this story is an honest rendering of an indigenous reality for many marginalized and vulnerable people. in the memoir, cardinal describes the circumstances under which she was taken from her indigenous family and placed in the child welfare system. from research and conversations with her biological father and other family members, cardinal learns that her parents struggled with addictions, lack of sufficient support, and poverty, making it difficult to care for her. child welfare documents listed “neglect, unfit conditions and severe alcohol issues” for the removal of her and her sisters (13). as a baby, cardinal and her sisters had spent three years in different, neglectful foster homes until they were later adopted by ronald and mary white in sault st. marie, who also had a biological son named scott (14). having to contend with an abusive and racist adoptive home forever altered the lives of cardinal and her two sisters. as a teenager, cardinal escapes but finds herself an adolescent without financial and emotional support and reeling from traumatic experiences. taken in by a friend’s family, cardinal struggles to cope and ends up on a greyhound bus heading to edmonton to live with her older sister, gina. cardinal later becomes pregnant, and the rest of memoir follows her journey as a mother of five children. though her children are represented as the light and saving grace in her life, cardinal continues to struggle with her personal demons and ability to cope with crushing poverty, racism, and abusive partners. however, towards the end of the memoir, cardinal returns to school and, later, takes on an administrative position, but health issues, racism at work, and plaguing symptoms of complex-ptsd force her to leave her job. near the end of the memoir, cardinal enters therapy and later becomes involved in advocacy work for mmiw and sixties scoop survivors. she begins the journey of healing, self-discovery, and self-actualization as she thoughtfully reflects back on her life and finds peace. cardinal transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 314 articulates how she was robbed of opportunities to know her people from saddle lake/goldfish lake communities as well as her language and culture. as a result of child welfare displacement, cardinal developed little understanding of her cree identity and felt disconnected from her extended indigenous community. coming back to her home community, saddle lake, and connecting with an auntie, alongside her experience of meeting other activists and community organizers, were depicted as pivotal moments in cardinal’s transformation in the memoir. cardinal describes finding community, healing, and purpose in fellow sixties scoop survivors, community activists, non-indigenous allies, her children, and grandchildren. as readers, we are left with a call to have “compassion, empathy and understanding” for our indigenous relations (205). ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (raised somewhere else): a 60s scoop adoptee’s story of coming home is purposeful in educating, validating, and drawing attention to a looming indigenous child welfare crisis that urgently requires attention. natasha stirrett, queen’s university microsoft word jaceweaver_jm comments.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   94   redwashing: sedgwick’s blood moon, a case study jace weaver over the past several years a new term has entered the lexicon in native american and indigenous studies, and in indian country generally. the word is “redwashing.” it is defined by karen wonders on the website first nations: land rights and environmentalism in british columbia as describing “the deception of the general public by government and industry in trying to cover up their theft of indigenous peoples’ lands, natural resources and cultural riches by pretending that they are acting in the best interests of the native peoples.” as clayton thomas-muller has discussed, often the offenders in an act of legerdemain engage in public relations campaigns to convince people that they are acting benevolently by contributing funding to indigenous educational, artistic, and cultural programs. it was coined from the term “greenwashing,” in which bad actors appear as if they are environmentally good citizens. as with greenwashing, it occurs “when time and money are spent on … gimmicks that make a pretense of acting ethically towards the indigenous nations of the new world, when in fact the opposite is done” (wonders). in this brief article, i want to talk about a slightly different—but no less pernicious—form of redwashing. during the 2016-2017 academic year, colin calloway, a leading authority on early native american history, was on sabbatical and in residence at mount vernon. journalist john sedgwick approached him to discuss the latter’s current book project, a book on cherokee removal. the author had published a book on the burr-hamilton debate and was taking the jace weaver “sedgwick’s blood moon”   95   same approach with the new book, looking at the conflict between two individuals, in the cherokee case between major ridge and john ross. he asked calloway if he would look at the finished manuscript. colin agreed and, knowing my wife, laura adams weaver, and i had written a book on removal that he used in the classroom and that i had otherwise written on the subject, suggested in an email on 25th september that sedgwick reach out to me as a second reader. colin and i subsequently received the book from sedgwick’s publisher, the trade house simon & schuster. both of us were surprised to be receiving typeset galleys instead of a manuscript. colin emailed me on 3rd october, saying, “i’m not sure how receptive he’ll be, or how much he can change now it’s in proofs.” given the costs associated with making changes in galleys, i concurred. further, these were not to be anonymous readers reports. upon reading, what colin and i both found was a text riddled with factual errors and the faulty interpretations of someone who knew little or nothing about native culture and history with a narrative derived from secondary sources, some of which were outdated and of questionable reliability in some instances. the author leaned heavily on grace steele woodward’s book the cherokees, published in 1963.1 he also relied uncritically on emmett starr’s history of the cherokee indians and their legends and folk lore, published in 1921.2 sedgwick traffics in hoary stereotypes, with a special preference for the lurid and the patronizing. indians are described in animalistic terms: “swarming,” “screaming,” “roaring.” they easily become “frenzied” and commit atrocities. tecumseh is described as “wild-eyed” and transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   96   “shrieking” twice in two lines (sedgwick 90, 92).3 women dancing the ghost dance are described as “dancing wildly, wearing around their ankles tortoise shells filled with pebbles that cracked to the beat of ‘wild uncouth sounds.’”4 they “cavort naked.” full-bloods present were “crazed” (92). cherokee women engaged in “errant sex” with white traders. the author wallows in cherokee chief doublehead’s ritualistic cannibalism and gratuitously wonders, with no source or basis, whether the ridge partook (52-53). and he follows the pattern of the mixed-blood declension narrative: john ross, for instance, is described as “white almost to the core” (59). fullbloods are repeatedly described as “copper” in complexion. like many other non-specialists and non-natives, sedgwick’s book reflects the “shock of discovery” (i.e., “i didn’t know this, so no one must know it.”). in the introduction, on page one, the first lines are “this is the last big surprise of the civil war: it was fought not just by the whites of the north and south, and by blacks who mostly came in after emancipation. it was also fought by indians…” (1). just as david grann, author of killers of the flower moon, and even enrolled osage citizen dennis mcauliffe, in his the deaths of sybil bolton, did not know of the osage reign of terror prior to writing their books, sedgwick assumes because he did not know of cherokee removal, it must be a little-known story. in fact, the flyleaf trumpets, “an astonishing untold story from america’s past—a sweeping, powerful, and necessary work of history that reads like gone with the wind for the cherokee.” that is supposed to be a compliment. there is, however, one more discovery the author made in the course of his work. on april 12, 2018, the new york times posted on its website an op-ed, “the historians versus the jace weaver “sedgwick’s blood moon”   97   genealogists,” by sedgwick. in it he states at the time he began work on blood moon (which had dropped two days earlier), he did not know he had a personal connection to the story he was telling. he discovered that he was a distant relative of harriett gold, the white wife of elias boudinot. he writes, “suddenly that book was no longer just by me. it was also about me.”5 this is what sedgwick would call a “howler.” it is a move reminiscent of that which hertha dawn wong makes at the beginning of her preface to sending my heart back across the years (1992). she writes, “when i began writing this book in 1984, i had little idea that i was part native american, one of the unidentified mixed-bloods whose forbears wandered away from their fractured communities…. did my newly discovered part-indian heritage now make me an ‘insider,’ someone who might speak with the authority of belonging? ‘of course not,’ was my first response” (v). cue the shift to the plural first-person pronoun. colin and i each finished our readings and sent detailed reviews to both the author and the publisher. colin’s went in about a week before mine, and he copied me on it. he spoke specifically to the tone and stereotypes. in my report, i seconded all of his critiques and recommendations. i then went into specific issues not flagged by him. we both said we wished we could be more affirmative. sedgwick sent a reply to colin, stating that this was just the kind of criticism he wanted—in fact, needed to hear. an encouraging sign, we thought. when he received mine, sedgwick sent me an acknowledgment but said he had not yet read it. neither of us ever heard anything more. while i will not catalogue all its errors, i will list some of the most important specific mistakes and stereotypes colin and i pointed out. though i read the published blood moon quickly, when transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   98   one of the errors remains unchanged in the final book, i will note that fact. otherwise, as far as i can tell, they were corrected. the following then is a list of such errors: • he referred to dragging canoe as a “fearsome spectacle of coiled and snarling nastiness.” • he provides no context for the anglo-cherokee war and attributes it to “some renegade cherokee” (32). • he stated that the timberlake delegation of 1762 met with king george ii, not george iii, conflating it with the 1730 embassy. • he attributes st. clair’s defeat during the northwest indian war to dragging canoe, though there is no proof he was present, and the victory was that of the northwest confederacy, not the cherokee (50-51). • he states that tecumseh gave the muscogee warriors fighting in the creek war the name “red sticks” (99). • he credits dragging canoe with giving tecumseh the vision of uniting all tribes, not the northwest confederacy—in a war in which tecumseh himself fought (90). • he says that sequoyah and all other cherokee considered the printed word “black magic” (144). jace weaver “sedgwick’s blood moon”   99   • he says that john ross was given a cherokee name, tsan usdi, but was called little john. ross’s cherokee name was cooweescoowee. tsan usdi is just literally “little john” (59). • he stated that some event “made john ross what he had never been. a cherokee.” (colin calloway called this “rubbish.”) • he stated the name cherokee came from the creek, not from the choctaw “chalaque.” • he says of the ridge: “then he fell in love—if love is the term for a society and culture that largely segregated the sexes, had few romantic traditions, and offered scant privacy” (67). • he states that prior to the coming of whites, “the cherokee were a people largely without history, that grand pageant of progress and disaster, possessing mostly legends about what had come before, legends only the conjurers knew” (17). • in citing james adair’s book, he says, “it is a remarkably clear-eyed piece of ethnography to modern eyes, with one howling peculiarity:…his argument that the american indians were a lost tribe of israel.” any issues with adair aside, the “lost tribes” trope was a very common piece of ideology at the time (13). transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   100   • the cherokee language, among cherokee who prized rhetoric, were “the grunts of a harsh language.” • the ridge’s stentorian voice could “shake the leaves off the trees.” • he said that clan revenge created “endless cycles of violence.” according to rennard strickland, it was in fact a single cycle. a life was taken in exchange for a life. then it stopped. things were balanced out. • he stated that the 1827 letter to albert gallatin was by major ridge, who was not literate. it is by john ridge. he uncritically quotes from it a passage that is not accurate and reflects john ridge’s christian bias (or his effort to tell gallatin what he expected to hear). he corrected the attribution and nothing else (69-70). • his description of the execution of doublehead (72-75) is confusing and does not match any single account, including that of thurman wilkins in his book cherokee tragedy. i fear, dear reader, that i have tried your patience with this litany. i will stop there. i trust it gives you an idea of both the problematic nature of blood moon and our efforts to try to redress it. at the outset of this brief essay, i termed the book a case a case of redwashing. how is this so? in his acknowledgements, sedgwick writes: jace weaver “sedgwick’s blood moon”   101   i’ve also turned to two of the most authoritative contemporary scholars of native americans to make sure i have kept up with the latest understanding of the cherokee. i owe great debts to colin calloway, a professor of native american studies at dartmouth college, and to jace weaver, the director of the institute of native american studies at the university of georgia, for scrupulously going over the manuscript to correct errors of fact and interpretation. they have made this book much better for their efforts. needless to say, i take full responsibility for any mistakes that remain” (417-418).6 the author thus has it both ways: he avers the imprimatur of two respected, established scholars of the field, while saying that we may be absolved of any (minor) errors in the final book. books like this continue to get published because they prove popular and sell. they are dangerous because a public interested in learning about native history snaps them up, thinking they are getting accurate information when they are not. just as on wall street there is a maxim that “bad money forces out good,” bad information forces out good, leading the general reader to bypass accurate and nuanced information and scholarship in favor of books such as this. sedgwick’s effusive thanks to colin and me implies to his audience that we endorse the finished book when we did not and when the author ignored most of our comments. he made some, but far from all, of our corrections. he did nothing to address our concerns about the tone and his stereotypes. lesson learned. though john sedgwick doubtless thinks his “recovery” of an unknown topic is pro-indian, on many levels it is a deeply anti-indian monograph. it will lead many innocent, well-intentioned readers to believe that indians traditionally were frenzied, mindless, bloodthirsty savages. why care if they were dispossessed of a continent? transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)   102                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           notes 1 the woodward is so outdated that the publisher had contacted me to see if i was interested in revising it. it nonetheless remains in print. 2 there is much of value in starr’s book, and it is especially prized by genealogists. the author, however, has some questionable beliefs, such as when he claims that what was thought of as cherokee religious traditions had actually been taught to them by the german utopianist christian priber (1697-1744), and that within seventy years the cherokee had forgotten its origins. 3 when i quote something that remained unchanged between what colin and i read, i will cite to the published book. 4 around tecumseh and among some cherokee what is sometimes described as a ghost dance movement grew up. it is second in a chain of four related movements. because the movements in 1870 and 1889-90 actually are known by that name, i prefer to denominate them either “revitalization” movements or “raising up” movements, because a salient feature is often that the dead ancestors will be raised. 5 emphasis in original. 6 as previously noted, we did not see the book in manuscript, but in typeset galleys. works cited calloway, colin. personal email. 25 sept. 2017. ---. personal email. 3 oct. 2017. grann, david. killers of the flower moon. doubleday, 2017. mcauliffe, dennis. the deaths of sybil bolton. times books, 1994. sedgwick, john. blood moon: an american epic of war and splendor in the cherokee nation. simon & schuster, 2018. ---. “the historians versus the genealogists,” new york times, 12 apr. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/opinion/historians-versus-genealogists.html. accessed 20 apr. 2018. starr, emmett. history of the cherokee indians and their legends and folk lore. warden, 1921. thomas-müller, clayton. “we need to start calling out corporate ‘redwashing,’” cbc, 20 mar. 2017, www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/corporate-redwashing-1.4030443. accessed 20 april 2018. weaver, jace and laura adams weaver. red clay, 1835: cherokee removal and the meaning of sovereignty. w.w. norton, 2017. wilkins, thurman. cherokee tragedy. macmillan, 1970. wonders, karen. “redwashing.” first nations: land rights and environmentalism in british columbia, 2008, http://www.firstnations.de/indian_land/misrepresented-redwashing.htm. accessed 20 apr. 2018. jace weaver “sedgwick’s blood moon”   103   wong, hertha dawn. sending my heart back across the years: tradition and innovation in native american autobiography. oxford university press, 1992. woodward, grace steele. the cherokees. university of oklahoma press, 1963. microsoft word gould.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 232 bojan louis, currents: poems, bkmk books, university of missouri-kansa city, 2017. 66pp. isbn: 978-1-943491-11-7. https://www.umkc.edu/bkmk currents: poems by bojan louis is a book in at least five languages: english, navajo, spanish, aztec, and the electric charge of an unsettled spirit. not an easy read, this writing is laden with blood, silt, shit, and bone, bleached by sun, whittled away by wind, sculpted by anger and lament. the poems inscribe an indigenous story: fury at injustice and inconceivable desecration, the scars left by coerced conversions, forced marches, foreign and domestic violence, some done in the name of religion, some in the name of politics, or love. currents is a good title for this collection. i sense a number of them in the broken bits of language strung together in a syntax that only just holds meaning, as if the trust in a single language has become a thing of the past, an artifact from a by-gone era when a “common language” seemed possible. at this moment in time, louis seems to say, poets have to take great care with the spoken/written word, maybe because of the witchery of “text,” its ghost-trail of ones and zeroes—and because the word has become so cheap and deceitful. it once was said to be—and was held—sacred. louis’s language(s) feels like something that comes unbidden from some recess of pain and witness, though, at the same time, it is shaped, honed, impressionistic. the reader might want to start by reading through the “notes” at the back of the volume, and if primarily an english-speaker, jot down the translations and other data in order to trace or track where the poet is heading. the choice of language is not arbitrary. different sound-maps occur, with a variety of “knowings” that just one language cannot represent. while a single-language speaker likely will not “get” the range of resonances possible in this multi-lingual world, still it can be imagined, acknowledged, and appreciated. the gift of these poems that bojan louis has brought forth must be seen in the light of this frayed/flayed world, the never-ending cycle of birth and death, where the sacred and profane touch shoulders, and our humanity is always being tested and often found wanting. the geography that these poems encompass maps places in the west: alaska, arizona, the navajo nation. the first poem in the volume, “breach,” is a good “place” to begin. situated (imaginatively) in or near sitka, alaska, the poem moves through a series of motifs, like a triptych, each part also sectioned into three unrhymed tercets. what does this prosodic structure do? it seems to provide a scaffold for both uncovering and recovering memory, desire, and cognition, somewhat like a dream. in a breach, something breaks through—a wall, a womb, a body of water. a force is at work; this, too, resembles the potential in a dream. we might assume that a poem offers a moment, or moments, of insight into the human condition, into the heart or mind of the poet, into what connects us in this disconnecting world. if that is the case, i look for things done by or done to the speaker of the poem, the subjective pronoun paired with a shifting series of verbs. “it’s years,” the poet tells us, in the “breach” of life and work in sitka, alaska, “i’ve been recovered.” is that good? the language is a bit tricky. one reading of “recover” suggests surviving a catastrophe and being renewed, gathering up what has been lost. another reading suggests getting covered-over yet again, being obscured, maybe even suffocated. janice m. gould review of currents 233 the tension between these readings is interesting, and louis tends to move in this way, tightening and releasing the threads of meaning, weaving the piece into a discernable pattern that, on one level, can be understood with the mind, but on another level, must be comprehended with the spirit. the poem opens with images of “parents,” “mom” and “dad,” the first humans in a child’s life, first woman and first man. they are mythic figures that provide a pattern of being and doing. yet in this case “mom [is] alone, her own decision,” and “dad, how he was always/ asphyxiated until rolled over.” these figures seem to form or point the way to the frontier i’m abandoned to, exposed root ribcages above ground, rained on so much there’s no dust, no blow-away—traceless surfaces. the mix of images/ideas here is characteristic of louis’s work as a whole. the last line of the second tercet, “the frontier i’m abandoned to” tells us, “i’ve been abandoned to the frontier,” presumably by the parents. but it tells us, too, “i’ve abandoned myself to the frontier.” is this the same as a banishment? and why does the poet write “the frontier” and not “a frontier”? “the” suggests a definite locale, a border place known and named, though still unexplored, or in the american context, unexploited, the breach between “wilderness” and “civilization,” between history and myth, maybe a place of reckless abandon and a stifling loneliness, unfettered desire and chaos, remote and removed from the “mainland,” a place suggestive of “home.” are we encumbered by language or liberated by language? are we abandoned by language, or do we abandon language by denying the possibility of truth? and human striving, what is it about? for some, it is about name and fame, about accumulation of wealth, material comforts, power. that glittering world dangles before our eyes, telling us, “this is what it’s about.” my sense, in reading these poems, is that they are an act of unearthing, of coming out of the grave that is america, of arriving at the opening into the next world and casting off the dross of lies and dirt that distort our ways of knowing, that distract us from seeking the next level, a way out. at the end of “breach,” we are in the belly of the whale with jonah, a “lucky fuck” who was swallowed whole and remains “undigested,” hung from the beast’s spine, feet eaten, body untouched. this seems an inescapable situation, to say the least. where is our integrity if we have no feet to stand on? if the body is “untouched” in “the belly of the beast,” what are we being saved for? is the “breach” suggested by the title a promise or a betrayal? i’m not certain i know the answer as i thread my way through louis’s poems. they raise many questions for me, not as many answers. i want to look at the title poem, “currents.” its structure is similar to “breach.” like the first poem in the collection, this poem is a triptych composed of three numbered parts. in each part are three sections, each section constituted in three, three-line stanzas. like “breach,” this poem is given a locale, phoenix, arizona, almost the opposite of sitka, alaska, an arid desert transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 234 landscape, although the poem seems less rooted in place than the sitka of “breach,” despite some of the city imagery: “a crosstown bus,” “a stiffened step/on concrete,” my sense is that the poem means both to acknowledge and to transcend the limits of place and the memory of place. robert hass, in a little book on form, writes, “two often regarded as an aspect of one, so that with three number as such, the many, begins. and is infinite. oddness. not divisible. so that—the trinity, for example—mystery begins here” (53). he shows us the difference between the rhymed verse, triplet, and the unrhymed, free verse tercet, a shape whitman used in “song of myself.” hass writes, “formally, you can get to three at least three ways: 1 + 1 + 1….: 1 + 2….; 2 + 1…” (63), meaning the sequence of images, one piled up against another, or against two, or two piled against one. he says, as well, “in free verse stanza, patterning is partly visual, but it’s also partly aural” (64), and he gives some examples of how various poets employ stress within each line, often two stresses within a line, but sometimes more. we can think about louis’s “currents” (and other poems) in this way too. right away, we encounter a three-stress line in the first stanza, formed by trochees, augmented by rhyme: each new sun asks: be no thing more than me, have nothing beyond need we could read the first two lines as a couplet—“be me,” the words say, but since the sun “asks” this of the poet, it may be a prayer, or the reciprocation of a prayer. in fact, the poet tells us in his “notes”: “the poem opens with a version of a prayer, or offering of corn pollen, done at sunrise in dine tradition and knowing. it’s my prayer/offering, and i share it with you.” “have nothing beyond need” leads us to a new stanza, but before we go there, i want to point out that the third line is in excess of the first couplet, and it allows for generosity, a generosity lodged in humility (“be no thing,” “have nothing”), and also in an act of replenishment (“each new sun”). if “mystery begins here,” the next stanza ushers into that place, providing an image of the human being at prayer, not with bowed head, on the knees, but “opened”: --send opened your whole being, lifted face, arms spread. the words are reminiscent of joy harjo’s “eagle poem,” the concluding poem in her book, in mad love and war. “to pray,” harjo says, “you open your whole self/ to sky, to earth, to sun, to moon/ to one whole voice that is you…” (65). in louis’s poem, the speaker attempts to pray in this opened and opening way, but acknowledges, “… only part of me” [stanza break] “is blessed, a body exerted/after long hours, responsibility,/ and the need to ease tremors.” the longest line in this tercet is “after long hours, responsibility,” which departs from and disrupts the stress pattern of threes, as if the world has broken in here with its busyness, its dutiful “responsibility.” if the sun asks the speaker to be “beyond need,” the speaker recognizes the body’s limits, the difficulty, whether physical or psychological, when there is a “need to ease tremors.” janice m. gould review of currents 235 while louis employs the three-stress and two-stress lines in this poem, line stress tends to be variable, creating a kind of syncopation that feels nervous and anxious. the effect is a bit unsettling, and the idea, intertwined with the image, adds to the effect: a dark hall’s corner a damask of lines, the call-to mom uses, telling me i don’t add up. is this a poem about the mother’s disappointment in her son, the ways in which the patterns she lays down, as in a navajo rug, do not “add up” in her boy? is it a poem about the ways mothers sometimes mistreat their children, the “embarrassment” a child is made to feel, the punishments of “slap—freezing feet”? i can’t say with certainty, but as with many poems in this volume, i find louis’s journey interesting, his language alluring and his images compelling: i left and arrived months before the rainy season, through cuts along the cliff face over crystal shimmered with mica. like stars burnt out taking eons to reveal their absence in myth-heavy constellations (from “arc flash”). cliffs shimmering with mica like burnt out stars is gorgeous, and the image is intertwined with the stories of stars, their patterns part of a people’s mythic history. the here and now re-emerges in “arc flash,” as in other poems, and the mechanical world of men and machines seems to impose itself again and again: here, a few cars idle without drivers, warm up before the workday while smoke from houses vanishes and releases the night sky. there is much more to say about this absorbing and powerful book of poems: the ways louis is alive to the labors of the poor, the bent, migrant bodies, the wanton destruction of earth, the poisons of civilization. currents is about our current life, about the human currency which is bartered with blood and sacrifice. contemporary native american writing, especially that of younger poets, seizes the fragments and shards left in the wake of colonization, and builds a new edifice of language and experience. bojan louis’s writing seems to me a struggle to find strength among broken pieces, to rebuild the spirit with determination and love. janice m. gould, university of colorado, colorado springs works cited transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 236 harjo, joy. in mad love and war. middletown, ct.: wesleyan press, 1990. hass, robert. a little book on form: an exploration into the formal imagination of poetry. new york, ny: ecco-harpercollins, 2017. microsoft word wolf.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 225 denise low. shadow light. red mountain press, 2018. 72 pp. isbn: 9780998514079. https://www.spdbooks.org/products/9780998514079/shadow-light.aspx?src=rmp denise low. the turtle’s beating heart: one family’s story of lenape survival. university of nebraska press, 2017. 200 pp. isbn: 9780803294936. http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison/9780803294936/ while denise low’s two recent works certainly differ stylistically, they incorporate similar themes that contribute powerful messages about native american identity and the influences ancestors can have on later generations of a family. low beautifully juxtaposes human mortality with the permanence of nature, focusing on the inheritance of a concealed cultural identity, and exploring the long-lasting effects of generational and historical trauma. these books present low’s observations of her surroundings, as well as her thoughts about her position on this earth and the other people she is connected to. readers will be drawn to these books for their emotional honesty and their discussion of topics that connect a complicated history to contemporary human experience. low’s memoir the turtle’s beating heart is not a linear narration of low’s own life experiences—instead, it contains her reflections on those experiences after she learns more about her native heritage that has beens passed down through her late lenape grandfather, frank bruner. low explains that “the root [her paternal lineage] and bruner families presented themselves as european americans and participants in american society, not indians” because “erasure of identity has costs, but survival trumps everything else” (43). this statement captures the intention of colonizers to remove or erase native american legacy, though it also affirms the survival of these groups in the face of massive oppression and genocide: low’s grandfather was living during a time where the ku klux klan was developing as a prominent group that would openly harm and humiliate minorities. low addresses the generational problems that coincide with this attempted elimination of heritage, and her story powerfully uncovers memories while reclaiming her family’s cultural identity. divided into four parts, the memoir focuses primarily on low’s lenape lineage through her mother’s side. low writes about her grandfather, her mother dorothy bruner dotson, herself, and contemporary life in delaware. rather than recording a history she is familiar with, low recovers memories of a suppressed part of her family’s past and discovers how this new information has actually impacted her throughout her entire life. she explains that “history is an imperfect construction, but it is essential to community identity” (6). while the recovery of her family’s legacy is essential to her understanding of identity, her memoir also grapples with accepting the missing pieces of her grandfather’s life story and the resulting, imperfect construction of a previously concealed history. low was born and raised in kansas city, and she unpacks truths about her grandfather by investigating her family’s past and connecting it to the history of discrimination against native americans. unfortunately, low can no longer ask her grandfather or her mother about this traumatic history, so she seeks answers through research, people in her native community, and other, living members of her family. her memoir outlines that her grandfather originally lived katie wolf review of the turtle’s beating heart and shadow light 226 “within a block of the original delaware trading post” but “after the ku klux klan invaded his hometown in central kansas, his family moved to this haven [kansas city]” (4). despite the fact that this city was safer than frank bruner’s hometown, his family still chose to hide their native identities. low explains this when she states: “discrimination against native people has been so fierce that many people, like my family, suppressed their non-european ancestry as completely as possible” (5). it is this concealment that has prevented low from growing up with a strong understanding of her native heritage, and it is also what motivates her quest to find answers about her connection to the cultural identity that remained unspoken about for so long. as low begins to unravel details about her family’s past, she highlights the positives of revealing more about her relatives, but also the negatives that inherently align with a majorly suppressed past. for example, low explains that generational trauma has affected her family, and she explains that her mother “became isolated, like her parents before her. the habit of broken families is continued, in a pattern of unconscious behaviors. this is a continuing of internalized diaspora” (77). in this section, low importantly highlights the continuous impact that cultural oppression can have on multiple generations of a family. also, because she is telling this story to readers now, she also represents a story of survival while resisting colonial ideologies. this book connects history to the present and recognizes the powerful influence it has on multiple generations of people and the ways that they choose to identify with or disassociate from their cultures. low explains the effects that historical and generational trauma can have on native descendants, and her firsthand experiences with these issues demonstrate the complex problems that colonization inflicts on those who are still under its influence. for these reasons, her work contributes a valuable perspective to readers and would be beneficial to scholars studying native memoirs or other works that discuss topics such as historical and intergenerational trauma. low’s memoir pairs well with shadow light, a beautiful collection of poems that experiments with various styles and structures while maintaining a consistent voice, exploring connections between nature, humanity, the past, and the present. low’s considerations about her family and surroundings reappear throughout both of her texts. she alludes to family traditions, comments on native american history and colonization, and her book concludes when she directly mentions her grandparents and the survival of native cultures and traditions. these reflections provide understandings of cultural connections that are embedded in a family’s history and their physical space—and low considers how those connections are fractured once the space is colonized. throughout this book of poetry, low frequently and overtly references the destructive nature of colonization—therefore presenting a strong position about native tragedy and resistance to her readers. in “before the gnadenhutten massacre,” she writes “wheeling is wih link, ‘place of the head,’ a settler’s decapitated skull hung from a tree,” and then: they talk some stole land already. some are preachers . . . // transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 227 come morning they will begin the slaughter” (63). from this sample, readers can see that low reverts to a historical perspective about the violence european settlers brought to indigenous lands, and she describes their acts of entitlement that have resulted in cruelty and injustice towards generations of people. this text presents a clear snapshot of a single moment in time in order to demonstrate a constructed, historical perspective that challenges the dominant political narrative. along with poems that focus on conflicts, stolen land, and acts of violence, shadow light also touches upon important topics that detail a connection of cultural and personal history to contemporary life. for example, one of the most enjoyable convergences of the memoir and book of poetry is when low talks about how she became a poet. in the memoir, low writes about her experience playing cards with her grandfather: “this is how i learned poetry, not as ornament, but as spells. by the time i was born, everyone except my oldest sister was tired of children’s books, and so card playing was my first exposure to verse, training for my future as a poet. words created real consequences. we played for money, and any magic boost was allowed” (122). the spoken words and verses she learned through card games with her grandfather and the written poetry she now produces demonstrate an integration of two communicative mediums that link the past to the present. similarly, this excerpt highlights the major impact low’s grandfather has had on her career, as well as the perspectives she maintains about the power of words to influence actions. in “too many green leaves,” from shadow light, low compares leaves to cards, alluding to her unique initiation into poetry through card games. the poem states: i turn ten yours [sic] old i press scarlet leaves in wax paper flatten them with a hot iron. i turn sixty. huckberries are spades. (43) here, the impermanence of earthly qualities contrasts with the natural human function of aging. low’s metaphor intertwines natural imagery with human experiences and the life cycle, while skillfully incorporating details from her own memories. this poem is one that stands out because it relates to her other reflections about human relationships with the natural world in different poems and in the memoir. a final poetry sample that couples with the turtle’s beating heart comes from low’s last poem, “stomp dance, wyandotte county.” the poem reads: “my grandfather and grandmother lived on lenape land near this / spot. their footprints remain in the ground” (68). the words in this text and in the turtle’s beating heart express the deep connection low feels to her katie wolf review of the turtle’s beating heart and shadow light 228 grandparents after their deaths, and it also signifies the powerful presence people can maintain on this earth even after they leave it behind. this poem beautifully combines with low’s sentiments throughout her memoir—which is why shadow light further enhances the reading of the turtle’s beating heart and vice versa. works like low’s call upon readers to consider the impermanence of human life and the imperativeness of understanding and appreciating cultures and traditions that existed long before our present day. in the turtle’s beating heart, low recalls “as long as people remember, my cherokee friend taught me, they are not conquered” (131). if anyone might ask why they should read low’s work, the answer is in this line. low writes to remember her native family’s legacy while simultaneously helping contemporary readers recognize the importance of historically oppressed voices. stories and poems from low’s memoir and book of poetry contribute to the native narratives that maintain an important role alongside voices from the dominant culture. these works allow readers to become more aware of a fragmented past and understand that, while memories or recordings of this past cannot be fully recovered, they also should not be neglected. the turtle’s beating heart and shadow light ultimately provide necessary observations and assertions that affirm there is danger in forgetting cultural histories and there is power in remembering. katie wolf, california state university, northridge microsoft word 570-article text-4112-1-11-20190528.docx chew et al “enacting hope” 132 enacting hope through narratives of indigenous language and culture reclamation kari a.b. chew1, vanessa anthony-stevens, amanda leclair-diaz, sheilah e. nicholas, angel sobotta, philip stevens enacting both hope and change is an intergenerational process. for this reason, we are intentional in highlighting the narratives of emerging indigenous scholars who are resurfacing language, cultural practice, and identities which have been suppressed by colonization and forced assimilation. their narratives further portray successes and challenges in setting indigenous research agendas that interrupt the colonial legacies of western academic institutions. chew (chickasaw) speaks to the process of utilizing a culturally-grounded research methodology which creates space for community members to envision a future for their language. sobotta (nez perce) reflects on the transformational process of teaching and learning the language through stories which reveal indigenous knowledge. leclair-diaz (eastern shoshone/northern arapaho) shares a personal journey of navigating indigenous identity in academia. contributing commentary as scholars in different stages of their academic careers, stevens (san carlos apache), anthony-stevens (euro-american), and nicholas (hopi) weave together the stories of hope by highlighting interconnected enactments of resistance and resilience. this commentary confronts assumptions of homogeneity of indigenous peoples while also searching for common themes to advance decolonizing agendas across indigenous and non-indigenous positionalities. as scholars working at the intersection of anthropology and education, we situate our work amongst a burgeoning mass of critical, indigenous-led scholarship that counters damaging research that portrays indigenous peoples—and their languages—as deficient, broken, and conquered (tuck). while acknowledging the endemic nature of colonization, this body of scholarship underscores complexity and self-determination in its consideration of how indigenous communities enact language and cultural continuance. this essay emerges from five years of gatherings at the american anthropology association (aaa) annual meeting, where all six authors have participated in roundtables and panels focused on decolonizing research methodologies for indigenous education. in our collective journey, we have continually returned to the centrality of narrative to indigenous research and practice. to this end, we emphasize the vitality and efficacy of reclamation work by bringing into focus narratives of persistence and transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 133 optimism in indigenous language and culture reclamation and education. collectively, we theorize hope through personal narratives and embrace hope as an essential conduit between thought and action, belief and practice—a significant source of power in indigenous cultural preservation. in a larger context, our interconnected experiences of living hope through counter stories and the reclamation of ancestral wisdom and knowledge factors centrally in mobilizing decolonial futures in indigenous education. the process of selecting and sharing our own narratives is an enactment of survivance: of presence over absence, a performance of the academic transformation for which we advocate (vizenor 1). notably, as we have come to understand through our work together, academic transformation(s) necessitate careful consideration of the roles of and relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous collaborators. meaningful collaborations do not merely incorporate indigenous frameworks, but center them, thereby operationalizing spaces of hope in negotiated, brokered, and situated ways which tend to ethno-historic contexts of power (anthony-stevens 89). both individually and collectively, all of us, the aforementioned authors, speak powerfully to themes of negotiating identity through language and culture reclamation, alliances that attend to power imbalances and the agency of being as hope. it is our understanding that the process of telling and listening to stories of indigenous presence and persistence allows us to become whole in them. we choose not to italicize indigenous languages so as not to mark them as other in the narratives and discussion. 1. hope at the center of language revitalizing pedagogies we work from a theoretical stance that conceptualizes hope as central to language reclamation and emphasizes “the self-determination and inherent sovereignty” of indigenous peoples in language reclamation work (brayboy et al. 424). we follow miami scholar wesley leonard’s theorizing of language reclamation as a social process of reclaiming “the appropriate cultural context and sense of value that the language [and cultural practices] would likely have always had if not for colonization” (141). in this way, language reclamation encompasses, but is also distinct from, projects of language revitalization or documentation, which respectively focus on increasing the number of speakers of a language and creating language materials and resources. language reclamation, in turn, is not so much about the language itself but “people chew et al “enacting hope” 134 ‘doing language’ together in meaningful ways” to ensure what acoma writer simon ortiz calls language and cultural continuance (fettes 303-4; ortiz). nurturing hope becomes an act of resistance intricately linked to processes of reclamation. in the same way that language is living and nurtured through relationships, we treat hope as embodied and relationally enlivened in indigenous language and cultural education. as quechua scholar of critical pedagogy sandy grande reminds us, we are not conceptualizing the “future-centered hope of the western imagination,” but the hope “that lives in contingency with the past” and “trusts the beliefs and understandings of our ancestors as well as the power of traditional knowledge” (28). therefore, as educational philosopher paulo freire writes, “hope, as an ontological need, demands an anchoring in practice… in order to become historical concreteness” (freire and freire 9). for indigenous scholars, hope is the outcome of “our experiences, struggles, anxieties, fears, conflicts, and efforts […] in our ‘everyday practices of resurgence’ […] to strive for reconnection after disconnection, misunderstanding, and miscommunication” (aikau 657). in this way, hope within the context of indigenous language and culture education is a predisposition to action outside of constraints imposed by settler-colonization and a commitment to responsibility and reciprocity to community. self-definition cannot be separated from relational existence, such as spiritual questions of who we are as peoples and the “inwardand outward-looking process […] of re-enchantment, or ensoulment” (grande 74). this is the hope that is conveyed through each individual narrative—as well as when the narratives are considered together in this essay. emerging indigenous scholars chew, sobotta and leclair-diaz offer unique understandings of hope informed by differing personal, familial, and community contexts. their stories, as lumbee scholar bryan brayboy writes, “are not separate from theory; they make up theory and are, therefore, real and legitimate sources of data and ways of being” (430). the telling of these personal narratives is a critical act of reclamation in itself because colonization has sought to rob indigenous peoples of their voices. thus, indigenous narratives, “whether blunt or subtle,” as plains cree métis writer emma larocque asserts, act as “protest literature” speaking against struggle and the processes of colonization (xviii). these narratives connect the word to the self to reclaim voice and identities as whole and complete people. our narratives “share our humanity—over and over again” (larocque xxvii). as scholars who work at the intersections of educational research and sociocultural/sociolinguistic studies, our narratives are unified by critical culturally transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 135 sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies (csrp) as expressions of sovereignty and educational practices; csrp reclaims that which has been disrupted and displaced by colonization (mccarty and lee 103) and dedicates non-homogenizing attention to local communities’ expressed interests, resources and needs. as an applied framework to think about knowledge transmission, csrp includes attention to “asymmetrical power relations and legacies of colonization” in contexts of community driven indigenous language and culture education (mccarty and lee 8). critical recognition of ethno-historic context and subjectivities explores ways that narratives can recognize “the multiplicity of relationships across and through culture, history, and location” in a holistic, rather than a fragmented way (justice 21). we propose that indigenous and nonindigenous people benefit from processes that support narratives crossing geographic, disciplinary, and membership borders. furthermore, these crossings enable us, as co-authors, to enact relationships across difference as well as bring into relief distinct epistemologies and histories that define our differences. in the following sections, chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz share their narratives of language and culture reclamation as hope and allow us to look both inward—understanding the unique contexts in which this work takes place—and outward—putting narratives in conversation with one another to better understand the significance of indigenous narratives as pathways and practices of the broader goals of decolonization. the narratives are followed by commentary by stevens, anthony-stevens, and nicholas, who blend the personal and scholarly to extend our stance of restorying indigenous narratives in ways that recognize the power of relationality and respect the distinct differences among the roles we each play in indigenous-led language and culture reclamation. in this way, across our contributions, we trouble the distinctions between personal narrative and academic commentary/scholarly writing. 3. chew’s narrative: researching for hope chokma, saholhchifoat kari chew. chikashsha saya. i was twenty-years-old and an undergraduate when i first learned to use my language, chikashshanompa', to introduce myself as a chickasaw person. by that point in my life, i had said these same words many times in english— “hello, my name is kari chew. i am chickasaw.”—but they always felt empty, void of connection to the people and places from which i came. speaking chikashshanompa' chew et al “enacting hope” 136 grounded me in a deep sense of kinship, both to my ancestors and to generations to come. i felt responsibility to care for and learn my indigenous heritage language and, as a result, began to reenvision the purpose of my pursuit of higher education. i went on to graduate school, first pursuing linguistics so that i could understand what academics had written about my language, and then education so that i could teach other chickasaws what i had learned. during my graduate studies, i came to recognize that the ways in which indigenous people talk about their language(s) differ drastically from how academia and the public portray indigenous languages. with fewer than fifty elder fluent speakers, chikashshanompa' is typically classified as severely endangered by schema designed to measure the health of languages and disruption in their use. these classifications tend to be based on the enumeration of fluent first language speakers. while it is true that emerging generations are not currently acquiring chikashshanompa' as a first language, a growing number of youth, adults, and elders have committed to learning, teaching, and speaking the language. their efforts seemed to go uncounted for within those dominant discourses focused on loss and endangerment. seeking to better understand the phenomenon of language reclamation from a community perspective, i began researching the motivations of chickasaw people to engage in language reclamation efforts and how their commitments were sustained over time. because i am a chickasaw person and language learner myself, this research was inherently personal and required me to use a protocol which embraced—rather than erased—my cultural identity and personal relationships with other chickasaws involved in language work. to this end, i utilized a culturally-informed methodology, put forth by chickasaw citizen lokosh (joshua d. hinson), that was “rooted in place, built on relationships, and sustained over a period of time” (guajardo, guajardo, and casaperalta 8). called chikashsha asilhlha', or “to ask chickasaw,” this protocol guided me in how to ask in a way that was humble, transparent, reciprocal, and careful. a key feature of my methodology was a process of co-creating story with participants through in-depth interviews. these stories told of the elders’ strong desires to ensure chickasaw continuance through teaching the language to others, the parents’ sense of responsibility to pass the language to their children, and the youth and young adults’ yearning to speak chikashshanompa' as they developed consciousness of their chickasaw identity. collectively, these stories conveyed the potential for the rebuilding of intergenerational relationships, and, thus, the continuance of the language. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 137 one especially powerful story was that of hannah, an elder fluent speaker, amy, a language learner, and amy’s infant daughter. i first met the three, who were participating in a master-apprentice program, in the summer of 2010 at the chickasaw council house museum in tishomingo, oklahoma. amy had come to spend time with hannah speaking the language, and the pair allowed me to interview them beforehand. surrounded by chickasaw artwork and historical artifacts, amy sat next to hannah, tending to her child. it was a portrait of possibility: three generations of chickasaws coming together to speak and to learn chikashshanompa'. as we talked, amy shared her desire for both herself and her daughter to know their heritage language. over the course of several years, amy and hannah continued to build their relationship through their shared language reclamation journey. in 2014, i spoke with the pair again to learn how their story had developed. “building the relationship and building knowledge have both been good,” amy reflected. “hannah and i have gotten to be good friends [and my daughter] thinks of her as another grandma.” hannah, amy, and amy’s young daughter shared a special bond around the goal of restoring chikashshanompa' as a family language, and their story is one of hope. hannah asserted, “[speaking the language] is what i’m supposed to be doing… no matter what, i just keep going.” it is because of hannah and other fluent speakers’ persistence and willingness to teach others—and younger generations’ commitment to learn—that chikashshanompa' will keep going, too. 4. sobotta’s narrative: learning and teaching the niimíipuu language through story in twenty years working for the niimíipuu language program in lapwai, in north central idaho, i have seen many wonderful elders, who spoke niimíipuu as a first language, pass on. with few remaining speakers, there are challenges to teaching and learning the language. as a language teacher, i often wonder how the niimíipuu language program will continue to teach the language with no remaining fluent elder speakers. through my work as a language teacher and my graduate studies at the university of idaho, i have focused on my vision to teach and learn nimipuutímt (the people’s language) through niimíipuum titwáatit (the people’s stories). niimíipuu stories need to have life breathed into them. in turn, the stories breathe life back into the people through their lessons of wisdom and guidance. chew et al “enacting hope” 138 as a child, i heard tim’néepe, the niimíipuu creation story told by niimíipuu storytellers. a deceitful monster swallows all of the animal people, including coyote. coyote foresees the future and wants the best for the human beings to come. eventually, coyote conquers monster and escapes with the animal people. coyote then created the niimíipuu with blood from the heart of monster. the teachings of this story have unfolded over time and have come to guide my work. as a teacher, i, like coyote, want the best for my students as they grow into strong niimíipuu. this is why i along with other niimíipuu educators exercise sovereignty and selfdetermination to use our traditional stories for literacy instruction. the stories support our students’ education as niimíipuu in ways that the prescribed readings of the western publicschool system cannot. through niimíipuum titwáatit, coyote reawakens and is called upon to teach new lessons to the students. coyote’s powers are released when the listener becomes ready to receive the lessons gifted through the story. the stories continue to unfold throughout the students’ lives as they reveal new lessons. in this way, the stories sustain the niimíipuu knowledge system. before my classes, i have the students recite a language pledge: “nimipuutímt (the people’s language) cukwenéewit (know it) hiteemenéewit (learn it) téecukwe (learn it) c’ix̣néewit (speak it) titooqanáawit (the people’s way of life) wiyeeléeheyn (everyday). the pledge is a way to enact nimipuutimtnéewit ’inp’tóoqsix (taking back our people’s way of speaking). i remind the niimíipuu language students that they must speak the language to keep it alive. over time, the students become able to tell a traditional coyote story in the language with the aid of the pictures. i place pictures representing niimíipuu words from the story on the classroom walls. the students rotate around the room counter-clockwise—representing the movement of the earth and the seasons—using the visual aids to help tell the story as a group. through this practice, the students find a connection to learning which affirms their identities and allows them to uphold the responsibilities of teaching and learning the language. the niimíipuu have over three hundred documented stories and each represents a seed of hope. by telling the stories, we plant the seed and create conditions for niimíipuu knowledge and teachings to grow into good things. teaching the language through the stories allows niimíipuu to teach as our ancestors did. our ancestors taught from a place of hope and a vision of continuance seven generations ahead. they told stories out of love for the betterment of the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 139 people, passing them from one generation to the next. stories are given to us by our ancestors to teach us relationality between all things: the stories to the land, animals, plants, language, and to the people. this is why it is vital for niimíipuu to continue speaking the language and telling the stories. i have hope that the stories will equip the niimíipuu youth i teach to be knowledge keepers and that they will continue to carry the language and stories forward. 5. leclair-diaz’s narrative: becoming a sosonih/hinono’ei scholar my mind felt hazy as i walked towards my car. i opened the passenger door and heard my husband ask, “how was your class?” i held back my tears, trying to think of how to vocalize my insecurities. i had been so excited to begin my first semester of my doctoral program. in academia, i had not encountered indigenous professors who discussed indigenous knowledge systems in a contemporary way until i attended my doctoral program at the university of arizona. i realized i wanted to be part of that movement in some way. now, i felt overwhelmed because i didn’t know where to begin in connecting my indigenous knowledge with my research interests. my insecurities stemmed from the second meeting of my indigenous seminar course. two indigenous professors from my department visited class to speak about their research. one slide from their powerpoint listed the term “tribal epistemologies,” and i wondered to myself what that meant. the professors explained, through imagery on the slide, how indigenous knowledge and value systems served as frameworks for their research projects. considering how tribal beliefs could serve as a foundation for an indigenous scholar’s identity was a new process for me. during my pre-k-12 educational journey, i felt pressure from teachers and peers to stifle my cultural identity and focus on undertaking dominant cultural values in my behavior and school work. students who did not accept and conform to these ideals were viewed as unsuccessful, problem students, or “at-risk.” my husband’s voice brought me back to the present. “amanda, what’s wrong?” he asked. i hadn’t realized we had left the university and were already halfway home. “we talked about tribal epistemologies today in class, and it made me realize i don’t know what my tribal epistemologies are,” i said, my voice slightly catching. chew et al “enacting hope” 140 “it’s ok. i bet they didn’t know their belief systems at first either. you have time to learn those things,” my husband answered, patting my knee. “what if that knowledge is lost? i don’t ever remember anyone talking to me about eastern shoshone and northern arapaho epistemologies,” i answered. “you’ll have time to learn it. you could probably ask your mom and dad about it,” my husband said, trying to ease my worries. i felt a great sense of guilt and shame. had i not listened well enough growing up? did this lack of knowledge mean i was not indigenous? the next day, i called my mother and told her about the discussion that took place in my class. she listened quietly as i asked her what it meant to be eastern shoshone. at the time, i was unknowingly favoring this identity because this is the tribe i am federally enrolled in. she answered that she did not know and it was a good question. my dad hopped on the phone and answered that this form of knowledge was probably lost. it was in that moment i realized that i had to try and relearn what it meant to be eastern shoshone and northern arapaho—not only for my research, but so that i could start feeling like a whole person. my journey toward reclaiming my identities and epistemologies has drawn me to my languages, which are central to fully understanding eastern shoshone and northern arapaho ways of knowing. i enrolled in the american indian language development institute (aildi), a summer program in my department, to study my tribal languages and how to revitalize and promote their use. i learned about linguistics and language-teaching methods for indigenous languages. my cumulative project was to model a twenty-minute immersion lesson in my chosen indigenous language. most of the indigenous students in the program selected their single indigenous heritage language but, for me, the choice was not so simple. which language would i pick: eastern shoshone or northern arapaho? i felt pressure to choose only one language to study, and in doing so, it seemed i was privileging one part of my identity over the other. i learned from this experience that, when i acknowledge the intersectionalities of my identities rather than compartmentalize them, i can find strength and power as an eastern shoshone/northern arapaho woman scholar. being able to reconnect with my tribal language, i was able to define my identity as an indigenous woman scholar in a new, transformative way. the commitment to incorporating my tribal languages into my research and actions as an indigenous woman scholar helps me to connect “understandings of the past” with my transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 141 comprehension of being an eastern shoshone (sosonih)/northern arapaho (hinono’ei) woman scholar in today’s world (grande 250). now in the fourth year of my doctoral program, i continue to explore my identity and develop my voice as a sosonih/hinono’ei woman. conceptualizing my identities as fluid, interwoven, and interconnected has helped me bridge my indigenous knowledge to my academic work. i cannot separate my identities into binaries or break these two knowledge systems apart. the struggle of reclaiming and reconnecting with my tribal epistemologies will be a lifelong journey—and a challenging one particularly because the eastern shoshone and northern arapaho were traditionally enemies. contemporary shoshone and arapaho families in my community have intermarried and passed on both tribal epistemologies to younger generations— in this way i am not alone and have an important voice. reconnecting with my tribal epistemologies has meant centering the memories and values passed to me by my maternal grandmother, parents, and extended family. these teachings have stayed with me and influence me as a source of hope—the thread that connects me across generations to my parents, my grandmother, and my other family members. as long as i keep these teachings at the forefront in my personal and professional life, i have hope that i can stay true to myself as a sosonih/hinono’ei scholar. 6. commentary in the ensuing commentary, we weave the narratives of stevens, anthony-stevens, and nicholas together with those previously presented as an additional layer of complexity. stevens, anthony-stevens, and nicholas’s narratives highlight the crosscutting ways that chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz’s narratives embody a predisposition to action which decenters settlercolonization and demonstrates commitment to responsibility and reciprocity to community. as a counter to the western academic genre of separating self from content in analysis of text and concept, stevens, anthony-stevens, and nicholas choose to unsettle the space of commentary. we make our positionalities transparent and embed ourselves within relational frameworks of accountability to nurture hope. our use of the commentary space is intended to reflect our engaged stance on restorying indigenous narratives in the context of education. chew et al “enacting hope” 142 6.1 stevens’s narrative like chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz, i personally experienced the usurping of indigenous knowledge, language, and cultural systems through western colonial practices. growing up on the san carlos apache reservation, stories about apaches were often told by non-apaches and found in movies and books. these fictitious and romanticized accounts, told in english, placed a western lens of vice and virtue over apache culture and language. the outsiders who told our stories missed many of the culturally salient issues to apaches. they instead framed our culture and language in opposition to western notions of what is good: our gaans—physical manifestations of mountain spirits—were deemed devil dancers and our ceremonies wicked. there is a great need to interrupt the colonial legacies of western narratives through the telling, as indigenous people, of our histories, narratives, and truths. the telling of our stories on and in our own terms is an especially important practice within institutions of contention, such as schools and universities. as an adult, teaching at the same school that i attended as a child, i remember an interaction with a frustrated non-apache teacher. she was upset that her primary students knew nothing about the “redcoats” of the american revolutionary war. at that moment, my own thought was that this teacher knew nothing about mangas coloradas (translated loosely to red sleeves in spanish), one of the greatest apache chiefs. my chuckle regarding the juxtaposing of knowledge and riffing on the color red quickly subsided as it also dawned upon me that her students were probably also ignorant of mangas coloradas. for this reason, the privileging of indigenous narratives is of the utmost importance—they serve to confront colonizing forces while also giving way to the tenet of hope which facilitates the resurgence of our ways of thinking, knowing, and being. within chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz’s narratives, the strengthening of identity and longing for language are themes which resonate loudly. each narrative enacts language and cultural continuance through being and doing (fettes 304). chew embraces, not erases, chikashshanompa', despite the widely-accepted designation of the language as being severely endangered; at the same time, she positions language use and revitalization within a hope-based paradigm, rather than a deficit one. her example of multiple generations engaging with the language demonstrates there is the hope “that chikashshanompa' will keep going, too.” it is this same audacity of hope that compels sobotta’s nimipuutimtnéewit ’inp’tóoqsix. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 143 the reclamation of the peoples’ way of speaking—despite the decades of western schooling prioritizing english—allows sobotta to rightfully recognize that the stories are individual seeds that she is nurturing through her classes. if we are able to incorporate lessons that prioritize indigenous ways of doing, it may very well lead to events such as leclair-diaz’s reclaiming and reconnecting with sosonih/hinono’ei epistemologies. the initial insecurities felt by leclair-diaz as a doctoral student learning about epistemologies is vividly relayed through her story. it is not difficult to situate this insecurity against the hegemonic forces of schooling that for hundreds of years have stripped the recognition of indigenous culture and language. however, it is the realization of hope that allows the seeds of sosonih and hinono’ei to germinate and take root. these narratives, reflective of lived experience, are models of sustaining and revitalizing indigenous pedagogies of hope and research which, as smith claims, talks back and up to power (226). it is the way in which indigenous people can reclaim our stories as valid and useful—not only for ourselves but also within the cultural diversity of our lived reality. we hope for stories, not filtered through the lens of the colonizer, but firmly rooted in our epistemologies, aspirations, and languages. 6.2 anthony-stevens’s narrative i grew up in the occupied lands of the potowatami, peroia, and miami (among other indigenous peoples), in a region often referred to as chicagoland (midwest, u.s.). as the greatgrand-daughter of second-wave, industrial-era european settlers, my early life enveloped me in a malaise of indigenous erasure, both material and discursive. while names of rivers (calumet and chicago), locations (wabash and skokie), and structures occasionally maintained distorted eurointerpretations of indigenous place through indigenous languages, the environment settlers recreated bore little resemblance to its first peoples’ relationship to the land. tuck and yang write, “in order for the settlers to make a place their home, they must destroy and disappear the indigenous peoples that live there” (6). in chicagoland, indigenous narratives were told as static or made into ghosts under concrete, factories waste, and brick bungalow homes. as an adult, i am a wife and in-law within an indigenous family, with whom i birthed two beautiful daughters. the unsettling incommensurability of colonial and indigenous realities rattle my home and chew et al “enacting hope” 144 render my identity uneasy. in the context i can now name as settler colonial, indigenous narratives are urgent and radical anecdotes to the settler oversimplification of our contemporary realities. as a non-indigenous collaborator, my commentary highlights my own need to learn from indigenous narratives of hope and to move beyond superficial recognition of the ontologies of indigenous frameworks. the relationships described by chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz’s narratives highlight intersectional encounters with self in/with community, which are necessary reclamations of wholeness within institutional realities. the three emerging scholars remind me that denaturalizing my own narrative of place is paramount to troubling the social amnesia of whiteness that obfuscates institutional colonization and racism. indigenous narrative, as reclamation scholarship, constitutes a space outside of settler colonial binaries and conceptualizes social positionings within complex stories and complex personhood (gordon). that is to say, the stories people tell about themselves, and their social worlds intertwine with current available narratives and imagined futures. telling and retelling niimíipuu stories in spaces of colonial literacy instruction, as described in sobotta’s narrative, invites contemporary youth to find a connection to learning that affirms their identities, a recognition of complex personhood in globalizing times. language reclamation, as seen in each narrative, brings complex personhood into relief and underscores contemporary persistence as acts of both inward and outward resurgence. prioritizing indigenous narratives, by and for indigenous peoples, furthers what csrp refers to when it asks settler institutions to pay attention to “asymmetrical power relations and legacies of colonization” in contexts of community-driven indigenous language and culture education (mccarty and lee 8). such a connection between theory and practice instructs non-indigenous people to stop naming and to listen. activated within chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz’s narratives, hope is offered as a tangible, living being within our ecosystem. hope, as powerful and fragile, helps us to name the persisting elephants in the room—settler colonial hegemony, white supremacy, and institutional racism—as threats that constrain and contort the wellbeing of hope. naming these unsettling threats holds collaborating non-indigenous scholar-educators accountable to the roles played in perpetuating, or interrupting, the erasure of complex indigenous narratives. as pedagogies of hope live in relational ways, they do not make space for unexamined settler ideologies, nor do they have a responsibility to educate non-indigenous collaborators on the structures of settlertransmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 145 colonialism. the collective narratives shared by the three emerging scholars decenter settlercolonial frameworks and normalize indigenous complexity. their very “telling and re-telling” are centered on and perform well-being and wholeness. non-indigenous scholars contribute to narratives of hope by listening and taking material action to forefront indigenous voices, methodologies, and languages, as described by chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz. 6.3 nicholas’s narrative i draw from the discussions of maori scholar linda tuhiwai smith’s twenty-five indigenous projects in decolonizing methodologies, and brazilian educationalist paulo freire’s concept of hope in his pedagogy of hope, as i begin with my own story. my story is one that i often refer to as a “rude awakening” which also led to my current lifework in language and cultural reclamation. this awakening was prompted by a graduate course assignment using the genre of poetry to explore the linguistic aspects of our heritage languages, mine being hopilavayi (the hopi language). the “rude” awakening was that, although hopilavayi was my first language, as a graduate student, i found myself unable to recall the language i had spoken with ease as a child; i had undergone language shift and evident cultural disconnect. however, i had the good fortune of working with aildi professor akira yamamoto who planted the “hope” necessary and critical to enacting and sustaining my struggle and fight against hopelessness. in response to my anxious question, “where did my language go?” my professor explained that my language had not gone “anywhere.” rather, he stated that my language was residing in the depths of my being waiting to be resurfaced—to be spoken again and to become a living part of my being, a “pedagogy of hope” i continue to follow and to which i remain committed. the narratives of chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz as emerging indigenous scholarauthors of this essay speak collectively of a similar awakening to, or critical consciousness of, the voids of connection to our origins of identity and purposes of existence (the people, places, and responsibility). in turn, each narrative, as a critical self-reflection, reveals the hope— accessing the inherent ancestral wisdom and knowledge—that resides “in each and every one of us” as indigenous people (freire 2). as such, each scholar-author also speaks to a researching of the wisdom and knowledge that comprise an indigenous pedagogy of hope embodied in “the people’s way of life”—titooqanáawit (sobotta)—thus residing “in the people”. this researching chew et al “enacting hope” 146 has led each scholar-author back to a reconnection with community, the people, the peoples’ language, and ways of knowing and being: for chew, to community and chikashshanompa' (chickasaw language); for sobotta, to nimipuutímt (the people’s language) and to niimíipuum titwáatit (the people’s stories); and for leclair-diaz, to her cultural heritage identities of eastern shoshone/northern arapaho and their respective knowledge systems. moreover, smith asserts, “to be connected is to be whole” (150). this assertion is substantiated by chew who writes, “speaking chikashshanompa' grounded me in a deep sense of kinship, both to my ancestors and to generations to come,” by sobotta who tells us, “stories are given to us by our ancestors to teach us relationality between all things: the stories to the land, animals, plants, language, and to the people,” and by leclair-diaz who affirms, “i had to try and relearn what it meant to be eastern shoshone and northern arapaho—not only for my research but so that i could start feeling like a whole person.” this project, then, is as much one of “rediscovering indigenous knowledge and its continued relevance to the way we lead our lives” (smith 161) as it is one of enacting and sustaining the indigenous struggle and fight against hopelessness—“struggle” being a mainstay of hope (freire). while somewhat ironic that researching and embodying such struggle is being undertaken within the colonizing institutions of western education, this mission, however, becomes one of “reframing […] the ways in which indigenous issues are discussed,” “retaining the strengths of a vision and the participation of community,” and occurring “within the way indigenous people write or engage with the theories and accounts of what it means to be indigenous” (smith 154-55). freire further points out that while the hope that each individual holds is necessary, at an individual level it is not enough. the final project necessitates trans-indigenous engagements (allen), sharing knowledge through “dialogue and conversations amongst ourselves as indigenous peoples, to ourselves and for ourselves” (smith 146), across the world of indigenous peoples that includes non-indigenous scholar-educators. sharing contains views about knowledge being a collective benefit and knowledge being a form of resistance (162), resilience, and persistence. this essay represents emergent indigenous voices speaking back by writing back, what smith refers to as “indigenous people… writing and theory making” (150). the aaa venue, in turn, offers the reclaiming “spaces” for these voices to be heard. the scholar-author contributions to this essay represent the co-construction and publication of indigenous scholarship of a past, present, and future that is captured in sobotta’s words at aaa: “we are transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 147 still here; we are our own natural resources” for maintaining the most reliable guide toward envisioning an indigenous future. 7. conclusions and implications within the sociocultural study of language, localities are situated “worlds of sense” (feld and basso 8), experienced through placed relationships; as such, languages transport situated meanings across time and space (mccarty, nicholas, and wyman 51). with this understanding, we, together as co-authors, offer pedagogical and methodological orientations which re-center local languages and identities as resources for indigenous futures. the aaa annual meeting venue has served as a space for us to explore indigenous narrative as language and cultural reclamation and education. through this essay, we push forward our work to claim spaces for indigenous voices to be heard and find hope in the assertion that language awaits us in all spaces. privileging indigenous narratives and exchanges expands the space for indigenous peoples to clarify, as brayboy argues, their own resources and learn from other ways of doing and knowing. furthermore, this is an opportunity to draw upon the resources of one another and to enrich individual and community wellbeing. chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz’s individual narratives reflect a holding onto “ancestral wisdom[s] despite disruptions” in personal life, family, and community, which in turn provides “nourishment and sustenance” (neeganagwedgin 326). significantly, while the narratives have power when considered individually, new meaning is also produced when the narratives of all authors are considered collectively. a unified narrative of hope emerges and brings with it important implications for sustaining and revitalizing indigenous ways of being and knowing. as chew, sobotta, and leclair-diaz’s accounts suggest, hope is sustained through intergenerational relationships that connect the past, present, and future. each author has experienced loss and struggle as a result of colonization and ongoing pressures of assimilation, but nonetheless has taken up responsibility to reclaim knowledge, language, and identity. this work, as sobotta suggests, has the purpose of sustaining the next seven generations. hope is enacted as each author upholds a responsibility to honor the teaching of the generations that came before and to share them with those who will come next. we further learn from the collective narratives of our co-authorship that agency is deeply connected to hope. language and culture reclamation is not about preserving language and chew et al “enacting hope” 148 culture as abstract entities, but about recovering “voice, which encapsulates personal and communal agency and the expression of indigenous identities, belonging, and responsibility to self and community” (mccarty, nicholas, chew, diaz, leonard, and white 160). as the narratives demonstrate, the project of recovering and strengthening voice occurs in a multitude of spaces: communities, k-12 classrooms, and universities, as well as within intergenerational relationships between grandparent-parent-child and even professor-student. as leclair-diaz suggests in her narrative, these spaces must be intersectional in order to create conditions for indigenous peoples to empower themselves and express a voice that may be inclusive of complex personhood, including multiple indigenous heritage languages. as indigenous and nonindigenous scholars, we each have a role and responsibility in claiming and shaping these spaces, but these roles are non-congruent. as anthony-stevens states, non-indigenous/settler scholars have a responsibility to contribute to indigenous narratives of hope by listening and by taking material action to forefront indigenous voices, methodologies, and languages. importantly, a key implication of the narratives and commentaries is that hope, as a guiding framework, should not be understood as human-centric. the plants, animals, land, ancestors, spiritual beings, language, and stories have agency and guide the work of language and cultural reclamation. stl’atl’imx scholar peter cole explores this notion, along with the power of narrative, in a conversation between an indigenous researcher and tricksters raven and coyote. according to raven, “there is a growing call from indigenous peoples academics and other interested parties […] for compelling new narratives to reshape or replace the progress narrative of modernity” (349). as raven reminds the researcher, the narrative of progress privileges “mind over body and spirit human over non-human and more-than-human” and creates imbalance through the exclusion of indigenous knowledges and narratives (349). when we, as indigenous people, return to ancestral wisdom, which respects and exists in relationship with the non-human and more-than-human, we sustain a hope that is not solely reliant upon the whims of people. ultimately, by sharing narratives, we seek to privilege indigenous knowledge and ways of being as generators of new narratives of hope with implications for all people. notes 1 the author’s contribution to this essay was supported by a hunt postdoctoral fellowship. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 149 works cited aikau, hokulani k. “following the alaloa kīpapa of our ancestors: a trans-indigenous futurity without the state (united states or otherwise).” american quarterly, vol 67, no. 3, 2015, pp. 653-661. allen, chadwick. trans-indigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies, university of minnesota press, 2012. anthony-stevens, vanessa. “cultivating alliances: reflections on the role of non-indigenous collaborators in indigenous educational sovereignty.” journal of american indian education, vol. 56, no.1, 2017, pp. 81-104. brayboy, bryan m. j., heather r. gough, beth leonard, roy f. roehl ii, and jessica a. solymon. “reclaiming scholarship: critical indigenous research methodologies.” qualitative research: an introduction to methods and designs, edited by s. d. lapan, m. t. quartaroli, and f. j. riemer, jossey-bass, 2012, pp. 423-450. brayboy, bryan mckinley jones. “toward a tribal critical race theory in education.” the urban review, vol. 37, no. 5, 2005, pp. 425-446. cole, peter. “an indigenous research narrative: ethics and protocols over time and space.” qualitative inquiry, vol. 23, no. 5, 2017, pp. 343-351. feld, steven, and keith h. basso. senses of place. school of american research press, 1996. fettes, mark. “stabilizing what? an ecological approach to language renewal.” teaching indigenous languages, edited by jon reyhner, northern arizona university, 1997, pp. 301-318. freire, paulo. pedagogy of hope. the continuum publishing company, 1992. freire, paulo, and ana maria araújo freire. epz pedagogy of hope: reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. a&c black, 2004. gordon, avery f. ghostly matters: haunting and the sociological imagination. university of minnesota press, 1997. grande, sandy. red pedagogy: native american social and political thought: tenth anniversary edition. rowman & littlefield publishers, 2015. chew et al “enacting hope” 150 guajardo, miguel, francisco guajardo, and edyael del carmen casaperalta. “transformative education: chronicling a pedagogy for social change.” anthropology & education quarterly, vol. 39, no. 1, 2008, pp. 3-22. justice, daniel heath. “a better world becoming: placing critical indigenous studies.” critical indigenous studies: engagements in first world locations, edited by aileen moretonrobinson, university of arizona press, 2016, pp. 19-32. larocque, emma. “preface.” writing the circle: native women of western canada, edited by jeanne perreault and sylvia vance, newest, 1990, pp. xv-xxxi. leonard, wesley y. “challenging ‘extinction’ through modern miami language practices.” american indian culture and research journal, vol. 35, no. 2, 2011, pp. 135-60. mccarty, teresa l., and tiffany s. lee. “critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and indigenous education sovereignty.” harvard educational review, vol. 84, no. 1, 2014, pp. 101-24. mccarty, teresa l., sheilah e. nicholas, and leisy t. wyman. “re-emplacing place in the ‘global here and now’: critical ethnographic case studies of native american language planning and policy.” international multilingual research journal, vol. 6, no. 1, 2012, pp. 50-63. mccarty, teresa l., sheilah e. nicholas, kari a. b. chew, natalie g. diaz, wesley y. leonard, and louellyn white. “hear our languages, hear our voices: storywork as theory and praxis in indigenous-language reclamation.” daedalus, vol. 147, no. 2, 2018, pp. 160172. neeganagwedgin, erica. “ancestral knowledges, spirituality and indigenous narratives as selfdetermination.” alternative: an international journal of indigenous peoples, vol. 9, no. 4, 2013, pp. 322-334. ortiz, simon j. woven stone. university of arizona press, 1992. smith, linda tuhiwai. decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. 2nd ed, zed books, 2012. tuck, eve. “suspending damage: a letter to communities.” harvard educational review, vol. 79, no. 3, 2009, pp. 409-428. tuck, eve, and k. wayne yang. “decolonization is not a metaphor.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 151 vizenor, gerald robert. survivance: narratives of native presence. university of nebraska press, 2008. microsoft word dietrich.docx 160 daniel heath justice. why indigenous literatures matter. waterloo, ontario: wilfried laurier university press, 2018. 284pp. isbn 978-1-77112-176-7. https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/books/w/why-indigenous-literatures-matter daniel heath justice’s latest book works from the clearly stated premise that indigenous literatures matter and sets out to explore how and why they do so. at the same time, he already makes clear in the introduction that this premise cannot simply be taken for granted. this is especially the case in social contexts both inside and outside north america in which settlercolonial perspectives and assumptions about indigenous people’s “primitiveness” and/or “disappearance” foreclose discussions about the value or even the existence of indigenous literatures. prevalent conditions of ongoing settler colonial domination pervading all aspects of life, society, politics, and culture make narratives of, as justice puts it, “indigenous deficiency” the most widespread and readily accepted story about indigenous peoples from the u.s., canada, and elsewhere (2, emphasis in original). clearly, these stories cannot coexist with the idea that indigenous peoples are capable of creating their own narratives that do not only counter these imposed, harmful stories but are proof of and represent indigenous people as existing within rich, complex, and vibrant communities that have their own multifaceted literary traditions and practices. it is the great achievement of justice’s book that it not only answers but also preempts the tedious question everyone, native or non-native, involved with indigenous literatures (whether as scholar, teacher, or writer, or a combination thereof) has probably heard at one time or another: “is there writing by ‘indians’ at all?” beyond answering this question strongly in the affirmative (as does any other book on indigenous literatures or by an indigenous writer), justice’s book also responds to the questions that might follow from the first: why is it important (to know) that there are indigenous literatures; what is their significance for anyone interested in literary productions; what do they accomplish; and how and why do they matter? and one way in which they matter, as justice clearly shows, is that not only their presence but the stories they tell and how they tell these stories work against and refute the very assumptions that lead to the question of and skepticism surrounding indigenous literatures in the first place. by unpacking the key terms of his title––“indigenous” (along with “settler,” as the contrary position), “literature,” and also the combination “indigenous literature”––in an astute, rigorous, but also compassionate and generous fashion, justice already by the introduction makes clear that indigenous literatures matter vitally. the four major chapters following the introduction are then dedicated to discussing how they do so specifically. namely, justice addresses indigenous literatures—as a teaching tool, as a site of interlocution, and as form of interrogation—via four questions that give each chapter its title (cf. 28): how do we learn to be human? how do we behave as good relatives? how do we become good ancestors? how do we learn to live together? if we approach the book simply as an introduction to indigenous literatures mainly from what are today the u.s. and canada, this is clearly an unconventional approach, although it is also an approach that liberates the book from issues of periodization, canonization, or identification of thematic foci that can be burdensome for more “conventional” literary introductions. in fact, the open-ended questions serving as chapter titles are not only intriguing sub-questions to the main question stated in the book’s title but—when thinking about a wider readership for the book, or 161 its use in classrooms—also provide intellectual points of entry for readers who otherwise might shy away from more “conventional” academic perspectives on indigenous literary histories, forms, and practices. beyond that, these titles also make clear that this book can only imperfectly and incompletely be called an introductory text to native writing. it is rather, as justice puts it himself, “part survey of the field of indigenous literary studies, part cultural and family history, and part literary polemic” (xx). further, it “asserts the vital significance of our literatures to healthy decolonization efforts and just expressions of community resurgence” (xx). with this outspoken commitment to the potential political role of indigenous literatures, justice demonstrates throughout the book how each of the questions put by the chapter titles speaks to ongoing issues that indigenous peoples face in their continuing existence under settler colonial conditions. additionally, they resonate with long-lasting social structures, cultural practices, and communal self-understandings that characterize the multi-faceted and multi-dimensional ways of indigenous peoplehood. for justice, the key term for such a decolonizationand community-oriented approach to and analysis of indigenous literatures is, maybe not surprisingly, kinship. kinship being a complex, dynamic, and evocative term, justice makes sure never to fully define or “fix” it, but he offers a number of varying approximations of it throughout the book. when combining some of these, kinship appears as encompassing “an active network of connections, a process of continual acknowledgments and enactment” (42), that is embedded within “obligations to the diverse networks of relations and relationships” (74) and characterized by “chosen connections and commitments, as well as political, spiritual, and ceremonial processes that bring people into deep and meaningful affiliation” (75). ultimately kinship, as evoking manners of social formation that exceed settler models of societies defined by the nation-state, becomes the term that links the concerns of the questions guiding the four chapters and also constitutes a central category for putting the readings of the individual texts in relation to each other. in addition to a survey, a cultural/family history, and a literary polemic, the text can thus be read, intriguingly, as i find, as a study of indigenous literatures guided by what justice has called “kinship criticism” in his 2008 essay, “go away, water” (justice 2008, 147). in this essay, justice suggests an “explor[ation] of how the principles of kinship can help us be more responsible and, ultimately, more useful participants in both the imaginative and physical decolonization and empowerment of indigenous peoples through the study of our literatures” (154-55). expanding his initial interest in this idea, justice spells out more explicitly and practices this theory throughout his most recent text. kinship becomes the central category for analyzing indigenous literatures for their significance, and the referent connecting the central terms of the four main chapters: human, relative, ancestor, and living together. in the first chapter, a reading of ella deloria’s novel waterlily (1988) shows that, for the novel, kinship is the basis for practicing humanity and civilization. further in the same chapter, continuous investment in kinship also helps to counter narratives of indigenous vanishing while still allowing characters and readers to acknowledge historical losses, as justice’s discussion of geary hobson’s the last of the ofos (2000) shows; the ongoing imagination of kinship similarly places the last ofo speaker into a web of relations. as justice states, the character’s isolation does not erase how he identifies through the principle of kinship: “as a nation of one, he embodies multitudes” (55). in the second chapter, “how do we behave as good relatives,” 162 leanne howe’s shell shaker (2001) shows the dangers when “even the foundational bonds of kinship are at risk of crumbling” (80) under settler colonial assault, but also how it remains possible across time to “uphold your obligations to one another, no matter what the cost” (83). in the same chapter, justice explores the relations between other-than-human peoples––namely between the racoon people and nanabush, the “ojibway trickster-transformer” (92)––in drew hayden taylor’s motorcycles and sweetgrass (2010). importantly, justice also discusses kinship as “a very powerful and equally vexed set of understandings” for queer/two-spirit indigenous writers who face settler impositions of heteronormativity from outside as well as, potentially, homophobia and anxiety over non-normatively gendered bodies in their own communities. in the third chapter, on the question of how to become good ancestors, the focus lies on the relation of past, present, and future and the commitments to kinship these entail. this focus leads justice to explore the memoir of lili‘uokalani, queen of the sovereign kingdom of hawai’i, and how her writing of resistance speaks to present-day kanaka maoli struggles against u.s. settler nationalism. further, he discusses recent works of indigenous futurism such as cherie dimaline’s the marrow thieves (2017), in which new forms of kinship form the basis to remake traditions and communities for future generations in the midst of fatally increased settler assault and colonially induced ecological catastrophe. finally, the fourth chapter, on the question of how to learn to live together, extends the question of “relation” to relationships between indigenous peoples, settlers, and people of color. in leslie marmon silko’s the almanac of the dead (1991), a number of characters come to realize that the forms of oppression black and indigenous peoples are subjected to in the americas depend on each other. as this realization helps black and indigenous peoples to unite in resistance, the novel envisions the potential of an apocalypse that does not restore white patriarchal supremacy, as is often the case in more conventional apocalyptic fiction, but opens the possibility of a future that entails “different kinds of relatedness, different models of kinship, different ways of living with and on the earth and her varied peoples” (justice 2018, 173). and in the only good indian… by the turtle gals performance ensemble from toronto (the only play examined in the book, as justice himself admits), the vagaries of indigenous women performing for largely nonnative audiences at the beginning of the 20th century and today are considered in a way that connects figures like e. pauline johnson and gertrude bonnin/zitkala-ša to contemporary characters. the struggles of johnson and bonnin contribute to efforts of indigenous women artists such as the turtle gals today to stage their own vision, which they, in turn, do “in collaboration and in community” (179) with these earlier performers preceding them and with whom they finally become united on stage. as their “shared creation becomes a transformative act of love” (179), the second connective thread next to, and related to, kinship becomes apparent (as it has in previous chapters): love becomes a central quality through which multiple forms of kinship can be enacted, embodied, and experienced. one vital way in which indigenous literatures matter is that they can point to and imagine the possibilities of such love which, in turn, points to the potentials of decolonial struggle and resurgence: “we love: courageously, insistently, defiantly. we love the world enough to fight for it—and one another” (180). the possibilities of love toward which indigenous literatures can point are ultimately embedded in ideals of relation and thus evoke larger contexts and modes of being and embodiment that extend beyond settler models of 163 individualistic society, instead moving to embrace kinship-based community formations that ideally are both expansive and inclusive. from the texts selected here in the space of the review, it is already apparent that justice attends to a varied corpus, which includes well-known, but also many lesser known or underrepresented, examples. in addition, the book moves across multiple genres that mainly include narrative, poetry, memoir, non-fiction, and, to a lesser degree, plays. within the chapters, justice also provides important contextual information, such as a brief discussion of the history surrounding the terminology of queer and two-spirit for native people who do not identify as heterosexual, or a consideration of the achievements and limitations of the native american graves protection and repatriation act (nagpra) in the third chapter on how to become good ancestors. justice provides personal and family history in the context of cherokee peoplehood and settler violence of removal and allotment in the fifth chapter, “reading the ruptures,” before pointing in the conclusion to the many ways in which indigenous literatures have mattered to him, how he has seen it matter to others, and how the work of young indigenous writers ensures a future of indigenous writing that will continue to matter. the focus on personal/familial histories and perspectives in the last chapter and conclusion highlights a quality that characterizes the entire book, namely justice’s personal involvement with the subject matter and with the wider community of indigenous writers and (literary) studies in north america today. this does more than simply add to the highly readable and enjoyable quality of the text. the fact that justice writes on the matter of why indigenous literatures matter in an analytically clear and intellectually generous, compassionate, and inclusive manner, always making clear how and why they do so to him, might make it easier for readers less familiar with indigenous writing, history, and culture to consider the significance of indigenous literatures to them personally, even if the possibility did not occur to them before. the book ends with an appendix that makes a case for the richness of indigenous literatures in a more encyclopedic fashion and provides an excellent starting point to explore more native writing. it does so by revisiting an earlier project of justice that introduced one indigenous writer every day for one year via twitter, with the hashtag “honouringindigenouswriters.” the appendix is followed by a bibliographic essay, “citational relations,” that provides the bibliographical information in an essayistic form that makes the documentation of the sources themselves intriguingly readable and extends the notion of a relational criticism into citational practice. with a book in which there is, as has become evident, so much to like (and possibly even, in the spirit of the book, to love), it is hard to argue. even so, at the end of my review, i would like to raise two points that i do not see as objections so much as ways to continue the critical conversation, as justice himself invites readers to do in the introduction. firstly, i wonder if justice’s account of kinship as a central value of indigenous writing might be extended by a more expansive focus on native mobility and the increased urban experience that comes with it. i might be mistaken here, but in his discussions of indigenous urbanization, usually in the context of displacement and dispossession (see, for example, 59-60, 65), native mobility and the urban experience appear as a form of loss (mentioned together with the generational disruptions of the residential school system, for instance) or a trade-off (separation from reservation, but the creation of new affiliations), rather than an indigenous living situation in its own right, which includes the connection between indigenous peoples coming from a now-urban area and 164 indigenous peoples having moved there from other places for various reasons. these reasons might not always be reducible to dispossession or displacement but, more complexly, might also include different forms of indigenous agency manifest in mobility (i am thinking, in this context, of the online project led by ucla, “mapping indigenous l.a.” [https://mila.ss.ucla.edu/], as well as the recent literary portrayal of urban indigeneity in tommy orange’s there there [2018]). secondly, in the third chapter on the question of ancestors, justice discusses how native writers use genres of speculative fiction to their own indigenous-centered and decolonial ends and, within this illuminating argument, introduces his term of “indigenous wonderworks” to distance such works from the conventional terms of fantasy and/or science fiction, which denote genres conventionally rooted in the settler colonial imaginary. in this context, i would have wished for a more sustained discussion of this term in relation to the recent term of “indigenous futurism” coined by grace dillion (who is mentioned and cited for walking the clouds [2012], her anthology of indigenous science-fiction, but without reference to her coinage). this absence is particularly notable as justice makes a reference to octavia butler as arguably a key proponent of black or afro-futurism. especially in the chapter with a focus on indigenous future, i think a consideration of “indigenous futurism” in relation to “indigenous wonderworks” could have been helpful, as it also might have shown how the two terms emphasize different aspects of the same, or at least a similar, phenomenon; furthermore, if “wonderworks” might be said to be the term better suited to describe writing that does not immediately gesture to potential futures, i would have welcomed such a discussion, too. of course, these are only two minor caveats that should not at all deflect from this review’s emphasis on the important accomplishment justice’s book represents. in a time where the question about the existence and worth of indigenous literatures still has not ended, it now stands as the number one recommendation to anyone asking this question. but much more than that, it can provide readers––students as well as general readers––with a passionate introduction to the richness of indigenous literatures, specifically in north america, and can give teachers a very helpful tool for their future courses. additionally, it gifts those of us interested and/or working with indigenous literatures (including myself) with the opportunity to refamiliarize ourselves with old favorites, discover new ones, view indigenous literatures through the rewarding perspective of a kinship-based criticism, and remind ourselves (in case this might be necessary) why we are doing the work we are doing, and why not only the writing but also the reading, studying, and writing on indigenous literatures continue to matter. rené dietrich, obama institute for transnational american studies works cited deloria, ella. waterlily. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2009 [1988]. print. dillon, grace, ed. walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction. tucson: university of arizona press, 2012. dimaline, cherie. the marrow thieves. toronto: dancing cat books, 2017. print. hobson, geary. the last of the ofos. tucson: university of arizona press, 2000. print. 165 howe, leanne. shell shaker. san francisco: aunt lute books, 2001. print. justice, daniel heath. “go away, water: kinship criticism and the decolonization imperative.” reasoning together: the native critics collective. eds. craig. s. womack, daniel heath justice, and christopher b. teuton. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2008. 14768. print. lili‘uokalani. hawaii’s story by hawaii’s queen. new ed. of 1898 edition. north clarendon: charles e. tuttle. 1964. print. lauzon, jani, michelle st. john, cheri maracle, falen johnson, and monique mojica. the only good indian… , 2007. unpub. manuscript. mapping indigenous l.a. https://mila.ss.ucla.edu/. accessed nov 2nd, 2018. web. orange, tommy. there there: a novel. new york: knopf, 2018. print. silko, leslie marmon. almanac of the dead. new york: simon and schuster, 1991. taylor, drew hayden. motorcycles and sweetgrass. toronto: knopf canada, 2010. print. microsoft word pedri-spade.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 153 marcia g. anderson. a bag worth a pony: the art of the ojibwe bandolier bag. st paul, mn: the minnesota historical society press, 2017. pp.265. isbn: 9781681340296. http://www.mnhs.org/mnhspress/books/bag-worth-pony boozhoo anang onimiwin mukwa nindodem lac des mille lacs first nation nindoonji. a few months ago i was approached by the editors of transmotion to provide a review of marcia g. anderson’s recent book about bandolier bags. as an anishinabekwe (ojibwe) artist and visual anthropologist committed to both the practice and study of ojibwe material visual and material culture, i welcomed the opportunity. yet looking at my own unfinished bandolier bag i started about six years ago for my husband, i also felt somewhat guilty, aware that of the many large-scale beadwork projects planned or started by artists, all too many end up in the category of “started but never finished”, a point anderson aptly makes as well (16). nonetheless, after cracking the book open for the first time, i knew i was in for something special. i smiled as the first image to welcome me happened to be a photograph of delina white’s son in full regalia proudly dancing her beadwork, including a bandolier bag. as an ojibwe matriarch delina has and will continue to be a great family friend and a personal mentor for everything that i hope to achieve with the beadwork that i make for my family. thus, this was indeed a good signal of what was to come in the subsequent pages, which invite the reader to become part of anderson’s “three-decades-long love affair” (3) with gashkibidaaganag (beaded bandolier bags). gashkibidaagang are perhaps one of the largest and most labor-intensive beaded items created and worn by ojibwe people. anderson introduces these bags as cultural icons, embodying specific values and attributes important to ojibwe including status, respect, gratitude, and leadership. the reference to these bags as worth a pony is a nod to their role as a form of currency used in exchanges with other tribes for a pony in the 1870s and 1880s. while the exact origin of the bag is unclear, anderson reminds the reader that it cannot be interpreted apart from earlier forms of bags and pouches created by ojibwe for both daily life and special occasions— bags often adorned with various materials including glass beads, shells and porcupine quills. anderson emphasizes that material culture grows and changes along with people and gashkibidaagang must not be taken up as static objects but as dynamic and emergent entities continuously affected by changes both inside and outside their communities of origin. referencing an origin hypothesis common to both ethnographers and ojibwe community experts, anderson identifies that the most influential “change” leading to prevalence of the bags was that of colonial war, as she links gashkibidaagang to “military ammunition pouches worn by the european and american military” (21). anderson locates herself personally in relation to gashkibidaaganag as a collections curator with the minnesota historical society (mhs) during the 1980s. over the course of 35 years, anderson develops this relationship by committing her work to the stories of over 100 bandoliers within the mhs collection. her efforts focus on weaving together information gleaned primarily from archives, museums, and ethnographic texts with ojibwe histories and testimonies from present day ojibwe bead artists, knowledge keepers and tribal effort governments. her work culminates into a concerted and careful presentation of their cultural significance during the past two centuries. celeste pedri-spade review of a bag worth a pony 154 part one of the book presents a detailed history of the bags, addressing their design, structure, motif, material composition, and the various ways that archival records and photographs influence their history. on each page anderson provides strikingly clear images of gashkibidaaganang, including very detailed close-up shots when possible. she includes historical photographs of ojibwe men and women both donning and making the bags in a way that assists the reader in contextualizing them within ojibwe community life. this section also provides detailed sketches and descriptions of how the bags are constructed. anderson’s aim in this section is to stitch together an introductory history of the bags and her thoughtful composition of the photographs, sketches and written text, is not simply a “packaging up” of historical information in order to preserve gashkidibaaganang history; rather, it is a carefully constructed blueprint aimed at ensuring future generations are engaged and encouraged to connect to this history in a meaningful way. anderson uses her position as a curator and writer to craft something that helps make these bags accessible to a more public audience, including other ojibwe beadwork artists working to reclaim and revive their material cultural practices. early on in the book anderson emphasizes in several places that despite the fact that ojibwe women were most often the creative forces behind the design and production of gashkidibaaganang, their pivotal roles and accomplishments often remain obscure or are completely ignored. this points to the androcentric and patriarchal nature of colonial ethnographic texts and their interpretation. anderson commits her work to addressing this absence/erasure through privileging the stories and perspectives of both historical and presentday ojibwe women. this work goes beyond identifying the names of women pictured in photographs or connecting specific bags to their respective maker throughout the book when possible. anderson dedicates the second part of the book to privileging the voices and experiences of ojibwe women beadwork artists throughout seven different ojibwe communities in minnesota. in part two, anderson takes the reader on a journey to several ojibwe communities throughout minnesota, discussing specific gashkidibaaganang and their makers and wearers from specific places. she introduces the reader to the stories of several ojibwe women beadwork artists, illuminating their dedication, resilience, creativity, strength, and intelligence. the book privileges the experiences and voices of women who have and continue to accept the responsibility of making the bags out of love and pride for their families and communities. anderson situates this important work within the context of ongoing colonial violence aimed at severing ojibwe family and kinship ties and demonstrates how significant gashkidibaaganang have been to reclaiming and continuing significant family histories and cultural teachings. moreover, through the inclusion of direct testimonies, these artists are able to convey their own unique perspectives and stories, explaining how important these bags have been to their own wellbeing, the transmission of intergenerational knowledge and ongoing camaraderie among ojibwe women within communities. it should be noted that their testimonies often work to dispel colonial myths attached to ojibwe beadwork practice. for example, third generation bag maker marcie mcintire of grand portage addresses the myth that ojibwe floral designs were simply a “mimicking” or replication of european floral design and aesthetic: transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018) 155 it never dawned on me that my designs could be associated with the colonizers…whether anishinaabe [ojibwe] beadworkers were using geometric or floral designs, they were depicting the flora in the world around them. (123) by the end of the book, what may have started as a curator’s love affair with the beauty and magnificence of gashkidibaaganan, over the course of 35 years of work, has been transformed into what i see as a love affair with the brilliance, creativity and tenacity of their makers— specifically with ojibwe woman. in her writing, anderson illustrates how as a distinct visual/material object and art practice, each gashkidibaagan may mediate different experiences and generate different kinds of knowledges, all of which are significant to ojibwe life. this book is a commitment to moving beyond a surface level reading of the bags to bringing forward the stories embodied within every bead stitch—voices that link generations of proud ojibwe. as a beadwork artist, this book inspired me to pick up my own in-progress gashkidibaagan and honour the teachings of my ancestors and peers. and so i say miigwetch (thank you) to marcia for this gift. celeste pedri-spade, laurentian university microsoft word fletcher.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 241 review essay: on disenrollment david e. wilkins & shelly hulse wilkins. dismembered: native disenrollment and the battle for human rights. university of washington press, 2017. 208 pp. isbn: 9780295741574. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/wildis.html a snowy, icy workday in anishinaabeki. the headquarters of the lake matchimanitou band of anishinaabek. tribal council chambers. the seven tribal council members sit on an elevated platform behind a large table, with the tribal chief executive, ogema ajijaak, sitting in the middle. several dozen tribal citizens and employees sit in the audience at attention. ajijaak pounds a gavel. ogema ajijaak: aaniin. let’s call the meeting to order. we have an important action item to consider today. i know there will be much to say today. we have on the agenda a draft resolution proposing disenrollment of the waabshkaande and old woman siblings’ families. is there a motion to approve the agenda? councilor mukwa: so moved. councilor meshiike: seconded. ajijaak: so the agenda is approved. the legal department drafted the resolution at the request of the enrollment office. legal? tribal general counsel ogitchiidaa: (dryly) the resolution is approved as to form. ajijaak: hah! well, you wrote it. you should know. nervous laughter in the audience. none of the other council members are amused. a few audience members hiss. ajijaak: seriously. can you explain the resolution please? ogitchiidaa: yes, of course. ten years ago, the council enacted resolution number 20091074. that resolution altered as a matter of law the blood quantum of agnes old woman, listed on the dupont roll of 1864 as a quote half-blood indian. then-councilor mamengwa old woman advised the council at that time that agnes was full-blood and asked the council to make the correction. mukwa: i don’t know that we need to name names. ogitchiidaa: i am merely explaining the facts, councilor mukwa. ajijaak: please continue. ogitchiidaa: the council adopted the resolution. the impact of the blood quantum change to agnes old woman extended to 129 individuals who were one-eighth indian blood before the resolution and became one-quarter indian blood after the resolution. all of them were descendants of agnes’ children, waabshkaande, old woman jr., and ki-chmookmoninnini. as a result, all 129 petitioned for enrollment shortly thereafter. the enrollment office quickly enrolled 14 of the 129 on the basis that they lived here on or near the reservation, within the four county service area. they were all descendants of waabshkaande and old woman, jr. the enrollment office declined to immediately enroll the remaining 115, and passed the decision on to the tribal council for final determination. the basis was that the ki-chmookmon-innini family had moved to ohio matthew l.m. fletcher review essay: on disenrollment 242 in the late 19th century and did not live here anymore. the council at that time declined to act on their petitions. the 115 were not enrolled. a year later, the 115 filed a class action lawsuit in tribal court. ki-chmookmon-innini v. tribe. the plaintiffs argued that the refusal to enroll them violated the equal protection clause of the indian civil rights act. the argument was that the 115 were similarly situated to the 14 people who were enrolled. the argument was a sound one under the law. at the request of council, the legal department tried to have the case dismissed on sovereign immunity grounds (wilkins and wilkins, 103). the tribal court, as you all know, declined to dismiss the action. after a hearing, judge waabigwan ordered the enrollment department to enroll the plaintiffs. judge waabigwan extensively quoted dismembered by david and shelly wilkins in their opinion. dismembered contains a lengthy description of several federal and tribal court cases on disenrollment matters (wilkins and wilkins, 102-141). upon the order of the council, the enrollment director refused to comply. judge waabigwan held the enrollment director in contempt and threatened to jail them. the council in 2011 then removed judge waabigwan. the council amended the judicial code to strip the tribal court of jurisdiction to hear enrollment matters. ajijaak: i recall the 115 sued us in federal court? ogitchiidaa: yes. they sued the united states as well. the court held that under santa clara pueblo v. martinez that it had no jurisdiction to hear tribal enrollment matters. the case was dismissed. (wilkins and wilkins, 63, 303). ajijaak: ok. continue, please. ogitchiidaa: a few months ago, the tribe received a letter from the department of the interior questioning the tribe’s enrollment decisions. it is a true that the federal government has no power to overturn tribal enrollment decisions. but the letter also raised concerns about the council’s removal of judge wabaunsee. the government is threatening to pull some of our 638 contract funding, saying the tribe is using federal funds to violate the indian civil rights act. they did something like this before, in the cases of the nooksack 306 and the cherokee freedmen. councilor waabizheshi: that’s the gummint for you. always interfering with internal tribal relations. tribal citizenship matters involve the internal powers of indian tribes. the federal colonizers have no business in our business. someone should tell the wilkins’ that. ogitchiidaa: perhaps. but there is more to the letter. the government is also asking whether we use federal money to provide services to persons who are not actually eligible for tribal membership. that would be, i think, a reference to the 14 persons enrolled in 2009. actually, the government is demanding we prove the 14 are eligible for membership. ajijaak: can we? ogitchiidaa: on the facts. maybe. maybe not. we’d have to hire an expensive expert witness to prove the dupont roll was incorrect. the historical evidence is not conclusive at all. typically, the government agent just asked an ogema who was in their families and the blood quantum of each family member. the ogema could say anything they wanted. our best argument is the one raised by councilor waabizheshi, that the government has no authority to overturn our decision. but the government could still cut our funding under public law 638. we could sue the government over that, but the cost of the litigation will be massive. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 243 ajijaak: what about congress? could the indian civil rights act be amended to allow federal courts to review disenrollment decisions? ogitchiidaa: yes, in theory. congress has plenary power in indian affairs. they could adopt the american indian legacy act, too, the law proposed by laura wass (wilkins and wilkins, 159). ajijaak: i wondered about that idea, too. how would that work? what if a tribe, oh i dunno, say, this tribe, raised traditional and cultural defenses? ogitchiidaa: i see where you’re going. so if a disenrollee used the legacy act to access federal court, one question is how a federal judge would apply indigenous customary and traditional law? perhaps, for example, a defense rooted in the seven grandfather teachings? ajijaak: exactly. ogitchiidaa: i suspect the judge’s analysis would be the epitome of absurdity. ajijaak: is there any risk to our decision today being reversed by the federal government in any way? ogitchiidaa: well, only if a federal judge decides to intervene. that decision would most certainly be reversed on appeal. in other words, almost no chance at all. ajijaak: and so that brings us to the resolution. we disenroll the 14. mukwa: hear hear. waabizheshi: let’s vote. ajijaak: call the question? councilor waawaashkeshi: a moment please. if we have an equal protection problem with keeping the 14 in, why don’t we solve the equal protection problem by admitting 115 instead? i read dismembered, too, and i support a rule that once a person becomes a tribal citizen, they become a family member. we should never disenroll anyone. there is a long pause in the room. councilor bineshi: i support that solution. i do believe this is far more than a mere legal problem. councilor maang: i really do hate to bring this up, but how will that affect the bottom line? if our tribal membership balloons by 115 people, that’s another 115 people who will share in the tribal gaming per capita distribution. there is a murmur and a commotion in the audience. several council members pound the table with their hands. ajijaak: i suggest we move immediately to executive session. mukwa: so moved. waabizheshi: i second. the council chambers are cleared. the council exits the room and enters a smaller chamber, along with the general counsel. nearly an hour later, ogema ajijaak reconvenes the public meeting. matthew l.m. fletcher review essay: on disenrollment 244 ajijaak: boozhoo. aaniin. i call this meeting to order again. apologies for the delay. but we seem to be at an impasse. as you know, under the tribal constitution, the ogema is authorized to vote on matters only in the event of a tie between the six other council members. and, as many of you know, i am a traditional and ceremonial person, first degree midewewin. i am a learner, it is true. but i am knowledgeable enough to know that the tribal constitution is an american legal construct (wilkins and wilkins, 43-59). this simple majority requirement is not how we governed ourselves historically. and it is not how we should be deciding this matter today. i refuse to vote to break a tie, especially in a matter involving disenrollment, and what some call dismemberment. i have asked the council to return to the council chambers to convene a talking circle. everyone present here is entitled to sit in the circle. and everyone is the circle is entitled to speak without interruption. they may speak about anything they see fit and for as long as they wish. the only rule, if it could be called a rule, is that we must all behave in the spirit of minobimaadiziwin, and with respect to anishinaabeki and the seven grandfather teachings. i turn to my left, to our youngest council member. councilor mukwa? mukwa: i represent the protectors, the bear clan. we watch for danger. i see danger here for our tribal community. we have made a mistake. we allowed in persons who are far too distantly related to our own people. we elevated some people and excluded others without justification. by doing so, we exposed ourselves to this indian civil rights act lawsuit. it is a time to speak with debwewin, truth, one of the gifts of the seven grandfathers. miigwetch. waabizheshi: i speak today as a member of the marten clan, the warriors and hunters. i speak today with an eye toward aakode’ewin, or bravery, one of the gifts of the seven grandfathers. the things i say now are not easy to say. we are not a wealthy tribe. the federal government shutdown hurt us badly. we don’t have much money. our casino per caps brought us from abject poverty to lower middle class. but a few bad months at the casino might be enough to force us to shut down the health clinic, or the head start school, or the police department. it is irresponsible for us to artificially grow our tribe to benefit the few, at the expense of the tribal citizens who meet the citizenship criteria. my clan is charged with ensuring the community has food and supplies. i have no choice, really, but to make this argument. bineshi: i speak for the bird clan. like the marten clan, my concern is for the internal affairs of this tribe. we are a tribe of limited resources. our people are not wealthy. the per caps are a huge help for the membership, especially those members who do not work for the tribal government or the enterprises. people depend on that money. but these enrollment decisions are divisive. families are torn apart. feelings are hurt. sides are drawn. there is anger and jealousy. eventually, we will have threats and then violence. i acknowledge those harms. i speak with minaadendamowin, respect, one of the gifts of the seven grandfathers. i do not know the proper answer. but i have tried to see both sides. meshiike: i speak for the turtle clan. yes, i am named for the mud turtle. lots of jokes about that growing up. but our clan are healers. there is medicine in the mud, in nature. i look around the room and i see a lot of injury, and anger. there are decisions that must be made today, decisions rooted in the terrible history of this tribe. of all tribes. in the mud, in the dirt, in the rocks, you see the impact of time. it was the united states that first insisted we draw up a roll in the 19th century. it was the united states that demand we create classifications of our own family members based on indian blood. it was the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 245 united states that invited us to dissolved our traditional governments and replace them with american style governments. this circle today is a good first step toward healing the injuries inflicted upon us by the colonizers. this circle today is a good first step toward healing the injuries we, in turn, inflict on ourselves. i speak today with zaagi’idiwin, love, one of the gifts of the seven grandfathers. i have love for all my relatives here today. whatever choice we make must be made with love. maang: i represent the diplomats, the eagle clan. migizi can see far. migizi is charged with communicating with outsiders. and, yes, our clan has been accused of perhaps talking too much, and talking out of turn. i, too, studied dismembered carefully. the disenrollment of tribal citizens from their communities for political purposes, or because of greed, or because of personal politics, is catching the attention of outsiders. federal judges, the department of the interior, human rights watchdogs like david and shelly wilkins. they are all watching and judging. saginaw chippewa indian tribe disenrolled indian people that had walked on decades ago in order to legally disenroll living members. (wilkins and wilkins, 127-28). everyone believes they did it because of gaming revenue per caps. the cherokee nation tried to disenroll the descendants of the freedmen. and they failed (wilkins and wilkins, 130-131). but everyone believes they did it because of racism. whether they did it for moral reasons or legal reasons or reasons of sovereignty doesn’t really matter to observers. it looks wrong. it looks wrong because it most likely is wrong. we must ask ourselves in the spirit of gwayakwaadiziwin, honesty, one of the gifts of the seven grandfathers. and we must answer in the spirit of honesty. are we disenrolling the 14 in order to preserve our share of the per caps? to get reelected? or are we disenrolling the 14 for the right reasons? frankly, i’m not sure there are right reasons anymore. waawaashkeshi: well, i’m last, so i guess that makes me the oldest. i am deer clan. we are spiritual advisors to the tribe. like the turtle clan, we are healers and we are teachers, but we are also gatherers. i’ve been around a long time. i was here when we sent our ogema to washington, d.c. in the 1950s to fight termination. i was here when we filed the lawsuit to preserve our treaty rights to hunt and fish in the 1960s. i was here in the 1970s when we opened up the first indian casino in anishinaabeki. we were always fighting. there never seemed to be time for a rest. what modest material goods we have now, we fought for. now we fight each other. i spoke up earlier about admitting the 115 rather than disenrolling the 14 because i believe strongly that all views should be heard. maybe it’s a good idea. maybe not. but we at least should discuss it. i speak today with nibwaakaawin, wisdom. or at least i try to. sometimes when i try to think about nibwaakaawin, i think about how my ancestors would think about nibwaakaawin. and then i wonder if the decisions i help this tribe make would make my ancestors proud. would they make my descendants proud? the americans often talk about being on the right side of history. that’s where i want to be. our ancestors made great sacrifices to negotiate treaties and survive an apocalypse. this disenrollment decision seems petty compared to those sacrifices. that’s all i have to say. ajijaak: i’m crane clan. i’m also the youngest here. i speak from deepest humility, dabaadendiziwin. i learned a great deal today from these teachings and from my peers on the council. i believe the decision is made. the council is adjourned. baaniimaa’apii. matthew l.m. fletcher, michigan state university microsoft word sayre.doc transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 303 timothy cochrane. gichi bitobig, grand marais: early accounts of the anishinaabeg and the north shore fur trade. university of minnesota press, 2018. 249 pp. isbn 978-1-51790593-4. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/gichi-bitobig-grand-marais readers of transmotion will be accustomed to history monographs, and also to editions of historical documents mined from archives, whether they be journals, memoirs, missionary relations, exploration narratives, or political manifestos. there is a potential, however, for these two common book formats to blend into one another. many of us can probably recall reading an edition of a document or a literary text for which the introduction and other apparatus was longer than the document itself. gichi bitobig, grand marais is such a book, except that the primary texts edited here – journals written by the chief factors of a new fur trade post during its first two winters on the north shore of lake superior – are not entirely new nor particularly extraordinary. instead, the logbook by bela chapman and the journal by george johnston, who commanded the post established by the american fur company from 1823 to 1825, provide anchors for a monograph that delivers what the subtitle promises: early accounts of the anishinaabeg and the north shore fur trade. author timothy cochrane worked a long career with the national park service of the united states, at parks in alaska as well as in northern minnesota and michigan, and served for twenty years as superintendent of grand portage national monument, on the canadian border about fifty kilometers northeast of grand marais. he is also the author of two previous books about isle royale, an island near the middle of lake superior that has been a national park since 1940. cochrane has worked extensively with anishanaabeg tribal leaders in the area by virtue of his jobs with the park service. both chapman’s and johnston’s journals convey a sense of suffering, tedium, and desperation as they worked to try to build permanent shelters, collect enough firewood to stay warm, and catch enough fish to stay fed. desultory comments on the weather and the insubordination of their men are recurring themes. a typical passage from chapman, written march 7, 1824: “...every thing has been wet through + through but as bad luck would have it i have no peltry to get wet my buildings are worse than any hog pens, i am entirely cast down to see my returns, we are not arrived at spring and nothing done, to say we live would be false only stay and hardly that since march began we have taken no fish until this day” (166) the grand marais post was situated on a natural harbor. the name means “large marsh” in french but may be a mis-transcription of a quebecois dialect term marée which meant pond or pool, such as a harbor (see 44). the site was a stopover for canoe convoys travelling from fond du lac (today’s duluth, minnesota and superior, wisconsin) to the large fur trade post of fort william, at the mouth of the kaministiquia river in modern thunder bay, ontario, just east of grand portage. however, the primary routes for voyageurs led up the kaministiquia, or along the eponymous grand portage to the pigeon river in the hudson’s bay watershed, and thence toward gordon mitchell sayre review of gichi bitobig, grand marais 304 rainy lake and the red and saskatchewan rivers. the north shore was more thinly travelled, and chapman tried in vain to locate anishinaabeg who would sell him their pelts. the book depicts a time and place where geopolitical and economic forces were on the cusp of great changes. as cochrane explains, the post was established by the american fur company (founded by john jacob astor in 1808) in an effort to challenge the monopoly of the hudson’s bay company, which had merged with the north west company in 1821. astor built the largest fortune in american capitalism in the early 19th century in part by seeking government subsidies and support for his ventures. after the jay treaty of 1794, the united states wished to expand its sovereignty west of the great lakes. the “[u.s.] congress passed a law on april 29, 1816, that provided that ‘licenses to trade with the indians….shall not be granted to any but citizens of the united states.” (67). astor himself had lobbied for this measure and he saw to it that some of his factors were appointed u.s. customs officials as well. if native trappers north of the border sold their pelts to astor’s agents, he could maintain a monopoly similar to that enjoyed by the hbc. chapman and johnston distinguish their characters in their short journals. johnston was considerably more loquacious and literary than his predecessor, and, though he referred to his new home as “siberia,” he was somewhat more successful at trade. he wrote of meetings with anishaabeg leaders, grand coquin, espagnol, and maangozid, whom cochrane fleshes out for the reader, with genealogies and descriptions by better-known fur trader writers including george simpson and david thompson. these family histories and others illustrate the métissage of the fur trade. another interesting portrait cochrane provides is of george bonga, and his brothers jack and stephen, all sons of pierre, an african servant of alexander henry, and ojibwayquay, an anishinaabe woman. george bonga was referred to in a fur trader’s writings as “the first white man that was a negro that ever traded at leech lake” (54). for decades the center for fur trade research has been the hudson bay company archives in winnipeg, but the two documents published in this book are not held there, but instead among the henry rowe schoolcraft papers at the library of congress (for johnston, who was schoolcraft’s brother-in-law through jane johnston schoolcraft), and at the minnesota historical society (for chapman). cochrane makes a bid to shift attention of fur trade historians toward the u.s. side of the border, and has written a book that will appeal to academics and local history enthusiasts in equal measure. gordon mitchell sayre, university of oregon microsoft word zahzah.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 211 special issue review essay: the intelligentsia in dissent: palestine, settler-colonialism and academic unfreedom in the work of steven salaita steven salaita. anti-arab racism in the usa: where it comes from and what it means for politics today. pluto press, 2006. 264 pages. isbn: 0745325173 ---. the holy land in transit: colonialism and the quest for canaan. syracuse: syracuse university press, 2006. 234 pages. isbn: 081563109x ---. arab american literary fictions, cultures, and politics. palgrave macmillian, 2007. 208 pages. isbn: 1403976201 ---. the uncultured wars: arabs, muslims and the poverty of liberal thought—new essays. new york: zed books, 2008. 168 pages. isbn: 978-1848132351 ---. israel’s dead soul. philadelphia: temple university press, 2011. 159 pages. isbn: 9781439906385 ---. uncivil rites: palestine and the limits of academic freedom. chicago: haymarket books, 2015. 243 pages. isbn: 9781608465774 ---. inter/nationalism: decolonizing native america and palestine. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2016. 207 pages. isbn: 9781517901424 to even attempt something approximating a comprehensive review of steven salaita’s critical publications to date is a daunting prospect for several reasons. the first of these is rather straightforward: isolating and distilling the intellectual currents that define any thinker’s work across a cumulative body of texts is never a simple task—that is, when attempted with fair and sympathetic attention. the second is more personal, but no less urgent: any palestinian academic who foregrounds palestine in research as well as extramural endeavors knows that the threat of repression is all too palpable. indeed, as salaita himself has noted, at times by way of personal example, the academic embargo upon engaging palestine in its full colonial character is itself an extension of the ongoing settler-colonization palestinians continue to endure. for the zionist project, as with other settler-colonial imperatives, is not only to drive an indigenous population off of its homeland, but also to eliminate all of their historical and cultural imprints as part of this larger process of ethnic cleansing. due to the united states’ active support for the israeli colonial project, american universities, which have also served as strategic sites in the dispossession of north american natives, become disciplinary spaces seeking to temper faculty and student engagement with palestinian oppression. there is thus a powerful, if not painful irony in attempting to index the unique insights of an intellectual who has dedicated his life’s work to making these connections—to the point that the university acted on its authority to discipline, invoking the flimsiest and consequently one of the most dangerous pretexts as its justification: “civility.” omar zahzah special issue review essay: “the intelligentsia in dissent” 212 the third reason is that the damage inflicted by the university of illinois at urbana-champaigns’ so-called “unhiring” of steven salaita extends beyond the grave material implications of loss of employment: it also assumes intellectual proportions, thereby raising the stakes for what would otherwise seem a rather mundane undertaking moved by the motor-engine of academic rote and ritual. indeed, one of the more subtle effects of the university of illinois at urbana-champaign’s decision to rescind salaita’s job offer in 2014 due to donor pressure has been to detract from serious academic engagement with his scholarship. while zionists and zionist-sympathizers on the “pro-firing” side continued to dig through tweets and half-read quotes from texts to find evidence of bigotry (or litter amazon with a flurry of one star reviews), activists and academics who recognized uiuc’s transgressions defended salaita’s academic freedom and right to free speech. in both instances, the substance of salaita’s actual work, not just in the sense of lines in a curriculum vitae, was eroded as the battle for his livelihood wore on. to be clear, i do not offer this as a critique of all who defended salaita. these were commendable and valiant efforts, and an important refusal of the so-called “objectivity” prized by the colonial-corporate university. my point is simply that the effects of uiuc’s actions can also be reflected in the marginalization of salaita’s critical interventions as a scholar. what follows, then, will be a humble attempt to offset some of this damage through an academic assessment of salaita’s output to date, with particular emphasis on his contributions to indigenous studies (a field, i feel compelled to note, that is not my own, though i hope my own training as a comparativist with a grounding in american/comparative ethnic studies as well as research interest in arab america/palestine will partially compensate for this deficiency). while i will not spend too much time on salaita’s first published text, anti-arab racism in the usa: where it comes from and what it means for politics today (2006), particularly as it does not foreground questions of indigeneity and settler-colonialism in the systematic ways that would become more pronounced in the holy land in transit and onwards, i open with a brief reference to anti-arab racism because i believe it establishes what would remain key conventions of salaita’s output: a blending of intellectual analysis and autobiography; an attempt to combine two seemingly discrete forms, the research article and the personal essay (rather than sacrificing one for the other); consistent attention to “popular” news sources and commentary; and, along with this penultimate point, the refusal to obfuscate quotidian phenomena with academic terminology. we can see this methodology operative in salaita’s justification for avoiding the use of the term “orientalism” when analyzing the particular strain of racism plaguing arabs in the us: orientalism has been remarkably useful as a descriptive critique of phenomena ranging from misconceptions of arabs to foolhardy foreign policy, and has seen its use (quite justifiably) increase among arab americans in the post-9/11 united states. the term, however, is weighted with considerable theoretical and historical baggage, rendering it, at least in some intellectual circles, oblique or ambivalent. given its layered connotations and the controversies over its denotation, we can sense in its usage the potential for slippage or a rhetorical imprecision born of a correspondingly ambivalent or oblique authorial/oratical intention. most important, though, orientalism isn’t entirely appropriate when we consider transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 213 the effects of stereotype and bigotry on arab americans who, in a much different way than their brethren in the arab world, need to be located in a particular tradition of which they have been a partial inheritor. that tradition, uniquely american, includes the internment of japanese americans during ww ii, institutionalized anti-semitism until the 1960s, and a peculiarly durable xenophobia spanning decades, with, at times, acculturated immigrant groups directing it at newer arrivals. this tradition, of course, has as its partial inspiration a corresponding tradition, that of garrison settlement, slavery, and messianic fervor, a tradition that has evolved into detectable features of modern americana that, unlike immigrant histories, do in some ways affect middle eastern arabs. this corresponding tradition has inspired the premillenialist overtones so evident in american foreign policy. (14) while scholars such as andrew rubin, sarah gualtieri, and michael malek najjar have revealed how orientalism in fact emerged from said’s early work for the association of arab american university graduates (aaug) documenting the pernicious representations of arabs in us media, salaita’s point is well taken. focusing on anti-arab racism as an outgrowth of orientalism, while not conceptually inaccurate, may at times detract from engagement with the particularities of american racism and white supremacy, which include “garrison settlement, slavery, and messianic fervor” (ibid). this “messianic fervor” would constitute the subject of salaita’s second published text, the holy land in transit: colonialism and the quest for canaan (2006). it is with the holy land in transit that we begin to engage the question of salaita’s contribution to indigenous studies. as salaita himself notes when explaining the inspiration behind the text (which began as his dissertation), while there was no shortage of comparisons made between palestinian and native american struggles against ethnic cleansing (often by the affected populations themselves, which salaita claims only encouraged his interest in the topic), a sustained scholarly analysis of such a connection had yet to be formulated, for “although references to commensurate situations in the americas and palestine are often made, nobody has produced a detailed comparative analysis” (14). the holy land in transit, then, is intended to serve as a corrective to this deficit. the book aims to diagnose the “identical discursive methods” (3) informing the settlercolonization of north america and palestine. salaita identifies both processes as defined by what he terms “the quest for canaan” (23), the biblical narrative of chosen people claiming a land ordained for them by god. however, in both the religious narratives and their settler repurposing, the land is not empty, as the presence of the canaanites in the original exodus story reflects. salaita draws and elaborates upon the work of robert warrior, who parallels native americans with the canaanites in his essay “canaanites, cowboys and indians” (and who also points out that even the original biblical narrative featured an imperative by yahweh to exterminate the canaanites) in arguing that the fate of modern palestinians is also implicit in warrior’s argument. as salaita writes: modern natives and palestinians… can be brought together despite obvious differences because of the specific narratives so deeply omar zahzah special issue review essay: “the intelligentsia in dissent” 214 marking their lives, narratives that have spent so much time traversing the space between the new world and the holy land. (37) salaita’s careful perusal of american and israeli colonial narratives shows palestinians and native americans alike variously constructed as amelkites/amalek, canaanites, and “noble savages” (3), as well as references to “jewish cowboys and arab indians” (57). such constructions are by no means fleeting. yet they are also not mere comparisons, as the quest for canaan is more than just a common feature among otherwise discrepant settler-colonial nationalist ethos—it is a binding thread in a symbiotic, even co-constitutive dynamic, which salaita illustrates through reference to mimesis: it should not be insinuated that these instances of colonial discourse simply exist parallel to one another… i think imitation best contextualizes the type of rhetorical interplay with which i am concerned. more than that, however, “mimesis” also connotes a transferal of text from one object onto another; such a transferal appropriately symbolizes the dynamics of the covenant settlers have for centuries carried across the ocean, with each group copying onto foreign land the stories employed in another foreign land… their mimesis, however, is not merely parallel, but confederated. zionists drew inspiration from american history in colonizing palestine, and american history also shaped the outlook of american leaders toward the near east. (56) this theorization of the dynamic interchange and mutual composition between the covenantal discourses informing zionism and “new world”/north american settlerism lays the groundwork for salaita’s ultimate, provocative contention that the settler-colonization of palestine would have been unthinkable without north american conquest, as “american settlers filled with religious talk were one step ahead of arthur james lord balfour” (80). the united states and israel, then, share far more than a strategic relationship defined by aid and the exchange of military and security tactics and technologies. far from merely a militarized proxy state acting as a forceful representative of the us’s geo-imperial designs, israel is a partner to the us in a relationship that transcends the spoils of war profiteering and the tactical dimensions of securing of global hegemony. salaita’s text demonstrates that this relationship also assumes existential proportions: both israel and the us are militarized settler-states that justify conquest and ethnic cleansing through the trope of the quest for canaan, which comes to undergird even the allegedly secular outgrowths of settler-patriotism such as “democracy,” “enlightenment," “civility,” so on and so forth. for whether or not it assumes explicit religious overtones, only an assumption of pre-ordainment/entitlement to another peoples’ land can offset the breakdown of two contradictory accounts of settlement: one of uninhabited, arable land awaiting beleaguered settlers, and another that acknowledges, with extreme reservation, a preceding indigenous presence (though often of populations who were unaware of how to “develop” the land in question to its full potential). palestinians and north american natives have been and remain subjected to variations of these two accounts. the health and vitality of the modern nation-state thus becomes directly continuous with the completion of indigenous dispossession and ethnic cleansing, as indigenous ties are counterposed to a settler teleology of “progress.” despite their differing timelines of ethnic cleansing transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 215 (having only declared “independence” in 1948, israel is presently engaged in a form of garrison settlement that the us has well surpassed), one settler-state’s ability to fully realize its goal of unmitigated expansion and complete indigenous erasure assumes a prophetic function for the other. this is why interrupting such a process through the demystification of shared ideological investments comes to assume such urgency for salaita. as he notes, forging connections across the shadow lines drawn by imperialist artisans is a healthy way to ensure that occupiers of native lands do not evade their history as conquerors in today’s culture of decontextualization . . . as invaders and occupiers continue the quest for canaan, it is essential to ensure that canaan is never found. (80-1) divergent timelines in the process of settler-colonialism between the two nation-states might in some ways make israel seem a more straightforward example of a contemporary settler-colonial project driven by messianic imperatives—especially to scholars and activists who take the completion of the us’s settler project for granted. various constructions (and even validations) of us settler-colonialism as a past event rather than an ongoing process is a tendency heavily criticized by salaita, and one that he finds prevalent not only among activists for the palestinian cause who see no issue with invoking the values championed to justify ethnic cleansing and even genocide in one settler-nation—“colonial values framed in a vocabulary of enlightenment and civility” (3)—to criticize another’s subsidized colonial project, but also the wider american left, for whom the status of the us as a “post”-colonial nation often seems a given. this is due to the fact that narratives of conquest have been transformed into national imagination… that natives are still alive in large numbers and struggling in myriad ways to regain stolen land and attain selfdetermination is even less important. decontextualization has played an enormous role in the success of american colonial discourse. (51) any truly liberation-focused scholar and activist, then, must remain consistent. to criticize settler-colonialism in one nation-state while uncritically undermining indigenous claims and resistance upon the stolen land of another is the height of hypocrisy. to my mind, salaita’s contributions to american indian/indigenous studies would already have been guaranteed had his text solely focused on the shared messianic conceits informing the settler-ideologies of the us and israel. but he makes another significant move in his second chapter, “the holy land in transit”: making the case for palestinians as indigenous, a term that denotes “non-western, agrarian and communal worldviews fitted to specific parcels of land… not only are the palestinians indigenous to this land [“the holy land”], they are by all accounts the indigenes of this land—whether muslim, christian, druze, or jew” (42). salaita also notes that palestinians themselves would welcome this designation due to its fidelity to their “social systems and geographical location, and because of its political implications,” and that scholars of palestine in turn have a responsibility to explore the potential of the concept of indigeneity as well as the intelligibility between palestinian and north american native struggles against settler-dispossession as a way of more fully understanding and elaborating palestinian claims to the holy land—even insofar as this entails contending with the implications of a pre-colonial past (ibid). these observations, particularly the emphasis on the “political implications” of omar zahzah special issue review essay: “the intelligentsia in dissent” 216 palestinian indigeneity, put salaita in conversation with scholars of palestine such as rabab ibrahim abdelhadi, who in the essay “palestinian resistance and the indivisibility of justice” argues that a paradigm of zionist settler-colonization and palestinian indigeneity can revitalize an anti-colonial framework that recognizes present day israel as occupied palestinian land in addition to the occupied territories, and acknowledges that all palestinians share an equal stake in and claim to liberation regardless of present location (60). furthermore, salaita is a scholar interested not only in patterns of oppression, but also methods of resistance. and so, the text contrasts its analysis of the discursive commonalities of both settler-states against the ways in which north american native (specifically anishinaabe) and palestinian authors “write back” against colonial dispossession. salaita uses the term “reciprocal intercommunalism” to ground this comparative approach to global indigenous literary resistance, or “counternarratives” (61), as well as to accommodate various moments at which palestinians and north american natives invoke one another’s liberation struggles as a way of contextualizing their own (21). salaita’s training as a literary scholar offers a pragmatic explanation for his focus on literary forms of resistance, but this focus also illuminates the significance that narratives themselves hold for settler-projects, a significance reflected both in the aforementioned narratives of divine preordainment used as justification for ethnic cleansing as well as colonial attitudes and policies toward indigenous narratives. for: ethnic cleansing is the removal of humans in order that narratives will disappear… [necessitating] a blinding of the colonial imagination so colonial history will be removed along with the dispossessed…the narratives and counterhistories produced by the dispossessed therefore assume great significance. (62) yet even when an intercommunal dimension is not explicitly elaborated either in salaita’s own critical schematization or in the literary work under scrutiny, the holy land in transit’s formidable conceptual framing makes it impossible to read any text in isolation. for instance, it becomes difficult to consider salaita’s fourth chapter, “digging up the bones of the past: colonial and indigenous interplay in winona laduke’s last standing woman” about how the characters in laduke’s novel “fight to reclaim the bones of their ancestors, which were unearthed and sent to various east coast museums or forgotten in the rush of modern construction” (85), without understanding desecration of burial sites and even grave robbery as a broader aspect of settler-colonial erasure. though not mentioned in the chapter, israel’s bulldozing of palestinian grave sites to construct museums and national parks is an association made possible through salaita’s intercommunal groupings. the converse is true for chapter five, “the kahan commission report and a balcony over the fakihani: a tale of two fictions,” which analyzes two different texts related to the palestinian struggle. salaita’s title suggests that the report authored by the israeli kahan commission regarding the extent of the israeli occupation forces’ involvement in the infamous sabra and shatila massacres of 1982 is no less “fictional” than a literary work by a palestinian novelist spanning the same period. both, that is, are guided by particular strategies of representation, elision, and the attempted cultivation of readerly sympathy, factors that salaita groups under the determining rubric of “perspective” (113). but only one of these fictions is geared toward exculpating the public image of a colonial government and military. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 217 media coverage of the sabra and shatila massacres, which took place during the lebanese civil war (1975-1990), constituted a veritable puncturing of the hitherto manicured image of israel fed to western, particularly us, news audiences. unmediated accounts of the iof’s participation in and facilitation of the slaughter of palestinian civilians by lebanese phalangists, often from reporters directly on the ground, precluded a complete denial of israeli violence. and so, salaita notes, the authors of the kahan commission report partially admitted responsibility, conceding that violence had been perpetrated, but that it was done in spite of israel’s best interests and intentions. the reception of this strategy in western outlets was overwhelmingly positive, with sources hailing the report for demonstrating a “new lesson in democracy” (116). salaita argues that this strategy would have been inconceivable were palestinian barbarity and inhumanity not taken for granted within these very outlets (117). in a gesture that would be taken up again in a slightly different context in israel’s dead soul (2011), salaita here uses the kahan commission report to demonstrate how colonial conceptions of humanity allow for the colonizer to deploy and interpret violence as a means of existential redemption, whereas the indigenous/colonized are merely passive objects to be acted upon as part of this process of auto-actualization. the colonizer’s violence is never taken at face value (either denied outright or explained away through appeals to a greater complexity), whereas the colonized are over-determined with associations of “violence” that precede any direct action and obviate the possibility of exhibiting an untroubled innocence. as with the fourth chapter of the holy land in transit, it becomes difficult to read this episode and analysis in isolation, so that the kahan commission report’s strategy of absolution-through(partial) admission takes on a deeper resonance as a larger tendency within the psychology of settler-colonization. salaita’s sixth chapter, “reimagining the munificence of an ass: the unbounded worlds of gerald vizenor and emile habiby,” analyzes how the trickster/“tricksterism” (147) figure into the novels the trickster of liberty by experimental anishinaabe author gerald vizenor and the secret life of saeed, the ill-fated pessoptimist by palestinian author emile habiby. both novels, salaita shows, employ trickster discursive strategies that undermine dominant “biblical narratives of settler-colonialism” (142). yet both authors’ stylistic post-modernism and subsequent dedication to troubling overly-facile borders and boundaries also translates to humorous critiques of hyper-romanticized conceptions of anti-colonial resistance. salaita carefully lays bare how both texts offer an incisive refutation of forms of indigenous resistance that unwittingly reinforce the setters’ terms and frames, whether it be tacit acceptance of colonial distortions of indigeneity in the case of vizenor’s novel (159), or uncritical/reactionary resistance and redeployment of the colonizer’s language of “democracy” for habiby’s (164-5). salaita’s conclusion, “dreamcatchers on the last frontier,” is a powerful personal testimony of the author’s experience living in shatila refugee camp in lebanon in the summer of 2002 and teaching palestinian students about native american history, culture, and resistance. while their knowledge is far from complete, salaita discusses how the palestinian refugees of shatila in general possessed an awareness of native dispossession and suffering that exceeds the average american student’s. such an awareness, salaita concludes, is certainly informed by their own deprivation as refugees and subjects of ongoing settler colonization. but it is also coupled with a profound reverence. “in the refugee camps,” salaita writes, natives are considered to be decorated veterans of resistance, people who understand the horror of displacement and omar zahzah special issue review essay: “the intelligentsia in dissent” 218 dispossession… as people who have experienced ethnic cleansing, it is neither unreasonable nor surprising for [palestinians] to focus on others who have suffered the same fate. (172) this seems an especially apt conclusion for the holy land in transit despite its transcendence of the literary—perhaps even because of it. for if the stakes of reciprocal intercommunalism are as high as salaita would have his readers believe, then it must have purchase that extends from literary-critical spheres to the quotidian. in addition to references in poems and novels, reciprocal intercommunalism encompasses palestinians reduced to the bare life of an overcrowded refugee camp, denied the right to travel or return to their homeland and deprived of meaningful employment in the country of relocation (lebanon), who nevertheless turn to the struggles of native americans as reminders of the need for tenacity and the rightfulness of resistance. 2007 also saw the publication of steven salaita’s first monograph on arab american literature, arab american literary fictions, cultures, and politics. this work is irreducible to a single hermeneutic category of interpretation, and by design: salaita rejects flatly homogenizing ideas of arab american “identity” and literary form in favor of plurality, multiplicity, and hybridity— necessary critical signposts in the era of a derealized “war on terror,” in which reductive dehumanization of arabs is a crucial component of perpetual imperialist warfare and aggression abroad and justifies domestic surveillance and suspension of civil liberties. while arab american literature cannot be reduced to one genre or function, part of its import lies in the ability to scramble propagandistic caricatures and racist stereotype. i will not spend too much more time on arab american literary fictions due to my primary concern with salaita’s interventions into american indian/indigenous studies. however, it is worth noting that in addition to early scholars of arab american history and culture, salaita cites native american/indigenous studies scholars as his primary influences for the type of classifications and analysis he is attempting to perform in this work. despite the publication of new works on the subject, arab american literary studies remains a developing field—salaita referred to it as an intellectual “teenager” in his 2011 reprisal of this text, modern arab american fiction: a reader’s guide (3-4). that salaita consciously grounded one of the earliest monographs on the subject within the influence of native american/indigenous studies scholars out of an ethics of the need for interethnic awareness and reciprocity is not merely an intriguing piece of literary-historical trivia—it is a testament to the often inherently comparative origins and methodologies of field-formation, and a proud rejection of ethnic solipsism. published in 2008, the uncultured wars: arabs, muslims, and the poverty of liberal thought is a collection of essays on topics ranging from “terrorism,” teaching, the life of the mind, and even the tv show jackass. in some ways, the uncultured wars serves as a continuation of some of the conceptual fixations evidenced in salaita’s earlier works—for instance, the fascination with contemporary pundit/politico culture and the overlooked character of liberal racism were topics of concern for salaita stretching all the way back from anti-arab racism in the u.s.a. and yet, salaita’s explicit attempt to engage the essay form in this collection marks somewhat of a departure from his earlier writings, one that anticipates the character of 2015’s uncivil rites. “an essay,” salaita writes in the introduction to the collection, is eternally versatile: it can do and look like almost anything. an essay can cover any length, from the minimalist to the exhaustive. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 219 it can be prudent or cantankerous, often simultaneously. it can be stunningly revealing or majestically impersonal. it is a fun and rewarding genre, but not an easy one. (2) salaita then goes on to observe that the essay has a rich history in arab american literature, and informs the reader that he will be “concerned in many of these essays with morality,” which in his usage is “coterminous with a committed accountability to comprehensive human wellness” (2). it is difficult to read the forthcoming uncivil rites as anything but a book of essays similarly committed to a “committed accountability to human wellness,” even as it also explores the personal dimension of salaita’s struggles with the uiuc administration. despite the dated status of some of the content of the uncultured wars, then, its value lies in the way it presaged certain tendencies of salaita’s later output. further evidence of this can be found in the essay “the perils and profits of doing comparative work,” in which salaita revisits the holy land in transit and remarks that the text’s extensive focus on the shared colonial language of israel and the us meant that salaita “ended up privileging the [colonial] agents” (104) rather than resisting indigenes. salaita’s most recent work, inter/nationalism: decolonizing native america and palestine might be read as a corrective of sorts to this dilemma, given the text’s preoccupation with the extant forms of and future possibilities for north american native and palestinian resistance. the aforementioned essay in the uncultured wars is further notable for clearly elaborating an underlying ethics to salaita’s comparative methodologies. salaita writes that he advocate[s] comparative work most avidly around the potential it creates for political collaboration, although intellectual collaboration is highly appealing and indivisible from the political. these categories, in any case, don’t make much sense and only retain their use based on a decidedly politicized, albeit supposedly neutral, western taxonomical paradigm [under which] the political becomes anything that threatens the status quo. it is for this reason that i deem the political in indigenous studies coterminous with useful intellectual work. i don’t want to encourage the retention of binaries, but there is no way to evolve indigenous studies in an acceptable fashion without threatening the academic status quo… if the emergence of comparative work can link various communities into a common set of ambitions, then it will be one of the rare instances in which scholarship actually performs a vital role in the world and influences more than two dozen people. (111) while salaita may not be an outlier in his insistence upon the necessity of linking scholarship to community uplift, or his critique of the charge of “political” scholarship as coded censure for a certain type of political work, these concerns are here focalized through the act of comparison. reading the literatures and struggles of palestinians (and, at times, arabs more broadly) alongside and through those of north american natives becomes more than an interesting intellectual exercise. it is an act infused with the possibility for honing and revitalizing articulations and patterns of resistance. it is, furthermore, an act that must be committed in opposition to “the academic status quo” insofar as that status quo normalizes the confusion of colonial epistemologies with a “neutral” or “apolitical” positioning. omar zahzah special issue review essay: “the intelligentsia in dissent” 220 israel’s dead soul (2011) shows salaita returning to and expanding his critiques of the limitations of liberalism and multiculturalism. specifically, salaita takes issue with the discourse of multiculturalism’s accommodation of zionism, an accommodation made possible through multiculturalism’s avoidance of the systemic causes for deprivation and exclusion. as salaita reveals, it is by no means an anomaly that zionism and multiculturalism subtend one another, for “the two phenomena are so readily conflated because they represent the same ersatz righteousness, arising from the same unexamined ubiquity of colonization and structural power imbalance” (4). multiculturalism’s obfuscation of various forms of systemic subjugation through a hollow performance of uncritical representation in turn catalyzes the propagandistic conjoining of israel and zionism with jewish identity, a move that “relies on a host of unsustainable assumptions and dubious colonial mythologies” (9). such a gesture is dangerous not only because it presumes an identity-based consensus on colonial nationalism that erases vibrant historical and present debates about the rightfulness of zionism as a solution to anti-semitism, but also because it erases palestinians “legally and historically from the physical and emotional spaces of their very constitution as a discrete national community” (ibid). in his second chapter, “is the anti-defamation league a hate group,” salaita demonstrates how the multicultural juxtaposition of jewish identity and zionism facilitates the ability of organizations such as the anti-defamation league (adl) to assume the title of a civil rights group while a) being primarily concerned with the unquestioning protection of israel’s image amidst its brutal practice of garrison settlement (44), b) engaging in ethically questionable practices such as working with law enforcement to surveil individuals and organizations (predominately muslim) it deems “extremist” (54-5) and c) contravening academic freedom by spying on professors it deems insufficiently supportive of the us-backed zionist colonization of palestine (58-62). chapter five, “the heart of darkness redux, again” returns to the issues salaita explored in his analysis of the kahan commission report in the holy land in transit. this time, however, he engages in film analysis to situate the notion of violence against the colonized being displaced through performances of redemption as a defining trope of colonial modernity. salaita analyzes three films: west bank story (directed by ari sandel and written by kim ray and sandel), munich (directed by steven spielberg and written by tony kushner and eric roth) and waltz with bashir (written and directed by ari folman). though stylistically rather divergent, salaita argues, all three are connected in the denial of complexity to palestinian characters and the use of violence against palestinians as a mere backdrop for the staged anguish of the colonial psyche. this is “the heart of darkness redux,” the returns of a phenomenon first exposed by chinua achebe and here repurposed by salaita to accommodate the palestinians as colonial subjects: the colonized exist only as passive and disposable catalysts of the colonizer’s painful journey towards greater self-awareness—even, dare we say, “enlightenment.” to return to the issue of irony raised in the introductory paragraph, there is a rather staggering quality to realizing how attentive salaita was to all of these matters well before uiuc’s rescinding of a tenure-track position for his political tweets. then again, a more generous reading might substitute irony for prescience in this instance, as the preceding paradigm of academic “neutrality” makes it possible to read such actions as praxis meeting theory—as the standard workings of the already-named “status quo.” this is, in any case, the attitude with which we are confronted in uncivil rites: palestine and the limits of academic freedom. a systemic contention with how academe is implicated and complicit in the violence attendant transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 221 colonial modernity precludes individualization of regulatory disciplining. thus, while salaita does not shy away from exploring the personal impact of uiuc’s unethical conduct, he also refuses to exceptionalize his case, opting instead to tell “an autobiographical story that is anything but personal” (4). in fact, in a move that is reminiscent of his earlier texts, salaita not only refuses to exceptionalize his case, but seeks to transform it through the act of writing into a narrative with galvanizing potential for academic and extramural modes of dissent: if i could convey a single point about the experience of being fired and ending up a news story, it would be that oppressive institutions can never subdue the agility of mind and spirit. humans can be disciplined, but humanity comprises a tremendous antidisciplinary force. (ibid) true to this paean to human steadfastness against structural coercion, uncivil rites moves across a range of topics, refusing to be limited to a despairing obsessiveness about the circumstances of salaita’s firing by uiuc (though such a move would obviously be warranted, given the circumstances). naturally, palestine features rather prominently: the first essay, “tweet tweet,” is both a frank refutation of criticisms (including those of uiuc administration and donors) of salaita’s twitter use and an exploration of the comprehensive nature of israeli colonial violence and racism. in a fanonian move, salaita grapples with the question of israeli violence by insisting upon the need to acknowledge the colonial paradigm structuring israeli/palestinian relations: …skirmishes and clashes exist within a paradigm of colonization… i wouldn’t argue that all palestinian resistance is ethical or prudent, but it’s important to remember that it’s the violence (and often nonviolence) of the colonized party. moral and legal frameworks underlie this reality. israel, on the other hand, is the colonial power. as such, its mere presence is an act of violence. (17) as with salaita’s earlier analysis of the kahan commission report, “violence” here becomes rearticulated as a systematic (and systematizing) force of colonial subjugation rather than the a priori condition of the colonized. the second piece, “palestine, (un)naturally,” engages the spatial and geographic dimensions of settler-colonization. the piece begins with a consideration of palestine as religious synecdoche rather than inhabited place. salaita notes that this confusion of categories is precisely what facilitates the process of ethnic cleansing, for “settlement and myth are symbiotic” (19). following this, the essay moves to a broader consideration of how the curation of settler-colonies necessitates the reinvention of characteristic environments and topographies. salaita uses los angeles as an example. while not indigenous to the city, palm trees were imported by settlers who “wanted to brand the region” (ibid). many of these early settlers were “spaniards with a religious mandate,” so palm trees were selected due to their association with “the holy land” (20). settler “place” is thus made through the de-familiarization of indigenous place. and as settlement gathers momentum and support, space itself is weaponized: “though it doesn’t physically disappear, palestine is forever shrinking” (ibid). however, salaita dialectically situates the land as both an instrument of colonial erasure as well as resistance. as he notes, omar zahzah special issue review essay: “the intelligentsia in dissent” 222 “animals remain. olive trees still age for centuries. perhaps this is the natural history of palestine: the unbelievable endurance of its flora and fauna… and the persistence of its indigenes despite the captivity of occupied space” (26, emphasis in original). in keeping with the methodology informing salaita’s previous works, uncivil rites exhibits a comparative approach to indigenous struggles, extrapolating upon indigeneity and settlercolonialism by way of alternating reference to an american indigeneous context as well as palestine. chapter sixteen, “the chief features of civility,” takes uiuc’s “retired” mascot, chief illiniwek, as the subject of an extended meditation upon settler distortions of indigenous identity. these distortions provide the underlying logic for a pageantry of racist symbolism, a slew of arbitrary signifiers cobbled together that reflect nothing “authentic” save for the narcissism of all indignant about the chief’s “retirement.” as salaita explains, the issue is precisely that non-native indignation is prioritized over native arbitration in representational authenticity: “[chief illiniwek] is meant to honor natives, but in reality his function is to reaffirm the emotional desires of whiteness” (138). it is not native realities, but the psychic investments of power and privilege that become the determining factors of representation, for “mascotry is an issue of the settler’s psychology” (141). salaita also constructs the mascot as the embodiment of “civility.” the rationale for his termination, under salaita’s analysis, civility is revealed to be a cosmetic emphasis on respectability that invisibilizes the institutional racism that thrives on campuses such as uiuc, and stigmatizes the attempt to name this and related patterns of oppression and exclusion common to the experiences of society’s variously subaltern populations. civility, salaita cautions us, is not harmless politeness, but power, power that marshals “the unnamed violence of bureaucracy and tradition” (145). as it becomes so normalized into the very workings of tradition, exposing this violence is “necessarily uncivil” (ibid). the chief is thus the perfect representative of civility because, just as natives are afforded no say in matters of authenticity, civility is the etiquette surrounding the ability to establish convention at the direct expense of the marginalized. the fifth chapter of salaita’s most recent text, inter/nationalism: decolonizing native america and palestine, reexamines the issue of his firing by uiuc through a colonial lens. specifically, salaita argues that the paternalism at play in the administration’s refusal to consider the american indian studies department’s support for his appointment reflects the devaluing of american indian/indigenous studies departments and scholars, a devaluation that is inseparable from the larger denial of native sovereignty and agency (137). this chapter also considers the relevance of american indian/indigenous studies to palestine studies and palestine solidarity activism (which salaita willfully conflates out of a refusal to relegate “scholarship” and “activism” to neatly separate spheres of activity). ultimately, salaita maintains that palestine work, whether scholarly, activist, or a blend of the two, must systematically take up american indian/indigenous studies in order to craft a truly comprehensive vocabulary and program for decolonization (136-7). the text is in many ways both a return to and departure from the insights of the holy land in transit. for instance, salaita’s neologism, “inter/nationalism,” is intended as a partial corrective to the phrase “reciprocal intercommunalism” that he had previously used to capture the mutuality transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 223 of reference and invocation informing palestinian and north american native elaborations of struggle. as he explains, while the former term rightly emphasized “reciprocity,” it did “not expressly underscore the nation” (xvi). as i understand it, salaita’s repurposed phrase is politically multivalent. on the one hand, it is intended to preserve the idea of a mutual legibility and referentiality between native/palestinian struggles. however, it also builds on the pronouncements of scholars such as audra simpson, glen coulthard and penelope kelsey in simultaneously capturing and evoking the possibilities for global solidarity and work with, among, and between native peoples and nations for sovereignty and restitution upon the stolen land of settler-nations. salaita engages this latter possibility through considerations of how the 2005 palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (bds) can be more explicitly attuned to north american native struggles. salaita argues that bds in fact already implies north american as well as palestinian decolonization due to the fact that it “undermines american state power in addition to the militant colonialism of its israeli client” (28). bds thus already performs inter/national work. a comprehensive ethics of decolonization would develop this potential even further, so that the practice of bds can entail both an insistence of palestinian freedom as well as “an articulation of native sovereignty” (ibid). uiuc may have hoped its actions would end steven salaita’s scholarly career, but uncivil rites and inter/nationalism prove this to be far from true. the spirit and intent of both works suggest that salaita, who has already made great innovations in american indian/indigenous studies through the comparative establishment of palestinian indigeneity and deconstruction of the religious tropes animating us and israeli settler-colonization (not to mention being one of the sharpest social critics presently writing about the university as a site of colonial/capitalist normativity), is far from finished. the intellectual richness and political ethics that inform salaita’s texts up to this point make the prospect of continued output truly enticing. whatever form these future works may take, however, i hope they remain “uncivil.” omar zahzah, university of california, los angeles works cited abdulhadi, rabab ibrahim. “palestinian resistance and the indivisibility of justice.” with stones in our hands: writings on muslims, racism, and empire, edited by souhail daulatzai and junaid rana, university of minnesota press, 2018, pp. 56-72. najjar, michael malek. arab american drama, film and performance a critical study, 1908 to the present. mcfarland & company, inc., publishers, 2015. salaita, steven. anti-arab racism in the usa: where it comes from and what it means for politics today. london: pluto, 2006. print. ---. arab american literary fictions, cultures, and politics. new york: palgrave macmillan, 2007. print. omar zahzah special issue review essay: “the intelligentsia in dissent” 224 ---. inter/nationalism: decolonizing native america and palestine. university of minnesota press, 2016. ---. uncivil rites: palestine and the limits of academic freedom. haymarket books, 2015. ---. israel's dead soul. temple university press, 2011. ---. modern arab american fiction: a reader's guide. syracuse university press, 2011. ---. the holy land in transit: colonialism and the quest for canaan. syracuse univ. press, 2006. ---. the uncultured wars: arabs, muslims and the poverty of liberal thought new essays. zed books, 2010. microsoft word morford.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 336 smokii sumac. you are enough: love poems for the end of the world. kegedonce, 2018. 107pp, isbn: 9781928120162. https://kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/122-you-are-enough-love-poems-for-the-end-of-theworld.html in a recent interview, cindy blackstock (gitxsan), an activist for the rights of indigenous children, emphasized that “you have to build a movement of justice on love” (qtd. in souffrant). the idea of a justice movement built on love encapsulates the heart and soul of “queer bright / ktunaxa and proud / two spirit” smokii sumac’s debut poetry book you are enough: love poems for the end of the world, published by kegedonce press at the close of 2018 (sumac 14). you are enough can be seen as a justice movement and call-to-action built on, through, and with decolonial love. sumac’s story-poems fill the page and the soul with “(big) / little” moments of world-transforming and world-building revolution through kisses, cuddles, intimate scenes of kind and gentle solitude with the self, the body, and the land, as well as ongoing and embodied territorial acknowledgements, and decolonial love-making (11). these “(big) / little” storytellings stretch across six interconnected sections and are presented in a rich array of ways, including: the “(big) / little” form of the haiku; the paratextual photo collage that is the central cover image; the ktunaxa language, which sumac speaks in moments throughout the collection; and through thank you’s, dedications, and sumac’s sharing of “things our women have taught” him (11; 51). sumac’s collection engages with the complexities, potentialities, grief, and hopefulness woven into its titular concept of “the end of the world.” on the one hand, the term “the end of the world” may conjure ideas of an apocalypse. various indigenous literary works—including walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction (2012) edited by grace l. dillon (anishinaabe), love beyond body, space, & time: an indigenous lgbt sci-fi anthology (2016) edited by hope nicholson, and the masterpiece novel the marrow thieves (2017) by cherie dimaline (métis)—recognize that the apocalypse is not a potential phenomenon of the near-future but, rather, is an ongoing reality for indigenous peoples which indigenous peoples have been living through for far too long. the apocalypse is the violent and ongoing structure of colonialism, which has forced—among other atrocities—fallacious notions of the so-called gender binary, heteronormativity, and heteropatriarchy, and which has attempted to obliterate indigenous cultures, identities, languages, epistemologies, and lives. indeed, the onslaught of ongoing colonialism that indigenous peoples fight and resist every day is, to quote from sumac’s collection, “a constant state of grief” (39). in walking the clouds, dillon writes that “native apocalyptic storytelling [...] shows the ruptures, the scars, and the trauma” of colonialism “in its effort ultimately to provide healing and a return to bimaadiziwin,” an anishinaabe concept that translates roughly to “the state of balance” (9). you are enough honestly recognizes various contemporary and ongoing apocalyptic, world-rupturing, and world-destroying realities through story-poems that honour, remember, and bear witness to the exhaustion and hurt of traversing white heteronormative spaces as a two-spirit trans indigenous person, the atrocity of “brown children scream[ing] / their parents locked in a cell / god knows how far / away,” and the unspeakable and unbearable pain that is the loss of colten boushie (cree), barbara kentner (anishinaabe), and tina fontaine (anishinaabe) who, “for the indigenous person in your life,” are family since “when you survive genocide / everyone left / is family” (sumac 41; 43). ashley caranto morford review of you are enough 337 importantly, you are enough is also filled with the recognition and assertion that, despite ongoing colonial attempts at destroying indigenous lands and livelihoods, indigenous peoples “keep going / keep on” surviving, resisting, loving, laughing, and caring (74). “meditating on the elsewhere,” episode 26 of the indigenous-black solidarities podcast the henceforward, posits that elsewheres are “lived and created everyday, but also [are] realms of unknown possibilities” (habtom); elsewheres are the “places we yearn for,” the decolonial worlds that indigenous, black, and people of colour communities dream, live, breathe, and act into being. while you are enough importantly speaks truths about and bears witness to the wrongs and pains of colonialism, sumac’s storytelling also creates radical elsewheres. in these elsewheres, he provides and witnesses journeys of healing and returns to bimaadiziwin. you are enough’s poems celebrate decolonial world-building and radical elsewhere-creation, in scenes containing the everyday acts of love that indigenous people experience, offer, receive, live, and breathe: from moments of “self-love[, which] is a revolution for an ndn,” to erotic scenes that celebrate the decolonizing potentials of indigenous love-making, so beautifully embodied, for instance, in a piece wherein sumac and his lover “take the cadillac for a ride” (sumac 36). indeed, such scenes are examples of the elsewhere-building potentials and realities of the “sovereign erotic,” a concept coined by cherokee scholar qwo-li driskill in hir’s “stolen from our bodies” (2004), and which acknowledges “the decolonial potential of native two-spirit/queer people healing from heteropatriarchal gender regimes” (qtd by driskill et al 3). perhaps “the end of the world” that the title of sumac’s poetry collection ultimately refers to is the end of the apocalypse, the end of the settler colonial regime, and the living into being of decolonial elsewheres. in why indigenous literatures matter (2018), cherokee scholar daniel heath justice recognizes that indigenous literatures guide readers in how to be better relations. justice writes: relationship is the driving impetus behind the vast majority of texts by indigenous writers—relationship to the land, to human community, to self, to the other-than-human world, to the ancestors and our descendants, to our histories and our futures, as well as to colonizers and their literal and ideological heirs” (2018a, xix, italics in original). relatedly, you are enough provides calls-to-action for settler, white, cisgender, and heterosexual readers, which guide these readers to be better relations. everyone has the responsibility to aid in dismantling and ending the colonial apocalypse, and in helping to restore and ensure the radically decolonial balance that is necessary for the well-being of this earth and all its creation. through poems that tell readers that “instead of fearing / always the wrong thing / just act out of love” and “you ask what to do / and i’m telling you now,” as well as poems that say “how to support me today after orlando,” you are enough guides its settler, white, cisgender, and heterosexual readers in how to support indigenous and lgbtq2ia+ communities and respectfully and responsibly aid in the process of ending the apocalyptic destruction of colonialism (sumac 45; 48; 56, italics in original). above all, and most importantly, this collection is a love song and thanksgiving “for the love of all / that is queer and” indigenous—for indigenous lgbtq2ia+ peoples and selfhoods (13). justice writes, “our trans, nonbinary, genderqueer kin enliven this world’s magic” while anishinaabe scholar-storyteller-activist leanne betasamosake simpson writes of “[t]he powerful relationships queer bodies house—consent, diversity, variance, spiritual power, community, respect, reciprocity, love, attachment” (justice 2018b; simpson 126). sumac’s collection transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 338 celebrates this lived and embodied magic, as he honours “this body i am in and the power it can hold” (sumac 24). sumac’s collection recognizes—vulnerably, honestly, and sometimes painfully—the ongoing colonial struggles that particularly oppress and strive to silence and erase those who do not conform to white heteropatriarchal expectations. but sumac emphasizes that indigenous lgbtq2ia+ people will “keep on fighting” (64). this poetry collection gives thanks for indigenous lgbtq2ia+ existence and celebrates that indigenous lgbtq2ia+ people are so much more than enough; as sumac writes, “some days i can see that being here is the / most incredible miracle and it is enough. it is so much enough. simply / being here” (73). the field of indigenous literatures is rich and always growing, containing an ever-increasing and vibrant diversity of indigenous lgbtq2ia+ publications, including the writings of beth brant (mohawk), daniel heath justice (cherokee), gwen benaway (anishinaabe & métis), arielle twist (cree), lindsay nixon (cree-métis-saulteaux), billy-ray belcourt (driftpile cree), and joshua whitehead (oji-cree). maraming salamat—many thanks—to smokii sumac for this important and beautiful addition. the introduction to sovereign erotics: a collection of twospirit literature (2011) says that two-spirit literatures can be seen as “maps and stories for those” indigenous lgbtq2ia+ people “who come after and for those who may already be on their journey, but who have journeyed without guides or fellow travelers” (driskill et al 1). smokii sumac’s you are enough: love poems for the end of the world is indeed filled with maps and stories of love-filled guidance for indigenous lgbtq2ia+ readers, which position the collection as one for and of the past, present, and future. it is a great privilege for the world to be gifted with this book, and we have the responsibility to read this collection, and, most importantly, to listen to and carry forward into the world the decolonial teachings, transformative potentialities, and deep deep love that sumac’s debut poetry book so generously and honestly provides. acknowledgements: maraming salamat to daniel heath justice for his generous permission to cite one of his twitter posts in this review. ashley caranto morford, university of toronto works cited dillon, grace, editor. “introduction: imagining indigenous futurisms.” walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction, the university of arizona press, 2012, pp. 112. dimaline, cherie. the marrow thieves. dancing cat books, 2017. driskill, qwo-li, daniel heath justice, deborah miranda, and lisa tatonetti, editors. “introduction: writing in the present.” sovereign erotics: a collection of two-spirit literature, the university of arizona press, 2011, pp. 1-17. habtom, sefanit, host. “meditating on the elsewhere.” the henceforward, season 1, episode 26, indian and cowboy podcast media network, 12 nov. 2018. www.thehenceforward.com/episodes/2018/11/12/episode-26-meditating-on-theelsewhere. ashley caranto morford review of you are enough 339 justice, daniel heath. why indigenous literatures matter. wilfrid laurier university press, 2018. @justicedanielh. “more beauty, courage, & love have been gifted to the world by trans & nonbinary people than by all their incurious, unimaginative, & insecure persecutors. our trans, nonbinary, genderqueer kin enliven this world’s magic; their haters understand only ruinous shame & suffering.” twitter, 17 november 2018, 10:47 p.m. twitter.com/justicedanielh/status/1064047537739317248. accessed 9 feb. 2019. nicholson, hope, editor. love beyond body, space & time: an indigenous lgbt sci-fi anthology. bedside press, 2016. simpson, leanne betasamosake. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. university of minnesota press, 2017. souffrant, kharoll-ann. “standing up to injustice: professor cindy blackstock on moral courage.” mcgill, 8 january 2019. mcgill.ca/arts/article/courage-act-face-injustice. accessed 9 feb. 2019. sumac, smokii. you are enough: love poems for the end of the world. kegedonce press, 2018. microsoft word 550-3374-1-ce.doc transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 132 mind, memory and the five-year-old gary f. dorr i was moved to memory by the glass. the fragile glass was now the concrete upon which i began to build a reason for why i liked sitting there in that restaurant with my mother. i could just as easily have been staring out the windows of the old datsun station wagon my parents drove when i was only four years old, smelling the sudden burst of coffee as my father opened the steel thermos my mother had filled only minutes earlier. the odors of blood, hides and entrails were also deposited into the bank of my memory. i remembered hanging over the back of the seat, straining to be close to my father. i could very easily have been delivering lunch to my father at his meatpacking plant. only, something wasn’t right. i wiped the dust off of my memory’s photograph. now, i see that i was only straining to get close to my father because i had been placed into the rear storage compartment of the car. if i had been able to keep from wetting my pants, i would have been allowed to sit on the seat. i competed for what little time my father had, and, when i realized i wouldn’t gain his sole attention, i began to stress out; both ends of me grew wet. i agonized over which was worse. i questioned whether the stupid, uncontrollable tears were more humiliating than the wetted pants. now i remember that staring through the glass, away from my family’s glaring faces, was about all i had left to do. my memory has been serving me well since the day i was adopted. i remember being three years old and listening to my caseworker, mrs. arnold. i was riding “shotgun” in her green car and standing up on the same cloth-covered seat as she was sitting on. “do you know where we’re going today gary?” she asked with a great big loving smile. i wanted to hear her tell me again, so i shook my whole body from left to right to indicate a solid no. “i’m taking you to see your new mommy and daddy today,” she said through a smiling, confident face. i grinned and tilted my head back to let some of the excitement out before i burst. i just grinned, swayed, jumped, and shook different body parts to release the excitement as it built up. oh, but she knew what she was doing all too well! she presented the script, a well-worn script, but with each new actor, i am sure she still achieved standing ovations from a heavenly audience. she began, “when we get to your new house i want you to give your new mommy a big hug; can you do that?” i asked why i should hug her and she answered, “because gary f. dorr “mind, memory and the five-year-old” 133 she is your new mommy and she’s going to love you.” “will i have a bed to sleep on?” i inquired, missing the totality of the moment as only a child can. “gary, your new mommy and daddy told me they have a bed just for you—now what do you think of that?” she asked, finishing with a rounded, exclamatory mouth and raised eyebrows, meant to excite me more. i was jumping and waving my arms and grinning. i was grinning for sure. we arrived at the house soon after. i wore my giant green shorts and a horizontally striped shirt that almost every three-year-old is familiar with. to top it all off, literally, i had my big, black, cowboy hat. i remember the hug and saying, “mommy mommy,” but what may have been the most vivid moment probably came at my first dinner, when my identity, as i knew it, was carelessly taken away. mom took the hat away from my bushy little head to maintain proper dining etiquette, and “asshole!” rang from some region of the table, very near to where i was sitting. i said it casually, but with enough force to convey my point: do not take the hat. the lively linguistic abilities, for which i will always be famous to my mother, came from my earlier life with alcoholic and abusive parents. despite the gravity of it all, i can’t remember anything before the moments i rode with mrs. arnold down wiley city road, over the creek and up the drive to my new house. being new to a family was tough enough, but, in addition, they were white. it never bothered me at the start. i knew mom and dad to be just that. my sisters seemed to get along with me ok. i remember once, after a frustrating toilet-training session, my older sisters sought to rescue me from the terror of being flushed down the very same toilet by the frustrated father of a difficult four-year old. yes, that was a sure sign that i was going to be a part of this family forever. i possess a truly unique answer to the question, “what are sisters for?” we moved from that house where dad’s toilet training academy failed to achieve any success. we made it a whole 50 yards north to what we would call our “white house.” it was in an alfalfa field next to that house where i made my first promise to myself. in the moments just before making that promise, i was with my father. something on the tv made mention of the year 2000. i looked at my dad and asked him when that year would get here. he tried to explain it to me by helping me add twenty-eight years to my age then. together, we talked about how much i would change. i thought it was an important moment. i walked to my transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 134 office, which the farmer next door called his alfalfa field. i had gotten spanked for going to the office without supervision before, but it didn’t seem to matter to me that day. i picked a spot, and i got down to business; i started to remember. in that moment, i promised to remember as much as i could. i would be grateful, as a grown man, for the wisdom gained from that promise. i smelled the alfalfa, heavy with spring rainwater. i tried to remember the shape of the clouds as i tilted my head back. when i leaned back, my head touched the red fur on the collar of my little red-and-blue jacket. i remembered mom telling me to put my jacket on if i was going outside. i looked down and saw that i had my all-time-favorite tiny blue boat shoes and plaid pants to remember. i took note of the sounds from red-winged blackbirds playing in their jungle next to the creek and a pair of meadowlarks sitting on the fencepost right next to my dad’s red truck. i looked at the house, just a couple of butt-swats away, and i committed everything inside it to memory. how could i know that as new year’s eve, 1999 approached, the same small child in my mind would still be walking in that field, anxiously waiting for any spare moments i had to share with him. i would never have guessed that my inner child would serve memory so well. for though the saying goes, “if memory serves me correctly,” rather, it is we who are slaves to memory. the memory exists to bind us to lessons taught one day, but sometimes learned years later. that brave little guy in my memory deserves a medal for remembering so much more than just that day. i remember the pain of being pushed into a family, without choice, where we did not swear. i remember the feelings of frustration, generated both by my rebellion and my family’s reaction to it. i remember the feelings of inadequacy from not learning to use a toilet until well after the age of five. i shock even myself with the harsh memory of just “being indian.” i was in kindergarten when boys teased me for trying to become white. i was ashamed, but i didn’t know of which side to be ashamed. was i ashamed that i was indian or that my parents were white? this feeling was never more evident than when we went to parades or rodeos in toppenish. i looked at the other indian kids, and i tried to keep my distance from my parents. i couldn’t bear the weight of the argument that standing next to them would present. it didn’t help any when i got in trouble; my mother would grab me and make sure i got an earful. i looked around fearfully, searching for any indians who might run to my rescue, never dreaming she was my mom. this feeling of shame can never be explained to my family with any success. i guess gary f. dorr “mind, memory and the five-year-old” 135 you just had to be in my black patent-leather parade shoes to understand. years later, an army friend, captain bhatt, asked me, “when did you first know you were a part of your adoptive family?” “the puyallup fair!” i fairly shouted in the voice of that little boy, gary. my family had parked in the back of a huge grass parking lot. i was about eight-years old, daydreaming the feel of my stomach in my throat and the sky beneath me as i looked at a huge roller coaster. fortunately, my dad was watching the cow-pie in front of me at that moment. he grabbed my hand with his huge rugged fingers and spoke firmly but not harshly. “watch out son!” he spoke into the recorder, deceptively stored between my ears. those words were instantly seared into the chest of my soul; never before that moment and never again has my father referred to me as “son.” i knew then and there that i was part of this family. no wet pants or skin color could ever be a barrier after that. a passing girl spoke to her own family in those same moments. “oh, did you hear that, he called that little boy his son, how sweet,” she said to the people on her left and right. a white guy calling a little indian boy “son” was what she thought was so cute; the importance of the moment nullified whatever would have normally made me cringe in embarrassment. many times i have found my peace from remembering those magic words. i discovered many inadequacies as i aged. remembering i had a father who called me his son was all i needed to find my balance again. i knew i had to tell somebody about this insightful lesson that i had kept hidden for so long. i headed for the mall where mom is the marketing director, and i shared the memory of the cow-pie incident with her after lunch. as i finished, we each dabbed a tear from the corners of our eyes. i knew then that i would never have to look away in shame again; nevertheless, as i left the hour-long lunch with my mom, i found myself looking up at people walking by that glass wall again. i turned toward my mother. earnestly, i wished that the sweet little five-year-old with the tiny blue boat shoes and the big wet spot on his plaid pants could have been on the other side of the glass to see that i was no longer looking away in shame. then, those shameful tears on his face would have disappeared, replaced by his huge grin. that very instant, i began to grin; i was grinning for sure. microsoft word 257-2119-1-pb (1).docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 22 never alone: (re)coding the comic holotrope of survivance michelle lee brown “like most native people, i do not perceive of the world of creative writing as divided into categories of prose and poetry or fiction and nonfiction. nor do i imagine myself crossing from political resistance into artistic creation and back again. life is a confluence of creativities: art is a fluid political medium, as politics is metaphorical and artistic.” (haunani-kay trask, “writing in captivity: poetry in a time of decolonization.”) 0. starting from the center i began this paper with the intent to author a piece on indigenous political ecologies within and without the never alone video game, articulating certain embodied material and discursive practices in the making and playing of the game. the deeper and more expansive the connections and stories became, the more i realized that immersion within the game and the (re)mapping of histories and materialities were altering how i thought and how i was writing. alexander galloway states, “[w]ith video games, the work itself is material action” (3). i want to extend this idea of material action further by thinking about praxis on multiple levels: the company and game creation, the play-interface, and now the articulation of these processes through written english. this game is infused with the foundational principles of the iñupiaq people— interconnectedness and interdependence. it is also infused with older sign technologies that are themselves “complex information systems with layers of meaning, memory, and interaction” (loft 172). putting those ideas into action-interface, i opened to the epistemic agency of the game1 as a coauthor of this piece. it has shaped this work at every step, informing my layers of understanding, and remains what i return to for grounding my words and focusing my thoughts. michelle lee brown “never alone” 23 however, as i reread gerald vizenor’s writings on survivance and literature, this concept of co-author became inadequate to encompass the world-within-world of the story, the game system realm, the designers, players, and myriad other human and nonhuman interactions occurring on multiple levels. thinking of never alone as a (re)coded comic holotrope of survivance retains that epistemic agency i noted earlier, but also incorporates that worlds-withinworlds, the “all” interplay of players, designers, and story within the story itself. 1. core samples “when we locate the present of settler colonialism as only the production of the past, we overlook how settler colonialism is configured in relation to a different temporal horizon: the future.” (eve tuck and rubén gaztambide-fernández, “curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity”) this article employs mishuana goeman and gerald vizenor’s concepts as my main theoretical threadwork, as a smaller reproduction of what resurgence theory does on a larger scale, and as academic praxis. in short; this example of indigenous digital media is not new, but a new emergence of a centuries-old way of relating to others, which has much to offer on many levels as it (re)maps cultural practices, deepening and rewiring human and nonhuman interdependence. these complexities and intertwined communities require a turning away from western linear temporalities and theorizations, and a turn towards indigenous scholars who have already articulated theories of storytelling and media. this is not to deny or exclude the invitational aspects of never alone; but by centering indigenous theory, it allows for what mohawk scholar deborah doxtator describes as “points of possible rapprochement between two different ways of ordering knowledge and conceptualizing the past” (34). this approach turns towards inclusive indigenous futurities, while refusing the elimination and erasure tactics of settler ones, as noted by eve tuck and rubén a. gaztambidefernández. at the core of this paper are two foundational concepts: (re)coding and comic holotrope. (re)coding incorporates mishuana goeman’s use of (re) from her method of (re)mapping in mark my words: native women mapping our nation. she defines (re)mapping as “a powerful transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 24 discursive discourse with material groundings… in which i would address the unsettling of imperial and colonial geographies.” she continues to note that this is the work of native authors and communities to “write and undertake the simultaneously metaphoric and material capacities of map making, to generate new possibilities” (3). using the “re-” within parentheses, she articulates a process of traditional and new storytelling of survivance. these stories of places and relational practices are not old, nor new—but a mix of both, allowing for multiple emergences.2 comic holotropes themselves articulate two related concepts: game as world (re)mapping—rather than game as text—and the relationality and connections that reverberate through multiple realms, as drawn out by gerald vizenor. he outlines the comic holotrope of survivance in writing indian, native conversations as follows: so comic holotrope is the question—it’s communal, and it’s an “all” figuration, the entire figuration—you have to recreate it, which is the entire figuration—of the community. you have to create a play of readers and listeners in the story itself. that’s the comic holotrope. (117) i will delve further into each of these concepts in later sections, highlighting them here to underscore their importance to situating never alone. indigenous use of digital media warrants engagement of indigenous theorists and scholars to this digital realm. indigenous storytelling is political by nature, so it made sense to turn to vizenor and goeman’s work on political and literary analysis to explore the concept of never alone (re)coding the comic holotrope of survivance. 2. remedia(l) tendencies “of equal importance in these processes of counting is the dynamic relationship between the physical creation, the narrator, the narrative itself, the act of narrating, and the audience.” cheryl lʻhirondelle, “codetalkers recounting signals of survival” david gaertner wrote incisively about never alone for isla 2016, contextualizing it as remediation within western new media and visual culture studies definitions: bringing old into new, highlighting marshall mcluhan’s definition of it as a process in which one medium becomes the content for another. i press that more is being done here, thus my use of michelle lee brown “never alone” 25 (re)mediation rather than remediation. this is not to completely dismiss mcluhan’s contributions, but to center indigenous literary and political scholars to reframe the discussion. i use three key citations to briefly trace the threads that help delineate (re)mediation from remediation. english can be challenging to express something that, while defined as a “noun”, is ongoing, material and discursive, deeply relational, and always in-process. this paper uses gerunds, verbs and nouns to convey some of that—also emphasizing that goeman and vizenor repeatedly outline the ongoing and active nature of the terms they use. even allowing for some flexibility in grammatical categories, remediation remains fixed to western concepts of time and relationality. remediation also remains fixed to ideas of objects, which indigenous digital media challenges on multiple levels. within these media, objects can be a charge, an infusion of communal intention, and they can also contain multiple crossover points between written and oral transmission. as cree artist, writer, director, and activist cheryl l’hirondelle notes in her chapter of coded territories: what these historical indigenous practices… suggest is our ability to take account of vital information with the creation of a physical object and move beyond what has been oversimplified as solely orally centred transmission processes. the “object” is charged and embodies the interplay of processes between the oral and the written (notched/drawn) used to aid in its own retelling. (157) extending this further, if indigenous relational objects can be seen as hypertexts (angela haas) and/or as living beings connected to the community by ongoing generative processes (jackson 2bears), how could their emergence and agency within a communal digital form be framed as a mere remediating of one form into another? in his essay “mediacosmology”, mohawk scholar and curator steven loft notes, “a cosmological model of communicative agency, then, transcends the simplistic notions of “romance” offered by anthropologists, ethnologists, art historians, and media theorists. there is no “re” for us” (172). here, he refutes the simplistic binary invoked by mcluhan and his “tribal man” who has no sense of past or history, only the present, moving towards a more nuanced and connection-filled model. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 26 carrying this concept further, loft notes other indigenous scholars and artists who see these realms as already inhabited by our ancestors. he states: if we, as aboriginal people, see the ‘internet’ as a space populated by our ancestors, our stories, and, in a wider way, ourselves, then we must believe it existed before the actual realization of the technology. it is then, indeed, a “cyberspace”, attuned to, and inclusive of, our past memories, our epistemological concerns, and the culmination of lived experience. (172) if there is no “remediating” or “remediation”—as this leaves little room for indigenous temporalities and perceptions of time/space/past/future—perhaps there is room for (re)mediation. a form which could take up these past memories, epistemological shifts, and lived experiences. within the set of parentheses the ‘re’ takes on a significant shift; goeman is careful to delineate what the (re) itself does in her method of (re)mapping. i am not glibly assigning the prefix to create some sort of indigenous media theory chimera, but to invoke these generational, old-yetnew understandings. as she notes in the introduction to mark my words: in an effort to recognize the recovery and extension of precolonial constructions of space in native writing, i use the parenthesis around “re” in “(re)mapping” to acknowledge connections to cultural concepts… reflected in their work is an understanding of space passed down through generations, and it is often only the presentation of spatial concepts in new formats that are the contemporary formulations. even this format, however, contains elements of the traditional. (213) [emphasis mine] the use of the prefix within this paper is also not simply to riff on recode/rework as (re)code/(re)work, etc.—though i hope to retain an element of playfulness. instead, i invoke the (re) within this paper to note these are emergences of much older understandings of space, place, and relations, and embrace the concept of these realms as already being inhabited by ancestors who reshape and reweave digital and physical teleologies, as never alone beautifully illustrates. 3. unsettl(er)ing emergences “i think this game is going to be a seed, a new emergence of video game culture.” (qaiyaan harcharek) michelle lee brown “never alone” 27 the iñupiat believe this story, a digital emergence of “kunuuksaayuka” as told by robert nasruk cleveland (with permission granted by his daughter, minnie aliitchak gray—iñupiat elder) is transformative, containing healing and power they feel is desperately needed at this time. interconnectedness and deep relations are at its core, and particular elements resist being dissected or partitioned. to approach this emergence and trace the roots of this articulation of the story, i turned to indigenous scholar and artist chadwick allen’s process of entwined analysis in his book trans-indigenous: to understand an indigenous work, it needs to be situated in larger layers of context and meaning-making. his term trans-indigenous is not meant to create a ‘universalized’ definition of indigeneity, but to encompass ways of relating and practices that can mitigate moving between realms—filling the interface between and interfacing different nations with a myriad micro-connections. as that last phrase suggests, there are multiple realms of gaming, theory, and indigenous praxis to navigate. this particular emergence of the story within never alone is new; it is one more step in a longer series of art evolutions for the iñupiat—from scrimshaw carvings on whale bone to ink and paper illustrations, oral stories to written then printed books—now digital media. what struck me, as i read some of the testimonies from the elders, was their acceptance of this as the story’s next expression, and their excitement. they had seen their stories unfold in various mediums, this was a new (re)telling they could share with the next generations. as their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were already immersing themselves in video games and digital learning tools, multiple translations and world-navigations were already occurring, now they could (re)map their own routes. returning to chadwick allen, he expresses this relational complexity as follows: the realities of contemporary indigenous identities describe multiple kinds of diversity and complexity; often, they describe seeming paradoxes of simultaneity, contradiction, coexistence. these qualities are the contemporary indigenous norm rather than its tragic exception. (p xxxiii) these multiplicities and paradoxes highlight the importance of using native theorists and nurturing a deeper understanding of the elements and communities that came together to create never alone. here i am careful to note that these processes are ongoing, as the game expansion transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 28 releases, articles, books, digital media, and the communities involved continue to grow and inspire further emergences. as gerald vizenor notes “political cultures begin at home” (purdy 115); what the iñupiat and citc have done is examine what was, is, and may be their home. this game is one step towards a future that incorporates their worldview within these new realms. the mechanisms for accessing these realms were already there; the gaming systems and tech their children and community members were using. now it has been reinterpreted/reimagined as a digital articulation of survivance. a story that we do. mishuana goeman describes a process of “unsettling settler space” through (re)mapping with stories: “the imaginative possibilities and creations offered in the play of a poem, imagery of a novel, or complex relationships set up in a short story provide avenues beyond a recovery of a violent history of erasure and provide imaginative modes to unsettle settler space” (2). thinking of this digital realm, how this game space is unsettled, and (re)woven, connecting with other physical and digital realms and beings. these actions are deeply political, but not “just” politics—as allen notes, these are relational practices that move between realms, (re)coding systems and connections, (re)mapping spaces. 4. taproots/taproutes “creative people, however, know that culture is political. writing, music, painting, dance, and voyaging are profoundly political….not only the content of writing, but the act of writing is political. and naturally so.” (haunani-kay trask, "writing in captivity: poetry in a time of decolonization”) 4. taproots before moving into the inner workings and external resonances of the game, it is important to note its roots—the foundational threads woven before the release of never alone. gloria o’neill, president and ceo of the cook inlet tribal council enterprises, inc. (subsidiary of cook inlet tribal council) and upper one games, outlined the communal processes that council engaged in order to invest in something that would give back to the community in tangible and intangible michelle lee brown “never alone” 29 ways. after investigating the potential for growth and return, the council decided to invest in futures, rather than funeral homes (a common investment strategy). after careful consideration, citc inc. partnered with e-line media as upper one games in 2012, the first indigenousowned commercial game company in the united states. in 2014, the two organizations merged with plans to expand indigenous gaming in partnerships with other communities. the iñupiat chose to invest in what their children were already doing: gaming. or, evoking an older sense: playing, interacting with stories. the game systems were already there, the culture (in its early 21st century manifestations) is there. various cultural practitioners and elders are featured in the game and on the website as cultural ambassadors; some are in education (digital education), some are polar bear guards and/or whale hunters (in traditional boats), others are traditional storytellers, musician, and artists. as amy fredeen notes in the very first cultural insight clip: “we are not a museum piece. we are a living culture”. the game world takes an oral story that had been written down, affixed, then unlocks it through (re)newed oral and visual forms, then infuses it with other stories and histories via insight clips, website extras, blog posts, and more. each step along the way, citc referred back to the community to shape their decisions and practices. they left it to the community to decide who would be the voices of their narrators, community members were brought to the design studio (and designers brought to iñupiaq territory many times) to ensure it was told in a way that was their worldview in digital form. visual elements were created using the same protocols. scrimshaw pieces have a long history within iñupiaq culture—images were (and are) carved on baleen or ivory; these series of images are used for storytelling or documenting a series of events. images are read by the elder or carver to unlock the stories within—these were timelines of natural and political events or tales that instilled cultural, social and political practices. within the game levels, scrimshaw style artwork is used in animation sections that begin or end game levels within never alone, superimposed with the voice-over in their native language. much as scrimshaw can be unlocked by those who know the embedded histories and meanings behind it, there is much to think about regarding encoded and (re)coded meanings within the game realm of never alone. several elders and cultural ambassadors spoke of the joy in playing the game, of being both student and teacher. this is not by accident—never alone is designed to be best experienced in co-player mode3—with people playing next to each other, talking and planning, transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 30 sharing tips and suggestions. this was a way of returning to story as a way of connecting—an experiential interface between people and the non-human actors. another non-human actor, the weather (sila) in the game and in the arctic also had a definite ‘interface’ with the designers. gloria o’neill related a story during the hawaiian media makers conference in 2014: the early versions of the wind, sleet, and snow were deemed not quite right by the iñupiat. the designers were brought out to barrow, alaska in mid-winter so they could experience it more fully: take photos, draw sketches, be immersed within it. this sila immersion worked—the next version passed the scrutiny of the elders and cultural ambassadors. it translated so well that columbia university is incorporating parts of the game in a class on climate change. key concepts used throughout this paper are articulated within the game, via twenty-four cultural insight video clips unlocked as the story progresses. featuring the iñupiat cultural ambassadors, they offer stories and insights about the game, characters, and key concepts: sila (the atmosphere/weather—that which is from the land to the stars) has a soul, as do animals, and the land (nuna). nuna is also the name of the central character in never alone. these same concepts, emergences of iñupiat traditional practices and stories, are also encoded within the game-making process. 4.b. taproutes humility and knowing “you are not the biggest force in the world” are key parts of the iñupiat world, reflected in the making and playing of never alone. the making of the game required a lengthy and multi-layered process of community-based decision making and extensive designertribal collaboration and revision. this communal interdependence and sense of connectedness (lateral rather than a hierarchy) is also embedded in the game’s structure and play. when adapting the story for the game, several story elements were changed while keeping this in mind—the boy becomes nuna,4 the arctic fox is added as another main character. she rides a polar bear, which is an actual experience of one of the elders, fannie (kuutuuq) akpik. (this multi-temporal story-within-story-within story is unlocked as one of the cultural insights, fitting with the idea of comic holotrope). balance is also central to these worlds—never alone is a (re)mapping of beautiful forests and waters, but also harsh and unending winter in many chilling variations; even such beautiful michelle lee brown “never alone” 31 displays as the northern lights have a dangerous side to them. it also shapes some of the adversaries in the game: the northern lights which try to snatch up nuna, the blizzard man causing unending winter, sila alannuqtuq—sila (weather/atmosphere) out-of-balance/changing. these are not seen as evil or bad, but beings operating at a different level of intensity, or oncehuman-like agents now out of balance (respectively). for generations the iñupiat have been intimately aware of climate change and the deeply connected systems disrupted by it. this particular issue emerging within never alone—networks within a larger system out-of-balance—has particular resonance through nuna’s journey as a small, seemingly insignificant character up against forces that threatens to wipe out her entire community. on her quest, players must rely on others to advance and work towards restoring balance, even if in single-player mode. it cannot be done by one character alone—no ammo or gear drops, nor cheat codes; reaching the end of this story realm requires interdependence and timing. this is a digital story (re)mapped as praxis, a way of relating to different worlds and realms that players can become immersed in, and (re)shaped themselves. video games are wellsuited to this type of immersion, and never alone is infused with the iñupiaq world—the sounds of the language, the visual images, background sounds, cries and calls, weather sounds—these and more create realm-crossing paths designed to shift us, to affect and alter us, creating or (re)creating connections on multiple levels. yet, underneath these other foundation threads, is perhaps the oldest one—our taproot here is a story. stories matter. as iñupiaq writer and consultant ishmael angaluuk hope states: “we all do stories. we all live stories.” the next section engages with the literary-political-social theories of (re)coding to think about how this story, (re)mapped into a digital space, does renewed life in a new medium and realm, yet retains an ancestral center. 5. (re)coded territory “stories are wondrous things. and they are dangerous.” (thomas king, the truth about stories) mobility and displacement have offered up challenges to indigenous presences and paths/routes to maintain connections with human and nonhuman family. stories have long been used to trace transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 32 the unsettling of settler boundaries, the continued existence and pushing against colonial narratives. as mishuana goeman notes, “remembering important connections to land and community is instrumental in mapping a decolonized native presence” (29). in mark my words she traces how stories “teach us how to care for and respect one another and the land; they endure” (34). part of this endurance is their complexity and richness—multiple layers of meaning allow for open and more coded access/understandings. if “territory… is constitutive of cultural, political, and economic practices” (goeman 34), thinking of digital realms suggests not only (re)mapping, but (re)coding—pushing back against colonial structures which see digital space as terra nullius 2.0. i use (re)code to highlight that these stories are not just translations in a new realm, or game as text; orality and community translation are powerful challenges to these concepts. richa nagar’s writing on translation refers to it often being an act of violence. for nagar, this indicates the translation of sounds to written or typed words—affixing an oral story to the written page, pinning it down, stripping it of further movement. she (as well as noenoe silva) note the violence of translating from one language to another. what i would like to pick up here is never alone as an act of (re)mediation and release, an emergence of survivance. “kunuuksaayuka” is the basis for never alone—a version of an older story crafted and told orally by robert nasruk cleveland. his daughter, minnie aliitchak gray, was encouraged to write the story down; it was later published. ishmael angaluuk hope came across the printed copy of her written retelling, and thought it was one of the best stories he had ever read.5 while the story itself has shifted shape (as noted earlier) the intrinsic elements of it have remained. ronald (aniqsuaq) brower, sr. is one of the cultural ambassadors of the upper one company and never alone game, providing cultural insights, iñupiat translation, and voice over work. he describes his childhood, and being trained, literally filled with stories in their language by his elders, so that he might share them with future generations: “as a child disabled by rheumatic fever, i listened and learned many iñupiaq myths, legends, history and stories from elders that frequented my parents home. i would also be invited by elders to listen and learn my people’s history and life experiences so i may be useful to our community in my adult years. how correct they were in choosing my life path!” michelle lee brown “never alone” 33 ishmael and other iñupiat cultural advisors (both young and old) note that it is common practice for elders to tell young children what they hope they will do or be for the community as they grow up. over the course of their video clips or interviews on the game website, they note how fulfilling it was to express skills planted within them in the making of the game (and its supplemental release, foxtales). returning to goeman once again: while i study contemporary native american literature and not stories from time immemorial… its tendency in a single breath or word to recall hundreds, even thousands of years back by employing community, personal, and historical stories in intertextual moments allows us to see these sets of relationships outside the mapping of the state. (38) breathing life through the centuries, transcending intertextual spaces and the gaps between 0 and 1 in streams of code—these are stories as relations. “the truth about stories is, that’s all we are.” thomas king begins his book with this statement—i use it here as a launch into the next section. these are stories as governance: highlighting the importance of interconnectedness and responsibility to each other, the land, and the world around them. they are also seen as transformative. if stories are indeed all we are, what does this mean in terms of relational webs of players, designers, storytellers, and the technologies we engage with to play the games? 6. net-work: kinnections + deep relations the native paradigm is comprised of and includes ideas of constant motion and flux, existence consisting of energy waves, interrelationships, all things being animate... if human beings are animate and have spirit, then “all my relations” must also be animate and have spirit. (leroy little bear, “foreword”, native science: natural laws of interdependence) these webs of connections are necessary for survivance storytelling to flourish, within never alone, it is an intimacy and interconnectivity through game play, immersion with an old story (re)mapped within a digital space. in this section i introduce my own neologism—kinnections— transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 34 to trace threads of this web of interconnectivity, weaving selected strands into this article. it is intended as a launching point rather than definitive statement—the networks reach out in more directions than is possible in multiple books, let alone one paper. nonetheless, tracing these relations helps highlight their materiality—a richer one than may appear at first. within never alone in particular, and indigenous games more broadly, materiality is more pervasive than it seems. i am engaging with particular indigenous lines of thought, threads if you will, to tug ideas within robbie shilliam’s concept of deep relations into a kinnected, trans-indigenous sphere. these threads are words on the page, pulled from a digital recording or image; what we weave here is perhaps more intangible than tangible, but nonetheless connected deeply by interdependence. as with any deep interdependence, the game, company, tribe, players, land itself have a stake in each other. i take up robbie shilliam’s terms to describe this interconnectedness, but shift it slightly. he defines deep relations in his work the black pacific as: a relationality that exists underneath the wounds of coloniality, a cutting logic that seeks to—but on the whole never quite manages to—segregate peoples from their lands, their pasts, their ancestors and spirits. decolonial science seeks to repair colonial wounds, binding back together peoples, lands, pasts, ancestors and spirits. its greatest challenge is to bind back together the manifest and spiritual domains. (13) binding back together manifest and spiritual domains presents a paradox that digital spaces might help mitigate—as this binding requires materiality. materiality in an extended and very earthy sense, as it cannot leave nature out of materialism, a materiality that does things (wark 14). never alone has a particular liveliness that cannot be separated from the material world, which is foundationally the natural world. alexander galloway calls a video game “a cultural object, bound by history and materiality, consisting of an electronic computational device and a game simulated in software” (1). i would like to decolonize this, extending it further than being viewed as an action-object—but as something which has a particular vibrancy, a liveliness that crosses realms. binding and relational threads are used here to describe the interstices between realms; when we cross over into a different media realm and immerse ourselves in a particular world, touching on deep, global infrastructures of trans-indigenous connectivity. these connections are michelle lee brown “never alone” 35 marked by invitations to participate, but the digital/physical world-making with never alone at its center has been created with iñupiat ways of being. it will take up the questions of cosmologies and temporalities, seeds and emergences. weaving in the concept of deep relations helps encompass further these concepts of relating and moves to self-determination that underpin the story and gameplay, the creation and distribution, the materiality of resources, technology, and future plans. while examining them in detail is outside the scope of this paper, noting their connections to and through the game helps indicate additional depths of this relationality. rather than a massive portmanteau or hyphenated kin-making-digital-physical-phrase, i will use kinnection to touch on this area. this term invites further development and discussion, but if we are tracing roots and routes—here we turn back to never alone. never alone is a fitting emergence for articulating realm-crossing routes, as it draws on the materiality of itself—the earthiness of the console, the travels to get there, the electricity to utilize it. this materiality is in motion, the work-play a material action. returning to galloway: with video games, the work itself is material action. one plays a game. and the software runs. the operator and the machine play the video game together, step by step, move by move. here the “work” is not as solid or integral as in other media. (p 3) here we are still stuck within western concepts of work, binaries, and ʻoperatorʻ versus ʻmachineʻ. galloway does note that “in our day and age, this is the site of fun. it is also the work site” (5), and he takes up the terms “operator” and “machine” not to downplay the fun within gaming, but “to stress that in the sphere of electronic media, games are fundamentally cybernetic software systems involving both organic and nonorganic actors” (6). i would like to turn this line of thought in on itself a bit: teasing out the idea of cybernetic networks into nets and work-play of relational practices/kin-making across multiple realms. seeing these as the threads that bind the interstices, that flow out from and back to the “cultural objects” galloway refers to as a video game. it can be said that, just as the title denotes, we are never alone playing the game; never alone is more than a cultural object, even in the broader game theory sense. taking back up the thread of the game as more than a co-author allows us to present it as a decolonial science practice/comic holotrope of survivance—moving between realms to relate a story of multiple worlds (touching on material and spiritual domains). transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 36 “i think we are more scientists than people realize—we have more knowledge of these things than people will ever know” (angie (patik) kellie, never alone cultural insight video). in the introduction to native american dna, kim tallbear notes the importance of “the practice of making kin” and the deep meaning in circulation, as she puts it: “routedness” versus “rootedness”. in this section, tallbear also thanks donna haraway for “insisting that there is pleasure to be had in the confusion of boundaries—in their undoing.” unsettling boundaries, embracing routedness—patterns and pathways that unsettle settler spaces as they (re)map them; within this r(re)mapping and (re)connection lies an undoing as well as a remaking. what galloway sees as being less than “interactive” (6) can be powerfully generative and disruptive at the same time. i would like to pick up the idea of migration and travel further here to think of routedness and movement in digital realms, pathways and kin-making, and maintaining practices for both human and nonhuman family. revisiting the earlier use of the term root/rooted to view rootedness as planted within a story, traveling along the story route through varied temporal and spatial perceptions, returning back, flowing through, changed but familiar. these decolonial intimacies indigenous game realms offer extend kin-making and practices through various materialities and multiple realm-crossings. these net-works—encompassing readers, viewers, makers, players, and more—are whirling in kinetic webs of survivance that elicit resonances and tugs kinnection threads. for assistance in further tracing multiple narrative voices and connections in these worlds/realms within realms—i turn to vizenor and his concept of comic holotrope of survivance. 7. comic holotrope of survivance: or, when fox is more/less/all “the fox was reborn into a new form. or was it who he really was this whole time?” (narrator, never alone) here we pick up these threads of (re)coding and kinnection to weave them alongside vizenor’s articulations of comic holotrope of survivance, tracing some of the digital-political never alone and upper one games has (re)coded. it is fitting to place the section on (re)coding comic holotropes after kinnections—as it is a communal “all” figuration by an extended community, a michelle lee brown “never alone” 37 (re)coded space. articulating it here remains playful and open to expanded allusion and layered meanings; much like survivance, it is praxis—theory as action. we do stories. linking ishmael angaluuk hope with haunani-kay trask, these “story-doings” are inherently, profoundly, and richly political. before releasing these lines of flight within never alone, it is helpful to revisit various pieces of this concept as drawn out by gerald vizenor. as stated earlier, he outlines the comic holotrope of survivance in writing indian, native conversations as follows: so comic holotrope is the question—it’s communal, and it’s an “all” figuration, the entire figuration—you have to recreate it, which is the entire figuration—of the community. you have to create a play of readers and listeners in the story itself. that’s the comic holotrope. (117) this play of readers, listeners, story within the game is assisted by a key figure: the trickster. “the trickster is a communal sign in a comic narrative; the comic holotrope (the whole figuration) is a consonance in tribal discourse” (narrative chance 9). vizenor delineates the trickster and comic holotrope in a later section as sign and signifier, noting lacan’s liberation of the signifier6 within trickster narratives. i will not delve too deeply into sign and signifier here, as their emergences in digital spaces transforms the discourses about them, pushing for (re)newed ones. but it is important to note this delineation of narrative voices/comic holotrope as the signifier in trickster narratives, and the trickster as semiotic sign that “wanders between narrative voices and comic chance in oral presentations” (narrative chance 189). i do not wish to imply that fox is a trickster in a generic sense; returning to chadwick allen’s concepts, thinking of fox as a whole within the game and the community. “the trickster is a communal sign, a comic holotrope and a discourse; not a real person or a tragic metaphor in an isolated monologue” (narrative chance 9). the particular kinnections for his game allow fox to push back against boundaries vizenor proscribes around tricksters in prior literary emergences: “the trickster is disembodied in a narrative, the language game transmutes birds and animals with no corporeal or material representations” (narrative chance 196). here there is another materiality now intimately involved: earth, metals, oils, plastics, electrical currents and charges. i use ‘involved’ with some humor here—at a certain point (now infamous on community boards and playthroughs), the only way out is through breaking player perceptions of “tragic.” transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 38 vizenor notes the trickster is comic and communal multiple times in narrative chance, noting this is “neither the ‘whole truth’ nor an isolated hypotragic transvaluation…” (12). the tragic is outlined as a linear single story arc that communal comic holotropes resist—as does the trickster as the sign, as does fox as our emergence of this sign within never alone. at this particular game point, when a player ʻwins’ or ‘beats’ that level by making it through all the challenges and unlocked bonuses, a figure comes out and brutally snaps foxʻs neck. this step is necessary, as it leads to a (re)emergence of the fox within the next levels, however it is rough to experience (even for those replaying the game). players react very strongly to the character’s perceived death, the unfairness of that action, etc. fox exemplifies both the comic and survivance—transforming into another form on the next level. as shown by the fox quote opening this section “or was this his true form to begin with?” perception and form are fluid; tragedy is turned into something else, here the comic is communal, shared humor between game, players, narrator, etc. the ‘tragic single story’ thread is playfully inverted, woven back into the larger holotrope. walter kerr notes in his classical studies on tragedy and comedy—there is no way out in comedy, and tragedy is the form that (cruelly) promises a happy ending. in never alone it remains cyclical, we continue on within the game, transformed, to return to the end-as-beginning: the same scene it started from. 8. comic holotrope: (re)coded “the western world is finally coming to understand how our ancestors embedded and encoded our ceremonies, languages, world views, and metanarratives as complex algorithms that refer back to the very creation of the universe.” (cheryl lʻhirondelle “codetalkers recounting signals of survival”) now that we have traced some of what fox does within never alone, as a sign that becomes the comic holotrope of survivance “(t)rope are figures of speech; here the trickster is a sign that becomes a comic holotrope, a consonance of sentences in various voices, ironies, variation in cultural myths and metaphors.” (narrative chance 190). never alone is a shifting interplay of narratives within the game and there is much more to be said, written, and created around the ideas of comic holotropes and tricksters in digital realms. michelle lee brown “never alone” 39 between the storyteller/narrator, fox, and glitches (which often happen through the fox when played by the game system itself)7 there are significant emergences of the comic holotrope: playful, communal, with nuances and multiple layers/realm shifts that push against the “flattening” leanne simpson and others caution against—within game worlds, these nonhuman intimacies and unexpected turns are heightened. all of which weaves into a “whole figuration”/emergence that “ties the unconscious to social experiences” (narrative chance 196); (re)coding these spaces as acts of survivance. shifting discourses beyond critical theory and political ecologies—thinking of this digital (re)mapping of these holotropes as political/cultural/artistic emergences of survivance requires a moment to think about what this term might emerge as in a digital space. thinking of survivance as ways of relating and reshaping other realms within our context of (re)mapping, it allows for invitational play with resurgence theory,8 partnerships and remaking within digital realms. turning to resurgence theory, scholar leanne simpson notes similar themes to those presented earlier in this writing: seeds, stories, emergences in her book, dancing on our turtle's back: stories of nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence, and a new emergence: interpreted within our cultural web of non-authoritarian leadership, non-hierarchical ways of being, non-interference and non-essentialism, the stories explain the resistance of my ancestors and the seeds of resurgence they so carefully saved and planted. (18) in the first section, simpson clarifies that she sees these stories told in print or video/film as losing some of their emergent transformative power, becoming “flattened” and “unilateral” (34). gerald vizenor’s pivotal definition of survivance in manifest manners is “an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry”;they have much in common with resurgence, and, as the site survivance.org states, “[a]n act of survivance is indigenous self-expression in any medium that tells a story about our active presence in the world now.” the flattening she articulates can be understood on some level within words on a page. yet as vizenor, goeman, and others have noted, there is incredible depth and play within this form. leanne simpson has engaged with this in her more recent works: in her chapter in indigenous poetics in canada, she describes how digital storytelling plays a “critical role” in transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 40 indigenous nation-building and resurgence. in addition, these forms work to decolonize and envision indigenous-centered collective futures for all our relations. (re)mapping survivance into digital game spaces traces these relations even further. if we think about spatial (re)mapping within indigenous stories, and the (re)mediation of them into digital environments—never alone in particular—dynamic circular web patterns swirl in an emergence—an imaginative and lively imitation, rather than a fixed representation. in other words: a comic holotrope of survivance, with kinnections bringing depth and multilateral resonances. returning to survivance.org: “[s]urvivance is more than mere survival—it is a way of life that nourishes indigenous ways of knowing.” comic holotrope as a concept is important to articulate through ever-political 21st century indigenous artists and creators. vizenor parallels trask when he cautions: “social scientists take native stories as representations, not imitations or figurations, because they are not literary artists. they’re methodologists, looking for a faux reality” (purdy 116). if the comic holotrope is all communal, relational, and all figurative/emergent; here this conceptual tool is (re)mapped to think of new-yet-old relational emergences, a story infused with survivance, (re)coded for the 21st century. as with the word survivance, the use of comic holotrope here is done not as a neologism in the digital realm, but infused with a “beyond meaning” or “greater meaning” (purdy 117). this is an attempt to (re)code the comic holotrope of survivance into digital spaces, thinking about realm emergences: highly imitative realms with their own agency. the comic holotrope within this world also incorporates that there are actors within the game that are not human: glitches, and ai moving the npc in unexpected or seemingly counterproductive ways. temporal plasticity occurs on multiple levels, causing shifts in relations and intimacies. the game pushes certain questions: what other intimacies get clipped when we focus on human ones? what happens when we recenter affective intimacies on the nonhuman? 9. end as beginning—survivance into resurgence “the lie, the great american lie that we have been exterminated by the colossus of the north has been uncovered… decolonization is all around us. my work could not exist outside this context, nor would i want to write in any other.” michelle lee brown “never alone” 41 (haunani-kay trask, “writing in captivity: poetry in a time of decolonization”) there is no neat conclusion here. as this realm and these concepts (re)code in new emergences, i close our journey together with a look towards current and future projects, which promise to take these ideas even further and deeper. there is more here than can be articulated by the written word. as vizenor notes, social scientists often become fixated on terms, articulations, definitions—which cuts many kinnections that help shape these works in intangible ways. while it is important to attempt to note some of these potentials and articulations, i want to close with the images above, thinking of them as world (re)mapping, allowing us “to see that the map is an open one and the ideological and material relationships it produces are still in process” (goeman 38). the first image is of a game interface as turtle island, designed by elizabeth lapensée, for the indigenous languages singing game singuistics developed by pinnguaq. the second is by lianne charlie, who created gyó/salmon in connection with learning traditional salmon relational practices in her home territory. both women are phenomenal digital artists and indigenous scholars who push, what we assume to be, ones and zeros, thinking of the spaces between them as relational practices, engaging with multiple realms and materialities to transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 42 (re)code digital images and spaces, embodying kinnections and the responsibilities those kinnections entail. several younger and older iñupiat community members refer to never alone as a seed, a story which can unfold further (as it has for generations). as with any seed, they need care to flourish into emergences, which may take route/root in multiple spaces. from a polar-bear guard to a basque-american currently writing alongside kānaka maoli ‘ohana hanai in hawai’i, tracing these threads is not meant to exclude others, nor preclude their unfolding elsewhere, but to highlight how never alone as (re)coded holotrope moves far beyond ‘preserving a culture’ or ‘saving’ a people. it also offers future lines of flight for thinking about (re)coded comic holotropes of resurgence. as the iñupiaq believe, this story is transformative. it deepens kinnections: story and practices of interconnectedness and deep relations form trans-indigenous patterning across human and non-human worlds. to articulate this further—especially how the liveliness of the game interplays with the concepts of (re)mapping, kinnection, and survivance—i close with two quotes from amy fredeen: i grew up hearing some of our traditional stories, but not fully aware of the values imbedded in those stories. being a part of the team that made this amazing game has been a gift. i have reconnected with stories long forgotten, and have been able to realize how important storytelling is for passing on wisdom and values. she invites us to think of stories as alreadycoded in multiple ways: having numerous layers of meanings that are embedded, unfurling in new-yet-familiar ways as they are (re)mapped and (re)coded in different realms. within this unfurling are depended kinnections—experiencing places and ties in visual and aural kinetic environments and networks within networks, expressed through never alone’s comic holotrope: a holotrope of survivance and perhaps (invitational) resurgence of indigenous futurities. as fredeen succinctly explains it: “it’s not one way of seeing things, it’s one way of knowing you’re connected to everything.” notes 1 richa nagar described this process in her colloquium, political science dept. uh mānoa 3.11.16 2 emergence here is infused with deeper meaning by jon goldberg-hiller and noenoe silva in their political science colloquium at the university of hawai’i at mānoa on 3.21.15. they michelle lee brown “never alone” 43 articulate emergence as the shoots of the ancestors: new, but of the same stalk. they engage with this concept (rather than rhizome) to maintain earthiness of these connections and recognize indigenous connections and contributions to this way of thinking. 3 the parents’ guide for the game suggests several ways to co-play with children and adults of various ages and gaming experience. 4 o’neill noted, when making the game, they looked at how many games featured male and female lead characters, and decided on nuna to help restore balance to that area. 5 this multi-temporal story-within-story-within story is unlocked as one of the cultural insights, fitting with the idea of comic holotrope outlined in the fourth section of this paper. 6 lacan cautions against clinging “to the illusion that the signifier answers to the function of representing the signified, or better, that the signifier has to answer for its existence in the name of any signification whatsoever” (from “sign, symbol, imagery”). 7 i have been musing over whether these could all be seen as aspects of the same comic holotrope voice/4th character. 8 i note here there are many overlaps, and much more writing to be done on the intersections of the two concepts within indigenous digital spaces. works cited allen, chadwick. trans-indigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies. u of minnesota p, 2006. doxtator, deborah. “inclusive and exclusive perceptions of difference: native and euro based concepts of time, history, change.” decentring the renaissance: canada and europe in multidisciplinary perspective, 1500– 1700.u of toronto p, 2001. galloway, alexander r. gaming: essays on algorithmic culture. u of minnesota p, 2006. gaertner, david. “how should i play these?: media and remediation in never alone.” ilsa, 31 may 2016, https://ilsaneveralone.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/how-should-i-play-thesemedia-and-remediation-in-never-alone/. accessed 10 august 2016 ---.“never alone panelists, congress 2016.” ilsa, 31 may 2016, https://ilsaneveralone.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/the-panelists/. accessed 10 august 2016 goeman, mishuana. mark my words: native women mapping our nations. u of minnesota p, 2013. little bear, leroy. “foreword.” native science: natural laws of interdependence. clear light publishers, 2000. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017) 44 l’hirondelle, cheryl. “codetalkers recounting signals of survival.” coded territories. u of calgary p. 2014. loft, steven. “mediacosmology.” coded territories. u of calgary p. 2014. mcloud, neal, ed. indigenous poetics in canada. wilfred laurier u p, 2014. “meet our cultural ambassadors" never alone game, 2014, www.neveralonegame.com. accessed 10 apr. 2016 never alone. upper one games. 2014. purdy, john l. writing indian, native conversations. lincoln: u of nebraska p, 2009. shilliam, robbie. the black pacific: anti-colonial struggles and oceanic connections. bloomsbury academic, 2015. simpson, leanne. dancing on our turtle's back: stories of nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence, and a new emergence. arbeiter ring publishing, 2011. tallbear, kim. native american dna: tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. u of minnesota p, 2013. trask, haunani-kay. “writing in captivity: poetry in a time of decolonization.” inside out: literature, cultural politics, and identity in the new pacific. rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. 1999. tuck, eve and rubén a. gaztambide-fernández.“curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity.” journal of curriculum theorizing, vol. 29, no. 1, 2013, pp. 72-89. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln: u of nebraska p,1999. wark, mckenzie. molecular red: theory for the anthropocene. verso books, 2015. microsoft word shook.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 225 keith barker. this is how we got here. playwrights canada press, 2017. 104pp. isbn: 9781770918221. https://www.playwrightscanada.com/books/t/this-is-how-we-got-here tara beagan. in spirit. playwrights canada press, 2017. 64pp. isbn: 9781770918061. https://www.playwrightscanada.com/books/i/in-spirit cliff cardinal. huff & stitch. playwrights canada press, 2017. 120pp. isbn: 9781770917460. https://www.playwrightscanada.com/books/h/huff-stitch yvette nolan. medicine shows: indigenous performance culture. playwrights canada press, 2015. 184pp. isbn: 9781770913455. https://www.playwrightscanada.com/books/m/medicine-shows yvette nolan. the unplugging. playwrights canada press, 2014. 80pp. isbn: 9781770911321. https://www.playwrightscanada.com/books/t/the-unplugging jean o’hara, editor. two-spirit acts: queer indigenous performances. playwrights canada press, 2013. 160pp. isbn: 9781770911840. https://www.playwrightscanada.com/books/t/two-spirit-acts donna-michelle st. bernard, editor. indian act: residential school plays. playwrights canada press, 2018. 392pp. isbn: 9781770919143. https://www.playwrightscanada.com/books/i/indian-act both north and south of the great lakes, literary critics and thinkers such as julian noisecat and madeline sayat have been hailing a “new native renaissance.” yet, while whitestream u.s. theatres have recently been waking up to indigenous playwrights such as larissa fasthorse, mary kathryn nagle, and delanna studi, play development, production, and publication in canada has long been ahead of their southern counterparts, as evidenced by the output of playwrights canada press. even so, the press’s recent publications particularly demonstrate the variety and strength of current first nations, inuit, and métis playwrights. medicine shows: indigenous performance culture, by métis playwright / dramaturg / director yvette nolan, provides a critical counterpart to these plays, demonstrating the web of interconnections between artists, development processes, and production companies as a fractal of “the interconnectedness of all things.” after all, as nolan writes, indigenous theatre calls attention to connection, and reconnects “through the act of remembering, through building community, and by negotiating solidarities across communities” (1-3). as nolan draws upon her prodigious memory as a longtime participant and former artistic director of native earth performing arts, she navigates the web of genealogy of young actors who become playwrights, young playwrights who become leaders, and transcultural failures whose honesty encourages new and more informed attempts. her approach contextualizes contemporary dramas by indigenous playwrights within the playwrights’ own cultural systems, but also acknowledges jennifer e. shook review essay: first nations theatre 226 both the incredible diversity within the “indigenous” category, and the diversity of dramaturgical methods employed by contemporary indigenous playwrights. nolan’s critical overview of contemporary indigenous drama eludes some of the stereotypes common in a settler lens, instead organizing her chapters around concepts such as “survivance,” “remembrance,” “ceremony,” “making community,” and “the eighth fire”: this last title designating nolan’s vision of the next task as reciprocal and informed collaboration between indigenous and arrivant artists. nolan exemplifies her description of the indigenous artist as “a conduit between the past and the future,” and both past and future loom large in these recent plays (nolan medicine shows 3). for instance, two-spirit acts: queer indigenous performance, edited by jean o’hara, includes new solo work by spiderwoman co-founder muriel miguel (kuna / rappahannock), as well as by kent monkman (cree), and waawaate fobister (anishinaabe). o’hara’s introduction and tomson highway’s foreword, “where is god’s wife? or is he gay?,” delineate the existence of queer indigenous community, and encircle that community (or, more accurately, communities) within the broader community of indigeneity. miguel’s hot ‘n’ soft begins with a quilt backdrop, like many of spiderwoman’s performances, but quickly departs into a romp of lesbian discovery, where a hairy woman’s body reminds miguel of bored coyote, and female coyote sends the performer back to a giggling telephone flirtation. miguel simultaneously embraces her role as indigenous theatrical elder and refuses to let that role predict her body or her life. meanwhile, kent monkman’s diva drag persona miss chief eagle testickle dons stilettos and feathers to directly address enduring misrepresentations of indigenous peoples by holding a séance with painters eugène delacroix, paul kane, and george catlin, where she first eviscerates them and then invites the audience to “bring back” the “dance to the berdache,” or two-spirit, in clubtrack remix. in taxonomy of the european male, as the title suggests, miss chief flips the script to reveal the absurdity of supposedly scientific racialization. as for the more recent past, of course the dominance of the “truth and reconciliation” process that shadows all recent discussions of indigeneity in what is currently known as canada spills into indigenous theatrical creations. after all, while canada’s truth and reconciliation commission (trc), convened as a result of the indian residential schools settlement agreement of 2007, “concluded” in 2015 with a lengthy report, indigenous playwrights have long been grappling with the ongoing colonial legacies of the residential school system. nolan calls the school system “an identifiable villain with a contained timeline,” not separate from the larger effects of colonization, but more “obviously intentional and institutionalized” (nolan medicine shows 13). judging by the recent publications of playwrights canada press, however, recent plays by first nations, inuit, and métis playwrights make those connections between current issues and intergenerational trauma, particularly from residential schools, even more explicitly. theatre has often played a role in the difficult processes of restorative justice instigated by trcs around the world. art has the advantage of taking multiple approaches to testimony, as well as experimenting with multiple reactions, as jane taylor has noted in reflecting upon her play ubu and the truth commission, created with handspring puppets for the south african trc. even within the collection indian act: residential school plays, edited by donna-michelle st. bernard, styles and approaches run a wide gamut: from nolan’s dear mr. buchwald, both a multimedia documentary of nolan’s mother’s life and a bitterly blunt account of their family’s transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 227 struggle to receive her survivor settlement; to michael greyeyes’ (plains cree) nôhkom, another first-person, yet lyrical effort to recover what he can of his grandmother’s story from scraps and memories; to tara beagan (ntlaka’pamux)’s they know not what they do, where characters both testify as elders and dramatize their early childhood experiences; to the naturalistic young group casts of larry guno (nisga’a)’s bunk #7, set in a residential school in the 1960s, and curtis peeteetuce (cree)’s kihēw, set in 2007 in the shell of an old school, where teens find more than they bargained for looking for ghosts; to the most naturalistic and yet stunningly openended two-person confrontation between former student and former teacher, god and the indian, by drew hayden taylor (ojibway). god and the indian encapsulates many pitfalls and doubts inevitable in a reconciliation process that relies upon memory and the trauma inherent in describing trauma. his title refers to the play’s only two characters: a boarding school survivor who traces all the pain of her life to her abuse at school, and a now-celebrated priest whom she believes to be her abuser. at the same time, the title points to the duo’s imbrication in a huge system and a long history of churchdriven cultural genocide. taylor skillfully draws the audience into the survivor’s hope that truth will lead to reconciliation and peace; instead, as the priest insists that it wasn’t him, she starts to question her own memories, and we as audience start to question whether any resolution could be possible. we become complicit in the desire for story patterns and tidy endings, for reconciliation at the expense of restorative justice. taylor leaves us as unsettled as history. tara beagan and yvette nolan’s contributions to the anthology exemplify the power of multimedia technologies in performing archives. in they know not what they do, beagan’s actors play their characters both as small children and as aged survivors except for the children who did not live to age. the cruelties of inspections, hair cutting, stern incomprehensible speeches, punishment, and suicide play mostly through multimedia images. although moments of theatrical beauty intercut these horrors (notably an aurora borealis springing forth from a suitcase), the play’s tone remain elegiac from the children’s first day of school through their testimony. as one says, “seems unfair to be sitting here telling my story when so many never will. but… hopefully our telling will honor them somehow. … those schools did what they were supposed to do. took us from home. … for good” (st. bernard 157-9). beagan’s stage directions actually include the directive “hammer home some archival images,” and her play ends with “harper’s apology on sardonic loop”; after the testimonies of what can never be undone or returned, the repeated “and we are sorry. and we apologize” rings bitterly (st. bernard 159). within the students’ survival, though, and their telling, live their ancestors’ stories. what they need, what these plays provide, is the “string to build [their] stories on” (st. bernard 152). meanwhile, nolan makes use of projections to share documents and photographs in counterpoint with her letter to the lawyer who worked with her family to secure her mother’s settlement as a residential school survivor. commissioned by a graduate law students’ association from native earth performing arts, the spoken letter draws attention to the years-long process of securing the settlement, and to the system that creates even greater obstacles to families with fewer resources, a system that continues to make money “off the first people of this land, still, after all this time, all the while complaining that we should just get over it, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and stop being a drain on the resources” (st. bernard 353-4). it’s not about the money, nolan’s jennifer e. shook review essay: first nations theatre 228 speaker insists, she’s given away her share, and yet the money exemplifies the ongoing exploitation of her family. meanwhile, the archival projections also insist that it’s about the people: photographs of her mother insist upon her unique humanity, from her teenage years to her young wedding to her status card to her young children to her grown children. the projections also allow educational text to intersperse with the reading of words from the royal commission on aboriginal peoples, summarizing the trc process and its findings, and the four principles for “basis for a renewed relationship: recognition, respect, sharing, and responsibility.” nolan’s play, and the anthology, end with “the road forward” (also a chapter heading in medicine shows). the road forward, nolan’s projected photos insist, includes indigenous people, living and working and being in the present in all their variety. as her stage directions celebrate, “there are so many of them” (st. bernard 355-6). like many composers in a non-mainstream, or non-whitestream community, indigenous playwrights have to attend to insider and outsider audiences or make an intentional decision to let non-indigenous audiences not understand. nolan describes the course of indigenous art about the residential school system as a “long and often painful process of education for a canadian public that was largely oblivious of its existence” (nolan, medicine shows 14). the plays included in indian act anticipate a spectrum of audiences, working toward healing and community building all the way around the eighth fire. editor st. bernard highlights the international responsibilities of settler-colonial governments by including the un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, article 11, in the collection’s appendix. in this context it serves as both documentation of indigenous rights and a call for settler readers to continue their education and work for equity beyond the limits of the official trc process. the title, meanwhile, refers to the indian act of 1884 that created the residential school systems. the titular play on words gives agency to the indigenous actors but also calls up the long stage tradition of redface, acts of representation whose stage popularity affect the treatment of real indigenous people in daily life. editor donna-michelle st. bernard prefaces the collection with a thoughtful meditation on what she didn’t learn in the canadian school system as a young immigrant, what she didn’t know even as an adult theatre practitioner, yet what she now sees continuing in, for example, “the short life and tragic death of tina fontaine while in government care,” proving that “while the language of the indian act policies have been revised and redacted, the institutional culture they represent is implicit, pervasive.” as a non-indigenous ally, st. bernard wields her “we” gloriously, speaking to her fellow arrivant canadians (and by extension north americans), “maybe we can all excuse ourselves for what we weren’t told, as a child nation. also, maybe it’s time to grow up, to take responsibility…. what happened here is part of our story, a part that is context to all other struggles in this place” (st. bernard x-xi). she acknowledges survivors’ right to their silence, and the generosity of their testimony and their research. in a “dialogue” preface, daniel david moses (delaware / tuscarora) declares that the collection’s plays can “show us how to heal” (st. bernard vii). melanie j. murray (métis) particularly connects contemporary lives with historic injustice by beginning with a protagonist who doesn’t even know her indigenous ancestry. in a very polite genocide or the girl who fell to earth, josie has an unexpected emotional response when giving her university research paper on “the devastation of the métis”; her slow process of reconnecting with her birth family parallels her grandfather’s reticence to lead as an elder, and in overlapping time periods, her grandparents’ childhood at residential schools, her grandfather’s transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 229 post-war ptsd, her grandmother’s addiction after losing her children, her uncle’s sexual abuse and depression. josie’s character embodies generational isolation, but as yvette nolan notes, the play “makes … a community… that has been shattered and dispersed by residential schools, the 1960s scoops, and internalized racism born of shame and dislocation.” the time travel, or timemashup, works with josie to “make the connections to become whole again,” until in “the final scene of the play, the playwright makes a community of a group that has until now not known its connection. …three generations are connected, listening to one of the oldest stories” (nolan medicine shows 83-4, 87). with the help of a rougarou, “a shape-shifting supernatural creature that keeps nudging the reluctant student to look at the things she has been avoiding or denying all of her life,” josie unites pieces of self, pieces of community, and pieces of stories, “making connections about her own history and the history of the country in which she lives” (nolan medicine shows 86, 84). josie’s and other characters’ repeated insistence that they “don’t know” and aren’t up to the task dramatizes the need for everyone to begin somewhere in grappling with the past and its legacy. therefore, murray’s contribution to indian act bridges to other crises to which north american settler governments are slowly waking up, such as the decades-long crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people, a movement that has done much awareness-building through art and online with the hashtags #mmiw, #mmiwg, and #mmiwg2s. tara beagan, who attends to child characters in her boarding school play, gives all of her wrenching drama in spirit to direct address by a “fictionalized” murdered girl “inspired by all too many true stories” (beagan iii). in spirit’s epigraph connects #mmiwg2s to history of cultural genocide, declaring, “a missing child is an unquantifiable symptom of the greed and corruption of society. … this play is for those children who bear the weight of the ways in which this world has failed them” (beagan i). in spirit provides an exquisite example of finding broad applicability through the specific. beagan uses ntlaka’pamux words, and notes that the play is meant to honor a specific loss, with the permission of the lost girl’s mother, but she changes names and identifying details. here again, video and sound augment the raw simplicity of solo performance sometimes providing flashbacks of happier memories, sometimes demonstrating the distortion that young molly experiences as she tries, post-mortem, to remember what happened to her. molly speaks directly to her audience, but doesn’t know why they are there any more than she knows where she is. her “do you see me? feels like you’re looking about me. but not really at me” speaks to the potential voyeurism of the audience relationship as well as the way that individual lives dissolve into the statistics (beagan 6). molly literally pieces together her smashed bike while telling stories about her family and her dog and her friends and her birthday the kind of stories a not-quite-thirteen-year old girl tells, about her plans for holidays and how she and her best friend will live in a house together when they grow up. molly doesn’t realize that the bike she’s reassembling is her own, but bits of the story of the man in the truck who asked her questions keep surfacing to puncture her young happiness. she tries to hide from sounds of her attack but keeps finding the bravery to pick up the bike pieces and tell her strange quiet adult audience about how her friend with brothers taught her to “become dead weight” to stop somebody from fighting them. molly, however, knows more than one wants a not-quite-thirteen-year-old to know. she knows that “that’s only if someone’s worried about getting in trouble…. some people don’t care about trouble. that’s when you have to be really, really, smart and brave” (beagan 15). consequently, the horrific reality of girl’s death inevitable as any plot softens enough to withstand its telling, but also lands all the more jennifer e. shook review essay: first nations theatre 230 painfully because we see it land on her, a girl we now know. as molly spins her tales of family and friends, she illustrates nolan’s point about community. the loss of molly will resonate through a long network. molly’s spirit, though, draws upon that network in death just as she did in life: just as she dealt with racist teachers by laughing about how adults can be dumb, just as she notes that dogs and people only grow up to be mean if someone was mean to them, just as she cried hardest when she realized that each of her run-over dogs were run over by people who chose to leave them. remembering how her yuh’yuh (grannie) told her that everything has spirit, and that a funeral would help her let go of her dog, even though she was sick of funerals, remembering how they told stories about the dog, and then the wind “went shwushhhhup the trees,” that “yuh’yuh said it’s [his] spirit going. freefree,” and then she went about her daily routine missing him but that each day got easier (beagan 36). that understanding, that reassurance that molly’s spirit gives back to her audience, that validation for the telling of stories of the lost, brings molly to recognize her bike, and to tell what happened to her, even to see her body. on the video screen, molly remains “lifeless on the ground… as live molly walks away” (beagan 39). beagan’s play manages a tone both tender and brutal, funny and childlike and devastating. it allows molly, standing fictionally in for so many real lost children, to be a child, and to craft a full life in stories even in the shadow of her death. it provides a ceremony for letting go, but its last sounds, of the truck on gravel, refuse to suggest any false resolution for an ongoing epidemic. similarly, cliff cardinal’s dually-published solo pieces, huff & stitch, allow their young characters their childhood, drawing strength from the space of the play to… well, play. by speaking directly to the audience, molly and huff’s wind and stitch’s kylie conjure what is lost, what is constantly being lost, what could have been and could be salvaged, protected. yet where beagan maintains a mostly gentle touch, cardinal thrusts his audiences into a brittle, devouring world. stitch begins at kylie’s job acting in porn videos; more specifically, it begins with kylie proclaiming, “you’re sick. … but the ugly truth is that i need you. … i won’t be asking much of you. just do what you always do. watch” (cardinal 59). although she addresses an internet audience, she literally addresses the theatre audience, who see behind the scenes of her life, but also must watch all of her pain, her addiction, her struggle for custody of her daughter, her dangerous and humiliating jobs, and her personified persistent yeast infection. huff also “implicates” the audience in its first moments, as the lights come up on a young man with his hands tied behind his back and a plastic bag over his head; he asks audience members to help him remove the bag, ensuring that from the beginning, the audience must face the consequences of their own lack of action. like beagan, cardinal worked as an actor before writing, and his early experiences included working with nolan and with native earth performing arts. he had performed in the successful one-man piece tales of an urban indian, and nolan notes that his huff, written ten years later, echoes that earlier “story of survival” but with “even more harrowing” stakes (nolan medicine shows 28). once again, the young protagonist wind, who stops his own suicide attempt in the first scene, has his own very specific memories to share, but once again his life is entangled in historical and social forces. even the kids on the bus know that “the statistical rate of suicide for first nations living on the reserve is the highest in the world,” so wind knows that his mother’s and brother’s suicides connect to the problems of their school system, his other brother’s fetal alcohol syndrome and sexual abuse, his father’s violence, and all three brothers’ huffing of gas transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 231 (cardinal 26). wind assigns the audience the role of “imaginary friends who exist as a result of self-asphyxiation, gas huffing, lysol, or a combination of all three” (nolan medicine shows 29). nolan admits that stitch must be driven by a magnetic performer in order for its power to cohere. the same can be said of huff, but its rhythms and shifts between roles, its understanding of spare production flexibility and audience interaction speaks to cardinal’s deep knowledge of shared emotion and energy. perhaps it’s cardinal’s time inhabiting huff as performer that yields such a muscular, lean, charming yet brutal portrait of the play’s resilient boys. cardinal has said that he wants huff “to inspire hope, not hopelessness” (nolan medicine shows 30). while the play’s dark content makes hope feel unlikely, the energy and love of a great solo performer can bring it back, as can the brothers’ relationship as described by wind. huff’s scared gift was that he could “make people feel love just by blowing. like this: whooosh,” and at the end of the play, when wind seems once more lost beyond all hope, the whooosh returns to him, and he removes his handcuffs and the plastic bag, choosing hope, inspired by brother’s memory preserved in story (cardinal 7). even with only one body onstage, indigenous storytellers have long known how to embody community. nolan’s own play, the unplugging, and keith barker’s this is how we got here present survivor stories as well, but in some senses more whimsically. in dialogue that hews between realism and fable, these two plays dramatize community more than identifiable issues or identities. the unplugging presents a post-apocalyptic, post-electric landscape; its coprotagonists, two women in their fifties who’ve been exiled from their community because of their age, learn to live on their own through memories of grandmother’s teachings, and then must decide whether to share their knowledge with their banishers. the characters’ indigeneity emerges in small pieces, like remembering how to set a trap, then remembering the word for rabbit. yet its humor, its validation of elders and long memory, and its concern with relationships emphasize nolan’s points about making community. as rachel ditor’s introduction points out, the play addresses both “small, domestic negotiations between people and the vast landscapes of our negotiations with nature… prompt[ing] us to think about our relationship to the land, our relationship to knowledge and how we acquire it and to the construction and nurturing of community” (nolan unplugging iii). in medicine shows, nolan quips that she wrote the unplugging “to see if [she] was still a playwright” as she left her administrative home. she identifies its “starting point [as] an athabaskan story, which was told by velma wallis and published in 1993 as two old women, about two women who are exiled from their community and must remember their traditional knowledge in order to survive” (nolan medicine shows 88). while the original was set in precontact times, nolan’s resetting continues to think into the time of the eighth fire. barker’s this is how we got here contains even fewer overt markers of indigeneity, yet it too stages remaking of community as survivance. in fact its title could easily match the last chapter of nolan’s essays, this is how we go forward. barker (algonquin métis) follows up his first play, the hours that remain, which dramatized #mmiwg stories, with another dexterously woven exploration of trauma’s repercussions on a family in this is how we got here. as the anniversary of their son craig’s suicide approaches, a family fights the disintegration of their relationships with each other in scenes that alternate with a tale of a storytelling fox who goes in search of his own forgotten story. the fox interludes both parallel and ground the swirl of human anger and loss, connecting to happy memories of craig’s childhood books and to a present-day jennifer e. shook review essay: first nations theatre 232 fox who lingers in the backyard, who craig’s mom believes to be his spirit. the first scene opens with craig’s father and uncle looking for craig’s mom, who has gone missing. only as the following scenes jump back and forth does the exposition unfold, how the mystery of craig’s suicide one year before sent fractures of blame and grief between his parents and their best friends. the final scene returns to the search but finds craig’s mom watching the body of the fox in the road. as the parents plan to bury the fox, they “lean into each other” again, and as the lights fade, the audience hears craig’s voice for the last and only time, his last voicemail message, a “slice of life, casual, everyday message” that his mom has been grasping as tightly as she grasps a mysterious egg brought to her by the fox (barker 86). while the play resonates with the pain of broken connections and bad medicine, it also takes time for spirit, and for humor, notably when craig’s aunt tries to shoo away the fox, yelling and just because i’m yelling at you doesn’t mean i think you are who she says you are, ‘cause you’re not! yeah yeah yeah, tilt your head, you smug little… what do you want from me? … there’s nothing left. you’ve taken it all away, and now it feels like…like i loved you too much… i am so mad at you and i have never been mad at you in my whole life ever. … well don’t just stand there, say something, would you? …yeah, you’re nothing but a fox (barker 70). while barker doesn’t identify his characters as indigenous, he writes from intimate knowledge of the youth suicide epidemic in indigenous communities, and like beagan and the playwrights in indian act, barker creates ceremony of collective grief in the name of collective healing. the play’s ceremony reminds us that we all carry stories of each other, as barker’s fox story elaborates: and when the sun returned the next morning, life continued as it always had, and stories continued as they always do. for you see, the fox did not understand that our stories are not just ours to tell. other people tell them too, for our stories live in the people around us. and when we lose our way, when we feel like we can’t remember our own story anymore, and that it might be coming to an end that everything is going to be okay: because when we can’t tell our own story, the people in our lives tell our story for us. (barker 80) in past decades, nolan found that whitestream audiences complained about feeling sad and guilty during indigenous plays, and the few successful plays seemed “to be reinforcing the same theme: first nations are damaged, and even within our own communities, we cannot heal.” yet these recent plays offer a way forward indeed: telling the stories together, around the eighth fire. although indigenous stories and people are so much more than traumas, nolan gives the trc, along with idle no more, some credit in starting the discussion about the relationship between indigenous communities and settler and arrivant communities “to work together to achieve justice, to live together in a good way.” she declares that “indigenous performance offers one of the most generative means for indigenous people and canadians to explore their shared history and work towards some kind of conciliation” (nolan medicine shows 117, 17). with nolan’s transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 233 historical and conceptual guide, these recent plays offer all of north america a remarkable reading and viewing list. jennifer shook, oklahoma state university works cited noisecat, julian brave. “tommy orange and the new native renaissance,” the paris review, june 29, 2018. sayet, madeline. “native women rising,” american theatre magazine. april 2018. taylor, jane. ubu and the truth commission. university of cape town. press, 1998. microsoft word contributors 5_1.docx contributors 360 contributors guest editors rebecca macklin is a phd candidate in comparative literature at the university of leeds and was 2017-18 fulbright visiting student researcher in english at cornell university, where she was affiliated with the american indian and indigenous studies program. her research is focused on native american and south african literary engagements with capitalism, (de)coloniality, and environmental justice and she has had writing published in native american and indigenous studies and wasafiri. she is interested in how the arts can be used as a tool for youth empowerment and has facilitated participatory arts workshops for young people in south africa, as a project facilitator with changing the story (https://changingthestory.leeds.ac.uk/) and board trustee for the bishop simeon trust (http://www.bstrust.org/). eman ghanayem is a phd candidate in english at the university of illinois at urbanachampaign. her research examines palestinian and american indian literatures, and the larger context of global indigenous and refugee narratives, through a framework of interconnected settler colonialisms and comparative indigeneities. eman can be reached at e.ghanayem@gmail.com. contributors dr. vanessa anthony-stevens, phd., is an assistant professor of social and cultural studies in the department of curriculum and instruction, university of idaho. as an educational anthropologist, vanessa is interested in the intersections of policy and practice in public education and examines the ways minoritized communities strategically navigate historically oppressive institutions for purposes of self-determination and social transformation. she is the principal investigator and director of indigenous knowledge for effective education program (ikeep) at the university of idaho. vanessa is a mother, a former k-8 classroom teacher, and an educator committed to projects of decolonization and educational sovereignty. dr. kari a. b. chew is a chickasaw citizen and postdoctoral fellow for neⱦolṉew̱ ‘one mind, one people’ at the university of victoria’s department of indigenous education. her scholarship focuses on the motivations and experiences of adult additional language learners who are reclaiming their indigenous heritage languages. her current research considers the role of technology in connecting learners who live outside their communities to their languages. she earned her doctorate in language, reading, and culture from the university of arizona in 2016 and was awarded a hunt postdoctoral fellowship, which supported her contributions to this manuscript, in 2018. dr. amal eqeiq is a native palestinian born in the city of al-taybeh in israel/palestine. she is an assistant professor of arabic studies and comparative literature at williams college. her research interests include: modern arab literature, popular culture, palestine studies, feminism(s), performance studies, translation, indigenous studies in the americas, and literature of the global south. she is currently completing her manuscript, indigenous affinities: a comparative study in mayan and palestinian narratives. amal is also a creative writer and has published a number of short stories and essays in mada masr, jadaliyya and transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 361 several anthologies, including being palestinian (2017) and min fami: arab feminist reflections on identity, resistance and space (2014). her translation of selected poems by hussein albarghouti (arabic-english) and miguel ´angel asturias (spanish-arabic) appeared in jadaliyya (2011 & 2017). amal keeps a facebook blog called “diaries of a hedgehog feminist” and is currently writing her first novel. jeremiah j. garsha is a postgraduate researcher in the faculty of history at the university of cambridge. he researches the cultural history of violence with an emphasis on visual and material cultures of colonialism and anti-colonial resistance in world history. he specialises in transnational indigenous movements, repatriation of human remains and artefacts, and postcolonial historical memory, specifically the positioning and repositioning of physical memory structures within landscapes of atrocities. his phd dissertation is a global history of a collected skull and its international travels throughout the twentieth century. dr. audrey a. harris received her ph.d. from the university of california, los angeles (ucla) in 2016. she teaches classes in latin american and u.s. latina/o literature and culture, and spanish language, at the university of california, los angeles, and at the cineteca nacional in mexico city. with support from the mellon foundation, she has taught prison workshops in mérida, yucatán, leading to the publication of nos contamos a través de los muros, (we tell our stories through these walls) (catarsis, 2016) an anthology of short stories and narratives written by incarcerated women in mérida, yucatán. more about that project can be found here: https://vocesdelacarcel.wixsite.com/vocesdelacarcel. north of the border, she has taught classes in latin american fiction and narrative with incarcerated women through ucla's prison education program. she is a translator of mexican author amparo dávila's the houseguest and other stories (2019), and her writings and translations have been published and are forthcoming in harpers, the paris review daily, two lines, roads and kingdoms, the aztlán mexican studies reader, chasqui, chiricú, párrafo, and elsewhere. danne jobin is a phd candidate in contemporary native american literature at the university of kent. their project explores the fiction of anishinaabe writers louise erdrich, david treuer and gerald vizenor to show how indigenous space extends beyond the reservation toward urban and transnational spaces. amanda leclair-diaz (eastern shoshone/northern arapaho) is originally from ft. washakie, which is located on the wind river reservation in wyoming. she is a doctoral candidate in the teaching, learning, and sociocultural studies department at the university of arizona. amanda's major is indigenous education, and her minor is teaching and teacher education. once amanda obtains her phd, she hopes to become a professor who works with pre-service educators and native communities. dr. paul mckenzie-jones is an assistant professor in indigenous studies at the university of lethbridge. as a settler-scholar he positions his work in solidarity with, rather than as an expert on, indigenous peoples, and seeks to use his privilege to help create more spaces for indigenous voices in academia. his research foci are indigenous activism, treaty rights, and indigenous pop cultures. his first book was a biography of early red power leader, clyde warrior, and he is currently working on two research projects – indigenous cross-border (us/canada) activism since 1900, and collaborative indigenous activism in the canzus states. contributors 362 dr. sheilah e. nicholas is associate professor in the department of teaching, learning and sociocultural studies, university of arizona. she is a member of the hopi tribe located in northeastern arizona. her scholarship focuses on indigenous/hopi language reclamation; indigenous language ideologies and epistemologies; the intersection of language, culture and identity; and, indigenous language teacher education, and draws from her dissertation study, “becoming ‘fully’ hopi: the role of the hopi language in the contemporary lives of hopi youth – a hopi case study of language shift and vitality.” she is co-principal investigator of a spencer foundation funded multi-university national study, “indigenous-language immersion and native american student achievement.” dr. thea pitman is senior lecturer in latin american studies at the university of leeds. her research interests lie in the field of contemporary latin american cultural production, especially online, and more broadly digital, works, as well as the appropriation of new media technologies by indigenous communities. she has published the anthology latin american cyberliterature and cyberculture (lup, 2007) and the book latin american identity in online cultural production (routledge, 2013), both with claire taylor, as well as numerous other articles and pieces of short-form scholarship on related topics. her current research focuses on indigenous new media arts in the americas. angel sobotta is niimiipuu (nez perce) and pursuing a doctoral degree at the university of idaho in the department of curriculum and instruction. she has worked for the nez perce language program in lapwai, idaho for over twenty years. drawing on this experience, sobotta's research focuses on learning and teaching her language, nimipuutimt, through coyote stories. she is married to bob sobotta and has four children: payton, glory, grace, and faith. dr. philip j. stevens is from the san carlos apache reservation. he’s parents are homer and nalani stevens. philip’s clans are tudiłhiłhi and deschiini. he has two daughters, carmen and hazel, with dr. vanessa anthony-stevens. philip is a regent for san carlos apache college, an assistant professor of anthropology and the director of the american indian studies program at university of idaho. he researches western education environments through apache cultural values and the intertwining beliefs, nature, justification and scope of mathematics among apache adults document cultural perspectives between native americans and non-natives understanding of mathematical concepts. dr. billy j. stratton teaches contemporary native american/american literature, indigenous critical theory, and writing in the department of english at the university of denver. his criticism, fiction, commentary, and editorial work has appeared in numerous books and journals including, arizona quarterly, cream city review, salon, the journal of american culture, the independent, wicazo-sa review, rhizomes, sail, big muddy, the los angeles review of books, and time. he is also the author of buried in shades of night: contested voices, indian captivity, and the legacy of king philip's war, while being contributing editor to the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. he has been instrumental in efforts to create dialogue and historical understanding at the university of denver around the issue of the sand creek massacre. dr. martin w. walsh, lecturer iv, holds a phd. in dramatic literature from cambridge university (1974). he taught at the university of giessen, west germany before joining the drama concentration of the residential college in 1977. he has published widely in early drama and popular culture, with dual language editions of the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 363 dutch/english everyman and mary of nimmegan. other articles have ranged from modern irish drama to contemporary caribbean carnival to native american masking traditions. he has also been an actor, director, dramaturge and translator for the semi-professional brecht company in ann arbor (1979-1993). in 1983 he started the early drama group “the harlotry players” which has recently participated in cultural festivals in corsica. he has been active in shakespeare-in-the-arb since its founding in 2001, as well as appearing in numerous other local productions including the university opera’s ariadne auf naxos. dr. doro wiese phd, is a researcher at düsseldorf university and utrecht university. in her multifaceted research, she investigates how aesthetics is a manner of drawing people into an effective relation with the lacunae of knowledges and histories. in her first monograph the powers of the false (northwestern up 2014), she determines how intermediality (photography, painting, music) in selected us-american and australian novels allows readers to relate to histories that have been repressed or silenced by trauma and taboo. in her second book, f – faust (textem 2018), she ask how and to what effect different media affect the human body. her current research project titled side by side: reading indigenous and non-indigenous literature asks which epistemological, formal, and thematic distinctions and connections are present in post-war fiction on native north america on both sides of the atlantic. this study helps to develop cross-cultural and cross-epistemological research fields in literary, historical, and cultural studies. omar zahzah is a phd candidate in comparative literature at the university of california, los angeles. microsoft word contributors 4_1.docx transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)  207   contributor biographies scott andrews teaches american and american indian literatures at california state university, northridge. he has published reviews, essays, poetry, and fiction in various journals. he is a citizen of the cherokee nation of oklahoma. brian burkhart is associate professor of philosophy at california state university northridge. he grew up on the navajo nation in arizona and is also from the cherokee tribe of oklahoma, where he still has a lot of family. he wrote his doctoral dissertation at indiana university on environmental ethics and indigenous philosophy, and is in the process of having a book published by suny press entitled respect for kinship: toward an indigenous environmental ethics. heid e. erdrich is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently the minnesota book award-winning curator of ephemera at the new museum for archaic media from michigan state university press. her recent non-fiction work is original local: indigenous foods, stories and recipes. she is editor of two anthologies of literature by native writers including the forthcoming new poets of native nations form graywolf press. heid’s writing has won numerous awards as have her collaborative poem films, which you can see on her vimeo channel. heid grew up in wahpeton, north dakota and is ojibwe enrolled at turtle mountain. she teaches in the low-residency mfa creative writing program of augsburg college. becca gercken is an associate professor of english and american indian studies at the university of minnesota, morris. she has published in the areas of identity and representation, masculinities, and pedagogy. her most recent work appears in leslie marmon silko: ceremony, almanac of the dead, gardens in the dunes and gambling on authenticity: gaming, the noble savage, and the not-so-new indian. tiffany midge’s poetry collection "the woman who married a bear" (university of new mexico press) won the kenyon review earthworks indigenous poetry prize, and a western heritage award. her work’s been featured in mcsweeney’s, okey-pankey, the butter, waxwing, and moss. she is hunkpapa lakota and allergic to horses. margaret noodin is the author of weweni (wayne state university press, 2015), a collection of bilingual poems in anishinaabemowin and english, and bawaajimo: a dialect of dreams in anishinaabe language and literature (michigan state university press, 2014). she currently works as an associate professor at the university of wisconsin–milwaukee, where she also serves as director of the electa quinney institute for american indian education. tommy orange's much-anticipated novel, there there, will be published in june of 2018. he was born and raised in oakland, california. he is an enrolled member of the cheyenne and arapaho tribes of oklahoma. he currently teaches in the mfa program at the institute of american indian arts. transmotion vol 4, no 1 (2018)  208   kenneth m. roemer (b.a., harvard; m.a., ph. d., univ. of pennsylvania), a piper professor of 2011, distinguished teaching professor, and distinguished scholar professor at the university of texas at arlington, has received four neh grants to direct summer seminars and has been a japan society for the promotion of science fellow and a visiting professor in japan. he has been a guest lecturer at harvard and has lectured at twelve universities in japan and in vienna, lisbon, hong kong, montpellier, dresden, and several cities in italy, brazil, ireland, canada, and turkey. he was one of only three americans selected to co-chair a seminar at the 2008 european alpbach forum in austria. he is past president of the society for utopian studies, founding editor of utopus discovered, past vice president and founding member of the association for the study of american indian literatures (asail), and past chair of the american indian literatures and late 19thearly 20th-century divisions of the modern language association (mla). he has been managing editor of american literary realism (alr) and assistant editor of american quarterly. he serves on the editorial boards of utopian studies, sail, and alr. he has served on the advisory board of pmla and the editorial board of american literature. his website covers, titles, and tables: the formations of american literary canons in anthologies, <www.library.uta/ctt> is the first website discussed in martha l. brogan’s a kaleidoscope of digital american literature. andrea l. rogers describes herself as a writer, member of the cherokee nation of oklahoma, teacher of middle school art, mom. shawaano chad uran is a visiting assistant professor in cornell's department of anthropology. dr. uran is white earth anishinaabe and teaches courses such as critical approaches in american indian and indigenous studies. microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 1 indigenous narratives: global forces in motion1 eman ghanayem and rebecca macklin in the contemporary moment, the world has seen an increase in transnational indigenous and decolonial activist movements. idle no more, rhodes must fall, the bds movement for a free palestine, and #nodapl and mni wiconi have all garnered international attention and trans-cultural calls for solidarity. these movements exemplify and build on long traditions of indigenous resistance in international contexts and commitments to other marginalized groups.2 mindful of these continued struggles and concerns, this special issue seeks to bring together some of the diverse ways in which native american and other indigenous narratives circulate to create an influence globally. while we foreground indigenous narratives in north america as our primary loci of interpretation, we are interested in the ways that they move outside of cultural or national boundaries and how communities around the world, indigenous and otherwise, engage with them. in doing so, we attest to the necessity of thinking globally as a way to understand some of the forms of connectivity and relationality3 that embody indigenous experiences. we understand as narratives the endless multiplicity of modes through which people represent, remember, and share their stories. the narratives discussed in this issue affirm indigenous survivance,4 regardless of how they are conveyed: whether through literature, historical revision, visual or performative arts, or digital media; irrespective of language; and whether they transpire in public spaces, classrooms, or through interpersonal communication. indigenous narratives embody what anishinaabe author and scholar gerald vizenor terms “transmotion,” as they invoke an active sense of presence that is fluid, mobile, and which transgresses colonial structures of legibility. in various ways, they disrupt or otherwise challenge the global circulation of prominent narratives about indigenous peoples understood by vizenor as “manifest manners,” i.e. the processes of erasure that include “familiar themes of classical, heroic tragedy, and modern victimry” (vizenor, “the unmissable”). in recent years, there has been an increase in indigenous scholarship that attempts to consider separate and distinct histories, cultures, and literatures in comparative and connective frames. in 2011, daniel heath justice observed the number of indigenous studies scholars globally, “reaching out, learning about themselves and one another, looking for points of connection that reflect and respect both specificity and shared concern” (344). jodi a. byrd, in the transit of empire (2011), employs the concept “transit” to describe the eman ghayanem and rebecca macklin “indigenous narratives” 2 interconnectedness and continuum of colonial violence that implicated multiple peoples and spaces. in 2012, chadwick allen established the concept ‘trans-indigenous’ to develop a methodology for global indigenous literary studies and, elsewhere, scholars have explored the potential for comparing native american socio-historic perspectives with those of other colonized and oppressed peoples. in his latest book (2016), steven salaita adopts “inter/nationalism” as a term that embodies decolonial thought and expression, literary and otherwise, that surface in the intersectional moments between native american and palestinian struggles. similarly, there is a long tradition of native american authors exploring the transnational politics of oppression and the multidirectional movement of memory5 in fiction, poetry and on stage: from leslie marmon silko’s transcultural decolonial revolution in almanac of the dead (1991) to leanne howe’s coauthored 2017 poetry collection singing, still, libretto for the 1847 choctaw gift to the irish for famine relief.6 these academic and creative projects cross the traditional disciplinary boundaries of indigenous, postcolonial, and settler colonial studies, bringing together histories and cultures that have been too rarely considered alongside one another. in this issue, we ask: what can the global offer as a lens through which to understand the movement of indigenous narratives? and how can “thinking globally” help to facilitate a shift away from exclusively localized perceptions of indigeneity to a view that sees it as an (already) travelling force? to theorize the global as it pertains to these narratives, we borrow from the fields of indigenous and postcolonial scholarship as they are embedded genealogically and politically in critiques of empire. these two traditions register the connotations of empire within the global, both through colonial histories and the neocolonial (read also neoliberal) present, as well as theorize the potential for disrupting these structures.7 a global indigenous studies, or “trans-indigenous” framework, such as that presented by chadwick allen (2012), valuably asserts the need to undertake indigenous-centered scholarship by reading indigenous texts in comparative terms, rather than comparisons rooted in settler-indigenous binaries. in our issue, as well as in our own research, we build on this approach and attempt a more expansive global frame. this accounts for interconnections between groups that have survived colonial or other forms of oppression, but which have different socio-political relations to dominant definitions of indigeneity. such a methodology complements kenyan writer ngugi wa thiong’o’s conception of globalectics (2012): a form of reading that foregrounds connections between disparate global and temporal spaces. a globalectical approach foregrounds periphery-periphery connections and dialogues, transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 3 particularly those in the global south, over and instead of studies that are framed around a center-periphery dynamic. as thiong’o asserts, “this attitude is germane to a global consciousness of our common humanity” (61). reading texts in this way demands that we reconsider our understandings of how indigeneity manifests in a global context, while fostering an acknowledgement of shared colonial experiences and understanding across cultural, linguistic, or geographic divides. in addition, we build our approach to the global in ways that undermine how the democratized and capitalist articulations of globalization reproduce imperial hegemony. following stuart hall, we understand globalization as “a structure of global power, and therefore of global or transnational inequalities and conflicts rather than the basis of a benign cosmopolitanism” (hall cited in webner, 345-6). and yet, as theorized by bouventura de sousa santos, it simultaneously affords possibilities for “new opportunities for transnational creativity and solidarity,” which can facilitate counter-hegemonic movements “intended to counteract detrimental effects of hegemonic forms of globalization” (180). several of the essays in this issue explore such examples of creative exchange and solidarity that arise through the circulation of literature, art, or expressions of resistance (see garsha, pitman, and eqeiq). while many artists, writers, and political actors strategically utilize such opportunities to facilitate new connections (see stratton, jobin, and zahzah), others employ the circulation of narratives to emphasise indigenous sovereignty on a global scale by resisting the dynamics of accessibility that characterise the transcultural movement of products, ideas, and knowledge (see wiese and pitman). yet, while recent political movements such as idle no more and the “#nodapl” protests have helped to render these types of transcultural exchanges and connections more visible to a wider public, the processes of exchange and interconnectivity that we highlight are not new. neither are they a consequence of globalized capitalism, though the technological advances of late capitalism certainly have shaped the ways that many of these connections materialize. rather, the concept of relationality is fundamental to many indigenous standpoints. in contradistinction to the self-exceptionalizing and oppressive strands of transnational settler thinking, relationality both operates and frames indigenous relationships with others domestically and internationally, as well as motivates the storyline of their political and cultural practices. glen coulthard and leanne betasamosake simpson define relationality as an indigenous practice and situate it in what they call “grounded normativity”: eman ghayanem and rebecca macklin “indigenous narratives” 4 grounded normativity houses and reproduces the practices and procedures, based on deep reciprocity, that are inherently informed by an intimate relationship to place. grounded normativity teaches us how to live our lives in relation to other people and nonhuman life forms in a profoundly nonauthoritarian, nondominating, nonexploitive manner. grounded normativity teaches us how to be in respectful diplomatic relationships with other indigenous and non-indigenous nations with whom we might share territorial responsibilities or common political or economic interests. our relationship to the land itself generates the processes, practices, and knowledges that inform our political systems, and through which we practice solidarity. to willfully abandon them would amount to a form of auto-genocide. (254) following this, we recognize that a global approach does not require a transnational or transcontinental focus. neither should this be at the expense of understanding local connections and articulations of belonging or solidarity. rather, we understand indigenous narratives as having been always already global,8 and as having registered the culturally overarching networks of socio-political conditions not only internationally, but also locally. to state it differently, we believe that global conversations happen locally, in ways that are attuned to uneven experiences of colonial and capitalist oppression within regional or national spaces. by foregrounding this conception of globality, then, we argue that it becomes possible to develop a more holistic understanding of planetary conditions of subjugation, allowing for international and local solidarities to intertwine. here, the article co-authored by chew, anthony-stevens, leclair-diaz, nicholas, sobotta, and stevens on the role of triballyoriented pedagogy and its significance to native nations and their languages offers an ethical practice that is simultaneously grounded and worldly, and whose instructive model could be valuably adapted by other communities. this issue was originally conceived as a panel for the 2017 native american literature symposium, entitled ‘native american literature in a transnational context’.9 our panel considered native american literary texts in relation to spaces of ongoing inequality in palestine, south africa, and syria. this was inspired by our commitment to widening the conversation around the legacies and ongoing realities of colonialism across the world, in order to facilitate processes of mutual learning. in addition, by highlighting the globality of indigenous peoples, cultures, and movements, we are actively pushing against the discriminatory logic of colonial management that perceives indigeneity as unmodern, immobile, and insular. when conceptualizing the special issue, we sought to move beyond an transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 5 exclusive focus on literary studies to consider these questions in a transdisciplinary frame, thus attempting to create and sustain connections not only across global and temporal spaces, but also across the gaps that frequently exist between academic fields. from the beginning, it was important to us to include contributions that explore differential experiences of indigeneity and colonial violence in geo-political spaces that are frequently left out of the conversations in trans-indigenous studies that predominantly focus on the anglo-settler colonial world. the pieces by harris, garsha, and eqeiq, in this way, make important provocations by expanding upon this focus, incorporating mexican, namibian, and palestinian experiences. we see this issue as both inspired by and contributing to the conversations taking place across indigenous studies that consider points of interconnection between separate and distinct cultures, literatures, and colonial histories (byrd 2011, allen 2012, jackson 2012, salaita 2016). our call for the special issue garnered interest from scholars around the world who were already actively engaging with these questions across a wide range of disciplines. the contributors to this issue acknowledge modern-day colonialisms by emphasizing their local and international utterances, while foregrounding indigenous responses to them that function within and outside their geographical boundaries. as these pieces show, though acts of resistance always spring in response to irreducibly local experiences of colonialism, the global is discernible in many expressions of resistance. in different ways, these articles foreground indigenous peoples as global actors—whether by tracing the transnational influence of protest movements or the material circulation of indigenous literatures, or by recognizing that indigenous belonging operates simultaneously on local and global registers. while indigenous belonging is always deeply rooted in place, these pieces show us that it is, too, continuously mobile and relational. some of these questions are taken up in billy stratton’s article, “transnational narratives of conflict and empire, the literary art of survivance in the fiction of gerald vizenor.” in an essay that impressively weaves together texts written over the course of vizenor’s career, stratton examines the enduring “interest in international and transnational experiences” in vizenor’s work. stratton reads tropes of “border-crossing, international exploration, transnational native liberty, and dynamic transmotion” to theorize an anishinaabeg sense of global presence that animates the writing of vizenor and which challenges circumscribed ideas of culture, identity, and geographic belonging. danne jobin in “gerald vizenor’s transnational aesthetics in blue ravens” also frames vizenor as a eman ghayanem and rebecca macklin “indigenous narratives” 6 transnational writer, whose aesthetics intentionally infuse anishinabe knowledge into new geographies. jobin analyzes the way vizenor’s blue ravens, as a novel that is located in paris during world war one and which centers native characters, explores the question of native agency and creativity as it manifests in moments of deep cultural encounters. by exploring vizenor as a traveling figure whose writings underlie a global aesthetic and mode of communication, stratton and jobin bring to our attention a long-standing tradition of indigenous figures traveling to different parts of the world as cultural and political ambassadors. two other contributors also center figures who, like vizenor, pursue and participate in politically-motivated modes of global communication. amal eqeiq in “aesthetics of indigenous affinity: traveling from chiapas to palestine in the murals of gustavo chávez pavón” shares her reflections on and conversations with gustavo chávez pavón: a guechepe muralist from mexico city who is involved with the zapatista movement. chávez pavón paints murals in palestine and mexico that connect indigenous resistance in both spaces and, as eqeiq shows us, register the significance of indigenous art, its traveling prowess, and the history and future of solidarity between palestinians and the zapatistas. also discussing palestine in a global context, omar zahzah’s essay “the intelligentsia in dissent: palestine, settler-colonialism and academic unfreedom in the work of steven salaita” gives an overview of arab american scholar steven salaita’s oeuvre vis-à-vis his commitment to comparative indigenous critique and anti-colonial movements. in 2014, and as a result of his critique of israel on social media, salaita’s scholarship was put into question, and he was denied a faculty position at the university of illinois. zahzah’s thorough exploration of salaita’s books on palestine, israeli settler colonialism, indigenous north america, academic freedom, and the ethics of solidarity returns us to salaita’s importance in the growing field of global indigenous studies. particularly, salaita’s work and life represent how discussing palestine in relationship to indigenous contexts, indigeneity as concept, and settler colonial violence globally is not only a significant feat, but one that is essential to its actual liberation and solidarity work with others. other articles explicitly consider the movement of texts produced by indigenous artists and authors, examining the processes of material, linguistic and digital circulation that enable literary and visual narratives to journey across distinct cultural and geographic spaces. doro wiese’s article, “untranslatable timescapes in james welch’s fools crow and the deconstruction of settler time” foregrounds the transcultural circulation of native american literature. specifically focusing on the 1986 novel fools crow by blackfeet and a’aninin transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 7 writer james welch, wiese draws on the concept of untranslatability to interpret welch’s engagement with temporality. she argues that the vision of time in the novel “cannot be transposed into euro-western temporal epistemologies”: a literary strategy that, she suggests, can be read as an assertion of indigenous cultural autonomy. audrey harris’ creative piece, “two maya tales from the mérida cereso,” also deals with questions of translation—both cultural and linguistic—in a contribution that seeks to shine a light on two emerging mexican writers. she translates into english two short stories based on mayan folklore written by zindy abreu barón and yesli dayanili pech pech: two women writers of mayan heritage, who have been imprisoned in the mérida cereso prison. her introduction to the stories frames the enduring nature of mayan narratives amongst mexican communities and clarifies the politically-contested system that produced the authors’ criminality and, consequently, led them to storytelling as a means of self-expression. thea pitman’s “indigenous new media arts: narrative threads and future imaginaries” takes a wide-lens view, showcasing dynamic examples of indigenous new media art and community art projects across the us, canada, aotearoa, and australia. she considers how a diverse number of artists are utilising new technologies as modes of cultural expression, ranging from large-scale digital video and multimedia installations; to digital photography and computer game design. while recognizing the necessity of careful and respectful curation practices, pitman celebrates the inclusion of indigenous new media arts in galleries around the world. she cites hunkpapa lakota artist dana claxon, who evokes the potential for the circulation of indigenous artworks to non-indigenous audiences to facilitate exchanges “of pedagogy, understanding, truth, hope.” this type of connective work is developed in articles by jeremiah garsha and paul mackenzie jones, who contemplate the parallel and interconnected conditions of modern-day colonialisms in distinct geo-political spaces and their corresponding protest movements. while mindful that transnational solidarities are always complicated by specific experiences of oppression and different conceptions of decolonization, we understand this type of connective analysis as necessary work to help bring about the conditions for meaningful and productive exchange between indigenous and other dispossessed communities. garsha’s “red paint: transnational ‘vandalism’ of colonial relics in the postcolonial world” centers “red paint” as an iconography that emerged out of the american indian movement (aim) and influenced indigenous struggles elsewhere. garsha discusses the use of red paint in namibia and australia to vandalize colonial monuments in homage to its use in 1969 during the aim eman ghayanem and rebecca macklin “indigenous narratives” 8 occupation of alcatraz, revealing the similitude of both colonial violence in global spaces and the resistance movements that emerge in response. in “indigenous activism, community sustainability, and the constraints of canzus settler nationhood,” mackenzie jones engages with transnational expressions of anti-colonial resistance by drawing on mohawk scholar audra simpson’s concept of refusal to understand recent indigenous movements across the anglo-settler colonial world. this piece reads examples of indigenous rights and environmental protests across the us, canada, aotearoa, and australia as acts that forcefully refuse the absolutism of settler-colonial nationhood. finally, “enacting hope through narratives of indigenous language and culture reclamation,” coauthored by kari a. b. chew, vanessa anthony-stevens, amanda leclairdiaz, sheilah e. nicholas, angel sobotta, and philip stevens, intervenes into anthropological and pedagogic discourses in order to theorize the sharing of narratives as a decolonial research methodology. through reflective narratives, the contributions that form this article understand hope as a mobilizing and connecting force that is “an essential conduit between thought and action, belief and practice.” as such, hope plays a transformative role in the context of initiatives for language and cultural reclamation and education, across personal and transnational scales. in many ways, hope is traceable throughout this whole issue—from its early inception to the thematic inclination of its pieces. hope reminds us of an indigenous continuum that travels in place and time, rooted yet mobile, introspective yet conversational. recognizing colonialism in the many forms in which it exists today, this issue attempts to bring together global experiences in the aim of fostering understandings of shared struggles. we hope that it lands in places far and near, and reaches those who, like us, can see that a global framework can aptly foreground indigenous narratives: not only as important in their respective contexts, but as necessary for everyone in the world to seek out, comprehend and recognize as global forces in motion. notes 1 we are grateful to david stirrup, david carlson, theodore van alst, and james mackay for supporting us with the production of this special issue from the very beginning. their interest, guidance and feedback have been instrumental in helping to bring this issue to fruition. 2 see nick estes, our history is the future: standing rock versus the dakota access pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance (new york: verso books, 2019). transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 9 3 we borrow relationality as indigenous conceptualization of solidarity and intercultural connection from jodi byrd, the transit of empire: indigenous critiques of colonialism (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011), xvi; 118, and glen coulthard and leanne betasamosake simpson, “grounded normativity/place-based solidarity,” american quarterly 68, no. 2 (2016): 254. 4 following gerald vizenor, we understand survivance to refer to “an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.” (manifest manners, vii). 5 as theorized by michael rothberg, multidirectional memory refers to a mode through which distinct cultural memories and experiences are able to circulate and coexist in a noncompetitive space. rothberg suggests this “has the potential to create new forms of solidarity and new visions of justice” through “productive” processes of “ongoing negotiation, crossreferencing, and borrowing” (rothberg, 32-33). see multidirectional memory: remembering the holocaust in the age of decolonization (stanford: stanford university press, 2009). 6 this self-published trilingual chapbook, coauthored with irish poet doireann ní ghríofa, remembers choctaw and irish historic gestures of anti-colonial solidarity. 7 on neoliberalism and neocolonialism as interchangeable, particularly as rooted in transnational exploitations of indigenous and racialized labor, see lisa lowe, the intimacies of four continents (durham: duke university press, 2015). 8 an argument made by richard scott lyons and the contributors in the world, the text, and the indian (albany: state university of new york press, 2017). 9 we are thankful to diane glancy for participating in the 2017 nals panel and to james mackay for facilitating this. works cited allen, chadwick. trans-indigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2012. byrd, jodi. the transit of empire: indigenous critiques of colonialism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011. coulthard, glen and leanne betasamosake simpson. “grounded normativity/place-based solidarity,” american quarterly 68, no. 2 (2016): 249-55. estes, nick. our history is the future: standing rock versus the dakota access pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance. new york: verso books, 2019). howe, leanne and doireann ní ghríofa. singing, still, libretto for the 1847 choctaw gift to the irish for famine relief. 2017. jackson, shona n. creole indigeneity: between myth and nation in the caribbean. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2012. justice, daniel heath. “currents of trans/national criticism in indigenous literary studies.” american indian quarterly 35, no. 3 (2011): 334-352. lowe, lisa. the intimacies of four continents. durham: duke university press, 2015. lyons, scott richard, ed. the world, the text, and the indian. albany: state university of new york press, 2017. rothberg, michael. multidirectional memory: remembering the holocaust in the age of decolonization. stanford: stanford university press, 2009. salaita, steven. inter/nationalism: decolonizing native america and palestine. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2016. eman ghayanem and rebecca macklin “indigenous narratives” 10 santos, boaventura de sousa. toward a new legal common sense: law, globalization, and emancipation. london: butterworths, 2002. silko, leslie marmon. almanac of the dead: a novel. new york: simon & schuster, 1991. thiongʼo, ngũgĩ wa. globalectics: theory and the politics of knowing. new york: columbia university press, 2012. vizenor, gerald. “the unmissable: transmotion in native stories and literature,” transmotion 1.1, 2015. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance, university of nebraska press, 1999. webner, pnina, ed. anthropology and the new cosmopolitanism: rooted, feminist and vernacular. oxford: berg, 2008. microsoft word rhadigan.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 331 heid e. erdrich, curator of ephemera at the new museum for archaic media. michigan state university press, 2017. 100 pp. isbn: 9781611862461. http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1d0-3fcc .xkqdbrazmb1 heid erdrich’s latest award-winning collection, curator of ephemera at the new museum for archaic media (winner of the minnesota book award for poetry, 2018), dexterously shepherds readers on a breakneck labyrinthine tour of a continually growing, carefully arranged, and bottomless cabinet of curiosities. whether floating above a burning nighttime sea of gas flares in a jet high-over north dakota’s oil fields, or freefalling through a tangled medley of magnetic cassette tape, scripted q-code signals, and coaxial cables, erdrich’s poems diligently render an apocalyptic north american landscape that is at once hauntingly familiar and imaginatively disorienting. her incisive critique of american “over-bloom” and cannibalistic patterns of ecological destruction is strengthened, not tempered, by the attachment and studious affection she brings to her poetic subject matter (26) supplanted technologies and outmoded media become the waypoints for this poetic journey through a terrain of insatiable appetites, new and forsaken treasures, and lapsed reciprocal relations with the other-than-human world. however, erdrich is not yet another dystopian prophet of the anthropocene (for indigenous responses to anthropocene discourses see davis and todd; whyte). erdrich’s unflinching account of the cataclysmically-destructive consequences of capitalist consumption keeps a steady eye on the disproportionate impacts of continued resource extraction on indigenous lands and communities, and explicitly underscores the ways that colonial-capitalist violence has already inaugurated apocalyptic social and ecological crises within indigenous worlds. in this sense, curator of ephemera is both a work of urgent critical alarm and a sustained meditation on collective action and creative resiliency. erdrich’s book engages deeply with the work of contemporary ojibwe artists and language speakers and their attendant political and intellectual currents. it locates hope in the many artworks, relationships, and creative collaborations that inspire and adorn its pages. and, when confronting a mounting heap of twenty-first century digital detritus, it fans sparks of humor and beauty amidst the wreckage by celebrating the minor utility and unsung aesthetic charms of forgotten or maligned technologies, like the qr code. curator of ephemera rescues the refuse of the everyday. whether retracing the manic emotional high supplied by a perfectly-sequenced track list in the poem “mix tape didactic…hither,” or the attuned dedication of a spouse guiding stray cups to the dishwasher in “shepherd,” the keenness, wit, and perspicuity of erdrich’s “every-blest-thing-seeing eye” envelops readers in the unheralded yet intoxicating workings of daily life (41). all the routine tasks, fragrant fuzzy details, and unresolved questions, the soft joys, humor, and heartaches—the day-to-day buzz of “how it is to be alive to be alive to be alive”—ground erdrich’s account of life in the face of continued loss and destruction, and amplify the power of the poet’s call to accountability and action (41). erdrich’s role as curator of this ephemeral museum is more than extended metaphor. the author has extensive experience working collaboratively with other indigenous and minnesota-based artists and has amassed a hefty resumé curating multiple exhibitions in the minneapolis-saint paul area in recent years. this hand-on knowledge and visual sensibility translates into a heightened attention to spatial arrangement, flow, and juxtaposition within the poetic text. fullpage reproductions of image-cells from andrea carlson’s colossal 2014 panorama ink babel ryan rhadigan review of curator of ephemera 332 interpose the book’s sections. these stark high-contrast renderings of rising seashores, jutting observation decks, and fresnel lenses (a recurring motif) push into their surroundings, mingling with and reflecting off of erdrich’s linguistic imagery. poetic lines strut across the white space of the pages in measured amounts of pattern and unruliness, huddling together in clumps and piles, or dangling alone in the stolen breath of a small clearing. bits of text mimic and mirror each other within these raucous and serene compositions, creating visual circuits and interpretive feedback loops. page space also dutifully structures caesuras and line breaks in many of the poems. these spaces step in for commas and periods with such agility and panache that they beg the question of whether such run-of-the-mill punctuation marks are yet another outmoded communications technology ripe for erdrich’s new museum. and lest we forget the handsomely-pixelated and cumbrous qr codes hung like square canvasses on the page, patient and ready to connect cellphone-clad reader to video poems or “poemeos” online. like in the art gallery, there are multiple vantage points, and each reading of the collection rewards fresh eyes with new pairings, pathways, and points of emphasis. furthermore, these vicarious juxtapositions playfully lure, delight, and rebuff interpretation by fostering tension between hermeneutic dichotomies of image and non-image, epiphany and apophany (a notion of “mistaken epiphany” that erdrich wryly probes through the collection’s formal, conceptual, and narrative apparatus) (51). poems like “mix tape didactic…break up 2” teasingly skirt the line of such indeterminacy. the poem offers a track list as an artifact-memorial to a terminated relationship, along with the single line: “i mean i broke up with you” (52). this separation can be read at multiple registers and scales. is it a youthful romance gone flat? or parting words between the earth and its unfaithful human relations (a post-apocalyptic “it’s not me, it’s you…”)? at each turn in the text, erdrich’s studied and judicious choices challenge and electrify. the poetics in curator of ephemera build upon and innovate the formal and stylistic experimentation manifest in erdrich’s earlier published works. there are several poems written collaboratively with margaret noodin, for example, which are structured around the multi-step english-ojibwe-english translation process that the two have been honing for many years. likewise, fans of erdrich’s previous collections will find plenty of thematic continuities in curator of ephemera, from engagements with dna, cannibalism, and compulsive internet sleuthing, to an encore performance by indigenous elvis. the poem “charger” for example, which is one of the many ekphrastic poems in curator of ephemera, offers a sampling of the kind of formal and thematic exploration that can be found throughout the collection. “charger” takes andrea carlson’s mixed media painting aimez-vouz les femmes (2011)—a work that counterposes the image of a video camera with a severed sculptural head—as its point of creative departure. in erdrich’s poetic treatment, the tableau transforms into an alternate telling of salome’s storied dance before herod: oh wanton oh salome what was it you wanted? how sexy the head you called for you got dead head you got it off transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 333 off that big mouth crying in the dessert crying just desserts on a platter a silver charger charged you (36) the truncated and enjambed lines drip economically down the page. her wordplay summons the “silver charger” charged with delivering john the baptist’s head to salome, just as it recalls the ubiquitous silver-pronged adaptors charged with powering our electronic devices. what must be sacrificed to make our cell phones, tablets, and lcd screens dance each day, the poem prompts us to ask, and at whose hand is such violence committed? “charger,” like many other poems in the collection, amply demonstrates erdrich’s deft command of language and capacious creative vision. erdrich’s words refract like light passing through a fresnel lens, a device that ornaments the cover of curator of ephemera. each of her carefully crafted images reflects multiple meanings at once. the fresnel lens, a technology that significantly reduced the amount of material needed to powerfully transmit light, is an apt metaphor for erdrich’s newest collection of poems. no thicker than the edge of a box of matches, and just as incendiary, erdrich’s svelte and skillfully curated text broadcasts its author’s critical and creative voice for miles. ryan rhadigan, university of california berkeley works cited carlson, andrea. “a note on ink babel.” mikinaak, 20 mar. 2017, https://www.mikinaak.com/blog/a-note-on-ink-babel davis, heather, and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international journal for critical geographies, vol. 16, no. 4, 2017, pp. 761-80. whyte, kyle p. “indigenous science (fiction) for the anthropocene: ancestral dystopia and fantasies of climate change crises.” environment and planning e: nature and space, vol. 1, no. 1-2, 2018, pp. 224-42. microsoft word greymorning.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 270 andrew cowell. naming the world: language and power among the northern arapaho. tucson: the university of arizona press, 2015. pp. x + 296 pp. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/naming-the-world linguist andrew cowell’s naming the world, language and power among the northern arapaho follows on the heels of his previous book arapaho stories, songs, and prayers. while arapaho stories, songs, and prayers will prove to be of utility to those northern arapahos striving toward strengthening their competency as speakers of arapaho, naming the world is a bit of a mixed bag. linguists will find particular merit in it, though passive arapaho speakers should also find some benefit, as might advanced second language learners, should they begin to emerge. this last comment finds its basis from andy cowell’s introduction, regarding the concept of continuity and discontinuity being problematic. while cowell points to the benefits that linguistic resources bring to the table, it is in fact elements of language discontinuity and a lack of language continuity that continues to fulfill the prediction of language demise and loss that michael kraus wrote about in the 1970s. discontinuity is also reflected in what cowell wrote about naming. here it was noted how young people just want a name and how neniisih’eihi (the one who names) stated that there was more to it than that, thus reflecting the discontinuity in understanding what it means to receive a name and to have a name. this was something i experienced firsthand when my son asked that i name his daughter (my granddaughter), and while i always call her yeiyinisei, i have not once heard him call his daughter this. what then tends to happen with those who have been named is over time through a lack of continuity and use the name fades into disuse and the ability to say it forgotten. this concept of continuity and discontinuity is further raised when cowell elaborates more with his discussion of a northern arapaho society in and around the reservation. tangentially i found it odd that “helen” was shown to used a man’s word hiiko no (page 20) instead of a woman’s word gus, which may also add to the discussion about naming and how these examples illustrate that there is more to language than just naming words. in chapter 1, readers are led through a series of topics that touch on pre-reservation era, importance of age, reservation era, band and tribe, ceremonialism and tribalism. in addition to this cowell also introduces topics of communities of practice, and language shift, stating that a focus of the book is to investigate causality of language shift among the northern arapaho. a point cowell brings up regarding language shift causality is a tension between language learners as performers of language, and elders as speakers of arapaho, an issue that has some complexity in a worldview where elder speakers of arapaho have shifted to become mth (more than human) wielding power through language. here cowell proposes that language learners see symbolic capital (here i would prefer importance or significance) through language performance irrespective of grammatical errors while elder speakers are viewed as having language capital that gives them control. here i would also consider whether within a worldview where language has power and is sacred, elders may be more concerned about what might result from language spoke improperly. in support of this, i refer to chapter 2. in chapter 2, andrew looks at how metaphors have been used by speakers of arapaho. here he introduces the importance of maintaining exact phonological forms of names (p. 53), without which leads to loss of meaning and connection to language and history, and a concept of power. drawing from “a man and his two sons”, which was the third story my daughter learned from me, andrew discusses two words no’otehiit, and no’o’ that he connects with power. referring to neyooxet greymorning review of naming the world 271 no’o’, i have seen this word spelled three different ways; once as nooo’, another as no’oo’ and now as no’o’. because arapaho is tonal lacking written diacritics to show this can result with the word not being said properly by someone who has never heard it spoken. for instance, when teaching my daughter the story i came upon this word and “3iewono.” i didn’t recognize these words so i asked a few older speakers about them both, which they also didn’t recognize. i eventually realized that i was pronouncing 3iewono as it was written and that it was misspelled, it should have been written 3iiwono. the same was true of nooo’. without pronouncing a missing medial glottal and not rising tonally at the end, the word was mispronounced and unrecognizable. and, with the word spelled no’oo’ not pronouncing the ending glottal and not rising the tone on the last vowel the word then sounds like no’oo (mom). similar issues are presented near the end of the chapter under the heading of “student discourse on the arapaho language,” where he gives mention to language shifts that move closer to european concepts of language (pg. 72). in chapter 3, cowell discusses names and power that connect to landscape. the chapter touches on areas such as: landscape descriptors; land areas and features that resemble a physical item such as the north slope of longs peak of colorado that is called ce’einoonoohoet (rawhide dish); names of areas based on some event acted upon by the arapaho, or some aspect of use done by the arapaho. while linguists should find this chapter particularly useful, it may also be found useful by arapaho students as it discusses structural meanings and global patterns of place names. here cowell brings up an important point (p. 98) with regard to addressing arapaho quests for knowledge, something that struck me while teaching my “indian culture as expressed through language” class back in 2009. i had written on the board niicoo’owu. what struck me was the end sound, which referred to a state of liquidness or body of water. weeks later while on the wind river i asked an elder speaker what the word meant and was told—salt. i responded, “i know that, but it carries another thought. at the end it refers to something in a liquid state.” the elder, getting a bit impatient with me stated it means salt. with my mind racing, when i asked “what is the name of that lake in utah?”, he dropped his head and quietly said niicóò’ówu’. this immediately gleaned the following. the word for pond is coo’óòwúse’, but if the front is a variant of níi’coo’, which refers to something that tastes good, then metaphorically it could refer to a body of water that carries some aspect of being good. it also means the transference of the word to apply to european’s salt recognized some similar quality. beyond this, the word suggests the arapaho may have recognized the relevance of salt as something that was good for the body, which dr. batmanghelidj's recognizes in 22 different ways in his book, "water: rx for a healthier pain-free life". chapter 3 winds down with discussions on “place naming, power, and modern arapaho society”, “the ironic response” and “place names in contemporary usage.” with regard to an ironic response, but from a different perspective that cowell would appreciate, is something ambrose brown told me back in 1994. in his generation the town of dubois was said something along the lines of niisoo honoh’ehih’o’ (or shortened, niisonoh’oho’), because they thought whites were saying “two boys”. another thing ambrose told me, which is similar to this but working the other way, was that black coal’s name was actually be’xou—red fox (fox = beexou), but when soldiers heard this they thought arapahos were saying black coal, which provides a segue to chapter 4. in chapter 4, cowell delves into the topic of personal names and naming, name usage, and toward the end of the chapter sections on change, and hollywood names. the chapter begins with some linguistic analysis of form and structure of names as they once were and how that transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 272 structure has been maintained through personal names. one of the topics brought up is “change and phonological rigidification and how a non-speaker may often garble the pronunciation of their own name into something meaningless or something that has some similar nominative english sounding words. in this instance when nii’eihii 3i’ok (sitting bird/eagle) was asked what his name was, he said “hey that buck.” another example relates to rigidity of use to what one would think of in english as a nickname. this tends to happen when a person’s name has been shortened. when the individual, however, is told their full name they may insist that this was not the name given them. several years back i was asked to tell a person what their name meant and the person pronounced the name as see3tei, i said it couldn’t make out what it meant. when i told person i thought the name was see3cei, the person insisted that wasn’t their name and that their grandmother had given them the name see3tei. this name unfortunately has no real meaning, where see3cei refers to pine pitch or sap, which makes sense as a name. chapter 5, folk etymology and language purism moves through several subjects, such as; “practice and ideologies”, “trickster and the whiteman”, “creation and origin stories”, “ethnicity and identity”, “being arapaho”, “etymology and authority”, and “power and irony” that discuss how these areas symbolically and metaphorically connect to etymology. in the section on “practice and ideology” cowell turns to an analysis of hosei’oowu, which he informs readers means offerings lodge. while this meaning is also found among the cheyenne, cowell says the term derives from hoseino (meat), which we are informed gives reference to where one gives away or sacrifices (hosein). i find this analysis quite surprising because i never heard the lodge as an offerings lodge but understood that the name derived from hoseikuutii, which means to toss or throw away. if hoseino’ were linguistically linked to the lodge as hoseino’oowu the meaning would more closely resemble flesh lodge. with the completion of the sun dance marking the beginning of a new year, then the last thing that occurs before its completion is the dancers throwing way the things that held them back in the old year to freshly begin the new one, something that often pledgers are reminded of by the grandfathers. in the section on “trickster and the whiteman,” cowell examines the word for whiteman (nih’oo3oo). while much of the discussion revolves around the word meaning spider, the question with regard to why it came to represent whiteman has no hard fast reason. here cowell notes that the same person can invoke different meanings for the same word, leading to more than one etymology being seen as true. to this i would add one of the reasons i was told by an elder when instructing me at an early age. when i asked why whites are called nih’oo3o, i was told it was because when arapahos from a distance saw the tops of covered wagons stretching out across the pains as they moved, it reminded them of spider filaments. cowell then takes on a discussion about turtle (be’enoo). what is interesting here, from a comedic sense, is the question, which came first the chicken or the egg? this is raised because be’enoo also means fog, and to state it is foggy would be bee’enouni. thus because be’ and bee’ both mean blood, and with the discussion of turtle’s etymology being linked with blood, an interesting discussion would be how the etymology of fog connects with blood. a sidebars adding to a discussion on etymology, are two words i’ve presented to students to see if they derive any imbedded meaning from how they sound, which is the word prayer “howoyeitiit” and dragonfly (cii’owoyeihii), a symbol that is used in sun dance, which they are not told. often students will link cii’owoyeihii to something in a state of prayer. chapter 6, “neologisms, and the politics of language maintenance,” begins with examining names of animals and plants relative to movement out onto the plains. the section concludes with cowell pointing out (p. 204) something that i have noted in my classes over the past 15 years, that arapaho, with its avoidance of incorporating foreign words, exceptions being cíìís and ceebini (germany), is an example of language purity. in the section that follows, “sound neyooxet greymorning review of naming the world 273 correspondences, analogical think and the ideology of neologisms,” cowell brings up my name, neyooxet (one day he might be interested to learn how my uncle had me accept that as my name.) he also mentions cooxuceneihii (meadowlark) a name i once metaphorically used for a talk; “teaching meadowlark’s children their songs,” that focused on the work of the arapaho language revitalization preschool i started in 1994 on the wind river reservation. while the sections in this chapter will draw the interests of linguists, they will be very useful for students of arapaho in understanding connections and underlying meanings imbedded within the language. a footnote to cowell’s discussion about meadowlark that i’ve noted on other occasions and in my meadowlark talk, a longstanding tradition that rests on the belief that meadowlark speaks arapaho was to feed the tongues of a meadowlark to a child whose speaking arapaho was delayed to bring on the onset of speaking. unfortunately, the last time i remember this being done by a parent to bring the onset of their child to speak was done for english, which clearly the meadowlark does not speak. in naming the world readers will find a treasure trove of linguistic analysis blended with transcribed speech that will prove to be beneficial algonquian scholars and students of arapaho alike. neyooxet greymorning, university of montana montana microsoft word barrett-mills.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 290 j. kēhaulani kauanui, ed. speaking of indigenous politics: conversations with activists, scholars, and tribal leaders. university of minnesota press, 2018. 369 pp. isbn: 9781517904784. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/speaking-of-indigenous-politics as a polyvocal chronicle, critique, and catalyst at the intersections between global and local indigenous politics, kanaka maoli scholar j. kēhaulani kauanui’s collection is a reinvigorating contribution that limns the ongoing importance of the topics discussed within, even “[a]s the dominant culture continues to marginalize native issues” (xxi). as such i want to make clear that speaking of indigenous politics is vital. kauanui’s radio show indigenous politics: from native new england and beyond ran between february of 2007 through until july 2013. the broadcast generated almost two hundred conversations with a diverse panoply of voices, all of whom are individually acknowledged at the end of the editor’s introduction. although this book was limited to a selection of twentyseven perspectives (twenty-eight including kauanui herself,) i urge readers to take the time to explore the rich catalogue of programmes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/indigenouspolitics-2011/id623837802?mt=2) for which this collection bears a splendid standard. keep in mind, however, that the act of putting together a collection of this type is not a straightforward process of curation and conversion from audio to print. or, rather, this process of curation and conversion is not straightforward. the late susan berry brill de ramírez employed the term “listener-reader” to evince a relationship of active participation between reader and text (1). whilst her formulation pertains more specifically to native american fiction, the concept is salient here too. the position of reader-listener is one that kauanui places herself in throughout, parsing the particularities of legal cases, critical concepts, and history in such a way as to “become a co-creative participant” in their transmission (brill de ramírez 131). under her guidance, the local remains distinctly local, yet also resonates out into a wider discursive context of indigenous sovereignty. consequently, speaking of indigenous politics’ audience is entreated to follow suit; each reader positions themselves in that same space of active listener-readership. one might be excused for failing to identify a clear organising principle around which kauanui situates the myriad discussions presented in this collection. settler colonialism emerges as the prevailing process of oppression confronting the various indigenous peoples represented here, but beyond that the tone is loose. the interviews do not unfold chronologically, nor has kauanui elected to cluster them in thematic subsections. a 2009 interview with kathleen a. brown-pérez (brothertown indian nation) concerning her tribe’s continuing pursuit of federal recognition seems as though it would gel cohesively with a pair of discussions with chief richard velky from 2007, in which he diagnoses the chicanery of commercial lobbyists as central to the federal government’s withdrawal of acknowledgement for the schaghticoke tribal nation. despite the evident commonalities, though, these interviews appear at opposite ends of the book. moreover, the collection’s lack of an index prevents interlocutors from cherry-picking isolated soundbites germane to their own research. of course, this could be frustrating for some (just show me a scholar who can honestly say they have never taken three index-sourced pages as undergirding for an argument,) and yet these editorial choices are carefully and critically made in order to resist conceptual jake barrett-mills review of speaking of indigenous politics 291 compartmentalisation. kauanui’s refusal to arrange speaking of indigenous politics based on easy divisions of affiliation, geography, theoretical field, or indeed along a chrononormative timeline highlights the intermeshed nature of the countervailing colonial forces that continue to suppress indigenous sovereignties worldwide. as jessica cattelino points out in her interview on seminole gaming, ‘sovereignty’ is a definitionally frustrating term, and this conceptual malleability pulses through the contradistinctive ways in which kauanui’s dialogists talk through sovereignty. hone harawira (ngāpuhi nui tonu) explains that for māori people “tino rangatiranga is absolute chiefdom or absolute sovereignty over lands and people” – a concept that was subjected to a calculated differentiation from sovereignty by the english for the purposes of dispossession (137). elsewhere, aileen moreton-robinson (quandamooka) emphasises that “indigenous sovereignty is not necessarily configured through the discourse of rights” despite the importance of indigenous recognition within the settler-colonial matrix of sovereignty “which is very much shaped by the social contract” (217). of course, it is precisely this fluidity that renders sovereignty such a significant ideological lodestone for politically and culturally diverse peoples. the troubling of settler classifications of sovereignty, which are entrenched in a monotheoristic epistemological history of eurocentricity, is one facet of what vizenor terms “shadow survivance” (63), whereby the dominant discourse and its acolytes are confronted with an indigenous political presence that is neither familiar enough to absorb nor alien enough to expunge. this informs “the anxiety of settler-colonial societies regarding the persistent indigenous sovereignty question” (kauanui 355) and each distinct formulation that comes out of these discussions contributes to the “sui generis sovereignt[ies]” that vizenor identifies in fugitive poses as being entangled with transmotion (15). robert warrior (enrolled member of the osage nation) speaks with kauanui about his seminal notion of “intellectual sovereignty” and it bears remembering that, as sovereignty resonates through multivalent registers of expression, so too does settler colonialism. the settler colonial project hinges, in part, on the successive compartmentalisation of indigenous populations to progressively diminishing and dislocated spaces as part of a multifaceted campaign of erasure against indigenous sovereignties. kauanui positions these co-generative discussions on indigenous sovereignty in a constellational array that abjures such a partitioning of issues. we listener-readers, therefore, are issued with a clarion challenge to trace the vectors that connect the issues and opportunities voiced by the radio show’s (and subsequently this collection’s) contributors. these are conversations that dovetail with one another, but not always in obvious ways. the reader must navigate the pages with agility, reading back – and forward – to understand the multivalent patterns of indigenous resistance that subvert “the contradiction, the erasure, the invisibility” imposed by settler states (250). kauanui speaks with scholars, activists, and leaders from indigenous communities around the world, spurred by the conviction that “indigeneity is a counterpart analytic to settler colonialism”, and yet her critiques do not fall prey to a homogenising narrative of ubiquity in indigenous politics (xiv). kauanui’s queries, prompts, and sparse interjections are generally concise, seldom running for more than three lines of text, and these contributions are characterised by an impressive specificity and a crucial depth of localised understanding. although the book is suffused with an ethic of coalitional indigenous solidarity, the interviews are treated “in their immediate context through a global approach to addressing the ongoing nature of settler-colonial domination and indigenous resistance” (xxiii). for this methodology to remain sufficiently robust, the interviewer must dextrously thread between the local and the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 292 global to avoid synecdochic generalisations. furthermore, they need to demonstrate acute insight into the specific historical and contemporary forces that confront the interviewee. in speaking of indigenous politics, these discussions span varied pressure points including zionist desecrations of “the oldest and probably the most venerated burial ground in palestine” (172), wampanoag language revitalisation efforts in massachusetts, and the intricate complexities of the late james luna’s (luiseño) ironic installation art. even with such a breadth to contend with, kauanui pivots unerringly with her guests’ discursive styles, which, given their heterogenous perspectives and backgrounds, are anything but uniform. warrior notes in his foreword that kauanui’s radio show “harnessed [a] subversive energy at a particularly opportune moment, just as international indigenous politics was coming to a critical juncture” in the wake of the united nations declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples (undrip), which was adopted in 2007 (ix). and yet one of the attendant perils to any such point of political apogee is the difficulty of nourishing that ‘moment’ and then impelling it into a palpable sense of momentum. this is particularly true when a relatively hypervisible piece of legislation like undrip comes along and courts the risk of eclipsing community-specific indigenous issues. tonya gonnella frichner (onondaga nation) was involved in the drafting process of the undrip, and she warns in speaking of indigenous politics that, “for all the wonderful language we have in the declaration”, it must not be taken as sovereignty realised nor justice served. a tremendous synthesis of effort, attention, and acumen is required to sustain the momentum of watershed moments, and the subsurface labour that kauanui poured into this endeavour deserves recognition. to prepare herself to present, produce, engineer, and direct indigenous politics, kauanui undertook a range of training to equip herself with the requisite skillset. this diligence is palpable, conveyed in the lucidity of the discussions presented in speaking of indigenous politics. the publication of this collection six years after indigenous politics’ final episode and nearly a decade after the majority of the interviews contained within constitutes yet another challenge presented to the attentive listener-reader. although kauanui provides a brief update of most of the issues discussed in the interviews’ prefaces, she takes care not to let these primers dominate the conversations that follow. this is in service of more than just the avoidance of spoilers. as i moved forward, backward and all ways in between across the collection, i also found myself exhorted to follow up, compelled to find out what became of and, more importantly, what is still becoming of these situations. in some instances, such as when kauanui presents two conversations with margo tamez (ndé konitsaaiigokiyaa’en) concerning indigenous legal activism against a u.s.-mexico border wall, the contemporary political ramifications are quite immanent. others entail longer searches – particularly for geographically and culturally distanced readers like myself – as evidenced by the developments since kauanui spoke with david cornsilk (cherokee nation) about the range of influences affecting the precarious citizenship rights of freedmen descendants of african american slaves within the cherokee nation. to be sure, the rigamarole of publishing is not famed for expediency, and i don’t mean to hijack kauanui’s intent here. nevertheless, whether tactical or epiphenomenal, the timing of this publication could hardly be bettered inasmuch as it reflects and reifies the unabating momentum of these political relationships and struggles. jean m. o’brien (enrolled citizen of the white earth ojibwe nation) argues within that settler-colonial polities are characterised by a systematic enterprise of “putting indians in the past” to “subtly seize indigeneity for themselves”, and her critique applies to indigenous oppression writ large (245). kauanui, then, has jake barrett-mills review of speaking of indigenous politics 293 accomplished something significant by exploding these political conversations across time, thereby limning their ongoing presence and eschewing historical closure. the commonalities that kauanui teases out of these interviews from around the indigenous world gather in ideological creases. these creases are coalitional sites of multivalent sovereign resistances, that, through kauanui’s adroit editorial efforts, emphasise solidarity in a fashion that still rebukes the kind of toxic equivalence we see come out of reductive settler colonial narratives that decoct indigenous peoples into indigenous people. as i claimed at the outset, speaking of indigenous politics is vital, and i mean that in all connotations of the word. jake barrett-mills, university of east anglia works cited brill de ramírez, susan berry. contemporary american indian literatures & the oral tradition. university of arizona press, 1999. vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. university of nebraska press, 1998. ---. “shadow survivance.” manifest manners: postindian warriors of survivance. wesleyan university press, 1994, pp. 63-106. untitled document heid erdrich's "poemeo" is reproduced here with the author's permission subject unconditionally to her original copyright. we include the notes from her website below, and with thanks. “pre-occupied”-heid e. erdrich, producer and co-director; r. vincent moniz, jr., co-director; jonathan thunder, art director and animator. written by heid e. erdrich. synopsis: “pre-occupied” is a new and experimental form, the poem-film. originally written for the website 99 poems for the 99%, poet heid e. erdrich created a visual landscape of associations and references that match the tremendous irony of how the word “occupy” can be meant. the film version of this poem is a collaborative collage that means to reveal the distracted human mind at a particular point in history. released in early 2013, the film inadvertently anticipated the idle no more movement. for full credits and acknowledgements , please view the film to the end microsoft word livingston.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 355 cedar sigo. royals. wave books, 2017. 96 pp. isbn 9781940696539. https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/royals. the title of cedar sigo’s recent poetry collection, royals, couldn’t be more apt for the book’s regal interior, a celebration and investigation of the lives and creations of poets, artists, musicians, and others elevated as sovereign, as well as the author’s own poetic lineage in created and creating verse. sigo’s royals are cataloged and displayed in living exhibition, guestbook ledger pages becoming the contextualized walls to hang or ink a portrait, where readers take a virtual tour of the galleries, parties, and poetry readings to witness the artists’ picturesque productions, their colorful lives and conversations. the poems in royals pay tribute to the poets and painters, musicians and lovers that have influenced the author and his creative process. sigo, in the tradition of the west coast branch of the new york school and beat poets, whose lines and lives intertwine and illustrate their obsessions, evokes the glorified artists and adorns their admired lines of poetry and conversation with his own poetic fascinations, producing a collection that is, at once, both homage and exploration of his regal literary lineage and his own place among the royal. the reader is invited to the gala, the coronation of the celebrants, whether the landscape is a jazz club, an art museum, a library, a street corner, or even the poet’s living room. we’re on the guest list, welcomed to mingle among the courtiers and courtesans, equally vip; encouraged to turn on, to flirt; urged to listen to the jazz and blues, to tune in to the dialogue, to browse the bookshelves and vinyl record albums, and to take home fragments of lines, “calling up receptors of individual visions,” “trimmings,” a “set of notes” from which to “press new meaning in between” and “retool” for the future (30). sigo’s court comprises his early artistic influences – as “a bolinas separatist poet” (26) moving between the suquamish indian reservation and seattle, washington; boulder, colorado and naropa university’s jack kerouac school of disembodied poetics; new york city book stores; and san francisco streets – illustrated in narrative exposition (“dragging back my bags of books … allen, jack, john weiners / … / i was mostly taught who to read … robert duncan, creeley, joanne”) (67); as well as homage (“sensation” for anselm hollo, “on strings of blue” for bill berkson, “our lives” for julian talamantez brolaski); and imitation (“blue moon” after alfred starr hamilton, “aquarelle” after emile nolde). the book’s dedication, “for brian / – with whom all landscapes / become love poems,” reflect the poet’s love for these royal landscapes: the party, the poetry reading, the conversation. sigo brings us there to mingle, to eavesdrop on the artists’ interchange, to take part in the art and music, and to fall in love as the royals empty their pockets and suitcases to share all their possessions and obsessions. in “the real contents of a street poet’s suitcase,” sigo catalogs among the short list poem: “tiny dented copper spools,” “an elephant gun,” “clean underwear,” “red garland records (red in bluesville, red alone)” and ends with the underlined passages of bob kaufman’s poetry in the beat classic paperback golden sardine (59). sigo quotes kaufman in those final lines, lamenting that poet guillaume apollinaire’s noble birth prevented his street credibility with the san francisco poets: golden sardine (with underlined lines and figures) “apollinaire never hiked in papier-mâché woods” chip livingston review of royals 356 “apollinaire never slept in an icehouse” (59). sigo contrasts the lifestyles between the last two referenced poets: kaufman, an african american surrealist poet who coined the term “beatnik,” and french aristocrat apollinaire, who coined the term “cubism.” the “street poet” of the poem’s title has those passages underlined in his copy of kaufman, positioning the lives of the poets, all poets, as equal in worth of reverence and immortality. sigo invokes the lives of poets and artists, dead and living, referencing them throughout the poems in royals, introducing us if we’re not yet familiar – and urging the reader to get to know this alluded to and elevated academy. in the new york school style of frank o’hara, sigo’s friends and influences stop by, enter in, and casually add a line or become a moment in the poems. “bill berkson / will read from / john weiners / in my wooden / house across / the street (brown / with golden couch) / his sounding out / the cut … / … / his voice held / the cleanest / copy one / could find,” writes sigo in “on strings of blue” (11, 12). in the marcel duchampish “whims,” the speaker reimagines remaking objects into gifts for the royal beloveds: “i drew a french mustache / onto a john cage postcard // … i spun a haunted pendant / for the edges of anne waldman // i stamped and numbered an opium pipe / for gregory corso’s private room // i handwrote a ouija board / for caconrad and set it outside the door” (25), much as joe brainard reimagined the ernie bushmiller comic character nancy in his fantasized alter-scenarios. in “thrones,” the new york school style homage takes the form of a salish giveaway ceremony, sigo says in a lithub interview from january 2019. “my poem ‘thrones’ was written after hearing a tape of philip lamantia read his ‘time traveler’s potlatch.’ … the form has you presenting gifts on bended knee in a way and it forms this sort of totem, a twitching altar with an almost invisible frame. for ‘thrones,’ i was interested in honoring (communicating with) certain essential african american artists. … while ‘the time traveler’s potlatch’ is ultimately a flowing list of decadent gifts, i love that the form itself can also be seen as a gift to all poets.’ (sigo) in addition to bob kaufman, amiri baraka, and alice coltrane, among other dead artists immortalized in “thrones” include: for phillis wheatley: a book of verse in cornerstones of a moorish castle, purple and gold, depicting souls in various stages of release, the pitch, anger and arc of the poems an unrhymed mirror to the long atlantic. for jayne cortez: an intertribal grand entry of poets in cedar bark jackets, split skirts and whalebones pinning them closed, a voice in praise and suspension of the drum … for stephen jonas: your favorite eric dolphy faded to a room of golden tasseled light, a couch of friends’ faces smeared in a gleaming silver crown (13). in sigo’s poems, “a couch of friends’ faces” is among the highest seat of honor, bringing the throne to the living room, the royalty to the shag carpet, the poetry reader to the art show, where surely verlaine’s blues are playing, a current that reappears through the collection in color and transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 357 sound, at times referencing punk poet musician tom verlaine and at others, french surrealist poet paul verlaine. the verlaines’ blues are carried into royals from sigo’s previous collection language arts, where we find the poet in the poem titled “verlaine blues” in the rain, “dressed in black, in mourning.” “go away from my door, i’ve got time alone and trouble for days / sometimes i get the blues when it rains” (11). sigo’s speaking poet/narrator finds his community in royals, restaging “apollinaire’s last hot march into evening air” (royals, 26). the “essential solitude” of the poet in language arts (9), where all “rooms are alien” (25), finds his rightful place among “the poets in glowing lab coats” in royals (27), pressing “new meaning in between” “the trimmings” (30). in sigo’s prose poem, “watching william castle writing,” “what makes it down onto the screen as letters, words, phrasing, seems after the fact” (62). when sigo writes, “it is this desire to filter the language that we have captured” (62), it seems to speak of the author’s process, filtering the “lines taken home” and “retooled” into a collection that stunningly reimagines and eternalizes them (5). cedar sigo is “a stylist of lines” (52), building his “own circuitry / sounds // and flow” (23), turning his “spade to the inset language” (26) to thoroughly place the reader in the landscape of the poet and the poem. the immortal “chamber of maiden / thought is metered” and always “gives / way to the word / in this case,” sigo’s – and in the case of royals, sigo’s word is executed perfectly. i read somewhere that if a poet falls in love with you, you can never die. sigo’s love poems to the poets and their landscapes in royals elevate the artists enshrined toward immortality. as he writes in “portrait in black,” “the dream house” becomes the heart “sketched,” a “valley grove of bones,” where “you can only capture the poets / and keep them lurking …” (65). chip livingston works cited mishler, peter. “cedar sigo on playfulness and poetry.” literary hub, literary hub, 29 mar. 2019, www.lithub.com/cedar-sigo-on-playfulness-and-poetry/ sigo, cedar. language arts. wave books, 2014. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 183 susan devan harness. bitterroot: a salish memoir of transracial adoption. university of nebraska press, 2018. 335 pp. isbn: 9781496207463. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496207463/ it seems important to identify myself before beginning this review. i am a non-enrolled member of the confederate salish and kootenai tribes (cskt). i grew up on the flathead indian reservation for most of my life, although, as an academic i have been more transient than i would like in my adult life. my síleʔ (grandfather) worked for the tribes all of my life, and my t̓úpyeʔ (great-grandfather) was a cornerstone of the séliš u qlispé culture committee until he passed away in the spring of 2016. because of these connections to the cskt community, and the flathead indian reservation more broadly, i am in a unique position to review susan devan harness’s memoir, bitterroot: a salish memoir of transracial adoption. the following review has not been vetted or approved by the cskt community, but rather reflects my individual engagement with harness’s deeply moving and powerfully honest book. harness’s book showcases both her expertise as a cultural anthropologist researching transracial native american adoption and her personal experiences with the difficulties of growing up indian in a white world in montana. bitterroot is a profoundly personal account of what it means to battle two diametrically opposed versions of internalized and externalized racism. harness’s academic training as a cultural anthropologist makes the work feel widely accessible and universalizes a particular subset of the struggles associated with what it means to be native in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. the book is part of a series on “american indian lives” published by the university of nebraska press, a collection that spans genres: from interviews, historiographies, and community stories to biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. bitterroot fits nicely into this collection of firstand second-hand accounts of native lives, with the added valence of telling a story that looks in from the outside and out from the inside. harness’s memoir captures what happens when you know you are an indian, but do not have the privilege of knowing the sense of community and pride that should accompany that identity. in the absence of positive representations of native people, harness’s childhood was punctuated with negative and racialized stereotypes of native people that run rampant in montana and the rest of the north america. harness felt compelled to not be the indian depicted in pop culture. she wanted to be a different kind of indian, one who would be accepted by the white community she grew up in. this understandable compulsion manifested in a lifelong identity struggle that impacted her mental health, self-esteem, personal relationships, and, perhaps most importantly, her efforts to reconnect to the salish family that she lost when she was a baby. bitterroot proceeds in a mostly chronological fashion, beginning with harness’s childhood in her white adoptive family and moving through her tumultuous collegiate and early adult experiences before focusing on the process of finding and reconnecting with her salish family on the flathead indian reservation. there are interruptions that sometimes flash forward—but, more often, backward—to provide context or provide historical explanations for major components of salish identity and experience, like the dawes act of 1887, the hellgate treaty of 1855, and the indian child welfare act of 1978 (icwa). these historical interventions are welcome reprieves from the autobiographical writing that, although moving, can feel overwhelmingly negative and a little repetitive when reading for longer durations. furthermore, they make the text accessible https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496207463/ tarren andrews review of bitterroot 184 to native and non-native people who do not have a detailed background in the legal and governmental aspects of the confederated salish and kootenai tribes’ colonial history. like many native children born pre-icwa, harness, along with two of her siblings, were removed from their family home on the flathead indian reservation and put up for adoption in 1960. she was adopted rather quickly by a white couple who moved around montana, following her adoptive father’s job as a wildlife biologist. her parents were transparent about harness having been adopted, but less so about why she was in the system to begin with. the chapters about harness’s childhood (roughly chapters 1-6) are shaped by the initial conversation with her father in 1974 when she was fifteen years old about her “real parents” (5). when she asked her adoptive-father what happened to her biological parents, she was told they died in a drunkdriving accident. pressing on, harness asked about what other family she might have left. her father told her, “i don’t know about brothers and sisters. i heard you had an uncle somewhere in arizona. phoenix, i think it was. but he was a drunk, no-good bum. it’s better you don’t get ahold of him… he and his family would leech off you for as long as you’d let them, and you have a kind and generous heart, they’d realize they’d hit the mother lode” (8). her father’s racist characterization of native people seems to be validated by harness’s early experiences in the world as a brown child in a white family: being followed while shopping, being refused service in favor of white patrons, hearing stories from other adults about the difficulties of renting to natives, etc. it is these racialized stereotypes that fueled harness’s adoption in the first place. natives were (and often still are) considered unfit parents due to poverty, addiction, non-traditional family structures, and absentee parents. it was assumed that harness would have a “better life” growing up with white parents. the lie behind this assumption is, perhaps, the central point made by bitterroot. since she was taken as a very young baby from her biological (read native) family, harness’s early stories focuses on the life she had with her adoptive family—many of these narratives show that problems often considered endemic to native communities, are just as prevalent and traumatic in white families. as a young adoptee, harness struggled with her father’s alcoholism, her parents’ unamicable divorce, and her mother’s absenteeism resulting from undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. regardless of having grown up in a non-native home, harness was “uncomfortably aware of [her] role as a statistic: i am american indian; i am from a ‘broken home’; one of my parents was an alcoholic; and one of my parents had mentalhealth issues” (80). this understanding was the backdrop to her first attempt at college at montana state university (msu) in bozeman. after succumbing to the pressure of the party crowd as a form of escapism, harness was put on academic probation, then academic leave, eventually dropping out of msu. after working for a while at yellowstone national park, harness returned to school at the university of montana (um) in missoula, a short, forty-five-minute drive from the flathead indian reservation. she majored in anthropology, “a forbidden discipline among natives” because she “believes it is the only way [she is] ever going to learn about indians, about being an indian” (102). the successful completion of her degree at um marks the transition from harness’s accounts of her youth to a more pointed recounting of her experience as an adult trying to find her way back to the reservation and the salish community in a meaningful and fulfilling way. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 185 after finding out the details of her adoption and biological family, harness makes several unsuccessful attempts to reconnect with her birth-mother, before a letter to the editor in the tribal newspaper, the charkoosta, prompted one of her sisters to call her in may of 1993: “this is your sister, roberta. ronni marie, your other sister is here with me. we’ve been looking for you since you turned eighteen” (141). however, this phone call was not the beginning of a fairy-tale ending to bitterroot, but rather the continuation of a life-long attempt to figure out how harness could understand who she is without knowing where she came from. the phone call and subsequent family reunion did not result in deep connections with her birthmother or siblings, but did help foster important connections to aunts, uncles, and other tribal members who have supported harness in her personal life and academic work. this final section of bitterroot (chapters 10-19) integrates harness’s personal and academic experiences into a collage of self-discovery that is raw, honest, and equal parts elating and unexpected. these vignettes expose and articulate the revelation that has whirled like a deadly undercurrent throughout the whole story: “[t]he shame comes because living in white america hurts, [but] being rejected by my tribal people hurts more” (236). the conversations between harness and her biological brother, vern, that conclude the book show that “drinking and its consequences are the same worldwide” (205). vern grew up with his and harness’s biological mother, and, much like harness, suffered the effects of alcoholism. harness and vern meditate on the way that alcoholism effects both native and white communities, but is stigmatized in much different ways. harness’s adoption into a white family did not save her from the trauma of alcoholism, but it did complicate her relationship with alcoholism and race-based stereotypes in a way that wasn’t true for vern. he was able to reconcile his experience of alcoholism within a community of native people who understood the nuances and effects of tropes like the “drunk native.” unlike the first two sections which are colored with harness’s internalized anti-native racism, this final section, reframed by vern through the lens of confession and understanding, escapes those traps and feels triumphant in its own ways. it’s not the ending most readers would hope to find—the one that ends with a series of photos from years of big, joyful holiday gatherings— but rather the “real,” untidy ending, reflective of transracial adoption and the native experience as a whole. overall, bitterroot: a salish memoir of transracial adoption will find an audience in both native and non-native audiences, not just because of its topic or genre, but because the bifurcated identity that did so much damage to harness is the thing that allows a varied readership to engage and empathize with her experience. in this way, bitterroot is a unique approach to native american narratives. most contemporary stories of native experience focus on a central native figure situated within a native community. these narratives often showcase stories of success and triumph, of individuals and communities coming together to overcome whatever stigma or struggle they collectively have. alternatively, harness tells the story of a native girl forced to confront all the same stigmas and challenges, but doing it alone, without the benefit of a native community. while we never get a final image of harness fully reconciled and at home in a wholly native community, we do get a sense of clarity from her—clarity about who she is and how she can embrace her identity along with the trauma that forged it to help others who are in similar situations. she does not focus extensively on what she learned from tribal elders throughout her journey to reconnect with her native family, but, as a person who has had tarren andrews review of bitterroot 186 the privilege of learning from salish elders, i find harness’s style reflective of these teachings. during language camps, coyote stories, and other gatherings we are often reminded that the young people among us are the most important, the ones who are learning and watching and listening. it is those young people who will remember and pass on our ways, and so it is for them that we heal. it is for the young people that we reconcile our pasts, write our trauma, tell our stories, so that they might know better how to carry on in the future. harness’s memoir tells a story that we are not often told, one that has taken a generation of knowledge from us and held it hostage, trapped in liminal spaces just out of reach, locked in government offices and files. hers is a story that our old people remember, but cannot tell, and one that our young people need to hear. her homecoming may not have been what she wanted it to be—she still remains slightly removed from her native family. but this dissatisfying ending reminds us of what we lost in the generations before icwa and what has remained lost in the years since. tarren andrews, university of colorado boulder microsoft word kongerslev.docx transmoion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 173 annette angela portillo. sovereign stories and blood memories: native american women’s autobiography. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2017. 204 pp. isbn: 978826359155. https://unmpress.com/books/sovereign-stories-and-blood-memories/9780826359155 annette angela portillo’s sovereign stories and blood memories: native american women’s autobiography (2017) inscribes itself into an important and emergent field of enquiry. in this book, the author seeks to reclaim “narratives of truth and survivance” (ix) and promises to “extend and adapt the work of native american autobiography theorists” (17). portillo’s central claim is that “the memories of these women who tell and write their stories of survivance are articulating a place-based and land-based language. and their autobiographical discourses express communal storytelling practices that embody ancestral identities across multiple regions, times, and spaces” (17). the first chapter of the book serves as an introduction to the key terminology and offers a brief overview of its methodological concerns. this chapter furthermore briefly argues that a recuperation of indigenous epistemologies and sovereignty is essential for understanding native american women’s life writing, and relates these concerns to an overall settler colonial context. portillo positions her approach to self-writing and autobiography primarily in relation to older scholarship such as arnold krupat’s studies of authorial collaboration and authenticity (1988 and 1994), hertha d. wong’s discussions about hetereoglossia and tradition (1992), as well as greg sarris’ exploration of authorship and authority (1993) and john beverley’s work on testimonio (1992, 1993 and 1996). chapter two offers a “remapping” of the authority of the kumeyaay elder, delfina cuero, from an anti-colonial native-centered historiographical perspective meant to reassert cuero’s agency. analyzing cuero’s relationship with the anthropologist florence c. shipek, who edited the narrative, portillo demonstrates how cuero uses a land-based, indigenous epistemology to reclaim an erased presence in the us-mexico borderlands of the kumeyaay and their neighboring tribes. as portillo writes, “cuero’s stories not only assert the ongoing presence and challenges brought to her people; her narratives and blood memories serve as witnesses to new forms of genocide, resistance, and healing” (24). the chapter includes a historical discussion of kumeyaay agency and knowledges, based on michael connolly miskwish’s scholarship, and a short discussion of genre and the publication history of cuero’s narrative. these serve as points of departure for portillo’s textual analysis, which covers silence and humor as subversive acts, cuero’s awareness of her multiple audiences, and land-based strategic performances of “transborder citizenship” (39), which leads portillo to conclude that cuero “ultimately controls the narrative voice, because she chooses which stories to tell shipek and, more importantly, which ones to explain” (35). the chapter ends with a somewhat awkward sketch of the relevance of cuero’s story to twenty-first century concerns about transnational indigeneity in the light of increased militarization of the border and its attendant (geo)political discourses. these are important issues that deserve more attention than the three pages portillo awards them, and their presence in this form is more surprising than illuminating. the third chapter explores leslie marmon silko’s self-published life story sacred water (1993) and the memoir the turquoise ledge (2010) as reconceptualizations of autobiography as a genre. the two narratives are multimodal, and portillo argues that “through storytelling and marianne kongerslev review of sovereign stories 174 photography silko creates an indigenous feminist practice that redefines colonial spacializations [sic] of indigenous land and peoples” (53). portillo begins the chapter with a short account of the history of photographic colonization of native bodies and identities, starting with edward s. curtis. this leads into her discussion of silko’s subversion of the power-discourse related to photography and her construction of a land-based epistemology in the two self-writings. moreover, silko expresses sovereignty and self-determination by refusing to acquiesce to the publishing industry when she decides not only to publish sacred water herself, but to physically construct the book (58-59). portillo argues that “silko complicates the notion of photography as objective, pure, and authentic” (60) by incorporating the visual into the textual narrative of the autobiographical form. moreover, portillo claims that this complication of form relates to the complication of the human as separate from the natural. portillo discusses silko’s conception and critique of ‘landscape’ as a misleading word and her extensions of the notion of kinship to nonhuman actors at length, and she argues persuasively that the toads, snakes, bees and other critters become more than just symbols of survival, they become central to survivance (63). in this way portillo accounts for silko’s complex critique of environmental destruction as more than mere nature writing or an ecofeminist (settler) preoccupation with conservation, but rather as related to blood memories of the land and “as unmappings of colonial discourses” (18). chapter four jumps back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and explores the life stories of sarah winnemucca hopkins, zitkála-ša, and pretty-shield. beginning with frank b. linderman’s interview with pretty-shield (recorded in 1932), portillo inserts the life-stories into their sociohistorical contexts and argues that pretty-shield’s narrative, which falls into the astold-to genre, is an expression of agency. similar to cuero’s refusal to divulge information, pretty-shield’s and other ethnographically collected life-narratives express a sense of resistance by consciously refusing to confirm romanticized preconceptions of indigenous women. through the use of humor and silences, pretty-shield becomes “an agent of storytelling rather than simply an ethnographic informant” (102). with winnemucca’s 1883 life among the piutes as a point of departure, portillo discusses the irony of indigenous women strategically using “the autobiography, a traditionally eurocentric, male-driven genre” as a way to “talk back and rewrite official histories of indigenous peoples” (103). while exploring the tropes of ‘blood memories’ and community in life among the piutes, portillo reiterates arguments about authenticity and winnemucca’s complicity in the perpetuation of stereotypes of her people, concluding that she in fact sought to rewrite dominant master-narratives through the construction of new forms of storytelling (oratory, performance, and autobiography). several of zitkala-ša’s stories from the early twentieth century similarly reflect a critique of hegemonic stories, and portillo argues somewhat confusingly that zitkála-ša “not only lectured and wrote essays that openly critiqued the government but also supported assimilationist ideology” (113). discussing her “complex” position, portillo situates zitkála-ša in the context of the boarding school system with its attendant genocidal discourses and claims that her “sovereign stories and blood memories forced readers to engage in the process of acculturation and torture endured by numerous children” (116). it is, however, unclear from portillo’s writing how zitkála-ša’s writings managed to acquire this power to “force” engagement. ultimately, portillo claims that rather than being the victims of editorial usurpation, both these women create sovereign stories that “reright and rewrite native american history and culture” (91), and she categorizes their narratives as “protofeminist strories [sic] that assert resistance and agency” (119). transmoion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 175 chapter five contains the book’s most original contribution to scholarship, as it details the recent emergence of online, internet-based modes of storytelling and knowledge sharing. beginning with a history of the zapatista movement and its revolutionary methods regarding online and media network construction, portillo argues that “indigenous organizations, tribal communities, indigenous social justice movements, and individual bloggers have ‘indigenized the internet,’ thus creating and participating in a communal space of testimonio that resonates with the storytelling practices of indigenous peoples” (128). the idle no more and nodapl movements are highlighted as specific examples of how the new media can benefit indigenous peoples, build coalitions across nations and other borders, and share information. the precise connection of this first part of the chapter to the overall purpose of the book is unclear, and unfortunately portillo only perfunctorily discusses the more relevant “communo-blographies” (134) by two indigenous women—margo tamez and deborah miranda—towards the very end. the final chapter takes as its departure the author’s personal reflections of and experiences with teaching native american studies broadly, and women’s autobiographies specifically. portillo mentions how she engages with an empathic and decolonial pedagogy that centers on debunking stereotypes, unlearning colonialist logics, deconstructing the canon, and fronting an indigenouscentered knowledge system, as contextualization for literary fiction, poetry, and self-writing. as portillo writes, “i underscore the importance of complicating simplistic definitions of native american identity and emphasize that each primary text should be read from tribally specific histories and perspectives” (143). through an examination of ruby modesto’s not for innocent ears (1980), portillo exemplifies her pedagogical approach, which she calls a “conversive relational methodology” (150). furthermore, she stresses the importance of tribal community engagement and exchange when teaching indigenous literatures, and argues “that inviting elders and members of indigenous communities to share their specialized knowledge with a class is an integral component in any course on native american studies” (148). for new teachers of native american studies, this chapter provides an excellent point of departure. for more experienced teachers, most of portillo’s claims and approaches will already be familiar. the last two chapters are less well-developed and their ties to the first three chapters are somewhat tenuous and unclear. a deeper engagement with the central claim about women’s selfwriting and decolonial pedagogy, respectively, would have brought the book full circle more elegantly. moreover, it is perhaps surprising that portillo does not clearly position her work in relation to recent developments in indigenous feminist scholarship. mishuana goeman’s 2008 article on “(re)mapping” is employed to illustrate the importance of stories to native feminisms, but goeman’s spectacular mark my words (2013) is relegated to a footnote (164). siobhan senier’s voices of american indian assimilation and resistance (2001), winona laduke’s recovering the sacred (2005) and cheryl suzack, shari m. huhndorf, jeanne perreault, and jean barman’s indigenous women and feminism (2011), to name just a few pertinent volumes, are strangely overlooked in a book that argues that some of the authors discussed resist assimilation narratively, are “protofeminists,” or write against (white) ecofeminism. other feminist works, such as paula gunn allen’s the sacred hoop (1986) and devon mihesuah’s indigenous american women (2003), receive scant attention. a more diligent and informed conversation with indigenous feminist theory would have clarified portillo’s particular contribution. marianne kongerslev review of sovereign stories 176 sovereign stories and blood memories at times shows signs of scholarly shortcomings, especially as relates to theoretical foundations, methodologies, and academic practice. n. scott momaday’s notion of “blood memories” which is so central to portillo’s argument is never fully explained or operationalized. for example, the important debate between those who see the term as essentialist and racist, such as arnold krupat (1989) and those who seek to reclaim it, such as chadwick allen (1999 and 2002) is only superficially touched upon in the book’s first chapter (2-3). further, in successive chapters, ‘blood memories’ seems to be used almost synonymously with ‘stories’ and a deeper discussion and clarification early in the book would have avoided this terminological vagueness. similarly, in chapter two, portillo argues that, “it is therefore more appropriate to read [cuero’s] narrative through a critical ‘listening-reading’ technique” (30), a technique she does not clearly explain, nor mention again, throughout the book, although she does briefly mention it in the introductory chapter. a more careful selection of academic sources would also have benefitted sovereign stories and blood memories, as the book often rests on a rather thin foundation, which adds a sense that the author omits pertinent sources, or is unaware of their existence. for instance, it is thoroughly surprising that, in a discussion of the us-mexico borderlands in chapter two, portillo claims that, “we rarely think of the borderlands area in terms of its intercultural significance for the multiple indigenous groups who claim this geopolitical space as their ancestral homelands” (46), without acknowledging the essential scholarship on the topic from gloria anzaldúa’s seminal borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza (1987) to the more recent indian given: racial geographies across mexico and the united states (2016) by maría josefina saldaña-portillo. in addition, the communal “we” portillo utilizes problematically gives the impression of a widespread scholarly lack of attention, which i would argue is incorrectly diagnosed. similarly, a discussion in chapter three of the role of mythologizations, photography, and us settler colonialism is rendered superficial as it skips from curtis to contemporary hollywood “indian” representations (54-55) with no mention of the history in between. furthermore, the inclusion of controversial scholars such as andrea smith and ward churchill as sources deserves further discussion and debate. especially the latter scholar’s work should not be cited without discussion of the serious issues of academic fraud associated with his work, a debate which falls outside of the scope of this review. however, when used as one of three sources given for claims about boarding school experiences (other than life-stories), it indicates a lack of both awareness of the problematic nature of the source, and of the extensive scholarship undertaken by others on the topic. in addition, certain elements of sovereign stories and blood memories appear unclear or fragmentary. as mentioned above, portillo includes a short account of the publication history of delfina cuero’s life-narrative. as this section provides the foundation for portillo’s claims about agency, narrative survivance, and subversion of colonial discourses (and publication practices and power), a more thorough discussion would have benefitted the explication and argument. likewise, portillo’s discussion of pretty-shield’s life-story deserves a more in-depth explication than the four pages it receives (98-102). overall, many points of the book seem preliminary or unfinished, and with a total text of just 160 pages (not including notes and bibliography), further analysis and discussion could easily be accommodated practically. transmoion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 177 at times, portillo’s book unfortunately reads like a hastily rewritten dissertation which, in addition to the academic shortcomings listed above, includes many (but perhaps minor) irritations, including but not limited to: lack of proofreading, omission of cited works in the bibliography (71) or careless referencing—such as paraphrasing scholars but only providing a page number, when the bibliography contains three texts by that one author (103)— terminological inconsistencies (such as spellings of tribal names outside of quotes (“paiutes” p. 108, “piute” p.105) and oscillation between “indigenous,” “native american,” “native,” and “indian” without justifying the terminology), as well as structural and compositional issues which a more rigid editing process would have alleviated. for instance, the introduction switches chapters five and six in the summary section, so that portillo incorrectly characterizes her own book, stating, “thus, i end my book by providing a brief overview of new media and review [sic] how the internet is becoming indigenized…” (20), when in fact, the last chapter is focused on decolonizing pedagogy. of course, individually these are minor concerns, but taken together they may imply an underlying compositional deficiency, and in connection with the academic shortcomings, they indicate fundamental issues relating to academic practice. in sum, although this book offers convincing readings of the selected life-writings, most of its claims and conclusions can be found more fully explicated in other works in the field. however, as a book-length exploration within an otherwise fairly understudied field, it may spark further and deeper scholarship in the future. marianne kongerslev, aalborg university works cited allen, chadwick. “blood (and) memory.” american literature, vol. 71, no. 1, 1999, pp. 93– 116. jstor, jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/2902590. allen, paula gunn. the sacred hoop: recovering the feminine in american indian traditions. beacon press, 1986. anzaldúa, gloria. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: aunt lute books, 1987. beverley, john. against literature. uni of minnesota press, 1993. ---. “the margin at the center on testimonio.” in: de/colonizing the subject: the politics of gender in women’s autobiography, by sidonie smith and julia watson. university of minnesota press, 1992. ---. “the real thing.” in: the real thing : testimonial discourse and latin america, by georg m. gugelberger. duke university press, 1996. goeman, mishuana. “(re)mapping indigenous presence on the land in native women's literature.” american quarterly, vol. 60, no. 2, 2008, pp. 295–302. jstor, jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/40068538. ---. mark my words : native women mapping our nations. university of minnesota press, 2013. krupat, arnold. for those who come after: a study of native american autobiography. uni of california press, 1985. ---. the voice in the margin: native american literature and the canon. university of california press, 1989. marianne kongerslev review of sovereign stories 178 ---. (ed.) native american autobiography: an anthology. uni of wisconsin press, 1994. laduke, winona. recovering the sacred: the power of naming and claiming. south end press, 2005. mihesuah, devon a. indigenous american women: decolonization, empowerment, activism. university of nebraska press, 2003. saldaña-portillo, maría josefina. indian given: racial geographies across mexico and the united states. duke university press, 2016. sarris, greg. “hearing the old ones talk: reading narrated american indian lives in elizabeth colson’s autobiographies of three pomo women.” in: new voices in native american literary criticism, by arnold krupat (ed.). smithsonian institution press, 1993. 419-52. senier, siobhan. voices of american indian assimilation and resistance: helen hunt jackson, sarah winnemucca, and victoria howard. university of oklahoma press, 2001. suzack, cheryl, shari m. huhndorf, jeanne perreault, and jean barman. indigenous women and feminism: politics, activism, culture. ubc press, 2011. wong, hertha d. sending my heart back across the years: tradition and innovation in native american autobiography. oxford up, 1992. microsoft word robinson.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 324 richard wagamese. keeper’n me. penguin random house canada, 2018. 320pp. isbn: 9780385693257. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/184587/keepern-me-by-richardwagamese/9780385693257 richard wagamese died on march 10, 2017. a month later, the clint eastwood film production of his 2013 novel indian horse appeared in cinemas, solidifying the stature of that fiction as the strongest candidate for the one book that could serve as an equivalent to the diary of anne frank in carrying the message of our own holocaust: residential schools. yet there is so far little recognition for wagamese’s lifetime achievement, so it is good to see this penguin modern classics edition of wagamese’s 1994 novel, which has always had a staunch following, and to see wagamese described in the note on the author as being one of canada’s foremost writers. although he retreated to his home near kamloops and to the inspiring presence of the land to do his writing, wagamese was an engaged activist. he toured extensively to urban centres and indigenous communities, maintained a lively facebook site, and taught many creative writing seminars. on youtube, one can find many interviews with him. he sought the widest possible readership. his prose style shows the conciseness and even terseness of his early experience as a journalist, combined with the indigenous storyteller’s humour, both of which lend to a broad appeal. his is not the mystical suggestiveness of louise erdrich, who accurately describes him on the jacket as “a born storyteller.” having been saved from post-traumatic stress response (the word disorder implies an inadequacy on the part of the victim, whereas the word “response” conveys the inevitable impact of historical circumstances) by the recovery of his anishnaabe worldview, wagamese wrote for indigenous people who are similarly lost. he represents them in garnet raven, the hero of keeper’n me. this is why keeper’n me is such a good choice for reissue: a young indigenous man earnestly seeking reconnection with family and tradition is brought together with a witty and friendly elder who is keeper of the drum and of much cultural wisdom. as such, the novel may serve as a model for precisely the kind of rejuvenating relationships that many indigenous peoples need to heal from colonial trauma. wagamese also wrote for and spoke to non-indigenous audiences. like many great authors (but not all), he was a humanitarian who reached out to others. when he spoke in my class at macewan university in 2015, it was a dramatic performance more than a speech, and more articulate than any speech i have ever heard. he used the english language with conciseness and power, while he weaved and darted about the room. it could be said that he spoke to the common person and wrote for the common reader. it could also be said that these two creatures are elusive if not non-existent, yet the effort to reach them is identifiable and palpable. his tone was and is always that of the blues singer, an ancient tone of pain blended with humour and always poised, with the right note of passion demanded by the moment and a fine measure of psychological insight. as an example of that poise, please consider the lifelikeness of the verb “skied” in the following sentence describing garnet’s homecoming to his mother after being away in foster homes and the wider world for twenty years, from five to twenty-five years of age: “she smiled all soft across the fire at me and a little tear skied down one cheek” (82). garnet is, of course, an avatar of the author. character and author share anishnaabe cultural roots on a reserve in northwestern ontario, and they are both drawn to the shiny and fast-moving world outside jack robinson “common fires”: a tribute 325 indigenous cultures: garnet learns to love the blues, whereas wagamese had a lifelong love of baseball and hockey. to draw garnet back to his cultural roots, keeper sometimes explains anishinaabe values; more often, he allows garnet to discern the truths that lie beneath his methods. reciprocity. care is taken to frame the key relationships in the novel as reciprocal. keeper does not set up a hierarchical relationship with garnet. instead, he puts garnet at ease by saying that they can “kinda be each other’s guides” (105). through alcohol, keeper has strayed from becoming the member of the medewiwin, the guardians of the anishnaabe people, that he was meant to be, and garnet guides him back to the role of the knowledge keeper; in turn, keeper guides garnet back to his culture, but at his own pace. nothing is forced, though conditions for learning are created. concerning garnet’s relationship with his physically powerful and oldest brother jackie, who was an aim activist and an articulate leader in the seventies, garnet faces a big problem. jackie has turned into what his next oldest brother stanley describes as “a big broodin’ angry wounded bear kinda’ guy” (142) who alternates between coldness and anger. extending the bear imagery, keeper notes that bear mothers teach their cubs by setting up conditions of play so that the cubs learn unwittingly, while playing (148). garnet learns that hockey is the one activity in which jackie can “let off steam,” and, applying keeper’s advice, he engages his oldest brother in a game of shinny. they end up sprawled against the boards in a bear hug, and jackie admits that he hated the whites for kidnapping his baby brother (15); that he hated garnet for “the whiteness i can see all over you” (156); and that he avoided him in fear that his hatred would spill out and drive him away. this confession leads to admissions of mutual emotional need: garnet needs jackie to fulfill his familial identity, and jackie needs to let down his judgmental walls and restore his suppressed love for his baby brother (157). jackie thanks garnet for challenging him, and garnet replies, comically, “it’s a bear thing” (158). the upshot is that the reserve team, the white dog flyers, featuring the raven brothers and their uncles, cheered on by family and community, becomes the strongest in the area. jackie gives garnet a jersey with the name “bagga antlers” on the back; this is the nickname jackie had given him in childhood because of his boniness, and garnet wears the jersey every year (159). judgments. they form isolating barriers based on fear. keeper’s ruminations make it clear that the white colonial leaders came in this judging mode, “not askin for a guide, judgin’” (108): they “seen us prayin’ strange and got fulla fear about it,” so that “other people’s fear pretty much made up us indyuns’ hist’ry anyway” (109). with his laconic humour, keeper remarks that those who bowed in prayer to the god in the whites’ great book of truth looked up to find that all their land was gone (108). the whites ignored the anishnaabe truth that the true human being has “truth inside” (107). all growth, in the anishnaabe world view, takes place from the inside out, and this accords with observations of the natural world: “nothin’ in this world ever grew from the outside in” (56). simplicity. keeper clarifies that the anishnaabe people survived the last five hundred years because “we never lost that simplicity” (167). he explains that the worship of creation or mother earth is an expression of humility: “pray ‘n ask for help. it’s the start of your own power…. simple, eh?” (262). from the foundation of faith springs respect and a series of other attitudes: “give respect, you give kindness, honesty, openness, gentleness, good thoughts, good transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 326 actions. simple. eh?” (167). the drum is the heartbeat of mother earth, keeper explains, and the drumbeat is about “the woman power all around us” and “the spirit power of the female” or “soo-wanee-quay” in ojibway (165). the purpose of the drum is to bring people back to the sense of oneness that pulses through the heartbeat of the mother, something that is felt in the womb before birth (165). garnet illustrates this principle when he recalls the early homecoming experience of being locked in a long hug with his mother: my speeding brain got quieter and quieter and i felt more and more relaxed and safe and sheltered and warm until i began to realize that i’d felt this same way somewhere back in my past. i don’t know what it was but something somewhere deep inside me recognized that heartbeat. recognized it from the days way before i ever slid out into this world. recognized it from when her body kept me safe and sheltered and warm. recognized it from when she was all vibration, fluid and movement. from when our souls shared the same space and time. my mother. (78) balance. garnet learns the need to honor both the gifts of the female and those of the male. he learns that his mother prayed often for his return over twenty years and composed a song that she sang often, with the single line ”bih’kee’-yan,” meaning “come home” in ojibway. his father, john mukwa (ojibway for “bear”), blamed himself for failing to keep his children, secluded himself on his trapline (72), drank, spoke to no one, and one rainy night fell to his death from a railway bridge over a river (73). garnet thinks about his father’s loss and his own (74), and he names a tiny early-evening star “the bear star” so that he can look at it and talk to his father about his feelings and perhaps sing him an ojibway song (82-3). in doing so, he accepts the darkness his father slipped into and honors his truth without succumbing to that darkness himself. garnet undertakes a four-day journey into the bush by himself to find and honor the cabin that his father built. he has a dream about two eagles that turn into an old man and old woman who smile at him (251). this means that the grandfathers and grandmothers are watching over him, keeper tells him later (271). an eagle also leaves him with the gift of an eagle feather. as keeper says, the eagle feather in anishnaabe culture is given to honor someone who has done something to help people. keeper explains that the freedom of the eagle’s soaring is the result of a lot of effort to “pick out the bad air from the good.” people too seek balance in life through hard effort, and garnet has done a “lotta work an’ learnin’ to see and feel” (185). real warriors. keeper warns garnet against two kinds of silence that men fall into, “indian or not” (127). one is “the smoldering, angry kind we use instead of our fists” (127). this is the kind that jackie had fallen into when garnet rescued him with a game of shinny and a bear hug. it coincides with the stereotype of the hypermasculine indian man, conveniently inculcating the attitude that this dangerous male cannot be lived with: he must be controlled or defeated. the other kind is “the big open, embarrassed kind” when the heart feels things that the male cannot articulate. these are the nurturing and protective emotions that are attributed to the female (indian or not). keeper warns that the “real warriors” never surrender to silence. he jokes that “the only stone-faced indians doing any good out there are statues” (127). this refers to the stereotype of the stoic warrior that, for example, archie belaney adopted to pass as grey owl. garnet replaces silence with action. he hugs people and creates closeness in other ways, such as finding that tiny bear star in the early evening sky so that he can connect with the spirit of his father. as keeper explains, real warriors are also humble: at the feast at the end of the novel, the jack robinson “common fires”: a tribute 327 men will first serve the women (287). real warriors have long-term commitment and regard wisdom as a path rather than a goal (273). they are represented in the animal world by the mole that lives close to mother earth and always investigates carefully; those who behave like the mole take the time to know their feelings before acting (220). living in two worlds. the great challenge facing all young indigenous people today is finding balance between the non-indigenous world and the indigenous world. keeper warns that indians “can’t be hidin’ behind our indyun ways” (198). to illustrate his point, he borrows a tradition from prairie indians about “stealin’ horses” (198). keeper advises that indigenous people need “the kinda horses them outsiders ride nowadays” to survive in the contemporary world and “fight the good fight” (198). he advises that, as long as they “do it in the spirit of the teachins’,” indians can take up any role, trade, or profession and use it as “another horse we learn’d to ride” (200). for example, garnet’s next oldest brother, stanley, has earned a degree in social work and returned to white dog to help his people. stanley insists that indians need to “steal all the whiteman’s horses to make our circles strong again” (136). wagamese wisely frames cultural hybridity neither as a betrayal of indigenous cultures, nor as a compensation for a deficit, but as an act of courage, a tactical victory, and a means of maintaining the traditional value of balance. like many actual indigenous men and women today, garnet needs the balance of the eagle. after five years at white dog and all he has learned about family and tradition, he is still proud of having survived as a city indian, and he is still occasionally drawn to the fast pace and shiny things of the white man’s world. the same is true for actual indigenous people today. as keeper puts it, the whiteman comes “in lotsa diff’rent ways” (56). whereas there were blues and jazz then, there are hip hop and rap now, and there are cell phones and video games, etc. not knowing himself, garnet settled into a black family in toronto and arrived at the reserve looking like “one james brown-lookin’ indian” (51) with a three-foot afro, mirrored shades, a balloonsleeved yellow silk shirt, lime-green baggy pants, and platform shoes (45). he looked “more like a parakeet than a raven” (62). garnet’s years in white society left him with “one great big black hole” in his belly and the wind whistling through him (33) (these are repeated images). wagamese suffered those feelings (though he would have looked pretty funny in an afro, since he was so unmistakably indigenous!), and those feelings persist for young indigenous people today because racism is alive and well in canada. some young indigenous people i know in academe are setting their priorities wisely: they are putting their culture first and their white education second, but they are uncompromising about wanting both. i wanted to pay wagamese homage by offering a detailed and appreciative reading of his novel. i am grateful that he is a humanitarian who writes in a way that is relatable. i am grateful for his uncanny talent for making his literary performance real: in his work, there is no separation between writer and writing. the gap between artist and art closes: both merge into a seamless whole, as happens with a fine actor or actress in a play or film, and as happened that day when he spoke to my class. his narrative voice has such authenticity that it validates the reading experience, so often denigrated as a pseudo-experience; specifically, he validates reading complex fiction literature, which is a demanding activity that seems imperiled in this age of mixed media when the nobel prize for literature is given to bob dylan for his music. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 328 with the burgeoning of indigenous memoirs and fiction about residential schools, the misconception has developed that indigenous fiction is deliberately simple in its style. helen hoy disparages this premise, pointing out that it leads to the corollary that such texts render experience in a transparent or unmediated way (hoy 288). jo-ann episkenew adds that this old prejudice leads to the assumption that such texts should be studied under the heading of anthropology rather than literary studies (episkenew 112). wagamese is so important because his writings bring together aesthetic complexity and a tone of authenticity that speaks to the common reader; in particular, keeper’n me has many fine narrative touches while it introduces anishinaabe cultural values and tells a wry tale. i am grateful too that, through some careful narrative moves, he explicitly includes nonindigenous readers in his audience. garnet relays keeper’s view that we are all tribal people deep in our pasts; hence, fires warm our hearts and souls as well as our bodies, and the problems of the world and between people will be solved “once we remember the common fires that burn in our pasts” (239). jack robinson, macewan university works cited episkenew, jo-ann. taking back our spirits: indigenous literature, public policy, and healing, university of manitoba press, 2009. hoy, helen. how should i read these? native women writers in canada, university of toronto press, 2001. microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 11 “transnational narratives of conflict and empire, the literary art of survivance in the fiction of gerald vizenor” billy j. stratton with more than forty books to his credit, including poetry, fiction, critical theory, journalism, memoir, and tribal history, spanning the last five decades, gerald vizenor has established himself as a prolific, versatile, and influential contemporary native1 writer and thinker. while vizenor's works have consistently addressed the legacy of colonialism and native peoples' responses to its effects, they are also distinguished for their frequent placing of native people and characters within international contexts. these interests can be traced back to his earliest writings in the realm of haiku and imagistic poetry, directly inspired by his experiences living in japan while serving in the u.s. military. these include the volumes two wings the butterfly (1962), raising the moon vines (1964), seventeen chirps (1964), and empty swings (1967). he has continued these poetic explorations in more recent collections, matsushima: pine island (1984), almost ashore (2006), favor of crows (2014), and calm in the storm/accalmie (2015). writing on the influence of a deep understanding of place via a sort of communion with a particular ecosystem and its terrestrial cycles in favor of crows, vizenor states, "haiku, in a sense, inspired me on the road as a soldier in another culture and gently turned me back to the seasons, back to traces of nature and the tease of native reason and memories" (xi). cosmopolitan origins vizenor's strong interest in international and transnational experiences is also evident in several works of fiction set throughout asia and europe. these include griever: an american monkey king in china (1990), the heirs of columbus (1991), hiroshima bugi: atomu 57 (2010), shrouds of white earth (2010) and blue ravens (2016)—the first of a trilogy of novels2 addressing the european experiences of anishinaabe soldiers in the contexts of world wars i and ii. in these works, anishinaabe culture and ideas take on indelible "chancy presence," transcending political boundaries while conferring a deep sense of global belonging (postindian 19). vizenor's use of common tropes such as border-crossing, international exploration, transnational native liberty, and dynamic transmotion are, in many ways, reflective of his own billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 12 cosmopolitan experiences—initially through the tribal newspaper published at white earth by his own ancestors, the tomahawk (later renamed progress); as a member of the u.s. military; and most fully as a transnational native writer, lecturer, and traveler. this cosmopolitanism would, perhaps, be natural for a native person, an anishinaabe citizen of the white earth nation, the descendant of "postindian immigrants, and in that sense postmodern natives on the move from the reservation to modernity, the industrial world of minneapolis" (postindian 21). it is also natural for a storier whose homeland, while centered in minnesota and the great lakes region, also includes the rest of north america, as well as a world and universe. this is so by virtue of its very creation and maintenance through the dreams and thoughts of the gichi-manidoo, or great spirit, in the creation stories of the anishinaabe, transformed and always transforming into its present form by the trickster, naanabozho. among the anishinaabe stories of origins and world-creation found in vizenor's works, he describes the pre-historical world as originally consisting of water without form, or as a disordered and amorphous non-place in the midst of a global flood where creation and renewal are constant. within the broader category of creation accounts known as earthdiver stories, these narratives concentrate on the processes by which supernatural figures, with the help of various animals, work to draw substance from the depths of the abyss to establish solid ground where living beings can enjoy rest and relief. in the heirs of columbus (1991), for instance, vizenor relates the actions taken by naanabozho to accomplish this. in this work's opening, the narrator describes this figure as, simply, "the compassionate tribal trickster who created the earth" (5). the abbreviated description of creation that follows establishes a universal, native-centric, but non-exclusive conception of the world—which i have elsewhere termed, "heteroholistic"3— whereby "the trickster created the new earth with wet sand" (5). vizenor's subsequent 1992 novel, dead voices, contains a more detailed version of this story. here, the importance of cooperation in the process of creation are elaborated with naanabozho enlisting the assistance of various animals to restore the flooded world: "so he asked the beaver to dive down and rescue the last of the old earth, but it was the muskrat who came back with a little piece of sand, enough for the tribe to pack a new island on the back of a turtle" (111). in many ways such a conception of the world/universe is in harmony with the earliest conception of cosmopolitanism noted by kwame anthony appiah as simply a "citizen of the cosmos" (xiv). transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 13 utilizing naanabozho's wildly adaptive capacity as a ubiquitous narrative figuration in anishinaabe storytelling and literature, vizenor broadens their vital role even further, noting in the trickster of liberty (1988), "the trickster is a 'cosmic web' in imagination" (xi). as such, naanabozho is conceived and understood within a broader cosmological framework and as a prominent semiotic presence. vizenor stretches the limits of the descriptive capacity for this ambiguous "tribal trickster" through the tease of chance and irony. in the essay "trickster discourse: comic holotropes and language games," for example, he describes naanabozho as "a liberator and healer in a narrative, a comic sign, communal signification and a discourse with imagination" (187). writing on the function and purpose of the trickster in storytelling and literature, jace weaver, observes vizenor's prevalent use of the trope, stating that "in the very process of disruption" initiated by the trickster both naanabozho and characters that embody its traits and qualities succeed in "imaginatively keeping the world in balance" (other words 56). the resonance of such ideas emphasizes the values of restoration, harmony, and cooperation. at the same time the inclusion of these qualities helps shift the focus away from individuality and isolated facts, events, and locations that are central to western knowledge. this grants even greater significance to restoration, harmony, and cooperation when combined with the transcendent conception and identity of gichi-manidoo. the eminent anishinaabe scholar and storyteller, basil johnston, defines gichi-manidoo as "the great mystery of the supernatural order, one beyond human grasp, beyond words, neither male nor female, nor of the flesh" (2). in his explanation of how the universe and all things in it were created, johnston states, "kitchimanitou4 had a vision, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, sensing, and knowing the universe, the world, the manitous, plants, animals, and human beings, and brought them into existence" (2-3). similarly, this figure is simply described by the ethnologist, frances densmore, as "the master of life—the source and impersonation of the lives of all sentient things, human, faunal, and floral" (97). anishinaabe poet and linguist, margaret noodin, emphasizes the global relevance and essential crux of johnston's outline of these stories as a "way of saying the words of stories are medicine of the earth, information about all that can be observed, parts of universal understanding that are essential for living according to the anishinaabe people" (112). although native american creation stories may be dismissed as quaint myths, or worse, by non-native readers, the point daniel health justice makes in why indigenous literature matters (2018) about native speculative fiction seems equally pertinent to oral tradition: "the fantastic is an billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 14 extension of the possible, not the impossible; it opens up and expands the range of options for indigenous characters (and readers [or listeners]); it challenges our assumptions and expectations of 'the real'" (149). one of the major implications of this native order of things is that as part of a contingent, cohesive, and global whole, the wide-ranging anishinaabe lands and lakes located in wisconsin, michigan, north dakota and minnesota—home to the white earth reservation—and of the larger great lakes region on both sides of the american/canadian border, form the geographic center for what is known as "turtle island" by the anishinaabeg, as well as other native peoples. the first person narrator of vizenor's shrouds of white earth (2010) takes little time in challenging the imagined communities of european colonialism in a dialogic statement put directly to the reader: rightly you query my use of that facile word, culture. i should be more specific about the use of popular, cosmopolitan, and aristocratic cultures, but for now my use of the word culture is even more particular. i mean a reservation culture, a culture of reservations, that reservoir and uncommon association of colonial, foisted, bribable, simulated, countered, postponed, and ironic good stories, taste and company. (6) the artificiality of these national and political boundaries, imposed in the aftermath of european colonialism, is precisely what another anishinaabe writer, gordon henry jr., playfully labels as "parameters of residence" (light people 76-79). for henry, this was simply the result of the imposition and demarcation of reservation enclaves of native culture. additionally, out of the same land seized from native peoples, other borders were drawn to delineate the political national territories of the united states and canada to the north, and mexico to the south. it is precisely these conditions that lead appiah to highlight the arguments of contemporary thinkers who maintain that "the boundaries of nations are morally irrelevant—accidents of history with no rightful claim on our conscience" (xvi). hence, despite the restrictions on freedom, movement, and opportunity they unmistakably inflict, such impositions alone are incapable of severing the spiritual connections or sense of global belonging the anishinaabeg as citizens of an anishinaabeg world, or any other native and indigenous peoples as citizens of their own respective worlds, maintain with the earth. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 15 colonial encounters, upheavals, and resistance in his revolutionizing work in native critical theory, louis owens sought to differentiate the world of creation from the context of postcolonial positionality through the adoption of edward said's idea of "strategic location" (208). for owens, this conception aligns with anne mcclintock's critique of "postcolonialism" as a term that "reorients the globe once more around a single binary opposition: colonial-postcolonial" (10). owens worked to articulate a distinctly native critique of colonial land in much of his critical work, conceived "as a kind of frontier zone, which i elsewhere have referred to as 'always unstable, multidirectional, hybridized, characterized by heteroglossia, and indeterminate'" (208). in a similar vein, vizenor has sought to rectify the sustained exclusion of native people in postcolonial discourse by placing emphasis on the geographic claims and connections of native peoples beyond the limits of strategic locations bound to imposed and simulated reservation boundaries or liminal frontier zones invented by colonial knowledge. in an essay titled, "literary transmotion: survivance and totemic motion in native american indian art and literature," vizenor observes, "native and indigenous cosmototemic artists created the first memorable scenes of presence, natural motion, and survivance on the slant of stone, and in the great shadows of monumental caves more than thirty thousand years ago on every continent" (20). for like the story of another trickster, the brother of naanabozho, who takes the elemental form of stone and appears in several of vizenor's novels, as well as in henry's the light people, there is no place on earth without their presence. within the context of western colonial discourse, native peoples have long been cast as brutal savages in the weaponized binaries which accrue meaning within the asynchronous and starkly linear context of european exploration and globalization. vizenor cites the 1648 treaty of westphalia in native liberty (2009) as one significant moment in the concomitant establishment of geo-political "territorial borders, security, and state sovereignty" within this context (105). conceived to bring to an end the thirty years war, this agreement also served as a mechanism by which the native, indigenous, and first nations people of the western hemisphere were placed under the influence, surveillance, and purported authority of western european ecclesiastical, monarchic, and military rulers (105). this exploitative state of relations was enabled, at least in part, by the systems of cultural classification and enforced criteria of normative appearance, behavior, and thought. one of the prime vehicles for the dissemination of billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 16 such knowledge as an expression of imperial authority and power was embedded in spurious representations of native and indigenous people in the western art and literature. the perceptions propagated by these discourses were instrumental to frequent dissemination of fabricated information about native peoples. vizenor directly addresses this problem vis-à-vis frontier narratives in his widely influential article, "socioacupuncture: mythic reversals and striptease in four scenes," describing it as "the structural opposition of savagism and civilization found in the cinema and in the literature of romantic captivities" (83). literary texts and artistic images were central in circulating disparaging images and descriptions of native cultures and peoples throughout europe and the americas. such representations anticipated and exacerbated the nature and intensity of the conflicts typifying european imperial interactions with the indigenous peoples they encountered in the western hemisphere, as well as in asia, africa, australia, and all parts between. in the most widely reproduced examples used as synonyms for native culture, vizenor continues, "plains tepees, and the signs of moccasins, canoes, feathers, leathers, arrowheads, numerous museum artifacts, conjure the cultural rituals of the traditional tribal past, but the pleasure of the tribal striptease is denied, data bound, stopped in emulsion, colonized in print to resolve the insecurities and inhibitions of the dominant culture" (83). taken as a whole, colonial modes of representation contributed to systems of knowledge and action that neatly aligned with readymade conceptions of barbarism, primitiveness, and cultural stasis (83). no doubt influenced by such developments, and in response to the wider geopolitical dynamics spawned from european conflict, vizenor observes that native communities were "already under colonial siege and disease, decimated by the first fatal contact with the dominions of 'globalization'" (liberty 105). more specifically, he makes readers keenly aware of the ongoing processes by which anishinaabe and other native peoples of north america were oppressed and "denied a sense of presence" in a world defined and divided by the mechanisms of western knowledge and campaigns of organized and state-sanctioned violence (105). the particulars of this repressive system of imperialism, described as being "delivered by the breath and blood of monotheism and civilization" (105), have not just led to social isolation, cultural erasure, and forced assimilation, but also to the denial of "cultural hybridity, hemispheric contact and liberty" (106). it was a world that was rapidly expanding and torn asunder by the speed of transportation, advances in technology, and warfare. and within this context the lands, forests, and lakes of the anishinaabe became a flashpoint of imperial fortunes and subjugation with the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 17 arrival of french explorers and missionaries, along with the massive transformation and growth of the fur trade. as ian k. steele points out in warpaths: invasions of north america (1994), french efforts to monopolize the fur trade proceeded over a lengthy period of time starting with the expeditions of jacques cartier north of the gulf of st. lawrence in 1534, and later those of pierre du gua and samuel de champlain, resulting in the establishment of fur trading settlements at ile sainte-croix in 1604 and port royal in 1605, culminating in the establishment of québec in 1608 (59-64). as a consequence of these relentless colonial incursions, the anishinaabe became entangled in the extractive activities that resulted. vizenor details the impact of these events in an early contribution to indigenous autohistory,5 the everlasting sky: new voices from the people named the chippewa (1972), stating that "in the seventeenth century the first voyagers and missionaries of the old world established a fur-trading post on the island [madeline island] near the sacred community of the people" (6). in a follow-up text, tribal scenes and ceremonies (1976), he returns again to this theme, stating, "the fur trade interposed the first anomalous economic burr on the traditional survival rhythms of woodland life and the equipoise of tribal spirits" (111). in response to the destructive cultural and spiritual effects of the colonial fur trade, one character in the heirs of columbus cynically observes, "the fur trade determined the future of the tribes, fur for sale was worth more than a hide packed with bones, feathers, and superstitions" (47). the expansion of the fur trade and its associated effects, as we know, brought widespread environmental disruption and acute trauma to native communities in the larger context of extractive colonialism. nonetheless, vizenor also doesn't shy away from speaking directly to the responsibility and agency that arise from the distorted rationales of victimry and ecological romanticization, noting, "tribal people from the mountains, plains and waterways of the woodland, transcended or ignored their religious beliefs and family totems by killing millions of animals for peltry" (tribal scenes 111). positioning the french fur trade within the larger context of colonial globalization, scott lyons draws a comparison between the fur trade and the difficult negotiations native people were brought into in addressing european languages, including the fraught questions surrounding translation. following vizenor, lyons observes that even in a "subordinate" position, the anishinaabe still "played a fairly extensive role in the fur trade" (159). although basile hudon beaulieu describes this era of anishinaabe history, which was billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 18 also one of apocalypse, as "an eternal shame" in native tributes (2018), it is not one of limits or finality either. instead, as he reminds readers, "the memory of totemic animals continued as a source of stories and images in native art and literature" (7). transnational passages in war and exile the wide-ranging and long term results of these social, cultural, historical, and epistemological dislocations is that anishinaabe and other native peoples were reduced by degrees to the status of exiles, as "the fugitives of frontier, imperial, [and] mercenary sovereignty" (liberty 108). turtle mountain ojibwe writer, louise erdrich, illustrates the stark nature and effects of subsequent colonial impositions in the opening of her novel, tracks. the narrative commences in the tumultuous period following the fin de siècle closing of the frontier as heralded by frederick jackson turner with a narrator who observes: "it was surprising there were so many of us left to die. for those who survived the spotted sickness from the south, our long fight west to nadouissioux land where we signed the treaty, and then a wind from the east, bringing exile in a storm of government papers, what descended from the north in 1912 seemed impossible" (1). speaking to many of these same forces and impacts, vizenor addresses the transnational and transhistorical effects produced from this context in the opening chapter of blue ravens. here, the lineages of the two characters through which the narrative is told, the brothers aloysius hudon beaulieu and basile hudon beaulieu, are traced back along multiple lines of rhizomatic kinship: "honoré hudon beaulieu, our father, was born on the north shore of bad medicine lake. he was known as frenchy. our mother was born on the south shore of the lake. these two families, descendants of natives and fur traders, shared the resources of the lake and pine forests" (5). the composition of such stories that address the complexity of these cultural interactions in ironic and empathetic ways, especially those that place native characters in international settings and contexts, carry the capacity to effectively challenge circumscribed notions of culture and identity and its relation to geographic belonging. apart from bearing witness to the complications of intercultural contact and the inextricable web of familial interrelations resulting from the encounters between anishinaabe and european peoples, blue ravens explores the border-crossings of some of vizenor’s own ancestors. in fact, their experiences as soldiers and nurses during world war i, including those of ignatius vizenor, augustus hudon beaulieu, ellanora beaulieu, john clement beaulieu, and transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 19 lawrence vizenor, are honored on the dedication page of the novel itself [5]. such memorialization lends narrative substance to jodi byrd’s observation that "to be in transit is to be active presence in a world of relational movements and countermovements," through the people, events, and landscapes vizenor's fictional narrators see and experience in place of their real-life counterparts (xvi-xvii). "to be in transit," byrd further emphasizes, "is to exist relationally, multiply" (xvii). an analogous sense of relationality is conveyed in the narrative trajectory of blue ravens, which provides readers a window into anishinaabe experience emanating from the white earth reservation starting in the year 1907. the narration of the story itself is embedded in white earth, before shifting to europe and the horrors of world war i, which the narrator characterizes as an “empire demon more sinister than the ice monster” (109). initiating a break from these parameters of residence, the story traces lines of flight to the reservation where the beaulieu brothers experience a persistent sense of confinement and isolation, provoking a return to france where they would ironically "become expatriate native artists, a painter and a writer, in paris" (109, 211). in the novel's sweeping exploration of the impacts that forms of "empire slavery" (278), and especially, its results bore on the anishinaabeg of white earth, vizenor's characters utilize the potency of imagination to address the traumas of oppression, war, and inhumanity. vizenor accomplishes this through the genre of historical fiction, building upon the broader transnational, postcolonial critique that extends throughout his discursive body of work. vizenor's concern for history and the way it bears on native individuals and societies highlights the truth that intercultural conflict and acts of war result in the massive displacement of native and indigenous peoples. yet, the actual events of the war itself are not the focus of his narrative as the essential substance of blue ravens is primarily focused on the aftermath of world war i as told through the experiences of the beaulieu brothers as expatriate artists, a writer and painter, who return to paris to escape their ironic status as “political prisoners by the federal government in a civil war” (217). the thematic concerns this and vizenor's other novels engender, which include a diverse array of characters including human, animal, and spirit beings, encourages readers to appreciate his sustained engagement with the multivalent sources, impacts, and legacies of colonization and empire building through the empathetic play and tease of humor and irony. expressions, of course, that form the basis for his practice of trickster hermeneutics. the agile modes of discourse created with such elements allow the creative capacities of storytelling and art to be more effective in conveying the essence of survivance and native billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 20 sovenance, which vizenor defines as "that presence in remembrance, that trace of creation and natural reason in native stories" (fugitive 15). connecting the inevitable legacy of violence that proceeded from global colonialism to more recent and contemporary historical experiences that attend this context, vizenor creates a complementary array of stories by which to explore the resonances and impacts on anishinaabe people. in so doing, vizenor establishes linkages between blue ravens and his follow-up works, native tributes and the yet to be released satie on the seine, by tracing the narrative threads to world war ii, and the experiences of the crossblood character, ronin ainoko browne, in hiroshima bugi. readers are introduced to ronin, the orphan son of orion browne—an anishinaabe soldier stationed in japan—and a tokyo bugi dancer, known only as okichi, as living on without "parents to bear his stories, no memorable contours, creases, or manner of silence at night” (15). left at an orphanage following his birth, the use of ainoko as a middle name is reflective of his physical traits, signifying " a hafu, or halfbreed child" (17), while he is also given "the name of the actor, mifune," from which ronin is derived (21). as these accumulated names imply, despite his familial isolation, ronin is heir to a rich tradition in japanese culture, invoking the famous image of the wandering samurai widely depicted in art and literature and whom serve as the inspiration for the heroic wandering samurai characters played by toshirô mifune in numerous akira kurosawa films, including yojimbo, sanjuro, and seven samurai. finally, the surname, browne, connects the transnational circuit back to the anishinaabe world of vizenor's stories through intertextual association with other dislocated characters such as almost browne found in several of his stories and novels. as explained in the novel, hotline healers (1997), it is a name derived from an accident of circumstance in which the character was said to be born "on the shoulder of the road […] almost on the white earth reservation" (10). for jodi bryd, the historical contexts of transnational interrelations, war, and the effects of displacement that play out in hiroshima bugi prompts a consideration of "american indian participation in and disruptions of conviviality within the transits of empire" (189-190). as is the case in practically all of vizenor's works, the impact of empire cuts across various spatial, temporal, ideological, and spiritual coordinates and realities. vizenor highlights lines of correspondence across indigenous worlds through a narrative structure that reveal the novel to be a book within the book formed by ronin's journals and the unnamed narrator of the "manidoo envoy" chapters, which alternate between those focalized transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 21 through ronin. identified as a fellow anishinaabe veteran from leech lake, and erstwhile roommate of orion at the hotel manidoo in nogales, arizona, who ronin bade "to provide notes, the necessary descriptive references, and background information on his father and others" (9). these textual details, which included accounts of orion's experiences after surviving a war in which he was "exposed to nuclear radiation," are conveyed as story fragments in ronin's narration. at the same time, they transport the reader back to a site that bears crucial significance in so many of vizenor's works: "he retired from the army, nursed his nuclear wounds, and built a cabin at the headwaters of the mississippi river near the white earth reservation in minnesota" (18). emphasizing the healing powers of this sacred place, the narrator later reveals that orion "recovered by meditation, native medicine, and the annual stories of survivance at the headwaters" (18). in addition to creating connections between native worlds, hiroshima bugi also highlights transnational linkages between the knowledge and stories of the anishinaabe and the indigenous people of japan who are known as the ainu. these are described as extending to "natural reason, their creation, animal totems, and survivance" (51), with an unnamed narrator further asserting, "ainu culture is based upon a world view which presumes that everything in nature, be it tree, plant, animal, bird, stone, wind, or mountain has life of its own and can interact with humanity" (51-52). the radical break with western epistemologies and ontologies that understandings of an animate world gives potency to a transcendent and unbounded conception of the earth in which national borders, private property, citizenship, and identity retain little meaning. vizenor reinforces such ideas by emphasizing the inherent sense of belonging that anishinaabe people may feel anywhere in the world, the significance of sites including ronin's "nuclear kabuki theater of the ruins" at the atomic bomb dome in hiroshima (3), and orion's retirement home in the desert of southern arizona, or in the beaulieu brothers' escape from white earth to the refuge of paris. all of these settings are imbued with increased implication, perhaps, when considering the ways in which the stories they frame resist the "homing" pattern theme observed by literary critics such as william bevis. while having significant force in classic native novels such as n. scott momaday's house made of dawn, james welch's winter in the blood, and leslie marmon silko's ceremony, which tend to correlate healing and recovery with a return to reservation lands, it is important to note the narrow limits of such interpretive models as well. as angelika bammer writes on the concept of displacement, for instance, when billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 22 it comes to native and indigenous peoples, colonial and imperial policies resulted in the massive "expropriation of land that often left indigenous peoples with merely a small, and mostly poorer, portion of their [original] land" (xi). this situation notwithstanding, the exigencies of the homing pattern has not been without its critics. the irish scholar padraig kirwan, for instance, has asserted that the application of this mode of interpretation in some quarters has become "an automatic, enforced, and singular means to achieve relocation and deracination that results in native literatures being disallowed sufficient room to develop a narrative schema that speaks of life in the urban centers or elsewhere" (3). stephen graham jones is one native writer who has expressed skepticism for the efficacy of this determinist formulaic, stating in a publisher's interview promoting the fast red road: a plainsong, that the novel was written in part to challenge this determinist model.6 legacies of discovery and empire the broader philosophical and historical valences brought to the surface by these ideas have also been addressed in several of vizenor's other works, and numerous offerings by other native writers from leslie marmon silko's ceremony and stephen graham jones' the fast red road, to louise erdrich's and michael dorris' co-written novel, the crown of columbus, as commencing with the arrival of the italian navigator in 1492 to the western hemisphere. far from being seen as an isolated moment in history, which eschews "the binary axis of time," which mcclintock critiques as "an axis even less productive of political nuance because it does not distinguish between the beneficiaries of colonialism (the ex-colonizers) and the casualties of colonialism (the ex-colonized)" (11), these works connect columbus' landing to ensuing waves of colonial violence that were unflinchingly documented by spanish missionaries and conquistadores such as bartolomé de las casas and bernal díaz del castillo. the catastrophic series of events resulting from the so-called discovery and conquest of the 'new world' is taken up in the heirs of columbus as the foundation for the mythologization of the americas and the operant masternarratives of divine providence and exceptionalism that animates colonial historiography. events commencing with the landing of christopher columbus also form the context for subsequent interactions that led to the abduction of pocahontas, the daughter of powhatan, by english settlers in what was to become virginia; circumstances that culminated, of course, in her untimely death and internment at gravesend in kent, england7, transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 23 creating a situation that threatens to consign her to the status of a perpetual captive. it is useful to note that in addition to representing a decisive moment in native american history, the 500th anniversary of columbus' arrival served as the occasion for the publication of the heirs of columbus itself.8 as kimberly blaeser remarks, however, in her critical study, gerald vizenor: writing in the oral tradition," heirs distinguishes itself from the mass of columbus materials that appeared at the time by the unusual twists it gives to the legacy of the columbus myth, boldly imagining the genes of the explorer as a source of contemporary healing" (95). the novel serves, in this sense, as an informative example that reflects the ways in which traditional native storytelling and literature function to deconstruct the artificial disciplinary distinctions between discourses such as history and literature, fact from story. among the numerous ways vizenor uses his work to address the effects of violence, dispossession, confinement, isolation, and loneliness that bear on the lives of native people in the wake of european colonialism is through acts of creative appropriation. in heirs this occurs as columbus is rendered as indigenous, transformed, as it were, into "a trickster healer in the stories told by his tribal heirs at the headwaters of the great river" (3). the provocative and deeply ironic nature of vizenor's reinscription of columbus' role in the remaking of north america is one that aligns with hayden white's notion of historical explanation by "emplotment," which is taken to signify "the way by which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a particular kind" (7). the process of historical production shaped by narrative form is reflective of the essential uncertainty and instability evident in attempts to excavate the facts of the past, along with the human desire to make sense and create order out of the fragments presented by historians through sanctioned modes of documentation, but never through memories or stories, and much less, the dreams of native peoples. vizenor deftly exploits the ambiguities and limitations that issue from such matters to challenge and subvert european claims to lands and resources of the western hemisphere founded upon notions of discovery and conquest, or colonial succession. such is the case with the united states, canada, and mexico from their relationships with england, france, spain, and holland, formulated within a "culture of death" by papal and monarchic authorities, and then later by political and military force (10, 19). billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 24 obscure heirs columbus' own remote "mayan" roots are attributed by vizenor to his mother, susanna di fontanarossa, from whom it is said that he "inherited the signature of survivance and tribal stories in the blood" (9, 28). this provocative connection becomes possible in the story due to the obscurity that attends the tracing of matrilineal descent in western patriarchal culture. the genealogical ties on which the novel's title hinges are made complete by the introduction of columbus' purported indigenous partner, "a hand talker named samana," who emerges into the story from between the lines and through the unstated implications of his journals (31). prompted by the expected skepticism to this element of the story, perhaps, vizenor shares his thoughts on the rhetorical and philosophical function of this wild circumstance in the "epilogue" that follows the conclusion of the novel, stating, "columbus arises in tribal stories that heal with humor the world he wounded; he is loathed, but he is not a separation in tribal consciousness. the admiral of the ocean sea is a trickster overturned in his own stories five centuries later" (185). thus, through his use of storytelling devices and narrative conventions that give cohesion to an alternate legacy for columbus, vizenor challenges the historical processes and constructs of knowledge that attend the deprivation of native people of their lands, natural resources, and culture. the building of story around such "twists" is furthered through the creation of new reservations and native lands. the first of these is established "on the international border near big island in lake of the woods" (6), and founded by the evocatively named, stone columbus, an anishinaabe crossblood identified as the "direct descendent of the trickster, stone, and christopher columbus" (9). as readers attuned to vizenor's irreverent humor and comic irony may already suppose, this place will be no ordinary reservation as it consists mainly of "an enormous barge that had been decked for games of chance on the ocean seas of the woodland," and christened as santa maría casino (6, italics in original). vital to the understanding of vizenor's critique of colonial history is that the casino is further described as a roving "trickster creation on an ocean sea in the new tribal world" (11). that the reservation/casino in this new tribal world is "anchored" beyond the contemporary boundaries of white earth, as well as other anishinaabe communities in the state and region, "straddling the international border between the united states and canada," provides another opportunity for the deconstruction of transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 25 conventional notions of spatial territory and belonging (6). it seems important to note that the particular site of the white earth reservation had been legally retained by the anishinaabe through a series of land cessions actuated by treaties between various anishinaabe groups and the american government in what was to become the state of minnesota from 1837 until 1863. these are facts that draw emphasis to the historical and political dimensions of territorial land claims throughout north america. ones that were shaped by the dispossession and dramatic reduction of reservation territory, while promoting the legalized theft of tribal lands that continued beyond the treaty era and into the twentieth century through mechanisms such as allotment. as one might expect of a story offered as a means of challenging the facile and alltoo-convenient assumptions about native peoples perpetuated in american literary and historical discourse, vizenor offers forth an indigenized conception of land and sovereignty. hence, the legality of stone columbus' reservation/casino is acknowledged through the ruling of a sympathetic federal judge who holds that "the essence of sovereignty is imaginative, an original tribal trope, communal and spiritual, an idea that is more than metes and bounds in treaties," thus providing a legal frame to the novel (7). another site that serves to extend conceptions of anishinaabe land beyond reservation boundaries is "the stone tavern, that wondrous circle of warm trickster stones, [that] has been located for more than a hundred generations on a wild blue meadow near the headwaters of the mississippi river" (4). the "trickster stones" referred to here are, of course, those linked to naanabozho's brother, and which "create a natural theater, an uncovered mount that is never touched by storms, curses, and disease; in the winter the stones near the headwaters are a haven for birds, animals, humans, and trickster stories of liberation" (5). situated just outside this tavern one also finds "the house of life," which is "the burial ground for the lost and lonesome bones that were liberated by the heirs from the museums" (5). binding these associations together is the mississippi river, known to the anishinaabe as "gichiziibi," a term vizenor translates as "the cradleboard of civilization" (13). the connotation of this phrase teases at longstanding connections to the land, as well as its physical conception and epistemological significance conveyed in indigenous knowledge, recalling sacred associations that are stifled in the colonial processes of claiming and naming. additionally, gichiziibi also reflects on vizenor's broader concerns regarding the connections between native languages and place in which he states: "tribal languages were spoken in places for thousands billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 26 and thousands of years, and for that reason the place words are more dramatic connections to the earth. in tribal language and religion there are connections between vision, word, and place. and where people have visions, the vision was connected to the energies of the earth through words, a complex abstract connection" (bowers 48). clearly, the mississippi river, understood through a metaphor that overturns western binaries and eurocentric thought, is one such place, while also appearing in the works of other anisihinaabe writers such as in gordon henry's the light people and louise erdrich's the antelope wife9 (1998). stone columbus is joined in his efforts to decolonize the land and history of the americas and assert a sense of native presence and belonging that moves beyond colonial borders by his wife, felipa flowers. early in the story, as a means of introduction, she is characterized as "the trickster poacher who repatriates tribal remains and sacred pouches from museums" (8). she goes to new york city on a mission in service to such ends "to repatriate sacred medicine pouches […] the bear paw and otter pouches that had been stolen by henry rowe schoolcraft" (45). the tactics flowers uses in her efforts provoke questions centering on the fraught meanings of the terms "discovery" and "theft," and are undertaken "'to atone for" what she calls "the moral corruption of missionaries, anthropologists, archaeo-necromancers, their heirs, and the robber barons of sacred tribal sites'" (50). in order to secure the sacred items stolen by schoolcraft, flowers arranges a meeting with doric michéd, who is identified at first as an "obscure crossblood," and soon after as a "cannibal" (46, 54). vizenor uses these ambiguous and conflicted associations as another means of challenging the shallow narratives of victimry and tragedy that have so often been used to deprive native people of agency and presence. indeed, vizenor's stories are set in a richly textured world in which cultural binaries, especially those that merely reverse the positions of civil and savage, are rejected. in addition to michéd's "remote" ties to an indigenous community (48), he is also revealed as a member of a sinister organization known as the brotherhood of american explorers. this shadowy group meets in the so-called "conquistador club," whose motto is to "'explore new worlds, discover with impunities, represent with manners, but never retreat from the ownership of land and language'" (50). while representing numerous and conflicting identities, within the context of this organization, michéd is portrayed as "'a distinguished explorer and gentleman heir of the first indian agents in the territory of michigan" (54). this is a distinction that further emphasizes transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 27 the complexity of intercultural relations and ever-shifting concepts of land and territory in the colonial period. michéd's conception of a world mapped, classified, and commoditized through colonial knowledge is placed in direct contrast to flowers' understanding that "the world was united in clever tribal stories, imagination, memories" (46). flowers manages to successfully recover the stolen items, but only with the help of "an eager tribal tent shaker" and reservation-less native named transom (54). in fact, transom is only able to liberate the bundles, along with a silver casket containing the remains of columbus, from the museum vault where they were held by entering through a slipstream portal in the transmuted spiritual form of a "bear" (56). as such, this would be no conventional heist as the entry and escape were only made possible by a dimensional worm hole opened by "two black stones" that lead back again to the headwaters (5657). when questioned by the detective in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of these items, flowers challenges the colonial context of their very presence while asserting the spiritual claims of the anishinaabeg in stating, "the liberation of our stories is no crime," before adding that she "would not reveal the location of the pouches" (60). although these narrative events give credence to the territorial primacy of the anishinaabe within minnesota, a more audacious understanding of the world vizenor animates is posited through an attention to different conceptions of sense and understanding: "the new world is heard, the tribal world is dreamed and imagined. the old world is seen, names and stories are stolen, constructed and published" (93). the impressions of these words, then, become the fading echo of flowers next venture to retrieve "the remains of pocahontas for proper burial by the heirs of columbus" (95). this mission, taking her across the atlantic to england, sets the stage for the further deconstruction of the territorial restrictions imposed upon native and indigenous peoples. this plan is put into motion after flowers is contacted by a collector of rare books by the name of pellegrine treves. he claims to possess pocahontas' remains but asks for flowers help in having them repatriated for a proper reburial in america (94). as it turns out, however, the information flowers receives is part of a ruse concocted by michéd who poses as treves to regain possession of columbus' remains. reflecting the sheer brutality of colonialism and its agents, flowers is abducted and killed while engaged in what she thought to be the rescue of "a tribal woman from the cruelties of more than three centuries of civilization" (115). in a dramatic replay of pocahontas' death detailed in a detective inspector's report, flowers' body is billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 28 found "at the base of the statue of pocahontas at st. george's parish church in gravesend," on which it is written that "felipa flowers, may have died from exposure or loneliness at gravesend" (117). movement and belonging flowers' murder and the trauma it bears upon her family forms the impetus for another journey by stone columbus, who travels to the pacific northwest and "declared a sovereign nation on october 12, 1992" at point assinka (119). established five hundred years to the day after the landing of christopher columbus at hispaniola, stone reinscribes the date with an ironic sense of native liberty. significantly, stone's new nation sits at the intersection of international boundaries "between semiahmoo, washington, and vancouver island, canada," in a reclamation of lands and waterways remade into "the wild estate of tribal memories and the genes of survivance in the new world" (119). the establishment of this new sovereign native nation by the heirs of columbus occurs through the claiming of lands in a similar manner as columbus and other european explorers. but their act of claiming is not one predicated on power and force, but done simply "in the name of our genes and the wild tricksters of liberty," further underscoring the sense of unbounded transmotion that vizenor champions in so many of his works. these acts of transition and movement, but also liberty, culminate in the transportation of "the stone tavern, one stone at a time," by which "the earth was warm and healed at the point" (121). the broader significance of these interlinked occurrences and actions demonstrate the capacity for native liberty to operate beyond the limiting parameters of colonial borders, while offering another reminder of the boundlessness of stone. in reverence of this principle and in honor of his deceased wife, stone establishes the "felipa flowers casino […] on the international border between canada and point assinika," in which "there were no inspections at the tribal border; indeed, the heirs honored tribal identities but no political boundaries on the earth" (131). through the creation of this new nation, vizenor provides a means for the "liberation of the mind" from common notions of the world as divided into counties, reservations, states, and nations founded on little more than social and political constructs and that act to sever native peoples' most fundamental connections to the land and the relationships that would be a natural result (155). in the place of such strictures, through stone's efforts to "make the world tribal" through the acceptance of those with a "dedication to heal transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 29 rather than steal tribal cultures" (162), vizenor offers his readers "native memories, stories of totemic creation, shamanic visions, burial markers, medicine pictures, the hunt, love, war and songs," which form "the transmotion of virtual cartography" (fugitive 170). within this same section of fugitive poses, he elaborates further on the theme of geographic meanings, stating that "tricky creation stories, totemic pictures, and mental mappery are the embodiment of native transmotion and sovereignty. native mappers are storiers and visionaries" (170). the subtle associations and ironic turns that are apparent between anishinaabe creation and trickster stories, and the transnational narratives that make up vizenor's novels that act to "overturn civilization with humor" (heirs 165), offer numerous sites of entry into a world and cosmos where a different kind of indigenous cartography has been drawn. a universe, a world, and "a place of the stones," of elements and substance that cannot be contained or circumscribed within the confining limits of colonial ideology and western knowledge (170). and never will be as long as the stories of the people continue to be remembered and told. notes 1 in accordance with vizenor’s conventions on the use of capitalization in reference to the terms indian and native, but more importantly what this intervention signifies in terms of colonial representation and simulation, “native” and “indigenous” are rendered in lowercase throughout this essay. 2 the second installment, native tributes, covering the period of the great depression and the infamous bonus march, was published last year by wesleyan university press (2018). the third, and final, installment, satie on the seine: letters to the heirs of the fur trade will be published by wesleyan in 2020. 3 see "towards a heteroholistic approach to native american literature," in weber: the contemporary west 29:2 (2013) and "reading through peoplehood: towards a culturally responsive approach to native american literature and oral tradition,” in twenty-first century perspectives on indigenous studies: native north america in (trans)motion, 2015. 4 johnson’s usage, kitchi-manitou, is an alternate derived from an older and canadian-located anishinaabe orthography. 5 this phrase was coined by the wendat huron scholar, georges e. sioui, in for an amerindian autohistory, to challenge what he calls the "americanization of the world" (xxii). as a form of decolonial praxis, the intent is "to show how modern american societies could benefit from demythologizing their socio-political discourse and becoming aware of their 'americity.' that is, on this continent where they have just come ashore, they should see spirit, order, and thought, instead of a mass of lands and peoples to be removed, displaced, or rearranged" (xxiii). 6 see also my essay, “for he needed no horse: stephen graham jones’s reterritorialization of the american west in the fast red road,” in the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion, ed. billy j. stratton, (albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2016), (85). billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 30 7 perhaps, as an indication of a shift towards a more accurate depiction of this chapter of american history in mainstream american media, the popular account was the subject of criticism on an episode of trutv's adam ruins everything titled "the first factsgiving," which originally aired on 27 march, 2018. 8 the heirs of columbus was written during the same time as several other works that took a critical view on "discovery" by the likes of kirkpatrick sale and noam chomsky, coinciding with the 500th anniversary of his landing at guanahaní. an event that vizenor's narrator says was renamed by columbus as "san salvador in honor of our blessed lord" (36). 9 erdrich subsequently revised this novel and republished it under the new title, antelope woman (2016). works cited appiah, kwame anthony. cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: norton, 2005. bammer, angelika. 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"migrations to modernity: the many voices of george copway's running sketches of men and places, in england, france, germany, belgium, and scotland," the world, the text, and the indian: global dimensions of native american literature. ed. scott richard lyons. albany: state university of new york press, 2017: 143-182. mcclintock, anne. imperial leather: race, gender and sexuality in the colonial context. new york: routledge, 1995. noodin, margaret. bawaajimo: a dialect of dreams in anishinaabe language and literature. east lansing, mi: michigan state university press, 2014. owens, louis. i hear the train: reflections, inventions, refractions. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2001. sioui, georges e. for an amerindian autohistory. 1991. trans sheila fischman. montreal: mcgill-queen's university press, 1992. steele, ian k. warpaths: invasions of north america. new york: oxford university press, 1994. stratton, billy j. “for he needed no horse: stephen graham jones’s reterritorialization of the american west in the fast red road.” the fictions of stephen graham jones: a critical companion. ed. billy j. stratton. albuquerque: university of new mexico press, 2016. 82-110. vizenor, gerald. blue ravens: historical novel. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, 2014. ---. dead voices. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1992. ---. the everlasting sky: new voices from the people named the chippewa. new york: crowell-collier press, 1972. ---. favor of crows: new and collected haiku. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, 2014. ---. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1998. ---. the heirs of columbus. hanover, nh: wesleyan university press, 1991. ---. hiroshima bugi: atomu 57. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2010. ---. hotline healers: an almost browne novel. hanover, nh: wesleyan university press, 1997. ---. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska billy j. stratton “transnational narratives” 32 press, 2009. ---. native tributes: historical novel. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, 2018. ---. shrouds of white earth. albany: state university of new york press, 2010. ---. "socioacupuncture: mythic reversals and striptease in four scenes," crossbloods: bone courts, bingo, and other reports. 1976. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1990: 83-97. ---. tribal scenes and ceremonies. minneapolis. the nodin press, 1976. ---. "trickster discourse: comic holotropes and language games," narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian literatures. 1989. ed. gerald vizenor. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1993: 187-211. ---. the trickster of liberty: tribal heirs to a wild baronage. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1988. vizenor, gerald, lee, a. robert. postindian conversations. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1999. weaver, jace. other words: american indian literature, law, and culture. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2001. white, hayden. metahistory: the historical imagination in nineteenth-century europe. 1973. baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 1993. microsoft word henzi.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 308 deni ellis béchard and natasha kanapé fontaine. kuei, my friend: a conversation on race and reconciliation. vancouver: talonbooks. 176pp. isbn: 9781772011951 https://talonbooks.com/books/kuei,-my-friend kuei, my friend: a conversation on race and reconciliation (2018) is an epistolary exchange between innu writer, slam poet, and artist natasha kanapé fontaine, and québécois/american writer, journalist, and photographer deni ellis béchard, originally published in french in 2016 under the title kuei, je te salue: conversation sur le racisme. as a bilingual reader, i am often intrigued by the changes and slippages that occur within the work of translation. in effect, a word-for-word translation of the french title into english would be kuei, i greet you: a conversation on racism. kuei is the innu word for “hello”; both versions thus put the innu word, the indigenous language, first and center. the shift in translation, from “i greet you” to “my friend,” implies that a certain level of intimacy has already been established; the formality of the french greeting, from the original encounter, has shifted, in the english translation, to a recognizable friendship, a rapport, in other words, the very relationship that the two authors aim to consolidate through and by their correspondence. indeed, kanapé fontaine signs her first letter to béchard with nuitsheuakan, my friend. the other change, in the second part of the title, from “racism” to “race and reconciliation,” is interesting and, i argue, politically relevant to the time of publication: in december 2015, the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (trc) handed in their report.1 as the authors state in their opening to the book (both versions), “these letters were written in the fall of 2015,” thus anticipating many of the recommendations and findings as exposed by the trc’s report. importantly, this shows that these conversations were and have been taking place well before the implementation of instances like the trc. while the french version was published in 2016, the later publication date of the english version (2018) reflects some of the previous year’s political and cultural discourse regarding canada’s 150th anniversary; and a major theme overall was reconciliation. thus, the shift from “a conversation on racism” to “a conversation on race and reconciliation” is also noteworthy, as it does take something away from the fact that racism is alive and well in canada.2 while the issue of race is still emphasized in the english title, it is quickly coupled with that of reconciliation, coming together, forgiveness, and moving on, in and amidst our differences, in the spirit of canada’s multiculturalism. while the very issue of reconciliation is problematized in the authors’ correspondence (specifically in the later letters), it is worth noting that the first, intended audience for kuei were “high school and college-aged” youth3; however, their “readership [quickly] turned out to be much larger and in no way limited by age” (kanapé fontaine and béchard 2). i am purposefully being nitpicky about the choice of words here to draw attention to the importance of the decisions that are made when works such as kuei do, finally, hit the shelves; because, in fact, kanapé fontaine and béchard’s conversations have to do with all of these aspects: race, racism, reconciliation, but most of all, reparation. for the writers, “each letter [is] like a new treaty” (105). the epistolary exchange was prompted following an unfortunate encounter between natasha kanapé fontaine and québécois journalist denise bombardier at the north shore book fair in sept-îles, in april 2015. bombardier, in january 2015, had written a very harsh column stating sarah henzi review of kuei, my friend 309 that the cultures of indigenous peoples were “deadly” and “antiscientific” (bombardier, n.p.). her comments were met with anger by many, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, and (amongst others) an open letter, co-signed by québec’s idle no more spokeswomen widia larivière and natasha kanapé fontaine, alongside many others, attempted to return the insult back to its speaker: that it was bombardier herself who was “a wavering vestige of a culture that kills, truly. the cult of ignorance; the culture of emptiness” (larivière, n.p.). bombardier was in attendance at the north shore book fair as a guest speaker on a round table and, following her intervention, kanapé fontaine, accompanied by a group of innu women, stood up with the intention of reading a text to bombardier, wanting to “denounce some of the words that we found to be racist in one of her columns…to denounce the general racism against us” (qtd. in durand, n.p.), but also wanting to “speak about the innu community and about indigenous culture in how it is constructive, luminous and millennial” (qtd. in lachaussée, n.p.). bombardier interrupted kanapé fontaine and, speaking into a microphone, spoke over the innu poet and “read her definition of what an indigenous person is from her dictionnaire amoureux du québec [love dictionary of québec]” (lachaussée, n.p.). i am purposefully recounting the details of this encounter because i believe that this context is crucial in understanding not only how the book came to be, but that it speaks to a much larger problem. indeed, béchard, who witnessed the entire scene at the book fair, later told kanapé fontaine, “we should write a book, because if she [bombardier] does not realize how racist what she just did is, that means there are plenty of people here who do not realize that there is banal racism” (lachaussée, n.p.). the type of racism that béchard is pointing to here is the kind that is internalized and goes hand-in-hand with invisible violence (kanapé fontaine and béchard 98). in several letters, he recounts moving to virginia, and then to vancouver, and being perplexed by his classmates’ reaction to african americans and immigrants. béchard also recounts the slurs directed at his own french-canadianness by people in new england (100). he speaks of his father’s racism, “a type of racism that i have heard thousands of times all over the earth, a banal and irrational racism that many humans have learned to reproduce without thinking,” to which he adds, “this is exactly what renders it so dangerous: it’s a reflex that expresses itself without effort” (24). likewise, kanapé fontaine reflects on the racism that she has witnessed within her own community; it is an “intergenerational memory” (29), she writes, one that needs to be understood within the context of residential schools and the larger “wound of colonization” (30, 130). ultimately, kanapé fontaine remarks, “the members of the two communities [the whites and the first nations] are often wounded by mutual ignorance. each group is part of the imaginary of their neighbours…we just need to find a way to transform the images that we have of other people, to form our own ideas through direct human contact” (17). it is towards making this transformation possible, towards a better understanding, towards “compassion and comprehension” (38), that kanapé fontaine and béchard’s correspondence aims to lead their readers. “we don’t know how to listen,” writes béchard (7). bombardier’s decision to speak over kanapé fontaine, thereby silencing her, is symptomatic of settler anxiety, of an unwillingness to listen, within a space of competing sovereignties. it is also telling of a history of erasing voice and presence, of erasing humanity. in order to fully understand a situation or a story, reflects kanapé fontaine, it is important “to humanize it” (52), to engage with it, to respect it; it is an invitation to bear witness to the lives and experiences of others. this, of course, is what literature is all about: transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 310 “literature,” writes béchard, “gives us access to the interior lives of others and allows us to perceive different ways of seeing the world” (61). to read, then, is similar to listening; both can be radical acts (62). according to béchard, if we are willing to accept that we need not always agree, but learn to read and listen respectfully, then we can aspire to a better understanding of one another. similarly, the exercise of writing to each other, of sharing their stories – as if they were speaking with one another – is a form of active participation (107), of (re)building trust (111) and, importantly, of recognizing and acknowledging other peoples’ sovereignties (103, 112). as kanapé fontaine and béchard’s conversations progress through different topics – navigating the emotional territories of childhood, loneliness, and losing oneself and others, while addressing difficult events and issues like the oka crisis, the war in afghanistan, violence against women and girls, police brutality, and co-opted ngos, eventually culminating in the realization that there is, truly, a wide-scale global, neo-colonial form of racism (128) – the reader can only be drawn into the intimacy that these two writers have carefully woven; we become privy to these stories as well. thus, when the topic of genocide becomes the main focus of letters 24 and 25, a theme that threatens to “burst” kanapé fontaine’s heart open (131), one can only wonder what, indeed, of our humanity (132)? “there cannot be reconciliation without reparation,” concludes kanapé fontaine in her last letter (143). for many, reconciliation is difficult to conceive of without redress. it is even “suspicious,” if and when there was not a “conciliatory experience” to begin with (maracle 12). at the very least, it should be a personal and/or community-based process, not one that follows the dictates of the very system that is responsible for why reconciliation is a necessity. kanapé fontaine tells béchard, “i’ll undertake the search for the path that will lead me to my own reconciliation. repair myself first, repair my wounds, my personal wound of colonization…[then] i’ll get down to work on reconciliation with you and between our peoples” (132). she does, however, provide what she believes are the necessary steps towards, first, reparation, and then, perhaps, reconciliation: knowledge (of the self, of the other), acknowledgement and understanding that there were people and societies that were here before “discovery” and, most importantly, acknowledgement of the land, “the spiritual, philosophical, and human value of the territory” (143). she also calls for humility: “the humility to ask for healing” (143) and the humility “to acknowledge our mutual ignorance” (144). these steps, she concurs, are crucial to the process – a process that will take time, care, patience, and attention – not necessarily to reconciliation, but to decolonization (144). kuei, my friend should be regarded as a crucial tool to begin the important work of thinking about how we can better learn about our responsibilities towards one another, towards the lands on which we are guests, and to the different nations that are our hosts. how to become better listeners, better participants, better allies. as kanapé fontaine notes, early on in their epistolary exchange, “the work has begun” (48). now is the time to find the ways to continue it. sarah henzi, université de montreal sarah henzi review of kuei, my friend 311 notes 1 the summary, as well as all six full volumes, the calls for action, and additional resources can be found on the website of the national centre for truth and reconciliation (http://nctr.ca/reports.php) 2 february 2018 was particularly difficult in this respect; within weeks of each other, two important cases that had caught the attention (and hearts) of many delivered a blow to all those who were hoping for justice: the two men who were standing trial for second-degree murder – gerald stanley, who shot 22-year-old colten boushie in the head in a “freak accident” (friesen), and raymond cormier, who was accused of killing and disposing of the body of 15-year-old tina fontaine – were found “not guilty” by, in the first instance, an “all-white” jury and, in the second instance, a “mostly white” jury (palmater). 3 the book includes an appendix with suggestions for classroom use. works cited bombardier, denise. “la culture autochtone qui tue.” le journal de montréal, 21 january 2015, www.journaldemontreal.com/2015/01/21/la-culture-autochtone-qui-tue. durand, monique. “sortir de l’enfermement, s’ouvrir au monde.” le devoir, 11 may 2015, www.ledevoir.com/culture/439734/des-innus-en-haiti-2-2-sortir-de-l-enfermement-souvrir-au-monde. friesen, joe. “shooting death of colten boushie a ‘freak accident,’ stanley defence argues in laying out its case.” the globe and mail, 5 february 2018, www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/shooting-death-of-colten-boushie-a-freakaccident-stanley-defence-argues-in-laying-out-its-case/article37853099/. kanapé fontaine, natasha and deni ellis béchard. kuei, my friend: a conversation on race and reconciliation. translated by deni ellis béchard and howard scott. talonbooks, 2018. ---. kuei, je te salue: conversation sur le racisme. écosociété, 2016. lachaussée, catherine. “interview kuei, je te salue: un livre sur le racisme écrit après une confrontation avec denise bombardier.” radio-canada, 12 may 2016, ici.radiocanada.ca/nouvelle/781262/kuei-livre-racisme-bombardier-fontaine-bechard. larivière, widia. “lettre ouverte à denise bombardier.” the huffington post – edition qc, 5 february, 2015 [https://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/widia-lariviere/lettre-ouverte-a-denisebombardier_b_6616006.html] accessed 27 april 2019. maracle, lee. “reconciliation.” first nations house magazine, vol. 1, issue 7, 2012: 12-13. palmater, pamela. “why canada should stand trial for tina fontaine's murder.” now, 25 february 2018, nowtoronto.com/news/why-canada-should-stand-trial-for-tina-fontainemurder/. microsoft word duchemin.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 258 anna hudson, jocelyn piirainen, georgiana uhlyarik, editors. tunirrusiangit: kenojuak ashevak and tim pitsiulak. art gallery of ontario; goose lane editions, 2018. 160 pp. isbn: 9781988788029; 9781773100913. https://gooselane.com/products/tunirrusiangit we were trying to get some things in there that challenge the whole system of museums vs indigenous people. historically, there’s been a lot of tension in that relationship. – taqralik partridge (commanda) tunirrusiangit: kenojuak ashevak and tim pitsiulak is not your typical inuit art show, and neither is its resulting catalogue. even if you are familiar with both artists—especially kenojuak who has become an icon of inuit graphic arts—you might not expect to be moved so far from firmly rooted curatorial habits. it’s not so much an exuberance in the concept or design, but a quiet, profound, long-lasting epistemological revolution, probably the first of many to come. don’t search for a thematic organization, for it often tends to erase the fundamental interrelations between humans and non-humans by separating beliefs, daily activities and animals. don’t even try for a chronological survey, despite the fact that the exhibition is a double retrospective. and don’t yearn for an academic essay that will recount the story of james a. houston and the beginnings of printmaking in kinngait [cape dorset] for the umpteenth time. while there remain answers still to unearth in this matter, another project is taking place here. the ambition of the curatorial team has consisted of confronting norms and preconceptions by shifting discursive modalities, relocating inuit art in the spectrum of indigenous knowledge, values and decolonial thinking. with this in mind, tunirrusiangit is both addressed to inuit and qallunaat [white people], celebrating the legacy of two brilliant artists who paved the way for inuit resilience and whose contribution plays a part not only in indigenous, but also canadian and international art history, as the authors underline. tunirrusiangit, which means “their gifts” or “what they have” in inuktitut, was held at the art gallery of ontario (ago) during summer 2018. the museum is known for its important inuit art collections, part of them originating from the gift of samuel and esther sarick. dedicated exhibitions are not rare at the ago, but they aren’t often accompanied by a catalogue for they mainly consist of small focuses on artists or communities. the last major event related to inuit art dates back to 2011 when gerald mcmaster and ingo hessel co-curated inuit modern. seven years later, what changes have been brought to the way inuit art exhibitions are conceived? while the subject of tunirrusiangit might seem conventional—a retrospective of kenojuak ashevak (1927-2013) and her nephew tim pitsiulak (1967-2016)—its curatorial treatment is not. indeed, as a sign of their willingness to acknowledge and “commi[t] to indigenous voices and expertise” (23), the ago asked four inuit artists and curators to team up with two of their noninuit counterparts. in the field of first nations art, the presence of indigenous curators has become more common. from veteran gerald mcmaster (cree) to rising figure candice hopkins (carcross/tagish), who has been involved in the most prestigious international art events, it seems inconceivable today to do without indigenous actors. the same cannot be said for the inuit art world where similar standards are taking much more time to be instituted. even though exhibitions have been curated by inuit since the late 1990s-early 2000s (by, e.g., july papatsie, barry pottle, laakkuluk williamson bathory), they have suffered from poor visibility—or to be more precise, 259 unwillingness to give them a sufficient place in the art world. emerging inuit scholars and curators such as heather igloliorte have been bringing about a major change for the past few years, but an equitable balance between inuit and non-inuit involvement still remains to be reached. put another way, having a curatorial team predominantly composed of inuit members— a choice also followed by the winnipeg art gallery for its inuit art centre—is a strong ethic and a political commitment, especially when it offers unprecedented insights into the exhibited works. let us remember that in 1994-1996, when odette leroux curated isumavut: the artistic expression of nine cape dorset women at the canadian museum of civilization and asked the artists to work with her on the presentation, description and titles of their works, she was greatly criticized. the inuit involvement was said to devalue the role of the [qallunaaq] curator, which says a lot about the low value granted to indigenous knowledge and capacity to manage their own artistic productions. fortunately, in 2017, things have changed and are asserted as such from the first pages of the exhibition catalogue: the names of the inuit curators are put first while the non-inuit are presented as allies. before focusing on the content of the catalogue, it is useful to say a few words about the curators. koomuatuk curley is a sculptor, director and videographer from kinngait. he is particularly known for his monumental works and his video interviews of artists. taqralik partridge is a spoken word performer, writer, poet and curator from kuujjuaq who currently lives in norway. her work has been translated into several languages and her performances held in several countries. she has recently been named editor-at-large for inuit art quarterly. jocelyn piirainen is an inuk curator and artist based in ottawa. she has notably curated unmentionables: indigenous masculinities in 2015 at the asinabka film & media arts festival and neon ndn: indigenous pop-art in 2016 at saw gallery. laakkuluk williamson bathory is a kalaalliq [greenlandic inuk] performer, dancer, musician, actor, writer, spoken word poet and curator based in iqaluit who has been incredibly active for several years—in 2004, she curated inuit art in motion and ilitarivingaa? do you recognize me? at the ago. more recently, she has collaborated with musician tanya tagaq and co-founded the “qaqqiavuut! society for a nunavut performing arts centre.” finally, georgiana uhlyarik is the canadian art curator at the ago while anna hudson is a professor at york university specializing in canadian art and indigenous studies who led the mobilizing inuit cultural heritage project. the strength of the tunirrusiangit project lies in the complementarity of these multi-disciplinary profiles. each of the curators mobilized their proficiencies to serve the exhibition and propose a curatorial pattern that differs from most inuit art exhibitions. not only did they select and show the works in accordance with what they “liked as inuit and thought that people should see and appreciate” (commanda), but they also provided personal works that could both be regarded in and of themselves and understood as “interpretational strategies” (myers). the exhibition opened with silaup putunga, a 25-minute immersive film installation by laakkuluk williamson bathory and jamie griffiths that plunged the visitor into the vitality of the arctic land through images of nunavut, katajjaq [throat singing] by celina kalluk and uajeerneq [greenlandic mask dancing] performed by laakkuluk herself. this work, far from being apolitical, set the tone of the show as it contextualized inuit art in canadian colonial history and asserted inuit sovereignty. taqralik partridge, for her part, created a qarmaq [sod house] covered with old newspaper articles being prejudicial against inuit. she used it as a place to perform storytelling. as for koomuatuk curley, he conducted a series of interviews with kenojuak ashevak and tim pitsiulak’s relatives transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 260 and community members that offered inside perspectives on their artistic practice. additionally, quotes by all the curators were featured on panels and written on the walls throughout the exhibit space, adding curatorial insight to specific works. a catalogue, though, is never the same as the exhibition. translating any scenography into a printed medium and following the original arrangement of the works is not an easy task— considering you would even want to do that. however, the main spirit of the project usually remains while essays complement and extend the curatorial intention. the editors made the choice not to reproduce the installations of the curating artists: probably because they would only help to document the exhibition and not effectively deepen the understanding of kenojuak ashevak and tim pitsiulak’s work. on the one hand, such visual additions would have made the works part of the “catalogue” itself and obscured the focus of the exhibition. on the other hand, it was a stronger gesture to turn the norms of the exhibition catalogue inside out: by replacing academic essays, that often aim at achieving an objective point of view, with engaged essays spoken from one’s individual experience, inuit epistemes are being put on the forefront. indeed, knowledge, according to inuit, consists in the sum of diversified expertise rather than generalizing remarks. hence, the catalogue is divided into two parts—the first being dedicated to kenojuak ashevak, the second to tim pitsiulak—punctuated with essays or poems by the curators (some of which could be heard in the exhibition) and equally interesting short comments on the artists’ works. all along, the authors endeavour to erode the colonial gaze and stereotypes, exceed expectations of what inuit culture can be and bring to light the artists’ proper concerns. in her opening essay, “gracious acceptance of their gifts,” jocelyn piirainen remembers the many discussions necessary for the project to take shape and connect “the old traditions with new conventions of discourse” (21). she particularly stresses how kenojuak and tim’s achievements have been inspirational to the curatorial team: “we came to a collective realization: these two artists were encouraging us to think about and reflect on our selves, our pasts, and our futures, as well as challenging our ideas about who they were and what they achieved” (21). it is not only kenojuak and tim’s part in history, but also the role that they will keep playing in the future for generations of emerging inuit artists, writers, curators, scholars and more, that is thus one of the key ideas of the retrospective: the level of excellence that they set helps inuit recover a self-esteem that was devalued by colonialism. anna hudson and georgiana uhlyarik’s following essay underlines, in the same way, that in culture “resides a sense of collective identity, social support, and a sense of belonging grounded in positive relationships” (23). they acknowledge then the necessity for qallunaat to understand that “practices of collection, research, and curation involving inuit culture require honesty, humility, openness, patience, and a willingness to listen, learn, and experience new perspectives” (23). laakkuluk williamson bathory’s literary contribution introduces kenojuak ashevak’s chapter. her poem in two parts, “i am the light of happiness,” is named after the words of the artist. kenojuak was born in 1927 in iksiraq, baffin island, nunavut and soon became a major artist. she was included in kinngait’s inaugural print collection in 1953, had a film dedicated to her in 1963, received the order of canada four years later; this was followed by many more distinctions until her death in 2013. her iconic enchanted owl (1960) was sold for $216,000 in 261 2018, which is the highest amount paid for a print by a canadian artist at auction. as an art historian, i often enjoy telling my colleagues how she reversed the gender hierarchies and used to sign her husband johnniebo’s works to make them more valuable—something hardly seen in western art history. these exploits of kenojuak’s, laakkuluk williamson bathory all knows them too well, and it is with much intelligence and sensitivity that she pays them homage. but she does not confine herself to singing the artist’s praises, she most importantly challenges a decontextualized, depolitized, approach of kenojuak’s art. this poem might become one of the new major texts of inuit art history since it brings attention to several important facts and issues. laakkuluk recalls the imperialist context in which the works were born and how they contributed to build resilience: “she used art to heal,” she writes about kenojuak (30). she also addresses the occultation of the role played by inuit art in the assertion of canada’s identity during the postwar years: there was no such thing as canadian art before qinnujuaq. canada is hand-drawn by qinnuajuaq (31) inuit art, indeed, became the marker of canadian modernity to the rest of the world when the group of seven looked too old-fashioned to the eyes of the european avant-gardes. exhibitions travelled to ibero-america, africa, asia, pacific, europe, even crossing the iron curtain, from the 1950s to the 1970s. the cultural face of canada was inuit, and it is a story that tends to be forgotten. laakkuluk makes a strong gesture when she writes kenojuak’s name “qinnuajuaq,” which happens to be its proper inuktitut transcription. by doing so, she alludes to the multiple appropriations and deformations that have peppered inuit history and led to consequences such as the application of the disc number system (due to the incapacity of transcribing inuit names and regulating the population, the federal government identified every individuals with a number engraved on a medal). learning how to pronounce qinuajjuaq’s name might be a first step towards reconciliation. the catalogue of qinnuajuaq’s works that follows is of interest for any admirer of her style, should they be novice or expert. prints, ironically, have long been considered more valuable than original drawings in the field of inuit art and the curators, without ignoring some of the artist’s famous works, consequently also chose to draw the attention to her drawings and her diversity of techniques: coloured pencil, felt-tip pen, ballpoint pen, graphite and ink. rare works from private collections and west baffin eskimo co-operative’s consequent loan to the mcmichael canadian art collection are also being reproduced. one of them, started in 2012, was even finished by her son, adamie ashevak. it is indeed impossible to understand qinnuajuaq’s work without seeing her drawings, especially when one knows that she was very careful of the way they were translated into prints. the works are not presented chronologically, but rather by stylistic and thematic affinities which makes the reading appreciable by connecting the dots of her thought. both the curators’ and the artist’s quotes, for their part, provide additional insights: how art gave qinnuajuaq the opportunity to support her family, how such a talent in a left-handed person is perceived by inuit, what the return of the sun after winter means in the arctic, etc. more still, it is the authors’ own fascination for qinnuajuaq that signals her legacy in the inuit society and contributes to the writing of an indigenous art history. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 262 tim pitsiulak, qinnujuaq’s nephew, told me in 2010 that his aunt was his “hero”: “she’s a big part of my life and she’s my inspiration” (personal interview). born in kimmirut, tim first started working with jewellery before moving to kinngait and participating in the annual graphic art collection. his work is characterized by very large, meticulous drawings addressing both the old and modern ways, changes in inuit history and the legacy of shamanism. as a hunter, animals have a special place in his work. this is not uncommon: many male artists are hunters too and anthropologist nelson h. h. graburn has shown the similarities between carving and hunting in the inuktitut vocabulary (graburn 49). it is this very closeness that sculptor, hunter and curator koomuatuk curley emphasizes in his first-person account: “carving is like hunting money, hunting food. carving became my hunting” (89). the reader is led to understand that the talented artist shares the same qualities as the successful hunter: patience, adaptability and capacity of observation. both men also shared the will to seize “new opportunities” (90) and show unexpected works by inuit artists. as tim used to say: “people around the world don’t know what we have up north. i want [artists] to show the other people what we do up north” (personal interview). tim pitsiulak’s catalogue shows not only his technical skills as a drawer, working notably with pastels or coloured pencils on black wove paper, but also the complexity of his approach. his depiction of animals, especially walruses and whales, is intertwined with hunting scenes and motifs from the thule culture (which he borrowed from books) from which the spiritual significance cannot be removed. playing with transparency, multiplying the points of view, going from landscapes to heavy equipment, the body of works chosen by the curators shows the artist’s constant audacity and his promotion of inuit traditional knowledge and values [inuit qaujimajatuqangit] such as sharing or being innovative. tim’s work can also be said to be critical, not only because it destroys the preconception of the “barren land” or the loss of traditions among inuit, but also because it comments on the western infantilization process that denies inuit the capacity of derision or irony. hero 4 (2015) is a clever pun: the artist shows a tiny camera—his gopro hero4—approaching a couple of massive walruses while the photographer is left out of the frame. the whole scene gives the idea of courage a hilarious twist and asserts once and for all the critical intelligence inuit demonstrate through laughter. some of tim pitsiulak’s overtly political works are not included here, but it only gives the reader the occasion to look deeper into his career. the exhibition catalogue finally closes with taqralik partridge’s poetic contribution. kuujjuatuqaq and after an argument speak of everyday life in arctic communities and the connection to the land through its most subtle details. i can tell you that quiet is not silent but yields to gentler sounds (153) as for two poems, it weaves links between allies whose philosophies escape from western capitalism. taqralik’s work, quite similarly to isuma productions’ films, forces qallunaat readers to follow inuit’s rhythm, to give up both their authoritative framework and pace to acknowledge indigenous ways of understanding, to pay close attention and learn from observation as inuit education recommends. 263 in conclusion, tunirrusiangit is a statement, or even better, a manifesto. like the preview of the show opened with the sharing seal meat to honour the artists in the traditional inuit way, the catalogue relocates their works into inuit knowledge and asserts the pertinence of indigenous expertise. it does not mean, as many have feared before, that non-inuit are not allowed to study or curate inuit art anymore, but that the involvement of indigenous peoples in the museum should become the standard instead of an exception. it particularly means that the qallunaaq art world should accept to trade its anonymous, hegemonic voice for a situated, biased point of view—one among the others, with no more authority than the others. without a doubt, readers’ perspectives will be enriched by this catalogue. not only is it a fine book, beautifully illustrated with reproductions of works, portraits of the artists and photographs by tim pitsiulak himself, but it is also an inspiring project that will convince anyone of how strong inuit culture has remained through time, despite the suffering caused by colonial history. such a celebration of two major graphic artists in the global art history contributes both to decolonizing minds and spreading a sense of pride among young inuit, in order to prevent further intergenerational trauma. in other words, tunirrusiangit: kenojuak ashevak and tim pitsiulak is a necessary book that has probably already gained its place in critical history. florence duchemin-pelletier, institut national d’histoire de l’art works cited commanda, erica. “inuk curators taqralik partridge & jocelyn piirainen set new ground at the ago.” muskrat magazine, 29 june 2018, www.muskratmagazine.com/taqralik-partridgejocelyn-piirainen-set-new-ground-at-the-ago. accessed 26 feb. 2019. graburn, nelson h. h. “eskimo art: the eastern canadian arctic.” ethnic and tourist arts: cultural expressions from the fourth world, edited by nelson h. h. graburn, university of california press, 1976, pp. 39-55. leroux, odette, jackson, marion e., and freeman, minnie aodla, editors. inuit women artists: voices from cape dorset. douglas & mcintyre; canadian museum of civilization; university of washington press, 1994. mcmaster, gerald. editor. inuit modern: the samuel and esther sarick collection. art gallery of ontario; douglas & mcintyre, 2010. myers, lisa. “tunirrusiangit: kenojuak ashevak and tim pitsiulak.” inuit art quarterly, 29 january 2019, http://iaq.inuitartfoundation.org/tunirrusiangit-review. accessed 26 feb. 2019. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 187 drew hayden taylor. sir john a: acts of a gentrified ojibway rebellion. talonbooks, 2018. 98 pp. isbn: 9781772012149. https://talonbooks.com/books/sir-john-a drew hayden taylor. cottagers and indians. talonbooks, 2019. 72 pp. isbn: 9781772012309. https://talonbooks.com/books/cottagers-and-indians the latest two plays by prolific anishinawbe writer drew hayden taylor continue his long history of combining humour with political and social critique. the plays each look at a recent controversy that has hit mainstream press in canada. sir john a. is “a historical, musical, comedic, biographical, political piece of the theatre” (x) that examines a topic that was a source of debate as the nation approached its 2017 sesquicentennial: the place of canada’s first prime minister in history, and whether the nation should continue to honour a man whose legacy includes the attempted genocide of the indigenous peoples. cottagers and indians deals with the conflicts over land use that began in 2012 between seasonal residents, mainly from the metropolitan toronto area, and the anishinawbe food activist james whetung, who has been reseeding manoomin, wild rice, in the lakes of the kawartha region. in an era when the rhetoric of the settler-canadian government is one of “nation-to-nation agreements” and “reconciliation,” taylor’s plays demonstrate the limitations of such lofty goals by dramatizing these relationships through individuals from both cultures who interact and debate an individual issue. the difficulties the characters, who do learn to respect each other as people, have in coming to a mutual understanding on the issues under debate have larger implications. in the two plays, taylor shows how citizens of a country that preaches tolerance and inclusion are not yet ready to engage in non-metaphoric decolonization. the impetus for the plays indicates the good will that does exist on both sides of the cultural divide. the two plays were initially, and separately, written as commissions, and the dramatic texts both begin with prefaces in which taylor places their genesis at the feet of artistic directors. jillian keiley of the national arts center in ottawa contacted taylor when canada 150 “was fast approaching and the nac was feeling obligated to do something about our founding prime minister” but, given the indigenous protests that countered the mainstream celebration of canada’s sesquicentennial, keiley had “come up with the idea of telling his story through the eyes of the indigenous community that he so traumatized via his policies” (ix); the result was sir john a. likewise, richard rose of tarragon theatre in toronto asked taylor to write cottagers and indians after reading an article about the ongoing wild rice wars. the commissioning of these plays says much about the current political climate in canada and the complex work that imaginative literature is being asked to do. both of the involved theatre companies are known for including cutting edge, political theatre in their programming, but both are also well-respected artistic companies with a primarily non-indigenous audience. mainstream canada is becoming increasingly aware of, and sympathetic towards, the historic and contemporary injustices faced by indigenous people. taylor’s ability to, as he puts it, “explore and teach through humour” makes such difficult subject matter more palatable (cottagers xi). at the same time, there is a danger that the very humour that allowed an audience of torontonians to have “an unexpected and overwhelming appreciation” for a show in which toronto cottage-goers are the villains https://talonbooks.com/books/sir-john-a https://talonbooks.com/books/cottagers-and-indians judith leggatt review of sir john a. and cottagers and indians 188 (cottagers x), also might allow them to distance themselves from the more radical changes that the dramas are asking them to consider. both plays imagine conflicts between settler and anishinawbe societies through debates between individual anishinawbe protagonists and non-indigenous blocking characters. in sir john a. bobby rabbit, a character who added much of the humour and conflict to taylor’s earlier play alternatives, convinces his friend hugh to accompany him to kingston, ontario, where they plan to dig up the bones of sir john a. macdonald and hold them for ransom until a medicine bundle that was stolen from bobby’s late grandfather when he entered residential school, and is now held in a european museum, is returned to its rightful home. along the way they pick up anya, a hitchhiker who defends macdonald as “a man of his times, historically speaking” (39) and the specter of sir john himself has his say at the start of each scene. in cottagers and indians taylor stages the wide-ranging debate as a conversation between two people, each of whom addressed the audience directly, trying to demonstrate the validity of their point of view. the protagonist, arthur cooper, is a fictionalized version of james whetung, pursuing the same quest to reseed the lakes of his ancestral home with the food that was at the centre of their lifeways. his antagonist is maureen poole who, arthur explains, “has dedicated her life to bringing an end to the good seed renaissance i am trying to generate” (7). she stands in for the “save pigeon lake” group who opposed whetung. while taylor “tried to present both sides as fairly as [he] could” (cottagers x), both plays favour the anishinawbe of view, and the contemporary settler characters hit many of the same notes that establish their limitations. both anya and maureen accuse the indigenous characters of reverse racism; and both establish their sympathy for indigenous people and causes by claiming to have read thomas king. despite these broad strokes, all the characters are well drawn, and their individual quirks and backstories provide a humour and emotion that makes the plays entertaining, rather than simply dramatized essays on contemporary affairs. both plays break the fourth wall in order to bring the audience into the debate. early in sir john a., hugh imagines “standing center stage at the national arts center, singing my heart out to throngs and throngs of excited and devoted fans (gesturing to the audience). they love me” (5). the audience thus becomes a part of hugh’s fantasy, and a character in the production. the positioning of the play as a response to canada 150 thus implicates the audience in the chief’s refusal to back bobby’s quest because it “might screw up all the canada 150 celebrations” (13). likewise, while the opening staging of cottagers and indians makes it appear as if maureen is on her cottage deck and arthur in a canoe on the lake, the latter soon steps out of the canoe onto the stage floor and addresses the audience directly: “what? you thought i was out on the lake? silly people. you don’t have to be on the water to sit in a canoe” (10), reminding them both that they are watching a fictionalized version of the events and, more importantly, that they might have to question their own expectations and assumptions in the drama. the positioning of the audience within the drama also asks them to consider the real-world implications of the conflicts they are consuming as entertainment. maureen’s claim to “support native issues” “in principle” is undercut as soon as her own property is affected “without consulting us” (31), embodying the positions of many liberals whose support does not extend to anything that might inconvenience them. even anya, the most complex of the white characters in either play, suggests that taylor knows the limits of his audience’s sympathy. as she chastises transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 189 bobby for involving hugh in his crazy plan, she says “i’m not unsympathetic. first nations people have every right to be pissed off. to want to burn bridges and blockade roads, i get that, but it doesn’t mean you actually have to. it’s a metaphor” (52). the idea that resistance should be metaphorical rather than literal is dangerous, and speaks to the limitations of current discussions of decolonization, reconciliation, and nation-to-nation agreements. as eve tuck and k. wayne yang put it in “decolonization is not a metaphor”: “when metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future” (3). while stories of decolonial activism can effect change by inspiring action, that process only works if they move beyond metaphor. watching or reading a drew hayden taylor play can—like reading the works of thomas king— make canadians sympathetic to indigenous causes, but the plays asks them to do much more. if audiences read a call to action as a metaphor, they are missing the point. the conflicts of the play are ostensibly about the return of a single medicine bundle, and the reseeding of manoomin in a string of lakes—both issues in which a liberal audience can comfortably support the indigenous heroes (so long as they do not own a cottage on that particular lake). these individual conflicts are, however, part of larger call for a nonmetaphorical decolonization. as bobby puts it, “not everything can be settled and placated with an apology and a couple of cheques” (sir john a. 49). in asking his audiences first to demythologize the man who created the nation-state of canada and then to take the side of an anishinawbe man over a white property-owner in a dispute over land use, taylor is asking them to rethink the existence of the nation itself. as readers and viewers we are being asked to deny maureen’s claim that “we are all this lake” because “we are all canadians” (cottagers 8) because it erases the reality of arthur and his family’s history that predates the country, and to instead agree with bobby’s stance that “your average canadian is celebrating everything canada has given them while we are still dealing with everything canada took away” (sir john a. 15). the focus on land in conversations of nationhood, implicit in both plays, becomes explicit in the published version of cottagers and indians, which ends with a reprint of leanne betasamosake simpson’s essay “land & reconciliation: having the right conversations.” simpson places the rice wars firmly in the realm of non-metaphorical decolonization, and emphasizes the importance of land in that process. she asks “how can we ‘advance the process of canadian reconciliation’ without talking about land?” (68), and explains that “land is an important conversation for indigenous peoples and canada to have because land is at the root of our conflicts. far from asking settler canadians to pack up and leave, it is crucial that we think about how we can better share land” (69). the only way to achieve reconciliation, she argues, is “to dismantle settlercolonialism as a system. our current government needs to move beyond window dressing and begin to tackle the root causes of indigenous oppression in canada… it means giving back land, so we can rebuild and recover from the losses of the last four centuries and truly enter into a new relationship with canada and canadians” (simpson 72). the inclusion of this essay provides a context in which to read the two plays, to think beyond sympathy for individual characters and their losses, and to imagine the structural inequalities that created the conflicts not only in the imagined literature, but also in the country taylor depicts. taylor’s plays provide a call to action, but there is a danger that these calls will go unheeded by an audience that comes for the pure entertainment that the plays also provide. judith leggatt review of sir john a. and cottagers and indians 190 judith leggatt, lakehead university work cited tuck, eve and k. wayne yang. “decolonization is not a metaphor.” decolonization: indigeneity, education and society. 1:1 (2012) pp. 1-40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630/15554 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630/15554 microsoft word guanteaume.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 255 elizabeth harney and ruth b. phillips, editors. mapping modernisms: art, indigeneity, colonialism. duke university press, 2018. 456 pp. isbn: 978-0822368717. https://www.dukeupress.edu/mapping-modernisms mapping modernisms: art, indigeneity, colonialism is a timely collection of fourteen wellargued essays assembled and introduced by university of toronto and carleton university art historians, elizabeth harney and ruth b. phillips. the essays are written by an international team of art historians and focus on the production of artists working in the early twentieth century in postor neocolonial countries formerly under british and french domination as well as in the united states. emerging out of the 2010 clark art institute colloquium, global indigenous modernism: primitivism, artists, mentors, the essays explore the aesthetic practices of specific indigenous and colonized artists, hitherto largely, if not entirely, excluded from discussions of early twentieth-century modern art. deemed to fall outside of the definitions of modernism as propounded by such influential scholars as roger fry, their forms of visual expression were rendered invisible, as the authors rightly assert, not only in art history’s modernist discourse in academia, but in museum exhibitions as well. whether categorized by others as, for example, aboriginal, haida, inuit, maori, melanesian, nigerian or zulu, the authors argue that the modes of visual expression produced by the artists they discuss share something fundamental. and that is precisely the artists’ engagement with modernity, meaning a rapidly changing world brought about by the forces of nation-building, industrialization, urbanization and material changes (i.e., the introduction of, for example, the automobile, airplane, refrigerator, telephone, radio and a host of other electrical devices) that impacted peoples’ lives across the world. but, as the authors of mapping modernisms underscore throughout, engaging with modernism for the artists in question (and others who shared in their predicaments) also meant dealing with the structures and legacies of colonialisms and contemporary artistic currents as well as, for some, playing with the very idea of primitivism. collectively, the authors argue that between the late nineteenth century and the cold war, modernity was a transnational phenomenon and global artistic practice, however varied its local and indigenous manifestations. by arguing for specific indigenous and colonized artists’ place within art history’s modernist discourse, the authors aim to re-conceptualize the art historical narratives of modernism. to lay the groundwork for the essayists’ individual case studies, harney and phillips’ cogent introduction discusses the evolution of art history as a discipline in terms of its complicit history with colonialism, imperialism and nation-building. the very western powers which forced peoples into enslavement or indentured servitude or to otherwise live as colonial subjects well into the twentieth century, mapped indigenous and colonized artists out of the art historical canon, as they literally remapped the world by laying claim to remote regions. western powers asserted the universal principles and values of art while simultaneously removing subjected peoples from canon and physical spaces, thereby denying the very humanity, intellect and creativity of these people, among them indigenous modernists. as the editors stress, the west needed concepts like “native,” “indigenous” and “primitive” to support their imperialist ambitions, and the use of these terms shunted the artists under discussion to the margins of art cécile rose ganteaume review of mapping modernisms 256 history. in their introduction, harney and phillips also discuss the growing awareness of this complicit history within the disciplines of anthropology and, more slowly, art history. in so doing, they outline the epistemological biases encountered by art historians, such as those contributing to the volume, as parallel (in a fashion) to those faced by the indigenous and colonized artists they discuss. in this spirit, the book, while rigorous in its scholarship, reverberates with a dual sense purpose. the essays are organized into three parts. broadly speaking, the five essays in part i explore how definitions of primitivism often relegated the artistic practices of twentieth century artists of zulu, inuit, haida, kwakwaka’wakw and māori heritage to “folk art” or “craft.” the categories denoted that the works were neither that pure form of expression created by their ancestors and influencing cubists and surrealists, nor anything remotely akin to the sophisticated art of those western modernists. while arguing against the general assumption that all indigenous and colonized artists existed outside of modernism and contemporary artistic currents, the authors explore the challenges that indigenous modernist artworks have posed, not only for the discipline, but also for their creators themselves. the four essays in part ii examine issues of transcultural exchange, identity and hybrid creativity. they discuss, for example, the evolution of subject matter in individual artist’s modes of visual expression and how stark subject matter (e.g., contemporary political events and changes in the lives of women) seep into their work. in other words, the authors explore how the artworks narrate aspects of modernity and “the passages from colonialism to decolonization” (thomas 172). finally, the five essays in part iii explore indigenous artists’ overt engagement with cosmopolitan life and vanguard artistic currents and, for some of them, the importance of artistic collaborations. mapping modernisms’ chapter contributors are bill anthes, peter brunt, karen duffek, erin haney, elizabeth harney, heather igloliorte, sandra klopper, ian mclean, anitra nettleton, chika okeke-agulu, w. jackson rushing iii, damian skinner, nicholas thomas and norman vorano. there is no question that the art world is grappling with how to rectify its exclusionary practices towards indigenous and colonized artists, modernist or not. on february 5, 2019, the museum of modern art in new york city announced that it will close its galleries for four months this summer to feature more works by “historically under-recognized modern and contemporary artists” (kenney 2019). hopefully, it will include works by modernist indigenous and colonized artists. however, a number of controversies have swirled around major art museums in recent years, and some of them speak to the landmines they face as they try to incorporate the art of indigenous and colonized artists—and their histories—into their displays and narratives. in 2017, for example, walker art center in minneapolis came under fire from dakota activists for its installation of the sculpture “scaffold.” the sculpture evoked the 1862 hanging of 38 dakota men and was made by the non-native artist sam durant. in 2017, both the walker art center and the whitney museum of american art were challenged over their jimmy durham retrospective, “jimmy durham: at the center of the world.” native american activists have challenged durham’s self-identification as cherokee (slenske 2017). in addition, and most recently, the metropolitan museum of art has been denounced by native activists for its inclusion of sacred and sensitive objects among the native american objects displayed in its redesigned american wing (angeletti 2019). such efforts to promote, in this case, native american visual forms of expression as art alongside that of western art are long overdue, but clearly fraught with risk. blindsided, art museums are, it seems, treading into unknown territory, literally and figuratively. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 257 the strength and scholarly contribution of mapping modernism is that, in each of its essays, the authors ground the aesthetic practices of the artists they study firmly in the complexity of modern worlds they experienced by demonstrating how those artists negotiated their place in the world—through their chosen modes of visual expression. dispelling assumptions of the past, the authors reveal the artist to be as cognizant of the exigencies of their complicated histories and lives, as they are in command of their expressive forms. mapping modernism sheds much needed light onto the artistic production of modernist artists living in postand neocolonial countries in the early twentieth century. cécile rose ganteaume, smithsonian national museum of the american indian works cited angeletti, gabriella. “native american group denounces met’s exhibition of indigenous objects.” the art newspaper, 6 nov. 2018, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/native-american-group-denounces-met-sexhibition-of-indigenous-objects kenney, nancy. “new york's moma to close for four months for renovation.” the art newspaper, 5 feb. 2019, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/moma-announcesplans-to-reopen-in-october slenske, michael. “does it matter if jimmie durham, noted cherokee artist, is not actually cherokee?” new york, 1 nov. 2017, https://www.vulture.com/2017/11/jimmie-durhamat-the-center-of-the-world-whitney-museum.html transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 141 gerald horne. the apocalypse of settler colonialism: the roots of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism in seventeenth-century north america and the caribbean. monthly review press, 2018. 256 pp. isbn: 9781583676639. https://monthlyreview.org/product/apocalypse_of_settler_colonialism/ in the apocalypse of settler colonialism, gerald horne once again earns his reputation as a nuanced transnational historian of race and class. in this, his thirtieth book, horne demonstrates that modernity arrived in the seventeenth century on the three horsemen of the apocalypse: slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism. through a focus on english colonial projects, horne proves these phenomena to be inseparable and interlocking, rather than, for instance, separate pillars of a single structure. horne’s deft archival work reveals rebellion to be a powerful and primary historical force, and clarifies whiteness as a category of convenience used to quell the vibrant cross-class and cross-racial revolutions which erupted throughout the seventeenth century—from england to jamaica, barbados to boston—rebellions that reverberated through the formation of the united states forward to this day. in horne’s adroit analysis, seventeenthcentury merchant class revolts against the monarchy, long thought to be paeans to democracy and liberalism, are shown to be inextricable from the violent enslavement of africans and native americans. for example, horne shows how the american revolution of 1776, often understood as a liberal democratic rebellion, was less laudable: a merchant class of capitalists used the “democratic” spread of white supremacy to wrest wealth from a divinely ordained monarchy’s monopoly on slavery. white supremacy, as horne’s historical research shows, is a tool of capital accumulation. whiteness was used to justify the opening up of slave markets, the accelerated brutality of colonial and settler colonial genocide and extraction economies, and the solidification of a categorical other underwriting the war logic that continues to define modernity. the apocalypse of settler colonialism makes essential interventions into existing scholarship on the history of racial formation, the emergence of liberal democracy, and the transnational dynamics of settler capitalism. in its attention to the conditions of crisis within seventeenth-century colonial projects, this book importantly backdates scholarship documenting the relationships between capital, class, and racial categories. horne’s text traces a transnational and early history that nell irvin painter takes up in the centuries that follow in her predominately american-focused the history of white people. horne reveals the seventeenth century as an era where the preconditions for what painter details are transnational. he establishes white supremacy (“often disguised in deceptive ‘nonracial’ words”) as an essential handmaiden to mercantile capitalism that crossed oceans, national boundaries, and political commitments (horne 135). merchants invoked white superiority to argue for their share of slave markets, making leaps from anti-monarchism to collaboration with royals with a flexibility that allowed an emergent capitalism to combine with elements of feudalism and slavery, a “blatant power and money grab by merchants [that] was then dressed in the finery of liberty and freedom” (horne 172). here, horne joins the likes of cedric robinson, whose “racial capitalism” challenges the marxist idea that capitalism was a revolutionary negation of feudalism. instead, horne and robinson agree that a historical continuum of exploitation dominated by the merchant class who allied with republicanism or monarchism as it suited their financial and social gains. in some cases, too, this continuum was embodied in a single figure, as “some aristocrats by lineage became merchants by currency” (horne 37). tracing these continuities, horne pays special attention to advancements in military https://monthlyreview.org/product/apocalypse_of_settler_colonialism/ april anson review of the apocalypse of settler colonialism 142 technologies, national and imperial political dynamics, and the force of venture capital as the material conditions which allow for this “new kind of aristocracy that is whiteness” (13). horne’s book offers an early transnational history for work on the paradoxes of liberal democracy. horne hones in on the glorious revolution of 1688––“not so glorious for africans and the indigenous”––as emblematic of the convenient use of liberal democracy to cover merchant capitalists in the dawning of the africa and native north america’s apocalypse (horne 164). horne catalogues the historical beginnings of what chandan reddy calls freedom with violence but argues “it would be an error to ascribe fiendish barbarity to western europeans alone, even settlers” (horne 59). he instead attributes the apocalypse to the systems of settler capitalism that recruited from across europe and britain and had impacts across the globe (horne 59). indeed, “the bloody process of human bondage” which included nearly 13 million africans and possibly as many as 5 million native americans, was “the driving and animating force” of the apocalypse that made both democracy possible and the executors of this apocalypse unbelievably wealthy (horne 9). horne’s text complements studies taking up more recent paradoxes of liberalism, adding transnational historical depth to studies of our contemporary moment. horne’s research fills out the colonial history informing work such as the economies of dispossession explored in a 2018 issue of social text, lisa lowe’s intimacies of four continents, wendy brown’s walled states, waning sovereignty, david theo goldberg’s sites of race, and grace kyungwon hong’s the ruptures of american capital. horne’s book also provides an essential antecedent to texts that take up these paradoxes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as timothy powell’s ruthless democracy, brenda bhandar’s the colonial lives of property, laura stohler’s race and the education of desire, and patrick wolfe’s traces of history. the apocalypse of settler colonialism is an essential colonial pre-history for aileen moreton-robinson’s the white possessive, roxanne dunbar ortiz’s an indigenous people’s history of the united states, and david stannard’s the american holocaust. moreover, horne documents the seventeenth century’s “racializing rationalization of inhumanity” in complement to jamaican social theorist sylvia wynter’s essential insights that categories of the “human” were crucial to the creation of racial others that accompanied conquest even before columbus with the landing of the portuguese on the shores of western africa (horne 8). horne’s focus on rebellions like king phillip’s war, which was enflamed by colonists selling indigenous peoples into slavery, connects indigenous and african political movements and details their power in the face of right-wing populist demagogues like francis bacon (horne 145). crucially, just as nick estes’ our history is the future reveals indigenous struggles to be a powerful historical agent, horne’s attention to the power of seventeenth-century political movements, especially african and native rebellions, makes clear that transnational solidarity is as old as colonialism and remains the greatest opponent of transnational settler colonialism and imperialism. horne’s text enhances recent work in indigenous, black, and ethnic studies that explores the “apocalypse,” rebellion, and settler colonialism as a set of apocalypse-inducing technologies aimed at dispossession that communities of color have been outlasting for centuries (la paperson 10). potawatomi environmental philosopher kyle whyte has shown the ways native transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 143 communities in the united states and canada already live “what our ancestors would have likely characterized as a dystopian future” (horne 207). whyte’s words resonate with scholars across disciplines such as grace dillon (english), cutcha risling baldy (native american studies), zoe todd (anthropology), lawrence gross (race and ethnic studies), sidner larson (american indian studies), and other indigenous writers who emphasize that indigenous peoples are experienced survivors of the past and ongoing apocalypse of settler colonial capitalism. indigenous futurisms, a term coined by grace dillon, was inspired by afrofuturism which builds on mark sinker’s claim that the “apocalypse already happened: that (in public enemy’s phrase) armageddon been in effect” (sinker). horne’s study offers a vital historical archive for these recent anti-colonial futurisms. horne’s vibrant language and anticolonial methodology tracing seventeenth-century apocalypse adds urgency to his argument that revolution today is not just possible, but long overdue. for instance, his historical narrative relates the rebellions in 1640s barbados, antigua, virginia, maryland, and bermuda to our own delayed revolutionary moment, making clear that the apocalypse was not merely a game of the elites, but, rather, perpetrated by those who could rapidly class-climb by consenting to a solidarity based on racial capitalism that has yet to disappear. to make these connections across decades, centuries, and geographies, horne moves forward and backward in time in ways that can be dizzying for those more comfortable with linear chronology. however, horne’s deliberate interruption of progressive time may be a methodological aspect of his argument. the apocalypse of settler colonialism disrupts the forward movement of what mark rifkin calls “settler time” which normalizes colonial histories of modernity, and refuses the backward revisionism that claire colebrook reads in western apocalyptic narratives (rifkin). in this interruption, horne’s methodology closely aligns with nick estes’ explorations of the apocalyptic prophecies informing the standing rock movement. estes reminds readers that “indigenous resistance draws from a long history, projecting itself backward and forward in time” (estes 18). similarly, alexis pauline gumbs examines this forward-backward movement in terms of “black feminist time travel,” a time-space continuum where those seeking social justice today draw on the strength of people like harriet tubman, who, too, used her imagination of the freedom that many experience now as a source of strength to survive and free others. these indigenous and black studies scholars detail continuance through and beyond the apocalypse of settler colonialism, vital scholarship that builds decolonial futures into the historical recognition so assiduously archived in horne’s research. horne’s research and powerful conclusion gain even more force when understood in conversation with this growing body of research. the apocalypse of settler colonialism also draws attention to the ways apocalypse has been used to justify and reinvigorate these systems of exploitation, as scholars like betsy hartmann, joanna zylinska, andrew mcmurry, eddie yuen, larry lohman, and frederick buell show and the recent issue of asap/journal explores. though horne does not make these literary connections explicit, his brief mention of today’s alarming reprise of fascism offers scholars an opportunity to connect his work to literary, black, and indigenous studies scholarship regarding contemporary invocations of the apocalypse such as ecofascist responses to climate change. the apocalypse of settler colonialism provokes, but does not plot, the correlations between the rebellions and climate crisis of the 1600s and the ways that relates to our own contemporary climate chaos and social justice movements. horne does gesture to those connections, drawing april anson review of the apocalypse of settler colonialism 144 geoffrey parker’s work on seventeenth-century climate change into relation with the piratical character of capitalism, anti-blackness, indigenous genocide, and settler colonialism. horne gifts scholars the space to extend these exigent connections from his seventeenth century work even farther across time and space. the apocalypse of settler colonialism is essential reading for any scholar, student, or civic intellectual interested in transnational american studies, global economic systems, or the contemporary parallel rise of fascism and the apocalypses of climate change. april anson, university of pennsylvania works cited bhandar, brenda. the colonial lives of property: law, land, and racial regimes of ownership. duke university press, 2018. brown, wendy. walled states, waning sovereignty. zone books, 2010. buell, frederick. from apocalypse to way of life: environmental crisis in the american century. routledge, 2004. byrd, jodi a. et al. “economies of dispossession: indigeneity, race, capitalism.” social text 135. 36:2 (2018) pp. 1-18. colebrook, claire. “slavery and the trumpocene: it’s not the end of the world.” oxford literary review. 41:1 (2019) pp. 40-50. dillon, grace. walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction. university of arizona press, 2012. dunbar-ortiz, roxanne. an indigenous people’s history of the united states. beacon press, 2015. estes, nick. our history is the future: standing rock versus the dakota access pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance. verso, 2019. goldberg, david theo. sites of race: conversations with susan searls giroux. polity, 2014. gumbs, alexis pauline. “like seeds or a guide to black feminist time travel.” everyday genius, 3 august 2012, http://www.everyday-genius.com/2012/07/alexis-pauline-gumbs.html. gross, lawrence. “the comic vision of anishinaabe culture and religion.” american indian quarterly. 26:3 (2003) pp. 436-59. hartmann, betsy. the america syndrome: apocalypse, war, and our call to greatness. seven stories press, 2017. http://www.everyday-genius.com/2012/07/alexis-pauline-gumbs.html transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 145 hong, grace kyungwon. the ruptures of american capital: women of color feminisms and the culture of immigrant labor. university of minnesota press, 2006. hurley, jessica and dan sinykin. “apocalypse: introduction,” asap/journal. 3:3 (2018) pp. 451-66. la paperson. a third university is possible. university of minnesota press, 2017. larson, sidner. captured in the middle: tradition and experience in contemporary native american writing. university of washington press, 2001. lohman, larry. “fetishisms of the apocalypse.” the corner house, 20 september 2014, http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/fetishisms-apocalypse. lowe, lisa intimacies of four continents. duke university press, 2015. mcmurry, andrew. “the slow apocalypse: a gradualistic theory of world’s demise.” postmodern culture. 6:3 (1996) pp. 1-23. moreton-robinson, aileen. the white possessive: power, property, and indigenous sovereignty. u. of minnesota p., 2015. painter, nell irvin. the history of white people. w.w. norton & company, 2010. parker, geoffrey. global crisis: war, climate change, and catastrophe in the seventeenth century. yale university press, 2014. powell, timothy. ruthless democracy: a multicultural interpretation of the american renaissance. princeton university press, 2000. reddy, chandran. freedom with violence: race, sexuality, and the us state. duke university press, 2011. risling-baldy, cutcha. “why i teach the walking dead in my native studies classes.” the nerds of color, 24 april 2014, https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2014/04/24/why-i-teach-thewalking-dead-in-my-native-studies-classes/. rifkin, mark. beyond settler time: temporal sovereignty and indigenous self-determination. duke university press, 2017. robinson, cedric. black marxism: the making of the black radical tradition. university of north carolina press, 2005. sinker, mark. “loving the alien/in advance of the landing” the wire (february 1996). http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/fetishisms-apocalypse https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2014/04/24/why-i-teach-the-walking-dead-in-my-native-studies-classes/ https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2014/04/24/why-i-teach-the-walking-dead-in-my-native-studies-classes/ april anson review of the apocalypse of settler colonialism 146 stannard, david. the american holocaust: the conquest of the new world. oxford university press, 1993. stohler, ann laura. race and the education of desire: foucault’s history of sexuality and the colonial order of things. duke university press, 1995. todd, zoe. “relationships.” in “lexicon for an anthropocene yet unseen.” cultural anthropology, 21 january 2016, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/relationships. whyte, kyle powys. “our ancestors’ dystopia now: indigenous conservation and the anthropocene,” in the routledge companion to the environmental humanities. ursula k. heise, jon christensen, and michelle niemann, eds. routledge, 2017, pp. 206-15. wolfe, patrick. traces of history: elementary structures of race. verso, 2016. wynter, sylvia. “unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—an argument.” cr: the new centennial review 3:3 (2003) pp. 257-337. yuen, eddie. “the politics of failure have failed: the environmental movement and catastrophism.” in catastrophism: the apocalyptic politics of collapse and rebirth, sasha lilley, david mcnally, eddie yuen, james davis, and doug henwood, eds. pm press, 2012, pp. 15-43. zylinska, joanna. the end of man: a feminist counterapocalypse. university of minnesota press, 2018. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/relationships microsoft word pre-edit.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 166 two maya tales from the mérida cereso1 audrey a. harris “for the maya indian—a truth more extensive yesterday than today, but still true—all beings, and even inanimate objects, exist in constant relation to spirits and occult forces that decisively intervene in human life.” —oswaldo baqueiro lópez, magia, mitos y supersticiones entre los mayas (translation mine) “tell all the truth, but tell it slant—” —emily dickinson, the poems of emily dickinson: reading edition in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a penitentiary, the imagination is both escape and pressure valve. art can be a mode of spiritual and mental resistance against confinement. for the imprisoned women in mérida, yucatán, the oppressions are multilayered, extending from centuries ago to the present day: they come in the forms of patriarchy, mexican rule in the yucatán, the memory of the spanish conquest, the lash of prejudice against the incarcerated, and against incarcerated women in particular, and steep class-based inequalities. outside prison walls, the telling of maya folklore and of stories set in maya pueblos is a form of cultural solidarity, a tribute to the ancient mayas, one of the great civilizations of the ancient world, and a gesture of resistance against central mexican culture (moßbrucker et al., 155). inside the enforced exile of the prison, where the hand of the law is felt with every breath and daily injustices, large and small, abound, the need for a) a local sense of cultural belonging and b) resistance against entrenched hierarchies of power magnifies exponentially. the two stories translated below were written for two different writing workshops at the women’s area of the mérida cereso (center for social reinsertion), a prison in mérida, yucatán. both authors are of mixed maya and spanish descent; though neither speaks fluent maya, both identify culturally with maya culture and both report having at least one fully maya speaking grandparent. zindy abreu barón, a self-trained writer who has won numerous national literary awards, wrote “mucuy y los niños del monte” (“mucuy and the mountain children”) in 2005 in a workshop led by the yucatecan educator and writer verónica garcía rodríguez. the book that resulted from this workshop, memorias de mujeres en prisión y otros relatos (2009), features three texts by abreu: a poem, a short autobiographical account of her apprehension, torturing and forced confession to a murder she didn’t commit, and a short story. in 2005, “mucuy,” a work of audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 167 literary fiction, won the josé revueltas national story prize, an annual award, administered by the ministry of public security, for the best story written by an inmate in the mexican penal system. although a writer before spending fourteen years in prison, abreu developed her talent behind bars in garcía rodríguez’s workshop. passion for the written word runs in her veins; she proudly claims to descend from the family of ermilo abreu gómez. gómez is the author of one of the canonical texts detailing the injustices experienced by the maya people, canek (1940): the story of the maya leader kaan ek (jacinto canek), who died in 1761 while battling spanish imperial rule. upon completing her sentence, during which she began to give classes in english, guitar and chess to the other inmates, abreu was released in 2014. since leaving prison, she has become a tireless advocate for incarcerated women in mérida, returning on a volunteer basis to give classes in english and creative writing, and organizing public exhibits of the prisoners’ artworks; she also dreams of opening a halfway house for recently released female inmates. the second story, “la leyenda de juan pistolas” (“the legend of juan pistolas”) by yesli dayanili pech pech, was written in the summer of 2016 in a reading and writing workshop i taught in the cereso. in the summer of 2016, with a grant from the mellon public scholars program, i led a workshop with female prisoners in the cereso de mérida, and, following in the footsteps of garcía rodríguez, i published a book of their writings, entitled nos contamos a través de los muros (we tell our stories through these walls, catarsis). this opportunity allowed me to experience first-hand the workings of a prison creative writing workshop and how it may be used as a tool both to help women on an individual basis as they navigate prison life and prepare for social reinsertion, and also to spark larger conversations about conditions of prison life in mexico and the circumstances that lead people to prison and the transformed world they face once they leave. i presented the project, along with an exhibit of photos taken of the workshop and its participants by the photographer albert durán, at events in mérida and at the u.s. embassy in mexico city. the choice to be included by their real names was made by all but one of the workshop participants; likewise, all but one of the participants requested to have their likenesses appear in the photo exhibition. as the mérida-based writer and prison educator lope ávila explained to me, during one of the many lengthy conversations and interviews i conducted with local prison educators, these women are known for their crimes, and their names and likenesses often appear in local papers both upon their incarceration and upon their release. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 168 participation in cultural projects, such as writing workshops and other public events organized within the cereso, serve as a rare source of positive publicity and attention for inmates, and can help create a positive impression of them as they prepare for social reentry. although this paper is primarily literary in nature, the following section provides important background information on some of the social conditions facing female prisoners in mexico. the statistics below are also corroborated by information provided to me orally during a number of interviews and informal conversations i held during my time working in the mérida penal system with prison educators and administers. according to leticia romero rodríguez, jesús nicolás gracida galán, and carlos benito lara romero the following are the conditions facing women in prison in the heavily maya-descended southeastern mexico: -“most inmates lack resources to defend themselves…the legal process has little effect and public defense continues to be an ineffectual institution” (rodríguez, galán, romero 21, translation mine). -“there are numerous violations of the rights of female delinquents. the vast majority of female inmates has never seen a judge and did not hear from his or her mouth the reasons for which her rights to liberty have been removed. the defense is of poor quality and there are also clear violations during the process and the moment of detention. investigation into their cases by the public ministry is minimal (ibid)”. -“once inside the prison, the rates of corruption are high, and insufficient attention is paid to rehabilitation” (ibid). -fewer than 5% of prison inmates in mexico are women. the crimes they commit are generally less violent than those by men. however, those who are incarcerated face higher sentences for the same or lesser crimes than men, due to a pattern of discrimination against women within the mexican penal system. -types of corruption that commonly occur in the mexican prison system include the exchange of sexual favors from female inmates with prison officials for goods or certain freedoms; the proliferation of an underground economy within the prison by which wealthier inmates receive better living quarters and other services not available to other inmates, etc. -women in prison are subject to more societal and familial discrimination than men. because of their doubly or triply marginal position as women (many of indigenous descent) in prison, family members are quicker to cut ties with female inmates than with males. conjugal audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 169 visits are more frequent to men by their wives than to women by their husbands. women in prison are cut off from their families, rejected, and left to fend for themselves when they leave. they are blamed for ruining the honor of their families, while men are more quickly welcomed back into the family and social fabric following incarceration. i did not ask the women who participated in the workshop to write directly about their experiences in prison. instead, i exhorted them, in the words of emily dickinson, to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” accordingly, although many of their stories are fictional or related to memories that took place before their incarceration, they contain a number of themes that mark their lives in the cereso: injustice, solitude, dislocation, and violence, both physical and social. pech’s story is a retelling of a folk legend from her town of dzidzantún: a pueblo located in northeastern yucatán. though not a trained writer, pech is known in the cereso as the ‘rimera’ (rhymer), a writer of poetry, rap, and picaresque accounts such as the one translated below, “la leyenda de juan pistolas.” i found her to be one of the most enthusiastic members of the writing workshop, producing extra pieces of writing as the sessions drew to a close, including a stash of clever and humorously illustrated poems and songs which she wrote for herself and performed for the other prisoners’ amusement. pech has since been released. since the spanish conquest of the yucatán, two key features characterize maya literature2: 1) resistance to colonial rule (under which the maya still live as reluctant mexican nationals) and 2) the maya cosmovision, which abounds with supernatural characters and occurrences. both abreu and pech claim maya descent; in interviews both report having at least one fully maya speaking grandparent, through whom they root their affiliation with maya culture and to whom they trace an early interest in maya folklore. both of their stories feature maya protagonists, who are also, not coincidentally, outsiders in their society. in search of answers for why inmates, including non-maya speakers, in the mérida cereso are drawn to writing, reading and recounting maya folklore—it is one of the most-requested genres in my writing workshops there—i interviewed abreu during a telephone call on september 17, 2018. she says that mexicans of non-yucatecan3 origins can find themselves discriminated against, and thus often seek to assimilate by acquiring cultural fluency. she theorized that, in a context of social exclusion such as a prison, the desire to be incorporated into the society, its norms and its values increases; in this case that desire expresses itself through the telling of folklore. thus the telling of maya folklore within the prison indicates a mixed cultural identification—on the one hand the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 170 desire to draw close to yucatecan folkloric traditions, rooted in maya culture, and on the other, a demarcation of cultural difference from the central mexican government and from the deculturation occasioned by globalization. maya folklore often features magical beings who surprise, bless, or torment humans in the pueblos. these beings include the x’tabay, a fatal woman lurking in the brush who lures drunkards to their deaths and serves as a cautionary tale against inebriation and infidelity, the alux, the huay-chivo, and scores of other surprising creatures who insert an element of magic into the everyday. these characters are beloved for their narrative potential, but also feared. all of them possess an essential otherness that mirrors the otherness of maya culture within the context of mexican society. their belonging to an alternate realm of existence asserts the possibility of an alternate order that rules life and that exists quite independently of contemporary society, its laws, norms and happenings—an order capable of undercutting, defying and/or reordering reigning social hierarchies, norms and protocols. abreu’s piece tells the story of a young autistic girl named mucuy, who lives in a maya village on a traditional solar. karen kramer’s anthropological study on maya children and their roles in traditional pueblos, maya children: helpers at the farm, (2005) describes a solar as a household compound composed of dwellings of wattle and daub, an earth floor, and pitched roofs. solars are surrounded by a rubble wall which is carefully maintained. most also have backyards with animal pens, an outhouse, herb and vegetable plots, and work areas (60). like most school-age maya girls, mucuy must spend many hours a day occupied in domestic work. she assists her grandmother around the solar to support the family. jobs for women in a typical maya village include “food processing, food preparation, collecting water and firewood, running errands, tending domesticating animals, sewing, washing, and cleaning” (kramer, 105); meanwhile the men typically spend more time cultivating the milpa, or maize field (ibid, 104). in the story, mucuy can be seen performing several chores, including washing clothes, cleaning the patio, gathering firewood, grinding corn kernels in the nixtamal and drawing water from the well. meanwhile, her grandmother feeds the hens, butchers, cooks, and serves one for dinner, weaves hammocks, tends the house and oversees mucuy’s work, and her uncle paciano works all day in the milpa, all following the traditional gendered roles outlined by kramer. to her disappointment, mucuy is not permitted by her grandmother to attend school. beyond primary education, low school attendance is common in maya villages, where “the audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 171 limited amount of training necessary to be successful at maize production, coupled with the unavailability of skill-based wage labor, results in a low payoff to parents who forgo their children’s work and formally educate or train them” (kramer, 38). however, because of her autism, mucuy is denied even the chance to learn to read and write; to make matters worse, she is shunned by the other village children. she is beaten and starved by her grandmother, sexually molested by her uncle, and her only friends are the mysterious niños del monte (children of the mountain), who resemble aluxes, mischievous local sprites. the magical elements in both stories are firmly rooted in the mythological tradition of the yucatán. the journalist and cultural expert oswaldo baquiero lópez (1932-2005) undertook a study of this tradition and defined the aluxes as little spirits that live in the mountains and who manifest their presence with devilish tricks, with the goal of receiving gifts of their favorite foods. sometimes, they can even cause illness due to the harmful ‘wind’ that they leave in their wake . . . on the other hand, if the alux makes friends with the indio, he or she can be certain that no thieves will steal their corn crop . . . they only appear after the sun sets and in the form of a child of three or four years old, naked except for their head . . . they are very agile on their feet and can run backwards as well as forwards. (33, translation mine) the duality of the alux—who despite their mischievous natures also serve as protectors to indios who manage to befriend them—is apparent in abreu’s story, in which the narrator makes friends with the aluxes, in spite of her grandmother’s disapproval. they become her playmates when the village children refuse to play with her, and even punish her uncle for drunkenly molesting his niece by fatally smashing his head in with rocks from the garden wall. in the presence of the aluxes, hierarchies between young and old, male and female, and weak and powerful collapse. as a result of her friendship with them, the otherwise disempowered narrator experiences small but significant joys and triumphs. during our interview, abreu explained to me that her aim in writing “mucuy” was to create a slice of life based on accounts of the pueblos told to her by maya inmates whom she describes as enveloped in a world of fantasy (i.e. fantasy as subversive of material conditions) that helped them manage the poverty and injustice of prison life. likewise, mucuy’s fantasy relationship with the aluxes helps her survive the domestic abuse she lives at the hands of her grandmother and uncle. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 172 similarly, in pech’s story, the alux—and the huay chivo that appear are examples of the magical hybrid creatures that abound in maya mythology. in his mitología maya, the prominent folklorist roldán peniche barrera, author of several books of maya legends he collected and transcribed in the pueblos of the yucatán peninsula, describes these creatures variously as ‘seres perversos’ (perverse beings), and ‘nefastas criaturas,’ (nefarious creatures) ‘siniestras,’ (sinister) and ‘deleznables’ (despicable), elaborating on their nature as follows: “los seres mitológicos mayas se comportan… como verdaderos flagelos. son todos de impresionante presencia, feos por dentro y por fuera, intimidantes, … y además vagan por las noches” (“the mythological beings of the maya act… like true scourges. all impressive in appearance, they are ugly on the outside and the inside, intimidating… what’s more they roam by night”) (5). in stark contrast with these primarily negative descriptions, the narration of both abreu’s and pech’s stories sympathizes with these often demonized characters, both humanizing them and demonstrating how they are (unjustly) vilified by the larger society. in the case of mucuy, the aluxes, though considered a nuisance by her grandmother, rescue her from the sexual molestation that she suffers at the hands of her uncle. thus the outlier figure of the alux is shown to be misunderstood, even heroic in the context of abreu’s story. meanwhile, in pech’s retelling of the huay-chivo legend, the violent punishment greeted on the titular character by the people of the pueblo is disproportionate to the crimes of vandalism he has perpetrated—thus she turns the legend into a parable about the unjust sentencing of a misunderstood outsider. pech originally recounted the story of juan pistolas orally in our workshop. the first draft she presented was brief, yet indicated her talent for rhythm, structure, suspense, and captivating subject matter. in her second draft, she added more details to the story, such as descriptions of juan pistolas’s body and of his activities that so frightened the village people. one interesting element of pech’s tale is its hybrid character. there are characteristics of the western film in the story, with people riding horses and seeking to lynch the huay-chivo. indeed, many of pech’s texts contain cinematic elements indicating her interest and influence in film and popular culture. the name juan pistolas shows the influence of spanish culture, as pistols are not native to maya culture. the horse is a spanish import to mexico, as are the church bells, the notion of the ‘soul in pain’ and the references to satan. even the huay-chivo is a cultural hybrid, since goats were also imported to mexico from spain. however, huay is a maya audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 173 word, dzidzantún is a maya pueblo, and the choza where juan pistolas lives refers to a typical provisional maya hut, constructed of sticks or mud and a thatched palm roof. in the context of ongoing ethnic conflict and inequality in the yucatán, it is significant that the protagonist of pech’s story is an “hechicero” (spell-caster or sorcerer) who mutters a “satanic dialogue.” pech describes juan pistolas as a sorcerer, and he raises his wife’s suspicion by muttering verses from the black book. the story registers cultural conflict when juan pistolas’s wife and others in the village judge him for practicing a belief system that they judge evil, based on their manichean worldview. as in abreu’s story, it is the principal character’s contact or association with an alternate world order characterized by magical, pre-catholic belief systems that lands them in trouble. the presence of folk catholicism, or the mixture of catholic and pre-catholic beliefs that characterize contemporary indigenous cultures across mexico, is clear in the story which includes references both to the biblical satan and to the maya huaychivo, conflating them into one in the eyes of the villagers. other important elements of pech’s story are its themes of violence and injustice. is the violence perpetrated against juan pistolas by the villagers and his own brother really merited by his crimes? his crimes are, by any measure, petty: breaking and entering, causing public disorder, and slaughtering chickens. his punishments— imprisonment, assassination, eternal damnation—feel unwarranted and unjust.4 he is a scapegoat for the ills of the village and punished accordingly, after being betrayed by his own family. for the crime of social deviance, he is now a prisoner of the devil, condemned to eternal suffering. as for many of the female prisoners at the cereso de mérida, his punishment and public vilification far outweigh his crimes. both of these stories speak to the cultural hybridity of mexican culture, which has arisen as a product both of spanish colonialism and western cultural imperialism. abreu uses the form of the short story to bring characters from maya mythology to life, instead of employing the traditional leyenda5 format (the format that pech employs to great effect in her story). meanwhile, pech introduces elements from the cinematic western to her original retelling of the huay-chivo legend. due to the distinct process of conquest and mestizaje undergone by mexico during and after the spanish colonial period, indigeneity functions differently in mexico than it does in the united states. in mexico, indigeneity has been embraced by the nation as an important symbol transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 174 of national identity and culture. yet at the same time, indigenous populations in mexico face enormous structural inequalities. both of these stories bely a unique sensitivity to the multiple oppressions their characters face. both also bely a playful sensibility that derives humor and enjoyment from the figures of maya folklore, and subsequently and simultaneously function as a denunciation of social marginalization and a celebration of the unique landscapes, customs and supernatural characters of the maya world. beyond appealing to a local audience, or even to a readership concerned with issues of prison justice, these stories transcend through their universal themes of injustice, otherness, violence and abuse. both are the work of gifted storytellers. abreu is already recognized in the world of mexican prison literature but deserves an even wider national and international audience as a writer whose work stands on its own. meanwhile pech’s work is until now largely unknown outside the mérida cereso, yet readers should appreciate the fine quality of her writing. for both women, this is the first time their work has appeared in english translation. their stories demonstrate the potential of maya prison narratives to transcend prison walls, as well as linguistic and geographic boundaries, carrying their authors’ critique of injustice, and also their cry of hope, to readers around the globe. a note on the translation: abreu and pech’s stories appear below first in the original spanish versions and then in my english translation. in the yucatán, spanish is frequently mixed with yucatec maya. i have left maya words and expressions in italics, with english translations in the footnotes, to preserve the bilingual flavor of the spanish in the region. mucuy y los niños del monte zindy abreu barón cada noche, por entre los hilos de mi hamaca, los veo llegar. vienen del monte. caminan sobre las piedras de la albarrada y arman gran alboroto en el patio. la luz de la luna llena alumbra sus cuerpos arrugados, de piel morena como la mía. son de mi tamaño, aunque algunos alcanzan a asomar los ojos de carbón encendido por las ventanas de madera. mi abuela dice que yo atraigo a esos malos aires que le quitan el sueño. también asustan a sus gallinas que ya no quieren poner más huevos. por eso hace de todo pa´ que se larguen: audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 175 acomoda tijeras en forma de cruz bajo su hamaca, cuelga ajos con hojas de guano tras de las puertas y se pasa las horas cuchicheando con la estampa de una señora con rebozo de estrellas, rodeada de un montón de chiquitos gordos con alas, quesque viven en el cielo. antes de dormir, se santigua y asienta junto a la batea tres jícaras, que son como mitad de pequeños cocos secos, sin pelos, llenos de atole de maíz nuevo, chile habanero y aguardiente de mi tío paciano. cuando duermo en el patio, me trago todo lo que encuentro en las jícaras, pa´ que los niños del monte nunca se vayan. después de que el gallo canta, mi chichí, con los pelos canos largos, sin amarrar todavía, le da de comer a las gallinas. a la que más se acerca a ella le aplasta la cabeza con sus sayonaras y le tuerce el pescuezo. la cocina con caldo de arroz en leña y prepara agua con naranjas agrias, sólo pa´ mi tío, porque es hombre y trabaja la milpa. yo como de lo que encuentro en los árboles. más tarde, se pone a urdir hamacas con hilos de colores. a mí me pone a lavar ropa, limpiar el patio, juntar leña, moler los granos de maíz en el nixtamal y sacar agua del pozo. todo eso hago hasta que el sol cae, como bostezando, entre las flores que cubren el tajonal. me quedo a gustarlo porque sé eso de las flores y el sol que, agradecido en que lo guardan de noche, les regala sus colores. ya se durmió mi abuela y su hijo que no aparece. el pobrecito llega de trabajar la milpa, siempre borracho, ya muy noche, desde que esa mujer con la que peleaba mucho, por mi culpa, se fue. la luz de una vela alumbra las sombras, que, bailan y se alargan por las paredes de adobe. el humo a cartón de huevo quemado llena la choza y ahuyenta los moscos que dan vueltas sobre mi cabeza. sentada en mi hamaca arrullo entre mis brazos el cuerpecito de manta de mi muñeca. paseo mis dedos por su cabello enmarañado y negro como el mío. le pregunto si conoce el cielo por donde se pasea mi má. dice mi abuela que, al rato que me parió, se nos fue. no lloro; aunque sienta que cruja, como cucaracha aplastada, lo que punza dentro de mi pecho. unos ratones chillan y acorretean iguanos transparentes sobre los palos de madera que atraviesan el techo de paja. los persigo con la mirada. algunos caen, resbalan por el pabellón en donde ronca la vieja y se escurren bajo la tierra roja del suelo. al menos ellos tienen con quien jugar. los chamacos del pueblo no quieren jugar conmigo. corren a atraparse entre los árboles. con soga de henequén se amarran a los tobillos jícaras redondas llenas de piedritas. desde lejos los miro. brinco y aplaudo cuando pescan a alguno. si me acerco, gritan que apesto a wishs y transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 176 con piedras en las manos corren tras de mi hacia la milpa. el corazón que se me quiere salir por las narices cuando me guardo entre los maizales, los niños del monte los reciben a pedradas. los chamacos, con los ojos bien abiertos, dan la vuelta y huyen hacia el pueblo, las piedritas en sus tobillos zumban como panal de abejas. con los brazos al cielo y mi lengua de lado, los persigo hasta que los pierdo de la mirada. no falta quien llegue de acusón con mi abuela, quien, sin preguntar, deja caer una lluvia de huascops sobre mi cabeza. grita que sólo sirvo pa´ hacer maldades, que soy bien bruta y que en mi cabeza de cocoyol, sólo las liendres y los piojos se pegan. por eso no me llevan a la escuela. además quel dinero no alcanza pa´ libros. entonces sí lloro. no por los pescozones que rezumban mi cabeza, sino porque quiero ir ir a la escuela, a jugar con los niños, a leer las letras. mi tío no me pega. deja que remoje mi tortilla en su caldo cada que llega y encuentra dormida a mi abuela. me sienta encima de su enorme panza. mientras devoro lo que queda en el plato, él hace cosquías a mis pies. a veces pienso que con su dedo más gordo quiere atravesar la carne entre mis piernas y no lo dejo. revoloteo como gallina que le tronchan el pescuezo y wisho su pantalón. para esas veces; gruñendo, paciano se levanta, me bota al piso y del pelo me jala a dormir al patio. con la mano espanto a los moscos que dan vueltas sobre mi cabeza. no dejan que se aquieten mis pensamientos. el ruido de unas piedras que caen de la albarrada hace que de un salto me levante de la hamaca. camino hacia la puerta del patio. acecho, primero un ojo, luego otro. por mis cabellos se cuela el aire fresco de la noche. el susurro de las hojas secas que el viento pasea de un lado a otro llena mis oídos. los grillos cantan cosas de la gente del pueblo: el llanto de los huesos enterrados bajo la tierra, del nené que aprieta con su boca el pecho seco de su má y del chillar de tripas que se retuercen de hambre, como las mías. camino sin prisa hacia el fondo del patio. con los dedos intento pellizcar las estrellas que cuelgan del cielo. una, la más brillante, abre y cierra sus ojos. con su luz acaricia mis pestañas. un viento colado se mece entre las hojas de los árboles y trae hasta mis oídos murmullos que parecen decir: mucuy, koóx paxal. me detengo junto al brocal del pozo, agarro una piedra y la aviento hacia la oscuridad. entre los árboles estallan las risas de los niños del monte. mi corazón parece querer salir por mi boca abierta cuando los miro bajar y deslizarse por las matas de tamarindo y aguacate. del tronco de ceibo se despega uno que se apoya de una vara al caminar. acerca su rostro de papel arrugado al mío. su aliento a tierra mojada baña mi rostro. se carcajea con los dientes puntiagudos de fuera. audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 177 un grito agudo, como graznido de kau, escapa por mi garganta. cubro mi boca con la mano y wisho mi huipil. corro hacia mi hamaca y me enrollo en ella. por entre los hilos, miro a los niños colgar sogas de las ramas. esconden el lazo entre la tierra y riegan granos de maíz encima. abren la reja del gallinero, azuzan a las gallinas y trepan a los árboles. cuando las gallinas se acercan a picotear el maíz, los niños desde las ramas, jalan las sogas. las muy mensas quedan colgadas boca abajo, cacarean, giran y aletean, unas del pescuezo, otras de una pata. a lo lejos, en las calles vacías del pueblo, los perros aúllan. para cuando decide asomarse mi abuela, el patio amanece cubierto de plumas y las gallinas, todas tiesas, como tieso amaneció hoy mi tío paciano. con la cabeza, como tauch, aplastada bajo las piedras que cayeron de la albarrada. la vieja, sin preguntar y a chillidos, me raja las nalgas con soga remojada. aprieto los ojos. con las manos cubro mis oídos para no escuchar como si un montón de hormigas sayes marcharan hacia mi nuca por los huesos de mi espalda. una voz dentro quiere llevarme a caer hacia las aguas del cenote sagrado en donde nacen los niños del monte. si no fuera por la luz brillante de esa estrella, que abre y cierra sus ojos, dentro de mi cabeza. mucuy and the mountain children zindy abreu barón each night, from between the strands of my hammock, i watch them arrive. they come from the mountain. they walk on the stones of the garden wall and make a huge ruckus in the patio. the light of the full moon illuminates their wrinkled bodies, dark-skinned like mine. they are my size, although some of them are tall enough to peer through the wooden windows with their burning coal eyes. my grandmother says that i attract these evil spirits that rob peoples’ sleep. they also frighten her hens, who refuse to lay their eggs anymore. that’s why she does anything to shoo them off: she arranges scissors in the form of a cross beneath her hammock, hangs garlic with guano leaves behind the doors and spends the hours whispering with the figure of a woman dressed in a starry rebozo, surrounded by a mountain of fat babies with wings, because they live in the sky. before sleeping, she crosses herself and next to the tray she places three jícaras, which are like little halved dried coconuts, hairless, filled with young corn atole, chile habanero transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 178 and my uncle paciano’s aguardiente. when i sleep in the patio, i drink everything i find in the jícaras, so that the mountain children will never leave. after the cock crows, my chichí,6 with her long white hair, not yet tied back, feeds the hens. she crushes the head of the one who gets nearest to her and wrings its neck with a sayonara. she cooks it in a broth with rice over firewood and prepares water with tart oranges, only for my uncle, because he’s a man and works in the milpa7. i eat from what i find in the trees. later, she weaves hammocks with colored strands. she sets me to washing clothes, cleaning the patio, gathering firewood, grinding corn kernels in the nixtamal and drawing water from the well. i do all this until the sun sets, as though yawning, between the flowers that cover the tajonal8. i stand there enjoying it because i know this about the flowers and the sun, that, grateful that they preserve his essence at night, he gifts them his colors. my grandmother has already fallen asleep and her son hasn’t yet appeared. the pobrecito always comes back from working the milpa, always drunk, late at night, ever since that woman who he was always fighting with, over me, left. candlelight illuminates the shadows, which dance and lengthen across the adobe walls. the smoke of burnt egg crates fills the hut and drives off the mosquitos circling above my head. seated in my hammock i rock my doll’s little cloth body. i run my fingers through her hair, which is tangled and black like mine. i ask her if she’s been to heaven where my má walks. my grandmother says that, just after giving birth to me, she left us. i don’t cry, although i feel something crunching, like a crushed cockroach, piercing my heart. mice squeak and transparent iguanas scamper over the wooden poles that cross the thatched roof. i follow them with my eyes. some fall, sliding down the pavilion where the old woman snores and they burrow beneath the red earth of the floor. at least they have each other to play with. the village kids don’t want to play with me. they run and hide between the trees. they tie round jícaras filled with stones to their ankles with henequen ropes. i watch them from far away. i jump and clap when they catch someone. if i come close, they yell that i stink of wishs9 and with stones in their hands they run after me toward the milpa. my heart wants to jump out of my nostrils as i hide myself between the corn stalks; the mountain children throw stones at them. the village kids, their eyes open wide, turn around and flee toward the village; the rocks at their ankles buzz like honeycombs. with my arms waving in the sky and my tongue wagging, i chase them until they are out of sight. audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 179 there is no lack of complainers who come to my grandmother, who, no questions asked, lets fall a shower of huascops10 on my head. she yells that i’m only good for making trouble, that i’m a brute and that my head of cocoyol11 is filled with nothing but nits and lice. that’s why they don’t send me to school. besides they don’t have enough money for books. then i do cry. not because of the blows that reverberate in my brain, but because i want to go to school, to play with the other children, to read letters. my uncle doesn’t hit me. he lets me moisten my tortilla in his broth whenever he comes and finds my grandmother asleep. he sits me on top of his enormous belly. while i devour what remains in the dish, he tickles my feet. sometimes i think that with his fattest finger he wants to pierce the flesh between my legs, but i don’t let him. i flap and flutter like a hen with a twisted neck and i pee on his pants. on these occasions, he gets up growling, boots me to the floor, and drags me by the hair to sleep on the patio. with my hand i frighten away the mosquitos that circle above my head. they don’t allow my thoughts to settle. the sound of stones falling from the garden wall makes me jump from my hammock. i walk toward the patio door. i spy, first with one eye, then the other. the fresh night air sneaks through my hair. the whisper of dry leaves being blown back and forth by the wind fills my ears. the crickets sing about the villagers, the lament of the bones buried beneath the earth, of the nené who sucks his má’s dry breast and of stomachs twisting with hunger, like mine. i walk unhurriedly toward the back of the patio. with my fingers i try to pinch the stars that hang from the sky. one, the brightest, opens and closes its eyes. its light caresses my eyelashes. a draft blows between the leaves of the trees and carries rumors to my ears that seem to say: mucuy, koóx paxal.12 i pause next to the lip of the well, grab a rock and fling it into the darkness. the laughter of the mountain children explodes amidst the trees. my heart seems to want to escape through my open mouth when i watch them descend, wriggling through the tamarind and avocado plants. from the trunk of the ceibo drops one who leans on a crutch when he walks. he nears his wrinkled paper face to mine. his breath of wet earth bathes my face. he cackles with his teeth pointed out. a sharp cry, like the squawk of a kau13, escapes my throat. i cover my mouth and wet my huipil. i run back to my hammock and roll myself up in it. from between the strands, i watch the children hang ropes from the branches. they hide the loop in the earth and shower kernels of corn on top. then they open the chicken coop, bait the hens and climb up the trees. when the hens come close to pick at the corn, the children pull transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 180 the ropes from where they are stationed up in the trees. the stupidest get strung up mouth down, squawking, spinning and flapping, some by the neck, others by a leg. far away, in the empty streets of the village, dogs howl. by the time my grandmother decides to come out the next morning, the patio is covered in feathers and the chickens are all stiff, stiff like my uncle paciano looked this morning. with his head, like a taúch14, crushed beneath the rocks that fell from the garden wall. the old woman, without asking what happened, screams and whips my bottom with a wet rope. i squeeze my eyes shut. with my hands i cover my ears so i won’t hear what sounds like a mountain of ants marching along my backbone toward the nape of my neck. a voice inside wants to carry me to the sacred cenote, to fall into the waters where the mountain children are born. if it weren’t for the brilliant light of that star, that opens and shuts its eyes, inside my head. leyenda de juan pistolas yesli dayanili pech pech cuenta la leyenda que en un pequeño pueblo llamado dzizantun, en yucatán cuando llegaba la noche unas cadenas sonaban. la gente decía que cosas insólitas pasaban en el pueblo. los ancianos del pueblo decían que todo era a causa de un brujo al cual le llamaban “juan pistolas”. juan pistolas tenía ciento cinco años de edad. su madre era una mestiza de aquel pueblo. por las noches se transformaba en un animal grande con patas de chivo, cabeza de caballo y pelo de mono. sus ojos, como los del venado, sólo se distinguían de noche. juan pistolas asustaba a la gente del pueblo transformándose en un animal llamado “huay-chivo”. a partir de las doce de la noche ningún alma en pena caminaba por las calles por miedo de que se les apareciera “juan pistolas”. la hora de salir de aquel animal era las doce de la noche ya cuando la gente del pueblo dormía. juan pistolas salía de su choza que quedaba por san juan chuilen y en ese mismo pueblo asustaba a la gente metiéndose a las cocinas de las chozas y tirando todo lo que hallaba a su alrededor: ollas, sartenes y cubetas. pero en realidad se comía la comida y mataba a las gallinas y pavos sólo para sacarles el corazón. cuenta la leyenda que “juan pistolas” se había casado con una mujer más joven que él. la mujer era de otro pueblo, cerca de dzizantun, llamado cansacob, yucatán. a pesar de tener dos hijos con él, una noche ella lo abandonó porque descubrió que "juan pistolas" se dedicaba a audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 181 hacer la brujería, magia negra. una noche ella se levantó y le escuchó susurrando un dialecto a satanás del "libro negro". poco tiempo después, en una noche oscura, la gente del pueblo, cansada de sus fechorías, decidieron lincharlo pero una y otra vez se les escapaba. juan pistolas tenía dos hermanos: herminio y pedro. un día, pedro, el mediano, decidió acabar con su propio hermano. agarró su caballo y se dirigió a la cueva donde vivía el brujo. llevaba un litro de gasolina. cuando llegó comenzó a rociar toda la choza con el líquido, prendió un cerillo y quemó todo. juan pistolas estaba dormido después de una de sus corridas nocturnas y no anticipó el ataque. cuenta la leyenda que juan pistolas murió a manos de su propio hermano, pero su alma en pena sigue andando arrastrando la cadena que lleva atada a sus pies y a su alma: es prisionero del diablo. hasta la fecha la gente se acuerda de sus infamias. the legend of juan pistolas yesli dayanili pech pech the legend goes that in a village called dzidzantún, in the yucatán, when night fell the chains began to clank. people told of unusual things that happened in that town. the old people said that it was all the fault of a sorcerer who was known as juan pistolas. he was a hundred and five years old. his mother was a mestiza. by night he would transform himself into a large animal with the hoofs of a goat, the head of a horse and the hair of a monkey. his eyes, like a deer’s, could only be distinguished at night when they reflected the light. juan pistolas would scare the village people transforming himself into an animal called a huay-chivo. after midnight no one could be seen in the streets because of the fear that he might appear. that animal left the house at midnight when the people of the village were already asleep. he would leave his hut, near san juan chuilen, where he would scare people by entering their kitchens and ransacking their pots, pans, and drawers. but really he was only after the food, and he killed the hens and turkeys by tearing out their hearts. the legend goes that juan pistolas had married a woman who was younger than him. the woman was from casacab, a village close to dzidzantún. although she had borne him two children, one night she abandoned him because she discovered that he performed witchery, black transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 182 magic. one night while she was dreaming, some murmurs awoke her; she walked toward where the voice was coming from, and found him whispering a satanic dialogue from the black book. on a dark night, the villagers, tired of his misdeeds, decided to lynch him, but again and again he escaped them. juan pistolas had two brothers, herminio and pedro. one day, pedro, the middle one, decided to finish off juan. he mounted his horse and headed toward the choza15 where the sorcerer lived. he carried a liter of gasoline. when he arrived, he poured it all over the choza, lit a match and burned it down. juan pistolas was asleep and had not anticipated the attack. that’s how juan pistolas died at the hands of his own brother, and he drags a chain tied to his feet and his soul; he is the devil’s prisoner. to this day people still remember his infamies notes 1 research for this article was supported by a mellon public scholars grant 2 i understand maya literature to include maya folklore and stories written by people of maya descent. because both pech pech and abreu claim maya heritage, i classify both their stories as pertaining to to the tradition of maya literature. 3 yucatecan refers to inhabitants of the state of yucatán, located in the north of the yucatán peninsula, in south eastern mexico. mérida is the capital city of yucatán. 4 i am indebted for this interpretation to a conversation about pech’s writing that i shared with the noted yucatecan writer and educator lope ávila. 5 traditional maya leyendas (or legends) are short written accounts of oral myths. they often begin with the lines “cuenta la leyenda…” (“the legend goes that…”) 6 term of endearment for a grandmother. 7 maize field. 8 an herbaceous bushy plant covered in yellow flowers that grows wild along roadsides and in fields in the yucatán. 9 pee. 10 blows to the head or neck delivered with closed fists. 11 a palm tree nut that has been stewed into a sticky, sweet candy. 12 “let’s play.” 13 great-tailed grackle. 14 black sapote, a species of persimmon also known as chocolate fruit, chocolate persimmon, or chocolate pudding fruit. 15 typical maya hut, frequently made of wood or mud and palm leaf branches. audrey a. harris “two maya tales” 183 works cited abreu barón, zindy. “mucuy y los niños del monte.” por esto [mérida, yucatán], 2005. baqueiro lópez, oswaldo. magia, mitos y supersticiones entre los mayas. mérida: maldonado editores, 1983. dickinson, emily. “tell all the truth but tell it slant— (1263).” the poems of emily dickinson: reading edition. 1951. boston: the belknap press of harvard university press, 1998. garcía rodríguez, verónica. memorias de mujeres en prisión y otros relatos. mérida: instituto de cultura de yucatán, 2007. ed. harris, audrey. nos contamos a través de los muros. mérida: catarsis, 2016. kramer, karen. maya children: helpers at the farm. cambridge: harvard university press, 2005. moßbrucker, harald, pfeiler, barbara, and colí, hilaria maas, “la identidad cultural o étnica en la revista literaria ‘yikal maya than.’” boletín de antropología americana 29. july 1994: 153-162. pech pech, yesli dayanili. “la leyenda de juan pistolas.” nos contamos a través de los muros. mérida: catarsis, 2016. peniche barrera, roldán. mitología maya: serpientes, gigantes, pájaros mágicos y dioses mayas. mérida: editorial dante, 2015. rodríguez, leticia romero, galán, jesús nicolás gracida, and romero, carlos benito lara. “pagando culpas: vulnerabilidad de las mujeres reclusas de tabasco.” cotidiano 186. july-august 2014. microsoft word fiola.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 297 evelyn peters, matthew stock and adrian werner. rooster town: the history of an urban métis community, 1901-1961. university of manitoba press, 2018. 225pp. isbn: 978-088755-825-2. https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/rooster-town in rooster town, dr. evelyn peters, and her research associates matthew stock and adrian werner, shine a light on the largely ignored topic of urban métis experiences. drawing upon administrative databases (censuses, voter lists, wwi military records, manitoba vital statistics, building permits and the like), newspaper records, métis genealogies, scrip records, and interviews with former residents, the authors present a history of rooster town (or pakan town, the michif word for hazelnut, as the métis themselves refer to it) ‒ a community on the fringes of southwest urban winnipeg composed largely of métis people who had been dispossessed, first of land promised to them in the manitoba act (1870), then from rooster town itself in the early 1960s. readers are taken on an intriguing journey beginning with the history of the manitoba métis, including dispossession from their lands, the formation and consolidation of the métis community of rooster town, pressures in winnipeg (including depression and inflation, chronic housing shortages, inadequate social supports) and their impacts upon rooster town across the six decades of its existence (1901-1961). a meticulous sifting through existing records enables the authors to track rooster town population fluctuations as they related to the great depression, the world wars, and the interwar period, among other historic and municipal contexts. the authors demonstrate that métis experiences of settler colonialism, as evidenced by rooster town, were similar in ways yet differed significantly from those of first nations. peters, stock, and werner illuminate ways that colonial and administrative practices contributed to those differences, including federal government refusal to recognize métis collective indigenous rights to land, refusal to create reserves for the métis, and insistence that the métis fall under provincial jurisdiction. whereas federal jurisdiction and recognition of first nations’ collective rights to land enabled them to sign treaties, métis land rights were supposedly extinguished on an individual basis – though it should be noted that some métis scholars, such as dr. adam gaudry and prof. larry chartrand of the métis treaties research project (2017), argue that métis-settler relations in canada have indeed produced treaties (for example, louis riel and the métis provisional government of 1870 referred to the manitoba act (1870) as the “manitoba treaty” and the “métis treaty” (gaudry 2016; shore 1999)). in addition to addressing the gap in scholarship regarding métis urban experiences, and impressive attention to detail, the real strength of rooster town lies in its successful dismantling of colonial narratives that depict indigenous people as out of place in modern urban society. since métis people were not systematically removed from urban areas and confined to rural reserves, as most first nation people were, many métis remained in the city and attempted to make a good life for their families. peters, stock, and werner convincingly argue that métis chantal fiola review of rooster town 298 urbanization was an adaptive strategy, rather than a failure to cope with city life. the authors highlight métis agency, resilience, and adaptability in challenging colonial processes through explicit resistance, and refusing colonizers’ attempts to move them. moreover, métis at rooster town also made efforts to improve their conditions by self-building, and their (likely strategic) decision to continue living clustered together with other métis for decades (as evidenced by endogamous marriage, kinship, and residence patterns) which provided a buffer against the poverty and racism surrounding them. importantly, the authors challenge the view that métis received the land promised to them in the manitoba act, or received good prices if they decided to sell their land, as argued most notably by thomas flanagan and gerhard ens (1994) on behalf of the government. following the trail of records for rooster town métis individuals who supposedly received land or good prices for it, the authors highlight that marginal, low-cost locations of households, overcrowding of relatives within a single dwelling, and low estimated worth of such dwellings all counter flanagan and ens’s claims. in this they are not alone: other authors, including métis scholar darren o’toole (2010), also dispute flanagan and ens’s claims that the government fairly and systematically distributed the land promised to the métis in the manitoba act and that subsequent land dispossession is the fault of métis themselves. the accuracy of documentation of land transactions is specifically called into question by the authors – it seems métis did not receive the recorded sales amounts for property, nor did land transactions lead to economic security. peters, stock, and werner also expose the role media played, via newspaper propaganda, in creating racist stereotypes of métis in rooster town as unemployed, lazy, diseased, tax-evading criminals, living and partying in tarpaper shacks. while rooster town did experience economic marginality, the newspapers chose not to also publicize métis contributions to the economy of winnipeg, socio-economic heterogeneity and long-time gainful employment for some, or participation in winnipeg society via the public school system among other avenues. such portrayals would have made it difficult for winnipeg officials to justify their lack of support and services to rooster town and the eventual forced dispersal of inhabitants in favour of grant park shopping centre and other amenities. suburbanization engendered the branding of rooster town residents as so-called “squatters”; this and shady eviction tactics (such as government threats to withhold relief unless families moved) are also explored by peters, stock, and werner. another strength of the book can be found in the authors’ acknowledgement of the risks of cultural appropriation within their work as non-indigenous scholars researching and writing aspects of indigenous history. ultimately, their decision to pursue the topic rested upon timing (interviews with surviving, elderly rooster town residents needed to happen now while a few are still with us), finances, and time-commitment ‒ dr. peters’s canada research chair provided the resources that enabled this expensive and time-consuming research. throughout the research, the authors kept the manitoba metis federation well-informed, delivering progress reports and public talks and making sure to invite former rooster town residents. the authors are quick to note that they do not aim to provide an account of rooster town from métis perspectives – appropriately, they encourage métis scholars to undertake that work ‒ but, rather, they transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 299 reconstruct a history of the community using settler records while challenging colonial interpretations. while it is refreshing that the authors honestly address the risks of cultural appropriation, their work would benefit from a deeper exploration of their social locations and the implications and consequences of non-indigenous researchers undertaking such research. more could be said about their individual and collective relationships with indigenous peoples, their attempts to undertake ethical work, and their efforts to remain accountable to rooster town residents and the manitoba métis. nonetheless, dr. peters, stock, and werner offer other nonindigenous authors a good example of how to openly and honestly address risks of cultural appropriation in scholarly work. rooster town argues that the dissolution of métis fringe communities has created an ongoing legacy of distrust and anger, and that more research is needed to correct the silencing of such communities in urban histories, economies, and cultures. the authors conclude that efforts to explore resistance to settler colonialism within these communities represent an important step in the process of reconciliation. indeed, folks interested in urban history and geography, métis studies, indigenous relationships with settler colonialism, and métis dispossession of land in manitoba, among others have much to gain by reading rooster town. chantal fiola, university of winnipeg works cited flanagan, thomas, and gerhard ens. “métis land grants in manitoba: a statistical study.” histoire sociale/social history, vol xxvii, no. 53, may 1994, pp. 65-87. gaudry, adam. “are the métis treaty people?” weweni indigenous lecture scholar series, university of winnipeg, 6 january 2016, https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/indigenous/weweni/past-wewenis/are-the-metis-treatypeople.html. accessed 17 february 2019. gaudry, adam, and larry chartrand. métis treaties research project, 2017, http://www.metistreatiesproject.ca/. accessed 17 february 2019. o’toole, darren. “thomas flanagan on the stand: revisiting métis land claims and the lists of rights in manitoba.” international journal of canadian studies, no. 41, 2010, pp.137-177. shore, fred. “the emergence of the métis nation in manitoba.” métis legacy: a métis historiography and annotated bibliography, edited by lawrence barkwell, leah dorion, and darren prefontaine, pemmican publications, 1999, pp.71-78. microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 63 translating images of survivance: a trans-indigenous corporeal analysis of spear and maliglutit matt kliewer beginning in 2016, i was part of a programming team that brought two features to the native crossroads film festival and symposium in norman, oklahoma. originally founded by kristin dowell, karl schmidt, and victoria sturtevant, native crossroads is run through the university of oklahoma and currently headed by cherokee film scholar joshua b. nelson. the 2017 native crossroads opened with the feature screening of stephen page’s spear and closed with zacharias kunuk’s maliglutit. while this schedule was largely coincidental, the way these two films bookended a native film festival in oklahoma containing documentaries and short films focusing on the water protectors protesting the dakota access pipeline, choctaw visual artist and filmmaker steven paul judd, and pawnee major league baseball pitcher mose j. yellowhorse, is suggestive. it highlights the unique interplay between the more locally produced films that appear each year at native crossroads and global indigenous films often first appearing at imaginenative, while also speaking to the power of trans-indigenous film discourse at both the diegetic and productive level. the productive transnational spaces of imaginenative and native crossroads provide access to and resources for the maintenance of a global indigenous visual sovereignty. in reservation reelism: redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of native americans in film, michelle raheja claims that “[v]isual sovereignty is a practice that takes a holistic approach to the process of creating moving images and that locates indigenous cinema in a particular historical and social context while privileging tribal specificity” (194). while the creation of tribally specific images of survivance that raheja describes is a fundamental part of the process of reinforcing visual sovereignty and enacting self-determination, extending such work across tribal boundaries also represents a powerful inter-tribal, globally indigenous challenge to the colonial gaze. when analyzing indigenous images from vastly different geographical and colonial contexts, we can find common colonial images that indigenous image makers strategically deconstruct and remake in the image of survivance, revealing performative inter-tribal sovereignties one of the foundational aspects of visual sovereignty, according to matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 64 raheja, is “a revision of older films featuring native american plots in order to reframe a narrative that privileges indigenous participation and perhaps points to sites of indigenous knowledge production in films otherwise understood as purely western products” (196). stephen page’s spear and zacharias kunuk’s maliglutit are useful films to consider in this context, as they demonstrate how an inter-tribal aesthetic directly engages western colonial film conventions and colonial imagery, reframing narratives where indigenous bodies encounter and resist their historically limited positionality in filmic mediums. by viewing both maliglutit and spear as indicative of barclay’s fourth cinema1 and by focusing particularly on their postindian subversions of genre and plot, we are able to consider the inherent meta-awareness of the filmic medium as one of the most politically viable methods of creating a global indigenous media. in her examination of kunuk’s atanarjuat, shari huhndorf points to film’s “capacity to mediate across temporal and geographical distances . . . support[ing] an imagined inuit community with deep historical roots” (76). film, then, fundamentally contains not only the tools to contrapuntally form indigenous coalitions around imagined and real indigenous relations; in a specifically indigenous context, as we see in both spear and maliglutit, film also maintains the power to write and gaze back against the colonial apparatuses of film itself through indigenous bodies’ movement through temporalities and spaces. trans-indigenous film studies has not yet produced the sheer amount of material that exists within literary studies since the publication of chadwick allen’s impactful transindigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies. nevertheless, both jessica horton and salma monani have undertaken specifically trans-indigenous projects within film and visual art, each adopting a focus on the corporeal body as a site of resistance. in monani’s chapter, “kissed by lighting and fourth cinema’s natureculture continuum,” she describes the “transcorporeal yet embodied response” that viewers experience in reflex to cinema in general, and with specific attention to a particular trans-indigenous corporeal response to shelley niro’s kissed by lightning (146). likewise, in her analysis of atanarjuat, horton examines how “corporeal senses of place allow for a sympathetic alignment of bodies on film with bodies in real-time viewing space”, explaining how “[t]his ‘sense of place’ is immediate, physical, and can be unconsciously experienced by the viewer” (7). discussing this same scene from atanarjuat in his keynote address at the 2018 native american literature symposium, joshua nelson carefully transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 65 notes that the interaction between the corporeal and ecological in indigenous film often decidedly speaks back against pernicious and stereotypical portrayals of the ‘ecological indian.’ in much the same way as horton argues that a naked atanarjuat forces an immediate sense of place, i contend that both spear and maliglutit portray indigenous bodies to locate that place within inherently colonial spaces. extending the scholarship of channette romero, angelica lawson, danika medaksaltzman, and joanna hearne, my aim in this piece is to examine indigenous survivance images in which colonial tropes appear intertextually as vehicles to rework and reappropriate indigenous presence and space through corporeality. while hollywood, and the colonial film apparatus in general, remains the spectre that haunts and limits indigenous film production and distribution, colonial images of indigeneity are summoned forth through the body in kunuk and page’s works. as raheja argues in visualities: scholarship on native american filmic representations has historically presented a reading of indigenous peoples as victims of hollywood interests, and a national rhetoric and relic of invisibility and disappearance . . . yet this, of course, is not the whole picture. as a supplement and antidote to these images, important recent work on indigenous film demonstrates how contemporary indigenous filmmakers have resisted hollywood by employing culturally specific representational practices of visual sovereignty, and sometimes by ignoring or eliding dominant representational conventions and other forms of colonization.” (raheja 12) within spear and maliglutit, each filmmaker notably refuses to ignore or elide colonial spaces and colonial filmic history. instead, they confront each directly, both in conception and motion of the filmed bodies, allowing for meaningful decolonial disruptions. through indigenous filmic survivance, each film simultaneously alludes to and fractures colonial performativity—gazing back at colonial cinema. while kunuk presents this through a repurposing of john ford’s classic 1956 western the searchers, page subverts colonial filmic temporality through a contrapuntal historical retelling of australia’s colonial history as written on, and performed through, indigenous bodies. strategically juxtaposing these two films reveals the ironic interactions between colonial film conventions and survivance in contemporary indigenous films. exposing filmic strategies that directly implicate and complicate colonial film narratives allows us to theorize imagic matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 66 survivance in ways that speak concurrently to specific indigenous histories and trans-indigenous filmic methodologies. chadwick allen argues that “staging purposeful indigenous juxtapositions” becomes a means “to develop[ing] a version of indigenous literary studies that locates itself firmly in the specificity of the indigenous local while always cognizant of the complexity of the relevant indigenous global” (xix). where spear utilizes metafilmic images to recalibrate colonial filmic portrayals of aboriginality, kunuk reinvents the searchers, through (1) the utilization of inuktitut language throughout the film; (2) a fully indigenous cast; and (3) the reframing of the hollywood western projected in stark relief onto and against the landscape of igloolik. this final element requires the characters to possess specific indigenous knowledge of the land in order for the protagonist and his young sidekick to pursue maliglutit’s kidnappers. in both of these films, colonial imagic portrayals of indigenous peoples are rewritten and visualized through the bodies of the characters as they reenact and refute colonial film narratives. ford’s westerns and the blackface aboriginals of british propaganda films exist in perpetuity underneath each of the narrative arcs of these films, as both directors shift the colonial gaze ironically and vehemently back toward the colonizer via the framing of indigenous bodies in colonial and decolonial spaces. gazing through the western in maliglutit maliglutit, which translates from inuktitut to english as searchers, takes place and is filmed in and around the community of igloolik, in nunavut, northern canada. the choice to reframe ford’s narrative (which was filmed on the navajo reservation in arizona, as a stand-in for west texas) in the specific region of igloolik points to kunuk’s desire to make visible the issues of colonialism that continue to impact the inuit. kunuk’s arctic setting intuitively challenges colonial mythology, as shari huhndorf underscores, stating that “[a]s signifiers, and instruments of power, images of the arctic remain central to struggles for control of the region” (79). by transposing one of the most popular colonialist films of the twentieth century across national and tribal borders into igloolik, kunuk continues a filmmaking tradition of western critique with a specifically inuit method. in maliglutit, kunuk challenges the images of indigeneity found in the western film genre. the reframing of ford’s film by kunuk immediately contradicts the bas-relief of ford’s indians. additionally, by casting nearly all igloolik actors the racialist dynamics of the transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 67 searchers are subverted.2 the application of kunuk’s stylistic filmmaking to ford’s the searchers also amplifies the convention in indigenous films of intertextually referencing films and images previously constructed about indigenous peoples. in his book imagic moments, lee schweninger speaks to this allusion to colonial portrayals in indigenous films, arguing that [t]he self-awareness exemplifies fourth cinema, in a sense, in that such instances demonstrate the filmmakers’ insistence on the importance of telling one’s own story by holding and focusing one’s own camera. in this way, the filmmakers very literally and selfevidently control the gaze . . . this self-conscious use of film and photography, i argue, forces an awareness on the viewer and insists on a somewhat critical rather than a merely a passive response to the viewing experience. (schweninger 15) kunuk’s intertextual cooption of the searchers reframes the narrative in a way that shifts the gaze both to the original conception and the ideologies that underlie hollywood westerns, while also indigenizing humanistic questions of violence and revenge. the drama of the murder and the kidnapping do not serve narratives of manifest destiny or inherent savagery, as is the case in ford’s film; they merely result from a lover’s jealousy. the controversy takes place on a human and a tribal level, not one based in national racialist discourses. instead, the titling of the film and the closeness of the narrative to ford’s western function as a postindian revision of ford. by moving from the liminal positionality of the savage stereotype, maliglutit underscores anishinaabe theorist gerald vizenor’s sense of “transmotion, that inspired sense of natural motion and singular, visionary sovereignty [that] abides in stories of survivance” (native liberty 108). the colonizer in maliglutit is never present in a scene, but remains palimpsestically present in the narrative. kunuk gazes back at ford, pronouncing indigenous presence and disrupting the manifest manners of conventional westerns. apart from the production elements and ideological differences between the two films, several other aspects of maliglutit stand out as subversions of the filmic manifest manners visible in the searchers. in ford’s original, a band of raiding comanche slaughter ethan’s brother aaron, his sister-in-law martha, and his young nephew ben. they then proceed to kidnap his two nieces, lucy and debbie. the subsequent quest to recapture the nieces is undertaken by ethan and martin, aaron’s adopted half-blood indian son. as a tracker with the ability to speak and understand the comanche language, ethan utilizes skills learned from the comanche and his army experience to trail the raiding party to a convergence between two hills, where he takes matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 68 leave of his nephew in order to continue the search. the camera stays with martin as ethan exits off-screen, who returns later to inform the adopted nephew of his sister lucy’s death. a common interpretation of this scene holds that the lack of firsthand perspective during such a fundamental moment within the plot suggests that ethan is not entirely honest with his nephew about the occurrences off-screen. often vulgar and racist toward martin, ethan may have murdered his niece after finding her raped by the comanche. this theme of the fear of miscegenation occurs frequently throughout the western genre of film, and within the searchers ethan’s interactions with martin and the initial horror with which ethan reacts to the discovery of martha’s body provide evidence for such a reading. in sue matheson’s viewing of the film, she claims that “ethan has no other choice but to leave because he cannot give up his incestuous love for his brother’s wife and his extreme horror of miscegenation” (51). discovering lucy in a similar state would presumably trigger the same latent fear and murderous intent present in ethan throughout the film. the interactions between ethan and martin, and the murder of lucy, are dramatically shifted in maliglutit to challenge the racialist assumptions and fears of miscegenation that suffuse ford’s film. instead of off-screen interactions between the two warring parties, kunuk widens the camera in his beautiful panoramic landscape shots and refuses to look away from the abusive scenes merely implied by ford and so feared by ethan. many of ford’s characters find doubles in kunuk’s film: kuanana mirrors ethan, and the role of martin is occupied by siku. while siku mirrors martin as the younger man in the search, it is suggested in the film’s opening that he is likely the illegitimate son of kupak, maliglutit’s analogue to the figure of scar. the two women who escape death in the initial raid by kupak’s tribe somewhat mirror lucy and debbie, although neither is ever murdered, and instead of being kuanana’s niece, ailla is his wife. and while the first significant plot point of the searchers is mirrored inasmuch as kuanana and his son leave their home unattended only for the remaining characters to be slaughtered in their igloo, the subsequent search for and fate of the wife figure vary greatly. notably, the impetus for kupak’s raid finds root not in colonial relations between the two tribes but rather in a feud based on a prophetic vision had by one of the elders of kuanana’s tribe. the elder man who experiences this vision claims that “a murder is near,” and an elder woman points to kupak and exclaims that “[y]ou, kupak, are the cause of all this. you asshole!” ultimately, it is a combination of kupak’s refusal to share food from his hunts and his sexual encounters with transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 69 the women of the tribe that push kuanana’s tribe to banish kupak and his followers. as a fundamental aspect of tribal sovereignty lies in the ability to set the parameters of membership, the banishment of kupak displays and exercises that sovereignty. the most important divergence in kunuk’s revision of the searchers, however, lies in the fact that tagaq and ailla survive their kidnapping, although they are not unscathed. where ford hides these atrocities behind hills and walls, kunuk relishes in the visual resistance and survival of ailla. during her first night in captivity with kupak, he asks ailla to pour him a cup of tea. wordlessly, ailla pours a cup from a kettle that had been set by the fire. she hesitates as she brings the cup up from the kettle and looks toward a nearly sleeping kupak with disgust. she then throws the cup of water into his face, which prompts him to attempt to assault her. this struggle unfolds over the course of a minute and twenty seconds, with ailla pulling at kupak’s hair, punching him in the chest and face, and fighting tirelessly. as they continue to fight, the camera slowly fades from the firelit igloo, where the assault takes place, to the blowing snow of igloolik, and then to kuanana and siku, sleeping upright. kunuk forces the audience to witness the ferocity with which ailla fights, and, unlike debbie in the searchers, ailla never converts to kupak’s tribe—instead remaining resistant. in the most memorable and strikingly unconventional scene of the film, ailla and tagaq attempt to escape kupak’s band. when they are alerted to the escape of their wives, kupak and his ally aulla dress quickly, gather the ropes that had previously bound ailla and tagaq, and give pursuit. unlike the fast-paced, heavily scored and dramatized chases in the searchers and stagecoach, the camera pans wide, showing the two women running, slowly moving toward the camera, with a view of the two men some distance behind. kupak catches up to ailla as tagaq and aulla run off-screen. rather than submit to being rebound with kupak’s rope, however, ailla continues to fight, screaming “get off” and “get the fuck away from me.” kupak is able to retie ailla, and commands her to “come with me” and “be nice,” to which she replies, “i don’t want to be with you” and “no,” respectively. refusing to go with kupak, she forces him to drag her back to camp. this process is cut through by a scene where kuanana and siku have followed the tracks of the rival band close enough to see them through a telescope. the perspective changes again when kuanana climbs a hill to gain a better vantage, then back to a close shot of kupak continuing to drag ailla back to camp. the closeness of the camera to the two bodies matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 70 displays the ferocity with which ailla fights to keep from being bound to kupak’s sled. this sequence takes over three minutes, with ailla finally tiring enough for kupak to tie her. the motion of kupak and ailla’s bodies show their conflict played out in small muscle movements, wrestling without grand spectacle. it is a very human altercation, where we see the wife grow tired but continue to struggle with every sinew to escape the assault. the pacing of this scene directly contradicts the grand hollywood spectacle of violence in the searchers. while there is constant movement, it is muted by the close proximity of the camera to the bodies of the subjects. the intensity with which ailla fights in the face of what seems to be an unwinnable battle illustrates an agency not offered any of the women or indigenous characters in the searchers. the contrast between the sweeping, sublime shots of small bodies moving in the vast landscape of the arctic and the painful intensity of the close-ups of ailla and kupak relates the seeming harshness of the climate with ailla’s drive for survivance. temporal, spatial, and corporeal movement in stephen page’s spear in terms of kunuk’s films, maliglutit presents the most straightforward, genre-focused film in the isuma catalogue, but the film’s allusive re-creation draws interesting and productive juxtapositions when considered in conjunction with stephen page’s much more experimental film spear. both films confront colonial histories through interplays of narrative action and corporeality, yet a deconstruction of temporalities between the colonial past and present inform the movements of spear. in her discussion of several films focusing on aboriginal australian histories and their relation to the larger hegemonic colonial narratives of australia, faye ginsburg claims that a fundamental element of many prominent aboriginal films is that they ‘backtrack’ through the nation’s history not in triumphalist terms, but in ways that address the legacies of grief and violence wrought by settler colonialism, a significant transformation in the country’s sense of its own legacies, and a recognition that it matters whose stories are told and by whom. (82) page’s spear continues this legacy, relating the innumerable traumas of the aboriginal australian population at the hands of their colonial british occupiers. history haunts spear. the film takes its protagonist, djali, through a series of historical and contemporary atrocities faced by aboriginal australians, all performed through dances that mix modern, classic ballet, and aboriginal dance styles.3 transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 71 painting, costuming, sound, and movement coalesce within spear to provide an aboriginal historical revision. this revision offers a healing path for its young protagonist through the exposure of his body to the movements of his ancestors and, eventually, through his own enacting of ritual dance. images of indigeneity —both in the spatial choices made by page and in the movements of the dancing bodies throughout the film—challenge colonial narratives and foreground an element of performativity. one scene in particular in spear demonstrates the reciprocal relationship between portrayals and performances of indigeneity, and assimilative colonial apparatuses—in this instance the forcibly assimilative australian education that created the stolen generations. several scenes in spear are scored to recordings of colonial propaganda or horrifying accounts of abuse. subsequently, the utilization of the song “my boomerang won’t come back” draws the audience into a further simulation of colonial australia by calling attention to the tension of decolonizing imperial representations while simultaneously performing in-step with colonial conventions. this dance, above all others, traps its performers in stunted, copied choreography. whereas the vast majority of dances in spear are flowing, balletic, painful, and beautiful, the dance to “my boomerang won’t come back” features the only song accompanied by lyrics. the dancers begrudgingly perform, set to the racist recurring chorus “my boomerang won't come back/i've waved the thing all over the place/practiced till i was black in the face/i'm a big disgrace t' the aborigine race/my boomerang won't come back.”4 the farce of this performance notably clashes with the stylistic elements of the other dances. filmically, we might view this staged dance as an instance of postindian survivance. vizenor views sites of colonialist portrayal as points of potential colonial disruption. to deconstruct the colonial “indian” is to ironically inhabit that figure in a strategic manner. according to vizenor, “[t]he postindian must waver over the aesthetic ruins of indian simulations (fugitive poses 15). the postindian is bound in a relationship with the public's perception of natives and then uses this relationship to displace beliefs and perceptions circulating in public discourse (miles 47). the application of the postindian—a concept specifically rooted in a north american colonial context—to indigenous australia, although perhaps imperfect, resonates in the gymnasium space and stage of the residential school. while all of the dances in spear function as a form of transmotion, “that sense of native motion and an active presence” (fugitive poses 15), this scene calls attention to physical and sonic colonialism through repetition, performance, and ironic sound. matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 72 appearing after a quick cut from a racist, previously filmed propagandist clip of a primitive and savage aboriginal man, the performers stand in front of a school stage in a gymnasium, where a banner reading “welcome to country” hangs near the curtain. in fiona magowan’s study of yolngu dance in film, she argues that the very act of yolngu dance constructs country, stating that “experiences of country are active and ongoing where perceiving and knowing place is always in the flux and flow of becoming through painting, singing and dancing” (“dancing into film” 65). while the dancers must perform under a banner of a colonial nation, their dances actively construct an indigenous country through active presence and movement. the banner, while on the surface welcoming the dancers to a residential school where they will be forcibly assimilated, also welcomes the viewer to the country constructed by the dancers through corporeal movement. in this scene, the performers are costumed in the baggy tan clothes of the residential school, painted with poster paints and colorful, childlike drawings of nature scenes. the men are bare-chested, and several are adorned with childlike handprints instead of the traditional paint more commonly seen in the other dances. during the dance, each performer’s movements match the music count rather than supplementing the music, as is the case in other dances throughout the film. the sonic manifests more strictly in the body movements in this dance, with the metaperformative conventions being underscored by the stage, the simplistic dance movements, and the two outsider gazes of djali and the elder aboriginal man. this performance of indigeneity becomes increasingly complicated when the elder of the two observers joins in the dance. the elder viewer moves from observer to performer in a strategic repositioning in order to express both the inescapability of these performances and their ironic hyperbole. the performance comes to an abrupt end, with a visibly jarring iris out transition to close the frame. within this scene, the metaperformative aspect of indigeneity, as filmed through a first cinema gaze, disrupts master narratives of assimilative education and emphasizes discrepancies and ironies within indigenous portrayals by deploying a vizenorian simulation. as the bodies of the dancers in the school are locked into their choreography and colonialist portrayals by “my boomerang won’t come back,” the temporal and spatial shift immediately succeeding the iris out moves the viewer and the metaviewers of djali and the elder into the repressive colonial space of a prison. the scene opens with establishing shots of a cloud crossing the sun and the corner of a barbed wire prison-yard fence. djali walks with a new guide, transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 73 an aboriginal woman carrying a bag. the shot is filtered through a cage-like fence, offering a fourth cinema perspective from inside a prison that contains a majority aboriginal population. the inversion of the camera orients the scene as firmly juxtaposed against the previous colonial gaze of the school gymnasium scene. cutting away from djali, we see the backs of twelve prisoners facing forward in a massive warehouse. the combination of prison imagery and warehouse setting display an inhumanity whereby the prisoners are stored, not confined. djali and the woman are transported to the waiting room, where she is searched. a guard finds herbs and a tupperware of white paint, which he wordlessly allows the woman to take with her. she leaves djali and enters a bathroom, where she paints her face and sets fire to the herbs so that they smoke. as the woman prepares her ceremonial medicines, one of the prisoners receives a tray of prison food and goes to sit down to his meal in a small cafeteria. the shots alternate between the ceremonial preparation and the growing angst of this prisoner, as shown through his facial expression and hesitance to step through the same monotonous routines as the other prisoners. when the prisoner sits, the camera moves to a close-up on his face as he looks around anxiously, removes the shirt from his prison uniform, and starts to dance. the dance begins by evoking the pain and fear of the dancer through his facial expression and his proximity to the floor. he almost cowers. the tone changes significantly, however, as other prisoners come to notice the dancer. he disrupts the space, the routine of the prison. he stands and jumps, and the movements turn from pain and fear to a defiant, albeit brief, resistance. the dancer returns to the floor and the camera cuts to the woman approaching from the bathroom. she carries two pots of smoking herbs, her face fully painted. she nears the dancer cautiously, who reacts as if in fear when he sees her. they circle each other until, seemingly defeated, the dancer reaches toward her and the smoking pots, embracing the woman as though too exhausted to continue this battle. the camera cuts back to djali, who, although not present for the dance, stares contemplatively at the floor as if he had witnessed it. the camera slowly zooms closer as djali stares at his open hands and smoke from the same herbs pours in from off-screen. at this moment djali perhaps recognizes the scared, yet ferocious dancer within himself. he breathes deeply of the smoke and the experience, obtaining and interpolating another aspect of the confinement of the aboriginal body. matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 74 the vacillation within this scene between fear and fervor in the dancer’s movements, and the potential healing of the dancer at the hands of the woman, speaks to the survivance narrative performed within such colonial spaces. the dancer disrupts the procedure of the warehouse prison. where djali previously experienced the ideological confinement of his body in the space of the gym, the physical confinement of the aboriginal body becomes subverted through this dance. through it, space is transformed; from a repressive space of inhumanity into a place that evokes powerful affective responses as the retelling of dominant histories becomes the recreation and revitalization of aboriginal histories through movement and ceremonial healing. the sonic backdrop of spear, with symphonic music underscored by colonialist propaganda tunes, displays a desire to achieve decoloniality through survivance, which must occur in colonial spaces that otherwise seem to foreclose the possibility of a decolonial project. “my boomerang won’t come back” directs the dances in the school, and a colonial propaganda speech regarding aboriginal assimilation plays throughout the scene in the prison. these spaces are clearly the ideological spaces of the colonizer, but one of the most sonically affective scenes of spear comes in the form of a tortured dance performed by one aboriginal man in an underground chamber. as the camera takes us through the halls of this dark place, it focuses on a large man who speaks directly to the audience in an untranslated aboriginal language. the camera cuts away to a close-up of djali, who bends down to uncover a man beneath a blue tarp. the uncovered man (“abused man” as he appears in the credits) appears suddenly, without the presence of the large man or djali, and begins to dance, without music, to the recorded voice of a male narrating the sexual abuse of an aboriginal boy. the recording and the dance are interrupted by cuts to the large man, still staring into the camera and speaking—disrupting the violence of the abusive man. it is precisely the lack of movement in juxtaposition to the tragic dance that resists the puppeteering of the abuser. the camera cuts to djali, who then looks down to find abused man’s head covered with a plastic bag. djali removes the bag and the camera continues to cut between the three temporal positions of abused man dancing, the large man speaking to the audience, and djali gazing at the immobile abused man. the resonance of the abuser’s voice fades as the large man begins to chant. the camera focuses our attention on the dancing abused man, marked with a black “x” painted across his bare chest. a mist, reminiscent of the smoke from the prison scene, pours from the ceiling and an aboriginal chant song replaces the horrific narration of the abusive man. abused man wipes transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 75 away the “x” on his chest, using the mist to smear the black paint. the two temporal zones of the dancing abused man and the stationary abused man, accompanied by djali, converge as we see abused man sitting dejected and traumatized beside djali. djali brings a cup to abused man’s lips, and he drinks with little to no movement. the healing in this scene remains incomplete, perhaps never to be realized. the history seems irreconcilable, but abused man survives, and, through his very presence, he forces the colonial gaze to confront itself and abused man’s trauma at its hands. one character in spear fails to find reassurance, healing, or a distancing of postindian irony through dance. suicide man is a character who appears several times in the film as a drunken, homeless, and seemingly ignored alongside the progression of the greater narrative of djali’s growth. his body lacks the grace of the other dancers, and as such he fails to filter the colonial trauma wrought on him. page portrays suicide man as a staggering summation of the results of the previously danced traumas, stumbling from colonial space to colonial space. the audience eventually finds him in a dark room. the chair he occupies is spotlit, forcing the viewer to encounter a character so often and so intentionally ignored. slightly off-center in an immobile shot, suicide man speaks to an off-screen interrogator in a drunken slur, reliving much of the trauma displayed in earlier dances. ultimately, the camera zooms to the chair as suicide man stands in a position such that his thighs mark the top of the frame, the rest of his body off-screen. his feet move slightly at first, then kick the chair out from beneath him, with the sounds of convulsions and a swinging rope underscoring the disembodied legs. djali appears immediately afterward, too late to save the man. as he looks on in horror, a young woman approaches from behind and covers his eyes. this image, more than any other in the film, affects djali to the point where he can no longer witness, no longer accept the trauma of his history. disjunctive with the entire plot movement of djali, the covering of his eyes becomes a necessary mercy. this final scene of tragedy marks the movement of the film back to djali’s journey. he and another young aboriginal boy, romeo, are painted by the other dancers and the old man from the school before a montage cut to the beautiful open space of a cliff overlooking the ocean. unlike the claustrophobic, darkly lit urban spaces, the natural light and openness of this space provide a sense of healing that emanates directly from atmosphere and land, affectively inviting the viewers to participate. the dance performed here is led by djali, who has functioned almost entirely as a stand-in for the audience gaze until this juncture. reading this scene as a liberating, matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 76 completive dance, we might envision djali’s movements as indicative of magowan’s analyses of yolngu dance, in which “[t]he body provides an emotive and sensory domain of awareness through which to explore its transformative potential via singing and dancing. in ritual, meanings are not verbalized, but they are danced and enacted since they are most poignantly felt though the body” (melodies of mourning 14). without vocalizing the meanings djali has interpolated through his exposure to these various dances, his body starts to move with the other dances in ways he has resisted up to this stage. eventually, he stands apart from many of the dances, hearing and seeing the history and the trauma of his fellow aboriginal dancers, and ultimately transforms into a dancer himself after the painting ceremony. djali’s journey to this point and place mirrors the capacity of film to relate the marginalized histories of aboriginal peoples. in particular, the dances that relate trauma express the story that is written on and performed by the bodies of the actors. performance, in this case, is not a facsimile of reality, but an attempt to instill indigenous stories via non-western methods. sonically and kinetically, the dances are coded with indigenous knowledges that escape and critique traditional western filmic conventions. in speaking of the power of film to address these issues, tewa and diné scholar beverly r. singer claims that “film and video visualize the healing from the ruptures of our history related to colonialism, disease, and cultural loss. our identity as filmmakers also helps to reverse the devastating effects of assimilationist educational policies that coerced a sense of inferiority in us” (9). many of the performances in spear are visualizations from an indigenous perspective of these ruptures as told through the bodies of indigenous australians. the final dance and the dramatic shift in filming technique from the more stable shots that we see in the school, prison, and dark underground room to the quick montage cuts of djali’s initiation dance display just such a reversal. sonically, the dance is scored not with a traumatic voice but instead with a modern beat, supplemented with aboriginal language accompaniment and the chants of the dancers themselves. in this dance, we truly see djali emerge as an image of survivance, a person who has survived the trauma of colonialism in ways that suicide man was unable to do, and one who continues to resist and heal through dance. in spear, djali’s initiation dance, portrayed as a result of his spectatorship of historical trauma, directly engages survivance through kinesthetic movements. the camera moves just as agilely throughout the shot, refusing to stand still and witness colonial atrocities as it did in the transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 77 school and for suicide man’s death. the transmotion of the bodies as they perform, disrupt, and subvert their colonial histories arrest the viewers and enact survivance through dance. productive juxtapositions in spear and maliglutit while spear and maliglutit share relatively few overlaps in their stylistic and narrative elements, reading the films together through a trans-indigenous lens allows valuable conclusions to be drawn regarding transnational indigenous film theorization. whereas kunuk’s signature framing of his actors in the vastness of the space of igloolik demonstrates how the characters are both highly connected to the land and subject to its sublimity, page’s characters are framed in an often-antagonistic relationship with their surroundings. until the concluding scene, his dancers remain subject to the colonial spaces of the dark abusive underground cavern, the prison, and the interrogation room. both narratives, through different filmic relations of colonialism, grapple with colonial imagery. as previously discussed, the metafilmic narratives provided by each film offer the medium of film itself as a potential sovereign representational space. while the techniques utilized by both directors remain largely responsive to specific colonial histories, they do share commonalities in their conception, goals, and specific visual styles that highlight transnational colonial agendas. according to huhndorf, certain aspects of these visual practices are specific to the indigenous context. popular images have conventionally relied on progressivist racial logic to define native peoples as inferior to europeans and to confine them safely to the historical past. (21) in both of these films, the assertion of presence in hostile and historically violent imagic spaces refuses this confinement, and directly challenges progressivist narratives that erase indigenous presence. this can be examined with particular clarity in the layering of colonial sonicism in spear and plot divergences in the re-appropriation of the searchers. in maliglutit specifically, kunuk endeavors to reframe indigenous presence in a genre where indigenous peoples are frequently killed or portrayed as violent savages. those images generate a key paradox: the hypervisibility of native peoples underlies an abiding social invisibility . . . rendered timeless and placeless, native people have been stripped of a contemporary political presence and, hence, of any legitimate claims to land. (huhndorf 21) matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 78 the connection between visual imagery of indigenous peoples and their pronounced absence or misrepresentation in the searchers and the colonialist film being shown in the bowling alley in spear both emphasize the constant reference point of indigenous realities that huhndorf theorizes. the images analyzed by each film, whether through a direct metafilmic sampling or through the transposed plot and character structure of the searchers, refuse to participate in either a relegation of indigeneity to prehistory or the justification of contemporary imperial practices. the deliberate sampling of racist clips or direct allusions to westerns overtly points to the correlation between image and dispossession. perhaps the most illuminating and productive juxtaposition between these two films involves the way each director treats the bodies of his indigenous actors. in each of kunuk’s films, the bodies of his subjects are heavily protected against the tundra climate of igloolik. maintaining body heat becomes a primary plot point in maliglutit; the building of igloos and the burning of seal blubber for warmth form the essential daily labor for both tribes in the film. apart from their exterior clothing and the hunt for warmth, the actors’ faces clash with and resist traditional hollywood standards of beauty. far from the imposing figures of john wayne and henry brandon, the primary protagonist and antagonist are not tall, nor are they stylized with the typical signifiers of hollywood westerns and masculinity. the men maintain patchy beards, their teeth are crooked, and the women are adorned with traditional inuit facial tattoos. initially jarring for outside viewers, the beauty of these bodies finds root in the practicality of survival in a harsh, freezing landscape. kunuk often employs close-ups and extreme close-ups on the faces of his actors while they are eating, sleeping, or working. the focus on the beauty of his subjects through their mastery of the arctic landscape produces an imagic sense of survivance tied specifically to indigenous land. the igloolik land becomes reflected physically in the characters, and the characters in turn utilize their specifically inuit imagic presence as tools to change and survive in igloolik. similarly, characters’ bodies in spear show an acute knowledge of their surrounding space, oftentimes changing their dances based on the specific colonial or aboriginal space they inhabit. in the dimly lit urban setting where a car has crashed, the dance group creeps carefully and slowly toward subjects who will become the epicenter of a dance. in one scene, a female dancer moves swiftly through a deserted forest, alert, hunched, even scared, as if hunting. unlike in maliglutit, the dancers often are clothed sparsely, or in colonial costume. many scenes feature transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 79 the dancers shirtless, painted to various degrees with white, red, blue, or black. one particular scene, which page returns to throughout the film as a bridge of sorts, shows an extreme close-up on a dancer hanging upside down from an unknown point, painted white with feathers adorning his back. the paint has cracked on his body and his face; every time the dancer turns his torso in a slow contortion, paint falls to the unseen ground below. the dancer appears to be contorting in an attempt to free himself from his invisible bonds, never quite managing to escape in these scenes. the musculature of the dancer becomes pronounced in each of these turns, a sound of creaking accompanying the movements. while the meaning of the paints remains various throughout the film, the white paint that has caked and dried on this subject and the woman walking through the woods appears to be haunting, signaling an internal and external struggle that both characters seem unable to conquer. these struggles are wordless, offered through the body movements of the characters, and, unlike the swifter dance scenes where the camera captures multiple bodies in motion, these two scenes disturb and fascinate through movement and paint. images of survivance, while rooted in specific responses to colonial oppression, can be viewed transnationally and trans-indigenously as productive and subversive ironies capable of speaking to multiple colonial histories simultaneously. in spear and maliglutit, two seemingly disjunctive films participate, through different filmic methods, in the same endeavor of transmotion. through their subversive, contrapuntal styles, page and kunuk gaze back at their colonizers, privileging indigenous perspectives and indigenous presence through images that assert narratives of survivance. in each film, the body engages with colonial frameworks and spaces in vastly different manners, yet via filmic movement and corporeal survivance the filmmakers produce intercultural, trans-indigenous exchanges through the body. notes 1 in her utilization of barclay’s theorization of fourth cinema, joanna hearne notes that fourth cinema, “trac[es] the transnational heritage of dominant film storytelling to the originary scene of settler colonialism” (hearne 3). the concept of fourth cinema, “a cinema that seeks to establish the pre-eminence of the voice of the indigenous” (milligan 351), inherently transcends nationalistic film borders in ways which allow for meaningful interactions with specific indigenous histories. 2 n.b.: henry brandon, the actor who plays scar in the searchers, was neither comanche nor indigenous but rather german-american. matt kliewer “translating images of survivance” 80 3 importantly, rachael swain notes the many trans-indigenous exchanges that have codified into contemporary indigenous dance in australia as a result of the intercultural indigenous choreographic laboratories (swain 504). 4 in 2015 the song was banned as racist in by the australian broadcast corporation. the song also reached number one on the charts in australia in 1962 (huffadine). works cited allen, chadwick. trans-indigenous: methodologies for global native literary studies. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2012. evans, robert michael. the fast runner: filming the legend of atanarjuat. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 2010. ginsburg, faye. “blak screens and cultural citizenship.” visual anthropology review. 21:1/2 (2005): 80-97. hearne, joanna. “native to the device: thoughts on digital indigenous studies.” studies in american indian literatures. 29:1 (2017): 3-26. horton, jessica l. “alone on the snow, alone on the beach: 'a global sense of place' in atanarjuat and fountain.” journal of transnational american studies. 4:1 (2012). huffadine, leith. “abc radio bans joke song my boomerang won't come back because it's racist... even though it's been around since the 1960s.” the daily mail. 24 nov. 2015. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3331469/abc-radio-bans-joke-songboomerang-won-t-come-s-racist-s-1960s.html huhndorf, shari m. mapping the americas: the transnational politics of contemporary native culture. ithaca, ny: cornell university press, 2009. krupat, arnold. “atanarjuat, the fast runner and its audiences.” critical inquiry. 33:3 (2007): 606–631. kunuk, zacharias, director. maliglutit. isuma distribution international, 2016. magowan, fiona. “dancing into film: exploring yolngu motion, ritual and cosmology in the yirrkala film project.” landscapes of indigenous performance: music, song and dance of the torres strait and arnhem land. ed. fiona magowan and karl neuenfeldt. aboriginal studies press, 2005. ---. melodies of mourning: music & emotion in northern australia. santa fe, nm: school for advanced research press; university of western australia, 2007. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 81 matheson, sue. “‘let's go home, debbie’: the matter of blood pollution, combat culture, and cold war hysteria in the searchers (1956).” journal of popular film & television. 39:2 (2011): 50-58. miles, john d. “the postindian rhetoric of gerald vizenor.” college composition and communication. 63:1 (2011): 35–53. milligan, christina. “sites of exuberance: barry barclay and fourth cinema, ten years on.” international journal of media & cultural politics. 11:3 (2015): 347-359. monani, salma. “kissed by lightning and fourth cinema’s natureculture continuum.” ecoambiguity, community, and development: toward a politicized ecocriticism. ed. scott slovic et al. lanham, md: lexington books, 2014 135-150. nelson, joshua. “a conversation with joshua nelson.” native american literary symposium, 23 march 2018, mystic lake casino hotel, prior lake, mn. keynote address. page, stephen, director. spear. cinemaplus pty ltd, 2015. raheja, michelle h. reservation reelism: redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of native americans in film. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 2011. ---. “visual prophecies: imprint and it starts with a whisper.” visualities: perspectives on contemporary american indian film and art. ed. denise k. cummings. east lansing, mi: michigan state university press, 2011. 3-40. schweninger, lee. imagic moments: indigenous north american film. athens, ga: university of georgia press, 2013. singer, beverly r. wiping the war paint off the lens: native american film and video. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2001. swain, rachael. “a meeting of nations: trans-indigenous and intercultural interventions in contemporary indigenous dance.” theatre journal. 67:3 (2015): 503–52. vizenor, gerald. “american indian art and literature today: survivance and tragic wisdom.” museum international. 62:3 (2010): 41-51. ---. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 1998. ---. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 2009. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 134 susan mchugh. love in a time of slaughters: human-animal stories against genocide and extinction. penn state up, 2019. 240 pp. isbn: 9780271083704. http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08370-4.html susan mchugh’s love in a time of slaughters pays much-deserved attention to native theory and recognizes indigeneity as global in scope. she builds upon the work of several native theorists to provide strong readings of oral traditions, novels, and films by and about indigenous peoples and nonhuman animals. in one of her critiques of settler culture, mchugh reads from non-native novelist lydia millet’s magnificence, describing an epiphany that “extinction and genocide meet at least conceptually in the taxidermy collection” that the settler protagonist inherits (59). within her analysis, mchugh critiques settler colonialism and demonstrates familiarity with recent scholarship in native studies. she writes, for instance, that she “draws heavily” from the latest work of cherokee scholar daniel heath justice (20). most critical to mchugh’s approach is vine deloria’s “american indian metaphysics.” in addition to critiquing settler culture, mchugh offers an informed study of native literatures and cultures, along with a sincere interest in native theory. her critique is firmly grounded in “literary animal studies,” which mchugh describes concisely as emerging from a critical theory approach from theorists such as jacques derrida and donna haraway. the main aim of mchugh’s love in a time of slaughters is to develop a critical lens for literary theory in animal studies that includes a concern for native cultures. animal studies is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the complicated (and often conflicting) relationships that exist between human and nonhuman animals. mchugh rightly focuses on the fact that the areas of the earth that contain the most biodiversity also tend to contain the most cultural diversity (1). she explains that “animal narratives are first and foremost crafted objects, involving lives of a different order passed through human filters, and as such often say more than their authors, audiences, and zeitgeists even know, an aspect that makes them both alluring and troubling” (88). in reading the more-than-human ways that stories are constructed, she links “cultural and biological conservation” (91). mchugh’s approach shows why animal studies scholarship needs indigenous theories. in promoting indigenous theory, mchugh posits that native american spiritual beliefs should be read philosophically. building on the work of both vine deloria and kim tallbear, mchugh insightfully suggests that “reframing beliefs as ontologies enables anthropologists to represent indigenous human-animal relationships apart from terms in which metaphor is only ever opposed to reality” (40). mchugh uses this critical insight, interpreting beliefs as ontologies, throughout her book while theorizing “indigenous metaphysics” (8). mchugh’s critique, which is strongly critical of the concept of animism, gives equal weight to european philosophies and native ways of knowing. my critique of mchugh’s approach lies in the need to engage with more tribally-specific theories (or metaphysics, to use deloria’s term). mchugh credits tallbear for extending deloria’s insight on tribal philosophies to nonhuman animals in “why interspecies thinking needs indigenous standpoints.” in that same article, however, tallbear points out that “both vine deloria, jr. and charles eastman get classed as ‘american indian’ intellectuals, but in fact, they were also dakota and so they wrote ‘american indian’ things out of a disproportionately dakota cultural http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08370-4.html brian k. hudson review of love in a time of slaughters 135 background.” in mchugh’s usage, however, “indigenous metaphysics” carries too much theoretical weight, applying to native american nations as well as the indigenous peoples of the middle east and japan without developing sufficient tribally-specific nuances to deloria’s “american indian metaphysics,” a strategic theoretical construct. this is not to say that mchugh fails to pay attention to tribal context. she provides poignant context, for instance, about the tribal milieu surrounding stories of the inuit sled dog massacres. mchugh’s analyses are most grounded when in conversation with more voices from the tribes themselves. however, where this is lacking, the voices of indigenous theorists from many nations are ready to be heard. mchugh makes compelling and unexpected connections between texts about seemingly disparate indigenous nations. in her cross-cultural analysis of the anime classic princess mononoke by hayao miyazaki and linda hogan’s novel power, for instance, she explains that they both “address the systematic eradications of indigenous peoples” (23). the characters in princess mononoke are based on indigenous people of japan, specifically the emishi and utari (often referred to as ainu). hogan’s novel is about a fictional tribe influenced by two tribes—her own chickasaw nation and the seminole nation. mchugh connects the experiences of settler colonialism of the utari and hogan’s fictionalized native american tribe. in her readings of princess mononoke and power, mchugh asserts that she is “imagining indigenous resurgence as necessarily both a social and an ecological project” (24). this broad-based lens on social justice is clarified in her analysis of the anime film when she defines the conflict as “different kinds of people alongside animals and gods as all together engaged in struggles that concern differences in class, gender, sex, race, ability, age, and species” (28). mchugh notes that a boy and an elk in miyazaki’s film are “constantly caring for each other” as well as “sharing and enduring suffering” (32, 33). her last insight here, on suffering, complements my own reading of early twentieth-century salish novelist d’arcy mcnickle’s the surrounded. mchugh sheds light on the similar ways in which settler colonialism is experienced by indigenous peoples throughout the world. her critique rings true in terms of how indigenous peoples of japan faced similar experiences of colonization as other indigenous peoples. mchugh’s analysis, however, would have been strengthened by attention to contemporary utari voices—even utari metaphysics—in her analysis of princess mononoke. this film was written and directed by miyazaki hayao, a non-indigenous japanese man, who portrays human and nonhuman indigenous beings sympathetically (29). the utari people, who were not recognized by the japanese government until 1997, are noticeably absent in mchugh’s discussion of their representation in the celebrated animated film that has reached a global audience. mchugh sees indigenous stories as the antidote to the sickness caused by settler colonial structures. she recognizes how the myth of the “vanishing red man” follows structurally from settler colonial acts of genocide and extinction. in her reading of linda hogan’s people of the whale, she explains that “the ‘last one’ trope is, after all, one of the most powerful representational strategies of erasure, all too often enlisted to naturalize genocides and other atrocities” (73). in response, mchugh describes one of hogan’s characters “creat[ing] new ways of overcoming the pressures of assimilation, environmental racism, and other modern ills…” (85). she also derives from her analysis of hogan’s novel on whale hunting the need to transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 136 understand how traditional narratives “align hunters, hunted, and other creatures as native to particular shores” (78). mchugh suggests that traditional stories that contain knowledge from other species help elucidate that settler colonialism exists as a structural problem, supporting genocide and extinction. mchugh makes good use of several native theorists in arguing that genocide and extinction are overlapping constructs. as previously mentioned, though, mchugh’s readings are most grounded where she engages more tribal voices. for instance, mchugh reads inuit narratives of canadian police shooting inuit dogs, using the excuse that the dogs were not confined and were only partially domesticated. she cites the powerful testimony of inuit elders to the house of commons that “to diminish our numbers as inuit, our dogs were being killed” (27). these killings were not acknowledged by the canadian government until 2008. notably, this recognition occurred only after the dedicated work of the qikiqtani truth commission in documenting inuit stories. mchugh dedicates several pages to the work of the commission in her analysis of qimmit: a clash of two truths, a 2010 documentary that explores canada’s colonial attempt at genocide/extinction. she clearly describes the importance of sled dogs to traditional inuit cultures and explains that the term inua applies both to human inuit people and to their canine companions. she also describes the important role that dogs play in holding the names of deceased humans for those who are yet to be born. this focus on tribal specificity grounds mchugh’s approach to indigenous metaphysics and helps her show that the act of extinction, in killing inuit sled dogs, is directly tied to the act of genocide toward inuit peoples. in her readings of stories on birds and bees, mchugh brings in an impressive swarm of native theorists—thomas king, marijo moore, catherine rainwater, daniel heath justice, harry garuba, as well as allies such as mark rifkin, among others—to read several novels, including louise erdrich’s plague of doves. she reiterates that narratives by and about indigenous humans and nonhumans disrupt those narratives that justify genocide and extinction. interpreting indigenous narratives from an animal studies perspective, she observes, requires an ontological shift from the reader, a shift to what i have called elsewhere a “first beings” standpoint. mchugh shows that indigenous stories are crucial to “reweaving kinship bonds frayed by the conditions of settler colonialism” (191). i would only add that indigenous narratives are likewise vital to those tightly-woven relationships always already existing across species. each indigenous nation theorizes our relationships with the nonhumans with whom we share the land. for those interested in animal studies theory, specifically the literary turn, mchugh describes the field with clarity and authority. for current students of animal studies, mchugh introduces several native theorists who contribute to her approach of reading animal stories in ways that acknowledge the colonial destruction of many indigenous peoples who happen to belong to many species. brian k. hudson, central new mexico community college works cited deloria, vine. “american indian metaphysics.” power and place: indian education in america. brian k. hudson review of love in a time of slaughters 137 ed. daniel wildcat. fulcrum resources, 2001. hudson, brian k. “domesticated species in d’arcy mcnickle’s the surrounded and john m. oskison’s brothers three.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 28, no. 2, 2016, pp. 80-108. ---. “first beings in american indian literatures.” animal studies: special issue of studies in american indian literatures, vol. 25, no. 4, 2013. tallbear, kim. “why interspecies thinking needs indigenous standpoints.” fieldsights, november 18, 2011. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/why-interspecies-thinking-needsindigenous-standpoints. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 160 allison hargreaves. violence against indigenous women: literature, activism, resistance. wilfrid laurier university press, 2017. 281 pp. isbn: 9781771122399. www.wlupress.wlu.ca/books/v/violence-against-indigenous-women shannon speed. incarcerated stories: indigenous women migrants and violence in the settler-capitalist state. university of north carolina press, 2019. 163 pp. isbn: 9781469653129. www.uncpress.org/book/9781469653129/incarcerated-stories/ shannon speed’s incarcerated stories presents in unflinching fashion the lived experiences of indigenous women migrants seeking asylum. speed argues that the resulting violence—which she dubs “neoliberal multicriminalism”—is rooted in the convergence of the anti-indigenous systems and ideologies of the united states. using the means available, speed’s practices in collecting these stories are a story unto themselves, and the resulting guerilla methodology brings a tangible sense of urgency to the ideas being explored in this work. speed’s title refers not just to the brick and mortar detention centers that hold these indigenous women but also reminds readers that these stories “are not normally heard, are locked away and silenced, and reflect the women’s entrapment in the structural cages of the settler capitalist state” (speed 7). facing obstacles of access, language barriers, and material lack, the fact that these women’s stories have even made it to publication is a great victory. indeed, the precarity of the indigenous woman migrant’s life extends beyond the violence and discrimination against her body, onto the printed page in the form of resistant questions of validity, legality, and worth. the stories are presented in chapters centered around home, journey, detention, and postdetention. though the structure is familiar—evoking campbell’s hero’s journey, to a certain extent—the lives on display are anything but. time and again i found myself moved by speed’s style and her ability to balance such moving narratives with critical commentary. these are truly dramatic stories, made even more so by the knowledge that the violence is real and the systems employing such violence are still in place. as speed notes, these women’s lives and stories are the very definition of survivance, survival + resistance. the levels of violence these women face are matched only by the lengths they go to in resisting them. throughout the text, speed puts in the work to create a context for the reader in such a way that the uninitiated will have little trouble placing these stories into the existing conversation surrounding violence against indigenous women, while also leaving open areas for deeper exploration. ultimately, one of speed’s arguments that resonated deeply across the various narratives was that a shift needs to occur from making claims about these stories to making claims from these stories. the violence of the settler-colonial state is not an artifact of the past, and these stories are not only evidence of that but demand further engagement. the idea that we begin to make claims from stories instead of about them is explored in a recent work by allison hargreaves. her 2017 book from wilfrid laurier university press, violence against indigenous women, recognizes the position and capacity of indigenous women’s literature as a site of knowledge and resistance. hargreaves examines several works—including cinema, poetry, plays, and memoir—to discover the claims they make and to “demonstrate the http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/books/v/violence-against-indigenous-women http://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469653129/incarcerated-stories/ blue tarpalechee review of violence against indigenous women and incarcerated stories 161 important theoretical and practical contributions made by indigenous literature in helping all readers to imagine beyond the possibilities, limits, and gaps” of settler-colonial policies and initiatives. hargreaves is, in no uncertain terms, demonstrating the embedded indigenous futurisms present in the works she includes. that is to say, by centering indigenous literature and its claims, hargreaves allows audiences to see for themselves an envisioned future where indigenous people and perspectives are not only present but require no validation for that presence. it should come as no surprise that two works scrutinizing the structures of violence against indigenous women grapple with similar problems. speed’s notion of “incarcerated stories,” or those stories coming from perspectives that have historically been silenced, contained, and in some cases literally caged, could be applied to many of the stories hargreaves examines in interesting ways. in a chapter exploring the politics of commemoration, hargreaves states, “storytelling has emerged as an inveterate strategy of anti-violence campaigns; what, then, of those recurring figures whose individual stores are told and retold” (133). in other words, we are seeing a trend develop in the anti-violence struggle to put a human face to the violence with these narratives—which hargreaves argues become certain “faces” in particular. stories and faces that are deemed less successful are silenced and removed from circulation, while those considered successful become locked in place, “enact[ing] the very hierarchization of human life they protest against” (133). the resulting cycle of violence and commemoration creates a blind spot for the well-meaning white liberal subject and is evidence of speed’s “neoliberal multicriminalism.” the colonial violence of the present is obscured from view, and no reckoning takes place precisely because of the recognition and commemoration of the victim of past violence (hargreaves 151). hargreaves goes on to explore how indigenous literature raises important questions about the public systems of memorial and the agency of the actual bodies impacted by the violence in question. both hargreaves and speed reveal through their work a belief in the vitality and necessity of indigenous women’s stories. the systems enabling violence against indigenous women’s bodies remain in place, but these texts demonstrate the survivance on display in the lives and narratives of indigenous women. speed shares narratives that expose the systematic violence of the settlercapitalist state, while hargreaves reminds us that our storytellers have shown us alternative ways of being that address that system. both recognize that we must confront the notion “that colonialism is a historical phenomenon to learn about, rather than an ongoing set of relationships to be transformed” (hargreaves 166). each text promotes indigenous feminisms that honor the bodies and experiences related in their pages and are excellent additions to the growing scholarship around violence against indigenous women. these works contribute to the discourses surrounding structural violence, indigeneity in north and south america, and neoliberalism, while also opening clear avenues for further exploration relating to the material rhetorics of precarity, memorial, and necropolitics that these stories embody. scholars in indigenous studies, gender studies, anthropology and/or literary studies would benefit greatly from engaging with the ideas presented here. blue tarpalechee, university of oklahoma microsoft word haag.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 189 durbin feeling, william pulte, and gregory pulte. cherokee narratives: a linguistic study. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2017. 228 pp. isbn: 978-8061-5986-7. http://www.oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/2274/cherokee%20narratives durbin feeling has been one of the luminaries of cherokee language and linguistics for a long time. the list of his accomplishments cannot be briefly enumerated, but his value to the field lies broadly in his connection to the cherokee community of oklahoma, his deep knowledge of the language, the fact that he has received an education in linguistics, and that he has collaborated with many teachers, scholars, and even tech specialists such that all of us have benefited from the window into the cherokee language that he has opened. dr. feeling and linguist william pulte first collaborated on a cherokee dictionary published in 1975. this work has been vitally important to those who study the language because of several crucial features, among them being that it systematically marks tone and vowel length, and it provides templates of the most common verb conjugation patterns. this has given researchers both a toehold on the structure of the language and a jumping-off place for more meticulous analysis. more than 40 years later, dr. pulte has rejoined dr. feeling, together with his son gregory pulte, to create a most valuable work, cherokee narratives: a linguistic study. the book begins with an informative introduction, which gives a history of efforts to bolster the cherokee language in northeastern oklahoma, and a description of how the narratives are organized. “narratives” is an apt choice to describe the texts that appear in this work. they represent a very diverse range of types and themes: there are the somewhat expected versions of folk tales, but more often stories about experienced phenomena, especially supernatural intrusion into the natural world, a common theme, as cherokee literary scholars such as christopher teuton explain to us (170173). rarer types are a personal diary entry, a memoir, a legal document, a bible story, instructions for food preparation, and two conversations. what makes this book unique is the way these narratives are treated: the “linguistic study.” each narrative begins with a short contextualizing statement of perhaps two sentences. then it is rendered in four different ways, each with a particular focus and audience. the first rendition gives the narrative in a three-way interlinear format: the first line is cherokee written in the syllabary, the second line is the same cherokee written in the roman orthography, and the third line is a word-level literal english gloss. the gloss is somewhat bewildering for those with no cherokee language skills. the following is an example of one of the more transparent phrases: dikalvgv ‘to the east’ asi ‘yet’ jidinehe ‘when they lived there’ (origin of evil magic, p. 51). the second rendition is termed “morpheme by morpheme” and consists of the cherokee in the roman orthography, divided into meaningful units and glossed using linguistic terms. tone and vowel length are also accounted for with underscores for short vowels and a superscript number system for the tones. the authors use 40 linguistic notations in their analysis, and although cherokee morphology is rather more complicated than this, this level of analytic detail will be helpful to students of the language who can relate it to their classwork and to linguists. the same phrase in this rendition thus becomes: dikalv32gv ‘in-east’ asi3 ‘yet’ ji-di23-n-e3h-e‘rel-plpl-live-repp.’ the third rendition is the narrative written in syllabary, and the fourth and final is the english translation. the phrase from above in english is ‘still living in the east.’ marcia haag review of cherokee narratives 190 we can easily appreciate the astounding amount of painstaking work that the authors have poured into this volume. the selections themselves are products of a number of speakers using their own family dialects. based on how they are presented in-text, the larger number of narratives appears to be of transcriptions of oral materials. this means that the reader must prepare for authentic but ungroomed language in many cases. several of the selections, for example the legal document and a lengthy interview, feature linguistic registers that are far more elevated than one generally encounters in reading material. one very interesting narrative, reminiscence by mose killer, shows the only instance i have ever encountered of english-cherokee code switching as a speaking style. speakers’ hedges have not been edited out. translation is always both an art and a craft, and translating between languages that have no genetic connection posits a challenge indeed. the english translations in these narratives reach for clarity in meaning, and are for the most part successful in negotiating clarity and the deep oral quality of the narratives themselves. my expectation for this kind of work would be an english translation that “sounds” like a bilingual cherokee speaker, which is an admittedly impressionistic standard, but one that has been carefully considered in other languages. joshua hinson has an intelligent discussion of this issue with respect to translating chickasaw texts. most of the translations here do indeed meet this standard. a few of the translations might have hewn more faithfully to the original cherokee. for example, in the invisible companion black fox by durbin feeling (33-40), the cherokee version twice talks about ‘road numbered 33’ but the english translation says ‘state highway.’ people are well accustomed to roads being numbered, especially in rural areas, and referring to the road by its number would have preserved a bit more of the original. one translation in particular, throw it home, also by mose killer, stands out because its style is so different from the others. in the structure of the cherokee version, a story told in first person is encapsulated in a second story also told in first person, such that both first persons need to be kept distinct. mr. killer does this in a way that is quite illustrative of how cherokee discourse works. in the english translation, the central story is related in third person, with occasional quotes. as a tool for learning the cherokee language, the book is likely to be most helpful to advanced students who do not need instruction in basic grammar. understanding language as it is actually spoken is both necessary and challenging to those who would be fluent. the linguistic analysis will be very helpful here to those who can apply it to what they already know. for the cherokee speaker, these rare and authentic narratives are precious additions to the spare collection of modern works written in syllabary. it is unlikely we will be fortunate enough to get another work like this. the authors form a rare collaboration that will not see again. everyone interested in cherokee language and literature should acquire this book for immediate enjoyment and long-term reference. marcia haag, university of oklahoma transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 191 works cited hinson, joshua d. “interpretation is a tricky business: reviewing glenda galvan’s katihsht ittish oppolo’at okla alhiha’ imalattook (how poison came to the chickasaw and choctaw).” a listening wind: native literature from the southeast, edited by marcia haag, university of oklahoma press, 2016, pp. 123-134. teuton, christopher b. “cherokee literature.” a listening wind: native literature from the southeast, edited by marcia haag, university of oklahoma press, 2016, pp. 167-174. microsoft word 644-3332-1-ce.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 136 the seed runner jenny l. davis and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. but first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with swift warning. be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed. -richard adams, watership down i have always been a runner. not the athletic, fast kind like jim thorpe, or the superhero kind, like the flash. but the kind that find themselves bolting at the first sign of trouble—running in the opposite direction of everything: fear, responsibility, and if you believe my grandfather, hard work. running’s how i wound up at the pratt industries detention and training program in the first place. i had been out past curfew a week shy of my 13th birthday—at the library after class to see a real color copy of the astonishing x-men #17 that had just come in. i had never seen an original color print of a comic—only black and white copies of copies they kept in the library and i spent hours enthralled finally seeing the colors of my favorite world—totally mesmerized by jean grey’s red hair and the bright pink of gambit’s outfit. by the time i left, it was already past curfew and i had to sprint to get home before the patrols caught me. but being a runner doesn’t mean i’m fast—they picked me up less than two blocks from my grandfather’s house and took me to the local detention center. after only three days, i was sent up to pratt without seeing my grandfather or siblings again. they promised me a letter had been sent telling my family where i’d been assigned, but i hadn’t received any mail or packages since arriving, so i doubt anyone was ever notified. it didn’t really matter, everyone assumed any kids who disappeared ended up at pratt, or worse, and there was no point in going looking for them. pratt would have been worse, if it weren’t for jimmy. he was the only thing that made that place bearable. we had arrived on the same day and connected instantly. so we signed up for the same class schedules and picked the same dorm room and stole every spare moment to re-imagine it as xavier’s school for gifted youngsters. we spent all our time together, which was pretty easy, since we were put in the same grade and pratt was an all boys’ detention program. beyond that jenny l. davis “the seed runner” 137 nobody paid too close of attention to us—there were 300 boys to keep track of and any one of us was pretty interchangeable for another. he had only heard a little about comics, so we spent as much time in class and free time talking about who had what superpowers, who had allied with who, and whether magneto or apocalypse was more evil. we teamed up for all of our projects, like helping each other memorize the wording of the 2039 corporate sovereignty act that divided the country into four major corporate zones to avoid conflict between them. within only fifteen years of extreme resource mining throughout the continent, it became clear that the only remaining land worth having was tribal land—protected for nearly 50 years by strict environmental policies in most tribes. the top corporations soon established guardianship clauses that allowed them to exert “protection” over those territories based on their more extensive resources. pratt industries had created the new residential detention program— strategic training units—designed to train delinquent indian minors within their corporate jurisdictional boundaries for futures in the company. any “infractions,” even minor ones, like being out just after curfew, could get you sent up to pratt for a year, maybe longer. i was there almost 11 months. eight months in, the cadets caught us away from the quad, jimmy and me were just far enough to be out of the visual line of any window in the square, those concrete buildings filled with the residential school students, our teachers, and the guards who watched us all. we hadn’t even realized we were off the quad—we were too caught up in our game of xmen, this time cyclops and wolverine—to notice the shift from blacktop to gravel and grass under our feet. we knew we were in trouble before they even spoke. i froze, my adamantium skeleton instantly dissolving into dust within my skin. “and who do we have out of bounds?” the cadets were only 14 to 16—identified as ideal candidates for the bureau and brought to “low conflict” sites for training. the difference of those 3 years might as well have been 10. “no wards are allowed off the quad.” transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 138 their words were marked with glee as their pupils dilated with anticipation. they were focused on jimmy. he was always the target. far from the confident scott summers that he always picked to play, jimmy was short, his chubbiness always standing in the way of his deepest wish: to be invisible, unseen by classmates, teachers, and especially the cadets. it was the focus of the directors, who were determined to fashion us into optimal shape—a sign of their excellent guardianship. but no matter how they changed his diet, or how little they fed him, jimmy’ cheeks refused to grow less round, his middle never grew less soft, as though his flesh was carrying out a war against giving up ground fueled only by the tenacity of his ancestors (and the snacks his classmates were sometimes able to squirrel away to share with him in the dead of night). his hair, too, attracted their disdain. it stood straight up along his forehead, and no amount of gel or grease would hold it down all day. it was sticking up when they threw the first punches, with fists and freshly removed grey helmets, i ran. i could still hear the cadence of crunching by boots against gravel and knuckles against cartilage and bone. crunch. shift. crunch. smack. the sight of the only person i had left in this world struggling against the knee pad pressing down on his neck yanked the breath from my chest— even as i fled in the opposite direction, i looked back to see jimmy looking at me. his deep brown eyes begging me to stay—not as a hero, just to deflect even one of the blows. his face contorted by the fear of a child not sure if this might be death, willing me to let him at least die in the sight of friendship. but i ran. not for help. no such thing existed there. i ran to ease the terror closing around my throat. i ran to the back hall of sector 2, between classroom buildings 23e and 24a to hide until i could slink back to barracks without being questioned. i don’t know how long it took for the pounding to lighten in my ears, and the burning to ease in my lungs, but when i looked up i locked eyes with ms. nihi, our biological sciences teacher. my breath, just regained, caught. had she seen me? did she know what i had done? but she turned and walked backed into the building that held her classroom. jimmy didn’t come back to the barracks that night and was still gone in the morning. the buzz among the students was that he was in the medical building. that’s when i got myself assigned to latrine duty—easy enough to do if you were willing to take the initial harassment from the cadets. it was their worst official punishment. the barracks had been built in a hurry, and all plumbing for showers and toilets was in the centralized bunkers. no one was allowed to jenny l. davis “the seed runner” 139 leave their barrack at night, so everyone was given buckets for their piss. the person on latrine duty had to go through all of the barracks at night and empty the previous day’s pails into a giant drum on wheels that was dumped periodically in the sump pit near the back of the compound. it was exhausting, it took half of the night, and it was utterly disgusting. but it meant having relatively free range at night. that’s when i learned that it wasn’t the uniforms that separated the students and the cadets, it was their urine. the students pee was dark, it came in a range of unfortunate browns and yellows and the smell of it filled my nostrils and refused to leave. in biology, i learned that that came from a general state of dehydration and unfortunate diet. the cadets’ pails, on the other hand, were filled with much clearer, less offensive smelling urine—it was the only good thing about them. jimmy was in the med building and had not regained consciousness since the beating. he was barely recognizable with his swollen face turned nearly purple against the clear plastic breathing tube down his throat, his full lips stretched, cracked and dry, around it. i visited him each night for two weeks. i would pull up the only chair in the room so i could sleep with my head and forearms against his thin medical cot, hoping to add a little warmth to the always frigid pennsylvania night air. i talked to him, telling him he was charles xavier, capable of mentally controlling the entire operation from his bed without having to move a finger. and at sunrise i would run back to my barracks before the cadets began their training rounds. then, one night i came in, sweating from having rushed through emptying all of the pails and practically sprinting the drum to the sump and back, to find him gone. no notes or remnants—just an empty bed. forever disappeared in one of the pits just west of the barracks where such favorites of the squad always seemed to end up. in his absence, my only comfort was to imagine him as jean grey—a phoenix resurrected in some future timeline to save us all. ms. nihi never mentioned the day she saw me, but she did request me to do extra study halls in her section. she was one of only three teachers at pratt that were one of us but i never knew what tribe, and it was rumored she had even requested the position there. she drowned me with assignments in biology, botany, and even genetics but i didn’t care. i barely noticed when the security started to tighten and we were suddenly marched from class to class in groups led by cadets. the assignments filled the spaces that used to be taken up with daydreams about using telekinesis and teleportation to get me and jimmy away from pratt without the required corporate zone authorizations, money, and travel tokens. and the extra study halls meant i was allowed to transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 140 stay after class which suited me just fine—the nervousness on site was growing and the cadet presence increased almost every week. the sight of their uniforms made me nauseous and light headed every time i saw them. one day after nearly two months of staying after class for study hall, ms. nihi quickly walked up to me and whispered urgently for me to pack my things just before several sirens went off across the grounds. she anxiously checked the area outside her classroom before coming back inside and pulling something from around her neck, shoving it into my hands along with a full backpack i had never seen before. “what is it?” i didn’t know what was happening, i had never seen her in any state other than calm and confident. “it is our oldest responsibility. the seeds and pollen from the first corn. seed runners have kept them safe for thousands of years. they must never find it. it’s the proof—the link between human, animal, and plant. once its genome is mapped, they could unlock—and change— anything, and everything they wanted. everything would be different…lost.” she draped the small leather bag around my neck, still warm from her skin. a strange contrast to the always cool fabrics of the uniforms i’d worn in the year since arriving. “you must run. you must never stop running. if you do, you will die, and they will have all of us.” she thrust a backpack into my arms and pointed south. “go to the tree line and wait for the flames to reach the clouds. then...run.” as i watched stunned and confused, she let down her hair before dousing herself and everything else in her classroom in the chemistry lab’s alcohol. as she struck the spark, she danced— spinning a fancy dance of fire in all four directions at once. i ran. jenny l. davis “the seed runner” 141 i ran. i am the seed runner. i was chosen because i have always run—along the edges and in the shadows. panic grips me with blinding fear, and i run. microsoft word squint.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 106 mikaëla m. adams. who belongs: race, resources, and tribal citizenship in the native south. oxford university press, 2016. 330 pp. isbn: 9780190619466. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/who-belongs-9780190619466?cc=us&lang=en& gregory d. smithers. native southerners: indigenous history from origins to removal. university of oklahoma press, 2019. 259 pp. isbn: 9780806162287. https://www.oupress.com/books/15077544/native-southerners over the last three decades, historical studies of the indigenous peoples of the southeast have proliferated. current scholarship stands on the shoulders of ethnohistorical work by theda perdue, michael green, clara sue kidwell, and patricia galloway, whose books focused primarily on cherokee and choctaw peoples. the journal native south appeared on the scene in 2008, providing an additional platform for interdisciplinary scholarship in the field, and was edited by historians greg o’brien and james taylor carson, and anthropologist robbie etheridge, all of whom had already published significant monographs on southeastern tribes. as the historical field has grown, so have other studies of the native south, with important work being conducted by scholars of literature, religion, and other humanistic forms of inquiry.1 who belongs?: race, resources, and tribal citizenship in the native south (2016) by mikaëla m. adams, one of theda perdue’s doctoral students at the university of north carolina, and native southerners: indigenous history from origins to removal (2019) by gregory d. smithers, a productive and dynamic historian, are both important new studies of the indigenous peoples of the u.s. southeast; yet, they take distinctly different tacks. native southerners is a sweeping chronology that begins with oral traditions that grew out of southeastern land and ends in the mid-nineteenth century with the repercussions of the indian removal act of 1830. who belongs? provides case studies of six southeastern tribes as they developed citizenship requirements in the context of the tumultuous political shifts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, including segregation and evolving federal indian policy. because smithers’s book strives to be expansive and adams’s goal is to explore specific examples of citizenship formation, it makes sense to begin with the former. smithers declares in his introduction that he desires to “introduce” his audience to native southerners prior to and post-european invasion of north america (14). to that end, he seeks to define the region by adopting geographical boundaries per the smithsonian national museum of the american indian’s outline, overviewing historical and anthropological arguments about it, and includes william c. sturtevant’s map of north american tribes as further reference point (7-10). one of the most compelling aspects of smithers’s book is his approach to the first chapter, which begins with a creek origin story. he notes that he wanted such oral narratives to be “juxtaposed against western theories of native american migrations” (12). smithers provides an excellent overview of significant oral stories that informed the culture, society, and religions of several southeastern tribes. there are more detailed descriptions of stories about larger tribes such as the cherokees, choctaws, chickasaws, and creeks, but he also discusses origin stories of smaller tribes such as the natchez and catawba, especially the ways their stories have been intertwined with christian narratives. this section will be of particular interest to readers of southeastern kirstin squint review essay: who belongs? and native southerners 107 native literature, as many of the origin stories detailed here resonate with those retold in books such as shell shaker by choctaw author leanne howe, riding the trail of tears by cherokee author blake hausman, and pushing the bear by cherokee-descended author diane glancy. smithers also summarizes origin theories of indigenous southeasterners by western scientists, arguing that they “cannot be ignored because they constitute a part of the enduring legacy of settler colonial logic and the drive to empirically know, categorize, and confine native people” (16). these theories are buttressed by critiques of native scholars, leaders, and elders. this chapter also makes the important point of aligning indigenous adoption of various technologies based on agricultural and trading systems with other forms of origin-making, ranging from the construction of mound and town complexes to the development of the bow and arrow. the second chapter of native southerners explores the development of the mississippian chiefdoms, which arose as a result of a period of global warming that “triggered a series of ‘megadroughts’ across north america” (36). smithers argues that understanding how climate change affected the indigenous peoples of the southeast is an important reason to study the history of its chiefdoms, which he argues “emerged as a means of uniting people in a sense of communalism” (37). the chapter begins with the shift away from mobile lifestyles to more agrarian-based societies including the development of mound structures such as poverty point and then zooms into deeper examinations of the paramount chiefdoms of cahokia and etowah, as well as smaller chiefdoms such as timucua, chattahoochee, coosa, and tombigbee. he also explores the way simple chiefdoms formed paramount chiefdoms, such as in the case of moundville, which ultimately collapsed about one hundred years prior to the arrival of hernando de soto in the mid-sixteenth century. in addition to geo-political elements of mound societies, smithers discusses cultural elements such as the use of color and symbolism in art, clothing, and jewelry, and gender roles, particularly matrilineality. this chapter concludes with the arrival of european invaders and the ways they impacted indigenous diplomatic practices and warfare, particularly through the indian slave trade. the next two chapters of native southerners examine the way the mississippian chiefdoms splintered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, due to an increasing engagement with european colonists. smithers cites etheridge’s neologism of a “shatter zone” (59) emerging in the region that helped transform the chiefdom system and permitted new economies to evolve, including the indian slave trade. indigenous southeasterners were both participants in and victims of this economy. smithers also notes the devastating impact of new diseases, especially smallpox, and the growth of coalescent societies that still exist today including cherokees, choctaws, chickasaws, and creeks. warfare also characterizes this era, and smithers details how wars such as a series of conflicts with the tuscarora ultimately transformed the demography of parts of the south. the fourth chapter continues smithers’s examination of coalescent southeastern tribes, focusing more on lifeways and cultural practices. for example, readers of howe’s novel shell shaker will find a sense of familiarity in smithers’ descriptions of eighteenth-century choctaw life, such as its town divisions and leadership hierarchies, a testament to howe’s own meticulous historical research. this chapter also discusses creek, caddo, natchez, catawba, chickasaw, and cherokee lifeways. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 108 the fifth chapter of native southerners concentrates on the mid-eighteenth century to the emergence of the united states, detailing the ways that southeastern tribes allied themselves in various colonial conflicts such as the anglo-cherokee war, the seven years’ war, and the american revolution. this chapter also explores the way that pan-indianism developed in the southeast as a way of uniting tribes frustrated by white american disregard of their political positions or land rights. smithers pays special attention to the separatist message of lenni lenape prophet neolin and the military strategies of chickamauga cherokee dragging canoe who attempted to ally with the shawnees. the final chapter begins with the creek red stick rebellion, signaling a shift toward tribal nationalism in the native south. this nationalism is evident in the ways indigenous people allied with colonial powers in the war of 1812 and in the ways that tribal leaders maneuvered themselves as it became clear that indian removal was central to andrew jackson’s plans when he became president in 1829. smithers traces the ways that indigenous southeasterners had adapted to the economies of settler colonialism, particularly the ways that some tribal members accrued wealth through plantation ownership, including ownership of african and africandescended slaves. he also notes how removal of native peoples from their lands was an argument developing for years in the u.s. government, with thomas jefferson being one of its proponents. the chapter does a thorough job of discussing the different ways tribes reacted to land cession and removal treaties and, unsurprisingly, spends the most time on the cherokee nation’s well-known jurisdictional resistance to the indian removal act of 1830 and the georgia indian laws. there is a brief discussion of southeastern indigenous diasporic communities that completes this chapter and continues in the epilogue, as well as acknowledgement of those smaller tribes who were not displaced during the removal era. if smithers’s approach is macrocosmic, then adams’s is microcosmic. who belongs? proceeds from this very important point: “‘indian’ is not merely an ethnic or racial identity; rather it is a political status based on an individual’s citizenship in one of several hundred tribal nations that have, or have the potential to have, a legal relationship with the united states” (1). though she focuses on specific cases, a broad view of who belongs? reveals an interesting truth about indigenous southeasterners: regardless of whether they are members of tribes who were not forced to indian territory through treaties or who are remnants of tribes who were, the nineteenth century attempt to eradicate southeastern natives failed. adams’s book begins by exploring the complex history of tribal citizenship, noting that though the federal government now permits tribes to develop their own citizenship criteria, that was not always the case. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, federal indian policy and state-sanctioned racial segregation in the south created situations where tribes saw that they needed to distinguish themselves racially in order to maintain their political positions and so “increasingly adopted racial criteria for tribal citizenship” (3). adams traces the relationship between the development of citizenship criteria and tribal sovereignty, arguing that the former is essential for the latter. in order to contextualize the ways that the tribes she studies have established citizenship criteria, the introduction overviews relevant historical concepts and periods including the notion of tribal sovereignty; the racialization of tribal identity; the indian removal era; the allotment era; the impact of jim crow on southeastern tribes; the creation of tribal rolls; the adoption of blood kirstin squint review essay: who belongs? and native southerners 109 quantum as a citizenship marker; and the era of self-determination along with the complexities of federal recognition. adams’s first chapter, “policing belonging, protecting identity,” focuses on the pamunkey tribe of virginia and argues that it “used citizenship criteria to preserve its territorial sovereignty and to bolster its political status” (20). the pamunkeys’ story of self-preservation is a harrowing tale. the pamunkeys, a tribe with a recognized relationship to virginia since the colonial era, identify as descendants of “powhatan’s warriors” (38). like other tribes in the southeast including the catawbas and the mississippi choctaws, the pamunkeys fought the binaristic jim crow laws that would label them as “colored.” in the late nineteenth century, they created a separate indian school and church and insisted on recognition from the state as “indian” peoples. despite their classification as indigenous peoples by anthropologists and ethnologists, they fell victim to the eugenicist walter ashby plecker, the head of the virginia bureau of vital statistics from 1912 through 1946, whose mission was to “prove all people in virginia who claimed to be indians were actually the descendants of african americans” (44). the introduction to the anthology the people who stayed: southeastern indian writing after removal, by geary hobson, janet mcadams, and katie walkiewicz, describes plecker as having “hated indians” and “changed hundreds of indians into white or black simply by the use of his pen” (1), a form of paper genocide. it is hard to describe plecker as anything but villainous after reading mikaëla adams’s detailed descriptions of the lengths he went to in order to deny the pamunkey (and other virginia tribes) indian identity. despite century of travails, the pamunkeys did receive federal recognition on january 28, 2016, becoming the 567th federally recognized tribe. adams follows their bid for recognition through multiple revisions, explaining how evolutions of their citizenship requirements are the key to their success. “from fluid lists to fixed rolls,” adams’s second chapter, examines the catawba indian nation of south carolina, which shares certain similarities to the pamunkeys, including a longstanding relationship between state and tribe and a desire to distance themselves from african americans during the era of legal segregation in order to maintain their status as a separate racial group. the catawbas’ story is unusual in the southeast due to the impact of mormonism on the community in the late nineteenth century. mormons taught the catawbas that “they were members of a lost tribe of israel, the lamanites” (65), uplifting their sense of identity in a region that discriminated against all non-whites. one effect of mormonism on the catawbas is that many converts moved west, which led to the tribe withholding payments received from the state for previous land cessions from those tribal members. the twentieth century saw the catawbas gain federal recognition, go through the process of termination, and then re-gain federal recognition with the settlement act of 1993. these changes came alongside a formalization of the catawba citizenship rolls, which have both been controversial and central to how the catawbas define themselves today. the third chapter, “learning the language of blood,” focuses on the mississippi band of choctaw indians. unlike the previous two tribes, who had remained intact during the indian removal era, the mississippi band of choctaws were a remnant population of those who left as a result of the treaty of dancing rabbit creek. though the other chapters discuss cultural aspects transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 110 of the pamunkeys and catawbas, “learning the language of blood,” thoroughly explores the relationship of choctaw culture to their lands in what became mississippi, including the mound they know as their place of origin, nanih waiya. the treaty of dancing rabbit creek actually allowed for those choctaws who wished to remain to do so and retain tribal citizenship, but the general allotment act of 1887 led to another schism between the choctaws. in 1899, a roll of mississippi choctaws was created to determine who had rights to allotments in indian territory, part of the federal government’s attempt to move tribes from communal to private systems of ownership. adams outlines the complex route that led to the 1,000 choctaws remaining in mississippi in 1907 to lose their citizenship in the choctaw nation, a story that includes fraudulent land claims and battles between the federal government and the mississippi and oklahoma choctaws, much of which cycled around the question of blood quantum. adams argues that the mississippi choctaws learned from this experience and “manipulated the language of blood to reassert their tribal sovereignty in their southeastern homelands” (131). the tribe gained federal recognition in 1945 and today numbers more than 10,500 members, all of whom must be at least “one-half choctaw by blood” (130). in “contest of sovereignty” adams details the struggles the eastern band of cherokee indians of north carolina have had to determine their own citizenship criteria. the eastern band stands apart from other southeastern tribes for a number of reasons: they made land claims with the state of north carolina prior to removal that were contingent upon giving up cherokee citizenship; they received federal recognition in 1868, much earlier than other southeastern tribes; they won a court case in 1874 that gave them legal title to their lands, which they called the qualla boundary; and they incorporated themselves in 1889 to protect themselves against the numerous trespassers and frauds (“white indians”) who attempted to steal their land (136). as a corporation they could take trespassers to court, sell timber and land, and establish a stronger political identity. as with the mississippi choctaws, the allotment era brought government representatives attempting to create a census of eastern band citizens, the baker roll. adams notes the ways the cherokees pushed back against the government’s version of the roll which exceeded the number of individuals that the tribe accepted as meeting the requisite blood quantum of one-sixteenth. 1931, the cherokees were successful in this fight as congress suspended the allotment for the qualla boundary and agreed to their measure of one-sixteenth blood quantum. a new chapter in the question of eastern band citizenship began after the success of harrah’s casino, which opened in 1997. this drew a significant number of enrollment applications, especially after the tribe began distributing biannual payments to its citizens. an independent audit was held, and its product, the falmouth report, has created great controversy within the tribe because it suggests that hundreds of tribal members may not meet citizenship criteria. adams notes that “fallout from the enrollment audit is still ongoing” (167). today, there are 14,600 members of the eastern band of cherokee indians, and the enrollment criteria is still one-sixteenth blood quantum, as well as direct lineage from someone listed on the baker rolls. the final chapter, “nation building and self-determination” details the seminole tribe of florida and the miccosukee tribe of indians of florida, also remnant peoples who evaded removal, describing how and why these tribes split as a form of self-determination. their story is unique among southeastern indigenous peoples because, as adams explains, “kin ties and clan kirstin squint review essay: who belongs? and native southerners 111 identities instilled a sense of community belonging in the indians[; however,] the florida seminoles disagreed about the political future of their tribe. their challenge was not only to define who belonged to the tribe but also to determine to what tribe they belonged” (169). the seminoles and miccosukees are descended from creeks who migrated southward from alabama and georgia in the eighteenth century. as with other tribes in the book, adams describes the ways that current citizenship criteria are based in historical struggles the seminoles and miccosukees experienced as a result of settler colonialism. in this case, how the first, second, and third seminole wars of the nineteenth century led them to build their communities deep in the florida swamps, eschewing interactions with whites as much as possible. over time, within their discrete communities, it became clear that “[s]ome seminoles believed an official tribal government and federal recognition would protect their interests in florida, while others preferred to keep their loosely organized structure of bands led by medicine men” (171). in the 1950s, these groups split into the seminole tribe of florida and the miccosukee tribe of indians of florida. these differences are reflected in the citizenship requirements of the two tribes: the miccosukees use traditional matrilineal definitions of kinship, while the seminoles require a direct ancestral connection to the 1957 tribal census, one quarter blood quantum, and sponsorship by a tribal citizen. the economic value of citizenship has been effectively demonstrated by the seminoles through their gaming industries, beginning with a bingo hall in 1979 and continuing through the building of the hard rock casino-resorts in 2006. in fact, the court case seminole tribe of florida v. butterworth (1981) “paved the way for tribal gaming across the united states” (205). native southerners: indigenous history from origins to removal by gregory d. smithers and who belongs?: race, resources, and tribal citizenship in the native south by mikaëla m. adams are complementary historical texts. smithers’s book is a solid introductory resource to the long history of the native south through the mid-nineteenth century, while adams’s book deep dives into specific experiences of six southeastern tribes in the nineteenth and twentieth century, providing a surprisingly complete story of their histories as read through the lens of citizenship. both books synthesize a number of archival and ethnographic resources, attempting to center native experiences. ultimately, native southerners and who belongs? are important contributions to the knowledge of a region where people often do not realize there are federally or state-recognized tribes, with the exception perhaps of the eastern band of cherokee indians or the florida seminoles. smithers and adams give voice to these and many more tribal experiences through their well-researched studies. kirstin squint, high point university notes 1 i took issue with the term “native south” in my 2018 monograph leanne howe at the intersections of southern and native american literature because i think it privileges the idea of the “south” as the former confederacy and overshadows the long indigenous history of the region, especially specific tribal identities. that said, i have heard some indigenous peoples of transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 112 the southeastern u.s. refer to themselves as “native southerners,” and i made the argument in my book that howe should be considered a “southern” writer in order to expand the canon of that regional literature. in summary, i am acknowledging the problematic nature of the term “native south,” fully realizing that it has been institutionalized by the journal native south and will probably remain in vogue for some time to come. works cited glancy, diane. pushing the bear: a novel of the trail of tears. mariner books, 1998. hausman, blake. riding the trail of tears. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2011. hobson, geary, janet mcadams, and kathryn walkiewicz, eds. the people who stayed: southeastern indian writing after removal. norman: university of oklahoma press, 2010. howe, leanne. shell shaker. san francisco: aunt lute press, 2001. squint, kirstin. leanne howe at the intersections of southern and native american literature. baton rouge: louisiana state university press, 2018. microsoft word watt.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 252 richard m. hutchings. maritime heritage in crisis: indigenous landscapes and global ecological breakdown. routledge, 2016. 144 pp. isbn: 978-1-62958-348-8. https://www.routledge.com/maritime-heritage-in-crisis-indigenous-landscapes-and-globalecological/hutchings/p/book/9781629583488 richard hutchings’ maritime heritage in crisis speaks out against the destruction of indigenous heritage landscapes, tracking the ways in which rising sea levels and population growth have wreaked havoc to the coastal lands of the shíshálh first nation people located in the pacific northwest, as well as the shortcomings—even harms—of external cultural resource management (crm). the author posits that as society expands, heritage control becomes sought after and subsequently commodified as part of the neoliberal state’s broader capitalist project. in addition, hutchings takes into consideration the relationship between archaeologists and native peoples, acknowledging that the relationship has been and remains to be one fraught with the trappings of settler colonialism (112). the work’s critique of both crm and the field of archaeology alongside the emphasis on indigenous rights to collective land management all set this book apart from others on the subject of climate change and coastal landscapes. the first chapter outlines the problem of the global crisis along the coasts beginning with the post-1950s great acceleration of late modernity into the present (6-7). hutchings lays out his argument that, in addition to global capitalism, archaeology and crm are complicit in the ongoing attack to maritime heritage landscapes (1, 7). chapter two shifts to looking at the primary mechanisms of the crisis: coastal population sprawl and rises in sea level (19). the author shows the changes these two ongoing problems have caused to the salish sea and their impacts on the indigenous peoples of the region (35-36). chapter three explores the external responses to climate change and coastal erosion, namely crm (42). the author connects both archaeology and crm to the neoliberal mission of the state to maximize capitalist production— which necessitates the privatization of land for development (51). chapter four focuses specifically on the shíshálh people and the changes to their lands, specifically sechelt, halfmoon bay, and pender harbour (59, 76). he tracks the tribe’s responses to the ecological crisis, as well as effects of continued development—often occurring without the consent of the tribe (86-87). finally, chapter five looks more closely at the relationship between the settler state and crm, while chapter six concludes the work in retrospective (93, 106). situated along what is currently known as the sunshine coast, the work excels when offering a critique to the broader field. hutchings is at his best when linking archeology and crm to attempts at disconnecting indigenous people from their land (103). at their core, the dual truths that the land is intrinsically indigenous and conversely, that indigenous people are impossible to decouple from their land heritage, undermine settler development. this is true in ways both big and small: hutchings notes how the new name “sunshine coast” was an attempt to increase home purchases in the region—for even the renaming of indigenous places aim at driving development (1, 11; o’brien 2010: 202). as for bigger ways, he notes that responses to climate change significantly differ, dependent upon who is most at risk, acknowledging the environmental injustice faced by vulnerable indigenous peoples and people of color (43, 23). sierra watt review of maritime heritage in crisis 253 this slow violence against at-risk communities is not limited to the pacific northwest but endemic to indigenous peoples worldwide; during the 2016 protests against the dakota access pipeline, in an effort to halt production, sacred burial sites were outlined by the standing rock sioux tribe in court documents, only for the sites to be destroyed during a holiday weekend by the construction company, energy transfer partners (95; colwell 2016). the effort at protecting the sites in the mainstream manner required led to their untimely destruction. hutchings argues that the management component of crm and private archaeology dovetail into “resourcism” and the conversion of heritage spaces into resources to be developed rather than strictly conservation (92). his case is not subtle. he goes as far as to link the number of archaeologists directly to decreases in “intact indigenous heritage landscapes” in what he coins the “heritage landscape destruction paradox” (112). the author is compelling in his calls for “radical engagement” with indigenous groups as the only means to prevent the crisis from progressing further (115). one of the most striking moments comes from an anecdote shared early in the book. indigenous participants on a panel alongside the author left prior to the end of the panel (and the author’s presentation), significantly shifting the conference space to one comprised primarily of nonindigenous researchers (xii). they had come to be heard, rather than defend a position they wellknew to be true: that the destruction of their heritage spaces is ongoing (even, at times, beneath the guise of conservation). the author reflects on the dismissive attitude of the audience to the indigenous presenters’ position, but the incident speaks to another issue: the expectation that indigenous peoples and people of color must defend their position on behalf of not only their own best interest but on behalf of the broader public’s needs. for example, coverage of controversial pipelines, including keystone xl pipeline and dakota access pipeline, frequently depicts indigenous participants as serving the greater good against impending climate change, when they are not beholden to do more than protect themselves and their lands. rather than relying strictly on indigenous efforts, maritime heritage in crisis is the author’s own call to arms. the work is part philosophical outcry, part academic plea, and while the author is deft in his use of history and philosophy to make his case, he is just as comfortable explaining the technicalities of climate change and population statistics in a way that makes the work accessible to non-specialists. hutchings’ chapter two data offers proof for those who would still deny what’s increasingly undeniable (25, 33-34). the manner in which he offers the facts prior to any other argument reflects the premise of chris andersen and maggie walter’s indigenous statistics, in that data when used judiciously can be to the benefit of indigenous peoples (2013). in this way, he is speaking to the scientific community in their language, making his case in all forms. however, in the end, the work comes down to the moral argument of the necessity for change in the face of dire circumstances: “globally, indigenous peoples are fighting to maintain these connections and are insisting upon control over their resources and places that matter” (108). ultimately, the book’s case study and argument speak to the current situation faced by many indigenous peoples around the world, from the kiribati in the south pacific to the inupiat of shishmaref, alaska—the type of situation only radical engagement could hope to stem (caramel 2014; kennedy 2016). sierra watt, university of kansas transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 254 works cited caramel, laurence, “besiged by the rising tides of climate change, kiribati buys land in fiji.” the guardian, 20, june 2014. retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/01/kiribati-climate-change-fijivanua-levu colwell, chip. “why sacred sites were destroyed for the dakota access pipeline.” ecowatch, 26 nov. 2016. retrieved from: www.ecowatch.com/sacred-sites-standing-rock2103468697.html kennedy, merrit, “threatened by rising seas, alaska village decides to relocate.” npr, 18 aug. 2016. retrieved from: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwoway/2016/08/18/490519540/threatened-by-rising-seas-an-alaskan-village-decides-torelocate o’brien, jean m. firsting and lasting: writing indians out of existence in new england. university of minnesota press, 2010. walter, maggie, and chris andersen. indigenous statistics: a quantitative research methodology. left coast press, 2013. microsoft word mish.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 334 laura dá. instruments of the true measure. sun tracks series 83, university of arizona press, 2018. 75 pp. isbn: 978-0-8165-3827-0. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/instruments-of-the-true-measure laura dá’s new poetry collection, instruments of the true measure, is, in many ways, a continuance—but not a repetition—of her debut collection, tributaries. in instruments of the true measure, dá brings in a new cast of characters and her command of poetry craft has sharpened, which is quite a feat considering that her first collection, a national book award winner, read like a collection by a seasoned poet. like tributaries, instruments of the true measure is an exploration of the poet’s shawnee ancestors and the many ways that cultural trauma engraves itself on past, present, and future generations. however, in instruments, dá considers both the stories of her native and non-native ancestors: the story of her non-native ancestors follows crescent, beginning with his birth in the third poem in the book. from the story of his birth in the fourth poem of the book, lazarus shale from tributaries returns as the embodiment of her shawnee ancestors. both crescent’s and lazarus’s birth poems are prefaced by “nationhood,” a prose poem / preface, and “the point of beginnings,” a lyric. “nationhood” and “the point of beginnings” both turn on the change in a baby’s heart, post-birth, when it goes from “parallel flow to serial flow and the shunt between the right and left atrium closes” (3). throughout the book, this corporeal change serves as a theme without being overtly referenced—what causes “changes of heart”? “nationhood,” and “the point of beginnings,” also introduce a pair of architectonic metaphors: surveying and mapping. moreover, the surveying/mapping in the first two poems combined with the birth poems that follow prepares the reader to expect those terms as a constellation of metaphors—that is, that one (birth) and the other (surveying/mapping) are intertwined in the poet’s perspective. the word “nascent” appears in “nationhood”: “north america is mistakenly called nascent. the shawnee nation is mistakenly called moribund,” (3). the association of birth and surveying/mapping is confirmed and displayed on the page, first in “nationhood” and then throughout the book by the use of gps coordinates where place names might be expected— including in birth poems of lazarus and crescent. the poet avows that, in the colonizer’s mindset, the supposed births and deaths of nations are predicated upon survey lines, maps, and borders and that personhood, citizenship, and the landscape are confined within them. trauma is a major theme in this collection: bodily trauma, personal trauma, spiritual trauma, and the trauma of removal. in “correction lines,” a poem i read as about crescent, given the repetition of an image from an earlier poem when, as a boy, he sucked on “horses’ cracked oats for the hint of molasses,” (“territorial thirst” 45), the closing couplets’ piercing imagery reveals the damage: inside the man, survey the boy with horse oats in his mouth, shadow of the branch blooming in blood across his shoulders. (25) jeanetta calhoun mish review of instruments of the true measure 335 likewise, lazarus’s shawnee removal trauma is so deep in his body that it has disturbed his gait and his mind: bone plate growth jarred by endless movement— his walk has changed weeded by the terrain of new paths so too his mind’s rough rooted channels. in instruments of the true measure, trauma is the dark thread weaving through memory and time, leaving indelible traces on culture, mind, and body, and, as researchers have finally confirmed, upon our genetic code. dá’s ancestors’ traumas appear in the body of the poet: “i map myself into frozen joints, weak, blood, and lacy bones; these measurements slip into a web over my frontiers” (“mapsick” 11). in “stick,” the speaker figures her surgical scars in terms of the blazes surveyors carve into trees: “seven marks are carved into my torso and abdomen. i meander into the territory of illness and must learn to make its land my own; my body’s sovereignty evaporates” (74). and, in “pain scale treaties,” she describes her efforts to express her physical pain to nurses in the manner they require as “a treaty with myself bartering the refinement of my language for rapidly delivered slivers of chemical mercy” (59). treaties and removal were dependent on surveys and mappings of land—the lands that tribes were forced to cede and the lands they were removed to—the scars and the pain remain. laura dá’s complex architecture of metaphor and imagery is presented in spare, sparse language—there are absolutely no wasted words. yet, inside the spareness arises figurative language of an often gasp-inciting quality: “chilled holler of the axe’s / subtle swipe,” (32); “the coarse amber cradle / of missouri whiskey,” (61); hands that “grow hooked / around split-rail fences, / flatten and spatulate / over quill curve” (49). every detail feels exactly right, from the “ten soft thuds” of a father’s disapproving last words to his son (13) to the “rat-tooth embossed / leather strap” (33), to the way the hooves of a deer’s carcass “tick across the tip / of the saddle horn” (43). the sensately rich, verisimilar world that dá creates in instruments of the true measure stays with the reader long after the book is closed, as it did for tributaries.although it may seem odd for a poetry review, i think of instruments as a sequel to tributaries. in fact, i realized that i had been longing to return to the world of tributaries, to meet with lazarus again, to be again astonished and challenged and informed and devastated by the poetry of laura dá. jeanetta calhoun mish, oklahoma city university microsoft word szews.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 350 lehua m. taitano. inside me an island. wordtech editions, 2018. 134pp. isbn: 9781625492838. https://www.wordtechweb.com/taitano.html. “the salt in our blood carries droplets of the ocean. no matter where we are, inside us is a liquid web connecting our beating hearts.” (taitano, 17) in her second poetry collection, inside me an island, chamoru interdisciplinary artist lehua m. taitano negotiates the distance between what epeli hau’ofa calls the “substantial regional identity … anchored in our common inheritance of a very considerable portion of earth's largest body of water” (“the ocean in us” 392), and the horizon that symbolizes her displacement from her home island of guåhan. drawing on hau’ofa’s conception of oceania as a region that expands through the mobility of its people, taitano’s poetry explores the unmooredness of her diasporic chamoru identity. thereby she emphasizes the ambiguous nature of oceanic mobility that entails both a vast network of archipelagic identities (roberts and stephens) and a scattered and displaced people. the poet herself is a native from yigo on guåhan (guam), born to an american father and a chamoru mother. until she was four she was surrounded by chamoru culture and family life, yet when the family decided to migrate to the us for good, taitano was displaced from her home island, language and culture (perez, “a bell made of stones”). this feeling of displacement and unbelonging is a recurring subject in her poetry. inside me an island is structured in three parts: correspondence, ma’te (low tide) and hafnot (high tide). its black and white cover shows a record and instead of a label there is a photograph of a smiling chamoru woman, maria flores taitano, the poet’s grandmother. by featuring personal memorabilia on the record label, the cover hints at topics of taitano’s poetry that encompass memories, nostalgia, family, home and identity. the cover recalls the connection between poetry and music. moreover, it claims the oral traditions on which chamoru poetry is based. in his essay ‘singing forwards and backwards’, chamoru scholar and poet craig santos perez suggests that contemporary chamoru poets “are deeply woven into the aesthetics of the tsamorita tradition” (156), an ancient chamoru call-and-response form of poetry. in her poetry taitano interweaves the names and poetic approaches of other writers and artists and adapts indigenous stories ranging from the chamoru creation story to the seneca nation’s story of the origin of stories. the first part of the poetry collection, correspondence, begins with the poetic “transcription of a handwritten letter sent by [the poet’s grandmother] maria flores taitano” (129). this letter poem features a chamoru voice “from” guam in an effort to bridge the distance that separates her from her diasporic family. in the following poem “a love letter to the chamoru people in the twenty-first century,” taitano assumes the role of the sender. taitano explains that this and every letter she wrote and will write is addressed to the chamoru people. in this personal letter the poet discusses how chamorus struggle with issues of colonization, militarization, displacement, invisibility, environmental degradation and cultural erasure. thus correspondence establishes connections between chamorus living on the island and in diaspora as well as between the poet and her audience. the second part, ma’te (low tide), and third part, hafnot (high tide), are named after the chamoru terms to describe the ocean tides. by connecting oceanic terminology and metaphors with her mother tongue, taitano claims and reconciles both her oceanic and her chamoru identity. while the low tide describes the fall of the sea level that expands the land julia szews review of inside me an island 351 mass and displaces the sea, it reveals the things that lie at the bottom of the ocean floor. the high tide, on the other hand, describes the rise of the sea level which increases the expanse of the sea and creates connections between different land masses and islands. metaphorically speaking, the low tide could be understood as presenting displacement and disconnection. in countercurrent to that, the high tide would symbolize replacement and reconnection. yet, in the constant movement of the ocean, the tides merge into one another. this intermingling is also reflected in ma’te (low tide) and hafnot (high tide). both low and high tide are part of the poetic journey to re-imagine home in diaspora. translating the ever-flowing movement of the sea, taitano expresses herself through the versatility of her poetry. in 17 poems ma’te (low tide) explores memories of the sea and her siblings (shore song, create a sibling…), visitations of ancestral spirits (a night crowded with night), erasure and reconnection (islanders waiting for snow), patriotism and militarism (spectator), encounters with racism (banana queen) and the feeling of displacement (trespass) likewise, hafnot (high tide) explores nature and landscape of the mainland united states (enchanted rock, texas) as well as the indigenous stories that are connected to the land (one kind of hunger). taitano’s poems also explore emotional memories of grief (an oiled groove) and love (estuary). with its queer female diasporic chamoru voice, lehua taitano’s latest poetry collection enriches the multiplicity of unique styles and voices of chamorro poetry. her collection includes short poems, long poems, somatic poems and fragmentary poems that remind the reader of craig santos perez’s use of field composition to express oceanic nature and aesthetic of his poetry (heim 190). through her poetry taitano rethinks oceanic identity by extending hau’ofa’s concept with another constant – the horizon. the horizon presents a fixed constant reminding the poet of the “island shaped / hole” inside her ever since her displacement from her home guåhan (taitano, bell 1). countering the uprooting effect of living in diaspora, taitano realizes that the bridge to connect the fragments of her diasporic chamoru cultural identity can be found in oceanic consciousness. in a similar inward movement as suggested by hau’ofa’s “the ocean in us”, taitano realizes that both her oceanic and her chamoru identity are moored within her own consciousness and body. moreover, by recognizing the ever-flowing movement of the sea and its manifestations in different shapes (in the vastness of the sky, oceanic clouds, snow, the river, a lake…) through her poetry, taitano puts space and her own displacement into question. adapting perez’s unconventional fragmentary form of poetry, taitano reimagines the space on the page (see hsu, 297). the title of the collection inside me an island, on the other hand, indicates that her home island is interwoven in every action and poem of the artist. space and displacement become dynamic concepts in an oceanic consciousness. julia szews works cited hau'ofa, epeli. “the ocean in us.” the contemporary pacific, vol. 10, no. 2, 1998, pp. 392– 410. heim, otto. “locating guam: the cartography of the pacific and craig santos perez's remapping of unicorporated territory.” new directions in travel writing studies, edited by paul smethurst and julia kuehn, palgrave macmillan uk, 2015. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 352 hsu, hsuan l. “guåhan (guam), literary emergence, and the american pacific in homebase and from unincorporated territory.” american literary history, vol. 24, no. 2, summer 2012, pp. 281–307. perez, craig santos. “a bell made of stones” craig santos perez. https://craigsantosperez.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/a-bell-made-of-stones/. accessed 3 apr. 2018. ---. “singing forwards and backwards: ancestral and contemporary chamorro poetics.” the oxford handbook of indigenous american literature, pp. 152–66. roberts, brian russell, and michelle ann stephens, editors. archipelagic american studies, duke university press, 2017. ---. “introduction: archipelagic american studies: decontinentalizing the study of american culture.” roberts and stephens, archipelagic american studies, 1-54. taitano, lehua m. a bell made of stones. tinfish, 2013. microsoft word carlson.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 340 casandra lópez. brother bullet. university of arizona press, 2019. 95 pp. isbn: 9780816538522. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/brother-bullet it is rare that i find myself reading a new volume of poetry cover to cover in a single sitting, but casandra lópez's collection, brother bullet absolutely rewards such an approach. while its individual poems all stand up as discrete lyrics, any reader picking brother bullet up for the first time will be well-served by attempting to experience the book as a whole. there is remarkable power in lópez’s depiction of what grief and trauma do to the survivors of violence—in her case, the murder of her brother (always capitalized in the book, but never named) in her family home. for lópez, surviving that night is a recursive process, one that involves constantly revisiting and re-scripting experience. not surprisingly, the full effect of that realization on the reader develops only gradually. while many poems in brother bullet explore the same ground (and even recount the same moments), they do so in ways that perform the necessity of slowly working with (but never entirely through) the raw material of memory. somehow, lópez also manages to write about her experiences in a manner that avoids making the reader feel voyeuristic or ethically compromised in witnessing the process of grief. she also periodically broadens the scope of the work by including subtle gestures that link her personal loss to larger historical patterns (as in poems like “an unknown” and “i am sorry for your loss”). in this respect, brother bullet may remind some readers of natalie diaz’s when my brother was an aztec, another first book that brilliantly blends the processes of ethical witnessing and the aesthetic transformation of experience. i think this is because, on some level, lópez’s work consistently registers the truth of n. scott momaday’s insight that we are all “made of words.” brother bullet offers an implicit argument that, in the end, this may be the most important contributor to survivance. to say that we are made of words, of course, is not to minimize the role we play, as users of language, in that work of self-making. throughout brother bullet, lópez regularly reminds her readers of this. in the first lines of the poem “dear bullet brain,” for example, the speaker remarks, “because of you, we danger into feralness, / open our mouths wide— / speak to the dead” (34). the opening transformation of a noun to a verb here (a strategy deployed regularly throughout the book) indexes some of the key elements of lópez’s poetics. in a book focused on recounting the most traumatic of circumstances, lópez continually reaches to find a language that can express how profound loss both breaks down boundaries and opens gaps inside us in ways that challenge our sense of identity and purpose. she dramatizes this, in part, through the kind of lexical inventiveness just mentioned. she also does it through the intentional use of space on the page, and in her approach to enjambment and line break. and she does it, finally, through the complex deployment of figuration and personification that runs throughout the collection. because of their encounter with “bullet” (the co-protagonist of the book), lópez and her family must learn to: animal our wounds, lick them clean, taking needle david j. carlson review of brother bullet 341 to fissures, stitching wanting to mend hurt into aperture a pinhole star of clarity. (34) what makes this particularly challenging to do, however, is that on a rainy night in san bernardino in 2010, bullet both literally and figuratively became inextricably a part of brother. to remember and to honor the one, then, requires continually wrestling with the enduring presence of the other, employing all the resources that language provides as a way of doing so. so, what then does it mean to survive such an act of brutal violence? in the poem “what bullet teaches,” lópez begins by noting that “i learn to speak in metaphor / name your murder / bullet” (29). metaphorization is always a paradoxical act, of course—both a deflection of experience (rendering something in terms of something else that is it not) and an act of connection (tying disparate things together through that act of comparison). it is lópez’s ability to recognize and explore this complexity that gives her work much of its great profundity. in subsequent lines, lopez confesses to having imagined her brother “dead many times before, / for the good of story.” now, however, she acknowledges that “without you / i want to knife / the writer out of me—” (29). on one level here, of course, lópez is clearly registering the pain of survivor’s guilt (and even some of her own ambivalence about her poetic work throughout the collection). but at the same time, she is exploring that way that violence, writ large (to which “bullet” always relates synecdochally), always lives in our imagination. this is why, in the end, imagination also provides the most effective tool for dealing with it. as lópez puts it in “when i was a young girl,” a late poem in the collection, “we try to right this. / we try and try / to right this / and i write this—fearing no one else will” (82). lópez’s insistence on rendering a particular, southern california urban geography and experience visible also bears mentioning here. it will be valuable for readers, in time, to place brother bullet in dialogue with the work of other emerging indigenous writers (in poetry and fiction) who are interested in the exploring the contemporary city as an indigenous space. lópez’s approach to doing so is deeply entwined with her collection’s autobiographical foci. in her hands, 10th street in san bernardino becomes both the vividly rendered site of her brother’s unsolved murder and also something much more than that—a metonym for family history, for the culturally generative encounters between communities (particularly of color), and for the complex history of southern california. in the poem “the sweet and the bitter” (located explicitly in the “inland empire” as a region), lópez moves quickly from brother’s death to a figurative meditation on family and place. she recalls a time before the shooting, “when father is / sweet citrus, a tree-lined grove, feeding us orange / globed stories” (20). this kind of connection between family bonds and history and orange trees reappears throughout the collection as a regular motif. here, it allows lópez to take the reader from 10th street in san bernardino, to the citrus packing plant in nearby rialto (where her grandfather worked), to her grandmother’s childhood home in san timoteo canyon. through such moments, lópez is able to make her family “more than a note in a local / history book where we remain unnamed” (30). she is also able to connect the way indigenous people have persisted, despite efforts to erase them from the southern california landscape, with her family’s endurance of personal loss. weighing “witness” in one hand, and an orange in the other, lópez notes that “sometimes / it’s transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 342 hard to distinguish the sweet from the bitter.” she then reminds herself that both are essential, and intertwined, recalling her father’s admonition that “we must not juice our navels, we must peel and eat / them whole” (21). in the final poem in the collection, lópez will concede that oranges are not indigenous “to the place i call home, / not like we are” (91). yet in a poem like “the sweet and the bitter,” lópez explores the way that, for good and ill, many things not originally a part of our experience and heritage become, in time, intrinsic to it. what to do with that experience—how to grieve it, honor it, accept it, rage against it—becomes lópez’s ultimate theme. brother bullet concludes with lines (in the poem “oranges are not indigenous”) that find lópez in the backyard of the family home, reflecting on a celebration of what would have been brother’s birthday. she conjures the scene of a family friend taking “nephew” for a cruise through the streets of san bernardino in brother’s beloved ’67 riviera, showing off its detailing and shiny rims. she bends down to smell the ground, picking up the scent of mint growing along the side of the house, fed by a leaky water faucet. lópez reminds herself that this mint is always growing, “even when brother’s children do not visit / or i have been away” (92). then, picking up on the full range of her final figurative image, she acknowledges, “i need these reminders of / how we survive and still grow / so fiercely against the edges of this earth.” this moment, which balances a line earlier in the poem where lópez speaks of not wanting to box up brother’s clothes after his death (out of a desire to keep his scent “alive” as long as possible) is remarkable in its artistry and restraint. lópez offers no false sense of closure, no sentimentality. and yet readers will notice that the final poems of the book are less fractured than those at the start (with less use of white space between words and fewer gaps on the page). in this respect, lópez further reinforces the lessons taught both by the enduring mint and by bullet itself. it is possible to “[take] needle to fissures,” but to do so in a way that keeps us fully open to the past and to the scars it leaves. david j carlson, california state university san bernardino transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 158 bernard saladin d’anglure. inuit stories of being and rebirth: gender, shamanism and the third sex. trans. by peter frost. university of manitoba press, 2018. 387pp. ibsn: 9780887558306. https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/inuit-stories-of-being-and-rebirth inuit stories of being and rebirth is an english translation of bernard saladin d’anglure’s 2006 être et renaître inuit: homme, femme, ou chamane. the fifteen-plus inuit stories the author recounts are drawn primarily from a series of myths, as well as few legends and oral histories that the author recorded in igloolik beginning in 1971. saladin d’anglure was fluent in inuktitut when he first arrived in igloolik, and although he worked with several bilingual inuit assistants, he was able to interview the storytellers and translate their narratives into french largely without assistance. most of the stories are beautifully illustrated with drawings by inuit artists including several by the nunavik artist davidialuk amittuk (1910-1976), who was well known for his soapstone carvings, drawings, and prints depicting inuit traditional stories. this collection of stories is, in equal measure, both fascinating and frustrating. early ethnographers of inuit including hinrich rink (1997 [1875]), franz boas (1964 [1888]; 1901), and knud rasmussen (1929) published versions of most of the stories included. the stories in the present volume are well-told, and the author’s inuktitut cultural and linguistic fluency allow him to explain many of the subtle metaphors and other symbolic references that give meaning to the stories. unlike many earlier publications, these versions are earthy, revealing sexual and scatological allusions that can still be observed in contemporary inuit communities. saladin d’anglure studied with claude lévi-strauss, who wrote the forward to the original french text. it is translated and included here, and saladin d’anglure includes a tribute to his mentor as an afterword. lévi-strauss theorized culture as a structured system of symbols that could be universally understood. saladin d’anglure was heavily influenced by this form of structuralism oriented around discovering binaries—male/female, light/dark, land/sea, etc. the concluding chapter includes a lévi-straussian diagram of the inuit worldview as three perfectly symmetrical and binary intersecting levels of existence: fetal life, human life, afterlife (285). one feature of structuralist anthropology more generally is the understanding of cultures as systems of thought rather than as sets of practices. in other words, structuralists make no distinction between a cultural schema and the ways that people who share those schemas conduct their actual lives. if something is said to be a rule, then it must be what everybody does: on the injunction to turn a somersault upon entering an unfamiliar territory, saladin d’anglure states, “this custom was observed whenever you entered a territory for the first time. the somersault corresponds here to a rebirth” (50, my emphasis). like boas and rink, saladin d’anglure’s renditions of inuit myths are composites of multiple versions, some of which he recorded from different narrators, and some of which were told at different times by the same narrators. most of the myths he recounts include excerpts from versions collected 50 years earlier by rasmussen. while combining accounts allows saladin d’anglure to render the stories into a narrative form familiar and accessible to readers of english or french, the stories are stripped of the contexts and purposes for which they were told. while logically consistent with a structuralist anthropology for which culture is mental process, it is out of step with contemporary ways of presenting indigenous stories as practice. it is worth noting https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/inuit-stories-of-being-and-rebirth pamela stern review of inuit stories of being and rebirth 159 that the stories presented in life lived like a story (cruikshank 1990) and wisdom sits in places (basso 1996) were collected contemporaneously with those saladin d’anglure recorded for inuit stories of being and rebirth. context and audience matter in oral storytelling. no two tellings are identical, in part, because they are co-creations of the storyteller and the audience. narrators emphasize some details and omit others depending on their situated purposes and the audience’s situated responses. yet only once does saladin d’anglure mention the presence of an audience—the narrator’s (adult?) children who asked questions. we learn that the “interactive setting” contributed to the richness of the telling but are told nothing of what the audience asked (152). instead, we have saladin d’anglure’s narration of inuit myths written in a way that emphasizes—possibly overemphasizes—simple binary and symmetrical symbols. here is one example from a story about the origin of daylight: “paradoxically, the black raven preferred the lightness of day and the white fox the darkness of night” (52). at other times, the symbolic connections saladin d’anglure identifies strike me, to use another idea from lévi-strauss, as good to think with. this is the case with the book’s opening and closing oral narratives from two individuals who recount their memories of their own fetal life and birth. these are among the few places in the collection where saladin d’anglure presents inuit concepts of gender fluidity. the analogies he draws between the womb and the snowhouse seem apt and say something about the ways that inuit use stories to create connections between contemporaneously living people as well as between past, present, and future generations. despite my misgivings about his theoretical approach, what saladin d’anglure has documented is important and useful. pamela stern, simon fraser university works cited basso, keith h. wisdom sits in places: landscape and language among the western apache. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1996. boas, franz. “the eskimo of baffin island and hudson bay.” bulletin of the american museum of natural history. 15:1. new york: american museum of natural history, 1901. ---. the central eskimo. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1964 [1888]. cruikshank, julie life lived like a story: life stories of three yukon native elders. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1990. rasmussen, knud. “intellectual culture of the iglulik eskimos.” report of the firth thule expedition 1921-24. 7:1. copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandel, 1920. rink, hinrich. tales and traditions of the eskimo. mineola, new york: dover, 1997 [1875]. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 155 jennifer wemigwans. a digital bundle: protecting and promoting indigenous knowledge online. university of regina press, 2019. 256 pp. isbn: 9780889775510. https://uofrpress.ca/books/a/a-digital-bundle a well-needed and critical advancement in the fields of digital technologies and indigenous resurgence, jennifer wemigwans’ a digital bundle: protecting and promoting indigenous knowledge online examines the practicalities and potentialities of safeguarding cultural heritage on the internet for future generations. the book is grounded by a case study focused on the process of creating the website fourdirectionsteachings.com, and examines the site’s impact through carefully selected interviews with primarily indigenous scholars, educators, activists, and workers serving in public or organization capacities. based on an impressive breadth and depth of research, wemigwans compellingly argues that it is possible for indigenous knowledge, a phrase she capitalizes throughout, to be cared for respectfully online, following indigenous cultural protocols. furthermore, she shows how providing a platform for stewarding this knowledge plays a crucial role in offline political action and resurgence movements. a “digital bundle” is the term wemigwans uses to describe the sacred meaning and “lifelong commitment” that indigenous knowledge kept online requires (35). wemigwans is cognizant of the dangers that come with making indigenous knowledge accessible on the internet—including appropriation and commodification by non-indigenous audiences. using this term communicates the risks involved in this work, and also highlights the need for following clear and intentional protocols when embarking on projects such as fourdirectionsteachings.com. for example, as wemigwans argues: “the cultural transference of the site, then, becomes a very important responsibility that must be considered and attended to in the future because, as a bundle of knowledge, it must be transferred lovingly and with great care, according to cultural protocols” (45). a digital bundle fills the pressing need for scholarship which lays out the theory and methods behind using the internet as a space to steward and validate indigenous knowledge. while she is clear that no online tool can replace the face-to-face transmission of cultural teachings, a digital bundle convincingly shows how the protocols, wisdom, practices, teachings, and stories that fourdirectionsteachings.com holds can contribute to imagining a future where indigenous peoples are able to protect and share knowledge collaboratively across the globe. part of the accomplishment and significance of a digital bundle is in the use of indigenous analytical perspectives in assessing the process of creating and evaluating the impact of fourdirectionsteachings.com. drawing on the works of taiaiake alfred (2009), wendy makoons geniusz (2009), leanne betasamosake simpson (2011) and linda tuhiwai smith (1999), wemigwans “connects and juxtaposes [their] interrelated principles and perspectives,” not to identify a singular, coherent perspective, but to start a conversation around the ethics of keeping indigenous knowledge on the internet from a specifically indigenous framework (46). in adopting this perspective, the book seeks to apply an indigenous research design that can be a guideline for indigenous settler and non-indigenous scholars alike. in chapters 1 and 2, wemigwans lays out the scope of her project design to create fourdirectionsteachings. she defines indigenous knowledge and “digital bundles,” and outlines the goals and methods behind the book which proposes broadly to examine “how information communication technology (ict) affects relationships among diverse indigenous peoples and the https://uofrpress.ca/books/a/a-digital-bundle fourdirectionsteachings.com emily jean leischner review of a digital bundle 156 flow of power between indigenous peoples and the state” (1). she also explains the content and background behind fourdirectionsteachings.com, which hosts the teachings and worldviews of elders from five different first nations: blackfoot, cree, ojibwe, mohawk and mi’kmaq. to analyze how this online space can be “designed and validated through cultural protocols” (43), chapter 2 identifies linda tuhiwai smith’s twenty-five projects as powerful methodologies that can provide an important framework for thinking about the connection between indigenous knowledge and resurgence. wemigwans reorganizes these twenty-five methods under leanne betasamosake simpson’s four tenets of nishnaabeg principles (biskaabiiyang, naakgonige, aanjigone, and debwewin): “culturally embedded concepts and teachings that bring meaning to our practices and illuminate our lifeways” (simpson 61). chapters 4 – 7 each focus on a single tenet, and carefully walk through how smith’s methods are applied to analyze the conversations wemigwans has with each of her interview participants. throughout the text, braiding connections between indigenous scholars creates a web of interlocking methods and expertise. this in many ways mirrors the network of indigenous knowledge wemigwans is tracking and assessing through fourdirectionsteachings.com the third chapter describes the recruitment and interview process, taking care to introduce each research participant, identify why they were chosen, and explain how each person uses the internet, and fourdirectionsteachings.com specifically, to facilitate their work. the interviewees each fall under the category of “educators, cultural arts workers, and systems workers (those who work in organizations/institutions such as child welfare systems or penitentiaries)” (74). throughout the next four chapters of the book, wemigwans puts each participants’ experiences and opinions about indigenous knowledge online in conversation, providing detailed and extensive documentation of how this knowledge is being activated in a wide variety of spaces. for example, in focusing on biskaabiiyang (“to look back”), she shows how this tenet is being activated by educators using indigenous knowledge online as “a political act of survival because it connects the values and beliefs of those in the past to those of the present” (109). bringing forward knowledge found in the worldviews and stories stewarded on fourdirectionsteachings.com is one way in which indigenous activists are engaging with these teachings. finally, in chapter 8, a digital bundle calls for recognition of the transformative potential indigenous knowledge online has for contributing to the political and decolonizing goals of indigenous communities across turtle island, and beyond. wemigwans’ argument is well worth quoting in full: “in continuing to create digital bundles and to come together to decide on the future of an indigenous presence on the internet, indigenous communities will control information and thus shape the minds of their people in ways that support healing and regeneration” (227). by connecting the varied ways people are engaging with indigenous knowledge online, wemigwans persuasively shows how this diversity of uses is nevertheless united under the goal of working towards indigenous resurgence. her writing powerfully unites these activists together across territories, without losing the creative, context-specific, and inspiring ways they draw on indigenous knowledge in their own work. foregrounded in indigenous theory, methods, and analysis, a digital bundle is an invaluable case-study in how to ethically write and conduct a research project in indigenous studies. an essential addition to digital technologies and internet scholarship, this book is a must-read for any student or researcher writing on indigenous topics. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 157 emily jean leischner, university of british columbia works cited alfred, taiaiake. wasáse: indigenous pathways of action and freedom. university of toronto press, 2009. geniusz, wendy makoons. our knowledge is not primitive: decolonizing botanical anishinaabe teachings. syracuse university press, 2009. simpson, leanne betasamosake. dancing on our turtle’s back: stories of nishnaabeg recreation, resurgence, and a new emergence. arbeiter ring, 2011. smith, linda tuhiwai. decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. zed books, 1999. microsoft word noodin.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 358 linda rodriguez. dark sister: poems. mammoth publications, 2018. 88 pp. isbn: 9781939301666. https://mammothpublications.net/writers-m-to-z/rodriguez-linda-dark-sister/ linda rodriguez has been publishing poetry since 1994, when skin hunger was printed by scapegoat press. she has worked to broaden and diversify the definition of poetry in the americas and has connected women and voices across the globe by serving as co-convenor of the women and environment caucus at the united nations international conference, women 2000: beijing plus five and editing the world is one place: native american poets visit the middle east with fellow poet diane glancy. she is author of the nonfiction guide to writing, plotting the character-driven novel, and she has proven her ability to do that in a series of mysteries featuring cherokee and latinx chief of police, marquitta “skeet” bannion. in her latest collection of poetry, dark sister, she writes of hearing the phrase, “get your nose out of that book” as a child, but it is clear the pages continued to call to her as she became the creator of books always reaching in new directions (9). dark sister takes its name from the way she has been described in relation to her siblings. she is the “dark sister” the “dream sister,” “the witch sister,” “the crow sister,” the sister “stripped of layers of pride and shame, / become glowing cinder in the palm of a hand.” (14) her ability to look back now on her life and her family is the result of drawing power from these descriptions familiar to many women who dare to be strong, visionary and unafraid of finding their own paths. the poems in dark sister appear in four parts, each exploring an aspect of rodriguez’s being: “mixed-blood,” “mestiza,” “cherokee” and “woman.” although it may seem she wishes to clarify each identity for readers, she instead illustrates the ways in which language and life blur these definitions. poems in every section touch on the joy, and sometimes pain, of being a woman but the focus is about being a mixed-blood woman, combining all the adjectives that might be hurled her way. she introduces the blended ethnic outcome of generations building lives together in america and does not write within the stereotype of any category as she shares her family’s history. in the poem “where i come from” she explains: “i come from sequoiah and john ross. . .the great smokies and tahlequah and broken arrow, from highland crofts and dublin slums. . .from san diego and coronado and el cajon” (9). through geneology, rodriguez writes of people, place and politics and her own origin of her story. as a whole the collection is a call for more complex definitions. in the united states the term “mixed-blood” has been used to support blood-quantum definitions of identity while “mestizo” was often used in central and south american nations to support hierarchies of race and ethnicity placing people of mixed european heritage above indigenous people. rodriguez illustrates how the history of ꮳꮃꭹꭿ ꭰᏸꮅ (tsalagihi ayeli, the cherokee nation of oklahoma); ꮳꮃꭹᏹ ꮥꮳꮣꮒꮈꭹ (tsalagiyi detsadanilvgi, the eastern band of cherokee indians); and the ꭰꮒꭹꮪꮹꭹ ꭰꮒꮳꮃꭹ (anigiduwagi anitsalagi or united keetoowah band of cherokee indians) is margaret noodin review of dark sister 359 one that needs unravelling to understand where histories intersect and where agency and equality were denied. these nations represent multiple possible futures for cherokee people and rodriguez asks readers to think beyond such terms as american indian, native american, even cherokee, to understand the complexity of multiple identities that have changed over time. through her poetry, rodriguez, traces the connections between what her cherokee ancestors have urged her to remember and how the way cherokees choose to be in the world today. the carefully arranged collection ends with a reminder to “stop surrounding yourself with mirrors / turn them into windows” experience life, to let it flow as a sensation in her poem “through the body” (87) several themes are recurring in her poems. peace is a concept she works to describe a variety of ways. it is the “indian peace” of a fondly remembered relative (10). it is “the peace of coming to a hard place” in the poem, “god of hawks” (13). it is also part of the phrase “go in peace” which she whispers in the elegy “the things she gave me” as she thanks juana (jenny) gomez rodriguez for being the mother she needed (17). and it is included in the apology she makes to frida kahlo for the way american culture has mistaken her attempts to stay sane as exotic affect. “they won’t let you rest / in any kind of peace” she says about the ways in which kahlo’s art is now marketed to consumers seeking an icon of mexican identity (36). peace is also echoed when “la malinchine speaks of cortez” and asks, “how was i to live in peace after him?” (37). giving a voice to the nahua woman who served as slave, interpreter and bearer of children to hernan cortes as he conquered the aztec empire is one way for rodriguez to further complicate, and confront, the deep wounds of history. she points out the need for women’s voices and the long tradition in matrilineal nations of women as part of the process of negotiating a place among other societies and on the land. at a time when many are writing of mother nature, rodriguez writes of mothers and nature, reminding us to nurture the relationships that sustain life. her place is the center of the continent, and it is in oklahoma where she finds: winds and sky that could pull you off your feet into infinity if you didn’t have troubles to weight you down to the earth, i make my peace with it and come home (13). a second theme in many of her poems is death, which she deconstructs and recomposes as deftly as she does peace. in some cases, she confronts death as a part of shared history, a legacy of conquest and removal. when she writes of the ghost la llorona “the woman in white, / wandering the night in tears for the children she drowned, / looking for new little victims” she could be speaking of la malinchine or the ghastly female giant of john gast’s painting, "american progress" (17). rodriguez understands the need for honesty when facing terminal situations. she is brutally frank about her own brushes with death and uses plain words to describe her “ugly, puckered scar” and “3 ½ pain-filled, sleepless weeks” when “lovely bony ms. death” came looking (31). but she remains as unafraid as baby raptors learning to hunt and become “death on two wings” in the poem “redtail hawk” (76). in the “ofrenda” she takes fearlessness one step farther to write, “i would wrestle the lady of the dead herself / for possession, to wrench you / from peaceful rest in mictlan / and back into the tempest / that was us” (39). life is worth living according to the poems of dark sister. reaching backward toward transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 360 the knowledge of elders in the distant past, she describes life as a connection to a “labyrinth of galaxies spinning out of control,” an “eternal dissipation of energy” (31). she refers to the same maze in the poem “indian time” as she reframes “indian time” as less a cultural contrast in punctuality and more an implication of galactic relativity, an ancient concept worth embracing. and i see my life’s circular maze, three-dimensional rising ever to join the eternal spiraling wheel of stars” (56). this same coil of being is found in the content and form of “at the stomp dance” which creates a rhythm by beginning each line with “now. . .” as the feast ends, children play, a fire is started and: now, the women set the rhythm with their fast turtleshelled feet. now, the circle spirals out from the fire. now the dance can begin (81). rodriguez teaches readers to try “living in aztec time” paying attention not to time but to the order of things, resting comfortably with the knowledge that someday we will all “reach that hole in the sky” (83). these lessons in life and death are put forth mostly as free verse without formal structure and in the voice of the poet. a few notable exceptions are a short series of poems written from the perspective of various non-humans. crow recognizes the anthropocene and speaks of the “furless, clawless thing” in control of the present (57). owl speaks of “a long and happy relationship with death” (61). oak talks about sunlight and strong roots invisible to others while river speaks of the power to survive (62, 63). by viewing the world from another being’s perspective rodriguez reforges old networks of knowing. she achieves the same reconnection with her use of cherokee throughout the book. by mixing cherokee and english she inserts another ontology into the discourse. the poem “learning cherokee” seems to be a list but is a lesson in colonization as the phrase “ga yo tli ga do hi, just a little land” is repeated and eventually becomes “ni gad a ga do a, all your land” (72). the list also contains the word “yonega,” the term for white settlers, which appears first in the poem “trickster time” as a grandmother remembers what the “yonega ranchers” took and the circles of returning required to become nations again after “nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i, that trail where they cried” (23). readers also learn ghi gua is the beloved woman, the matrilineal leader who served seven clans (67). this use of cherokee emphasizes language revitalization as an essential part of cultural sustainability a way to live in the present but also “to go back / to that first world / of belonging, being part of a whole, / u li he li s di, / joy” (42). dark sister contains poems which asga ya galun lati (the great spirit, creator) will hear. some are declarations, others are conversations, others still are chants and prayers to all the beings who take time to listen. they are songs of praise for mockingbirds, lightning, a loved one asleep in the same bed and “all things silent and hidden” (48). they are a reminder: the world is waiting for you to know. the sun is there. bring it into being. listen to the blue wind. margaret noodin review of dark sister 361 listen to that wind. something is being told in the woods (78). margaret noodin, university of wisconsin-milwaukee microsoft word fox.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 319 carole lafavor. evil dead center. university of minnesota press, 2017. 219 pp. isbn: 9781517903565. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/evil-dead-center the untimely death of ojibwe activist and author carole lafavor in 2011 brought to an end any hope for a third novel in the writer’s red earth mystery series. best known perhaps for her work as an activist on behalf of indigenous people with hiv/aids, lafavor as a novelist left as her representative work only the 1996 mystery along the river and its 1997 sequel evil dead center. both works focus on the amateur tribal sleuth renee laroche and her involvement in solving murder cases both on and off the reservation, but it is the latter novel that is the focus of this review. perhaps the real mystery is how these two novels could have easily disappeared into the shadow realm of out of print books had it not been for the university of minnesota press rescuing them from obscurity. by republishing both titles, the academic press has done a tremendous service for not only the scholarly reader, but the general reading public as well, including those who favor genre fiction. like many works of popular fiction, lafavor’s writing builds on the heavy use of dialogue as a storytelling device. it is an engaging approach, one that captures the distracted reader’s attention and enables them to more easily slide into the narrative as it unfolds to reveal murders, conspiracies, and corruptions that shake a tribal community to its very core. dark secrets are brought to light through the right mix of active investigation and flat out luck. it might be argued that the novel is actually at its weakest as a mystery, as the primary suspect and the main motive are uncovered within the first third of the novel, leaving the remainder of the drama over to the search for evidence strong enough to win a conviction in the courtroom. the novel draws to a close with a manhunt for the killers set in the dangerous environs of a deep forest as a powerful blizzard bears down on the two amateur detectives. while it starts off as a mystery, evil dead center shifts toward becoming a thriller. the “thrill” attached to lafavor’s evil dead center comes not only from the unfolding of the story but from the unwrapping of truth at the center of the fiction. as novelist jack ketchum says, “really good fiction is always an attempt at total honesty” (loc. 298), and lafavor uses her fiction to tell truths about the contemporary indigenous experience that are both beautiful and dreadful. much of the novel’s beauty, and to some degree its mystery, comes through lafavor’s presentation of an anishinaabe approach to life that has long been available to the non-tribal world via academic programs, but which is much less accessible to the general reading public — a shortcoming in the industrial society’s shared imagination that leaves the average reader more vulnerable to stereotypes and outright racist readings of the metaphysics of indigeneity. fortunately, lafavor’s fiction avoids the pitfall of satisfying those readers who thirst for these outlandish and even imperialist ideas of tribal spirituality. lafavor also addresses dark truths about the contemporary experiences of indigenous people, most notably the disappearance of native women. her novel begins with the discovery of a dead woman just outside reservation borders and the white coroner’s dismissal of the death as an alcohol-related accident. a phone call sets in motion the involvement of amateur anishinaabe sleuth renee laroche and members of the tribal police, eventually leading to timothy fox review of evil dead center 320 not only the identification of the dead woman as a murdered investigative activist, but the uncovering of a conspiracy that is poisoning the very lifeblood of the tribal community. in the real world far too many anishinaabe women face similarly dark circumstances, with thousands going missing every year in north america, and statistics on the number of murdered anishinaabe unavailable, although preliminary studies funded by the u.s. department of justice suggest that tribal women are murdered at an extremely high rate — in some communities, more than 10 times the national average (domonoske). in canada a 2015 police study found that first nations women account for as much as a quarter of the number of women murdered nationwide (gray). contemporary activists are “calling for their voices to be heard, to have increased representation and for romanticised, patronising stereotypes to stop” (gray). the current republication of evil dead center may well be a part of this movement to help end the invisibility of native women, alongside recent nonfiction such as sarah deer’s the beginning and end of rape and such initiatives as the indigenous-led sovereign bodies institute’s mapping and data collection projects. lafavor’s evil dead center addresses as well the real-world issue of adoptions that place tribal children into non-indigenous families, effectively separating them from existing relations and cultural origins. the topic of white adoptions and the placement of children into non-native foster homes remains controversial, as demonstrated by the outcry arising from an october 2018 ruling by a u.s. district court judge that the indian child welfare act discriminates against non-native adoptees. signed into law in 1978, the indian child welfare act had been designed to stop the removal of children from native families, a practice that had begun in earnest in the late fifties and resulted in almost a third of all native children being adopted out to “nonfamily, non-indian” homes (goodwyn). the fact that a nexus exists between lafavor’s fiction and some of the sad realities of contemporary anishinaabe experience might potentially expand interest in this text among academics in the field of native studies, but evil dead center should find a greater appeal among readers of genre fiction, especially those who enjoy engaging reads within the mystery and thriller categories. the novel begins with ojibwe social worker renee laroche meeting police chief hobart bulieau at the off-reservation site where an unidentified native woman’s body had been found. the white coroner with jurisdiction over the case has not done a full autopsy, choosing instead to write the death of “jane doe” off as accidental overexposure due to alcoholic intoxication. renee has asked for help from the tribal police chief after receiving a somewhat cryptic telephone call from her former lover caroline beltrain. with political activism as the lifeblood of their relationship, the breakup some 18 years earlier between the “two-spirit” women had also been the end of renee’s full engagement as a political activist within “the movement.” caroline, however, had remained as an “underground” activist on the run from the fbi. renee and the tribal police come together to reveal that “jane doe” was not an unidentified drunk, but an activist who had been secretly investigating a child pornography ring, working in cooperation with individuals within the ojibwa community. by the novel’s end, two more native people are dead, and renee’s own life is hanging by a thread after she is targeted by a young killer who turns out to be more powerful, psychologically traumatized, and dangerous than expected. unlike other contemporary works such as settler novelist william giraldi’s hold the dark that set much of the narrative within northern forests and make nature a dark and dangerous transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 321 protagonist, lafavor’s evil dead center envisions the natural realm as an ally in a quest for harmony and justice. renee “didn’t just love nature,” but found in it a “sensuality… as though the environment enveloped her in the emotions of a lover” (30). renee sees her love for nature as something in common among all ojibwe who can recognize “the awesome abundance of mother earth’s living things.” for renee this connection to the forest results in “a passion for how so many different living things survived in unity.” this recognition gives renee the hope that “two-leggeds could do the same” (198). though she has the full support of the tribal police force, renee is not a professional detective or sheriff. her involvement in proving that the unidentified jane doe was a murder victim stems in large part to renee’s sense of justice, a spiritual calling that she sees as inspired by “the spirits” of the bear clan, her ancestors. this sense of the ancestral and spiritual is largely what informs evil dead center as a work of anishinaabe writing. it is a book that few could have composed with the degree of honesty and boldness that lafavor, herself a “two-spirit” political activist struggling for women’s rights who helped get healthcare and respect for native people with hiv/aids, brings to this writing. readers can easily see in renee the tribal values and worldviews that were likely central to lafavor’s own understanding of herself as an ojibwe. lafavor’s amateur sleuth is for readers the spokesperson for an anishanaabe understanding of the world that is unabashedly bold and respectful, even as it addresses darker systemic realities within the indigenous nation. evil dead center portrays tribal traditions and spiritual beliefs in a way that is beautifully stirring, though the author strives to avoid the pitfall of writing fiction that can be widely marketed to a non-indigenous readership eager to satisfy their shallow stereotypes and notions of indigenous spirituality. renee is deeply spiritual, but her belief in the stories of her elders and her respect for tradition are not unaccompanied by doubt. she is supported by many teachers around her, not the least of which are her grandmother, her aunts, and even police chief bulieau. it is the latter who reminds renee that the strongest value is family, with all anishanaabe qualifying as one family. “if any of us go off half-cocked, or refuse to work as a team, we’re gonna be in trouble,” he says (83). when one of the deputy sheriffs expresses doubts about the applicability of tribal values in a world of “new predators” who “seem to be a breed all their own” and asks how “the old ways” can guide the anishinaabe forward in such a world, it is renee who passes along what she has learned: “maybe… that’s the mistake we’re makin’ … thinking the times now are so different that we can’t learn anything from the old ways” (95). if lafavor refuses to satisfy an uninformed reader’s expectation of exotically drawn tribal traditions and metaphysics, she likewise pulls no punches when it comes to the erroneous assumption held by some non-indigenous readers that “progressive” white americans deserve to be automatically welcomed into the embrace of the tribal community. the author is straightforward in her depiction of antagonisms and troubled relations between the ojibwa on renee’s reservation and the surrounding white community, although she is always fair in not painting all whites as enemies and admitting to corruptions within the “red earther” society itself. indeed, this internal corruption is likely a source of the novel’s loaded title, evil dead center. if there is a common ground between whites and anishinaabe in evil dead center, it is the shared recognition of loss and the difficulty of getting through the everyday struggles of life. this is most clearly seen in renee’s recognition and acceptance of a white retailer whose timothy fox review of evil dead center 322 eyes betrayed his melancholy: “they were dark—some said brooding, others said haunted. elders believed the look spoke of a pain nearly as deep as their own, and thus a man to be trusted, no matter what color he was” (23). the sense of pain arising from both historical and contemporary injustices and imbalances is always at play within the novel, and the feeling that harmony between tribal and non-tribal people is hard to achieve is offered in lafavor’s depiction of renee’s auntie lydia, who though she “moved in the sunshine, dancing and singing through life,” nonetheless harbored within herself a “pain and discrimination” that she purposely “vacated” from her expression whenever she spoke with a white person. “the real auntie was not seen by many” (13). but lafavor’s novel never despairs that harmony between tribal and non-tribal people is impossible, as renee’s grandmother soothingly encourages: “many white folks have forgotten their instructions from creator, nosijhe, forgotten how to act… but be respectful, granddaughter. many white folks mean well” (24). lafavor is also daring in her unabashed presentation of renee as “two-spirited,” and extending that boldness to not only give the anishinaabe a white lover, but to portray the two lesbians as a family with a teenage daughter. the tribal community is shown as accepting of renee’s sexuality, but incidents of homophobic slurs thrown at renee take place in off-reservation settings. the serious nature of the real-world subjects addressed in lafavor’s work should not discourage anyone from approaching evil dead center as a thriller that can satisfy the urge for an entertaining read, a book that can find a welcome place on the bedside nightstand. lafavor dealt with the challenges that all authors face when writing a sequel, and did her best to provide background information on renee’s experience as an amateur sleuth without slowing the narrative pace with excessive backstory. nevertheless, there were moments when it felt that reading evil dead center would be more satisfying if it had been taken up after reading lafavor’s previous work along the journey river. fortunately, both novels are available as high-quality paperbacks through the university of minnesota press. both titles are also available as e-books for kindle and other electronic reading devices. this reprint includes a foreword by professor lisa tatonetti that provides important biographical information about lafavor, with a focus on lafavor’s contributions as a feminist activist nurse working on behalf of hiv-positive peoples. the book also includes as an afterword a more personal reflection of lafavor by the author’s daughter, professor theresa lafavor. in this afterword we discover that lafavor was often moved to tears by recognition of the beauty and suffering of humans and animals. a woman of great empathy, lafavor was also an optimist who “believed social change was possible and that we owed it to each other to work our hardest for each other” (218). it is from this afterword that we as readers and reviewers are given permission to see in the fictional renee laroche many of the qualities of the author carole lafavor: “there are many parallels,” the author’s daughter notes. “i have no doubt that renee laroche personified the values and ideals my mother held dear,” she says (219). these are values that the reader may likewise come to cherish after reading evil dead center. timothy fox, national ilan university transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 323 works cited deer, sarah. the beginning and end of rape: confronting sexual violence in native america. minnesota up, 2015. domonoske, camila. “police in many u.s. cities fail to track murdered, missing indigenous women.” npr. november 15, 2018. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/15/667335392/police-in-many-u-s-cities-fail-to-track-m urdered-missing-indigenous-women. accessed 24 march 2019. goodwyn, wade. “native american adoption law challenged as racially biased.” all things considered. npr. december 17, 2018. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/17/677390031/native-american-adoption-law-challenge d-as-racially-biased. accessed 5 january 2019 gray, lucy anna. “forgotten women: the conversation of murdered and missing native women is not one north america wants to have—but it must.” the independent. 4 august 2018. new york. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/native-american-women-missing-mu rder-mmiw-inquiry-canada-us-violence-indigenous-a8487976.html accessed 5 january 2019. ketchum, jack. “making contact.” horror 101: the way forward, edited by joe mynhardt and emma audsley. crystal lake publishing, 2014. ebook. loc. 213-305. sovereign bodies institute. “about us,” sbi. 2019. https://www.sovereign-bodies.org/about. accessed march 27, 2019. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 180 linda legarde grover. onigamiising: seasons of an ojibwe year. university of minnesota press, 2017. 201 pp. isbn: 9781517903442. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/onigamiising this book is a very nice read. personally, i found the book to be very moving. one does not have to be anishinaabe to appreciate the familial warmth that rises from the pages. the reader can bask in that comfort as one might have done with grandma’s old wood stove. however, the book touches on some of the hard truths of ojibwe history as well. those hard truths recall those solemn moments of pain contemplated in silence and finished with a deep sigh in thinking about one’s own family’s history as an anishinaabe. the book is a collection of newspaper columns the author wrote for the duluth budgeteer and is organized around the seasons of the year, starting with spring. as the title indicates, the geographic focus is on the city of duluth, mn, known in the anishinaabe language as onigamiising, the place of the small portage. the focus and the title are appropriate in that the author and her family have been in duluth for a number of generations. the author is anishinaabe. the anishinaabe people are also known as ojibwe and chippewa. all three appellations are used in the book. the book covers many aspects of the author’s life, from childhood memories to her current status as an elder in the tribe and professor at the university of minnesota duluth. the author will often start a column making an observation about some details of her family life, such as a family gathering. she will then use that observation to let her memory wander to her own childhood experiences or to make some larger point about life for the ojibwe people. invariably, in good rhetorical fashion for the anishinaabeg, she’ll bring her discussion back to the original starting point, thus completing the circle of her thoughts. given this stylistic method, a reader can approach and appreciate this work on at least two levels—the touching scenes of ojibwe family life on the one hand and the history and culture of the ojibwe people on the other. i will discuss history and culture first in order to lead up to the discussion of family life. no doubt, there are other ways of reading the book. but for the purposes of this review, that is how i will organize my thoughts and presentation. i will be speaking based on my status as a member of the minnesota chippewa tribe enrolled on the white earth reservation. history weighs heavy on the ojibwe people, and the author is not afraid to discuss the difficult times we had to endure. the issue that comes up the most is the boarding school experience. as grover points out in a number of chapters, during the boarding school era, ojibwe children were removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools, often far from their home communities. without going into the details, the boarding schools were quite brutal, and the children suffered badly. that trauma continues to echo down through the ages and so the ojibwe, along with other tribes, still suffer from historical trauma related to the boarding schools, as grover rightly points out. the history of the ojibwe is not all negative, though. the author also discusses the many ways in which the ojibwe of yore worked hard to maintain the culture. for example, one chapter is dedicated to an extensive discussion of treaties and the sovereign status of native people in general and the ojibwe in particular. the manner in which the ojibwe leaders reserved land for https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/onigamiising lawrence gross review of onigamiising 181 their people as well as the right to hunt, gather, and harvest wild rice in the ceded territories is explained in detail. the chapter on treaty rights is not the only place in the book the author discusses issues related to sovereignty and treaty rights. however, throughout the book, the reader can get the sense that the ojibwe were not just passive victims of the u.s. government and the forces of colonialism. instead, the ojibwe worked hard to maintain their culture, language, and way of life to as great a degree as possible given the realities with which they were faced. the culture of the ojibwe is presented in at least two basic ways: the material culture and cultural practices. one good example of material culture is dreamcatchers. it is well known among the ojibwe people that dreamcatchers were originally created by the ojibwe. the author devotes a chapter to the history of dreamcatchers, including the origin story. in short, a spider wove a web in front of a baby to soothe it as the poor child was fussing and fidgeting. grover points out that the spider did not have to take time out of its busy life to tend to the baby, and so expresses thanks to the spider for doing so. this is a good example because it includes an aspect of ojibwe material culture, its origin story, and perhaps most important of all, the behavioral attitude of having gratitude. so, the example of the dreamcatcher captures well the depth of ojibwe material culture. for their part, cultural practices permeate the book. for example, there is a very nice discussion of the practice of respecting elders. grover and her husband attend an event where the young people bring elders their respective plates of food. of course, grover is served. there is a twist, though, which i will not spoil by revealing it here. but, the twist points to another cultural practice of being polite. however, one aspect of this event i think is very telling. the elders are not just passive recipients of the food. they have a role to play as well, and their job is to be gracious in accepting the gift from the young people and to encourage them with kind words. in other words, the elders work to reinforce the cultural practice by making the young people feel good about following ojibwe customs. i appreciate how this example demonstrates the holistic nature of cultural practices across the generations. of even greater importance, though, is the manner in which the history and culture discussed above manifest themselves in the many scenes of ojibwe family life grover paints. it is those scenes of family life that, in my mind, make up the strongest part of the book. the many examples of ojibwe family life provided by grover show how in reality the history and cultural practices of the ojibwe are passed down from generation to generation. the examples are too many to go into here. however, two will suffice to make my point. the discussion of making ribbon skirts early in the book is very nice. the older, more experienced individuals work together to help the next generation learn the tradition of ribbon skirts. there is also a nice discussion of the history and cultural practices involved with ribbon skirts. for example, grover discusses the ways ribbon skirt fashions have changed over the years. but, the one example i truly appreciate is so simple and yet so powerful—the revival of the language. she talks about how her uncle bob hears one of her grandchildren singing a song with ojibwe words he learned as part of his ojibwe language instruction at school. her uncle comments how they were not allowed to speak ojibwe in the boarding school he attended, but now they are teaching it in schools. the simple and powerful part is her uncle shakes his grand-nephew’s hand just as a way of honoring the young boy and encouraging him to keep learning ojibwe. it is those types of transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 182 simple, gentle, and kind ways in which the history and culture continue to be passed on. in that regard, the book provides an intimate look at how the culture really operates. before i close, i would like to add a few personal notes. grover and i are from the same generation. so, when she talks about her childhood memories, and really her life in general, there is so much that i can relate to myself. some of them are fun, simple things, like using the family’s baby buggy as a toy. we had the exact same kind of baby buggy and used it as a toy as well. as kids we also always got so excited when we came back home from swimming or whatever and saw our aunt’s camper parked in front of the house for a visit on their way up north in the exact same manner grover details an impromptu family gathering. i also think about how the history of the boarding schools really did not come out when we were young. it was not until we were older that we heard some of the ways my family suffered in the boarding schools, again in the same way as grover. the same is true for the ojibwe language. it is pretty evident grover did not grow up learning much ojibwe. neither did we. but as the years have gone by, both of us have worked to learn the language as best we can. one last example has to do with local knowledge. this was a subtle little thing. but, at one point, grover mentions old highway 61 outside of duluth. i know old highway 61, just as i know the old cass lake road, old highway 2, old highway 71, and the old red lake road around bemidji. i love how the locals keep referring to roads and highways by their old names long after their names have been changed. knowing the old roads and highways really marks one as a native to the area. one is part of the in-group if one knows those old names. i had to chuckle to myself when grover mentioned old highway 61 and all the memories that were sparked by its name. i really felt a kinship with grover reading this book. i imagine other ojibwe people would not have to belong to the same generation as grover and myself to personally relate to the book. for many ojibwe, reading this book will be like holding up a mirror to one’s life. the reflection will validate ojibwe culture and make one feel good about oneself. so, in some ways, it is worth reading the book just to feel that sense of validation. there is much to commend for this book. it provides a lot of food for thought, and certainly if it were used in a classroom setting it would provide a wealth of material for discussion. i only touched on a few examples of the topics covered in the book. there is a lot more to explore in this wonderful collection. i will close by giving one last example, though. she has a whole chapter on making lugalette. so, if you ever want to know how to make lugalette, this is the book for you! lawrence gross, university of redlands microsoft word squint.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 244 michael wasson. this american ghost. yesyes books, 2017. 45 pp. isbn: 9781936919529. https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/this-american-ghost. michael wasson’s poetry collection, this american ghost, is both visceral and lyrical, taking its reader on a passionate, painful journey of decolonization. by weaving together english and nimipuutímt, wasson conveys both personal and cultural truths, particularly those that speak to the damages done by us settler colonialism. the collection begins with an epigraph from the iliad, a mourning achilles telling agamemnon, “we are the closest to the dead, / we’ll see to all things here” (n.p.). this quote underscores two major themes of wasson’s work: death and intimacy. images of murder, suicide, and cultural genocide play along the collection’s pages, and the pain of those affiliated losses is depicted in exquisitely lyrical passages. the fact that wasson chooses to quote achilles, in mourning for his beloved patroclus who he will avenge, highlights the simmering passion to come. “the confession,” “ant & yellow jacket,” and “another confession” all describe the pleasures of intimate physical love, yet “another confession” also juxtaposes love and death: “there’s a word i am / trying to tell you while the dead / skin melts into me / like ghosts / unable to confess their sins” (11). “the sacrifice” also achieves this juxtaposition: “the sky / once a torn skin like ink starred / with the whited pupils of the dead” and “the beauty of two bodies / reaching into each other” (4). there is an imminent pain shading these early pieces, suggesting more trauma in the latter works. the titles of “the confession” and “the sacrifice” speak to another persistent theme: the ideology of christianity, or a kind of repudiation of it. both “confession” poems are less about requesting forgiveness for earthly sins than unabashed celebrations of physical love such as the first’s “show me / how your mouth moves under / my hard-edged flesh” (1). a quote from corinthians is the epigraph for “redemption,” and the poem begins with another reference to confession. yet this poem details the speaker’s brother’s attempted suicide and suffering, posing the musings of a ghost, “how to change all these years of loss” (25). redemption comes presumably with the sacrifice of a deer at the poem’s end, shot by the persona, bringing a “lightening” of the night (26). the theme of the brother’s suicide continues in the collection’s final poem “mouthed,” in which the same gun that offers up the deer’s life also takes the brother’s. the speaker asks, is that not you i hear drowning in the living room & hunched down kirstin squint review of this american ghost 245 to what we never called god” (33). more overt repudiations of christianity come in “in winters, as ghosts” in which the speaker’s mother says, “there’s no hell” as the loss of loved ones punctuates the chill of winter nights. such personal loss is underscored with intergenerational trauma, as suggested by the allusion to chief joseph from his 1877 surrender to the us army, “maybe i shall find them among the dead,” (37). “the world already ended at y2k” turns on the irony that settler colonialism is already its own apocalypse, as suggested by the first lines, “the silence of the reservation / could fill me / to the point of breaking . . .” (29); the poem warns that there will be no otherworldly redemption, no arch angel here to drag you off to hell or purgatory or even paradise . . .” (29). the most fascinating piece to decolonize christian ideology is “on the horizon,” in which the speaker undoes biblical language such as & i said let there be dark pouring from your mouth at day break” (9). the poem contains similar allusions to the plague of locusts and the garden of eden, ultimately throwing off christianity altogether: “let another god / forget you were ever born” (9). these themes of passion, death, and spirituality cannot be separated from the cultural experiences of the nimíipuu (nez perce). wasson’s ubiquitous use of nimipuutímt throughout the collection requires the reader to become immersed in the in-betweenness of contemporary us indigenous experience. for example, the poem “lit in the mouth or for the old woman who died of song & loneliness” borrows language from a nimipuutímt story in order to expand the personal borders of the recurrent themes of loss, trauma, and the confession of that pain. one of the most compelling pieces in the collection, “the exile,” imagines the experience of nez perce elder titus paul at the chilocco indian boarding school in oklahoma in 1922 (37). though the poem is clearly a lyrical envisioning of that historical moment, it maintains the confessional tone of much of the collection with its first person perspective. “the exile” contains familiar details of indian boarding school experience—forced loss of language and culture through brutal forms of discipline—yet, the syntactic gymnastics used to convey these horrors is heart-rending: transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 246 because they can tear every lip from every memory of your mother because you are torn & because you are what song fills your throat with the color of carved out tongue” (15). michael wasson’s this american ghost is a collection for lovers of language who are willing to examine the physical intimacies and violences that play out in our most personal relationships. the use of syllabic form places emphasis on individual words, and the ways meaning can turn when words are isolated or paired in surprising ways. throughout this wordplay runs an unflinching examination of tragedy and how we cope with it. often, in these poems, that coping occurs in an engagement with the natural world: a deer, the horizon, the morning light, or the winter cold. how such an approach demonstrates human capacity to understand and accept loss can be seen in this powerful, poignant line: “who is it the dead / remember? the moon / finally asks me” (24). this american ghost makes clear that personal tragedies are intricately connected to realms beyond our individual experiences—to our cultures, our nations, our natural world. kirstin squint, high point university microsoft word on dreamcatchers.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 82 on dreamcatchers brad hagen but should enough people care and recall nana’b’oozoo into their midst by learning their ancestral language and espousing their old traditions, giving them new meanings and applications in the modern age, the spirit of nana’b’oozoo and the anishinaubae people will be restored to its rightful place in the lives of the anishinaubae people. basil johnston, the manitous to serve tribal change, indian storytelling must remain a dynamic, continuous site of theoretical investigation, evaluation, and revision… even the old ways and values vital to a native community at times require reflection and revision to ensure that tribal people adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. sean kicummah teuton, red land, red power when i was younger, dreamcatchers seemed inexplicable to me. they had been in my house, hanging above kitchen sinks and in the corners of rooms. there were dreamcatchers above our beds, stitched into our blankets, and tattooed onto the skin of my relatives. they were a common sight, but i marvelled at them. the perfection of the pattern that the sinew made up within the hoop of willow—how could one create a web that rivaled nature? because that’s where the dreamcatcher comes from, or so the story goes. spider woman gave them to us to protect our children’s dreams. but i won’t tell that story now; it’s not my place. they say that we shouldn’t tell stories like this in the summer months, that we should only tell them during the winter when the spirits are resting and we won’t offend them. though we are on the cusp of snowfall as i write this, i’m not sure when you will read it. but can’t you see it? the similarity between a spider’s web and the dreamcatcher? something that beautiful could only have been inspired by the mystery of perfection that is nature. i first learned to make them when i was around twelve while on an overnight field trip with my school district’s indian education program. having gone to school in the suburbs where there was a low native population, it was the first time that i had been around so many kids like myself. joining indian ed. felt like returning to cousins and aunts and uncles that i hadn’t seen in a long time—it was like coming home to a family that i didn’t fully realize i belonged to. we were all gathered into a large room with many tables, and at the end of each row was a white paint bucket filled with water and willow branches. one of our instructors and elders, brad hagen “on dreamcatchers” 83 marybeth, stood at the front of the room, demonstrating how to craft a dreamcatcher. at the same time, she was telling the story of how spider woman gave them to us. we bent the willow branch into a hoop, which was malleable from having been soaked in water, and tied the ends together with sinew. “valentine’s day is right around the corner, guys,” she said. “maybe you can give yours to your niinimoshenh.” i remember looking up and blushing, feeling my eyes go wide. niinimoshenh, or sweetheart when used colloquially in english, was a word i had recently learned from one of the other students in the program. this was the first time i’d realized my native teachers weren’t like the other ones i had in school; they were more personal, acted more friendly, and cared in a way that resembled family, like there was a strand that connected each of us. “now you’ll be making these sort of loops,” she said, demonstrating for us the intricate way that it’s done, her tongue sticking out on the side, “until you spiral close to the center. but not all the way—leave a hole, ‘cause that’s where the good dreams come through.” i remember my mouth physically hanging open after she said this. up until that point, i’d thought that people tied little bits together, that each line of the web was an individual piece. i looked down at my hands, a roll of sinew in one and a hoop of willow in the other, and didn’t know where to start. thankfully, marybeth came over after her demonstration and further explained, showing me how to make the first couple of loops. after accidently knotting up the web a couple of times, i eventually finished mine, complete with a bead and feather dangling from the center. i ran to kathy, the advisor i met with once a week in a little room at the back of my high school library, and showed her my new creation. she got this big smile on her face and said, “well, look at that!” she gave me a hug and told me how proud she was. words can’t begin to describe this woman’s importance in my life. the first day i met kathy, she was in a room filled with other students sitting at a table with her, already all conversing. when i walked in, everyone stopped and looked at me. she smiled and said, “well look who’s here. this is brad, you guys. he’s new to the program.” she immediately made me feel at home, a sensation i hadn’t often felt at that time. as i met with her over the years, she taught me all of the things that they wouldn’t teach me in school: our history, our culture, and bits of our language. she taught me that our story transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 84 didn’t begin in 1492, that we had technological advancements, doctors, medicines, and governments that preceded the arrival of “civilization.” so perhaps she was proud that day because of the circumstances and the history that came behind this moment. this was a woman that had reached her twenties before she was granted religious freedom, a woman who was insisted upon by society that the word indian equalled dirty, stupid, ancient, dead. she was an elder looking down at a child, smiling at the continuation of a story, at the creation of another loop in the web of our continued existence. because that’s how a dreamcatcher is made—with loops. you begin with the loop of willow, the ends tied together with tight loops of sinew. then you secure one end of the sinew (or thread, i suppose, though i’ve never used it), and make a continuous succession of loops until you reach the middle, where there’s a hole left at the center. maybe she was smiling because it was an actual native person who had made it. you can find dreamcatchers sold at gas stations, gift shops, truck stops, clothing stores, drug stores; you can win them at carnivals and state fairs, receive them in the mail from online catalogues. i even found a kit to make one at a bookstore the other day. these dreamcatchers, however, will say made in china, or vietnam, or indonesia. the art was not taught with love and hope for the future. they were not made with stories in mind, but produced in a factory, designed to be sold for commodity. so i suppose that, because i’ve been thinking about dreamcatchers, i’ve also been thinking about making art in a world that wants to sell your likeness. there’s always a person wearing a headdress at a rave; college kids are getting dreamcatcher tattoos to symbolize their “free spirits;” we’re mascots at sporting events, noble savages crying at the sight of polluted rivers; we’re the ones destined to die in old westerns, or just in general. or perhaps we are a commodity, something to be sold. they always ask what the big deal is, it’s just a picture, it’s just a tomahawk chop, just a dreamcatcher? it feels like i’m being sold when i see these things, that my memories and loved ones are objects to be consumed. i think of wiindigoo when i have these thoughts. a monster, a cannibal, a being who cannot stop consuming, consuming. i think of this being when i see these moments of appropriation because it is like we are being eaten, bit by bit, craft by craft, until we are nothing but a dried photograph resting in the tomb of a photo book. the mass consumer mentality and its voracious fascination with all things native is the wiindigoo of this day and age. brad hagen “on dreamcatchers” 85 in a way, i’m glad i think of wiindigoo because it helps me remember that we can look to our own cultures and traditions to explain contemporary realities. consider the dreamcatcher: what knowledge can be gained from observing the method in which the dreamcatcher is crafted, or the way it looks when it’s finished? the artist uses one continuous piece of sinew to create the web, one that has many intersections and meeting points—even though it appears disjointed, it’s really part of one singular strand. when i see this image, i am reminded of the interconnectivity of all things. there was a dreamcatcher that used to hang in my grandparents’ dining room that was made by my aunt. instead of a loop of willow, the web was tied into a hole that was cut out from the back of a turtle shell. when my grandfather died, it was passed to me and it now hangs on my bedroom wall. it’s the first thing i see in the morning as i’m trying to wake up and it forces me to remember my place. among natives, north america is commonly referred to as turtle island because of many creation stories having to do with the land of this continent being placed on the back of turtle during its formation. so when i see a turtle shell, i am reminded of my origin and the place that many peoples now inhabit. and when i see the web of the dreamcatcher stretched across it, i am reminded that i’m connected to everything and everyone around me. if i represent one of the intersections of sinew on the web, so does the squirrel that is running up the side of the tree that is across the street from me as i write. so does the tree. so does the bird that is currently making its home among the tree’s branches. so does the water that it bathed in this morning. so does the child that played in that water. if native communities from minneapolis represent one of the intersections, so do ones from oakland, detroit, and seattle: we are connected individually and communitively. the web of the dreamcatcher is made up of one strand. although it looks like there are multiple pieces, multiple knots and intersections, there’s only one. when i was younger, my grandfather once told me that wherever there are native people, you’re home. i think he understood this notion that i am only now arriving at. across turtle island, we native americans are connected like the web of the dreamcatcher. though we come from different nations, speak different languages, have different customs, and practice different religions, there is a strand running through us all that makes us one. not in a way that lumps us all into one term, indian, nor in a way that ignores our transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 86 sovereignty and independence as nations; we are connected in a way that unites us and combines our individual strengths. we are looped together in a web that holds each of us up. wait, you might be thinking. what about the center of the dreamcatcher? what does that symbolize? a commendable question, one to which i offer a deceivingly simply answer: i don’t know. i was speaking to a professor about my thoughts on this matter, and she said that if i were to use the dreamcatcher as a symbol, i had to account for what the center signified. so i racked and racked my brain, but i couldn’t think of anything. eventually i kept repeating in my head, i can’t think of an answer, as a sort of mantra for the better part of an hour until a random thought occured to me: it’s a mystery. and all of a sudden, it made sense. gichi-manidoo translates to great spirit, like gichigami, the name for lake superior, translates to great sea. the word manidoo can also mean mystery, making another possible translation for gichi-manidoo great mystery. ask why enough times and you’ll eventually reach the only answer left: i don’t know. you can spiral down a string of logic until it runs out, leaving a gaping hole at its center. this sense of mystery is something to be respected. it is the underlying reason for everything; it is what lies at the end of every intersection on the web of life. the hole at the center of the dreamcatcher is a great mystery, and that’s just fine with me. seeing it every morning reminds me that i don’t need an answer for everything. however, that doesn’t excuse us from reaching for solutions to the problems directly in front of us. and one doesn’t have to look far to see them. dreamcatchers were traditionally used to protect our children, but perhaps the children have grown up and still need protecting from things like cultural appropriation, the destabilizing of communities and cultural ties, and a government encroaching on tribal rights. in recognizing that the dreamcatcher can also serve to symbolize that the anishinaabeg, lakota, ho-chunk, oneida, commanche, cheyenne, and all the other nations are connected in an intrinsic and experiential way, we can stand against anything. that no matter where we go, we’re home, and that no matter what, this will always be our home. to the best of my knowledge, a fraction of that held by some of the great native women and men whom i have the privilege of knowing, the dreamcatcher is not traditionally thought of in this way. at least, it was never told to me. it’s a good thing, though, that we can turn to our brad hagen “on dreamcatchers” 87 own art to make sense of our own lives, even if that means adding to the meaning that is already there. this is what basil johnston and sean kicummah teuton were referring to in the quotes at the beginning of this essay. we must continually bring forward our old traditions and apply them in new ways. in this way, we’re endlessly lucky that they have survived and persevered through so much. to this, i can only think to say one word: miigwech. microsoft word 756-article text-4810-1-11-20200313.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 97 “the indian who bombed berlin”: german encounters in ralph salisbury’s work – modulating modern precariousness cathy covell waegner ralph salisbury’s canon is laced with encounters with germans and germany, serving to lend his stories and autobiography, so far, so good (2013),1 a transnational edginess in connection with his self-identification as native american. at times the germans are presented as the dangerously inimical other, although salisbury’s or his narrators’ realizations of inclusive human kinship generally undercut the jeopardy and alienation. salisbury spent extended time in germany in many capacities, including fulbright fellow (1983, 2004, 2005) and networking sojourner, and writes of his experiences there ranging from dealing with a formidable east german guard at checkpoint charlie to joy in teaching enthusiastic students native american literature. in his autobiography salisbury refers to his many german american neighbors and the wessels family of his mother’s first husband—themselves dealing with issues of otherness in patriotic america—in (in)direct confrontation with his alcohol-troubled and frequently violent “englishcherokee-shawnee father” (so far, so good 5). in the semi-autobiographical tall tale “the chicken affliction and a man of god”2 salisbury changes his irish american mother’s heritage to german american descent for the boy-focalizer’s mother, re-dressing—in faulkneresque southern modernist manner—his underlying boyhood trauma with humorous-grotesque exaggerations when the young narrator’s staunch mother futilely attempts to protect the boy from his abusive father. salisbury shows literary kinship with other modernist writers in the short story “silver mercedes and big blue buick: an indian war”; a babbitt-like shoe-store owner, who could possibly have felt at home in sinclair lewis’ main street, conducts cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 98 a hemingway-flavored gender battle with his sioux german-descended wife, as well as a perilous driving contest with a skilled mercedes driver on narrow bavarian roads. in “the indian who bombed berlin,” a native american exchange professor recalls his callous wartime destruction of enemy “cathedrals and homes” in germany (202), but finds himself constantly, transculturally, and ironically readjusting his lines of affiliation during a riotous demonstration by students of color in berlin. modulating modernism to produce a “cherokee modern” approach, salisbury’s complex instrumentalization of native american and german stereotypes and the accompanying issues of precariousness, alterity, agency, and reinforcement of indigenous presence can be compared to and contrasted with strategies employed by two anishinaabe authors in different genres and literary modes: gerald vizenor’s in blue ravens: historical novel (2014) and drew hayden taylor’s in the berlin blues, a 2007 play. this essay will first consider ralph salisbury’s (auto)biography in terms of precariousness—the violation of basic physical and psychological needs in childhood, the alterity and shakiness of his family’s ethnic identity, wartime hazards in dangerous training missions, and his existential precariousness through his pacifist and anti-racist counter-stand—and the way it interweaves with his exposure to (images of) germans and germany. this precariousness will then be related to risk as a key component of modernism and salisbury’s modulation of this into “cherokee modern” in an individualistic knitting together of autobiography and fiction to support agency and indigenous presence, often with self-directed irony. three sections subsequently examine a trio of salisbury’s short stories: the first, translating biography to literature: tall tale strategies, offers a relevant reading of “the chicken affliction and a man of god”; the second, focusing on the fourfold combat in “silver mercedes and big blue buick: an indian war,” creates a surprising amalgamation of conflicts in german traffic; the final section of analysis of salisbury’s fiction demonstrates how “the indian who bombed berlin” evokes transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 99 ethical agency as a possible route for transnational restorative justice. i continue with some ideas on the ways vizenor’s native protagonists in blue ravens: historical novel employ stereotypes as weapons against german soldiers in wartime precariousness. taylor’s the berlin blues returns the discussion back to a largely comic tall-tale contest, this time between two sets of ethnic stereotypes within a frame of mimicry and hegemonic european re-colonialization. my concluding paragraphs can be read as suggesting reasons why salisbury, the “cherokee humanist and indigenous cosmopolitan” (krupat 73), chose to end his autobiography with a comparison of the natural music of trumpeter swans, no longer threatened by extinction, to beethoven’s symphonies (so far, so good 2734). biographical german encounters ralph salisbury (1926-2017) grew up in a rural area near arlington, iowa, attending school with mostly german american children (so far, so good 20). although ralph’s father charles (charley) did not ever tell his family or community directly that he was of native descent (“he never, so far as i can remember, said that we were indian – and never said that we were not,” 39-40), young ralph sensed that his family was treated as different, for example when “a spiteful, possibly racist neighbor” turned his father in to the authorities for hunting out of season (58). supportive connections with neighbors, especially through his irish american mother, are also described, however. her first husband bernard wessels, father of ralph’s revered, eight years older, half-brother bob, was german american. wessels died after enlisting during world war i: “the american army may have been a way of transcending his bearing a german name… his was a sad and not unusual story, death from meningitis in a texas training camp” (so far, so good 139). the wessels family did not approve of their son’s enlisting, nor of his marriage to an irish american woman (241). salisbury vividly remembers how wessels remained a thorny cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 100 “presence… in my parents’ quarrels” (“the quiet” 25). not without empathy, salisbury depicts his own father’s overcompensation for alterity through the images of the family barn and charley’s clothing: “i’d see our barn, the only white one among the dozens of red—symbolic, maybe, of a southern-born mixed-blood indian man’s urge to be of the dominant race, the same urge that moved him to wear his one suit, a white shirt, and a necktie when going to town” (27). the english surname did not tend to serve the family well, we are told: “our english name was not advantageous, whether our german american neighbors knew we were indian or did not” (70). indeed, in a tavern frequented by local german americans, charley’s “urge to be of the dominant race” put him in jeopardy in a brawl: “during world war ii a group of drunks threatened my father in a tavern, not as an indian but as ‘a goddamned englishman.’ an older german american present restrained the would-be attackers by telling them, ‘charley is a good englishman’” (70). the motif of aggressive and discriminatory german behavior, balanced by broadminded interactions of good will, accompanies the reader of ralph salisbury’s autobiography and stories. teenage ralph learned to believe that physical fighting was necessary for survival as he “grew to manhood in a community like most, where men have to fight to get respect” (154). salisbury was deeply influenced by what he called “the lynchmob anger that the entire country had been feeling since a deluge of propaganda against japan, germany, and italy had begun” (125). his half-brother bob fought the nazis in north africa and was a maltreated prisoner of war in italy, and salisbury recalls how he “had wanted to kill his captors, the germans, who’d been so evil in the official history books of twelve years of state schools” (175). newspapers and movies aroused his desire to be a warrior when he “experienced orgasmresembling release in seeing british spitfires’ gun-camera film of nazi bombers bursting into flames in newsreels” (125). at age sixteen he painstakingly attempted to build a fighter-glider out of strips of sawed-up boards, binder twine, and farm transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 101 fertilizer bags in a material “labor of abstract hate” (126). in his later years, salisbury’s dream of flying a glider was finally fulfilled, but his memorable flight in “a graceful, german-designed glider” was tempered by his stark recollection of the war dead: “i remember that my cousin stacy was killed while piloting a glider carrying troops in the invasion of normandy” (128). salisbury’s adult explanation of the rise of hitler, near the beginning of his memoirs, places fault mainly on institutionalized propaganda: from the depths of humiliation and near-starvation imposed by england, france, and the united states, germany, united under hitler’s dictatorship, emerged prosperous and proud. ceaselessly propagandized, the german population felt moved to be led on and on, to greater victories, greater glory. (13) the mature autobiographer sees through the web of propaganda—on both sides of the atlantic and pacific—to the machinations driven by greed for material and territorial wealth, by stereotypical hate and misdirected patriotism, encouraging the “craziness of nations, which were daily slaughtering thousands of our own kind in war” (126). when did the fiery young ralph, would-be “cherokee warrior, movie dream hero” (134), grow disillusioned with the “propagandization” that demonized the german people? salisbury carefully records the ethnic discrimination he personally experienced or observed after enlisting at age seventeen in the army air corps. his not-immediately-identifiable ethnicity (or that of the recruits he befriended) led to verbal abuse attack as “spik,” “hispanic,” or “dago” (141; 172; 151). ralph buddied up with jewish trainees, “on the basis of… some vaguely sensed community of pariah-hood,” and was mistaken for a jew (148). the irony of preparing to fight in europe “to save… jews from nazis” but having to “watch jew-hating training sergeants mistreat [american] jews” did not escape the young trainee (124). there had only been one black family in salisbury’s home territory, and he was incensed cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 102 by the segregation and blatant discrimination directed toward african american soldiers in training camp (86). the many dangerous training missions the air corps recruits were sent on, made all the more hazardous by faulty equipment, poor preparation, and infelicitous weather conditions, gave salisbury a sense of perilous combat. as he told interviewer bo schöler in 1985, “i never engaged in bombing an enemy city, but a lot of my comrades died in airplane disasters… probably a hundred that we lost during the two-and-a-half years i was flying” (schöler 28). when specialist gunner salisbury heard about a training plane needlessly bombing cattle and a navajo home, ostensibly to have a live target (150), he meditated on stages and incidents in the genocide of native americans by the settler colonials and their military, a genocide resulting in “eight million native americans [being] wiped out”—even more than the approximately six million jews murdered in the holocaust by the german nazi organization (150). salisbury did not actually serve abroad in world war ii, since his orders for deployment to europe were changed to retraining with the large b-29 superfortress for bombing duty in the far east. the war ended before this training was completed. corporal salisbury firmly decided not to serve in active duty for any war, and later encouraged his son brian to register as a conscientious objector during the vietnam war (75). ralph salisbury’s professional career as a college teacher and university professor was strongly linked to post-war germany. his first trip to germany took place in 1967 following a sabbatical year in london from the university of oregon. he purchased a vw bus in hannover, traveled to berlin and later munich (email from ingrid wendt, 23 jan. 2019), and must have been keenly aware of the burgeoning of german student demonstrations for peace in vietnam and a restructuring of university and social systems. at any rate, salisbury’s experience at checkpoint charlie between west berlin and communist east berlin showed him the “workings of a police state” (so far, so good 209), when two men—unwisely transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 103 arrogant in their interaction with a border guard—were detained behind closed doors. salisbury and his four companions, one a former colleague from drake college in des moines, iowa, continued on to a museum in east berlin to see greek artworks that were as displaced as prisoners of war or migrants, “looted from greece by germany, then looted from germany by russians, and then ransomed back by the east german government” (201). salisbury surmises that the southern american accent of one of his companions attracted the negative attention of four young men, who menaced the five tourists, musing that perhaps the accent “had reminded the four of lyndon johnson’s voice talking about his invasion of vietnam, or perhaps they had had some personal experience with southern-born american soldiers before the russians took over” (210). ironically, the nearby presence of uniformed museum guards discouraged the communist harassers, and the danger became one more tale in the dense network of threats—from his father, from intruders on the farm, from school bullies, from officers, from suspicious strangers— that salisbury faces down in his autobiography. a second encounter at checkpoint charlie in 1983, during a semester as a senior fulbright fellow at goethe university in frankfurt, reinforced this pattern of stern and helpful guards in east berlin and is embedded in an important accolade of thanks to all who have assisted him during his long lifetime. a strict east german border guard noticed that salisbury had not signed his passport: jet-lagged and exhausted after weeks of little sleep while i’d worked to read the final projects of the young poets and fiction writers who were my students, i stupidly reached into my coat for a pen and simultaneously reached to take the passport back from the east german border guard… at the tense east german border, where many had been killed while trying to escape to the west, i escaped trouble because a kindly young soldier – as young as the young soldier i’d once been – took a worried look at his officer, then far down the line of americans being detained, and told me to wait and sign the cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 104 passport after i was safely back on the bus. i never studied german and can only converse haltingly and ungrammatically, but i understood the young guard as well as i’ve understood any poem i’ve memorized. the german word for “thanks” i knew but could not say, for fear of getting the guard and myself in trouble. (183) salisbury returned to germany repeatedly. in addition to a eurail trip with his wife ingrid wendt and their four-year-old daughter march-august in 1976, salisbury stayed in later years in munich and murnau, tracing with his wife her family history in hamburg, cologne, wiesbaden, and the stuttgart area (email from ingrid wendt, 17 jan. 2019). moreover, salisbury taught classes on contemporary native american literature at goethe university while ingrid wendt served as a fulbright fellow there between 1994 and 1995, accompanying her to poetry-teaching workshops in ten german cities. furthermore, salisbury taught literature and history courses at the university of freiburg in 2004 and 2005 as a fulbright specialist. immersed in an extensive network of german colleagues and close friends, the strong husband and wife team made at least six other trips to europe between 1983 and 2005 to take part in international conferences and to travel in germany and beyond. there can be no doubt that ralph salisbury’s transnational experiences in germany were intensely important personally, academically, and literarily.3 precariousness and cherokee modern the concept of precariousness has taken on particular importance in current cultural discourse, not least through judith butler’s post-9/11 collection of philosophicalpolitical essays precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence (2004). her stance against “corporations that monopolize control over the mainstream media with strong interests in maintaining us military power” (147), consonant with salisbury’s, leads her to inquire what makes some human lives “ungrievable” (xiv and passim). an alterity of pernicious discrimination, butler asserts, plays a key role transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 105 in the distinction between humanization and dehumanization of war dead, whereby “the differential allocation of grievability that decides what kind of subject is and must be grieved, and which kind of subject must not, operates to produce and maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of who is normatively human” (xv). butler claims that this deep form of exclusion stabilizes a world order that supports a hierarchy of injurious othering in spheres of nationalism, ethnicity, gender, and class. butler recommends emmanuel levinas’ visionary call for an awareness of a salutary kind of alterity, of “peace as awakeness to the precariousness of the other” (butler 134, my emphasis).4 i maintain that salisbury’s statements and literature provide evidence that he would agree with this philosophical application of precariousness and alterity, with its agenda of moving toward political peace in postmodern times. salisbury recounts his own “appalled” reaction to 9/11 in terms of the german civilian war-other, with both sides thoroughly “propagandized”: “i watched the tv coverage of the airplane’s gracefully turning to complete its suicide mission, and i was appalled, remembering my propagandized eighteen-year-old’s training to inflict massacre on the propagandized populations of german cities in world war two” (mackay 15). two further recent applications of precariousness—with respect to isolation and placelessness—arise from precepts of modernism and its “riskiness” (to be discussed below) and have relevance for salisbury’s life-writing and fiction. in a 2018 volume titled new perspectives on community and the modernist subject, the editors seek to refocus the traditional image of the “solipsistic and isolated modernist individual” by placing its interiority into contexts of “communal affiliations,” many of which are “non-conventional and non-essentialised external forms” (rodríguez-salas et al. 1-2). this approach would revalue the protagonist’s tentative and “precarious” connections to others and “show that many modernist narratives are built on the tension between organic, traditional and essential communities, on the one hand, and precarious, intermittent and non-identitary cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 106 ones, on the other” (7). for salisbury, biographically, this could perhaps offer context for an interview statement that speaks to a stronger “non-conventional” affiliation to germans than to an essentialized form of “pan-nativeness”; “i suppose,” salisbury reflects, “that maybe i might have more in common with a german than i would have with a navajo in many important cases” (schöler 32). a fictional example of the “tension” in established vs. precarious communities will follow in the discussion of “the indian who bombed berlin.” in postcolonial modernism and the picaresque novel: literatures of precarity (2017) jens elze links the traditional wandering picaro figures with the economically jeopardized underclass members of what he labels “postcolonial modernist” narratives. both groups “combine an existential precariousness with an economic precarity that is condensed in the picaresque’s traditional propensity to ‘atopy’ – a social placelessness in terms of genealogy and aspiration – that will serve as its main category of differentiation from the bildungsroman” (25). as a native postcolonial traveler and unsettler preferring “non-conventional” affiliations, salisbury could qualify as a picaro in his life-writing; but his insistence on the wholeness of his identity—as “a cherokee-shawnee-english-irish person, not part this part that but all everything, whatever it is” (so far, so good 242)—alongside his website’s statement of his transnational bildung, where he explains “i have lived and worked among the intelligentsia of many nations” (“ralph salisbury”), counters elze’s “placelessness in terms of genealogy and aspiration.” salisbury is thus able to, as it were, have the precarious modernist cake and eat it too. salisbury recorded his admiration of numerous modernist authors, citing his teacher robert lowell’s strong influence (schöler 31), calling ernest hemingway his “hero” (so far, so good 190), quoting robert frost’s advice (184), praising flannery o’connor’s late modernist art (185), and evoking william faulkner with whom he shared the inclination to “hunt and peck,” meaning writing slowly to encourage thinking (186), as well as the dubious honor of being called “nigger lover” by local transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 107 southern citizens (applied to salisbury living in bryan, texas, and teaching at texas a&m university 192). salisbury also attests to weighty bonding with faulkner through the latter’s valuation of native americans: “it was a white writer, william faulkner, who first gave me a sense of the sanctity of my indian heritage. faulkner’s character sam fathers, ‘son of a slave and a chickasaw chief,’ became my spirit father” (“the quiet” 25).5 furthermore, salisbury sees a bond between the 20thcentury southern modernists and native american authors. “like faulkner and other southern white writers, native american writers write from a conquered people’s awareness” (“the quiet” 34), creating innovative literature that challenges received conventions and “since the united states’ shattering defeat by tiny vietnam” takes on “a new importance to contemporary readers” (34). a well-known scholar of modernism, michael levenson, stresses the risk (6, my emphasis) taken by daring authors following what has come to be considered the modernist credo of “make it new” in their literary art. a number of them faced the physical perils of war, and all of them the philosophical terrors of alienation, cultural fragmentation, and a profound sense of loss. we could venture to say, though, that few, if any, of the anglo-american canonical modernists were confronted with the task of subsistence-level survival, combatting poverty, malnutrition, and violence (in the family, with peers, and in the community) to the extent that salisbury was. however, the current transnational, even global, perspective on modernism admits many authors from disadvantaged colonial backgrounds—and this could include native americans—who indeed battled with such threats. in an encyclopedic article on indigenous modernism, the university of oregon scholar kirby brown convincingly demonstrates that the expanded “new modernist studies has an ‘indian problem,’” largely neglecting native american authors (289). he resoundingly sets the record straight, presenting significant native american writers of various genres and media, male and female, based in precarious “indian country” (294) or urban centers, whose work lies in the high cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 108 modernism period of 1910s to 1930s, as well as recent critical publications that successfully offer new contexts for native american literature within american modernism. on the temporal axis, salisbury’s publications move beyond the core period of modernism, placed as 1890-1945 by douglas mao and rebecca l. walkowitz in their influential article “the new modernist studies” (738). that being said, mark wollaeger, the editor of the oxford handbook of global modernisms (2012), would assure us that these dates are not exclusive, particularly in postcolonial domains: “it is the persistence of conceptual affinities and various formal preoccupations that makes the identification of instances of modernism outside the temporal core both possible and increasingly uncontroversial” (13). nevertheless, despite certain “conceptual affinities and various formal preoccupations” of global family resemblance that salisbury might share with the modernists, his approach does not fit entirely comfortably with theirs. perhaps a decisive note of difference to the modernists in ralph salisbury’s adult life and work lies in his adoption of agency. biographically, he chose not to serve in the korean war; he did not let threats of lynching deter him from teaching racial equality at texas a&m university; he unswervingly and vociferously criticized the hegemonic and capitalist support of military ventures; he sought to travel and work in former enemy countries such as germany and italy; he deliberately proclaimed his hybrid native ancestry in contrast to his father, who attempted to pass as anglo-european in his iowa family and community. even as an adolescent, salisbury valiantly chose agency at an early pivotal point in his maturation, successfully challenging his father to stop shooting at his mother: i did something. i tried to change my life, to change the deadly fear of submitting to overwhelming violence, overwhelming force. today i do not expect immediate results, in the world around me or in the formation of what people call my character, but by act or by word i try to change what seems to need changing. (94) transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 109 through his proactive espousal of multifaceted risk in reality and in fiction, salisbury possibly moves beyond a modernist weltanschauung of shoring fragments against the ruins6 to a stance that can broadly be labeled—as in the shorthand title of this volume—“modern,” specifically “cherokee modern”: experimental, hazardous, and audaciously ethical. translating biography to literature: tall tale strategies ralph salisbury’s autobiography returns again and again to the precarious parameters of his childhood, to chronic hunger, illness, dangers in nature and from intruders, near drowning, hostile peers, drive-by shooting, “my parents’ undeclared war” (163), and above all violence perpetrated by his unpredictable father charley. the traumatic memory of his intoxicated father shooting a rough circle in the floor around four-year-old ralph’s bare feet becomes a meme in so far, so good that is repeated and woven into many descriptions of jeopardy in war, travel, or professional life. the extended meme is described in full when ralph has a further threshold experience of initiation into adulthood. he begs his father to let him fend off a potentially dangerous intruder in the family barn loft with charley’s pistol: my father regarded his middle son in the glow of a coon-hunting lantern. “all right,” he decided, a father whose own father had deserted him. “all right. you take my pistol.” the pistol with which he’d defended himself and defended our family several times. the pistol with which he’d shot a ring around my bare feet when i was three or four. the pistol that had sent bullet after bullet past my head when i was ten and moving, though terrified, to plead for my mother’s life… [t]hat time [in the dark barn] was a rite of passage into manhood. i’d measured up and won the respect of a father who’d often made me feel unvalued, unloved… three years later an atomic bomb turned my dreams of warrior manhood into shadows burned onto a concrete wall. (137-8) cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 110 the fear and emotional pain of his father’s pistol attack on the barefooted child is foregrounded in a number of salisbury’s short stories, but one story, “the chicken affliction and a man of god,” chooses the genre of the tall tale to assuage this fear and pain, not least through the support of the german american mother of the focalizer boy, juke. a sequence of stories in the indian who bombed berlin collection features the protagonist brothers juke (jukiah) and parm, whose names derive from salisbury’s cherokee shawnee relatives two generations older (cf. so far, so good 40). the youths’ experiences, however, are fictionalized versions of ralph’s and his brothers’.7 salisbury’s mother was actually irish american, so why did he choose to change the ethnicity of the stalwart, long-suffering mother in the juke and parm story-sequence? one explanation lies in the contrast and comparison present in “the chicken affliction” between the father’s inebriated reliving of his world war i confrontations with german soldiers and his struggles with his german american wife, who is in solidarity with “most of their [community and its god]” (139). he returns home from his drinking sprees “cussing and screaming and shooting at germans as dead as doornails already and not attacking anybody for years” (137), only to face his wife’s calling up a religious “force a whole lot stronger than hitler and all those other dead nazis put together” (137). salisbury remembers his biographical father as a talented tale-teller and reconstitutes of some of his father’s stories in so far, so good. charley, born and raised in the “hills of kentucky” (115), is voiced in dialect, relating family tales of danger with outrageous imagery in hyperbolic action or contests. charley’s account of his son ralph being struck by lightning and then running from further strikes provides a cogent example: “lightning left us as blind as hogs in the whiskey mash a minute or two, and then we seen ralph jump up from where he’s been throwed. he ran hell bent for election, sloshed through the slough, ran up to the next fence, backed off transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 111 a dozen steps or so, and ran again and slid like one of them baseyball players on his belly through mud under the bottom barbed wire.” (266) intertextually, the narrative voice in “the chicken affliction” could be heard as a third-person overlaying of father charley’s recounting from so far, so good with that of the son juke’s, the quasi-fictional observer-participant. the structure of the tall tale generally encompasses entangling contests between con men, often between braggarts and understaters. the hyperbolic rhetoric of the braggart usually leads to his being overtopped by the superiority of the understating eiron, with the boasting alazon ending as a fool.8 in “the chicken affliction,” juke’s religiously teetotaling mother sets out to trick his alcoholic, nonbelieving, and choleric father (the tellingly named dirk dark cloud) into sobriety by having the local priest, father o’mara, arrive at their home sunday noon when dirk will be returning from a drunken saturday night out. ma, at least temporarily, loses this framing contest when her husband—mostly silent except for curses— ignores the priest’s elaborate remonstrations and fires a pistol around the priest’s feet: “dust spurted up between shiny shoes, and spurted again and again as the old man skipped backward” (143). the immediate competition between father o’mara and dark cloud is given image by their respective cars. the former’s is a gleaming lincoln sedan with “immaculate paint,” and the latter’s a “fender-frayed” pick-up truck covered with “mud, dust, and rust” (138-40). the contest is temporarily decided by the priest’s foolishness. he up-ends dirk’s whisky bottle over the “ex-oilbarrel trash burner,” starting a fire that scorches his “white hair, combed forward over a receding hairline” but leaves his “eyebrows still as white as little arcs of springtime’s last snow” (142). the hellfire with which father o’mara threatened the “once-a-month drunken indian” seems to attack and ridicule the priest himself (141).9 in order to present the small boy juke as witness and indirect reporter of the action, salisbury cleverly depicts him as rooted in place by the contests unfolding, cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 112 unable to run away even though his mother persistently warns him to vanish: “don’t let [your father] see you” (139). the narrative voice interprets this sentence for the reader in a psychological reading of dirk’s native precariousness; we are told that juke’s ma means “don’t let your dark eyes and skin remind your crazy drunk dad of his own half-breed generation’s hunger and cold” (139). the tall-tale humor is radically undercut by the nine-year-old boy’s fear when he does finally move, attracting his irate father’s attention. juke dodges the bullets zooming past him and heads to the hills behind the farmhouse. the narrative voice describes his flight, not without bitter irony, in terms of the cliché of the doomed native american: “not yet ten, and not ready to accept his mortal destiny, juke, a vanishing american, ran, hoping to vanish temporarily and escape permanently vanishing” (144). the thunder that has accompanied the shots gives way to a hailstorm, and juke hovers among bushes in the freezing dark while comic restitution, engineered by ma, plays out in the farmhouse kitchen. dirk, now sobering up, father o’mara, and the sheriff (whom ma has summoned) companionably eat several helpings of ma’s stewed chicken and dirk’s favorite dish, cherokee dumplings. shut out of this warm resolution, the son re-experiences his father’s “half-breed generation’s hunger and cold,” continuing the inherited pain and precariousness. salisbury’s application of the stereotypes and dynamics of the tall tale invites a juxtaposition with some of southern modernist william faulkner’s stories. in them the device of boy narrator/participant is frequently used with moving and ironic effect to reflect the imperfections and (comic) struggles of the adult world. in “shingles for the lord,” the first-person narrator remains loyal to his father even as “pap” bargains away his son’s beloved dog in a complicated effort to overtop his neighbors and ends up accidentally setting the local church on fire. the boy’s “maw” knows how to take care of, dust off without judgment, and finally boost up her foolishly stubborn husband and is the understating winner of the subtle contest between her and pap. with regard to hyperbolic imagery, father o’mara’s transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 113 eyebrows “as white as little arcs of springtime’s last snow” in salisbury’s story intertextually compete with those of formidable minister whitfield in “shingles for the lord” whose eyebrows look “like a big, iron-gray caterpillar lying along the edge of a cliff” (41). in salisbury’s “chicken affliction,” ma’s chickens provide a cartoon-like sequence; their coop destroyed when dirk drunkenly drives into it, they constantly fly into the pick-up through one open window and are hurled out the other by dirk, accompanied by both his cursing them as “raven mockers, the cherokee witch-birds of his nightmares” (140) and his attempts to free himself from a growing pile of “smothering feathers” (139). the swirling, dangerous ponies of faulkner’s “spotted horses” provide moments of similar comic-book imagery in the dialect of tale-teller ratliff’s account: then [the texas horse trader] jumped into the [cluster of cornered horses], and we couldn’t see nothing for a while because of the dust. it was a big cloud of it, and them blare-eyed, spotted things swoaring out it twenty foot to a jump, in forty directions without counting up… then it was all dust again, and we couldn’t see nothing but spotted hide and mane, and that ere texas man’s boot-heels like a couple of walnuts on two strings, and after a while that two-gallon hat come sailing out like a fat old hen crossing a fence. (1689) the texas horseman and his partner, the master-trader flem snopes, hoodwink nearly the entire hamlet of frenchman’s bend into purchasing these violent horses, becoming, as narrative touchstone mrs. littlejohn proclaims, “them fool men” (174). the horse-swapping humor is undermined by debilitating injuries and the searing financial depletion to the poorest in the community, who, like poverty-stricken henry armstid, have succumbed to their own greed and pride in wanting to take advantage of a bold bargain. the modernist sense of loss and human frailty emerges in most of faulkner’s stories, even his tall tales. in salisbury’s “chicken affliction,” german-descended ma’s daily recurring struggle, “ministering to her cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 114 war-damaged husband and to her war-damaged children” (145), implies less a sense of loss than a possibly more postmodern view on salisbury’s part. only critique of, or change in, the master narratives of hegemonic contestation that lead to the recurrence of brutalizing war on (inter)national levels can allow harmony and respect within the family. stereotypes and intertwining indian wars on german roads in an adjustment of the tall-tale stereotypes and strategies of “the chicken affliction,” the short story “silver mercedes and big blue buick: an indian war” places the focalizing third-person narrator on tour in germany. there, we find him fighting a gender battle with his native-descended wife encoded within a contest between a sleek mercedes and an outsized american buick on the narrow roads of the bavarian countryside (the detailed description of the traffic, with bicycles crisscrossing among the high-speed cars, attests, in my judgment, to salisbury’s first-hand experience of driving on german roads.) mac mackenzie, the frustrated businessman from new ulm, iowa, and his wife dorotea weiss, who is of sioux and german descent, have traveled to germany at dorotea’s behest to improve their unsatisfactory marriage. she has always denied her sioux heritage, favoring the german side, but mac seems only to have been interested in her past beautycontest victories and her role in furthering the image of his business ventures, not her choice between “crazy horse or crazy hitler” affiliations (44). he worries constantly about her graying hair and growing lack of attention to her clothing, and he insults her repeatedly with the epithet “crazy bitch” (49, 52). mac would easily fit into one of sinclair lewis’ modernist, satirical novels of small-town, small-minded america, despite his international experience and his potential familiarity with indigenous communities. the superficiality of his traveling is revealed when he spends far more time ogling german waitresses, “as pretty as cheerleaders,” (45) at various locations than he does grasping concentration-camp exhibits when he transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 115 casually passes through dachau “for a quick looksee” (45). in fact, he views flourishing germany and the arrogant mercedes drivers as proof that world war ii was “no more than a fraternity-party scuffle, everything was hunky-dory again” (50). the contest in womanizing, materialistic mac’s failed marital relationship is barely satirically humorous, however. neither is his recollection of his wartime experiences killing enemy soldiers in germany, where he entered as “a conqueror… with cannon, and with prick… the same way his english great-great-greatgrandpappy had entered the new world” (42-3). his driving competition with the skilled and enviable mercedes driver—the german man’s arm firmly placed around an attractive young female passenger—lends itself more readily to modern tall-tale humor, though not without imagery of threat. the description of the “silver-haired” driver hyperbolically combines war and new-wealth imagery, his “sunglasses as round as double-barreled shotgun muzzles aimed forward” (50). the escalation of tension between the traveling couple in hemingway’s short story “hills like white elephants” can be found in salisbury’s “silver mercedes and big blue buick” too, but rather than the minimalist dialogue in hemingway’s story that revolves around the unspoken secret of the (dark-skinned?) woman jig’s socially transgressive pregnancy, the exchanges between mac and dorotea grow increasingly explicitly insulting and verbally cruel, especially with regard to the reasons for their childless marriage. a secret is suddenly aired: in the moment the buick crashes into a bike-rider, tea confesses to mac that she is terminally ill, showing in her rhetoric of stereotypes that she has seen through his social façade of decency: “i’m not young anymore,” she sobbed against his chest. “my looks were all you cared about, and nine months, six, five, then you’ll be free of your old worn-out squaw, free to have all the sex you want, and it won’t matter one iota. to you i’m already as dead as my babies are.” (51) cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 116 in a split-second flash, mac continues to spin out the pejorative stereotypes, imagining his life following her death and ascent to a “german-lutheran heaven,” including insurance money, remarriage to a youthful woman, a son who is a “100 percent white american boy,” and relief “not to have to go on pampering tea through old age, his hard-earned home her personal indian reservation.” he would not marry “another not-quite-vanished vanishing american – all that bottled-up hate about stuff so long ago nobody could remember” (52). with an ironic twist, tea manages to upstage him, ending his daydreams as she embraces her double heritage and arouses the german passersby’s sympathy in a semi-frieze. “the girl [the bike rider hit by the buick] put her head on tea’s shoulder,” salisbury writes, “and tea, her dark face all but buried in blond hair, began to sob” (52). the witnessing germans donate money to replace the girl’s ruined bike. in the end, “crying like a goddamned fool” (52), mac realizes he is overtopped—in the driving contest, his relationship, and in his interaction with germans. thus a complex fourfold-intertwining “indian war,” as the title of the story has it, evolves: buick vs. mercedes; the marital battle including the fight over control of the buick, which results in the accident with the bike rider; americans vs. germans in world war ii and the present; and the ethnic and physical struggle within dorotea. testing affiliations: “the indian who bombed berlin” in the short story “the indian who bombed berlin,” salisbury deviously and powerfully weaves components of his biography—teaching students at german universities in numerous time periods, for example—within a fictionalized past of fire-bombing cities in germany during world war ii; an imagined diegetic present of becoming a victim during a rough demonstration by arabic youths in the berlin metropolis during the (anti-american) protest years of the late 60s or 70s; plus a narratorial flash-forward to the 90s, after the soviet defeat in afghanistan. the firsttransmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 117 person narrator’s pleasure in fulfilling the terms of his academic grant “to further international understanding” (202) by teaching german university students “who were admirably fluent in english” and “most of them strongly egalitarian” (202-3), as well as his enjoyment in acknowledging the ancient cobblestones and fortress walls (cf. 204, 206), alternate with memories of his having viewed german cities at a cold distance, from maps or bomber planes as “puzzle patterns of tiny city blocks glimpsed through clouds, and through clouds of smoke” (202). during the war he had not contemplated “the devastation of cathedrals and homes, not only in big prime target cities but in small secondary targets” (202). above all he had failed to consider the “men’s, women’s, and children’s lives” that he extinguished as a bombardier (206).10 the moment the demonstrating “near east and middle east” students throw him from a historic bridge, “which i and other bombardiers had failed to destroy,” the narrator experiences an ironic déjà vu, “for the second time in my life flying above the bridge – this time not thousands of feet above, but just enough to clear the low stone railing” (205). ethnic critique that emerges in the story is directed toward the american and english soldiers rather than the german or arabic/turkish-speaking students. the small-statured narrator must endure racist epithets such as “tonto” and “red nigger” dished out by his larger pilot, both soldiers being “yanks” in britain during the war years (201). particularly perfidious is a british colleague, a bomber during the war, at the german university, who feels that the narrator has wrested the former’s “writing for stage and screen” class away from him. the british playwright threatens to report the narrator for his “redskin wog’s subversive blather” (203), including the “redskin” narrator’s expression of “doubt that hitler could have gained power had not germans been suffering from enemy-imposed hunger” (203). the british adversary apparently deliberately betrays the narrator as american to the angry “dark-skinned demonstrators” (204) on the streets while the narrator is walking on his way to teach. in his university classes, the native narrator had cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 118 believed that he “got on especially well with the sons and daughters of turkish workers, who’d been recruited for jobs in germany but not been given german citizenship” (204), but in the mob-like demonstration his attempt to show solidarity, shouting “wogs of the world unite!” (205), fails miserably. the professor’s established community with his students of all ethnicities does not extend to the exceedingly precarious one with the dark-hued demonstrators. he envisions his father’s “brown face” several times during the ordeal, but this connection also fails to lend him an effective strategy. even his native “war whoop” (205) does not help in the grotesque escalation, which is saved from tragedy by the narrator’s self-ironic view of his predicament, ending with him “lecturing, barefoot,” muddied but uninjured, in his classroom “that had housed american occupation troops” (206). for the demonstrators, however, he remained a “satan american! murderer!” (204). in the epilogue to the story the narrator admits that this epithet of “murderer” does indeed fit him. the events have at least furthered his own international and self-understanding. he evokes ethical agency as a possible route for restorative justice, observing “i can try to make my own life, and those of others, somewhat better – can still try to change injustice to justice, still try to keep our species’ suicidal tantrums from rendering us all extinct” (206). blue ravens: stereotypes as weapons in wartime precariousness the trickster tactics of the narrator of “the indian who bombed berlin”—his shout of solidarity as a “wog,” his war whoop—prove to be of no avail in a crisis situation. this is different in gerald vizenor’s blue ravens, wherein the anishinaabe protagonist-brothers, writer basile beaulieu and painter of blue ravens aloysius beaulieu, find themselves in brutal trench warfare in the europe of world war i. vizenor draws on his own relatives’ participation in overseas combat, and his employment of trickster tropes arises, we can presume, more from the rich anishinaabe trickster tradition which segues productively into postmodern transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 119 literature, than the con-man topos of the tall tale, despite morphological connections of structure. on a meta-level, as vizenor explains elsewhere, “the trickster is agonistic imagination and aggressive liberation, a ‘doing’ in narrative points of view and outside the imposed structures” (“a postmodern introduction” 13); like the postmodern author, the trickster “animates… human adaptation in a comic language game” (14). both the author of blue ravens and the clever beaulieu brothers use “agonistic imagination” and “adaptation” in the narratives they activate of natives involved in a war between hegemonic powers. the survival tricksterism practiced by basile and aloysius in their combat with german soldiers is particularly successful because it also relies on a very different and specific source of stereotype: the extremely popular “indian” adventure novels of karl may, published in the 1890s in german and read avidly by successive generations of german youth. may claimed to have experienced the encounters with native americans that he wrote about, but in fact the con-man author drew on questionable secondary sources and his own fantasy to create his ferocious scalpers and noble savages. winnetou is the best known of the latter, loyally protecting his brave german bloodbrother, old shatterhand, from all native enemies. birgit däwes and kristina baudemann have recently published a special-issue volume, addressed principally to teachers in europe, that attests to the continued prevalence of the stark karl may stereotypes among german pupils’ images of native americans.11 in wartime scenes in blue ravens, sergeant sorek forces the white earth anishinaabe brothers into a clever instrumentalization of stereotypical “indian” roles. the sergeant, who might have watched the earliest films in the emerging western genre, “was not romantic but he was convinced that stealth was in our blood, a native trait and natural sense of direction even on a dark and rainy night in a strange place” (121), and, in a kind of double finesse, the brothers’ strategies even fulfill this stereotype. worthy of a native trickster tale, their “first night of stealth and surveillance in the rain was solemn but only conceivable in a shaman cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 120 story” (121). they use assumed native skills of establishing oneness with nature to detect alien movements and they locomote like animals: “aloysius lowered his head and moved in the smart spirit of an animal, sudden leaps, lurches, and slithers on his belly… native hunters moved in the same way” (130-31). aloysius carefully applies warpaint, which in the native artist’s ironic protest becomes a “comic mask” (129) with the shapes and colors of a chagall work. ferociously wielding his pocket knife, the gentle painter aloysius exploits the stereotype of the savage native warrior to overcome, capture, and, during mission after “risky” mission (121 and passim), even kill young german “boche” (121) soldiers frozen into fear by the anticipation of being painfully tortured or summarily scalped, no doubt remembering the gruesome cruelty of the wild comanche warriors in karl may’s books. the brothers are extraordinarily successful scouts after their first mission in which they were captured by two even cleverer oneida scouts from a different squadron. the dark humor of the brothers’ grotesque-ironic situation is overshadowed by the deadliness of the hands-on contact of world war i: “we were native scouts in a nightmare, a curse of war duty to capture the enemy” (130). the brothers enter germany in the army of occupation, quartered on the 5,000-year-old defensive site of the ehrenbreitstein fortress on the rhine and mosel rivers overlooking koblenz, originally a roman city, one of the oldest in germany. they travel several times by steamboat down the rhine river, a classic tourist activity, but the sight of starving civilians continues the brothers’ experience of the horrors of war: “yes, we had survived the war as scouts and brothers, a painter and a writer, but were unnerved by the wounds and agonies of peace” (143-4). the treaty of versailles “became a tortured tongue of grievous reparations and vengeance” (144), a seed for later renewed war. the brothers have no stereotypes or paradigms to mediate the self-destruction of an ancient culture and its contemporary descendants; the euro-american settler society’s genocidal attempts to destroy native peoples and cultures through violence and false treaties could be transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 121 viewed as an inverse precedent. the anishinaabe brothers rely instead, moderniststyle, on their renewing, visionary art of native presence. after their time in the army of occupation in koblenz, basile tells us, “my literary scenes were more fierce and poetic, and the images my brother created were more intense and visionary” (144). back home, however, they discover that their war efforts, insights, and art have not changed their status with regard to sovereignty, as “the native soldiers who were once the military occupiers had returned to the ironic situation of the occupied on a federal reservation” (175).12 the anishinaabe brothers’ empathy for the occupied in post-world war i germany echoes that of the native narrator in salisbury’s “the indian who bombed berlin,” who maintains that (among other factors) the germans’ “suffering from enemy-imposed hunger” (203) led them to invest in hitler’s promises of economic success. in “the chicken affliction,” dirk dark cloud’s hyperbolic “cussing and screaming and shooting at germans as dead as doornails already” (137) masks the literal and emotional “hunger and cold” (139) of his “war-damaged” native self (145). thus, to use a slantedly appropriate military metaphor, vizenor and salisbury ‘join forces’ in imagining a precarious, “non-identitary” (rodríguez-salas et al. 7) community of those wounded by war and hegemonic ambitions in both the “old” and “new” worlds. the berlin blues: unsettling farce drew hayden taylor, who calls himself a “blue-eyed ojibway,”13 envisions, as a farce, the 21st-century recolonization of a first nations anishinaabe/ojibway community by german entrepreneurs deeply influenced by their adolescent reading of gripping karl may novels. in his comic play the berlin blues, he depicts efficient but naïve and humorless germans, birgit heinze and reinhart reinholz, as wannabe“indians,” economically and ideologically taking over the (fictive) otter lake reserve in canada with the plan of establishing “ojibwayworld,” an anishinaabe cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 122 theme park. the residents of the reserve have far less knowledge of their own culture and indigenous language than the germans. birgit and reinhart speak ojibway phrases, for instance, but the natives cannot follow them. reinhart points out that “there is no word in ojibway for goodbye. or for hell,” and otter lake resident trailer noah can only show astonishment: “really! i didn’t know that. (to [band administrator] donalda) did you know that?” (16-17). most of the residents are impressed by the germans’ knowledge and know-how, and willingly participate in setting up a giant laser dreamcatcher, a white water kayak run, crazy horse pony rides, bumper canoes, a facsimile of the rocky mountains, sitting bull steak house, and “dances with wolves – the musical,” complete with a large herd of imported buffalo on stage. no german stereotypes are omitted, it seems. when the buffalo stampede and destroy the theme park before the grand opening, birgit calmly consults her “aboriginal theme park emergency manual” (83). taylor stresses both the “delight” and the “outrage” that his play has evoked, “showcas[ing] contemporary stereotypes of first nations people, including a fair number of these that originate from indigenous communities themselves, to the often outraged delight of… international audiences” (“drew hayden taylor”). the irony in his prefatory acknowledgements in the printed play suggests that his hilarious comedy has outgroup barbs directed at germans: “and i suppose i should thank all the german people out there who have a special place in their hearts for winnitou [sic] and all other native related things. this is my special homage to you” (berlin blues 5). taylor has also recently created a documentary film called “searching for winnetou” (cbc, january 2018), which he describes on his website as “drew’s quest to understand the roots of the german obsession with native north americans” (“drew hayden taylor”). elsewhere, hartmut lutz has coined the term “indianthusiasm” to describe this undifferentiated and thus deleterious german obsession (23). transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 123 we could read the play as a tall-tale contest between two sets of ethnic stereotypes, german vs. native. but that would oversimplify the way the german characters adopt or discuss in their own stereotypical manner what they consider traditional native customs, and the way that the natives joke about (and also activate) those same clichés. when birgit first meets long unemployed trailer, who has lived in a gritty trailer for decades, she asks him, “trailer… hmm, is your name indicative of your aboriginal heritage? possibly because you are such a good tracker and trailer of deer and other such animals? that is why you are called trailer?” trailer responds deviously, “yeah. that’s me” (16). the line between stereotype and real-world condition is blurred: the germans offer to build a wellness center to counter the unhealthy obesity of many reserve dwellers, for instance, and this is broadly welcomed by the characters in the play, even angie. a native woman who grew up in a city and has only lived on the reserve for five years (and sells toy canoes to tourists), angie views the theme park venture, with the exception of the much-needed wellness center, as culturally lethal. she warns that “ojibwayworld is not the world of the ojibways. it’s some genetically modified, bastardized, hybrid, freak show” (61). with that pronouncement, the long history of “freak shows” and western movies exoticizing, stereotyping, affixing, and demeaning native american and first nations peoples opens up for the viewer. daniel heath justice begins his watermark study, why indigenous literatures matter (2018), by elaborating on the way stereotyping imposed by outside groups serves to create an image of “indigenous deficiency” (2). the german entrepreneurs’ appropriation of what they consider “indian” activities and artifacts—including wearing native-themed t-shirts (21), collecting beaded vests and porcupine quill boxes (41), greeting the morning sun (59), as well as teaching the reserve’s residents how to make proper pemmican (53)—might seem merely whimsical, but in fact this inverted postcolonial mimicry serves to show the europeans’ presumptuous sense of superiority—and their opportunism. the largely playful postmodern farce berlin blues with its ridiculous cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 124 hegemonic recolonization indeed reveals deep crevices in cross-cultural esteem. as salisbury has also vividly shown in “the indian who bombed berlin,” in his own way, the “international understanding” championed by such undertakings as the ambitious and praiseworthy fulbright two-way exchange program remains work in progress. alterity, agency, and ethics biographically, salisbury saw his fulbright mission as performing academic and ethnic double-duty: “i have been invited abroad to work, as a professor and as an american indian writer carrying on in the oral tradition by presenting his work” (mackay 15). welcoming the euro-german interest in his native american identity and in the public readings of his multi-layered prose and poetry, a 20th/21st-century realization of an “oral tradition,” was not dissonant with his self-described unity of hyphenated identity. salisbury did not display a modernist distrust of obtaining wholeness in the forging of his identity, nor modernism’s tendency, in a kind of inverse alterity, to privilege non-traditional artistic achievers. in a 2009 portrait, arnold krupat praises salisbury’s postmodern feat of espousing both/and rather than the exclusionary either/or, “the ways in which ralph salisbury continues to model the traditional and modern (postmodern, if you will) roles of the poet as cherokee humanist and indigenous cosmopolitan. marked by deep roots and varied routes – he has read and taught in italy, england, norway, germany, and india” (73). the optimism of the firmly grounded ethics expounded by this “cherokee humanist” is not infrequently imperiled in salisbury’s short stories. war, economicinstitutional machines, and mob thinking might seem too omnipotent for the individual to influence them, but succumbing is never entertained as a long-term option.14 salisbury is, however, honest in his presentation of hurdles. with regard to his native identity, which was reinforced by his father charley’s sustainable transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 125 techniques for farming, hunting, and masterly tale-telling,15 in conjunction with salisbury’s own direct contact with his father’s native relatives and their lore in kentucky, salisbury calls himself “his immediate family’s last-ditch indian survivor,” knowing that his own children and grandchildren “don’t feel indian… having grown up geographically removed from any cherokee influence other than my own” (so far, so good 241). he admits that he has not always followed his own advice as an “elder” (265) to novice native writers to write of what you have lived or have witnessed. don’t let the conquerors’ whims turn you into a tourist-grade museum exhibit… i too have slid into the trap i’ve warned of, trying to give some substance to my indian people’s past and thus sometimes taking others’ laboriously arrived at scholarly suppositions and turning them into fiction. (241-2) this is clearly not the case with his stories of german encounter, however, which refract his own experiences and blend his concerns as a “cherokee humanist” and an “indigenous cosmopolitan.” salisbury’s lived native culture is passed on through his literary works, his teaching, and his transcultural interactions; it melds with the flourishing indigenous presence locally and globally, physically and literarily. in his later years salisbury moved beyond personal precariousness to productive awareness, feeling free, as he indicates to his readers, to joyously and unconventionally entangle the distinctive calling of no-longer-endangered trumpeter swans, migrating in large flocks over his oregon home, with beethoven’s sophisticated symphonic compositions (“epilogue”, so far, so good 273-4). ralph salisbury’s embracing of both/and leads to an enlightened international contentment: “it’s a good day to live, here where i am now, in germany, a nation divided among conquerors, now becoming one nation again after massive destruction, oppressive occupation. it is a good day to live, a seminar in memory and the native american tradition for me to meet this afternoon” (251). cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 126 notes 1 work by ralph salisbury used by permission of the literary estate of ralph salisbury. copyright © 2020 by the literary estate of ralph salisbury. all rights reserved. no reproduction without permission of the estate. 2 this story and the two others mentioned in my introductory paragraph are found in the indian who bombed berlin, 2009. 3 in a 1987 autobiographical sketch, salisbury recounts in detail the strikingly transnational genesis of his poem “cherokee ghost story: my father’s”. he recalls how “[a]bout a month after i’d returned from an intensely meaningful few days of talking with scholer [sic: schöler] and others in denmark [about, among other things, an autographical story my father told me], i spent a long afternoon exchanging knowledge with bernd peyer, the german-swiss scholar who had set in motion the correspondence which culminated in dr. martin christadler’s inviting me to teach in germany. talking with bernd brought back the intense feelings i’d had in denmark; and before i left my desk at the university that day, my father’s story had migrated through time and space, from his youth in kentucky, through my childhood in iowa, by way of denmark and germany, onto a sheet of paper, and after some months of revision the poem made its way back to the southeastern u.s., where it – and my father – had originated, the poem published in a negative capability, printed in alabama in 1984” (“the quiet” 22). 4 butler quotes from levinas’ essay “peace and proximity” (first published in 1984). 5 as inspiring as sam fathers is in faulkner’s yoknapatawpha world, he illustrates— according to louis owens—the modernist “chief doom school” of literature with regard to native americans (owens 81-2), sam fathers being the last of his vanishing line and people. 6 the original version of this phrase is the fourth-to-last line of t.s. eliot’s the waste land (1922): “these fragments i have shored against my ruins” describes the role of the modernist artist. 7 the nine juke and/or parm dark cloud stories make up the indian who bombed berlin’s part three, titled “all in the family: some vanishing american military histories” (119-90). the reader is specifically told that juke’s and parm’s mother is german american on p. 122 of the first story, “a vanishing american’s first struggles against vanishing.” reviewer eric wayne dickey is not entirely correct in implying a steady maturation of the protagonists in the entire story collection of the indian who bombed berlin, but his point about the “uncertain and painful victory in berlin” of the adult narrator is well taken. as dickey puts it, there is “a kind of chronology in the book. starting with a young boy in elementary school, each protagonist advances in age. each tale adds to the receding story as salisbury transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 127 marches us toward adulthood and onto an uncertain and painful victory in berlin” (95). 8 the tall-tale figures and strategies overlap in uncoincidental ways with those in native tales. in her insightful study (that has perhaps not received the recognition it deserves) humor in contemporary native north american literature: reimagining nativeness (2008), eva gruber describes how native “tricksters are both culture heroes and fools” (95). gruber also analyzes meta-level “trickster discourse,” which i reference in connection with gerald vizenor’s blue ravens. salisbury evokes “old man coyote, the trickster” in an incident in so far, so good (164). 9 the story indicates that the priest has physically abused native children and is thus not on higher moral ground than dirk dark cloud. father o’mara, we are told, had “reportedly slapped [the indian face] of many a defiant reservation-orphanage child” (143). 10 in so far, so good salisbury shudders at the horrendous damage of the firebombing that “had incinerated dresden, a massacre greater than the ones perpetrated in hiroshima and nagasaki” (174). 11 see: däwes and baudemann, editors, [beyond karl may:] teaching native literatures and cultures in europe. 12 i discuss some of the ideas expressed here in connection with native protest and the instrumentalization of stereotypes in waegner 2015 and 2017. 13 the title of taylor’s 1998 book of humorous essays and columns is funny, you don’t look like one: observations from a blue-eyed ojibway. 14 faulkner also displays this discrepancy between rhetorical optimism, as in his much-cited nobel prize address, and the overwhelming burden of history and racism encoded in his major novels, at least with regard to some of the main protagonists. 15 “my father… told indian hunting stories and taught me to hunt with indian skill, indian instinct and taught me… a religious view based on awareness of creation” (“some of the life and times of wise-wolf salt-town” 251). works cited brown, kirby. “american indian modernities and new modernist studies’ ‘indian problem.’” modernism and native america, edited by james h. cox. special issue of texas studies in language and literature, vol. 59, no. 3, 2017, pp. 287-318. cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 128 butler, judith butler. precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. verso, 2004. däwes, birgit and kristina baudemann, editors. [beyond karl may:] teaching native literatures and cultures in europe. special issue of lwu: literatur in wissenschaft und unterricht, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016. dickey, eric wayne. “the indian who bombed berlin” (review). studies in american indian literatures, vol. 22, no. 4, winter 2010, pp. 94-97. “drew hayden taylor.” http://www.drewhaydentaylor.com/. accessed 15 january 2019. elze, jens. postcolonial modernism and the picaresque novel: literatures of precarity. palgrave macmillan, 2017. faulkner william. “shingles for the lord.” collected stories of william faulkner. vintage, 1977, pp. 27-43. ---. “spotted horses.” uncollected stories of william faulkner, edited by joseph blotner, random house, 1979, pp. 165-183. gruber, eva. humor in contemporary native north american literature: reimagining nativeness. camden house, 2008. hemingway, ernest. “hills like white elephants.” the first forty-nine stories. jonathan cape, 1972, pp. 219-223. justice, daniel heath. why indigenous literatures matter. wilfrid laurier up, 2018. krupat, arnold. “native writer profile: ralph salisbury.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 20, no. 1, spring 2009, pp. 69-77. levenson, michael, editor. the cambridge companion to modernism. 2nd edition, cambridge up, 2011. lutz, hartmut. “beyond indianthusiasm, or: why teach a canadian first nation author’s text in the efl-classroom? – emma lee warrior’s ‘compatriots.’” [beyond karl may:] teaching native literatures and cultures in europe, transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 129 edited by birgit däwes and kristina baudemann. special issue of lwu: literatur in wissenschaft und unterricht, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21-34. mackay, james. “an interview with ralph salisbury.” wasafiri, vol. 32, no. 2, 2017, pp. 12-16. mao, douglas, and rebecca l. walkowitz. “the new modernist studies.” pmla, vol. 123, no. 3, 2008, pp. 737-748. owens, louis. mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place. u of oklahoma p, 1998. “ralph salisbury.” http://www.ralphsalisbury.com/. accessed 15 january 2019. rodríguez-salas, gerardo, paula martín-salván, and maría j. lópez. “introduction: who’s afraid of the modernist community?” new perspectives on community and the modernist subject: finite, singular, exposed, edited by gerado rodríguez-salas et al., routledge, 2018, pp. 1-20. salisbury, ralph. the indian who bombed berlin and other stories. michigan state up, 2009. ---. “the quiet between lightning and thunder” (title in table of contents; title in chapter heading, p. 15: “between lightning and thunder”). i tell you now: autobiographical essays by native american writers, edited by brian swann and arnold krupat. u of nebraska p, 1987, pp. 15-35. ---. so far, so good. u of nebraska p, 2013. ---. “some of the life and times of wise-wolf salt-town.” returning the gift: poetry and prose from the first north american native writers’ festival, edited by joseph bruchac. u of arizona p, 1994, pp. 247-252. schöler, bo. “‘… i would save the cat.’ an interview with ralph salisbury.” american studies in scandinavia, vol. 17, no. 1, 1985, pp. 27-34. taylor, drew hayden. berlin blues. talonbooks, 2007. vizenor, gerald. blue ravens: historical novel. wesleyan up, 2014. cathy covell waegner “german encounters” 130 ---. “a postmodern introduction.” narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian literature, edited by gerald vizenor. u of oklahoma p, 1989, pp. 3-16. waegner, cathy covell. “gerald vizenor’s shimmering birds in dialog: (de)framing, memory, and the totemic in favor of crows and blue ravens.” native american survivance, memory, and futurity: the gerald vizenor continuum, edited by birgit däwes and alexandra haucke. routledge, 2017, pp. 102-116. ---. “preface.” mediating indianness, edited by cathy covell waegner. michigan state up, 2015, pp. ix-xxx. wollaeger, mark, editor, with matt eatough. oxford handbook of global modernisms. oxford up, 2018. microsoft word hitch.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 294 ingrid r. g. waldron. there’s something in the water: environmental racism in indigenous and black communities. manitoba: fernwood publishing, 2018. 184 pp. isbn: 9781773630571. https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/there8217s-something-in-the-water state actors and private firms have disproportionately subjected indigenous communities and communities of color in north america to air, water, and soil pollution, and systematically excluded these communities from access to healthy recreational and subsistence activities, both historically and today. moreover, canada and the united states have dispossessed indigenous communities of their lands and lifeways and have engaged in multiple forms of the elimination of native peoples (wolfe 2006). however, there is a dearth of research and theoretical engagement that brings together both settler colonial theory and critical environmental justice (cej) studies. fortunately, ingrid r. g. waldron’s theoretically rich and incisive analysis of environmental racism in nova scotia, canada, expertly puts these frameworks into conversation, and thus pushes the field forward in considering these deeply enmeshed issues. using settler colonialism and cej as a theoretical framework, waldron contends that issues of environmental racism cannot be disentangled from racial capitalism, and other forms of systemic social structures “within which race, gender, income, class, and other social factors get inscribed in subtle ways to cause harm to mostly rural, remote, geographically isolated and, therefore, ‘invisible’ communities” in nova scotia (16). building on her work with the environmental noxiousness, racial inequalities, and community health project (the enrich project), waldron argues for expanding the lens of environmental justice in canada by considering “how racist environmental policies, as well as other kinds of state policies, have enabled the cultural genocide of indigenous, black, and other racialized peoples” (10). waldron lists four objectives of her book: the first and main objective addresses the limitations of the environmental justice lens in nova scotia, and canada more broadly, by “opening a discursive space for a more critical dialogue on how environmental racism manifests within the context of white supremacy, settler colonialism, state-sanctioned racial and gendered forms of violence, patriarchy, neoliberalism, and racial capitalism” (5). second, the book aims to illustrate how environmental racism is a structural and systemic issue associated with the types of violence listed above. third, colonial legacies and structural “pre-existing and long-standing social and economic inequalities,” such as poverty and low educational attainment, undermine the capacity of communities to politically and legally oppose these pollutants, thus making the communities more vulnerable to environmental harms (6). finally, waldron documents “the long history of struggle, grassroots resistance, and mobilization in indigenous and black communities to address environmental racism” (6). to achieve the book’s objectives, waldron builds off of david pellow’s four pillars of the critical environmental justice framework, which pushes scholars to think intersectionally about the formation and impacts of environmental injustice (pellow 2017). indeed, while foregrounding race in all discussions of environmental racism is paramount, waldron embraces pellow’s first argument that more attention ought to be paid to how multiple social identities might intersect to produce environmental injustice. second, waldron argues that the reformist agenda embraced by many environmental justice scholars and activists working within the gregory hitch review of there’s something in the water 295 present systems has generally failed, as it “leaves intact the power structures within which environmental racism manifests”; therefore, indigenous and black communities must engage in an unabashedly “transformative anti-authoritarian agenda” (9). third, waldron engages with cej’s undertheorized idea of racialized and marginalized human populations as expendable and disposable, since states and industrial firms see them as “inferior, lacking in value” (9). finally, waldron embraces a multi-scalar approach, arguing that cej scholars “must understand the impacts of environmental justice from the cellular or bodily level to the global level and back…these issues can’t be discussed separately from their impacts on the souls, minds, and bodies of indigenous and racialized peoples” (9-10). most excitingly, however, waldron’s engagement with settler colonial theory elucidates how all environmental justice struggles in what are currently canada and the united states are affixed to the historical and contemporary practices of colonial systems. waldron threads this theory throughout the book to illustrate how spatial arrangements of communities that result in the disproportionate exposure to toxins are intimately tied to settler colonialism and racial capitalism, not as discrete manifestations, but as the intended effect of structural formations hundreds of years in the making. although the book primarily discusses theories of environmental justice, settler colonialism, and structural racism, the chapters also offer important lessons grounded in empirical work. chapter 1, for example, provides perhaps the most accessible and actionable writing about waldron’s experience with the enrich project. through her ethnography, waldron underscores the importance of community-based participatory research, especially working with indigenous and other marginalized communities. moreover, this chapter provides empirical evidence backing waldron’s assertion that environmental justice scholars and activists must work to dismantle the structures that enable environmental racism and systemic injustice, not simply reform them. chapter 2 provides the reader with an in-depth analysis of the relationship among settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and environmental injustice, illustrating how ej activists and scholars in canada have failed to grapple with land value as deeply inscribed with racial ideologies, and thus have used a rather limited environmental justice lens in their work. the theoretical discussion of these intersecting issues provides the grounding for waldron’s assertion that environmental racism “is a visible manifestation of racial capitalism” (49). building on the discussions from the previous pages, chapter 3 draws upon george lipsitz’s “white spatial imaginary,” to illustrate how certain spaces are deemed expendable by the state as well as industrial firms (lipsitz 2007). waldron argues that this type of ideological mapping results in material impacts on indigenous and other marginalized communities of color. specifically, waldron argues that “environmental racism must be theorized and articulated as a form of spatial violence in the way that in enacts authoritarian control over knowledge systems, bodies, and spaces” (65). chapter 4 discusses the main pillars of the environmental justice framework, explores how more inclusive democratic consultation by government agencies can help mitigate risk, and applies these ideas to specific cases in nova scotia. but most importantly, this chapter discusses how nova scotia’s unique racial history is more similar to that of the united states than to the rest of canada. therefore, canadian environmental justice scholars must consider race as a primary factor in the placement of polluting industries and environmental toxins in indigenous and other marginalized nova scotian communities. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 296 in chapter 5, waldron’s most compelling contribution involves reframing environmental health inequalities using a more holistic lens. waldron argues that researchers must move beyond mere quantitative research to better understand the multiple, overlapping, and interacting stressors that impact the physical and mental health of indigenous and black communities. indeed, environmental justice scholars’ primary focus on toxins and pollution has obscured other important aspects, such as intergenerational trauma, forced migration, land dispossession, and disrupted lifeways and interactions with more-than-human beings, which carry profound psychological, physical, and social impacts (see, for example, hoover 2017 and whyte 2018). waldron’s holistic, multi-scalar focus moves cej studies in the right direction and offers lessons for other scholars. chapter 6 provides multiple case studies of environmental injustice and, moreover, narratives of resistance by indigenous and black nova scotian communities. however, though these case studies, as well as those in chapter 4, provide important information and examples, they read more as a collection of reports without a clear narrative thread, which could cause the reader’s attention to wane. finally, waldron’s conclusion discusses the implications and efficacy of possible policy solutions, as well as how indigenous and black communities can undertake multi-pronged actions and solutions to environmental injustice in their communities. this book is essential reading for scholars and activists interested in real and lasting environmental justice. however, though waldron is clear and concise in her writing, many parts of the book engage dense theoretical language and therefore might be less useful for a nonacademic audience. this could have been mitigated by employing a narrative storytelling writing style supported by empirical ethnographic evidence. nevertheless, there’s something in the water is a critical and very welcome book that pushes the boundaries of cej studies, and, just as important, puts settler colonial studies in conversation with the pressing environmental health issues indigenous and other marginalized communities historically and continue to face. gregory hitch, brown university works cited hoover, elizabeth. the river is in us: fighting toxics in a mohawk community. university of minnesota press, 2017. lipsitz, george. “the racialization of space and the spatialization of race: theorizing the hidden architecture of landscape.” landscape journal, vol. 26, no. 1 (2007): 10-23. pellow, david naguib. what is critical environmental justice? polity press, 2018. whyte, kyle. “settler colonialism, ecology, and environmental injustice.” environment and society, vol. 9, no. 1 (2018): 125-144. wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research, vol. 8, no. 4 (2006): 387-409. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 177 katherena vermette. pemmican wars. illustrated by scott b. henderson. colored by donovan yaciuk. highwater press, 2017. 47 pp. isbn: 9781553796787. https://highwaterpress.com/product/pemmican-wars/ katherena vermette. red river resistance. illustrated by scott b. henderson. colored by donovan yaciuk. highwater press, 2019. 47 pp. isbn: 9781553797470. https://highwaterpress.com/product/red-river-resistance/ it’s a massive understatement to say that being indigenous is a vastly complex experience. among many other contributing elements, indigenous existence is made up of varied and disparate groups, points of view, and cultural influences. thus, representing indigenous perspective is an equally complex endeavor. given this complexity, the medium of comics has historically struggled with adequately representing indigenous culture and typically leveraged more stereotypes than not. reading and examining comics featuring indigenous characters, one can view them through the lens of criteria synthesized from raymond stedman’s shadows of the indian: stereotypes in american culture. the usual tropes, stereotypes, and misrepresentations he explores include does the indigenous character speak like tonto; do they have magic, mystic, or spiritual powers, just because they are indigenous; are indigenous characters portrayed simply as either noble or savage; and so forth. of stedman’s criteria, a notable item asks if the indigenous character’s humanity (or humanness, if you will) presents. thankfully, the a girl called echo series delivers on this, offering a centralized indigenous—métis—protagonist imbued with complexity and depth, while also avoiding many of the other aforementioned stereotypes. with katherena vermette at the helm of sequential storytelling, the series offers a unique glimpse of a young girl, echo, coming to terms with being métis in modern times as well as the historic events that contribute to that perspective. echo does not have superor meta-human powers or abilities, not even the stereotypic ones usually bestowed on indigenous characters: she doesn’t have mystic powers, isn’t a great hunter or tracker, and she cannot communicate with the natural elements or animals. despite lacking any noticeable powers, echo is not only able to witness historic métis events unfolding first-hand, she is somehow able interact directly with individuals from the past. these visits to, and interactions with, the past offer a fantastic voyage for echo; they both contrast with her daily life, filled with hardships, and intertwine with them, as many times the adventures coincide with lessons about the métis history she learns in school. echo seems to be living two lives: one life is in the present, where she struggles with self-identity amidst a troubled family situation; the other is steeped in exciting historic events of the past and individuals from that time period. while it’s not clear whether echo has a powerful imagination or is actually a time traveler, this juxtaposition of past and present offers an interesting story for readers. https://highwaterpress.com/product/pemmican-wars/ https://highwaterpress.com/product/red-river-resistance/ michael sheyahshe review of pemmican wars and red river resistance 178 of course, one could argue that this portrayal of echo interacting with the past contributes to a common stereotype of comic books, where indigenous people are consistently shown as a part of history, making indigenous people seem “immutable, forever stuck in the [past]…” (kilpatrick 46). yet, the series upturns this misrepresentation, especially given that echo is presented to readers as a character from modern, present times. thus, the series avoids stereotypes of indigenous people existing only in historic times by demonstrating métis continuance into a modern-day time frame. undoubtedly, this continuance into modernity is not without its own challenges for indigenous people, especially as individuals try to negotiate indigenous identity and strive for balance of their personal traditional culture and the complex nuances of modern life. the series highlights this struggle well—echo vacillates between immersing herself in music from her portable electronic device and being seemingly transported to and immersed within historic métis events. additionally, the complexity of modern métis identity is explored as echo and her mother compare cultural notes within the storyline. within the pemmican wars storyline, after reaching out and expressing her limitations to what being métis is, echo’s mother also confesses that she herself does not know nor comprehend all the cultural significances. in popular media such as film, televisions, and comics, indigenous “elders” (anyone older or more experienced than the central protagonist) are often portrayed as all-knowing guides of traditional culture. having this moment between echo and her mother gives a very poignant and human feel to the story and provides more support to the complexity of being indigenous, rather than have a ready-made “guide” into it. as with nearly all representation in media, comics must tread a delicate balance between good storytelling—which typically includes a sense of conflict of some sort—and oversimplifying indigenous experience as a set of predefined cultural hardships. all too often, comics and other media focus primarily on the hardships within indigenous communities, typically those associated with socioeconomic factors such as broken family structures, lower incomes, sometimes chemical dependency etc., in the same vein of what vine deloria, jr. refers to as the indian’s “plight” (1). fortunately, the a girl called echo series does a great job of lightly suggesting some of these cultural elements—echo does not live with her mother, for some yetto-be-revealed reason in the story, and must go visit her, for example—while still focusing on the main story: echo’s travel and voyages into the past. moreover, the storyline itself has not been “dumbed down” to facilitate those readers unfamiliar with métis culture and history. the series goes further by providing additional insight to métis culture, including a timeline of important historic events that deepens the reader’s understanding of being métis in modern times and focusing on echo’s particular time-travelling encounters rather than overwhelming the reader by providing a wide survey of all métis history. the sequential art, illustrated by scott b. henderson and colored by donovan yaciuk, is solid and well-executed, with illustrations of stark modernity juxtaposed against beautiful landscapes and vistas within the historical sections. indeed, the depiction of echo’s day-to-day life and interactions provide a rich tapestry for readers: the public school system, public mass transit, transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 179 “pop culture” references on tee shirts, use of personal electronic devices, and many other elements provide a deepened visual presentation. these visual nuances, coupled with the main character’s oscillation between personal adversity and her quests to the past, make for good comic-book storytelling. the series does well to avoid common misrepresentations of indigenous characters and provides an interesting take on what it means to be métis, especially for echo. left with a cliffhanger in volume 2, readers will look forward to future volumes of the a girl called echo series, as her adventures continue. michael sheyahshe works cited deloria jr., vine. custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto. university of oklahoma press, 1988. kilpatrick, jacquelyn. celluloid indians: native americans and film. university of nebraska press, 1999. stedman, raymond. shadows of the indian: stereotypes in american culture. university of oklahoma press, 1986. microsoft word leischner.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 283 margaret m. bruchac. savage kin: indigenous informants and american anthropologists. university of arizona press, 2018. 280 pp. isbn: 978-0816537068. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/savage-kin in an astonishingly researched and compelling book, indigenous anthropologist margaret m. bruchac reexamines the relationships between native informants and anthropologists in the early twentieth century, such as george hunt and franz boas, bertha parker and mark harrington, gladys tantaquidgeon and frank speck. conducting “reverse ethnography,” savage kin details how native gatekeepers and activists attempted to manage their relations with white collectors seeking to salvage indigenous culture – scholars whose intentions were often nonreciprocal, contentious, and savage. bruchac argues that it is these mediations which co-created the very field of north american anthropology and resulted in the material extraction of native culture on which today’s museums of anthropology are founded. part of the accomplishment of savage kin is in how it redefines the very nature of academic writings as mythological narratives – built up over time as a result of layers of biases and conventions, rituals and memories – that continue to circulate and influence anthropological discourse. bruchac explains that “the tellings of these stories are not (like native myths) seasonally restricted, but they are ritualized, having long been circulated within departments, institutions, and professional recitations (including conferences, publications, and websites) that keep ancestral memories alive” (7). tracing the remains of archival encounters with indigenous informants reveals many early anthropologists to be unreliable narrators of their own histories and contributions. another key contribution is the importance of what bruchac calls “restorative methodologies” – “cross-walking through archives to track objects and their related stories (even the false or fishy stories) through the locales and tribal nations represented in collections” (183). intermixed within the pages of savage kin are many ways in which the contributions of native informants have been erased from anthropological discourse, something bruchac notes routinely happened to female researchers of any ethnicity. the research practices she details are an essential toolbox for anyone engaging in archival or museum research. the first chapter describes the historical context for anthropological collecting of indigenous knowledge and material culture in north america. bruchac explains this work as a necessarily collaborative endeavor, which would have been impossible for the largely white, male anthropologists to accomplish without indigenous aid. yet contrary to the complexity and breadth of their engagements with these collectors, “natives were positioned as ethnographic subjects, not as scholars; and as informants, not theorists,” and these narrowed roles have obscured the impact indigenous gatekeepers have had throughout the history of the field of anthropology (17). chapters two through six present case studies that each challenge the native informant/anthropologist binary and highlight the unique strategies indigenous peoples used to manage their encounters with outside researchers. focusing on specific relations allows for a close-reading of these encounters which, taken together, “illuminate complex gender relations, power dynamics, and social entanglements that propelled some individuals into the light and emily jean leischner review of savage kin 284 others into the shadows” (8). bruchac both honors the influence of native informants while simultaneously chronicling when their choice to partner with anthropologists violated cultural protocols and threatened the political goals of indigenous sovereignty. despite some surprisingly salacious stories uncovered, the book avoids sensationalizing or generalizing its subjects and instead provides empathetic portraits of individuals whose actions and motives feel both authentic and grounded. chapter two examines one of the more well-known and often celebrated long-term relationships in anthropology between george hunt and franz boas. savage kin emphasizes the gendered bias of the boas and hunt partnership and questions the assumed status of their publications as “the primary authorities on kwakwaka'wakw culture and language” (47). the knowledge hunt sold to boas relied heavily on the participation of his female relatives, particularly his two marriages to high-ranking native women: tsukwani francine and lucy homikanis. bruchac convincingly shows how both hunt and boas’s work intentionally marginalized their contributions, yet would have been nearly impossible without them. together, chapters three and four highlight the deeply interconnected social relations of natives and non-natives participating in early anthropology. in chapter three, the relationship between mixed seneca and scots/english anthropologist arthur parker and his first wife, abenaki beulah tahamont, exemplifies the different ways of embodying indigenous identity in the early twentieth century, what bruchac calls “assimilated modernity versus cultural performance” (68). the groundbreaking archaeological discoveries of parker and tahamont’s daughter, bertha yewas parker – potentially the first professional female native american archaeologist, and likewise the first professional female native american ethnologist and archaeologist to work at a major museum – are described in chapter four. bertha parker worked collaboratively with white archaeologist mark harrington and, despite contemporary recognition of her scholarship, her successes were forgotten and much of her research attributed to harrington in the archives. savage kin also explores how the political goals of indigenous peoples were inseparable from their relationships with early anthropologists and served as both motivators for continuing and ending partnerships. in chapter five, bruchac writes about seneca veteran and cultural expert jesse cornplanter, who worked closely for many years with the white academic william fenton. their relationship ultimately soured over the construction of the kinzua dam which would destroy a significant portion of the seneca homeland. despite pressure from seneca peoples who called on fenton to reciprocate the kinship they had shown to him and his family, fenton increasingly “deployed his research and his influence as political tools to resist indigenous sovereignty” (139). finally, the relationship between university of pennsylvania anthropologist frank speck and his student and collaborator, mohegan anthropologist gladys tantaquidgeon, while by all evidence one of the more reciprocal partnerships described in the book, nevertheless resulted over time in the same erasures of indigenous scholarship chronicled throughout savage kin. bruchac shows how the myth of speck’s indigenous ancestry served to obscure the significant academic work tantaquidgeon conducted and downplayed the importance of his other indigenous collaborators. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 285 as a whole, these stories not only emphasize the systematic erasure of indigenous contributions, but showcase the near-ubiquity of the nonreciprocal and bad-faith relationships early anthropologists practiced with native culture experts. even when these collaborations went well, the choice of native peoples to participate in anthropological knowledge and material-collecting efforts came with difficult questions of how to navigate these relationships while still maintaining ties to their communities of origin. while its academic relevance is clear, this book will be of great interest to native and non-native students, teachers, and general audiences alike. savage kin successfully showcases the agency and participation of indigenous peoples in anthropology while never losing sight of the complexities that come with this involvement. although this book is written about the past, bruchac makes its contemporary relevance for indigenous peoples and anthropologists clear in the value of cultural recovery for native american and first nations and the hopeful potential of repaired relations. for the discipline of anthropology, moving forward entails looking back – acknowledging wrong relations and questioning the version of north american indigenous history still circulating in museums and academic writings. emily jean leischner, university of british columbia transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 43 sordid pasts, indigenous futures: necropolitics and survivance in louis owens’ bone game francisco delgado in mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place, louis owens (choctaw/cherokee/irish) describes california as “a place where [he] never stopped being a stranger” (233). a sense of belonging, not just for owens but for many of his native protagonists, appears to be as illusory as the hollywood narratives (like the 1992 production of last of the mohicans referenced by the narrator) that many of his characters ridicule and rebel against. california embodies the united states’ settler colonialist genocide as much as its steadfast refusal to truly reconcile with its history.1 in its capacity to estrange, as well as to seduce with promises of new beginnings, the state provides more than a setting for owens’ 1994 bone game. the state’s “ritualistic violence” toward its indigenous communities, as well as the pat version of reconciliation that it promotes via its hollywood productions and history textbooks, influence the novel’s main narrative as much as any of the characters (purdy 9). bone game recounts the difficulties of reconciliation in the political climate of the late-twentieth century, when this type of work perhaps seemed largely performative or, worse yet, intended only for individual gain. according to our third-person narrator, the idealism and fervor of 1960s social activism, embodied most relevantly in the context of the novel by the american indian movement (aim), is gone. aim activists have become performers pursuing profit and fame, “running sweat ceremonies for crystal gazers in francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 44 santa cruz, playing chingachgook in a hollywood movie, and singing with an indian rap group” (31-2). while a stiff assessment of russell means and john trudell, this passage depicts the 1990s as a time when the arduous work of reconciliation perhaps seemed abandoned. rather than creating new narratives about indigenous sovereignty, for instance, activists like means seemed content with playing a supporting role in a narrative that serves as an early example of the vanishing indian myth. bone game, then, is set in a time informed just as much by settler colonialism as by the neoliberal milieu of the 1970s and 1980s, when personal profit largely eclipsed communal responsibility. cole mccurtain, our protagonist, has no community at the beginning of the novel. in his off-campus home, bottles of liquor pile up alongside unopened mail. social interactions occur only in his capacity as an english professor teaching classes on modernism and native american literature. in addition to cole’s trauma from the death of his brother, attis—the subject of owens’ the sharpest sight (1992)—he is troubled by dreams of a figure painted half-white and half-black “ready to gamble for this world” (71). these dreams unsettle cole from his sleep, from his alcoholism, and root him in the genocidal history of santa cruz, where the franciscan mission system recorded some of the state’s highest death rates (bernardin 47). only knowing “a little bit” of the story and his role in it, cole is joined by his college-aged daughter, abby, as well as his father hoey, his uncle luther, and his honorary “grandmother,” onatima, who advises cole and others about the importance of stories (79). together with alex, a diné anthropology professor working at the same university, this group must reconcile the horrors of settler colonialism before it victimizes them. at the same time, each of them must help construct an indigenous future when the realities of history are addressed, indigenous sovereignty is restored, community and communal responsibility are revitalized, and indigenous stories are linked and propagated. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 45 survivance stories, which gerald vizenor (anishinaabe) defines as “renunciations of dominance, detractions, obtrusions, the unbearable sentiments of tragedy, and the legacy of victimry,” connect indigenous peoples to their ancestors, their histories, as well as to their descendants (1). the title of this essay, “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” speaks to this intergenerational connection forged out of survivance. while seemingly implying distinctions based on chronology (the past, simply put, is not the future, and vice versa), my objective is to diminish such chronological distinctions to show how owens’ novel both prevents the past from appearing beyond reproach and stops the future from seeming too abstract. the novel asserts that indigenous futures can be realized and fulfilled when the horrors of settler colonialism are addressed and resolved. in the context of this study, an indigenous future is one that honors indigenous claims of sovereignty—of territory, of bodies, and of thought. while geared toward the future, as the name suggests, it is linked to the pasts informing our shared (or, in the very least, concurrent) present. furthermore, an indigenous future is rooted in the agency of and the voice(s) from native communities; thus, it is closely related to leanne betasamosake simpson’s (mississauga nishnaabeg) concept of “indigenous freedom,” which begins with “being very clear about what [we] want out of the present and what [we] expect from the future” (7). cole’s and his community’s objective is two-fold: to tend to the past and the future simultaneously. by alleviating the injustices of the former, they brighten the prospects of the latter for indigenous people, whose genocide has long been neglected in popular discourses about california and the united states more generally. as owens makes clear with bone game, the past informs both the present and possibilities for the future. the past of california, moreover, is rooted in necropolitics or, as achille mbembe explains, “the power of death” (39). necropolitical power has been francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 46 implemented against the indigenous people of california throughout the region’s history: from its missionary settlements as northern mexico, to the gold rush of the mid1800s, to the california of the novel in which cole, his daughter abby, and his friend/colleague alex are the targets of a serial killer. indigenous people are exposed to “the power of death” to such a degree that it informs their individual and collective senses of self. onatima explains to cole, “it’s not wrong to survive. i see indians all the time who are ashamed of surviving, and they don’t even know it. we have survived a five-hundred-year war in which millions of us were starved to death, burned in our homes, shot and killed with disease and alcohol. it’s a miracle any indian is alive today. why us, we wonder. we read their books and find out we’re supposed to die. that’s the story they’ve made up for us.” (165) settler colonialist stories teach natives that there is something innately wrong about their ongoing survival. the danger of this lesson is compounded by the fact that these “books,” and the world they have helped develop, seem to go largely unchallenged. onatima tells cole when he is younger: “[writing] is how they make the world” (20). but it is, to return to mbembe, a “death-world” that these books create, one “in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon the them the status of living dead” (mbembe 40, italics in original). while mbembe writes in the context of the occupation of palestine (also a settler colonialist state), his concept of necropolitics aligns just as well with california, where indigenous people, “and by extension all who can be made ‘indian,’… can be killed without being murdered” (byrd 227). their deaths yield no justice, not even sufficient social outrage. there is no justice for the ohlone, who suffered the whip from spanish missionaries in the not-so-distant past that haunts cole. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 47 owens himself had a complex relationship with his adopted state. while recognizing the “boundless possibility” that california promises in the minds of many, including cole and abby, owens was also haunted by the heavy toll that the gold rush of the mid-1800s had on the state’s indigenous communities, as evidenced by their 100,000 casualties (“where things can happen” 152). underwriting the state’s promise of riches (historically via the gold rush or, more recently, via hollywood or the tech-boom beginning in the late-twentieth century) are the atrocities enacted by spanish and american settlers against california natives that continue to go unacknowledged in the context of bone game. as onatima observes about the part of california outside of cole’s santa cruz home, “i’ve never felt a place so troubled by the past. and that, of course, is the essence of our problem… we know in our hearts that there is no such thing as the past… to believe otherwise is to deceive ourselves and to never be whole” (176). here, onatima is pushing back against the dominant narrative that the past is simply past and that dwelling on it is counterproductive. the failure to acknowledge and reconcile the injustices of history, she states, prevents indigenous people of the americas from “be[coming] whole,” much in the same way that a serial killer terrorizing santa cruz deliberately dismembers his victims. this history includes the oft-neglected enslavement of indigenous people until 1867, a fact that prompts cole to comment, “californians don’t like to hear about their sordid pasts. no one’s supposed to even have a past in california. it’s considered in poor taste” (178). this conception of california as a place without a past no doubt contributes to its utopic associations. but rather than being a sign of utopia, the state’s deliberate refusal of its past is more dystopic in nature. raffaella baccolini argues that a dystopia, like california in bone game, in fact “depends on and denies history.” california denies its history of slavery and genocide, while “depend[ing] on” it to naturalize the presence and power of euro-american settlers, francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 48 even as many native communities, including the ohlone of the santa cruz region, struggle for recognition from the united states federal government (115).2 rather than reversing this dystopian tendency to ignore history, the university where cole works contributes to the milieu obfuscating uncomfortable histories of the state. built on ohlone burial grounds, as alex points out, the university seems uninterested in serving the state’s indigenous communities when it is easier—and, perhaps more importantly, more profitable—for it to control the public narrative of their histories. alex quips, “they don’t want an indian in their [anthropology] department unless he’s in a museum, like ishi. it makes them uncomfortable to have a live indian around when they want to go dig up chumash bones” (51). acting under the financial and ideological directive of uc santa cruz, the department only wants natives as objects of study, like the dried up bones of the chumash or the passivity that academic institutions wish to impose on someone like ishi. alex, however, wishes to be an active agent of social and intellectual change: he aims to prove himself as an inquiring subject, not just as a subject of inquiry. he contests the pacification of the native by proposing a project in which he will treat puritan bones as the bones of native peoples have often been treated: “they have the remains of twelve thousand native people in the hearst museum3 at berkeley, right? the bones of our relations. well, i’ve written an nsf proposal for a team of indian anthropologists to do a dig in the cemetery at the old north church in boston. that’s where they buried all those puritans. the winthrops are buried there. my basic argument is that it’s imperative we indians learn more about puritan culture. puritans had a significant impact on us.” (180) describing puritans as “primitive but fascinating people,” alex takes the language often deployed against indigenous people and turns it against settlers (180). furthermore, he transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 49 portrays puritans in the same objective manner typically reserved for natives, arguing that “it’s imperative we indians learn more about puritan culture [because they have] had a significant impact on us” (180). puritans are examined for their “impact” without having any say in the process or in any conclusions alex may draw. they are also spoken of in the past tense (“had”) as if they exist exclusively in history, a treatment predominantly reserved for natives. in this way, alex shows his status as the narrative’s primary trickster figure by emphasizing “humor over tragedy” (lalonde 19). alex does not dwell on the tragic aspects of native experiences; rather, he uses humor and wit to challenge dominant narrative of american academia that reduces natives to passive objects only. as vine deloria jr. (standing rock sioux) writes in custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto, “laughter encompasses the limits of the soul. in humor life is redefined and accepted” (146). alex’s humor, then, is an example of survivance, in that it “is an active presence over absence” (vizenor 1). his use of humor in this passage highlights his “presence” in an intellectual space where his “absence” would perhaps be more welcome. alex also highlights the necropolitical dystopia that bone game both accentuates and critiques, because native americans are only featured in museums as displays, not as scholars or curators. in his nsf proposal, then, he brings to mind the tragic case of ishi, who as vizenor explains, “represents to many readers the cultural absence and tragic victimry of native american indians in california” (3). commodified as the “last wild indian,” ishi marks in the minds of many the end of the dominant story of california natives. in contrast, individuals like alex and cole complicate settler notions that the west was “won,” that the frontier has ended, and that settler guilt over the horrors perpetuated against natives can be assuaged if settlers (and their descendants) simply feel bad enough about them. francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 50 guilt spares euro-american settlers the mess of having to acknowledge the necropolitical processes in which indigenous people are implicated by the state. mbembe writes, “the human being truly becomes a subject – that is, separated from the animal – in the struggle and the work through which he or she confronts death (understood as the violence of negativity). it is through this confrontation with death that he or she is cast into the incessant movement of history” (14, italics in original). to apply this argument to owens’ bone game, we must begin by acknowledging how it omits the processes of racialization in its discussion of how the state creates its subjects. in other words, the creation of a subject is by no means uniform across the citizenry, as each subject is variously affected by history, geography, language, and religion. second, mbembe portrays the subject’s “confrontation with death” as a voluntary act when, in fact, the nation-state laying claim (or trying to claim) the subject is the one forcing this “confrontation.” ishi, for instance, was not seeking captivity when he was captured by settlers; the last of his tribe, he was in search for food. likewise, the ohlone (and all other california natives) were not seeking christ—or, more specifically, roman catholicism— but rather were presented with them through the cruel methods of the spanish missionaries. as alex puts it to cole, who is still struggling to figure out his role in the creation of an indigenous future, “the spanish came and taught [the ohlone] history and death in a single moment… one morning they woke up and the world was unrecognizable. they must have felt like they were the dead and the spanish were the living” (54). this feeling of being dead extends to the present day of the novel to cole, whose struggles to reconcile history (using literature) are compounded by his own inability to express the complexities and nuances of black elk in a lecture. reflecting on it, cole identifies where he may have failed through the third-person narrator: transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 51 in trying to free black elk from the romantic visions of john neihardt and the students, he’d confused everything. he could tell the student felt cheated, missing the truth of the beautiful, troubled, old man, nicholas black elk, the angry catholic who had been born on the boundary of one world and survived far into another.” (35) black elk is a passive presence, even in his own narrative. neihardt has assumed authorial control of black elk’s life story. following neihardt’s model, cole’s students are intent on perpetuating the silencing of native people so that they may impose their own colonialist desires onto them: “they brought [cole] lovely feathers, presenting them with wonder because he was indian, as though his mixed blood allowed them access to certain astonishments of the beautiful world. in their own mirrors, they were explorers, raiding parties, horse thieves of life, and some of them were mad” (11). in these scenarios, they are not a passive audience for cole’s lecture; they are active participants in narratives of their own imagining: narratives forged out of their own tenuous grips on history rooted more in old west films and grade-school textbooks that provide the onesided version of american history that gives them comfort.4 cole recognizes that his students do not actually want to confront the horrors of settler colonialism as they appear in black elk’s narrative. frustrated, he asks his teaching assistant, “[t]hat’s what the fucking world wants, isn’t it, robert? to see indians as noble and mystical, and most important of all, impotent and doomed” (42). the impotence of natives is perhaps their most important characteristic, as it disqualifies them from being present in the nation’s future. to cole’s students and his t.a., there is no need for actual native americans if settler whites like them can just as easily (and comfortably) fancy themselves in the same roles, as either “reincarnations of crazy horse [or] descendants of indian princesses” (21). the sordidness of the past, then, is compounded by the francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 52 inability of settlers, including those that might otherwise consider themselves allies, to come to terms with history and to embrace their supporting roles in the long, ongoing process of reconciliation. the past itself is not what settlers consider sordid; as the students imaginings make clear, the past is rife with possibility. rather, it is the act of making settlers feel guilty and helpless about the past that can be considered, as cole jokes, “sordid” (178). reflecting on their roles in perpetuating settler colonialist history, as well as genuinely supporting indigenous people instead of simply speaking for (and over) them, is not nearly as romantic and appealing as being the sole hero of the story. survivance, after all, is linked to community. vizenor uses the “ance” suffix to elaborate on the active nature of survivance: “the suffix ance is a quality of action, as in survivance, relevance, assistance” (19, italics in original). the last of these words, “assistance,” hints at the communal nature of survivance in particular. the heroic individual glamorized by western narratives is incompatible with indigenous notions of kinship, community, and responsibility. in bone game, this mentality geared towards individualism is embodied most by cole’s t.a., robert, who speaks of “restor[ing] the balance” of the earth” as if he alone can do the necessary work (103). his use of collective pronouns like “we” and “us” elsewhere in his conversation with abby does not negate the fact that he is speaking only for himself and speaking at and over abby during most of the conversation. for robert, these objectives can only be accomplished by a single male individual, a hero—or, as cole dismissively refers to robert, a “natty bumppo of santa cruz” (206). in other words, the goal of achieving “balance” on a global level require an individual that acts under the guidance of native americans but who learns their ways and skills to such a masterful degree that he ultimately renders his guides/mentors obsolete. moviegoers of the time period would have seen this same process a couple years earlier in michael mann’s adaptation of last of the mohicans, in transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 53 which natty bumppo (played by daniel day-lewis) integrates the skills of his native american guides to such a degree that at the end, chingachgook (played by russell means) can leave the lands to which he alone is indigenous after the death of his son, uncas, to natty. the primary method of resistance, or survivance, depicted in the novel is cole’s act of writing. through writing, cole undermines the narrative control of settler colonists, who as onatima tells him “would imprison [him and other indigenous people] in their vision and their stories” (140). in the context of bone game, this “vision” of indigenous people relegates them to the past or, true to the necropolitical and dystopic landscape of california, to the grave. either fate contributes to the silencing of indigenous people and the erasure of their experiences and histories. stories like cole’s challenge the limited narrative scope provided by settlers to the state’s (and nation’s) indigenous people. as onatima advises him, stories are a matter of survivance. she states, “we have to have our own stories” (140). it is stories that allow owens’ native american characters—whether they are choctaw, chickasaw, or diné—to recognize their roles in their ongoing construction of an indigenous future. stories also create a sense of community where there was none. cole’s writing is both in service to and made possible by his community that assists him. prior to their arrival, cole not only stopped writing but had reached a point where its absence failed to register: “for the first time in ages, he considered the writing he hadn’t done, surprised to realize that he hadn’t even thought of writing since he’d moved, until that moment hadn’t even felt guilty about not doing it” (194-5). the link between writing and place is significant here: the fact that his practice and dedication to writing leaves him when he arrived in california is no small detail. before his move to santa cruz, he lived with abby and his wife in “indian country,” where he felt rooted in francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 54 ways that would elude him following his move to santa cruz (and in ways that elude owens himself, as mentioned at the beginning of the article). but his dreams of california’s genocidal history, while unsettling and haunting, root him to santa cruz more than he had felt prior. as john gamber argues, cole’s writing helps him “re-place” to santa cruz, meaning he “establish[es] [himself] where [he is, and is] able to re-place where [he] might go” (229). gamber’s process of “re-place[ment]” marks a radical shift in perspective for cole. over the course of the novel, santa cruz becomes his: his community, his home, his sense of responsibility to others. his dreams, while jarring, make community possible for cole in santa cruz. furthermore, the dreams gift him with a sense of responsibility that teaching at the college does not provide. now implicated in the genocide of the ohlone in the santa cruz region, he finally returns to writing because he recognized it as his responsibility. leanne betasamosake simpson writes, “i believe our responsibility as indigenous people is to work alongside our ancestors and those not yet born to continually give birth to an indigenous present that generates indigenous freedom, and this means creating generations that are in love with, attached, to, and committed to their land” (25). while he is not indigenous to the lands of the santa cruz region, cole takes an active role in resolving the injustices written in the region’s history. through dreams and his conversations with onatima and alex, cole understands that his responsibility to write is intrinsically linked to his responsibility to work alongside the ohlone, especially venancio, who haunts cole with messages of the cruelty of the franciscan missionaries, namely padre andres quintana, who alex explains “used a whip with wire ends to shred [the ohlone people’s] backs” (52). cole, however, does not understand why he was chosen for such a prominent role in the settler colonialist narrative of santa cruz. even while learning about the injustices transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 55 imposed on the ohlone, cole struggles to determine where his allegiance lies. he says to alex, “the strangest thing… is that i’m both of them. it’s as if i’m everything and everyone at the same time. i’m the priest whipping the indian’s back to a bloody pulp, and i feel every second of it. and love it. i want to kill them all and spread their guts out to dry, hate them because their souls are somewhere i can’t reach… and it’s me tied to the tree and getting my back cut to shreds, feeling like somebody’s raking the flesh off my bones with steel claws and hating the priest and everything around me.” (95) how can he reconcile the horrors of settler colonialism, of california’s necropolitical history, if he cannot reconcile his own split allegiance and self-hatred? in this passage, cole confesses to the type of “intense liminality” that the narrator jokingly sees in him at the beginning of the novel (17, italics in original). cole is not enough of any one category of identity. in the scenario he presents in this passage, he is neither the priest nor the ohlone. he is both of them, which is to say equally neither. likewise, he constantly feels that he is not “indian” enough, as the text’s repeated references to his “mixedblood” lineage make clear. he is also liminal from a geographical standpoint, never belonging anywhere until the genocidal past of santa cruz grips him in his sleep and awakens him through the emergence of venancio. but unlike his students, who fantasize about role-playing as indians and as colonists with equal aplomb (21; 11), cole attempts to come to terms with his role in the ongoing narrative about creating an indigenous future. his is a narrative based just as much on reflection and commiseration as it is about physical action, which is finally required at the end when abby kills robert when he is revealed to be the serial killer. writing, and native american literature in general, help cole escape his “liminality,” a francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 56 position that he had been occupying alone, and move into a role within a community. cole’s move towards becoming an active community member is likewise enacted at the scale of the book, which deliberately engages with other canonical works of native american literature to show the intergenerational and communal scope of survivance. earlier works of native american literature, for instance, help cole make sense of the narrative in which he finds himself, even as it unfolds. following the death of his adopted dog (provocatively named custer), cole teaches james welch’s (blackfeet/a’anin) 1973 novel winter in the blood. our narrator explains, “in the novel they’d discussed in class that morning, the indian narrator had confessed to shooting a dog just because he was drunk and it was moving. custer’s death, however, seems part of something much bigger, part of everything that had been happening” (193). cole struggles to find meaning in the poisoning of his dog, yet he knows there is meaning somewhere. rather than being a violent act for the sake of acting violently (like welch’s unnamed narrator), cole understands that each action is part of a narrative that, even as it nears its end, remains beyond his control and comprehension. as rochelle venuto explains, owens’ novel is ultimately about “the need for stories to help make meaning out of existence” (26). her argument relates to cole’s own writing, certainly, but it equally connects with owens’ rhetorical use of previous works of literature to develop bone game’s engagement with the nation’s (and the state’s) settler colonialist past, as well as its construction of an indigenous future. resolving settler colonialism in the creation of an indigenous future, however, is no small process and has no neat resolution. it is complex and at times may even seem cyclical, as we see with a second example of the novel’s intertextuality. on their way through new mexico to california, luther and hoey encounter emo, the antagonist of leslie marmon silko’s (laguna pueblo) ceremony (1977). published transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 57 sixteen years before bone game, silko’s ceremony ends with an uneasy resolution. emo has been sent to california after murdering his friend, pinkie, and the other characters observe that the witchery, rather than being settled, is simply “dead for now” (silko 243, emphasis added). the resolution that silko gives readers purposefully refrains from finality. the antagonism facing her characters and territory is not completely overcome; rather, through emo’s exile to california, it is deferred, “dead for now,” only to reemerge in the present of owens’ novel, when luther and hoey discover emo back in new mexico selling young women to men in california. owens deploys ceremony to demonstrate how the cycles of violence are quick to return and must constantly be broken: as tayo had done when he refrained from killing emo in ceremony, luther and hoey consciously choose not to murder him to break free from the violence born out of the genocide, displacement, and warfare of settler colonialism. they abstain from doing the work of necropolitical ideologies that link native americans with violence, either as enactors or as victims. venuto similarly argues that luther and hoey “refrai[n] from killing emo and his cohorts, effectively ending the cycle of violence by refusing to participate in it” (37). in their refusal to participate in this cycle, they make possible a different progression of time, autonomous from settler notions of time. this present (and future) that they and other characters create exists concurrently with the present and future perpetuated by settlers, who relegate natives and the injustices enacted against them to the past. luther’s and hoey’s act in this scene makes possible “the diversity of processes of becoming and the variety of potential interrelations among those processes” (rifkin 17). their decision, in other words, is not simply personal in scope. by keeping emo alive and preventing him from enacting settler colonialist violence against others, luther and hoey enable a different “proce[ss] of becoming” in which natives do not simply destroy one another and themselves. characters like luther, hoey, and cole francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 58 challenge stereotypes of indigenous people as violent or as alcoholics through the course of the novel. the stereotypes that these characters overcome can in fact be linked to the euro-american settling of california and the subsequent genocide of indigenous people. brendan c. lindsey explains how trail guides and emigrant guides “played upon [settler] fears of indian savagery already present in the euro-american psyche” (24). here, luther and hoey prevent the “savagery” of emo’s transgressions against indigenous women and thus, in no small way, challenge the construction of the “euro-american psyche” that expects them to take violent revenge against one of their own. rather than depicting it as something to be reconciled, the earliest euro-american settlers viewed genocide as a necessary consequence of manifest destiny. lindsey explains that california’s first state governor, peter h. burnett “believed that god had ordained the end of native peoples as part of manifest destiny… indeed in the minds of some nineteenth-century euro-americans, to turn away from genocide would be to contravene god’s plan” (231). the genocide of natives in california, as well as the use of god to justify that genocide, predates manifest destiny, though. franciscan missionaries in the early-nineteenth century used the teachings of god to justify their cruel treatment of natives, who resisted their religious doctrine. this far-reaching history of mexican california might seem too removed from the late-twentieth century context of bone game. however, even before the novel begins, owens emphasizes the speciousness of euro-american notions of chronology that make the past seem irrelevant to the present. the epilogue presents us with two widely disparate dates: october 15, 1812. government surgeon manuel quijano, accompanied by six armed men, is dispatched from the presidio in monterey with orders to exhume the body of padre andres quintana at the mission of santa cruz, la exaltacion de transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 59 la santa cruz. the priest is found to have been murdered, tortured in pudendis, and hanged. november 1, 1993. the dismembered body of a young woman begins washing ashore on the beaches of santa cruz, california. (3, italics in original) while both events speak to the necropolitics of california, they are presented as being so removed from one another—chronologically as well as in scope—that the settler colonialist violence of the past (the murder of padre quintana in retaliation for his torture of the ohlone) and the violence of the present day of the novel (the dismembered young woman) appear to bear no relation aside from their location of santa cruz. however, their juxtaposition collapses the settler notion of chronology that prevents any connections between these acts of violence in an attempt to keep the genocide of california natives in the past and seemingly beyond resolution. as chris lalonde has argued, “[i]n juxtaposing events occurring around santa cruz, california in the nineteenth century with those occurring in the late twentieth century, the narrative helps to emphasize the text’s concern and play with time, temporality, and the idea of history” (101). the past and the present can exist concurrently, especially at the level of violence in the united states. this concurrence is not lost on venancio who comments at the end of the novel, while staring out at santa cruz in the present day that “it is a world so like [my] own” (243). histories do not automatically denote positive progress. and neither silko’s novel’s ending nor owens’ connote finality. to do so would imply that the horrors of history have been settled, that the characters’ work (as well as our own) is complete. that is not the case. even after robert’s death, the characters feel anxiety instead of relief. like in silko’s novel, the antagonism that they have overcome is only temporarily settled. onatima explains to cole as she is about to head back home: francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 60 “we have our own worlds… we carried our people’s bones a thousand days to find a home. when so many were removed, we stayed behind. who would talk to them out there at night if i never went home?... luther and i have our tasks there, and [hoey] has found his world there. he pretends he doesn’t understand, but when the time comes he will surpass all of us. luther has always known that. hoey is hoyo, the hunter, the searcher, the one who seeks and finds.” (242-3, italics in original) for onatima and for all the characters, responsibility is rooted in place. back home in mississippi, she, luther, and hoey must tend to their ancestors, whose remains they carried “a thousand days to find a home.” in this endeavor, they enact sovereignty, described by guillermo delgado (quechua) and john brown-childs (massachusetbrothertown/oneida/madagascan) as “bringing our indigenous past along” (69). as a writer and as one of the characters confronting robert in the climax, cole shares a responsibility to the santa cruz region, especially the ohlone. venancio looks out into for one final time before his “shadow falls across the town and bay, undulating with the slow waves” (243). he is still taken by the cruelty of the missionaries, as reflected by his final, italicized words (“eran muy crueles”), which are also the final words of the novel (243). but in his last act of the book, venancio returns to the land and waters of the santa cruz region. he is, at least temporarily, at greater peace following cole’s and his family’s encounter with robert, who embodies the settler colonialist thinking that perpetuates the necropolitical ideology of the united states toward natives. if, as alex points out, the ohlone did not recognize the world following the arrival of the spanish, venancio finally can at the end of the text (54). he returns to the landscape and seascape, receding to a position that is not so much out of reach but all around cole and anyone else who settles, or “re-places,” to santa cruz (gamber 229). transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 61 this is perhaps the most utopic ending possible in the present day of the novel. venancio is at peace, robert has been killed, and cole’s family can return home. cole has returned to writing, prompted and empowered by the presence of his community who travel across the united states from their home territory. and abby and alex, challenging the dominant thinking that the future is somehow incompatible with natives, have begun a romantic relationship. the novel ultimately shows that perhaps the most sordid feature of the past is thinking that it is beyond reproach, beyond reconciliation. as venancio shows in his final act, our settler colonialist past is embedded in the lands and seas around us. the ending of the novel is less about finality than transition. while the novel was (and still is) marketed as a murder mystery, the climactic encounter with the murderer, robert, is less about individual heroics than kinship and responsibility. rather than signaling a break from the past (sordid as it may be), an indigenous future deliberately links to it. if, as quoted earlier from raffaella baccolini, a dystopia is a world that “depends on and denies history,” an indigenous future is a world that consciously connects with and addresses its injustices. notes 1 in the field of native american/indigenous studies, the term “reconciliation” has become particularly problematic. for an in-depth discussion about how reconciliation, or “reconciliation politics” are deployed by the settler state, please refer to glen sean coulthard’s red skin white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. 2 while previously recognized from 1906-1928 as the verona band of indians, the ohlone of the san francisco area have struggled to achieve recognition since the 1990s. in 1998, following the bureau of indian affairs (bia) classification of their application as “ready status,” the tribe calculated that the process would take 24 years and sued the bia to expedite the process. subsequent petitions to the federal government by the ohlone have been unsuccessful. francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 62 3 more recently at the hearst museum, nez perce writer beth piatote staged a reading of her play, antíkoni, a reimagining of sophocles’ antigone that portrays indigenous resistance through the title character’s attempts to retrieve her ancestors’ remains. 4 in her memoir, bad indians, deborah miranda describes the “mission project” assignment of all fourth-graders in the state of california. as miranda explains, however, the project does not provide students with an honest depiction of the state’s genocidal past: rather, it glorifies the era and glosses over both spanish and mexican exploitation of indians, as well as american enslavement of those same indians during american rule. in other words, the mission unit is all too often a lesson in imperialism, racism, and manifest destiny rather than actually educational or a jumping off point for criticism thinking or accurate history.” (xvii) works cited baccolini, raffaella. “a useful knowledge of the present is rooted in the past’: memory and historical reconciliation in ursula k. le guin’s the telling.” dark horizons: science fiction and the dystopian imagination, edited by raffaella baccolini and tom moylan. routledge, 2003, pp. 113-134. bernardin, susan. “steinbeck country or owens country?: indigeneity in the california fiction by louis owens,” the steinbeck review, vol. 5, no. 2. fall 2008, pp. 38-55. byrd, jodi. transit of empire: indigenous critiques of colonialism. u of minnesota p, 2011. coulthard, glen sean. red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. u of minnesota p, 2014. delgado, guillermo and john brown-childs. “first peoples/african-american connections.” sovereignty matters: locations of contestation and possibility in indigenous struggles for self-determination, edited by joanne barker. u of nebraska p, 2005, pp. 67-87. deloria, vine jr. custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto. u of oklahoma p, 1970. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 63 gamber, john. “tactical mobility as survivance: bone game and dark river by louis owens.” survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor. u of nebraska p, 2008, pp. 221-246. lalonde, chris. grave concerns, trickster turns: the novels of louis owens. u of oklahoma p, 2002. lindsey, brendan c. murder state: california’s native american genocide, 1846-1873. u of nebraska p, 2012. mbembe, achille. “necropolitics.” public culture, vol. 15, no. 1, winter 2003, pp. 11-40. miranda deborah. bad indians: a tribal memoir. heyday, 2012. owens, louis. bone game. u of nebraska p, 1994. ---. mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place. university of oklahoma press, 1998. ---. “where things can happen: california and writing.” western american literature, vol. 34, no. 2, summer 1999, pp. 150-155. purdy, john. “clear waters: a conversation with louis owens.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 10, no. 2, 1998, pp. 6-22. rifkin, mark. beyond settler time: temporal sovereignty and indigenous selfdetermination. duke up, 2017. silko, leslie marmon. ceremony. penguin books, 1986. simpson, leanne betasamosake. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. u of minnesota p, 2017. venuto, rochelle. “bone game’s terminal plots and healing stories.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 10, no. 2, summer 1998, pp. 23-41. francisco delgado “sordid pasts, indigenous futures” 64 vizenor, gerald. “aesthetics of survivance: literary theory and practice.” survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor. u of nebraska p, 2008, pp. 1-24. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 174 marcie r. rendon. murder on the red river. cinco puntos, 2017. 208 pp. isbn: 9781941026526. https://www.cincopuntos.com/products_detail.sstg?id=277 marcie r. rendon. girl gone missing. cinco puntos, 2019. 208 pp. isbn: 9781947627116. https://www.cincopuntos.com/products_detail.sstg?id=310 anyone interested in crime novels will find marcie r. rendon’s cash blackbear books extremely difficult to put down. rendon (white earth) is also the author of two nonfiction children’s books: pow wow summer and farmer’s market: families working together. in addition, rendon is involved in theater with four published plays and is the creative mind of raving native theater. her first foray into crime fiction, murder on the red river, won the pinckley prize for debut crime novel in 2018. the novel was also a western writers of american spur award finalist in 2018 in the contemporary novel category. rendon’s crime novels mix mystery, social commentary, and close character study with a deep attention to place. in the canon of american detective fiction, most series featuring native american characters and settings have been written by non-native authors. however, there are a significant number of indigenous authors who are embracing the crime fiction genre. writers such as sara sue hoklotubbe (cherokee), thomas king (cherokee) writing as hartley goodweather, and victoria nalani kneubuhl (native hawaiian/samoan) to name a few, are using the detective series format to provide important self-representation of indigenous lifeways and cultures. rendon’s depiction of cash blackbear is a welcome addition to the genre. there is a lot to like about the cash blackbear mysteries, one of the most prominent features being the protagonist. at nineteen years old, renee blackbear, who goes by cash, is wise beyond her years. after being separated from her white earth biological family at age three and forced into the child welfare system, where she was shuffled from one white foster home to the next, cash’s life has not been easy. since the age of eleven, cash has regularly performed farm work for cash—the origin of her nickname. because cash doesn’t know where her biological family is, her biggest supporter is sheriff wheaton, a seemingly unlikely ally. over the years he’s consistently been there for cash, and rescues her from an abusive foster father, securing her an efficiency apartment so cash can exercise her independence. although cash is quite young, she’s extremely smart, resourceful, and brave. as a result, she’s an engaging and likeable character. she bucks stereotypes about femininity as well as stereotypes of the time period in which the novels are set: the early 1970s. cash refuses pot, but will drink endless amounts of beer and smoke carton after carton of marlboros. she’s a pool shark with a reputation that precedes her, and she’s the only girl working the farm jobs. her appearance is simple, and she’s usually dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and her jean jacket. she’s not into free love, bell bottoms, or any of the things her white peers seem so passionate about; for example, she’s critical of her professors because “rather than talk about the day’s assigned reading material, class discussions often veered off into anti-war discussions or debates about civil rights. cash wasn’t sure what either of them had to do with her” (girl gone missing 30). cash is pragmatic, trying to survive in a world that has been so cruel to her in her short life. and she not only survives, but she thrives. cash shows her smarts when she tests out of her english and science https://www.cincopuntos.com/products_detail.sstg?id=277 https://www.cincopuntos.com/products_detail.sstg?id=310 mary stoecklein review of murder on the red river and girl gone missing 175 classes freshman year at moorhead state in girl gone missing, and she even wins a state award for an essay she wrote about shakespeare and langston hughes. but there are also a lot of things cash doesn’t know, which rounds out her character as a sheltered girl from rural minnesota. she’s confused by the idea of prostitution, wondering why anyone would pay for sex, especially when “make love, not war” is the mantra of so many of her college classmates. both murder on the red river and girl gone missing are as much diurnal catalogs of cash’s life as they are mystery stories. because the reader spends every moment of each book with cash— we know when she bathes, when and how she brushes her hair, the countless cigarettes she smokes, her large consumption of beer, and her sparse diet of coffee, tuna sandwiches, and bismarck donuts—it’s impossible not to root for her to succeed. she is incredibly endearing. and perhaps this could be a criticism some readers might have: that the mysteries seem secondary to cash’s daily life. however, the primacy placed on cash is what propels each story. in focusing on cash’s day-to-day activity, rendon embeds in each novel a subtext that raises awareness of particular issues that face indigenous communities. in murder on the red river, intergenerational trauma, particularly from boarding schools and placement into the state child welfare system, is highlighted. because cash’s mother attended boarding school and because cash herself was moved from foster home to foster home, rendon conveys the lasting impacts that being separated from family and culture have done to indigenous people. in girl gone missing, while the main mystery revolves around the disappearance of blonde-haired, blue-eyed white girls, rendon underscores the “worldwide epidemic” of the “trafficking and murder of women and children, of all races,” and, in particular, how this issue impacts native women and girls. in addition, cash’s brother, whom she hasn’t seen or talked to since she was three, shows up at cash’s apartment; cash learns he had been adopted by a white family, treated as one of their own until he returned from viet nam, and the family disinherited him. through this character, rendon again portrays the mistreatment of native children as well as the imperative role of native soldiers, particularly in viet nam. one of the other prominent features of the books is place. set in the fargo-moorhead red river valley, details and descriptions of the various north dakota and minnesota settings make the cash blackbear mysteries deeply regional. throughout the two books—and hopefully there will be more, as the ending of girl gone missing suggests—great attention is put into illustrating locality. ada, the red lake reservation, halstad, and the twin cities are just a few of the places the reader travels to with cash in her quest for the truth. topographic information and geographical elements round out the depth of the descriptions of place: “all of this land, as far as the eye could see was flat because some giant glacier had shaved it flat while moving north. and every year it flooded” (murder on the red river 20). as a result, the settings are far from being empty backdrops. in addition, because the red river valley is where cash has spent her entire life, she knows this place extremely well. while cash has an intimate knowledge of the land and a close relationship with sheriff wheaton, her dreams and out-of-body experiences are what spur her investigations. for example, after seeing the body of a murdered red lake man in murder on the red river, in her mind cash “saw a gravel road with a stand, almost like a food stand where one would sell berries, but this one had a basket of pinecones on it” (39-40). she follows these clues, which lead her to the home transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 176 of the day dodge family on the red lake reservation—the family of the man who was murdered. some readers may take issue with cash’s investigative process and proclaim that it perpetuates stereotypes about “mystical indians.” however, rendon’s characterization of cash is anything but mystical, and like all the other characteristics of cash, her dreams and visions are part of her. they are not exaggerated or overplayed; they appear sporadically but do help cash solve the mysteries. furthermore, her visions are primarily about place; she must visit these places to get the information she needs. some may argue that the resolution of each novel is too easy or oversimplified. in each book, at the climax, cash finds her way out of nearly impossible situations, saving the day just in time. with that being said, these high intensity moments are part and parcel of the crime fiction genre, and provide satisfying, closed-case endings that are the hallmark of detective fiction. it is good to see cash succeed. moreover, while these books could be read as standalone stories, rendon makes connections to cash’s previous investigations, ultimately showing that cash is growing and evolving. cash is not a static character and at the end of each book, readers want to know what’s next for her. in all, murder on the red river and girl gone missing are excellent novels, so compulsively readable that they are difficult to put down. they contain less gore and violence than other crime novels, but this does not prevent the texts from presenting compelling and engaging narratives that also touch on issues that face indigenous peoples and communities. as rendon states in the author’s note in girl gone missing, “it is my hope that you, reader, will search farther for the truths once you have read this story.” rendon’s storytelling places her as a prominent contemporary native american crime novelist, and there is no doubt that cash blackbear has many more mysteries to solve. mary stoecklein, pima community college microsoft word doerfler.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 179 kirby brown. stoking the fire: nationhood in cherokee writing, 1907-1970. university of oklahoma press, 2018. 292 pp. isbn: 9780806160153 http://oupress.com/ecommerce/book/detail/2298/stoking%20the%20fire in stoking the fire, brown makes a significant contribution to an understudied era in cherokee literature. brown carefully situates his work within and in connection to cherokee scholars and cherokee studies as well as wider bodies of work on nationhood, adding to the growing body of literature that argues literary and intellectual production can play an important role in articulating and asserting tribal nationhood. brown engages with an impressive number of scholars including craig womack, daniel heath justice, rose stremlau, mishuana goeman, james cox, clint carroll, joshua nelson, amy ware, jace weaver, and robert warrior, connecting to many important trends and innovations in american indian and indigenous studies. while there is an expansive and growing body work in cherokee studies, brown rightly notes an important gap. after a comprehensive survey of the literature, he notes that the time period from oklahoma statehood in 1907 to the early 1970s has been the subject of one book and a handful of chapters, essays and dissertations. furthermore, many of the scholars that engage that period characterize allotment and statehood as so devastating that they neglect to consider the ways in which cherokees continued to imagine their communities and nation. remarkably, brown notes that his own archival work only begins to scratch the surface of an expansive, understudied and unknown body of texts and individuals who were actively engaged in grappling with the complexities of that time period. in stoking the fire, brown traces the complex ways in which the work of historian rachel caroline eaton (1897-1982), novelist john milton oskison (1874-1947), educator ruth muskrat bronson (1897-1982), and playwright rollie lynn riggs (1899-1954) remembered, advocated for, and envisioned cherokee nationhood during a time when the cherokee state was not functioning. brown moves beyond the binary categories of accommodation and resistance, taking a careful and nuanced approach to see influence of history, place, family, race, and politics on the diverse ways in which these authors understand themselves as cherokee and how they conceived of and represented cherokee nationhood in their work. in addition to exploring the complexities of cherokee nationhood in the first half of the twentieth century, he also considers how that vision of nationhood continues to speak to the current times. brown asserts these texts are equally valuable for what the tell us about the cherokee past as they do about cherokee futures. brown’s attention to gender is a welcome aspect of the book. he devotes more than half of the book to two cherokee women and addressing questions relating to gender representation in both oskison’s and riggs’s texts. his recovery of many of bronson’s public addresses, essays, and political works and his attention to eaton’s john ross and the cherokee jill doerfler review of stoking the fire 180 indians (1914) makes a strong case for the importance of cherokee women in cherokee literary traditions as both keepers and producers of knowledge. in chapter 1, “citizenship, land, and law in john oskison’s black jack davy,” brown utilizes cherokee constitutional traditions to draw new and innovative insights from this frontier romance. brown reads the novel through the lens of cherokee constitutional history and convincingly argues that the novel’s conflicts centered on land, citizenship, and cherokee legal authority usurp the romantic aspect of the plot. while the novel conceives of the ideal citizen in both racialized and gendered terms, brown notes that it is an example of the “complicated ways that indigenous-authored texts can at once speak back to settler discourses from the colonial margins even as the silence those that are similarly marginalized within their own national borders” (65). in chapter 2, “oppositional discourse and revisionist historiography in rachel caroline eaton’s john ross and the cherokee indians,” brown details the life of eaton and her efforts to detach the discourse of civilization and american notions of christian virtue from whiteness and us settler state in order to leverage it to defend indian nationhood. amazingly, less than a decade after the dissolution of the cherokee nation, eaton utilized local archives, oral history, and family collections to write a counterhistory of cherokee nationhood told through the life of john ross. in her nationalist biography of ross she tells a story of cherokee struggle for survival and moral right against us violence and broken promises. in the end her positioning of the cherokee nation as an acculturated civilization worthy of existence as a modern people is valuable but, as brown notes, she leaves no room in her narrative for a legitimate place for cherokee traditional practices. a number of scholars have analyzed lynn rigg’s the cherokee night (1936) and disagree widely over this post allotment episodic play that some argue evokes the value of cultural purity and focuses on the disintegration of cherokee families. in chapter 3, “blood, belonging, and modernist form in lynn rigg’s the cherokee night,” brown offers a new entry point into the play and departs from previous readings by focusing on “rigg’s theoretical commitments to formally innovative, politically committed theater, and the play’s explicitly modernist, selfconscious disruption of linear time” (120). brown effectively details his innovative reading of the ways in which the play disrupts lineal, national time and he ultimately concludes that the play can be is a critique of blood discourse and the possible renewal of cherokee families. in chapter 4, “cherokee trans/national stateswomanship in the nonfiction writings of ruth muskrat bronson,” brown recovers bronson’s diverse array of nonfiction from a forty-year time period. brown argues that bronson’s life and work parallel that of wilma mankiller and in the tradition of cherokee women’s diplomacy but also in the broader context as a central figure of early twentieth century american indian activism. he tracks shifts in bronson’s politics and transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 181 demonstrates that these shifts were a result of her experiences and the contacts and relationships she had outside the cherokee world. brown acknowledges and compromises and contradictions that exist in the works he examines. while eaton and oskison are able to subvert the explicit colonialist intentions of the respective genres they wrote in, they situate female, black, and conservative cherokees to the margins. bronson struggled to mobilize christianity charity and reformist discourse to contribute to indian centered policy reform. rigg’s critique of racialized thinking and blood politics was likely lost of many of the non-indian readers of his work. despite these challenges, brown suggests that the texts carry powerful messages for the current time. he challenges us to consider how riggs and oskison contribute to the current debates surrounding citizenship and belonging. likewise bronson’s dedicated work on behalf of other indian communities and national organizations, including the national congress of american indians, serves as lesson on the importance of intertribal diplomacy. these complexities do not take away from the fact that bronson, riggs, eaton, and oskison all “in their own ways, spent their lives stoking the fires of cherokee nationhood across one of the most confusing and chaotic periods of cherokee and american indian history” (xvi). stoking the fire will be of wide interest to scholars in cherokee studies specifically and american indian and indigenous studies more broadly. adding to the growing body of tribally specific literary studies, stoking the fire provides a compelling framework for how to approach tribal diversity and complexity in a specific time period and consider how historic works can speak to and inform present debates and challenges. jill doerfler, university of minnesota, duluth microsoft word jbm, snyder, final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 255 tiffany midge. bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s. foreword by geary hobson. bison books/university of nebraska press, 2019. 195 pp. isbn: 9781496215574. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9781496215574/ this funny little book means a lot. i say “little” because it is under two hundred pages long and contains much white space and several blank pages separating its eleven parts, but it is not small in significance. on the contrary, this first humor book by tiffany midge, a lakota poet and memoirist, is full of insight and delight. unsurprisingly, though this wide-ranging collection is comedic, it contains the aspects of poignant memoir and poetic language that were featured in two previous books by midge: outlaws, renegades, and saints: diary of a mixed-up halfbreed (1996) and the woman who married a bear (2016). although tiffany midge is a citizen of the standing rock sioux tribe and strongly identifies and speaks as a native woman, she offers a special perspective. she notes she is not necessarily recognized by strangers as indigenous and did not grow up on ancestral lakota land, but in the northwest. midge writes: i am an undeterminable ethnicity, tending to blend in, more or less, in any particular group. as a child, i was assumed to belong to a family of japanese tourists while waiting for a raft to cross over at disneyland’s tom sawyer’s island. at different times i wasn’t allowed to play with the children of bigots. i am repeatedly asked my cultural origins as if i’m an oddity or unfathomable puzzle (31). to sigmund freud and, closer to home, another author of standing rock sioux nationality, the legendary vine deloria, jr., humor is not merely amusement, but a deep and revealing facet of human expression. deloria writes in his classic chapter “indian humor” from custer died for your sins (1969): “laughter encompasses the limits of the soul. in humor life is redefined and accepted” (146). irony and satire offer keen insights into the psyche of individuals and collectives. bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s deploys several forms including one-liner gags, domestic humor, indian humor, memoir, political satire, social criticism, and feminist humor, all in various ratios. humor from an indigenous point of view strategically employs an accessible and inviting form to shake up mainstream readers and educate them on the experiences of native peoples: how their rights have been and continue to be ignored or trampled upon and their identities and resources appropriated or plundered. midge’s humorous pieces published in mainstream outlets online gained popularity and thus represent a significant intervention, and those articles collected in such a book as this potentially open lines of sympathy and communication between mainstream non-native readers michael snyder review essay: bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s 256 and native americans. as vine deloria, jr. noted, “people have little sympathy for stolid groups” (146). deloria argues that author and comedian dick gregory achieved much more than he was given credit for when he injected humor into the civil rights struggle. with his books, albums, and stand-up comedy routines, gregory invited “non-blacks to enter into the thought world of the black community and experience the hurt it suffered. when all people shared the humorous but ironic situation of the black, the urgency and morality of civil rights was communicated” (148). likewise, midge does similar work in cultivating sympathy and empathy for native americans, such as the abused water protectors objecting to the dakota access pipeline at standing rock—her ancestral homelands—and so raises issues of cultural appropriation in teasing and chiding subsets of non-native readers. the most compelling writing found therein is about herself and people she has known, including her late lakota mother and late white father. the dialogues between the author and her mother found in the title piece and “conversations with my lakota mom” are nothing short of hilarious. one great example of midge’s familial writing and wry perspective is her account of her father playing the role of chief bromden in a local stage adaptation of one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, co-opting one of her mother’s old wigs. although her father had “plenty of cultural insider awareness, he played mostly to stereotype, and his bromden was stiff as a cigar-store indian” (28). the author liked to think her dad attempted to bring some relevance to the role, “having been married to a native woman, for all those years, but he was by no means a will sampson or jason momoa” (28). along with the brilliant and frank writing about her mother’s final months in the title piece and her father’s “ugly american” imperialist attitudes while living in asia (“the siam sequences”), midge is also a deft character portraitist. my personal favorite is “the jimmy report,” about an eccentric vintage clothes shop owner in bellingham, washington. sassy jimmy is a transgressive trickster whose pranks and hoaxes keep the narrator and reader in stitches. tiffany midge has a sharp eye for ironic detail and an appreciation of oddball aesthetics. the issue of the audience for this book is an interesting one, but it would seem to have broad appeal to both a general audience and native american readers. sometimes the audience is by implication heterogeneously native, but also including non-natives having some familiarity with native culture. at other times, it is constructed as a gaggle of yoga-pants wearing, hillary-loving, liberal democrat women. such women treasure margaret atwood’s the handmaid’s tale and its recent adaptation as a chilling trumpera dystopia, not realizing that such subjugation has been a reality for native american women for centuries, midge claims in “an open letter to white women concerning transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 257 the handmaid’s tale and america’s historical amnesia.” (atwood, for her part, has stated that all her iconic novel’s horrors and humiliations were based on historical precedents.) at other times, the audience is constructed as white women in general, half of whom frustratingly voted for trump in the 2016 election. they are trendy consumerists, “basic bitches” obsessed with pumpkin spice (“an open letter to white girls regarding pumpkin spice and cultural appropriation”). in fact, much attention is lavished on white women and their novel, mellifluous names, such as finnegan, delaney, and saffron, which tiffany midge enjoys uttering, punctuating her pieces and lending them a certain poetry amidst satire. but in general, the intended audience seems mainstream, although many of the pieces were originally published in indian country today. this book would be a good one to recommend to resistant nonnatives to help explain why “indian” costumes, donald trump’s gauche celebration of president andrew jackson, and his taunting of elizabeth warren as “pocahontas” are problematic, even maddening to many native americans. midge takes the bull by the horns: “and if valorizing andrew jackson and signing pipeline orders on the same day isn’t evidence enough to prove that the president holds no regard whatsoever for indigenous people or the law or treaties or the environment, he also flagrantly tossed around racial epithets during a white house meeting with senators” (187). one of my favorite disses in the book is when midge declares: “trump is the personification of imperialism, a fat taker; he puts the colon in colonialism and worse”; meanwhile, melania is “our future first naked lady” (163). here’s to tiffany midge, who gets straight to the utter unprecedented nature of our strange times, the absurdity of it all. while the book is enjoyable and thought-provoking, there is some room for improvement. one suggestion would be to make more contemporary references to native american literature and culture. many of the allusions are vintage, from the title referencing dee brown’s 1970 nonfiction bestseller about the mistreatment of the indians of the west in the nineteenth century, bury my heart at wounded knee, to gags referencing a famous line from chief joseph’s 1877 speech, here given the erma bombeck treatment: “i will fight no more about putting the toothpaste cap on, forever” (6). such references are pretty old-school, recalling some of the jokes that vine deloria, jr. catalogues in his chapter on “indian humor” from custer died for your sins (1969). for example, there is much riffing on the old ‘indians used every part of the animal and wasted nothing’ trope, which is used a number of times. perhaps some more recent references or jokes about bunky echo-hawk, joy harjo, or a tribe called red could be added. or how about an allusion to a contemporary native writer who uses humor and satire, such as gerald vizenor, leanne howe, or even the controversial sherman alexie? the topics of critique are often not surprising, but midge usually finds michael snyder review essay: bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s 258 something new to say: thanksgiving, casual racism in everyday speech and restaurant names, cultural appropriation in offensive halloween costumes, and of course, pumpkin spice (which sounds like the fifth spice girl, joining baby, sporty, scary, and posh spice). speaking of which, a minor quibble with this book is that, at rare moments, it felt like university of nebraska press editors might have been a bit more proactive about making this feel more like of a coherent book rather than a collection of previously-published pieces. for example, although these short pieces are well grouped topically into eleven parts, certain jokes are repeated as many as three times in the book, if we count geary hobson’s foreword. this collection is enjoyable, but not every piece is side-splittingly funny. some of the political humor already seems dated. such pieces were great for a timely newspaper column, but when placed between hardcovers, they seem a bit underwhelming. the foreword by geary hobson, the gifted and vastly underappreciated cherokeequapaw and chickasaw fiction writer and storyteller, feels kind of vintage as well, yet everyone will learn something from it. it catalogues moments of native humor from literary history, concluding: “yes, non-indian american people, humor does exist among native american people” (xvi). however, this proclamation echoes what deloria wrote over fifty years ago. in “indian humor” deloria writes: “it has always been a great disappointment to indian people that the humorous side of indian life has not been mentioned by professed experts on indian affairs. rather the image of the granite-faced grunting redskin has been perpetuated by american mythology” (148). along those lines midge delivers, in “redeeming the english language (acquisition) series,” an excellent discourse on the origins and history of “ugh,” the favorite expression of the “grunting redskin,” beginning with a memoir of the 1870s, traveling across the canonical novels of james fennimore cooper, and discussing a particularly problematic song in peter pan. in his foreword, hobson goes all the way back to an 1832 reference in washington irving’s classic travel narrative, a tour on the prairies, in which “he describes some osage warriors around a campfire, cracking up irving and his fellow tourists with their antics” (xv). if it seems like there has not been much progress from the time that deloria was writing in the late 1960s to today, perhaps most americans really do remain in thrall to enduring stereotypes of the stoic indian, not much more enlightened to realities of native life. this is depressing, but much evidence would support such a view. back in 1926, h. l. mencken wrote: “no one in this world… has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people” (kahn). i am grateful to geary hobson for showing how extensive was the rise of american indian journalists using humor in the post-civil war transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 259 period, which encircled a cherokee—dewitt duncan clinton—and a muscogee creek —alexander l. posey (fus fixico)—among others. two of my favorite pieces which take on ethnic fraud evoke hearty laughter, comprising a slam-bang satirical pair. the first is “things pseudo-native authors have claimed to be but actually are not,” which includes a chameleon who can “blend into the brightly colored tablecloths or barstools, making it easier for them to prey upon unwitting directors of reputable publishing houses or editors of endowed literary journals” (132-33). the second warns “you might be a pretendian… if both of your parents emigrated from germany” or “if you buy black hair dye by the case” (135). i have definitely seen “that guy” at a native conference or two. i made a comparison to erma bombeck earlier, which is very much meant to be a compliment. for “aunt erma” was my homegirl. reading tiffany midge’s book kept reminding me of bombeck, which led me on a memory path; i checked out from my local public library an e-book collection of three of bombeck’s humor books. bombeck was writing her early domestic humor columns in the same suburb (“welcome to warm and cheerful centerville, ohio”) where i later grew up reading her in the dayton daily news even though, as a boy, i was not her target audience. her family home in centerville was placed on the national register of historic places in 2015. my mother once went to a bombeck book signing. my grandmother snyder, a retired schoolteacher, was a fan and owned a number of her hardcover books from the 1970s with titles such as if life is a bowl of cherries, then what i am doing in the pits? and the grass is always greener over the septic tank. these zany titles grabbed your attention and curiosity just like bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s. and some of tiffany midge’s columns, with their accessible idiosyncrasies, are reminiscent of bombeck’s work. midge is known to write of her marriage and domestic life; her piece in chuck e. cheese’s called “eight types of native moms” is perhaps the most bombeckesque. like tiffany midge, erma bombeck was a strong advocate for women’s rights, and fought for the equal rights amendment (era). in 1978, bombeck’s feminism was outed when she was appointed to the president’s national advisory committee for women and “embarked on a two-year speaking tour urging holdout states to ratify the congressionally-sanctioned equal rights amendment,” kristen levithan notes in her article “erma bombeck: feminist housewife.” while advocating for the era, bombeck “blended her trademark humor with a spirit of activism.” addressing the national student nurses’ association convention in utah, bombeck jested: “we’ve got to get sex out of the gutter and back into the constitution where it belongs… the era cause—‘equality of rights under the law’—may be the most michael snyder review essay: bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s 260 misunderstood words since ‘one size fits all’” (qtd. in levithan). while bombeck’s latetwentieth-century columns were generally not explicitly political, in her 1983 book motherhood: the second oldest profession, she posed the rhetorical question: “what kind of a mother would go to her grave thinking era stood for earned run average?” (21). midge’s fierce feminist satire shines through such pieces as “committee of barnyard swine to determine fates for women’s health.” for taking me back to erma bombeck and associated memories, i am grateful to tiffany midge. one visionary piece is “thousands of jingle dress dancers magically appear at standing rock protector site.” both in its sharp political commentary and its use of imagery and dialogue, this is an excellent piece of writing. “the jingle dress dancers could not be reached for a comment. they appeared momentarily on the highway, danced, lifted the spirits of the people, and then dissolved back over the hills from whence they came. the swish and tinkle of their jingles could be heard from beyond the horizon,” the piece concludes onomatopoetically (83). midge notes that this piece garnered many likes and shares online to the point that it went viral amidst the depression of the election results coming in. in a followup article, “satire article goes viral on day of 2016 presidential election results,” tiffany midge concludes that the popularity of the first piece indicates that its readers believed that the story was real reportage rather than “satire” as she puts it, that “people can’t discern what is real and what is false” (86). i would call it fiction or fantasy blended with political commentary, not satire particularly. if it is satire, what is being satirized? midge took the popularity of the article to mean that “the majority of the population is illiterate with regards to native culture and grossly misinformed about indigenous people” (85). while this is true, and no doubt some of the comments that were made online after her piece was published support that conclusion, surely some of these readers understood what she was up to. otherwise, it seems too depressing to view the viral success of something you wrote as evidence of widespread ignorance in trump’s america, rather than your own inspirational talent. i particularly appreciate midge’s highlighting of the problem of the “white savior” narrative that is still so common today, “the all-too-familiar trope in which a heroic white character rescues folks of color from their plight” (29). this trope suggests that natives are merely passive tragic victims who are acted upon. although it is common, in many cases it seems to go largely without notice or criticism. in midge’s memoir, this issue arises as she describes how her late white father, while serving a prison sentence, was studying different shakespearean plays and scenes with native and black inmates. she imagines an idea for hollywood: a heartwarming white-messiah prison movie. one transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 261 example within my area of research is david grann’s romanticizing treatments in killers of the flower moon: the osage murders and the birth of the fbi (2017) of the attorney w. w. vaughan, who was thrown from a train, and the fbi agent tom white, who was brought in by j. edgar hoover to solve the osage murder cases and is given a large section of the book (which is being made into a martin scorsese film starring robert deniro and leonardo dicaprio). vaughan was surely killed because he was going to share what he knew about conspirators bill hale and h. g. burt with the fbi and was killed before he could. that is noble, but as i explain in my forthcoming book, our osage hills, to be published by lehigh university press, w. w. vaughan was more than happy to charge osages ten thousand dollars a head to restore them to “competency” in his regular law practice so they would not be subject to the chiseling of a white guardian; that sum of money has the buying power of about $140,000 in 2018. furthermore, the osages might have paid nothing; according to terry wilson in the underground reservation (1985), lawyers “profited by representing osages applying for competency even though the agency handled all such cases free” (140). so this book, while humorous and at times whimsical, takes on some serious issues facing not only indian country but the united states at large. bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s deserves a large audience so that, among other reasons, native american humor can move closer to the status it held in the early twentieth century, when america’s most popular entertainer—who, like tiffany midge, also penned a humorous newspaper column—was will rogers, “the cherokee kid.” as vine deloria, jr. writes, “when a people can laugh at themselves and laugh at others and hold all aspects of life together without letting anybody drive them to extremes, then it seems to me that that people can survive” (167). bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s achieves this balance, its comedy amply evidencing and promoting not just survival but also survivance, as theorized by gerald vizenor, an enduring, “active sense of presence” renouncing narratives of “dominance, tragedy and victimry” (vii). michael snyder, university of oklahoma works cited bombeck, erma. motherhood: the second oldest profession. mcgraw hill, 1983. michael snyder review essay: bury my heart at chuck e. cheese’s 262 deloria, jr., vine. custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto. avon, 1969. kahn, robert. “the stupidity of the ages.” courthouse news service, 16 november 2017, www.courthousenews.com/the-stupidity-of-the-ages/. levithan, kristen. “erma bombeck: feminist housewife.” literary mama, march 2012, www.literarymama.com/profiles/archives/2012/03/erma-bombeck-feministhousewife.html. midge, tiffany. outlaws, renegades, and saints: diary of a mixed-up halfbreed. greenfield review press, 1996. ---. the woman who married a bear. greenfield review press, 2016. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. bison books/university of nebraska press, 1999. wilson, terry p. the underground reservation: osage oil. university of nebraska press, 1985. microsoft word 865-article text-4566-1-6-20191117.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 90 niillas holmberg (born 1990) is a poet, musician, actor, translator and activist from ohcejohka in sámiland, finland. he is the author of three collections of poetry, written in his mother tongue, northern sami, a minority language spoken by 20 000 people in finland, norway and sweden. lill tove fredriksen, associate professor of sámi literature at uit the arctic university of norway, is the one who selected this poem. niillas holmberg “máttu oahpus” 91 microsoft word jbm, murdock, final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 303 tshaukuesh elizabeth penashue. nitinikiau innusi: i keep the land alive. edited by elizabeth yeoman, university of manitoba press, 2019. 280 pp. isbn: 9780887558405 https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/nitinikiau-innusi in nitinikiau innusi: i keep the land alive, tshaukuesh elizabeth penashue shares the intimate details of her lifelong activism, advocacy, and deep love for innu people, lands, and culture. in my estimation, there really is no better name for the memoir than nitinikiau innusi because it captures the extent of love, respect, and reciprocity that a steadfast and challenging journey of protecting lands, waters, and peoples requires. the memoir illustrates the range of experiences and emotions that penashue confronts and endures while advocating for innu lands; at the same time, the memoir also makes clear that these lands form the author’s sense of identity. the most salient theme throughout the book is the conception of land not as an object or commodity but as the central being through which all is connected and made possible. indeed, penashue’s activism and advocacy for innu culture is intimately wrapped up with how the land is identified and what the land does. people are not separate from the land; rather people work either for or against the land, which makes penashue’s memoir and activism a touchstone text for land protection and indigenous resistance. to understand how penashue’s advocacy works with innu culture and land protection, it is important to examine how she understands the impact of settler colonialism and land development. many of penashue’s entries both touch upon and also rely on an understanding of the importance of land as nutshimit. early on, editor elizabeth yeoman flags the importance of nutshimit, as well as the complications in adequately translating it. nutshimit has been translated into english as “in the bush,” which may also recall words or concepts in english such as “wilderness.” however, innu leader tanien (daniel) ashwini understands these translations as reductive and unable to capture what the word actually means in innu, which is more expansively an expression of being-at-home-in-the-world or land (xxvii). the understanding of the world land in english faces the same issue, with land largely being reduced to its noun status and not as a site or process of becoming—a verb—as it is within many indigenous philosophies, including innu. other conventions of english also pose issues in understanding land or nutshimit precisely because english relies on inanimate nouns to refer to animate and agential beings, such as land (kimmerer). this often imposes an understanding that humans are the beings that do things to land and land is a passive recipient of human action. this could not be farther from the truth and from the esme g. murdock review of nitinikiau innusi 304 understanding that penashue so consistently expresses. keeping the land, the people, the culture, the innu alive is a reciprocal process of all the beings living on the land. penashue describes nutshimit as home, as the place where she and innu culture, custom, and being are most alive and most authentically related. nutshimit, in some ways, is the lifeline and lifeblood of what it means to be innu and protecting nutshimit is the possibility of continuance for innu peoples and culture. in describing pressures from dominant canadian society to have innu children formally educated in canadian schools instead of spending time in nutshimit learning the land, penashue writes, yet they learn so much there: how to find their way, how to use an axe and a gun, when it’s safe to walk on ice, so many things. innu-aitun and innupakasiun—innu ways of doing things, independence and survival. the women teach the girls how to fish and get boughs for the tent and set snares. the men teach the boys to canoe and hunt. we have to teach them our culture—they need to know who they are (7). penashue’s concern illustrates simply and clearly the complex entanglement of who the innu are with the land itself. the land is not just a resource for survival, but also the basis for a particular way of being-in-the-world through relationship. what is more, penashue resists the dominant canadian culture’s imposition of ways of knowing or being-in-the-world by advocating for what innu children need to know—how to survive on the land. what it means to be innu cannot be separated from what is necessary and useful to know to be able to exist and flourish in nutshimit. this is further addressed when penashue begins her campaign of advocacy for the land, and nutshimit in particular, against the military campaigns of bomb testing and low-flying jet drills. these war games include the excursions of other european powers that essentially rent the air space/land from canada for these destructive purposes. yet, as penashue explains, [t]he military don’t understand what they’re doing to us. they’re destroying everything we have—our land, our rivers, our animals, our happiness. don’t they care? so many people are crying in their hearts. we can never relax […] they just point at the map—with one wave of a hand they decide where to go. to them it’s an empty space. they don’t care about the people hunting here, teaching their children how to live, or about the animals. they have no idea what this means to us or even whether anybody is here at all (17-18). central to the conflict between the innu and dominant canadian society are conflicting worldviews and conceptions of land. penashue describes explicitly the way the land is viewed and understood by the military as a means to an end, an “empty space” as she puts it: something uninhabited by people who matter (including animals and the land transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 305 itself that suffer from the same stresses as their human counterparts), something that can be used for the purposes of practicing and perfecting war-making. this understanding of land and nutshimit as the heart of innu culture and people is also reflected in the types of resistance and activism that penashue and other innu women craft in response to the threats to their existence and their lands. penashue writes repeatedly of her campaigns to demonstrate to others—canada and the world—what the land means to innu peoples and to the future and continuance of innu culture. this activism largely took the form of walks and marches, mostly composed of innu women, to demonstrate the love of land and the unity of purpose in defending innu lands and nutshimit from the destruction of dominant forces. when i walk in nutshimit with my people, i’m showing how much we respect innu culture, the natural world, and all the living things. i want people to know we won’t give up our land. we won’t allow the government to damage it with mines and dams and bombs. if i was elected to the innu nation or the band council, i’d put all my energy into this and i’d look after the people walking in nutshimit (130). throughout her writings, penashue demonstrates an expert understanding of resistance to the dominant forces of destruction that the canada government poses to innu existence. her campaigns of marches represent and demonstrate a counterpoint to the disrespect the military levels upon nutshimit through awareness of and attention to the peaceful ways innu coexist with and live with the land. penashue’s marches reinforce the fact that the innu culture and nutshimit are mutually co-forming as well as mutually endangered. penashue understands the severity of the threat of the military trainings: they are blowing up the land to destroy the innu. as the land and innu are not separate, a threat to the land is a threat to all that the land encompasses, all that the land is. a final observation about the memoir is the honesty and vulnerability that penashue shares in her exhausting fight and advocacy for her people, her culture, and her lands. penashue does not just tell us the stories of her and her community’s victories, but of the everyday challenges and exhausting struggles of doing this work. she shares her tears, her sorrows, her anxieties, her frustration, her anger, and her fight to hold on with all of her responsibilities as a relative, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, a caretaker, a provider, and so much more. she speaks of the delights in being with her family and the exhaustion that care work requires. she speaks of the isolation and depression she feels by being unsupported in much of this work by her friends, esme g. murdock review of nitinikiau innusi 306 comrades, allies, and her own band council as well as the supreme joys of coming together when it works out. i cannot really express what an honor it was to journey with penashue through her diaries and entries. i felt like i was listening to a friend and learning such incredible wisdom from a dear elder. as esselen writer and scholar deborah miranda states, [c]ulture is ultimately lost when we stop telling stories of who we are, where we have been, how we arrived here, what we once knew, what we wish we knew; when we stop our retelling of the past, our imagining of the future, and the long, long task of inventing an identity every single second of our lives[...] culture is lost when we neglect to tell our stories, when we forget the power and craft of storytelling (xiv). here, miranda argues that culture is cradled in our stories and kept alive through the steadfast telling and retelling of our stories. in her own story, penashue chronicles her life and advocacy for innu land, life, and culture. in doing so, she keeps the land, which is bound up and interwoven with innu culture, alive. for readers, her stories can kindle the flame of hope and resistance in many the hearts of other land and water protectors. we need everyone to fight for the life of the land, for the future of earth, and for the flourishing of all peoples, who—whether they acknowledge it or not—are land. esme g. murdock, san diego state university works cited kimmerer, robin w. “learning the grammar of animacy.” anthropology of consciousness, vol. 28, no. 2, 2017, pp. 128-34. doi:10.1111/anoc.12081. miranda, deborah a. bad indians: a tribal memoir. heyday, 2013. microsoft word beard.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 315 tanya tagaq. split tooth. penguin random house viking canada, 2018. 208 pp. isbn 978670070091. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534654/split-tooth-by-tanyatagaq/9780670070091/ in split tooth, tanya tagaq takes readers into life in a small town in nunavut in the 1970s. in a powerful first person narrative focalized by a young girl in a northern community, we share the joy of kids let loose in town after a long artic winter, the craziness of teen fashion in severe climates, and the children’s lived knowledge of abuse in a community still dealing with reverberations from the residential school system. longlisted for the 2018 giller prize, canada’s premier literary prize for fiction, split tooth explores the fierce love, the crazy cliques, and the rash explorations of youth. dedicating her text to “the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and survivors of residential schools,” tagaq opens the first chapter, dated 1975, with the sentence “sometimes we would hide in the closet when the drunks came home from the bar” (1). episodes of children hiding in closets, evading drunken adults, listening to “wet sounds of flesh breaking and dry sounds of wood snapping, or is that bone?” (2) punctuate the text, occasionally accompanied by black and white illustrations by jaime hernandez. the inclusion of the drawings and poems in split tooth “demand an intense engagement to read creatively and look mindfully” as hertha d. wong asserts in her recent work on visual autobiographies (9). wong’s argument that visual life narratives demand a more intensely active engagement because “moving between image and text relies on defamiliarization that requires us to become more self-aware of the process of decoding and interpreting image and text at the same time” (10) fits tagaq’s text overall. tagaq demands an intense engagement from readers as we enter her world, decoding the poems, connecting the drawings to the narrative chapters, following along through school fights, bullies, best friends, abuse from teachers, intense seasonal changes on the artic land, and eco-erotic encounters with various non-human beings. tagaq beautifully captures the extreme emotions of those childhood and teen years, “stuck in the horrid torrent of awkward crushes and curious sideways glances” (13). when spring comes, with daylight and warmer temperatures, the kids and the dogs are set free on “the dusty streets looking for adventure. large gangs of kids and large packs of loose dogs roam the town. i wonder which group is more rabid.” (7) the children pick up old cigarette butts and smoke the last puffs from them, chasing and taunting each other in various ways. when a boy makes fun of the unnamed narrator for having a crush on her friend, she feels “embittered and confrontational. i’ve always loved girls, and our insufferable town see this love as deviance. this little shithead is not helping” (13). tired of his taunting, she wrestles him to the ground and, along with the other girls, disrobes him, leaving him only in his underwear and runs away waving his pants. i think of all the times i have been told i was inferior for being a girl. i think about all the times men have touched me when i didn’t want them to. i think about how good it feels laura j. beard review of split tooth 316 to be waving the pants of one of the cocky boys in the air while he hides behind the corner. we keep running and circle the school. he is waiting for us on the other side, swatting mosquitoes and crying. this is not the last time he will get himself into trouble with bravado that cannot be backed up. he ends up dying that way. (16) part of the emotional pull in the text comes in these moments when we move from the memory of the teenage moment into the reflection of the adult narrator, a reflection from which we learn that that bright, lively, truant child is no longer alive. tagaq pulls in the members of her narrative audience, taking us on an emotional roller coaster through childhood in the northern town—the joys in close female friendships and connections with the land, the fears of hiding from drunken and abusive adults, the empowerment of taking back control from abusers (in another powerful scene the narrator encounters one of the teachers who has repeatedly abused her—and others—at a party where he is drunk, gets him outside and pushes him down the stairs), the whistling at the northern lights, and the fierce love she feels for her family, friends, and community. in a chapter entitled “nine mile lake,” the narrator addresses a second person directly, “my little cousin, you were only seven years old. i was eleven, the big girl. we pilfered money and went to the store” (23). continuing to describe the resolute bay store, the cigarettes they smoked, and the things they did “hoping that our mothers would not see us” (23), the narrator recalls, “i never let you tag along while hanging out with the big boys, because we were always up to no good. you were too small for all that chaos. i did my best to protect you. i still do.” (2324). the overwhelming emotion that runs through so many of these scenes is love: “i will never forget your sweet little face that day, proud and exhilarated with our accomplishment. i carried your heart in mine. i still do” (25)—the decolonial love written about by leanne simpson, billyray belcourt and others. the unnamed first person narrator is fierce, observant, and loving, sharing tales of what it means to live and love in the midst of the ongoing and historical injustices of colonialism, the residential schools, and heteropatriarchy. taraq’s narrative also provides examples of encounters in the contact zone of human and other than or more-than-human, many of which are eco-erotic experiences for the narrator. we have encounters with fox, as well as with ice that becomes a bear: i mount his back and ride him. my thighs squeeze him and pulse with a tingling light. we are lovers. we are married. he swims with incredible strength and we travel quickly. . . . my skin melts where there is contact with my lover. the ocean and our love fuse the polar bear and me. he is i, his skin is my skin. our flesh grows together. (93) melissa nelson, in her article “getting dirty: the eco-eroticism of women in indigenous oral literatures,” argues that these kinds of “messy, visceral, eco-erotic boundary-crossing entanglement[s] of difference . . . can engender empathy and kinship and a lived environmental ethic” (232). certainly, the various encounters in split tooth are presented within terms of empathy, kinship and a lived relationship with an expansive notion of the land. perhaps the strongest example is in a chapter in which she walks out onto the sea ice and lies down. after first leaving her body, to slip into the waters below to look for sedna, she returns to transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 317 the surface, back into her body, but “[t]he northern lights have descended upon me during my spirit journey” (113). the lights sear into her body as she “melt[s] from agony to ecstasy. . . . the slitting continues down my belly, lighting up my liver and excavating my bladder. an impossible column of green light simultaneously impales my vagina and anus. my clit explodes and i am split in two from head to toe as the light from my throat joins the light in my womb and begins to make a giant figure eight in my body” (113-14). the narrator becomes impregnated through this encounter with the northern lights, carrying twins. while she tells no one of the encounter, she learns lessons from the encounter and from the beings growing inside her, lessons about reciprocity, responsibility, kinship, the land. from a child who puffed gas and picked up half-smoked cigarette butts early in the novel, then, she has become a narrator who challenges her readers to reconsider their own responsibilities to the land: “land always answers these questions for me. land protects and owns me. land feeds me. my father and mother are the land. my future children are the land. you are the land. we destroy her with the same measured ignorance of a self-harming teenager. that is what i was in my fifteenth year, what is your excuse?” (132) as the narrator increasingly engages with her responsibilities to an expansive kinship that includes celestial kin, future ancestors, and more, split tooth pushes us all to consider our own responsibilities to the land and land-based relationships in more capacious ways. split tooth also challenges generic conventions. while viking publishes split tooth as a work of fiction, the dust jacket description claims that “tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine that readers will never forget.” what that description perhaps underscores the inability of those binaries of eurodefined disciplines to categorize, embrace, or discipline the exciting work of indigenous artists and scholars. just as with tagaq’s award-winning music (she is best known for her throatsinging, including the 2014’s polaris prize-winning album animism), split tooth is another example of tagaq’s energetic connection to the wider universe. tagaq, in an interview with carla gillis, has referred to the book as being about her life, with references made to source material coming from her journal. this beautiful novel will appeal to readers of (the overlapping and interwoven categories of) contemporary fiction, indigenous fiction, inuit fiction, life narrative, and, of course, to fans of tagaq’s music who will be enthralled by another aspect of her powerful artistry. laura j. beard, university of alberta works cited belcourt, billy-ray. masturbatory ethics, anarchic objects: notes on decolonial love. undergraduate thesis. university of alberta, 2016. gillis, carla. “tanya tagaq steps out onto an unfamiliar stage.” now magazine. september 12, 2018. https://nowtoronto.com/culture/books/tanya-tagaq-split-tooth/. laura j. beard review of split tooth 318 nelson, melissa. "getting dirty: the eco-eroticism of women in indigenous oral literatures." critically sovereign: indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, edited by joanne barker, duke university press, 2017, pp. 229-260 simpson, leanne betasamosake. islands of decolonial love: stories & songs. manitoba: arp books. 2013. wong, hertha dawn. picturing identity: contemporary american autobiography in image and text. the university of north carolina press, 2018. microsoft word watchman.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 166 lee, lloyd. ed. diné perspectives: revitalizing and reclaiming navajo thought. tucson: the university of arizona press, 2014. lloyd lee (ph. d.) is kinyaa’áanii, born for tłááschíí (towering house, born for red bottom). his third clan, his mother’s father’s clan is áshįįhí (salt) and his fourth clan, his paternal grandfather, is tábaahá (water’s edge). he is an associate professor of native american studies at the university of new mexico and the director of the institute for american indian research (ifair). his personal story makes up the preface of diné perspectives. revitalizing and reclaiming navajo thought, which is almost verbatim to the version found in the introduction of his self-published book diné masculinities: conceptualizations and reflections (createspace independent publishing platform, 2013). in collaboration with twelve other diné authors, this book culminates from essays that “reflect elements of cultural diné knowledge, analysis, creativity, planning, living, and reflecting” (xiv). diné perspectives: revitalizing and reclaiming navajo thought appears to be constructed to reflect the teachings conveyed by sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n1 and is thus divided into four parts. in applying the epistemologies imbedded in sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n, the thirteen authors reflect “the four-part planning and learning process encompass[ing] the following tenets: nitsáhákees (thinking), nahat’á (planning), iiná (living), and siihasin (assurance), [in respective order]” (lee 6; werito 27). this monograph at once advocates for the revitalization and reclamation of diné epistemology by using and critiquing western constraints of knowledge dissemination. sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n is not only understood to encompass the four tenants, but it is a cyclical continuum: “specifically, the diné philosophy [sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n] is associated with and orientated to the four cardinal directions, starting with the east direction; the four seasons, starting with the spring; and the four parts of the day, beginning with early dawn and moving around in a clockwise direction with the path of the sun. this is commonly referred to as the t’áá shá bik’ehgo na’nitin, or the sun wise path teachings” (27). the chapters intersect life stories, art, poetry, prose, and scholarly essays that reveal multivalent diné epistemologies and philosophies, or matrices; a term lee borrows from viola f. cordova who defines matrix as a “web of related concepts” (3). nitsáhákees (thinking). part 1: “frameworks and understanding” invites us to think critically about how the stories of individual diné conceptualize sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n. shawn l. secatero’s chapter, “beneath our sacred minds, hands, and hearts. one dissertation journey” recounts his path in developing a study, anchored in a corn model theory that “can be deemed as a higher education model that encompasses spiritual, mental, social, and physical well-being” (21). together, these also capture the diné principles of hózhǫ́, which is the focus of the next chapter by vincent werito. “understanding hózhǫ́ to achieve critical consciousness. a contemporary diné interpretation of the philosophical principals of hózhǫ́” provides a critical, albeit personal, framework for understanding the complexities and intricacies of hózhǫ́. werito reiterates the common translation of hózhǫ́ as becoming or being “in a state of harmony and peace…” (26). what is most powerful about werito’s chapter is that it uses the tools of applied indigenous studies by constructing and applying sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n to unpack the diné hermeneutics of hózhǫ́. in addition to ceremonial understandings of the term, he also writes: renae watchman review of diné perspectives 167 “hózhǫ́ is more significant when the meaning is conceptualized, actualized, lived, and reflected on at a personal level” (29). his first section, conceptualizing nitsáhákees, is “kodóó hózhǫ́ dooleeł: it begins in beauty, harmony, and peace.” the second section actualizes nahat’á, “’iiná baahózhǫ́ bó’hoo’aah: learning about hózhǫ́ in my childhood.” werito’s third section shares present-day experiences through the concept of iiná, “hózhǫ́ǫ́go ‘iiná: living in peace and harmony.” finally, he concludes his chapter with a section that reflects siihasin, “hózhǫ́ nahásdłįį’: it is fulfilled in beauty” by also interweaving the tenets of sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n. this last section, named after how diné were taught by the diyin dine’é to end prayers, provides reflection on how he continually improves his knowledge of hózhǫ́. werito organizes this subsection with four principles that reiterate nitsáhákees (“thinking for one’s self”), nahat’á (“critical conscientization, which entails a plan to strategize ways to empower myself and other diné peoples”), iiná (“action…to achieve life goals”), and siihasin (“reflection”).2 his chapter aims to encourage “indigenous scholars [that] we can utilize indigenous thought to make sense of western concepts and vice versa” (37). esther belin’s chapter, “morning offerings, like salt” challenges us to think critically about contemporary “california style” and other urban and relocated diné experiences that delineate sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n. her vignettes begin by acknowledging her presence among rocks from the northerly of the navajo four sacred mountains; she says “i am surrounded by the rocks from dibé ntsaa” (39). belin’s positioning continues in musing about and critiquing the navajo nation’s complicity in the erasure of traditional ways of belonging, being and doing. her vignettes return to the rocks and tell of how her parents instilled sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n, albeit with a hybrid of terms from diné bizaad and bilagáanaa bizaad. belin’s chapter incorporates history, theory, and personal anecdotes of life by the ocean with wit and nuance, while also maintaining a strong position as one who is on the path to “full diné personhood” (42) despite being legitimated by her 4/4 blood quantum and census number. all four parts of this book, end with a chapter by venaya yazzie. through her poetry and artwork, yazzie concludes each part with a creative perspective that offers “the essence” and “visual metaphor” (9) of each section, thereby revealing yet another way to revitalizing and reclaiming sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n. in this first section, yazzie’s poem, “7pm thought, memory @ dziłnaodiłthle-eastern view” evokes diné epistemologies of the kinetics of naashá (which she interprets as walking, moving, existing, and living), along with imagery of dziłnaodiłthle, located centrally among the four traditional sacred ones. her artwork titled “dinétah” (traditional homelands meaning “among the diné”) concludes this section. nahat’á (planning). part 2: “analysis of methodologies” shares how to plan out and actualize reclamation and revitalization of sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n through the works of leading diné scholars. larry w. emerson’s chapter, “diné culture, decolonization, and the politics of hózhǫ́” offers six concepts to critically engage in order to return to the teachings of hózhǫ́ and k’é (relationships, kinship) with a firm eye on global diné futurities. like others in this book, he begins with introducing himself by adhering to diné clan protocol, and he outlines his personal journey to affirm why his plan to actualize is worthy of implementation. emerson’s honest personal narrative of the disastrous role that colonization has played is one that many can relate to. he was “taught to deny [his] diné identity, history, culture, language, and politics” (51). colonization is the first of the six concepts and it caused an imbalance across diné bikéyah transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 168 (navajo land). this imbalance is the opposite of hózhǫ́. to return to hózhǫ́, necessitates decolonization and emerson writes it is “impossible without a creative drive to change things that are not appropriate and are unhealthy for diné peoples” (52). he offers a concise history of colonization from the era of the spanish invasions of the mid-sixteenth century through the pivotal return of diné from hwéeldi in 1864 that marks a new navajo history to contemporary times, where he says we are in a “quasi recovery from colonialism” (54). emerson broadens his critique of neocolonialism to include navajo nation citizens who have embraced western ways of being, knowing, and living, which have had unhealthy results. he transitions to the second of his six concepts, the theory of “intergenerational and historic trauma,” to help elucidate why hózhǫ́ and k’é are rendered meaningless throughout the navajo nation. the third concept is decolonization as theory, and emerson’s goal is to educate other diné in order to engage “community-wide healing, transformation, and mobilization” (58) that will embody a form of liberation. in order to get to this freedom from internal (diné) and external (non-diné) oppression, he proposes a return to our “beautiful philosophy of life” (61) whereby hózhǫ́ is at the core. the fourth concept naturally flows from decolonization theories, and it is that of indigenization, where he sees the role of kinship as ongoing, among other indigenous ways of doing, knowing, and being, as pivotal to diné continuity. indigenization necessitates traditional knowledge, which is the fifth concept that emerson outlines. he views “traditional knowledge in two branches: (1) theory and practice and (2) as a set of primordial truths” (63). the sixth and final concept emerson proposes that will revitalize and reclaim navajo thought is to recognize indigenous human rights, which lee takes up at length as a complete chapter in the final section of this book. emerson’s foray into this brief introduction of indigenous human rights affirms for diné elders and scholars how we can safely move towards thinking, planning, living, and reflecting using hózhǫ́ and k’é. historian jennifer nez denetdale traces “the value of oral history on the path to diné/navajo sovereignty” by beginning with her own family story that involved her grandmothers and diné culinary practices that involved the use of a long lost tsé’ est’éí (cooking stone). denetdale’s captivating narrative corrected my own knowledge of traditional foods. formerly, i only knew of this bread as hopi piki bread, and her story illuminated that this was, in fact, also a navajo delicacy called nóogazi. her chapter aims to promote cultural sovereignty (of which she provides several sources on how this concept is understood) through oral stories and denetdale emphasizes that stories from the diné creation oeuvre, particularly those that emphasize the importance of diné women, of matriarchy and of k’é, relationships, are key to reclamation and revitalization. she says oral stories reflect traditional thought, and knowing and narrating oral history, the tellers and re-tellers of the stories implement decolonial, didactic tools that teach “how to return to those philosophies and values” (73). denetdale’s scholarly journey began with her rejection of non-navajo versions of navajo history, which “erod(-ed) tribal sovereignty and den(-ied) the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples” (71) in the section “decolonization, cultural sovereignty, and oral history.” in arguing for the actualization of oral traditions as a framework to decolonize how history has been conveyed, she clarifies that it is a way “for finding our way back to the ways in which our ancestors envisioned the past and the future” (71). in the next section, “decolonization and oral history,” denetdale highlights the “long walk (1863-1866) [as] a historical watershed” (74) because ancestors of the survivors memorialize experiences of the long walk through oral stories, which are counterstories to the american (western) narrative. historical stories and creation narratives interweave to make meaning for contemporary diné. denetdale’s own oral history research combined with renae watchman review of diné perspectives 169 the didactic stories of creation: of the importance of place, diné bikéyah; of how clans were formed, which relay the importance of k’é and hózhǫ́; of the role of girls and the ceremonial significance of becoming kinaaldá, of becoming women like ‘asdzaa nádleehé. denetdale explains, “changing woman is one of our most benevolent and compassionate of the holy deities. she is the mother of the diné peoples. in the telling of stories about women and cooking, the imagery of ideal navajo womanhood was relayed” (78). this invites a return to denetdale’s story of the tsé’ est’éí, in the final section “reverberations.” the significance of recovering this cooking stone, invited the re-telling of her grandmothers who used it and as such, enacted cultural sovereignty and sustained their family. the third chapter in part 2 is by melanie k. yazzie and is called “narrating ordinary power: hózhǫ́ǫ́jí, violence, and critical diné studies.” the chapter commences with a memory that explains what “ordinary” and “hózhǫ́ǫ́jí” (blessing way) mean by way of the poetic beauty of luci tapahonso. yazzie then expands her narration to include the poetic dystopia envisioned by sherwin bitsui with both reflection of, and theorizing of, power and violence. turning to foucault, fanon, linda tuhiwai smith and patrick wolfe, yazzie relates her own personal journey when she was an (extra-)ordinary graduate student in developing critical diné studies methodology that captures the intersections these writers (and others) introduce in order to “center the ubiquitous issue of power...a conceptual tool for addressing the realities of colonial violence alongside and in relation to the realities of hózhǫ́ǫ́jí in ordinary diné life…” (91, emphasis in the original). similar to denetdale’s argument that stories are valuable for reclaiming and revitalizing diné thought, yazzie expands upon this: “like power, oral traditions are alive and constantly changing” (92). this leads to the section “critical diné studies and oral documentation.” before engaging in her argument, yazzie summarizes andrea smith’s call for native american studies to “take up queer theory’s insights regarding ‘subjectless critique’” (92) because “subjectless critique legitimizes the use of oral traditions to uncover these forms and influences of power, because oral traditions potentially describe the complexities inherent to constructions of knowledge and history” (93). to give more credence to her argument, yazzie also evokes michel-rolph trouillo to demonstrate how diné oral traditions act to historicize and centre “diné subject formation” (93). she ends this section by outlining three ways that these interwoven insights propel her theory of critical diné studies, grounded by oral traditions and diné subjectivity vis-à-vis the diné everyday and the diné ordinary. the final section in this chapter, “critical diné studies and interdisciplinarity” argues for diné studies scholars to “draw from interdisciplinary studies on colonialism and histories of modern power to inform our critiques of colonialism, settler desire, power, and discourse as they play out in the lives of ordinary diné peoples” (95). she offers several examples of interdisciplinarity as an approach, while also maintaining diné cultural significance in order to address power (which she notes there is no equivalent term in diné bizaad). while her arguments are sound, in terms of analyzing how the five-fingered negotiate power, violence and hózhǫ́ǫ́jí, yazzie does not engage directly with how her theory moves sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n forward. instead she pleads for “our research … to rigorously commit to understanding all these forms of power if we are to … commit ourselves to being responsible members of k’éí, past, present, and future” (97), which implies that clan membership, oral stories, and hózhǫ́ǫ́jí are anything but ordinary. iiná (living). part 3: “political challenges” outlines the contemporary realities of life for upkeeping diné thought amid assimilative and genocidal governmental policies. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 170 yolynda begay examines “historic and demographic changes that impact the future of the diné and the development of community-based policy” and andrew curley’s chapter is “the origin of legibility: rethinking colonialism and resistance among the navajo people, 1868-1937.” begay critiques the governmental policies that continue to measure diné identity, and like others in the book, prefer to identify by way of k’é. her chapter “evaluates the current and historical diné population dynamics and how these dynamics impact tribal enrollment policy” (106). her aim is to ultimately heed the call to adopt a decolonial way of diné recognition, i.e. tribal enrollment, to “integrate traditional knowledge into policy” (107). as the title of her chapter suggests, she employs the use of figures, charts, and data to track changes in enrollment and recognizes an imposed “political identity” versus “diné worldview on identity” that includes not just head counts, but also traditional names that became moot for governmental officials and thus anglicized. begay recognizes the contemporary and lived experiences of diné who are negatively affected by policy. and given the rising population, she argues that this is the moment, in the here and now, to rethink the enrolment policy for a sustainable diné future and doing so by asserting our sovereignty and reclaiming pre-assimilation, decolonial ways of belonging, which may or may not define identification and include enrollment. andrew curley’s astute observation that “when trying to understand navajo thought in an era of colonialism, we must also examine how we became the navajo tribe in the first place” (129) introduces his study on “the origin of legibility: rethinking colonialism and resistance among the navajo people, 1868-1937.” his analysis of how diné (the term) was erased and replaced by another term: “navajo,” is one that critiques the u.s.’s rationale of attempting to make the diné a “legible” minority who were to be in tune with, aligned with, and standardized with everyone else. these attempts were not without resistance from diné people, and curley hopes “this chapter contributes to the development of a new understanding of our recent history with greater emphasis on how we came to look the way we do in the eyes of the federal government—namely, though [sic] the establishment of political institutions around new forms of political leadership” (130). curley’s chapter is framed by the political timeline, spanning from the treaty of bosque redondo in 1868 to 1937 with the establishment of the second navajo nation tribal government. he charts governmental policy and its contentious impacts on diné, who did not sit idly by and resisted colonialism through acts such as ceremony, outright ignoring policy to that of enacting violence; these continue today. living as diné (and not as navajo) recognizes and promotes sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n in ways that simply reading about navajo history does not. siihasin (reflection/assurance). part 4: “paths for the future” engages readers to reflect upon how to move forward with active diné presence that includes examining diné language and culture loss as well as implementing articles outlined in the un’s declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. both kim baca and tiffany s. lee reflect on the contemporary challenges that diné youth have in learning and living the language and culture. baca’s short essay, “sustaining a diné way of life” introduces two navajo youth whose divergent stories reflect many in similar situations. they go to a native american public school in albuquerque and claim that their twice weekly navajo classes instill sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n. this short essay highlights their struggle with diné identity, while they yearn to embody diné identity. tiffany s. lee’s chapter “if i could speak navajo, i’d definitely speak it 24/7” proposes the creation of “critical language consciousness” that is communal, collaborative, and holistic. renae watchman review of diné perspectives 171 she reflects upon why diné bizaad is not at the heart of diné education, given the presence of a few key immersion schools that are on the navajo nation. this query invites more queries of why diné language is not prioritized as part of the contemporary daily diné life and worldview. the answers, she argues, are found in critical language consciousness, whereby students have become “well informed of the injustice and oppression that their people and indigenous people across the world have suffered, and they desire to make a difference” (160). knowing about the effects of colonialism is a prerequisite to transformative thinking that will continue to inspire language reclamation and revitalization. the section “diné youth and diné language” exposes the divergent views of youth who are either proud of their diné identity or ashamed of it. as an educator, lee advocates knowing genocidal and colonial histories that have promoted diné language loss; she notes that youth who have become critically conscious are the ones who yearn to make changes in terms of language revitalization. she has a wealth of research that spans from engaging her university students in written reflection to interviews that discuss how to reclaim languages to a questionnaire aimed at exposing high school students’ attitudes on diné language. the results of this combined research make up the next section “states of confusion, marginalization, and stigmatization.” while many were confused, felt marginalized or stigmatized for either not speaking or speaking incorrect diné bizaad, lee has stories of “diné youth language activism” whereby youth “have been very active as change agents in instigating language revitalization efforts in their families and communities” (166). all of the ways youth have taken initiatives to reclaim and revitalize diné bizaad are inspirational and range from becoming language teachers of sorts to family and community to combating racism by actively resisting censorship of the language. these stories highlight how youth are in control of their own language destinies through critical language consciousness and how as a community of diné, we need to embody sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n in ways that continue to motivate and inspire language reclamation and revitalization. this final section coalesces active diné presence via language with active diné presence as recognized by the “navajo nation and the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples,” which is the name of the final chapter of the book and authored by lloyd l. lee. he provides a concise summary of the premise of the declaration, including the initial oppositional votes, now reversed, from the u.s., canada, new zealand, and australia. lee then scrutinizes seven articles that the navajo nation is implementing whose topics are: self-determination through economic develpment, protecting diné traditions, customs and ceremonies, repatriation, language education, subsistence and development, land, recognition of rights pertaining to cultural heritage and indigenous knowledges, and determining identity and membership. in focusing on these specific articles, lee “offers a discussion on how diné individuals and communities can hold the tribal government and the united states accountable” (171). to scrutinize these articles, lee incorporates evidence where the “fundamental laws of the diné” worked in tandem with the declaration to advocate for a decolonial and sustainable system of governance for each respective topic. lee encourages turning to the laws to support a sustainable diné continuum that focuses on language, education, and privileging stories. together, the recognition and implementation of articles from the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples alongside thinking, planning, living and reflecting, by way of sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n, will aid in a transformative future for diné people and diné worldviews. this outstanding book synthesizes diverse stories of diné artists, writers, thinkers, and community members and is written for both academic and non-academic audiences. diné transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 172 perspectives privileges diné readers of all ages and it invites further dialogue about how one actively works towards diné revitalization, reclamation and renewal of sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n, the foundational epistemology that will ensure diné continuum. renae watchman, mount royal university notes 1 in speaking with local elders in the shiprock area, i have been instructed not to reduce our foundational epistemology of sa’ą naagháí bik’eh hózhǫ́ǫ́n to a metaphor, or to the acronym of snbh, as the authors in this book do. when in contexts outside of academia, elders do not say “snbh” in every day or ceremonial parlance. to continue to do so reverses diné continuance and is an act of epistemicide. 2 all quotes are from pages 34-35. microsoft word kovach.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 229 sara sue hoklotubbe’s sadie walela mystery series titles under review: hoklotubbe, sara sue. deception on all accounts. tucson: the university of arizona press, 2003. 240 pp. isbn: 0816523118. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/deception-on-all-accounts ––. the american café. tucson: the university of arizona press, 2011. 256 pp. isbn: 0816529221. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-american-cafe ––. sinking suspicions. tucson: the university of arizona press, 2014. 224 pp. isbn: 0816531072. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/sinking-suspicions ––. betrayal at the buffalo ranch. tucson: the university of arizona press, 2018. 232 pp. isbn: 0816537275. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/betrayal-at-the-buffalo-ranch sara sue hoklotubbe (cherokee) is the recipient of the 2012 willa literary award for original softcover fiction by women writing the west, the 2012 new mexico-arizona book award for best mystery, and the 2012 mystery of the year by wordcraft circle of native writers and storytellers. she was also a finalist for the 2012 oklahoma book awards, as well as the 2011 foreword book of the year. her sadie walela series is based in the place where she grew up: cherokee country in northern oklahoma. it mixes mystery, social commentary, and romance, and uses regionalist characteristics while introducing cherokee language and culture. anyone interested in mellow crime novels depicting the life of ordinary cherokee in rural oklahoma will find hoklotubbe’s series delectable. within the american tradition of crime and detective fiction, too many series depicting native american characters and settings were written by non-native authors. best-of lists citing popular crime novels presenting native americans never fail to mention tony and anne hillerman, craig johnson, or william kent krueger, but still tend to overshadow actual indigenous authors. hoklotubbe’s representation of cherokee life matters greatly within the scope of the genre. her voice deserves to be heard, and it is time the american detective fiction canon begins to incorporate more authors like her. do not judge the sadie walela books by their tacky covers: there is a lot to like in hoklotubbe’s mystery saga. sadie walela is a cherokee from mixed ancestry who struggles to find her place between her family life on the reservation and the white town where she works. sometimes a bit stereotypical, the horse riding, wolf-dog owning heroine is nevertheless completely endearing. alongside her search for clues, we can read between the lines a valuable social commentary on modern cherokee life in euro-american society. léna remy-kovach review of the sadie walela series 230 protagonist sadie walela embodies cherokee values of kindness and respect. she often goes out of her way to help neighbors, colleagues, and even customers of the bank where she works. she is hurt and discouraged to witness greed being put before humanity and always strives to do better while representing her community. she is a strong-willed, independent woman who finds comfort in spending time with her elders or horse riding on her family’s land. she is at the junction between cherokee and euro-american societies. from the first volume, deception on all accounts (2003), sadie operates as a liminal character, capable of navigating as well as bridging both worlds. despite racism and hardship, she constantly remains a symbol of hope and reconciliation in the novels. although her plots might seem simplistic, hoklotubbe maintains suspense by alternating voices and intertwining storylines from each chapter to the next. she skillfully inserts twists and masters the typical mystery fiction structure, in which each section ends on a palpable tension climax. she also maintains this rhythm from one volume to the next: although they can each be read as stand-alone works, she punctuates the investigations with remarks linking them together and informing us of sadie’s reflexion on past events. not only does this demonstrate good character building, it also represents the cherokee characters’ ability to evolve and grow, and therefore avoids the stereotypical trope of native americans as static figures of the past. sadie walela starts the series as a disenchanted bank employee, who leaves the business with the hopes of finding a different position that would allow her to bring good to her community. by the third volume, sinking suspicions (2014), she becomes a travel agent; the book alternates chapters between a murder investigation at home in oklahoma, and sadie’s trip to hawai’i. these elements echo hoklotubbe’s biography, who herself left a career in finance in oklahoma city to follow her husband when his job relocated him to maui. with each volume, the quantity and depth of remarks concerning cherokee life in america increase. hoklotubbe tackles racism and domestic violence with the same ease as she does the treatment of native american veterans or discrepancy in economic and professional opportunities for indigenous people. for example, deception on all accounts starts with the racism and gender discrimination that management inflicts on sadie, a bank employee whose loyalty and honesty cannot be accepted as synonymous with her “indianness” by her euroamerican boss and colleagues. . there are also repeated allusions to domestic violence and spousal abuse throughout the saga, specifically when sadie discusses her failed marriage. in sinking suspicions, we are confronted with the legacy of the allies’ presence in the pacific during wwii and with the treatment of hawai’ian and japanese americans by the federal government. in the american café (2011), hoklotubbe alludes to the multiple adoptions of native american children into white, christian, euro-american families. she traces back the emotions of her characters – such as depression, feelings of inadequacy, or struggles with addiction – to the intergenerational trauma too often suffered by the adoptees, the same children whose native identities and biological families were suppressed or even hidden from them. like many scholars, the author affirms that renewing ties with the original community, learning the language, and becoming knowledgeable in family relations and genealogy are keys to healing. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 231 in her latest novel, betrayal at the buffalo ranch (2018), hoklotubbe addresses land dispossession and settler encroachment on native land with a very modern twist. she uses the investigation of a mysterious murder to center the readers’ reflection on gentrification and western obsession with mapping and fencing private property, particularly on unceded tribal land. it is also in this latest volume that sadie actively becomes the detective, conducting research herself and visiting the crime scenes on her own. in the previous texts, she was always secondary to the action, hearing about clues from other characters or accompanying them and staying behind. whether it is the duty to protect cherokee lands from the greedy white ranch promoters which pushed sadie to take matters into her own hands, or a long due development of a protagonist who had been quite passive for three volumes, it is a new element that makes the latest novel the most interesting of the series so far. locality plays a major role in hoklotubbe’s mysteries. details and descriptions of the various oklahoma settings make the sadie walela series a great example of local color crime fiction. throughout the four volumes, great attention is put to accurately situate sadie and the action. lake eucha, sycamore springs, and liberty are some of the spaces the reader travels to while following sadie in her quest for the truth. topographic information and geographical elements add veracity to sadie’s comments on her surroundings. the settings are far from being empty background décor, however. detailed portraits of people’s particularities, such as accents or dialects, outfits, and even diet, make the walela series a vivid image of contemporary life in oklahoma. with this mystery series, sara sue hoklotubbe leaves her mark not only on cherokee modern literature, but on regional literature as well. although the sadie walela series might not appear to take as strong an activist stance as other native american crime novels, this does not prevent it from holding a valuable position within the genre. it contains less suspense and violence, which some crime readers are after, than sherman alexie’s indian killer (1996) or stephen graham jones’ the least of my scars (2013). it alludes much more discreetly to the gender and sexual abuse that threatens indigenous women than katherena vermette’s the break (2016). the oklahoma settings are more elements of local colors tropes than characters in itself, such as santa cruz and the monterrey bay area are in louis owens’ bone games (1994). however, hoklotubbe’s attention to respectfully engage the reader with cherokee values, language, and culture, as well as contemporary issues, absolutely places her as a contemporary native american crime novelist to follow. there is no doubt that sadie walela has many more stories to tell. léna remy-kovach, university of freiburg works cited alexie, sherman. indian killer. new york: grove, 1996. jones, stephen graham. the least of my scars. portland: broken river, 2013. owens, louis. bone games. norman: university of oklahoma press, 1994. vermette, katherena. the break. toronto: house of anansi, 2016. microsoft word golos.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 343 sherwin bitsui. dissolve. copper canyon press, 2019. 67 pp. ibsn: 9781556595455. www.coppercanyonpress.org if you have ever been in the southwest, the landscape, without the houses and towers, is a layered one—the tan earth, the wide sky, mountains that mold themselves between the two. sherwin bitsui's book, dissolve, incorporates this layering in brilliant and many-faceted ways into one long poem. at first reading, it is bitsui's images that become the book's top layer: a field of moonlight double-parked in snowmelt or ...a tow-truck hoisting up a buck butterflies leaking from its nostrils or cranes pass as swans through runnels underneath this dreaming or feather-wrapped mountains unclutter veins to what remains before sparking fires where moonlight warms knuckles wriggling in the slick throats of the drowning. you can read through this top layer and underline one image after another, until there seems a surfeit of image. however a slower read (“...breathe it in”) is necessary. bubbling beneath this layer is the poet's use of verbs. this is important, because bitsui's mothertongue is navajo, or diné bizaad, a language of verbs, full of movement, phrases and elegant construction. phrasing contains motion—the verb of movement “to go” is a basic phrase. description is done by the verb aspect of it, how something is made, is being made, in the present tense. for example, in discussion with poet joy harjo, bitsui relates trying to re-translate from its english translation, into navajo, a li po poem, which uses the word “wall.” when i asked bitsui about this in a phone call, he told me, “we would describe the ways it was composed—a cement rounding the house.” phrasing in navajo contains motion, description is the action of the noun, veronica golos review of dissolve 344 how the noun came to be. or, what it does. for example, “clock”, would be derived from “it is moved slowly in a circle.” and, for this poet, both languages congeal inside his imagination and poetry. amber clouds of bone marrow lathered over corn husks— are crushed sideways into toothache, where waning daylight's tongue-scent bleeds through a flypapered horizon. or this mountain stands near us: mountaining, it mistakes morning for mourning when we wear slippers of steam to erase our carbon footprint [emphasis added] and of course, mountaining, flypapered, steam and footprint all achieve movement or the hint of possible movement. here the poet's blend of language, of scene, and of movement shifts between what seems to be worlds: one of landscape and city, of the huge spaces of the navajo and the jammed town. but also between the poet and reader, or speaker and listener. through both image and motion, we are brought into voice and feeling, and into what i consider another layer, that of beauty and its disappearance. one might remember and consider the now famous, much-repeated section of the navajo blessing way ceremony: with beauty before me i walk with beauty behind me i walk with beauty above me i walk with beauty around me i walk this becomes in bitsui's language, here and not here, present and taken: there's a way out— with the dirt road into cerulean dawn, tap with clear fingerprints the windows of cars and trucks rattling down highway 77, and clasp the nine eyes of the desert shut at the intersection of then and now or transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 345 the camera sees a storm its eyes bullet blasts stacked stop gas-soaked magpie wings. or a lake, now a tire rut pool, leaves bitter aftertastes on single-roomed tongues. over and over the poet upturns the landscape, revealing the scabbing beneath. and also, sometimes, it works backwards: neighs spasms onto songs braiding their highest leaves into our necklaces of smoke. and then, like cactus-needles thrusting up through the desert floor, comes yet another layer in this important and timely and lovely book. the anguish and anger of the present day and its history, especially for indigenous peoples. the remaining uranium leakage, climate change, water contamination, drugs, exile. bluing under a dimming north star... the reservation's ghost.. rising out of the uranium pond— or this plate's shape is pawned for bread. paper lungs collapse ... when they seed guns with powdered bone awls, who will be injured by such blue dark? or on the shores of evaporating lakes. this plot, now a hotel garden, its fountain gushing forth— the slashed wrists of the colorado. veronica golos review of dissolve 346 here, at the heart of what i see in the book, is the madness of a world that slashes the wrists of the colorado. bitsui, by using image and unique juxtaposition, arrives at a kind of rubbing against the stones of the past-present world. history of this country's ravage of the indigenous peoples, pebbles through the poem: “bison-bone,” “gun's shadow,” “hatchet,” “scalped hair,” “we sleep/ collared to our children's nooses.” these poems are rich in affective and spiritual associations, seeking to put words together in such a way that they release a spiritual and vital action. they give the reader an experience that enriches, opens a door to the present-past/the past-in-the-present. this is done with a sure hand. veronica golos works cited drake, tim. “walk in beauty: prayer from the navajo people.” talking feather: lesson plans about native american indians, 2019. http://talking-feather.com/home/walk-in-beautyprayer-from-navajo-blessing. harjo, joy. “sherwin bitsui by joy harjo.” bomb, issue 145, 5th dec 2018. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/sherwin-bitsui/ transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 138 geoff hamilton. a new continent of liberty: eunomia in native american literature from occom to erdrich. university of virginia press, 2019. 207 pp. isbn: 9780813942452 https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5184 the critical framework that geoff hamilton sets up in the opening pages of his monograph, a new continent of liberty is an interesting one, from a heuristic standpoint. in “eunomia,” the greek concept of an ideal, ecologically-balanced fusion of human law and natural/divine law, hamilton puts forward a concept that allows him to chart two parallel literary histories—one “indigenous” (comprised of major—i.e. anthologized—native american writers from the past 200 years) and the other “euro-american” (reflecting a conventional, white male canon of american literature). hamilton’s sympathies here are quite clear. the euro-american story is a familiar narrative of declension, where the american ideological commitment to “autonomy” (one might substitute here the idea of white male, liberal subjectivity) gradually disintegrates as it reveals its inability to manage its own contradictions. the parallel indigenous literary history records a process of renewal in the wake of colonialism, culminating in a present moment where native american writers have been able to re-assert a political, ecological, and spiritual vision that balances individual and collective needs. i realize that this overview description makes hamilton’s book sound somewhat schematic. that is because it is, indeed, rather schematic. but there is value in this approach. ultimately, what a new continent of liberty is trying to do is find a meaningful point of contact through which one might rescript a new, comprehensive “american” literary history, one that more accurately reflects the totality of voices that comprise it. in doing so, of course, hamilton remains committed to a fairly conventional model of what constitutes literary history itself (the study of “major” authors and texts, tracing thematic through-lines across time with modest historical contextualization, etc.). this is the literary history of the undergraduate survey classroom, in other words. recognizing those parameters allows readers to appreciate what hamilton is able to achieve in the book (which does strike me as pedagogically useful in a number of ways) without being unduly critical of its tendency to tread rather lightly across other critical conversations. the introduction to a new continent of liberty promises an account of the increasing pathologization and “dysnomia” in what other critics might label “settler colonial” literature and a “revitalized understanding of eunomia” in indigenous writing. the bulk of hamilton’s work seeks to illuminate this contrast through the analytical pairings of texts. in a series of chapters, hamilton juxtaposes thomas jefferson and samson occom; ralph waldo emerson and william apess; mark twain and sarah winnemucca; ernest hemingway and zitkala-ša; joseph heller and n. scott momaday; and don delillo, louise erdrich, and gerald vizenor. as one might imagine, some of these pairing allow for more detailed and specific comparative analysis than others. while hamilton’s readings in chapter 1 don’t break much significant new ground in their discrete discussions of texts, for example, it is useful to see jefferson’s deployment of eighteenth-century aesthetic categories to support his political ideology (in notes on the state of virginia) read against samson occom’s challenging negotiation of the tensions between indigenous communal integrity and the colonial order in his own writings. there are some arresting moments in this chapter, such as the point when hamilton contrasts occom’s subtly https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5184 david j. carlson review of a new continent of liberty 139 subversive archiving of algonquian words with jefferson’s very different type of imaginative taxonomy (one can imagine deploying this contrast to great effect in the classroom.) hamilton’s distinction between the detached “specular power” implied in emerson’s famous transparent eyeball trope and the critical-historical vision apess presents in his “an indian’s looking-glass for the white man” is a similarly provocative and generative moment (47). at other times, though, the pairings developed in the book feel thinner, leading to chapters that read more like discrete reflections on texts than integrated analyses. the contrast between twain and winnemucca, for example, ultimately boils down to a distinction between huck finn’s individualistic commitment to negative liberty and a paiute emphasis on collective autonomy and integrity. the readings in this case come across as valid, then, but the payoff of the comparative argument remains fairly limited and generalized. in some other cases, one wishes that hamilton had considered incorporating supplemental frameworks and critical conversations to help deepen the connections he establishes. in reading the discussion of hemingway and zitkala-ša (which focuses attention on each writer’s treatment of the impact of trauma), for example, i found myself wondering if a more developed discussion of contrasts between settler colonial and indigenous modernisms (a subject of a fair amount of recent scholarship) might further enrich the story of dysnomia vs. eunomia driving the book. perhaps making moves of this kind would have transformed this into a different kind of monograph and diluted the clear through-line around which hamilton has structured his mediation. but i think the benefits of that type of complication of the argument would have outweighed the risks. in the end, hamilton argues that one of his major goals in writing a new continent of liberty was to cultivate increased dialogue regarding the distinctions between euro-american and indigenous “conceptions of autonomy” (179). in the introduction, he notes that he prefers that term “autonomy” to “sovereignty,” viewing the former as both having an older pedigree and also better conveying the idea that “self-rule,” in its most ideal form, entails the idea that the individual and communal self is “interwoven with the earth that sustains it” (5). what comments like this reveal, of course, is that co-existing with the literary historical argument of this book is a deeper political and philosophical one, which is much more congruent with the decolonial thrust of contemporary indigenous studies scholarship than might first appear to be the case. once or twice in the book, hamilton mentions in passing that he is interested in developing a “dialectical framework for understanding american literary history” (2). the subtext of his overall literary historical argument supports this, as ultimately hamilton seems to be presenting an indigenous nomos (or, normative universe) as the type of antithetical ideology needed to sublate and transform settler society to create a balanced and shared eunomic order. what the readings contained in the book also reveal, however (perhaps ironically at times), is that dialectical criticism must always wrestle with the danger of overgeneralization, and that dialectical transformation requires more than the mere juxtaposition of contradictions. in this regard, i find myself compelled by hamilton’s larger project, but also wondering if the conventional structures of literary history through which he is advancing it here end up being more restrictive than he would ultimately like. the fact that hamilton ends his book by holding up gerald vizenor’s particularly fluid (and dialectical) imagination as an example of how we might approach the transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 140 reformulation of the concept of self-rule suggests to me that he is aware, himself, of the need to develop new critical forms to carry on with the work he has ably begun. david j. carlson, california state university san bernardino microsoft word contributors 6_1.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 316 contributors guest editors a. robert lee formerly of the university of kent, uk, was professor of american literature at nihon university, tokyo, 1997-2011. his writings include designs of blackness: mappings in the literature and culture of afro-america (1998), multicultural american literature: comparative black, native, latino/a and asian american fictions (2003), an edinburgh university press publication which won the 2004 american book award, gothic to multicultural: idioms of imagining in american literary fiction (2009), united states: re-viewing american multicultural literature (2009) and the routledge handbook of international beat literature (2018). james mackay is assistant professor of british and american literatures at european university cyprus, who has published widely on contemporary native american writing and representations of first nations peoples in popular culture. most recent publications include a chapter on louis owens and ken kesey in louis owens: writing land and legacy (2019), reviewed elsewhere in this issue, and the article “ndngirls and pocahotties: native american and first nations representation in settler colonial pornography and erotica” (with polina mackay) for the journal porn studies. he is one of the founding editors of transmotion. contributors crystal alberts is an associate professor of english and the director of the und writers conference, which she has directed or co-directed since april 2009. she is the co-editor of william gaddis, “the last of something:” critical essays. her scholarship has also appeared in or is forthcoming from the salt companion to diane glancy, transatlantic literature and culture after 9/11, transmotion, orbit: writing around pynchon, and don delillo in context. her book art & science in the works of don delillo is under contract. she is a digital humanist, who is the primary builder of the und writers conference digital collection, which has been supported by multiple grants from the national endowment for the arts. eleanor berry is a former teacher of writing and literature at willamette university, marquette university, and other colleges. she has served as president of the national federation of state poetry societies and of the oregon poetry association. her essays on the prosody of american free verse have been widely published in journals and anthologies. she has three collections of poetry: green contributors 317 november (traprock books, 2007), no constant hues (turnstone books of oregon, 2015), and only so far (main street rag publishing co., 2019). miriam brown spiers teaches in the english and interdisciplinary studies departments at kennesaw state university. her research and teaching interests include indigenous literatures, science fiction, comics, formal and generic experimentation, 20th and 21st century american literature, gender studies, and native american studies. her current book project, the sovereign other, examines the ways that american indian and first nations novelists have adapted the generic tropes of science fiction as a means of resisting cultural assimilation and reasserting the value of indigenous knowledges in the twenty-first century. cathy covell waegner taught in the english department of the university of siegen in germany until her retirement in july 2013. she obtained degrees from the college of william & mary (ba) and the university of virginia (ma, phd). in addition to her work on william faulkner and toni morrison, she has published on native american themes, transculturality in the ethnic bildungsroman, minstrelsy, afroasian “postmodernist passing,” 400 years after jamestown, “hybrid tropes” in film, new diasporas, palimpsestic trajectories on the “ethnic shore,” and the interaction between american and european cultural phenomena. waegner has recently coedited a volume with daniel stein, geoffroy de laforcade, and page r. laws, migration, diaspora, exile: narratives of affiliation and escape (lexington books, may 2020), as well as one with with yiorgos kalogeras titled ethnic resonances in performance, literature, and identity (“routledge indisciplinary perspectives on literature” series, december 2019). she edited a volume in the american indian studies series (michigan state university press) in 2015 called mediating indianness, co-edited a project volume with norfolk state university scholars, transculturality and perceptions of the immigrant other: “fromheres” and “come-heres” in virginia and north rhine-westphalia (2011), as well as, with colleagues from université d’orléans, literature on the move: comparing diasporic ethnicities in europe and the americas (2002). she served as mesea (multi-ethnic studies: europe and the americas) treasurer for four years. her current research focuses on contemporary native american literature, specifically in connection with issues of globalization and justice. ingrid wendt is the author of five books of poems, a book-length teaching guide, one chapbook, and numerous articles and reviews. co-editor of two anthologies—in her own image: women working in the arts and from here we speak: an anthology of oregon poetry—ingrid’s poetry and prose appear in such magazines and anthologies as poetry, poetry northwest, valparaiso poetry review, antioch review, calyx, terrain, beloit poetry journal, no more masks! an transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 318 anthology of 20th century american women poets, and many more. to see her fuller biography, visit her website: https://ingridwendt.com/biography/ microsoft word 374-2118-1-pb.docx transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     109   ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land gwendolywn benaway don't ask why of me don't ask how of me don't ask forever love me, love me now this love of mine had no beginning it has no end i was an oak now i'm a willow now i can bend -buffy sainte marie, until it’s time for you to go author’s note: waciye, aaniin. i was asked to write a creative non-fiction piece around my writing practice. i couldn’t imagine writing about my writing practice without writing about my relationship to gender and land, so i have woven these threads together. as a poet, i’m particularly interested in how anishinaabe oral tradition moves between voices, mediums, and narratives in order to create a space for questioning. this is my intention within this piece, to not author truth but write a space where we can question and explore as a broader community of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. miikwec, ka’kina awiiyaak. gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   110   ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land gwendolywn (mitikomisi) benaway, makwaa doodemii, anishinaabe/ métis, niizh odeiii i walk on dirt roads in a nowhere land. it is deep night, the middle of summer inside dreams my bones remember river water. once we had names no one can say. the land and i hold a soft wonder between us as i would lift water to my lips, dust and the smell of lilacs is how i taste in this sleep a girl hunts her wholeness, transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     111   underground my gookumiv dissolves to memory, i will find her grave in me soon. a black bear follows me, she watches as i come back to what i lost. this is how ahkiiv finds me now, by spaces in my body she has not surrendered. my early memories of my gookum’s farmhouse are rooted in the land. she lived at the end of an unpaved gravel road in northern michigan. the land around her farmhouse was sparsely populated, filled with giant stretches of bush, which seemed infinite. the boundary between the farmhouse and the land outside felt fragile. the house leaned into the bush during the day and the bush crept through open windows at night. i grew up caught between fascination and a quiet terror of the bush around my gookum’s house. the wild in me has always warred with my desire to be safe. my gookum kept a garden, planted with vegetables, which never grew as expected. there were nightly incursions by foraging deers. snakes surrounded the house, often laying coiled in the pantry and traveling through holes in the hallway to the bedroom. several pairs of eagles nested close by. my gookum left them scraps and waved whenever she saw them flying. when i think gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   112   of her and my father’s family, i think of that land. when i imagine myself as a child, i am running through the back fields towards the dark border of the bush, alone and boundless. i hesitate to name my gookum as a traditional or a non-traditional anishinaabe woman. she was publicly christian and prayed at her kitchen table. she listened to polka music on the radio. she had diabetes and a huge jar of pink sweet n’ low packets. she walked her land every morning, leaving bread, chunks of lard, and meat scraps behind her. her favorite route the trail beside the house, which ran towards the edge of the bush. on her walk, she would pause and speak to every living thing she encountered. was this ceremony? or simply her relationship to the place she was responsible for? is there a difference between these two acts? she remains complicated for me. i witnessed her abuse by my grandfather as a child. he would come home drunk and yell or hit her. we know some of her children were by products of her rapes in their marriage bed. she lived with him for most of her life until he died. she raised her children, including my father, in an atmosphere of continual violence. i am the product of the trauma, my father abusing me in a cycle that has flowed around my family as long as i have stories of us. i feel she let me down, gifting all of her children and grandchildren with her pain. she saved us also, working 3 jobs to cover my grandfather’s debts and feed my uncle, aunts, and father. she gave love in balance to my grandfather’s rage. she suffered while she triumphed. victim, hero, anishinaabe woman. i remember talking to an anishinaabe elder about my gookum. like my grandmother, she had spent much of her life living in a very abusive relationship. i asked her why she stayed, raising her children in the middle of such violence. she answered me by speaking about how she tried to protect her children, taking a majority of the violence on her own body. she laughed while telling me about how her husband once broke a wooden broomstick over her back. “i must be some tough woman to survive that, eh?” she said, lifting her left hand to cover her mouth as she laughed. i’ve never forgotten what she said next because i felt like it was the first time i could accept my gookum’s choices. she looked directly in my eyes, something we almost never do in anishinaabe culture, and said “well, in that time, there was nowhere to go. no one would help an indian woman, so you did what you had to do. i feel bad about what happened and what my kids saw, but that’s how it was”. anishinaabe women accept, anishinaabe women laugh in the face of violence. how long have we learned to survive on nothing? transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     113   when i remember my gookum, i don’t think about the violence i witnessed or the bruises on her face when we buried her. i see her standing on the path to bush, whole in her blue floral apron. when i write, i travel in my mind to my gookum and that land. this is one of the landscapes i inhabit, the great lakes and the woods around our waters. one of the features of my work is the central relationship of land and water imagery to my body and sexuality. there are many reasons for my attachment to this particular landscape, including race, relationship, and the foundational nature of my childhood connection to it. for me, the strongest association between the land and my writing is the complicated and metaphysical way which the land connects to our bodies and spirits as anishinaabe women. ~ i remember one of my elders teaching us the word for vagina in anishinaabemowim (ojibwe). he cautioned us that any word for vagina could never be used as an insult in anishinaabe worldview. the word for vagina, ahkiitan, he told us while lighting up a third cigarette, comes from the word, ahkii, which means the land. anishinaabe know that a woman is sacred because she comes from this earth. she is rooted in. she carries it within her and like the land sustains us, she sustains her community and family. this is why vagina can never be an insult to anishinaabe, because a woman is the heart of our people. he continued on to tell us several different ways to insult people using variations of the word penis, including my favorite, piijakaans or little prick in english. there are many gender-based teachings in my culture. anishinaabe worldview does not include notions of identity construction or even free will. we come from creation. we carry responsibilities rooted in our clans, our names, and the ceremonies we participate in. this includes our gendered responsibilities as well. in the teachings i’ve heard, our spirits choose the families we will be born into. i’ve always struggled with this conception as an abuse survivor. my spirit chose to be abused? i’m not certain i can accept that, but i do accept the concept that we came to this land from spirit with specific responsibilities. what are specific responsibilities i carry? like all anishinaabe women, i have a responsibility to the land and it’s waters to guard their sacredness. i am meant to hold up the centre of my nation, to carry language, culture, governance, and our systems of knowledge forward to future gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   114   generations. as a niizh ode woman, i am responsible to facilitate between men and women in relationships and conflict, to protect and nurture other women around me, and to hold my sacredness in all my relationships. i am a bear clan woman, the ones who guard and protect our communities. we are supposed to be fearless in our love. brave, defiant, stubborn, ready to sound the alarm at the first sign of danger. we call out violence within and without our communities. we challenge people who hold power and we question oppression. we nurture through plant and land medicines. we heal ourselves in private. there is no way to separate my gender from my responsibilities in anishinaabe worldview. one gives birth to the other in an infinite loop. western culture is polarized between understandings of gender that either root it as determined by biological “sex” or a more feminist framing that sees gender as social performance. as a trans woman, i negotiate these conflicting perspectives. most people, regardless of their ideological association, believe both of these viewpoints to some degree. i can be a woman to them but a different kind of woman because of my body. i am eligible for certain portions of femininity (activism, dress, expression) while denied access to other portions (desirability, heterosexuality, socialization). it is a complex landscape. no one tells me how they view my gender in explicit terms, so i read their positions by their behavior towards me. does the pronoun “she” have an upper vocal inflection when they use it to describe me, as if they’re making mental effort to remember my gender? do men respond to my body and sexuality as if i am a woman or a man? how do the unspoken rules around my gender present themselves in my daily conversations with friends? my race is rarely factored into how people perceive my gender. because i am white passing (light skin, brown to blonde, blue eyes), i am often erased as an indigenous woman. in ways similar to my erasure as a woman, i’m reduced to a lesser category of “indianness”. it’s fine that i assert an identity as an indigenous woman to others, but they never factor matters of race or history into their interactions with me. the public acceptance of my race and gender contrasts the inner erasure of my race and gender. people won’t vocalize this discomfort or confusion because they don’t want to wear the label of racist or transphobe, so i can’t challenge or question how i’m read. i can only guess based on their responses. this form of mind blindness, not knowing how i’m being read or the borders of my believability as myself, is a pervasive violence. it leaves me vulnerable to misreading people’s responses to transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     115   me as prejudice when they may not be. it prevents me from undertaking the vital work of education and engaging across difference. more importantly to this conversation, it covers my life in a shroud of nothingness. what is a woman if she is never touched nor seen? what am i if i have no language for my body? the tension of living caught between the constant reality of harassment in public and the careful neutrality of my intimate relations with friends and coworkers is the most disempowering force in my life. of course, i know what i am. a woman, a traditional and sometimes non-traditional anishinaabe woman. what is missed in the arguments for self love and internal validation of your gender is that social agency is dependent on other human beings. my self-understanding matters, but it doesn’t grant me access to positive sexual and romantic relations, the privilege to have meaningful engagements with other people where my gender and race isn’t invalidated, or the shared benefits of emotional and material resources which come through relationships. wholeness is shared and created in relationships between bodies. inside anishinaabe worldview, i am whole and free of the contradictions of western mentalities. anishinaabe worldview does not exist within the social space i navigate. my friends are mostly non-indigenous. my romantic partners are usually white men. i participate and engage within a western social context in a majority of my life. anishinaabe worldview only exists in little spaces within toronto and across ontario. we are cut off from intellectual engagement with each other and the dominant thought systems. even within anishinaabe spaces, trans women aren’t always welcome. western systems of gender and sexuality assert themselves. the only place i am free is within my writing. within a conversation between land, my gookum and ancestors, and my body, i sew myself together. a half-life, a second truth, working with the only power i have, the same as every indigenous woman i know. we’re the ones who hold the circle of our nations together but no one holds us together as whole women. we’re seen and loved in pieces. ~ gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   116   two spirit women, cree, date and subject unknown wiindigovi looks for my heart i’m hidden in folds of land transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     117   i carry her in my mind a prayer is longing for this sweet earth breaking open in hands like the budding of my body, i am here and not here, i am holy and not holy in equal measure. to love is to know loon call by blood memory, ancestors sing at dusk to dawn in every breath i breathe stars, gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   118   exhale truth. this is a gift to be born inside two hearts to believe in the moon rising as if i am a heron lifting up from clear water. this is how ahkiivii births me. as a transgender 2 spirit anishinaabe woman, i do not have a vagina yet. i plan on undergoing surgery to create one within my body in the next 8 months, but in this moment, i am ahkiitan less. in anishinaabe worldview, this does not negate my role as a woman. often when we speak about being 2 spirited, we are talking about being gay or lesbian. my understanding of the 2 spirit teachings i’ve received are mainly focused on gender, not sexuality. what we think of as trans women in the western world seems like a close parallel for conceptions of 2 spirit in the anishinaabe world of my ancestors. we were born into male identified bodies, perceived by our grandmothers as carrying a special set of responsibilities, and were raised from a young age as women within our communities. we carried the responsibilities of any other anishinaabe women, but had some additional ones related to our unique attributes. we raised children who had lost their parents or kin. we often worked for the community directly in a variety of roles, including political and ceremonial. we usually had several husbands. we were the last line of defense in our communities if we were attacked while our transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     119   men were hunting. we were celebrated as orators and storytellers. we cared for other women during pregnancy and menstruation. some ceremonies are centered around our participation and leadership. we were as sacred as any anishinaabe women is. we did not have vaginas, but we always had our responsibility and relationship to land. ~ one of my favourite traditional stories is about nanabush or aayash, our first ancestor and the being who populates many of our legends. he often reflects our humanity back to us, making mistakes or illustrating worldviews though his behavior. our stories are not moral parables but were often recorded by western anthropologists as such. they usually stripped the sexual content from our legends due to their bias or discomfort. the original stories, told through our worldview and language, are rich depositories of knowledge and sites of inquiry. storytelling was our version of anishinaabe university, the space we constructed and discussed the complex frameworks of belief and insight. in this story of nanabush, he is wandering through the bush when he sees a young anishiinabe man in the distance. he finds the man very desirable and decides to seek sexual contact with the man. to achieve this desire, nanabush feminizes himself, taking on the dress and mannerism of a woman. he makes himself into the form of what he imagines the man will find sexually pleasing. once she is changed, nanabush approaches the young man and solicits him for sex. she is successful and after some foreplay, they begin intercourse. within the story, nanabush participates as the receptive anal partner to the man. she lets him penetrate her. the story changes once the young man is penetrating nanabush. she finds the sex uncomfortable. she realizes this isn’t what she wants and for whatever reason, she becomes afraid of her sexual contact with the man. she breaks away from him and runs off into the bush. she returns to her male body as nanabush. the story ends there and is often told in a humorous structure. i have many questions about this story and what it illustrates about my worldview. gender is performance in the story or a fluid state. nanabush moves between gendered embodied within the narrative. he alters his gender in response to desire, becoming what he thinks the man wants. she initiates sex very directly and her partner is responsive. there doesn’t appear to be any mismatch between their desires, but their sexual contact is still relational to their bodies. gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   120   nanabush doesn’t grow a vagina. it’s highly probable that she could, as a being of immense spiritual power, but she doesn’t need a vagina to elicit sexual desire in her partner. why does the story centre nanabush’s gender in relation to sexuality and desire? what about her partner draws her to him? what changes in her desire once she begins intercourse? is the humor because she is “crossdressing” or because she doesn’t know what she wants? we can observe that anishinaabe worldview has different comforts with sex, about a woman initiating sexual contact or about a man having sexual contact with a woman who possesses a penis. gender is clearly not rooted in biology in this story, but it does not also position their sexual practice as homosexual. what’s the lesson here? is it wrong to become a woman or that understanding what you desire is complex? i don’t think it’s useful to look for simple moral teachings from the story. the traditional use of stories was to generate questions, not answers. the value is that it shows nanabush, our most significant legendary being who often represents us as anishinaabe people, moving between gender states and sexual practice. it is profoundly sex positive. if nanabush represents our ancestor, we are directly implicated in her desire and sexuality. to indigenous people who suggest transgender and same sex relations are a western corruption, nanabush isn’t a foreigner. she is literally our humanity, questioning and exploring herself within sexual practice and gender. i perceive the story as a message coded within our worldview: yes, it is normal to question your gender, to move between gendered expressions, to have desire and seek sexual fulfillment, to decide what you thought you wanted is not what you want, to experiment, to have sexual partners who possess bodies different from your other sexual partners, and that anal sex is not something outside of our culture. i also wonder if the story is a form of sexual education, a way of our ancestors saying “hey if you’re going to take a dick anally, it might be painful the first time. practice first?”. ~ i have spent half my life denying the girl transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     121   i carry inside. now i spend my life being denied as her, double talk wiindigoviii white boys think i’m not whole, tell what i’m worth, half a woman not meant to be held like other girls, here in the bush i move like rivers across a land which wants me as i am, as close and deep as starfall over the spruce trees. no one tells me who i can be, gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   122   denies me the love i hold like breath inside hollow bones. windigoix boys can’t hurt me under the light of my grandmother’s moon, nothing is denied, no artificial boundaries white boys make around my body’s land can survive the wonder of this new earth. i am the girl the wild made me. ahkii desires me as much as i desire her, together we sing this sky apanex. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     123   colonization, christianity, and residential schools have eroded much, if not all, of our responsibilities and stories as anishinaabe trans women. we are the most vulnerable and stigmatized members of our communities. 2 spirit identified youth have the highest rates of suicide and harm in our communities. we suffer unparalleled violence and are often forced into sex work as a means of survival. i have never heard any anishinaabe public figure speak about transphobia or anishinaabe trans women. despite this separation of culture and spirit, we remain holy. while the canadian government was stripping us of our humanity and responsibilities as 2 spirit trans women, they were also stealing and appropriating our traditional lands. we come from two distinct violations, the degradation of our gender and the separation from our land. like other anishinaabe women, we carry responsibilities for our waterways and stewardship of our environment. when an indigenous woman is forcibly relocated from her land or denied basic governance of her territory, it is a spiritual rape of our bodies. land sovereignty is directly linked to body sovereignty. you cannot break apart anishinaabe womanhood from our land. we are connected by spirit into a web of relationships, which stretches back through time to our first ancestors. we carry those relations into the future in our bodies. i lack the fundamental power to reclaim my lands. most of us as anishinaabe women lack the fundamental power to reclaim our lands. the indian act was designed to disenfranchise indigenous women and their descendants from traditional territories and community governance. we have been caught in a cycle of violence, murder, and poverty for generations. we have resisted in profound ways. we fought the government of canada in court and forced modifications to the indian act. any moment of indigenous resistance in canada and the united states has been fueled and powered by indigenous women. we broke academic barriers. we wrote books and made art. we forged new nations. still we suffer from a profound separation from our bodies and land. this is why i write to and from my land. my writing is a response to the violence i have experienced. i centre my body in my land. i approach my sexuality and gender in the same way i used to run towards my gookum’s bush. i lean into my land by day and at night, my land leans into me. the connection is not broken. my womanhood is whole. by situating my writing and gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   124   poetry within a bed of sweetgrass, i call my ancestors to me. this is not a metaphor, but a daily practice. one of the best pieces of writing advice i ever received was from my elder. he looked at me and said “it’s not wrong to long for your ancestors”. i take this as permission to reach back to them, to draw them into my life and my work. every time i write, i ask for help. this is not like joseph boyden’s recent claims to author his stories from the ancestral voices in blood. i do not use my ancestors to deny responsibility. i am more responsible because i write with and to them. it is not a refusal of my agency as a writer, but embracing the ways i am situated in a profound set of responsibilities and relations. i remember the same elder asking a group of anishinaabe youth what being anishinaabe means. people had great answers about our art, our spirituality, and our history as warriors. he waited until everyone offered an opinion and replied, “to me, being anishinaabe means being responsible”. writing is responsibility. being an anishinaabe woman is responsibility. being a trans anishinaabe woman is a greater responsibility. the land sits beneath me. i carry life within me. i am connected to the whole. this is what makes indigenous trans women sacred. not our vaginas or our sexual practice, but our relationships to our ancestors and the many diverse beings who inhabit the world we walk in. one of the many things taken from us by state violence is the understanding of our bodies as holy and the vital need for our men to reflect that sacredness in their relationship to us. ~ i remember when i began my transition. i expected difficulties, but i assume my natural resilience would overcome them. i trusted in the relationships that populated my life. i naively believed that i knew what would come as i went through hormone treatment and into my womanhood. i didn’t plan my transition as many other women i know did. i blurted out i was transitioning in a staff meeting at work. a few days later, i announced it on facebook even though i had no idea what it meant for me. the day after i told the wider public world my transition, i came home from work defeated. there was a new intensity of fear around me, which i had never felt before. was i making the right decision? what would my life become? did i want hormones knowing the medical risks? transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     125   i walked into my apartment that day and lay on my bed. i started crying, something i rarely do, and felt as far away from myself as i’ve ever come. there was a sudden sense of presence in the room, a weight of energy moving towards me. i had the sensation of women singing, a warmth which enveloped me in the uncanny feeling of my gookum’s personality. i don’t frame this as mystical experience in a western sense, but in that moment, i knew i was walking a path which my grandmothers had set before me since i was born. blood memory and spirit pulls me. this is my connection. ~ we’wha, zuni 2 spirit, 1849–1896 gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   126   there are almost no visible indigenous trans women in the wider public. to my knowledge, i am one of the only published indigenous trans woman authors in north america. i know of two other indigenous trans women in the city i live in. all of us are disconnected in some way from our communities, often moving in white or other racialized trans spaces without an inherent recognition of our indigenous nationship. the phrase 2 spirit is almost always applied to gay or lesbian indigenous writers. they are well represented in our literature and art. recently, there was a special indigenous centered issue of a major canadian literary magazine and none of the published writers were transgender. indigenous and transgender are not allowed to be connected in our communities or in mainstream canadian society. we are the invisible descendants of the 2 spirit women i only know through historical photographs. i am enriched by the work of many gay and lesbian indigenous writers and thinkers. i am not arguing for their exclusion from the label of 2 spirit nor am i disputing the space they’ve built through their activism. the work of 2 spirit writers and artists is central to our regeneration as indigenous peoples, but so is the recognition of indigenous trans women. we need to remember that western understandings of sexuality and sexual practice do not define our understandings as anishinaabe. homosexuality and heterosexuality are recent inventions of western society rooted in economic and social distinctions. we did not have the same framework for naming the relationship between gender and sexual practice. the disruption of our cultures and language makes it difficult to identify what our understandings were, but there are some values that we know from oral tradition and jesuit writings. we did not have a system of monogamous marriage in anishinaabe culture. we had flexible extended family systems and often had romantic triads. sister wives, multiple husbands, a summer and a winter partner, a relatively uncomplicated system of decoupling from romantic partnerships, and ardent intolerance for sexual violence or abuse are some characteristics of traditional anishinaabe sexual and gender based relations. we were perceived by western audiences as immoral because of open and often public sexual practice. we lived in very close proximity to each other and often with several generations together. sexuality was not seen as shameful, functioning as key plot element of our traditional stories. in other words, our system of sexual practices and relations did not bear much, if any, resemblance to western societies. transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     127   2 spirit women, nation and date unknown gender remains a more complicated facet of our culture. we know through teachings and traditional stories that gender based responsibilities were central to our governance and spirituality. gender appears to function separate from our physical bodies in anishinaabe culture, at least in regards to 2 spirit women. we take on gender-based responsibilities because of our spirits in anishinaabe worldview, not our genitals. there is agency involved and a wider community recognition of our unique embodiment. from all the teachings i have heard in my life, 2 spirit anishinaabe women were not perceived as different from other anishinaabe women. we had the same opportunities for sexual and romantic partners. we were not paired gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   128   with other 2 spirit women as our romantic partners, but men from within our communities. what does this mean in terms of sexuality and gender in anishinaabe culture? we weren’t queer in a western sense, but naming what our role was complicated. why does it matter to identify a cultural framework for 2 spirit women in relation to contemporary transgender identity? it doesn’t to non-indigenous people and perhaps to the wider indigenous 2 spirit community. for women like me, embodied as indigenous and transgender, it is an attempt to connect the pieces of our identities into the bodies we currently possess. i see my gender as an extension of my nation. my body is a literal descendant of my indigenous ancestors. how do i connect these parts of myself within the heart of my culture without disconnecting myself from the land i come from? not possessing a language to name your gender and body is to be dehumanized. this is what colonization has always sought to do to indigenous nations, to kill our ability to speak and understand ourselves within our own worldviews. this is the space i write to. i take the pieces of culture and language i have and weave them into my writing. i hold my land around me. in my mind, i see the 2 spirit women before me, the ones i only know through archival research and academic theorizing. often they do not have names. often they are described by non-2 spirit indigenous writers or claimed by gay or lesbian indigenous communities. they look like the indigenous trans women i know. they have our faces, our complicated bodies, and above all else, they have our souls. we know from historical records that the first ones killed by the european invaders were 2 spirit women. out of the many aspects of indigenous nations that terrified them, we represented the deepest threat. ~ the most famous 2 spirit anishinaabe trans woman is ozaawindib or “yellowhead”. she is often represented by white and indigenous academics as a gay anishinaabe man, but it’s clear from the description of her attributes that she was analogous to being a trans woman today. the language used to describe her by the white observers is eerily similar to how many transphobes describe trans women today, “one of those men who make themselves women.”xi she was a war chief, responsible for leading incursions against rival communities and defending her community. this is principally a male gendered role in anishinaabe community, so it is an interesting example of how complex our traditional embodiments were. why does no indigenous transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     129   scholar claim her as a trans woman? it seems unusual to argue that transgender bodies are not part of anishinaabe worldviews by asserting that gay men are. who are her descendants, the gay men who identity and present as male or the trans woman who present as female within society? she is as much our ancestors as theirs. we know of her because she was romantically interested in john tanner, a white settler who writes about her in his diary. he is apparently horrified and disgusted by her, claiming to reject her romantic advances. throughout the recorded details of their interaction, it becomes clear that tanner may be recording her as disgusting in order to placate his sense of self about their likely romantic and sexual contact. in essence, the most famous anishinaabe trans woman in history is only known because of her romantic engagement with a white man, a white man who goes to great length to defame and deny his desire for her and their connection. i find this parallel to modern narratives of trans dating and sexuality uncanny. how many times in my romantic life have i been ozaawindib, visible only through my partner’s public denial of my gender, desirability, and sexuality. they are ashamed to love or sleep with us but drawn to our unique power. holy, defiled. when i look at the rates of murder and sexual violence against indigenous trans women in canada, i see we still terrify them. i think of how many times since i’ve transitioned that my life has been in danger. how many times i’ve come close to rape. how many times someone has mocked me or told me i’m not a real woman. how many times a man rejected my femininity as real. the violence we are surrounded by is a direct extension of the violence brought against our lands. when a society lacks a fundamental respect for women and their bodies, they lose connection to respecting the world that sustains us. indigenous trans women stand in front of so much hate. racism, sexism, colonization, misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia define the scope and shape of our lives. ~ how do we respond? how do we survive? more importantly, how do we reclaim our bodies and relationship to creation? the answer is returning to a profound love. as author junot diaz states in an interview with the boston review (2012), “the kind of love that i was interested in, that my characters long for intuitively, is the only kind of love that could liberate them from that gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   130   horrible legacy of colonial violence. i am speaking about decolonial love”. this is a conception of love that resonates with me as an indigenous trans women. i want to return to a space in my intimate and sexual relations where my body is approached as sacred and complete, where my anishinaabe heart can rest with my partner’s whiteness and not be consumed, where the love i give and receive is open to possibilities and my relationships are not defined by heterosexuality or western monogamy. i like leanne simpson’s simple framing of decolonial love best in her poetic song about cultural reclamation, “under her always light”. she instructs her listener, “get two husbands and a wife. make them insane with good love”. this is closest to the relational space i want to inhabit in my body. if my body is holy as an anishinaabe niizh ode, then i don’t need to hide the parts of my body that move outside western binaries of being female. if my love is an extension of creation, then it must be given freely to those in my life without shame, jealousy, or price. if my sex and pleasure are celebrated within my culture, then it is central to my wholeness. i can’t change how others see me, the lines of their erasure and desire, which write my body out of the story of womanhood, but i can write myself into the world as sacred. i see decolonial love as an answer to the separation of indigenous trans women from our communities and land. much of the burden of living within this body is rooted in fundamental absence of love, which surrounds me. when i transitioned, i realized no one touched me anymore. soon after starting hormones, i stopped having sex with men because i felt a pervasive othering of my body in sexual relations. i feel the violence of desirability as an intimate weapon. sometimes it overwhelms me. sometimes i long for a love that is given freely, that i don’t earn through my gender performance or the fetishization of my body. i want to be free from a world that doesn’t see or value me, so i build within myself a lodge of my culture, a space where the words and hostility directed at me is met with a fierce love. i imagine makwaa embracing me. i seek every small love in any opening in the borders of whiteness and gender i can find. this is what my ancestors taught me to do, surviving for generations in a cold and changing land by being adaptable and brave. a decolonial love flows from creation and through the land to our bodies. this is not a platitude but a spiritual reality. in anishinaabe culture, an orphaned child is considered very powerful. because they have been severed from their kin relations, the spirits come closer to them. the transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     131   land reaches out as our original mother to hold them up. i think the same relationship exists for indigenous trans women. severed from our community role, in danger and under attack, the ancestors walk with us. our land responds to our need. we become more holy in our pain, not less. this what i work to do in my writing. author us as indigenous trans women as powerful and connected to creation. write over the slurs and shame surrounding our bodies. transmit what i know of my culture and our value into words to carry across the land. reconnect us back to where we come from. imagine our lives as filled with love and trust. challenge and question masculinity, threaten western conceptions of sexuality and gender, and demand our communities stand with us. lee maracle, a celebrated sto’lo author, says that indigenous poetry is prayer. i am praying in every line i write. in ceremony, we name the forces of creation and call those beings to sit with us. every poem is a ceremony. every image of land is a request for those ones to join us again. i write the way back to my gookum’s farmhouse. i am longing for my ancestors. my life is difficult, but i am not broken in this work because i carry the waters of my grandmothers with me. i imagine a new future for my people, a space where we return to our bodies as whole beings. i see us standing together, interwoven with stars and cedar, as a vibrant circle of light around this land. this is not mythology, but prophecy. i come back to every bush i’ve lost, as if promise is my destiny, as if nothing they have done is great enough gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   132   to take this woman from me, she rests in kiizhikxii groves, she dreams her spirit home. she dreams all our spirits through lakes inside storms she is singing and the sound of her voice travels to echo in me as if i am the shape of her entire dreaming. ~ transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     133   i remember an elder telling me i was contaminated. he looked at my blue eyes and said i was infected by the enemy. this is how i often feel as a trans woman. filthy, corrupted, inviolate, a woman who hides a sickness. when i’m intimate with men, i often try to hide the parts of my body which don’t conform to what they expect of a woman. i am paying a surgeon to erase the male parts of my face. i’m training my voice to fall into female ranges. this fall, i will be booking a surgery date to change my genitals. i never told any of my casual partners that i was native. i let them assume whiteness. i pretend to be always female. of course, i used to be a man. of course, i am anishinaabe. who we are is often who we are allowed to be. i keep the dangerous parts of me a secret. i learned men’s medicines from many of the elders i worked with. for several years, i was a regular firekeeper, making and maintaining the sacred fire which sits at centre of many of our ceremonies. i moved through the world of men without ever feeling part of them. i still hold both parts of me somewhere. i learned quickly in my transition that any signs of masculinity would erase you to the world. display masculinity in any context as a trans woman and you will be thought of as a pervert. i have to always be feminine or risk retribution and shame. i remember wearing a sweatshirt to work one day. a female coworker stopped me in the hall and said “well you don’t look very feminine today, do you?”. her scorn followed me for weeks. i realized the only way to be desirable to my male partners was to inhabit my femininity as deeply as i could. hide what couldn’t yet be changed, disguise what wasn’t right. highlight my eyes to draw attention away from my nose. this is where anishinaabe worldviews differs from western understandings of being a trans women. 2 spirit women were allowed to pick up male medicines and responsibilities when they chose to. sometimes, we picked them up because there was no men around and it was needed. if our women and children were attacked when the men were away hunting, it was the 2 spirit women who went first to battle against the invaders. we needed to know both sides of gender, to kill and to give life. i have some of him in me still, as much as he feels like someone i knew a long time ago. gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   134   i find this imbalance relational to my perceived whiteness. i am read as white by the world so i hide the anishinaabe in me. other half breed women have tricks to make their race visible, beaded jewelry, dying their hair black, or heavy black eyeliner. i’ve watched these racial modifications play out in many ways. sometimes pride, sometimes shame. how similar am i in my transness? playing with presentation, looking for way to blend in. do you celebrate your unique humanity or carefully disguise the parts no one wants? i find my body fascinating in its current state. i like the shifts between male and female in its form. a woman’s breasts, a man’s ribcage, a woman’s hips, a man’s penis. there is something soft in my body. there is something hard in my body. i am both, leaning slowly towards the feminine but holding on to the masculine. why is this not beautiful? why is this not desirable? why must everything be simple for white people to value it? why can’t i be as complicated my 2 spirit ancestors? why do i have erase myself in order for men to see me as real? i miss anishinaabe worldview. i am contaminated, but not by my white ancestor’s skin colour or eyes. i am infected by their dreams, what they are willing to embrace. i imagine a love where i am a girl who becomes a boy when she wants to. i imagine a love where i am an anishinaabe who takes the parts of whiteness which are useful. i refuse to be loved in pieces. i am already whole. ~ transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     135   2 spirit/ trans educational posters, native youth sexual health network, toronto when i received my anishinaabe name, i was wearing long floral dress. i was introduced to creation as a woman. this is one part of my identity, which has not changed since i transitioned. i remember my gookum teaching me to make bread in her kitchen. she did not make go outside to play with my male cousins. she let me stay with her, learning the borders of her world. we never spoke of it before she died, but i think she knew what i was before anyone else did. i come to my body through her body. i pass through every woman in my family to return to myself. this is what is sacred in me. there many fears and misunderstandings of what it is to be a trans woman. everyone i meet carries some of these misconceptions. i often feel like an educator, explaining and naming my body to the world. despite the increased visibility, we are not known as ourselves to the wider world. similar to how the non-indigenous world mythologizes indigenous peoples as savage and primordial, trans women are demonized and misunderstood by the cis world we walk in. to live between both of these erasures, as a woman and as an indigenous citizen, is a strange and lonely gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   136   path. being indigenous separates me from the non-indigenous world and being trans often separates me from the indigenous world. one of the great traumas of colonization is the separation of indigenous peoples from our worldviews. by breaking apart our families and repressing our languages, colonization deprived us of our intellectual inheritance from our ancestors. my ancestors spent thousands of years learning and theorizing what gender and sexuality meant to them. they built profound systems of kinship and sexual practice designed to create loving and health family units. they must have made mistakes as well, insights we could have learned from now. i cannot reconnect all of the threads which have been severed. my elder told us that nothing is lost. to him, our languages and worldviews were living beings that inhabited a space separate from time. he wasn’t worried about appropriation or language loss. i remember him saying, “if anishinaabe needs those things, they only need to ask for them and they’ll be here”. at the time, i didn’t believe him. now, having walked through this transition to come back to myself, i understand the power in seeking wholeness. when you ask, they answer. we need to, as indigenous writers and communities, ask for those 2 spirit teachings to return to us. we need to find new ways to form romantic and sexual bonds between and within our genders. we must hold up indigenous trans women if we are to come back to ourselves. in the heart of my writing, i am standing on a lakeshore watching a heron dive. i am walking through a low brush of cedars by a swamp bank. i am drifting through an estuary towards a wide muskeg. i am standing in the dark of spruce trees in winter. i am building a lodge out of willow branches. i am peeling layers of birch bark off my skin. i placing tobacco alongside a river while thunders move overhead. this is not mystical. this is not imagining a spiritual destiny. this is the only way i know to be a woman: on my land, in my waters, through my grandmothers, working on behalf of my relations, and sustaining my worldview one metaphor at a time. this has always been the responsibility of an anishinaabe 2 spirit woman. i am responsible. some day i will return transmotion vol 3, no 1 (2017)     137   to the land i carry. some day my sisters the murdered the raped all of us indian women will return to the holy earth. until then i sleep inside the softness of my land i will speak us whole, kill wiindigoxiii with truth, be a girl rooted in ahkiixiv like an oak tree. gwendolywn benaway “ahkii: a woman is a sovereign land”   138   acknowledgement: i am grateful to the anishinaabe elders, traditional knowledge keepers, and 2 spirit women who have passed these teachings onto to future generations. i am especially grateful to alex mckay, doug williams, shirley williams, edna manitowabi, and pauline shirt. any mistakes in language or representation are mine. all interpretations are a reflection of my own learnings and perspective, not a definitive guide for all indigenous nations or even other anishinaabe people. i likely get as much wrong as i get it right, but i think it’s important for us to as indigenous peoples to work collectively to revitalize our narratives of gender, sexuality, and relationships. i am also grateful to the work of leanne simpson in this regard. i am also grateful to wesley brunson (university of toronto, m.a candidate in anthropology, zhaaganash, minnesota) for his help in the development of this work and his editorial feedback.                                                                                                                           i oak tree ii bear clan iii two hearts (2 spirit) iv grandmother v earth vi legendary being, a cannibal, one who is hungry/consumes others to feed self, the spirit of starvation (whiteness) vii earth viii legendary being, a cannibal, one who is hungry/consumes others to feed self, the spirit of starvation (whiteness) ix legendary being, a cannibal, one who is hungry/consumes others to feed self, the spirit of starvation (whiteness) x forever, always xi a narrative of the captivity and adventures of john tanner, (u.s. interpreter at the saut de ste. marie,) during thirty years residence among the indians in the interior of north america, ed. edwin james (new york, 1830; repr., intro. n. m. loomis, minneapolis, minn., 1956) xii cedar xiii legendary being, cannibal, a spirit of hunger, (whiteness) xiv earth microsoft word kneubuhl.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 362 dana naone hall. life of the land. 'ai pōhaku press, 2017. 248pp. isbn 978-i-883-52844-7. https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/life-of-the-land-articulations-of-a-native-writer/ life of the land chronicles the thirty-plus years of the work of dana naone hall in her homeland of the hawaiian islands. as a poet and public advocate/activist for her lāhui and her 'āina aloha, she tells her story through public speeches, interviews, letters, essays, legal testimonies, and newspaper editorials. adding another dimension of depth and insight, these accounts are interspersed with her poems. the beautifully designed volume reads like a personal journal as we move with the author through the conflicts she and others have shouldered for the protection of their kūpuna and their native land. not only does the work inform the reader about the many and varied critical issues that native hawaiians currently face, it also speaks to the vigilance required to stand up to the relentless onslaught of an economic intrusion that profits the few at the expense of the many. life of the land illuminates the sustained strength and perseverance that dana naone hall and her companions have expended over the years in the defense of what is unique to hawai'i nei and to our way of life. her writings stand as a testimony to the continued presence of native hawaiians, past and present, in the world today. “all around us, wherever we live, land is being changed beyond recognition.” (hall p233) hall writes that witnessing the destruction of the landscape of her childhood in kane 'ohe on the island of o 'ahu, motivated her to become active in trying to prevent the same kind of destruction in her new home on the island of maui. for many of us of hawaiian ancestry who grew up in hawai'i in the 1950s and 1960s the rapid transformation of our childhood environments has become a source of collective anger and grief. this loss, much like a physical wound, has shaped our psyches in various ways. now as adults, we have new words to describe these losses: fragile eco-systems, critical habitats, endangered species, extinctions, but as children and young adults, we had a more powerful and instinctual understanding that something we deeply loved was being taken away from us. if, like me, you were born and raised in the islands, this book will resonate with your loss. if you are not an islander, this book will help you to understand how thoughtless development can transform and erase the unique and valuable places of this world. what this book gifts its readers is that these changes are not inevitable, that action and community intervention can preserve special places, and that we all have the right to assert ourselves as stewards of our homelands. “… activism is 99 percent trench work.” (hall p2) life of the land reveals the dogged stamina required to engage with the government and with the public on critical issues. one gets more than a hint of what this might mean when reading the detailed testimonials in this book. it is more than apparent that the author had to become familiar and literate in many disciplines including history, business, archaeology, and law to name a few. not only did she have to have a solid understanding of these fields, she also had to be able to articulate that understanding. that articulation would be essential in order to present challenges to old policy, or suggestions to create new policy, or to call for adherence to the law. the exhaustive study and preparation required for her presentations can only elicit our admiration. a victoria nalani kneubuhl review of life of the land 363 review of ms. hall's writings reveals not only a sharp and prepared mind, but also a mind attuned to thoughtfulness and wisdom. this text is certainly destined to become a valuable historical record, documenting, from a native hawaiian perspective, the landmark achievements of communities to preserve places of historical and cultural importance. particularly moving are those passages that recount the efforts to preserve burial sites and to oversee the handing of our iwi kūpuna with reverence, respect and love. “the ancestress beckons, offering food, offering water a place in the shade to the passing travelers.” (p202) as a playwright, i am fascinated by subtext. when i read a story, whether fiction or nonfiction, i enter into a solitary relationship with the author, and all the while i am half listening for the “other” voice of the author that resounds throughout the work underneath the words and the story. i often ask, who is this person and what do they really want to tell me? life of the land reached out to me on two distinct levels. i heard the competent voice of a woman warrior, skilled in the art of beneficent disputation, a voice that touched my own love of historical, environmental and cultural preservation. but it was the voice of the poet that swept me away, captured my imagination and awakened the part of me that recognizes the larger, liminal space that contains our collective past and present. at first, when reading, i perceived these as two separate lines in the text, but at some point, i began to realize that they were not separate lines of thought, but a fluid reality that not only intermingled, but served as pillars of support to one another. in the end, one of the important things this book asks us is to join in honoring the infinite ways that the past permeates and influences our present. equally important is the very real affirmation that goodness, when combined with intelligence, courage and resilience becomes a powerful force in creating a path for change. “…when we are told up front that there is no way we can prevail, we will continue to watch and wait and assist where we can in maintaining the life of the land forever.” (hall p109) victoria nalani kneubuhl waiki ‘i, hawai ‘i microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 1 do you recognize who i am? decolonizing rhetorics in indigenous rock opera something inside is broken shannon toll dear dr. miranda, what is your source for this? “in the 65 years that the california missions were run by the catholic church, the numbers of california indians went from about one million to 350,000.” mr. d. thomas theology department saint junípero serra, pray for us! junípero serra high school “a short correspondence about a long story,” bad ndns the excerpt above is from a blog post by chumash/esselen writer and scholar deborah a. miranda, entitled “a short correspondence about a long story,” on her website bad ndns. the post is a transcript of an email exchange with “d. thomas” (a pseudonym she gave the inquirer to protect his identity), a theology teacher at junipero serra high school.1 in response to the question above, miranda politely offers a thorough explication of the available research on the subject, only to be met by resistance from d. thomas, who continues questioning miranda’s findings and expertise in the name of being “fair.” in the face of miranda’s meticulous enumeration of the myriad ways the mission system resulted in the precipitous decline of indigenous population (i.e. measles, displacement of traditional food practices by european agriculture, physical and sexual violence) and her refutation of his notion of “fairness,” d. thomas can only respond “i am sorry that my question offended you. i am catholic. your assertion deals with my history” ( “a short correspondence”). this anecdote highlights the emotional labor indigenous people are constantly compelled to expend on unwilling listeners such as d. thomas, whose incredulity and insistence on shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 2 protecting what he calls “my history” is a microcosm of settler-colonial denial of indigenous experiences of this shared history; the history of stolen spaces and the mythologies that protect the claims and the feelings of individuals who fear any narrative that undermines their own. native california scholars, artists, and writers like miranda and jack kohler—the creator of the indigenous rock opera something inside is broken—are actively telling their histories and questioning california’s celebration of its own history, which is mired in greed, racism, and outright theft in the name of ‘progress.’ something inside is broken dramatizes the nisenan people’s experience of settler-colonialism, focusing particularly on the gold rush era and its broadly celebrated frontiersmen, such as johann sutter and kit carson. told from the perspective of nisenan women, who were the subject of sutter’s sexual exploitation and slavery, the opera literally gives a voice to indigenous experience that was otherwise historically silenced. kohler explains how this work rights the wrongs of historical record, writing that “[s]eldom do we hear the stories of the women whose bodies, lives, and children were sacrificed to the men of the dominant culture in order for there to be some chance of survival” (“author’s note 1). kohler, founder of the on native ground media network and a member of the hoopa valley tribe in northwestern california, co-authored something inside is broken with alan wallace, a nisenan storyteller. the men began collaborating on the production after wallace attended a rock show that featured some students from kohler’s after-school program. wallace shared nisenan stories with the young people, who encouraged wallace and kohler to write a musical sharing the native stories they were not reading in their assigned textbooks. ultimately, kohler and wallace collaborated with half a dozen indigenous california tribes to write, produce, and then present something inside is broken throughout california and the southwest (trimble). it is through the character of lizzie johnson, a nisenan woman and daughter of star-crossed lovers iine and maj kyle, that these canonically elided effects are explored, notably in her scenes set during the congressional hearing for the state appropriation act of 1906. lizzie is in attendance in order to pursue “appropriation” for her tribesmen and other displaced california tribes, who experienced first the theft of their ancestral homelands, and then subsequently the ‘disappearance’ of treaties that guaranteed them land, treaties which were actually hidden away under an oath of secrecy by the state senate for 53 years (covert 20). supported by helen hunt, a member of the daughters of the western frontier who acts as her transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 3 friend and translator, lizzie presents these unratified treaties to skeptical and increasingly incensed senators, ‘talking back’ to the state legislature by reminding them of their responsibility to native peoples, whose rightful claims to their lands are still not properly recognized at the state and federal levels. and, at the macro and micro levels, this scene demonstrates the transformative capability of what celebrated choctaw writer leanne howe terms tribalography to engender new understanding of difficult histories, particularly for a non-native audience. as a work of tribalography, something inside is broken combines traditional language and dance with the uniquely contemporary oeuvre of the rock opera, crossing time and genres to bring the power of native storytelling to a historically non-native space. tribalography has become a seminal term in native studies, centering indigenous storytelling as cultural praxis by recognizing its epistemological and rhetorical importance, and removing it from the realm of ‘folktales.’ as a lens, tribalography highlights how native stories, no matter what form they take (novel, poem, memoir, film, history), seem to pull all the elements together of the storyteller’s tribe, meaning the people, the land, and multiple characters and all their manifestations and revelations, and connect these in past, present, and future milieus (present and future milieus mean non-indians) ( “the story of america” 42). in this sense, tribalography reflects indigenous experience but also radiates outward, connecting native and non-native people in a shared experience. stage and film have become formative spaces for native storytelling, as described in howe’s essay “tribalography: the power of native stories.” howe relates the experience of attending the “a celebration of native women playwrights” conference, and how a particular work that focused on the trauma experienced by first nations children at catholic boarding schools in canada led to a complicated but ultimately productive exchange between native and settler scholars. the conversations caused howe to consider how “native stories have the power to create conflict, pain, discord, but ultimately understanding and enlightenment a sacred third act” (“tribalography” 117). the catalyzing effect of performance, whether a reading, play, or any other of its diverse forms, can create conversations and mend cognitive dissonance in ways that extend beyond the immediacy of the theatrical space, making tribalography a “story that links indians and non-indians” (“the story of america” 46). shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 4 by applying howe’s concept of tribalography to something inside is broken, i will analyze the decolonizing rhetorics of lizzie johnson’s testimony before the california state senate, focusing on the songs “1852,” “appropriation,” “emelulu,” and “home sweet home.” i have embedded audio files of the songs discussed in this article—the cast album is available for purchase on itunes—in order to better illustrate the profundity of lizzie’s testimony and to allow the reader (and listener) to experience the nisenan language, which is foregrounded in multiple songs in the production. throughout this scene, lizzie asserts herself as a representative of the interests of the nisenan people in front of an increasingly hostile audience and shifts away from attempting to cater to the discursive norms of the western legislative space. instead, through her use of détournement, using the colonizers’ own language against them, she upends these protocols and tells her story in her own language, with helen acting as her translator. specifically, lizzie first uses the federal and state government’s understanding of their own legal and legislative processes to critique their abuses of the california tribes, undermining their claim to legal and moral superiority over matters such as appropriation. next, lizzie takes on the role of storyteller as the opera features an important moment of “embodiment” in the song “emelulu,” in which her testimony comes to life onstage in vignettes that illustrate the difficulties faced by enslaved california native peoples. finally, in “home sweet home,” lizzie rejects the ideology of the legislators and asserts her desire for survivance for her people, doing so in her own language and thereby enacting what scott lyons terms “rhetorical sovereignty” (449). while the flags of the united states and california hang from the walls, lizzie’s use of the nisenan language acts as a reminder to the legislature that the land they currently occupy was once inhabited solely by california’s existing native populations and should be returned to these peoples. in her progression as a rhetorician in this scene, lizzie reclaims the physical narrative space by telling the real story of its establishment in the language of those who were otherwise silenced, and how the primacy of these claims persists in the past, present, and future. as a work of tribalography, something inside is broken does not rely exclusively on lizzie’s voice to convey these stories; instead, the experiences of her mother and tribespeople during the reign of johann sutter are given voice in the opera, and “through multiplying stories, a communal worldview” is engendered (stanlake 119). something inside is broken does portray the exploitative and inhumane treatment of native californians during the gold rush, but also focuses on the nisenan tribal members as people with a history on the land that precedes transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 5 european claims. rather than only depicting reactions to colonialism, the opera emphasizes the wholeness of the nisenan people’s humanity, and it resists casting them merely as victims. moreover, the opera orients its audience within an indigenous narrative framework by not only featuring nisenan songs and stories, but also reflecting indigenous storytelling structures that trouble chornonormative temporalities. the opera reflects this synchronicity by opening the production with the song “creation story,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzii5kkc0&feature=youtu.be) during which the “worldmaker” creates the first human beings and the character of peheipe, a trickster figure. as a character, peheipe is described in the author’s note as a “spiritual guide” who is “neither good nor bad” and “can be seen by the audience, but not by the cast on stage” (kohler 1). traditionally, peheipe is neither male nor female, and while the character of peheipe is assigned to a female soprano, i will still use the pronoun ‘they’ in reference to this character throughout my analysis. peheipe guides the audience through the opera, offering historical contextualization and commentary on the events taking place. kohler identifies these issues as ones that continue to plague america, such as gendered violence, ecological destruction, and systemic attacks on the health and continuance of marginalized communities (trimble). something inside is broken features tribalography’s pivotal “synchronicity of storytime, the ‘mythic,’ including spiritually charged tricksters [peheipe] and creation stories [worldmaker], [which] intermingle with the ‘facts’ of daily experience” (stanlake 120). thus, the opera interrupts the linearity of colonial history that allows settler institutions to dismiss indigenous knowledge production as obsolete and relegated to an irreproducible past. instead, peheipe is an active embodiment of a non-linear perspective, a personified “manifestation of cultural philosophies” that assert a “view of time in which the past, present, and future coexist and possess the vital ability to affect one another” (stanlake 120). through the guidance of peheipe and the voices of nisenan characters such as lizzie johnson, maj kyle, and iine, something inside is broken tells a story that may have its roots in ‘history,’ but continues to reproduce itself through settler-colonial ideologies and institutions. in the face of colonial misremembering, nisenan stories and language provide an epistemological and rhetorical structure to bridge this knowledge gap and create a shared sense of understanding of land that is currently called california. the persisting, devastating effects of these ‘civilizing’ forces in california are reflected in the sharp attenuation in the indigenous population from the pre-contact period to the late shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 6 nineteenth century. scholars have estimated that between 705,000 and one million indigenous people lived in what is currently california, a number that far exceeds earlier estimations accepted as fact by both the academy and the aforementioned “d. thomas” (thornton 33).2 after contact, it is believed that the population of native californians dropped sharply during missionization, down to 85,000 in 1852, declining even further during the gold rush era and to as low as 18,000 by 1890 (thornton 109). as swarms of settlers descended upon native lands in search of fame and fortune, “tribes were aggressively removed from their territories by state and state-funded public militia in violation of the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo of 1848, which had provided that the united states would protect native land grants in the treated areas” (barker 149). next came the passage of the act for the government and protection of the indians in 1851, which stipulated that any “white” property owner could force a “vagrant” indian into work, opening the door to the enslavement of indigenous people by white landowners and ranchers.3 since native people were not permitted to testify against white people in court, they were unable to challenge either their enslavement or the rapid loss of their homelands. as lenape scholar joanne barker writes, despite california’s “status as a free state, [it] permitted the open sale and trade of native people for labor and sex trade purposes” and powerful, wellconnected men like johann sutter took full advantage of the utter lack of protection afforded to indigenous californians (149). during this same year, congress sat down with tribes to negotiate treaties “in order to secure land cession and tribal relocation onto reservations and under federal jurisdiction. by 1852, eighteen treaties had been negotiated with more than one hundred tribes. the treaties would have provided the tribes with approximately 8.5 million acres divided into eighteen reservations” (barker 150). this effort was thwarted by the california governor, the california senate, and a coterie of ‘concerned’ wealthy landowners, resulting in an ‘injunction of secrecy’ being placed on the treaties, one which was set to last until 1905. the tribes who signed these treaties were never informed of their unratified status and were moved onto ostensibly temporary “rancherias”—which were far smaller than the original acreage promised in the treaties— allegedly until they could be moved onto their permanent reservations, while their “deserted” land was scooped up by prospectors (barker 150). in the author’s note to something inside is broken, kohler describes this context as a reign of terror, with sutter exerting unchecked power over the “sacramento valley like a king.” transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 7 he writes that while sutter had an understanding with the local nisenan chief, his slave hunters continued their unrelenting search for “vagrant” indians to work at sutter’s mill, “especially young boys and girls, to work the fields, service the food and service the men” (1). the nisenan women in the opera are prey to the violent desires of the ‘civilized’ men who have come to nisenan lands to seek out fame, fortune, and plunder in all forms.4 along with sutter, we see dramatizations of “captain fremont, kit carson and us forces” exploring what stores of wealth california could offer them. altogether, something inside is broken presents a confluence of celebrated historical figures whose portrayals show that there was little to celebrate and characterizes the toll that the tenets of manifest destiny wrought on communities there. in something inside is broken, hidden treaties and the enslavement and exploitation of the nisenan people in particular, and california native peoples more broadly, are at the heart of lizzie’s testimony to the congressional hearing of the appropriation act of 1906. in this scene, the state of california is forced to confront the eighteen unratified treaties of 1852 with the peaceful tribes of california.5 the political intrigue, romance, and tragedy of something inside is broken make it a compelling addition to the american operatic canon, which has had a complicated relationship with native american representation. beverley diamond explains that, historically, indigenous people were not only featured in operas (though usually limited to representing the exotic other) but also attended and enjoyed the productions as foreign dignitaries while visiting european capitals, particularly during the 18th century and the years of the red atlantic exchange (32). in the early 20th century, at the height of ethnographic and anthropological efforts to ‘save’ native american cultures from their assumed demise, american opera began featuring “exotic representation of indians and indian life.” these renderings were presented as ‘authentic’ to american audiences struggling to “fill a spiritual void created by the nervous energy of modernism and the diminishing roles of religion and high culture” (pisani 3).6 in later eras, indigenous performers were featured in opera, from traveling maori singers to north american performers such as tsianina redfeather (muskogee-creek/cherokee) (diamond 32-33). during this time opera also became an unlikely but important space for indigenous performers to assert themselves not just as singers, but also, in the case of women like redfeather and gertrude bonnin (yankton-sioux), as storytellers who used the genre to present actual indigenous narratives and perspectives. collaborations between these women and mainstream composers— shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 8 charles wakefield cadman and william f. hanson, respectively—produced the operas shanewis and sun dance opera, both of which appeal to western opera’s desire to portray the ‘romantic indian’ while complicating the tropes of the disappearing indian that had lodged in the national consciousness. since then, contemporary indigenous operas from around the globe have expanded the capabilities of this genre, centering on indigenous stories and interrogating sociohistorical narratives of contact that privilege nationalistic and imperialistic interests. the transindigenous body of indigenous opera by first nations, native american, maori, sami, and aboriginal peoples has galvanized a decolonizing energy within the genre by integrating their respective oratures, dances, and linguistic traditions, thus transcending a frame of mere reaction to invasion and instead creating a multidisciplinary immersion into their lived experiences as people. there is no singular set definition of what constitutes an indigenous opera. generally speaking, though, these productions are collaborations between indigenous lyricists, choreographers, and performers who are invested in “addressing the social and political issues and honoring the worldviews of the indigenous communities these operas are written in association with, as well as presenting such works for the benefit of those very communities” (karantonis and robinson 5). as a work of indigenous opera, something inside is broken is an intertribal collaboration between kohler (hoopa valley tribe) and alan wallace (nisenan tribe) to tell a nisenan story that is oriented around nisenan worldviews. although kohler states that the show is in fact “geared toward non-natives” as a means of educating them about california’s history, it focuses on the humanity and survivance of the nisenan people, avoiding the narrative traps of the ‘exotic indian’ or ‘white savior’ that often plague western opera (trimble). more specifically, diamond views these contemporary productions as having three distinct “creative dimensions” that create the “transformative possibility” of decolonization: “language, genre shifts, and embodiment” (36). first, opera is uniquely situated to present indigenous languages to non-fluent audience members, as it “often crosses language barriers, with surtitles in the local language allowing audiences to understand performance in the original one” (36). second, indigenous operas are hybridized affairs, featuring a variety of performers with “skills honed within contrasting artistic worlds, as culture bearers of oral traditions with no music literacy skills, as pop musicians, or as opera singers with no knowledge of or competence in indigenous traditional song. hence, such productions must bridge orality and literacy” (36transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 9 37). finally, diamond notes that indigenous operas often experiment with “embodiment,” exhibiting that “fluid boundaries of existence—crossing animal, human, and spirit—are more fundamental and integral” (37). these elements of indigenous opera enhance the impact of the stories being told—their ability to “transform”—and as a genre, opera becomes a rich site for the enactment of tribalography, as the “power of native storytelling is revealed as a living character who continues to influence our culture” (howe “tribalography” 118). thus, opera has become a transindigenous vehicle for expression and storytelling that literally gives a voice to untold or erased histories. in the congressional hearing scenes, lizzie wields a variety of rhetorical tools that reflect both western and nisenan oratory practices. while the courtroom of the colonizer might be an unexpected space for native storying to take place, lizzie deftly demonstrates the latter’s importance as a decolonial praxis while undermining the former’s claim to ‘rationality’ or ‘neutrality.’ to highlight the government’s hypocrisy in its dealing with the california tribes, lizzie engages in “détournement…using the government’s language against it” (black 12). jason black writes that within colonizer-indigenous political relationships, there exists a rhetorical “presentation of resistance,” a “decolonial move” that unsettles the primacy ascribed to settler governments and “unmask[s] governmental cycles of abuse” inflicted on native communities (11). specifically, by “repurposing the rhetoric of those in power in order to drain the original language of its oppressive assaults,” native rhetoricians and politicians have been able to “clarify how the powerful, or master, rhetoric presents problems, inaccuracies, hypocrisies, distortions, and inconsistencies” (black 12). the act of détourning the colonizer’s language highlights its inherent contradictions and offers a framework for indigenous interpretations of narratives that otherwise privilege the colonizer’s position. to acknowledge the longstanding presence of détournement in indigenous rhetoric is to understand that rather than remaining passive in the face of settler aggression, native communities have “acted by maneuvering to possess economic modalities, sovereignty, safety, and other subsistent needs of the human experience” (black 12, emphasis original). and in viewing these purposeful actions, we can see how indigenous communities have always and continue to advocate for indigenous survivance, rather than accept the fate of assimilation and disappearance that colonial rhetoric demands. lizzie johnson’s testimony before the state senate is a both a plea for a better future for california tribes and a powerful denunciation of their treatment at the hands of the nascent shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 10 california government. the scene opens with the congressional hearing being brought to order, and the song “1852” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6rsr2g2mi8&feature=youtu.be) begins with the chairman recognizing lizzie johnson as a representative of the nisenan tribe, with helen hunt acting as her translator. while lizzie has prepared a statement for her testimony she is overcome with emotion in the moment, and helen steps in to assist her in reading it. over the objections of the senators, lizzie and helen present a “document of grave rescission,” detailing how the eighteen treaties that were signed by indian nations were left unratified and declared dead “under an injunction of secrecy” by the california senate (kohler et al 8). as the women speak, the room descends into chaos, with senators accusing the women of “lies,” “hearsay,” and “trickery,” with one senator declaring “i’m not learned on what you spew!” and another threatening “and some evidence to prove this too!” (9-10). the senators’ hostile reaction to lizzie’s statement and the emphasis on their lack of previous knowledge on the subject serve to undermine lizzie’s credibility, privileging their narratives over her own. amidst the fray, the chairman calls for order and asks lizzie to continue. she and helen begin the song “appropriation,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vczfzpkefk&feature=youtu.be) calling for the senate to ratify the hidden treaties and provide land for the homeless california indians. helen begins by demanding “appropriation… for all of the tribes,” who have been denied the land promised to them, while lizzie decries the “extermination” that “became law of the land” under “burnett, bigler and the senators of california” (referring to previous california governors pete burnett and john bigler, whose tenures were disastrous for california indians) (kohler et al 11). as the women continue their testimony, the chairman reads aloud from the evidence lizzie has provided him, noting the “official seal, dated 1852. the 18 unratified treaties of california,” only to be interrupted by the haranguing of the senators, who are irate by what they perceive to be “hearsay…lies…[and] trickery” at play (kohler et al 12). their objections notwithstanding, lizzie and helen persist, denouncing the land theft and the concealment of the treaties that were bargained in good faith by the indigenous leaders, leaving the tribes facing potential extinction. lizzie champions the need for appropriation, stating that “what they did was wrong,” and begging “let us live, let my tribe live.” the blunt response from the irate senators is “that will never be the outcome,” and “that’s not why we’re here” (kohler et al 13). as a song, “appropriation” is a cacophony of competing interests and competing voices and plays out as a tense dialogue between determined transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 11 women and antagonistic men, but the heteroglossic discord does not undermine the work of tribalography in the opera. indeed, “incongruity is at the core of tribalography, because the discourse is concerned with the process of gathering multiple voices, diverse points of view, and competing perspectives,” and the tensions revealed in this scene produce cracks in otherwise stable narratives of settler-colonial moral superiority (stanlake 129). it is in these uncomfortable spaces that the audience can grapple with their own assumptions and selfhood in relation to the voiced experience of the nisenan. within this dialogue, we see lizzie and helen forcing the legislature to face the dark history of their early statehood, and how the government engaged in a calculated campaign of death and disenfranchisement of the california tribes. when lizzie invokes “extermination” in the song, she refers to state-sanctioned genocide brought to fruition under the orders of governor peter h. burnett. in an 1851 address to the california legislature, burnett called for a “war of extermination” against the tribes that would only cease once “the indian race becomes extinct,” a measure approved by the legislature two years later (barker 149). this led to a cooperative effort between the state and federal government to pay bounties on the scalps of native men, women, and children, resulting in over one million dollars being paid outs to bounty hunters (barker 149150). lizzie’s repeated invocation of the word “extermination” directly mirrors burnett’s own language despite pushback from her audience, and she refuses to hedge or choose a euphemism to appease them. as helen continues her appeal for appropriation for the tribes, lizzie insists on reminding the senators, through détournement, why appropriation is a necessary measure in the first place, using their own language of “extermination” to show that they, as members of the governing body of california, have benefited from this campaign of extermination. consequently, she illustrates that they have inherited the responsibility for the sufferings of the eighteen tribes, which must result in recompense for these atrocities. for all her early fears and misgivings, lizzie becomes a powerful voice in this unfriendly environment, and continues to pursue a future for her people. after “appropriation,” lizzie’s testimony continues, and one senator asks her how she came to know english so well. lizzie describes her negative experiences at boarding school and is immediately accused of “trying to instill sympathy.” the chairman asks lizzie to “stick to the facts,” a request she responds to by presenting her “historical documents,” pictures of sutter and his “workers” (read: slaves), including lizzie’s mother, maj kyle (kohler et al 14). as these shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 12 pictures are shown to the legislature, the audience sees peheipe enter, unseen by the cast members onstage. peheipe is followed by nisenan men and women, who file in as peheipe sings “emelulu” (“housefly”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmr7hqem1cq&feature=youtu.be), an operatic adaptation of “ten little indians.” peheipe sings through the song once, “one little, two little, three little indians…” with the small but poignant closing edition “ten little indian slaves” (kohler et al 15). the slaves respond by singing the song back in nisenan, myynte ni ‘emelulu wek’etk’eti ‘emelulu tol nik’i paj nik’i maa nik’i ‘emelulu myynte ni ‘emelulu wek’etk’eti ‘emelulu tol nik’i paj nik’i maa nik’i ‘emelulu (kohler et al 15). peheipe is then joined by sutter, who repeats the song in english, with another response by the slaves in nisenan. as the song ends, they all exit the stage, and the focus is brought back to lizzie and the senators. lizzie declares that her mother “was a slave” of sutter’s, angering one senator to the extent that he “jumps to his feet,” insisting that: slavery was a southern thing, a negro thing. indians were never proven slaves, but servants. sutter paid his servants. the witness is trying to instill sympathy again. (kohler et al 16) the repeated interruptions and negations of lizzie’s assertions are emblematic of the erasure of indigenous experience under settler-colonialism, a force that was touted as being civilizing and positive for indigenous people, when in reality it resulted in genocide and subjugation. this repeated insistence that she “stick to the facts” by complying with the rigid norms of the congressional hearing privileges what kimberly wieser refers to as the “linear, analytical reasoning that argues for the ‘right answer’ by creating misleading dichotomies and discounting other kinds of reasoning” endemic to western institutions (7). lizzie does not comply and transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 13 continues her impassioned testimony, which comes alive onstage with the characters of sutter, maj kyle, and other nisenan slaves enacting the horrors lizzie, and at times helen, describe. in one such vignette, lizzie narrates how her mother, maj kyle, was one of sutter’s house servants who was “treated like an animal. she cleaned the house, made the food, fed the slaves and sometimes was used in other ways” (kohler et al 18). as lizzie recounts this, we see a flashback illustrating sutter’s treatment of maj kyle: sutter rings for maj kyle who enters, carrying a pitcher. maj kyle leans in to serve sutter and he aggressively grabs her wrist, causing her to drop the pitcher. he then drags her offstage as she screams. while the senators are not privy to this reenactment, the audience sees a clear picture of the depraved treatment women like maj kyle were subjected to in their ‘servitude’ and are faced with the legacy of trauma experienced by native women across the united states. as sarah deer (muskogee [creek] nation) writes in the beginning and end of rape: confronting sexual violence in native america, the widespread sexual abuse of native american women is not an inexplicable phenomenon but a “fundamental result of colonialism” (x). maj kyle is one of many victims whose trauma extends as far back as first contact and continues into our present day. the staging of lizzie’s testimony, while disturbing in its implications, is an important example of “embodiment” in indigenous opera; while lizzie euphemistically describes her mother’s abuse as being “used in other ways,” maj kyle’s body tells the true story on stage. this encounter introduces the physical and psychological toll of sutter’s enduring sexual exploitation of maj kyle, and her anguished bodily response (her resistance, her scream) becomes “comment[ary] on encounter” and its atrocities (diamond 36). moreover, this embodiment resonates with the audience, who are confronted by the enforced emotional sterility of the courtroom and the raw emotional exchange between maj kyle and sutter. while lizzie is acting as a witness for her tribe, the audience is witnessing the testimony unfold beyond the words themselves, as lizzie’s allusions to sutter’s rape of her mother are shown to “transcend [her] own memories, to include those of [her] relatives and tribal community” (howe “the story of america” 43-4). lizzie’s testimony is crafted to persuade the members of the legislature, but christy stanlake argues that in staged works of tribalography, “audience members often do not derive meanings…from following a single story or protagonist, but from witnessing a multitude of stories” (130). therefore, it is maj kyle’s voiced and embodied experience (and those of other shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 14 nisenan women and men) that engenders the “multi-vocal authenticity” that “models for audiences the concept of communal truth” (stanlake 129). this staging of lizzie and maj kyle’s stories reminds the audience of what is omitted from the historical records that they are meant to take as fact, and presents them with a more collective understanding of the human toll that these institutions have wrought. through these reenactments of the treatment of slaves during her testimony, lizzie bears witness to the experiences of the nisenan people. the scene-within-a-scene that shows lizzie’s words in motion, embodied in maj kyle’s suffering, serves as a critique of “master narratives” while amplifying the voices of those who experienced this treatment (black 7). in this moment, as the committee and the audience are experiencing lizzie’s decolonizing narrative of california history, the committee stand in as avatars for the audience, whose own understanding of this history might provoke feelings of resistance to the information being presented. as diamond writes, the “transformative possibilities” of indigenous operas such as something inside is broken as decolonizing works lie not just in the telling of indigenous stories, but in the reactions of mainstream audiences to their content, especially if these narratives contradict deeply held beliefs or privileged histories (31). the audience observes the senators' dismissive and hostile reactions to lizzie’s painful testimony, and in turn, the audience may reflect on their own responses to the multiple stories being presented, demonstrating how the “significance of collective creation resides not in a play’s ability to model concepts of tribalography but in the potential for the play’s stories to enter the audience and change the world” (stanlake 153). nonnative audience members might be challenged to consider whether they would be dismissive or hostile to someone sharing these difficult stories in other spaces, thus, as an indigenous opera and a work of tribalography, something inside is broken can extend its ideological impact beyond the stage and into outside conversations. as the senators become increasingly resistant to lizzie’s story, she upends the power dynamic, insisting on continuing her testimony in the nisenan language. this is a radical shift that i view as an act of lyons’ notion of rhetorical sovereignty. after the committee’s chairman addresses helen to ask her “if her client [is] going somewhere with this” (rather than addressing lizzie herself), helen responds; “chairman, did we not come here to/ hear the history of her tribe, her/history, she should be free to tell/ her own story” (kohler et al. 18). this leads into the song “home sweet home,” transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 15 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5pzftjghvo&feature=youtu.be) as lizzie decides to “tell her own story” in her own language with helen acting as her translator. lyons writes that “rhetorical sovereignty is the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desire…to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse” (449-50). lizzie’s insistence on speaking nisenan and absolute resistance to the repeated admonishments of the chairmen to speak english, then, reorients the “goals” of the hearing to fit her purpose of representing her community’s collective experience. lizzie begins by repeating “homaa nik’ c’esak’ bemi,” which helen translates to “do you recognize who i am?” their statements are met by objections to her use of nisenan language, and the chairman retorts that they “recognize lizzie johnson” or “recognize case number 95603” (kohler et al 19). while the court recognizes lizzie as an individual representative within the scope of the proceedings, they struggle to locate her within a collective, within “the logic of a nation-people, which takes as its supreme charge the sovereignty of the group through a privileging of its traditions and culture and continuity” (lyons 455). in a move that privileges the primacy of nisenan language and demonstrates its continuity, lizzie continues her calls for “recognition,” asking “nik’ majdy mee’u meem,” (“do you recognize my plea?”) and “niseek’ k’awi mee’u min” (“do you recognize what i stand for?”) (kohler et al 19). it is in this moment that lizzie comes into her own as a speaker, abandoning the insufficient language of the colonizer to convey her message and instead asserting herself in nisenan. something inside is broken’s co-creator wallace has emphasized the importance of the use of nisenan in the opera, stating that “i’ve always thought the nisenan language had the potential for a much higher level of communication than can be done in english…it’s much more intellectual. it’s much more multi-dimensional” (qtd. in madeson). when lizzie first engages in english, the senators and chairman understand her words but reject her meaning; when she switches to nisenan, they are are confused and unable to follow her without helen’s translations. while it may seem that lizzie is complicating her pursuit for appropriation and recognition, she wields the nisenan language as a “multi-dimensional” assertion of the rights of california tribes to “rebuild…to exist and present [their] gifts to the world.” moreover, her “rhetorics of sovereignty” constitute an “adamant refusal to disassociate culture, identity, and power from the land,” as the appropriation she seeks is in the form of the land promised to the tribes that was withheld in an of bad faith by the legislature (lyons 457). while lizzie’s words shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 16 are ostensibly framed as a series of questions, they emerge as demands made of the committee to reorient their perspective of her and what she represents, as well as her own recognition of the importance of the position she is taking in this space —what she “stand[s] for.” moreover, although helen still has to translate lizzie’s words in order for the members of the committee to understand her, her decision to make these demands in her language and disregard the conventions of the colonized space serves to reassert indigenous claims to this space, and to place the needs of her people and other california tribes on par with the interests of the nascent state. the chairman demands that lizzie adhere to the colonial conventions of the courtroom, but she continues her testimony in nisenan. she accuses the state of enslaving and attempting to “exterminate [her] race” (kohler et al 20), and breaks into the following solo, which is translated by helen: lizzie: homaa nik’ c’esak’ bemi homaa nisee c’esak’ bemi hedem k’awinaan ‘ydawmukum neseek’ hypy wentin hypym homaa nik’ c’esak’ bemi homaa nisee c’esak’ bemi homaa nik’ c’esak’ bemi homaa nisee c’esak’ bemi hedem k’awinaan ‘ydawmukum wej wej ha nik hipin k'ojonaan wej wej ha nik jamanmanto bomy nik hedem k'awi wentin helen: what truth or facts will prove the case i plead how can i try to undo all that’s been decreed transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 17 you took my people you took our land then you made us homeless indians here i stand here i stand (kohler et al 20) in this song, lizzie implies that the senatorial committee’s insistence on “truth and facts” is actually arbitrary, self-serving, and insufficient to encapsulate the depth of the “homeless indians’” struggle to survive. as wieser writes, within indigenous epistemologies, “experience in general—whether derived from experiences of the culture encoded in story, those of an authoritative elder, or those of an individual who shared the same cultural values—is held as evidence” (wieser 37). the senators’ repeated interjections attempt to invalidate lizzie’s claims either on the grounds that they are steeped in the pathos of experienced suffering or contradict ‘facts’ that the senators have already accepted as true. and this belies the committee’s underlying desire to dismiss her claims precisely because of their potential impact. to disregard experience as somehow counterfactual has consistently benefited white, heteropatriarchal christian society by disqualifying oppressed peoples from social discourses that affect their communities based on their supposed inability to remain ‘unbiased’ in their experienctial narratives. in her own language, lizzie makes it clear that she will not be deterred by their attempts to discredit her or deflect from the truth of her testimony. instead, within the ‘theater’ of the congressional hearing and howe’s concept of the “living theater” of the performative space of the stage, something inside is broken “responds to colonization’s harm by listening to, remembering, and repeating stories on behalf of the collective” (horan and kim 29). the repetition of “here i stand” is an assertion of continuance for both the senators and the audience: california indians have not disappeared, despite the best efforts of colonial forces, and they will continue to assert their rights to their land, language, and traditions. as wieser reminds us, “art may engage heavily with the mainstream, but it asserts cultural difference, and a native perspective on history within the milieu of popular culture is a statement: we are still here” (56). like “we are still here,” “here i stand” shows what recognition actually entails: reinstatement, repatriation, recompense, and hopefully, one day, actual reconciliation. they show that the story is not yet complete. shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 18 this recognition is at the heart of what the show means to its performers, particularly its indigenous performers. in an interview with indian country today, natalie benally (navajo), a dancer and actress who portrayed pulba in the 2016 touring show, describes that she had “been waiting for something like this to come about…when i was acting in school shows at fort lewis college, i’d think, maybe someday i’ll be able to play one of my people in a show” (madeson). benally’s desire to “play one of my people” is more than a self-affirming statement or an articulation of communal connectivity; it is a recognition of the potential of and responsibility inherent to tribalographic enactments. that one must, as howe writes, “learn more about my ancestors, understand them better than i imagined. then i must be able to render all our collective experiences into a meaningful form” (qtd. in horan and kim 29). it acknowledges the potential of the theater as a site of cultural continuance, where historically silenced voices can interrupt and interact with mainstream narratives to produce collective understanding. this echoes back to howe’s narrative about the “a celebration of native women playwrights” conference and the piece discussing the ramifications of residential schools. howe notes that while certain members of the audience were intitially hostile to the subject of the piece, others were moved to share their families’ experiences with persecution and oppression, from fleeing the holocaust to surviving chattel slavery on american soil. as they shared their respective stories, howe noticed a shift in the room, as the non-native audience members ceased their denial of indigenous history and instead “were threading their lives and experiences into ours. a shift in paradigm, it's generally believed to be the other way around: indians assimilating into the mainstream” ( “tribalography” 124). benally and howe’s words interweave with the concept of this “shift in paradigm,” of genres and spaces being assimilated to account for the experiences of indigenous people, rather than “indians assimilating into the mainstream.” by portraying alternative narratives that complicate and contradict the historical accounts that we otherwise accept as complete, something inside is broken reaches out to a non-native audience as well as native ones, assimilating the former into a new reality that acknowledges the wrongs of the past and present, and creates a catalyzing environment to have dialogues that envision a different path forward. notes transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 19 1 in “serra the saint: why not?” miranda articulates the frustration and anger indigenous californians felt at the canonization of father junípero serra in 2015. miranda writes that “serra did not just ‘bring’ us christianity; he imposed it, he forced it, he violated us with it, giving us no choice in the matter.” moreover, miranda dismisses the claims invoked by serra’s supporters, who deemed him a “man of his times” to excuse his culpability in the abuse and exploitation experienced by indigenous californians at the mercy of the mission system (miranda, “serra the saint: why not?”). 2 in “a short correspondence,” miranda writes that she double-checked russell thornton’s amendment of earlier estimates of the california native population with dr. william preston, whose research focused on the california mission system. preston responded that “[a]t this point i think that thornton’s high number is totally reasonable. in fact, keeping in mind that populations no doubt fluctuated over time, i’m thinking that at times 1 million or more native californians were resident in the state” (qtd. in miranda, “a short correspondence about a long story”). 3 during the gold rush era, “mexicans were then legally classified as ‘whites’ by the state law,” and also engaged in the enslavement of native californians (barker 149). 4 the experience of the nisenan and other indigenous california women is neither unique nor relegated to the past. currently, reservations are treated as hunting grounds by workers in the extractive industries. this issue is further articulated in a report issued by the 2016 american indian law clinic, which describes the significant and “unprecedented” spike in violent crimes, including sexual assault against native women, children, and men on the fort berthold reservation. men in particular have experienced a 75% increase in sexual assault, and the report draws a connection between these upward swings of crime and the “influx of well-paid male oil and gas workers, living in temporary housing often referred to as “man camps” (finn et. al 2-3). the report attributes this rise in trafficking in fort berthold to a “combination of economic hardship, an influx of temporary workers, historical violence against native women, a lack of law enforcement resources, and increased oil and gas development,” and notes that the complexities of federal indian law create issues in enforcing and prosecuting offenders (9). moreover, the authors discuss how “resource-based boom communities” lead to an overwhelming of local law enforcement, who must respond to a sharp uptick in calls to respond to a variety of violent crimes, leaving tribal communities vulnerable (8). 5 kohler’s linking of the issues facing native californians in the gold rush era to our present moment is an unfortunately appropriate analogy, and the repercussions of settler aggression continue to play out in similar ways. one must only replace johann sutter with energy transfer partners and the private and state-enacted violence inflicted on water protectors at standing rock or consider the current administration’s opening of federal land in utah--including bears ears, a sacred site for native american nations and tribes, including the “hopi tribe, navajo nation, ute indian tribe, ute mountain ute tribe and zuni tribe”—to a variety of energy prospecting interests (kestler-d’amours). specifically, this administration is invoking the general mining law of 1872, which functions in the same manner as gold rush era policies, merely requiring prospectors who wish to mine for precious metals to “hammer four poles into the ground corresponding to the four points of a parcel that can be as big as 20 acres,” with a corresponding description of the claim attached to one of the poles (volcovici). 6 charles wakefield cadman, the celebrated american composer, professed the importance of “idealizing” native american music for western audiences. he recommended that indian shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 20 composers” should, to the best of their abilities, “be in touch with the indian’s legends, his stories and the odd characteristics of his music, primitive though they may be, and one should have an insight into the indian emotional life concomitant with his naïve and charming artcreations. and while not absolutely necessary, a hearing of his songs on the reservation amidst native surroundings adds something of value to a composer’s efforts at idealizing. (qtd. inlevy 91). works cited barker, joanne. native acts: law, recognition, and cultural authenticity. duke university press, 2011. black, jason edward. american indians and the rhetoric of removal and allotment. univ of mississippi press, 2015. covert, shelley. “the continuing hold of the gold rush: on california’s indigenous survivors.” news from native california, summer 2017, pp. 15–16, view.joomag.com/news-from-native-california-summer-2017-volume-30-issue4/0302021001500589267?page=4. deer, sarah. the beginning and end of rape: confronting sexual violence in native america. university of minnesota press, 2015. diamond, beverley. “decentering opera: early twenty-first-century indigenous production.” opera indigene: re/presenting first nations and indigenous cultures. ed. pamela karantonis and dylan robinson. burlington, vt: ashgate publishing company, 2011: 31-56. finn, kathleen, erica gajda, thomas perin, & carla fredericks. “responsible resource development and prevention of sex trafficking: safeguarding native women and children on the fort berthold reservation.” harvard journal of law and gender vol. 40, no. 1 (winter 2017): p. 1-52. horan, elizabeth and seonghoon kim. “‘then one day we create something unexpected’: tribalography's decolonizing strategies in leanne howe's evidence of red.” studies in american indian literature. vol. 25, no. 1, spring 2013, pp. 27-52, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/505397, accessed 4 june, 2018. howe, leanne. “tribalography: the power of native stories.” journal of dramatic theory and criticism. vol. 14, no. 1, 1999, pp. 117–25. https://journals.ku.edu/jdtc/article/download/3325/3254, accessed 2 june, 2018. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 21 karantonis, pamela and dylan robinson. “introduction.” opera indigene: re/presenting first nations and indigenous cultures. ed. pamela karantonis and dylan robinson. burlington, vt: ashgate publishing company, 2011: 1-12. kestler-d'amours, jillian. “native tribes sue trump over bears ears monument.” al jazeera, 9 dec. 2017, www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/native-tribes-sue-trump-bears-earsmonument-171206125555058.html. kohler, jack. “author’s note.” something insides is broken. on native ground, 2016: 1-2. jack, kohler, et al. "1852". perf. megan chestnut, et al., something inside is broken (original cast recording), youtube, 9 feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6rsr2g2mi8. ---. “appropriation.” perf. jehean washington, megan chesnut & original cast. something inside is broken (original cast recording), youtube, 9 feb. 2018, https://youtu.be/vczfzpkefk ---. “creation song.” perf. jehean washington & original cast. something inside is broken (original cast recording), youtube, 9 feb. 2018, https://youtu.be/xnz-ii5kkc0 ---. “emelulu.” perf. carly kohler, elle beyer, natalie benally, rachael sprague & original cast. something inside is broken (original cast recording), youtube, 9 feb. 2018, https://youtu.be/tmr7hqem1cq ---. “home sweet home.” perf. jehean washington, megan chesnut, derek dozier & original cast. something inside is broken (original cast recording), youtube, 9 feb. 2018, https://youtu.be/i5pzftjghvo levy, beth e. frontier figures: american music and the mythology of the american west. university of california press, 2012. madeson, frances. “nisenan rock opera ‘something inside is broken’ tour on september 22.” indian country today, 16 sept. 2016, https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/nisenan-rock-opera-something-insideis-broken-tour-on-september-22-dpagg-yevewbo1mdwc73dg/ miranda, deborah a. “a short correspondence about a long story.” bad ndns, blogspot, 18, feb. 2018, badndns.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-short-correspondence-about-longstory.html. ---. “serra the saint: why not.’” indian country today, 15 jan. 2015, indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/serra-the-saint-why-not/. pisani, michael v. imagining native american in music. yale university press, 2005. print. thorton, russel. american indian holocaust and survival: a population history since 1492. university of oklahoma press, 1987. shannon toll “do you recognize who i am?” 22 trimble, lynn. “how native american rock opera something inside is broken explores the dark side of american history.” phoenix new times, 6 oct. 2016, www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/how-native-american-rock-opera-something-inside-isbroken-explores-the-dark-side-of-american-history-8702707. volcovici, valerie. “a modern land run? trump move opens utah to mining claims under 1872 law.” reuters, 31 jan. 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-utah-mining/amodern-land-run-trump-move-opens-utah-to-mining-claims-under-1872-lawiduskbn1fk1ma. white owl, roger. “support for maintaining collaborative efforts with federal, state, and private partners to combat human trafficking in indian country: resolution #phx-16078.” support for maintaining collaborative efforts with federal, state, and private partners to combat human trafficking in indian country: resolution #phx-16-078, national congress of american indians, oct. 2016. www.ncai.org/resources/resolutions/support-for-maintaining-collaborative-efforts-withfederal-state-and-private-partners-to-combat-human-trafficking-in-indian-country. microsoft word darensbourg-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 138 hoktiwe (for l. rain prud’homme-cranford) jeffery u. darensbourg1 this work is a cento, a type of found poetry, composed using david kaufman’s atakapa ishakkoy dictionary as well as gatschet and swanton’s a dictionary of the atakapa language. i use kaufman’s orthography here, which conforms with contemporary linguistic scholarship. the correct name for the language is “ishakkoy” (“human being talk”), as “atakapa” is an exonym and slur historically directed at the tribe by others.2 the primary original source material was gathered in lake charles, louisiana and environs in the 1880’s and 1920’s. there is but a small corpus of ishakkoy, consisting of a few paragraphs of narratives in the gatschet & swanton dictionary. there are, however, many example sentences therein that aren’t included in those texts, which i extracted on notecards, using these to compose additional texts. note: all sentences appear as in the kaufman dictionary, except that some place names have been switched into different sentences. all place names used are found in the published dictionaries of the language. katkoš koykit: an eagle is speaking: “išak tayš okiăn yukit he mon yalpeyulăt.” “strangers have come and taken our land.” šokšoš šokšo waņšolkit. birds are tearing up the young seed plants. cikip tat. a blue heron is poised there. naw taw walwalštit. many feathers are waving. iti hihiwalšat: i dreamt last night: wi šaknoms puškin waņankamstit. my children are playing outside. neš ne(y)kin tlop tat. a post stands driven into the ground. išak išat ha(n) huulăt. they see a headless man. cok taykin išakăt. he was born near blackbird river. jeffery u. darensbourg “hoktiwe” 139 tew tulkin išakăt. he was born at tail of the lake. kui taykin išakăt. he was born along cactus pear bayou.3 nun tixt mon waņo. i walk all over the village. oce hew šiwtiwkit. snakes slither quickly. išakkoy tiwxc koyo. i speak a little ishakkoy. okwaņš haņšǎt. the war is over. tik kakáwkin polšwaņkit. on the water an arrow floats. itans ockawškit. a cloud passes over the sun. šaktelšo. i unfold. kakáw taw inikit. the water comes in. wi šokatkok akilikišo. i soak the cloth. šoktol hew wi ke. i’m rather lucky. wi nuņ uškin ket ta. i live in bulbancha.4 kultan oktišat. a long time has passed. wiš kewtiukšo ya šokyulšo. i smoke and i write. cit lawkit. the tobacco burns. tanstal tolka makawǎt. the paper falls down whirling. pam inululăt. many footprints they left. ha išak lukin tiktat temakip. this fellow goes wading in the mud. neš takamš kamkamš. limbs branch out from the tree. hoktiwe. we are together. hatpeo. i am ready. wi ăm (h)inawš. let me drink. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 140 notes 1 enrolled member and tribal councilperson, atakapa-ishak nation of southwest louisiana and southeast texas. this poem was composed during an adaptations residency at a studio in the woods, tulane university, spring 2020. hiwew for comments to christine baniewicz, carolyn dunn, david kaufman, justin southworth, russell reed, and kimberly gail weiser. this poem is recited by me in the 2020 short film hoktiwe: two poems in ishakkoy by fernando lópez and myself (https://vimeo.com/452435309), commissioned by the contemporary arts center new orleans for the exhibition “make america what america must become” (https://www.oc20.cacno.org/). 2 for more on the status of the language, including notes on the tribe itself, see darensbourg and kaufman. other recent writings in ishakkoy by tribal member tanner menard are discussed in lief and darensbourg. 3 tew tul (“tail of the lake”) is the original name for lake charles, louisiana. kui tay refers to a bayou nearby where an important food source, the prickly pear cactus (opuntia humifusa) may be found. the french assigned a name that is an echo of the original, bayou guy. in their dictionary gatschet and swanton misidentify the waterway as “bayou des gayes” (72). my thanks to robert caldwell (choctaw-apache tribe of ebarb) for helping with the correct identification. 4 nuņ uš (“big village”) is a postcolonial term in ishakkoy for bulbancha (“the place of foreign languages”), which is the original, pre-colonial name for what most call “new orleans.” on the name and its spellings, see hali dardar, “bvlbancha,” 64 parishes, fall 2019, p. 22. for more on indigenous people in bulbancha who still use that name, including myself, cf. laine kaplan-levinson, “new orleans: 300 // bulbancha: 3000,” 20 december 2018, in tripod: new orleans at 300, produced by wwno, podcast, https://www.wwno.org/post/new-orleans-300-bulbancha-3000. works cited darensbourg, jeffery u. and david kaufman. “ishak words: language renewal prospects for a historical gulf coast tribe.” in language in louisiana: community and culture, edited by nathalie dajko and shana walton, pp. 64-68. up of mississippi, 2019. gatschet, albert s. and john r. swanton. a dictionary of the atakapa language accompanied by text material. government printing office, 1932. kaufman, david. atakapa ishakkoy dictionary. exploration press, 2019. jeffery u. darensbourg “hoktiwe” 141 lief, shane and jeffery u. darensbourg. “popular music and indigenous languages of louisiana.” proceedings of the foundation for endangered languages 19, 2015, pp. 142-146. microsoft word jbm, m higgins, final.docx marc higgins review of a world of many worlds 297 marisol de la cadena and mario blaser, eds. a world of many worlds. duke university press, 2018. 232 pp. isbn: 9781478002956. https://www.dukeupress.edu/a-world-of-many-worlds the responsibility for environmental collapse cannot be uniformly distributed – it is glaringly obvious which geographical regions and social segments benefited historically from the processes it set in motion – its consequences will be much more so: … [it] points to a shared catastrophe. (viveiros de castro and danowski, 173) the anthropocene marks a new geological epoch in which the planet is predominantly shaped by “the detritus, movement, and actions of humans” (davis and todd 762). as the result of “extractivism,” “the accelerated extraction of natural resources to satisfy a global demand for minerals and energy to provide what national governments consider economic growth” (de la cadena and blaser 2), there is an impeding “shared catastrophe.” it is marked by quickly increasing and converging ecological crises due to which the possibility of the destruction of life on earth is looming. however, the admission of culpability that holds humanity responsible serves to mask more than it reveals (kirby 2018).1 in response, heather davis and zoe todd (métis/otipemisiw) ask: “if the anthropocene is already here, the question then becomes, what can we do with it as a conceptual apparatus that may serve to undermine the conditions that it names?” (davis and todd 763). where one might call this the end of the world, the essays comprising a world of many worlds, productively invite us to consider the anthropocene as the end of worlds, or “worlds whose disappearance was assumed at the outset of the anthropocene,” as editors marisol de la cadena and mario blaser write (2). while a “shared catastrophe,” it is also one that is felt unevenly: the anthropocene disproportionately threatens large swaths of the global south, endangered animal and plant species, indigenous peoples, and marginalized communities of colour (both urban and rural) in ways that affluent colonizing communities in the global north have purposefully ignored. rather than linger in the space of critique, however, a world of many worlds moves into a space of critical affirmation: how might we create a heterogenous world of many worlds that does not require the destruction of other worlds as its mode of operation?2 centering a notion of political ontology based on “the presumption of divergent worldings constantly coming about through negotiations, enmeshments, crossings, and interruptions” (6), the book is organized around three differing yet co-constitutive transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 298 orientations. these orientations aim to work within, against, and beyond the ethicoonto-epistemic theory-practices of modernity. this is of double(d) significance as modernity is both deeply entangled with the ways in which this contemporary moment came about, as well as collusive in shaping the ways that responses to the crisis are articulated and practiced: “many practices allegedly intended to save the planet continue to destroy it” (3). as a world of many worlds is always already happening, the first orientation reworks and re-opens an imaginary of politics such that the possibility of a world of many worlds might be thought. as boaventura de sousa santos states in “beyond abyssal thinking: from global lines to ecologies of knowledges,” “the critical task ahead cannot be limited to generating alternatives… it requires an alternative thinking about alternatives” (63). towards these ends, in the first chapter of a world of many worlds, marilyn strathern opens up the question of knowledge in the anthropological tradition by asking if the concept of “knowledge” could be a means to knowledge through its doubling, duplication, and demarcation. applying similar logics to relationality, she suggests that understandings of “relation” shape what relations are possible and possibly understood. across encounters of difference (such as those that abound in the anthropocene), incommensurable heterogeneities proliferate, and not-knowing becomes an important partial way-of-relating. along similar lines, in the second chapter, alberto corsín jiménez offers a consideration of the ways in which “modern knowledge is essentially a trap to itself” (56), caught in a relation of (fore)closure that prevents it from responding to (or even grasping) the particular challenges of our contemporary moment. leaning into “trap” as a concept, jiménez explores the ways in which art, architecture, and social movement organization can operate as traps that both host and hold hostage. these processes “capture, caution, and captivate” relations as they are designed in relation to their creators, their targets, and their desired futures-to-come (75). the second orientation explores political ontology as a field of both study and intervention. extending jiménez’s notion of modern thinking as a “trap” in the third chapter, isabelle stengers enquires into western modern science specifically and the ways in which science cannot be wholly separated from an imperialist project that maintains its hegemony in multiplicitous and pervasive ways. importantly, she suggests that this is more than “only a question of the long entrenched life of colonial thought habits” (95). instead, possibilities of science being otherwise and dialoguing across difference require that ontology be (allowed to be) more than the object of epistemology. the very possibility of ontological politics in this encounter requires that marc higgins review of a world of many worlds 299 scientists (and those who inherit their legacies; see higgins and tolbert) actively engage in a form of “slow science” which attends to the embodied sense of fright that comes with taking seriously other-than-human agency as well as the ways in which the modernist imperative “do not regress” (i.e., a teleology of progress) that we possess also possesses us (see also stengers 2018). digging deeper into the importance of epistemologically slowing down modernity in the fourth chapter, helen verran explores not only how modern subjects should treat their own ways-of-knowing but also how modern subjects could approach knowledge existing beyond their own. particularly, she asks what encounters are possible between western modernity and indigenous ways-of-knowing-and-being by exploring what can be learned from the development and delivery of a yolngu aboriginal australian mathematics curriculum. she analyses the politics and possibilities of working differing ways-of-knowing-and-being together while keeping them apart. specifically, verran suggests a double(d) practice of “bad faith” and “good faith.” of the former, the knower remains hyper-vigilant of their own knowledge practices, “refusing to go along with what everyone knows” (114). of the latter, there is a trust that we know what we know and how we know, and that those we encounter do as well. verran ponders what might allow for the possibility of transformative coming-to-know in which the there-then of knowledge is simultaneously maintained and dissolved in pursuit of a practice of knowing together here-now. the third orientation of a world of many worlds sets out that political ontology is “a modality of analysis and critique that is permanently concerned with its own effects as a worlding practice” (6). in the fifth chapter, john law and marianne lien rejoin stengers in examining the ways in which science maintains hegemony through examining the multiplicity of ways that networked discourses about norwegian fish farming and fly fishing converge and diverge. importantly, in revealing how modernity renders itself singular(izing) in this context (e.g., how escaped farmed salmon caught by tourists trouble a “pristine” nature/culture divide), they challenge modernity as monolithic since there are resources for resistance that can be found within it. in chapter six, eduardo viveiros de castro and déborah danowski take up the question of the anthropocene more explicitly (e.g., addressing a whole page to the symptoms of our epoch). they suggest that we are facing—and must face—this destruction that is waged in the name of progress even if it is not often named as such. further, after stengers, the call to not regress is ever present. they suggest a bifurcated new worlding that accounts for and is accountable to the ways in which this epoch could never be relegated to the “anthropos.” there are those who are responsible for the anthropocene (i.e., “the humans” [181], having denied both the earth and their belonging to it) and those who must live with its effects (i.e., “the terrans” [181], othertransmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 300 than-humans and humans othered by western humanism). as this new dualism becomes the terms of refusal, viveiros de castro and danowski urge those identifying and identifiable as “humans” (i.e., subjects of modernity and western humanism) to learn from “terrans”: particularly from indigenous imaginations that have “already started to think the reduction or slowing down of their anthropocene” (190).3 as a whole, the collection is important in numerous ways. perhaps most significantly is how it responds to one of the central ironies of the ontological turn – manifestations of responsibility to the other-than-human are often not always able to respond to those othered by western humanism. the first decade of the ontological turn is marked by calls and efforts to reconsider the primacy of the nature/culture divide, which is deeply entangled with the (re)production of the anthropocene. however, it bears remembering todd’s (2016) critique that the ontological turn might be but another expression and enactment of (neo-)colonialism should we not attend to the ways in which western theories, including more progressive ones at this turn (e.g., posthumanism, new materialisms, science and technology studies, or sts), run the risk of subsuming, sublating, or suturing over indigenous ways-of-knowing-in-being (see also watts 2013). in outlining the purpose of a world of many worlds, the editors expand: to open up the possibility of a world where many worlds fit, it is not enough for the anthropocene to disrupt the nature and culture divide that makes the world one. rather, the practices that render the anthropocene visible – as well as proposals for survival – must also disrupt such a divide (15). stated otherwise, the ontological turn reproduces (albeit differently) logics and practices of power if those doing the work cannot learn to listen to those who have been most affected by said systems (e.g., indigenous peoples). particularly, the anthropocene is becoming an incomprehensible nightmare for those who have been doling out dread and destruction for years through practices that are at the intersections of colonialism and capitalism, as well as those affected who are now denouncing louder than ever these means of destruction. an inherent paradox is present therein: “could the moment of the anthropocene bring to the fore the possibility of the pluriverse?” (de la cadena and blaser 17). the anthropocene is a reckoning without a road map: we must learn to respond differently to the deeply situated and contingent project of refusing the one world which caused this destruction and slowly, yet urgently (re)open the possibility of a world of many worlds. marc higgins, university of alberta marc higgins review of a world of many worlds 301 notes 1 relevant here are conversations about when the anthropocene began. general consensus is that that anthropocene began in the 1950s with geological markers such as rising “carbon dioxide levels, mass extinctions, and the widespread use of petrochemicals,… and radioactivity left from the detonation of atomic bombs” (davis and todd 762-63). however, others invite consideration of the multiplicitous moments in which indigenous ecologies (i.e., humans, other-than-humans, and more-thanhumans) were at risk of extinction from “man” with planetary consequences (e.g., the “orbis spike” of 1610 [lewis and maslin 2015] in which atmospheric co2 levels drastically dropped as a result of the genocide of indigenous peoples) (see also yussof 2018). what distinguishes the contemporary moment is that “the colonizers are threatened[,] as the worlds they displaced and destroyed when they took over what they called terra nullius” are at risk (de la cadena and blaser 3). 2 there is much to be critical of, namely the way(s) in which all humans are held equally responsible under the signifier that is “anthropos,” which gestures towards a universalizing image of “man.” response is then framed outside of or beyond the capitalist and (neo-)colonial relations of power through which the anthropocene came about, such that “man” is off the hook for the material and cultural erasure of difference (davis and todd 2016; whyte 2018). 3 importantly, this is not to make the essentializing suggestion that there are no indigenous humanities (e.g., battiste et al. 2005) or that indigenous peoples cannot (problematically or strategically) occupy the position of subject of modernity. rather, the “world-forming, world destroying aliens, the europeans” (viveiros de castro and danowski 190-91) are more often than not the usual suspects of the anthropocene, or those who are not with the “terrans” and gaia (i.e., the earth) but rather against them. the point made is that there is a distinct need to learn from indigenous philosophies and practices, whose present holds futurities in which the extractivist project of settler colonialism is no longer a primary force that shapes what possibilities are possible. works cited battiste, marie, et al. “thinking place: animating the indigenous humanities in education.” the australian journal of indigenous education, vol. 34, 2005, pp. 7-19. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 302 davis, heather and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international e-journal for critical geographies, vol. 16, no. 4, 2017, pp. 761-80. de sousa santos, boaventura. “beyond abyssal thinking: from global lines to ecologies of knowledges.” review (fernand braudel center), vol. 30, no. 1, 2007 pp. 45-89. higgins, marc, and sarah tolbert. “a syllabus for response-able inheritance in science education.” parallax, vol. 24, no. 3, 2018, pp. 273-94. kirby, vicki. “un/limited ecologies.” eco-deconstruction: derrida and environmental philosophy. edited by matthias fritsch, et al. fordham university press, 2018, pp. 81-98. lewis, simon l. and mark a. maslin. “defining the anthropocene.” nature, vol. 519, no. 7542, 11 march 2015, pp. 171-80. stengers, isabelle. another science is possible: a manifesto for slow science. translated by stephen muecke. polity, 2018. todd, zoe. “an indigenous feminist’s take on the ontological turn: ‘ontology’ is just another word for colonialism.” journal of historical sociology, vol. 29, no. 1, 2016, pp. 4-22. watts, vanessa. “indigenous place-thought and agency amongst humans and non humans (first woman and sky woman go on a european world tour!).” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, vol. 2, no. 1, 2013, pp. 20-34. whyte, kyle p. “indigenous science (fiction) for the anthropocene: ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises.” environment and planning e: nature and space, vol. 1, no. 1-2, 2018, pp. 224-42. yussof, kathryn. a billion black anthropocenes or none. university of minnesota press, 2018. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 120 theodore c. van alst, jr. sacred smokes. university of new mexico press, 2018. 162 pp. isbn: 9780826359902 https://unmpress.com/books/sacred-smokes/9780826359902 intriguing are the ways in which one’s subjective perception of the content or spirit of a book may match or fail to mesh with the dominant hook by which it is summarized and marketed. in the case of sacred smokes, the university of new mexico press stresses the selling point of a “story of a native american gang member in chicago.” with such a cue, a potential reader might be tempted to begin making comparisons between sacred smokes and tommy orange’s smash hit novel, there there, published in 2018 within two months of sacred smokes, which centers on a cast of mostly deracinated, dysfunctional natives in oakland, california, and, on the whole, obsesses on the idea of 3d-printed firearms. however, such a superficial comparison would miss the mark since sacred smokes contains a great deal more depth, energy, and vitality. theodore van alst, jr.’s work is a raw, torrid bildungsroman about tough city kids and adolescents in the 1970s and 80s, sometimes focusing on a fraught relationship between a father and longhair son—for example, “old gold couch” is a stone classic that will, if there is justice in this world, become anthologized and taught. with humor and pathos, van alst ponders inheritance and habits, friendship, masculinity (toxic and otherwise), rebellion, and forming a code of conduct. he considers what it means to be working class and indian in “the city of big shoulders,” to quote carl sandburg’s poem, “chicago.” there is much laughter here among the reader and characters, as we often hear teddy “laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of youth,” again sandburg’s words. in many ways, as i hope to show, benjamin franklin is a much more apt comparison point for this entertaining story of self-improvement and growth. the tone, style, and sentiment of sacred smokes, however, are more reminiscent of chicago writer nelson algren (the man with the golden arm; walk on the wild side), harlan ellison, junot díaz, bret easton ellis, and stephen graham jones, whose short fiction van alst collected and edited for the faster redder road. although ben franklin might be seen as an odd figure to compare with van alst, he was something of an ally to american indians since, in the 1780s, franklin praised the manners and customs of new england indians, contrasting them with the ubiquitous chicanery of exploitative american settlers in “remarks concerning the savages of north america.” sacred smokes is incredibly funny and compelling, and its voice is lively and freely digressive, almost always in a good way. it is vibrant and vital, brimming with confidence and brio. these are apparently the author’s life stories which, while they may be embellished or fictionalized, seem to be derived from his impoverished upbringing in chicago. sacred smokes could be called a story cycle, or a novel, but it has the heart of a memoir. it has no evident political agenda; it just tells amazingly funny, surprising, heartbreaking, and sometimes violent stories with a sense of the joy of storytelling—and of living. it is somehow both hard-boiled and emotional, hilarious and poignant. one punchy story ends, and immediately the eye is caught by the opening line of the next, pulling the reader further. this is a great chicago book, one that recollects the edgy 1970s and 80s, the street-fights and shenanigans at pottawattomie park, and gang fashion fetishes to die for, perhaps literally. van alst elaborates the semiotics of gang sweaters, which were bright, outrageously colorful varsity-style cardigan sweaters, in two categories of “war sweaters” and “party sweaters,” which became war trophies. the narrator explains: “back then https://unmpress.com/books/sacred-smokes/9780826359902 michael snyder review essay: sacred smokes 121 those cardigan-style sweaters were the shit—they were everything. those were your colors” (18). sacred smokes shares the nelson algren vibe in its romantic celebration of those on the margins of society as the salt of the earth, and its depiction of those in power as grotesque, greedy animals. for example, older gang members who had done time were likely some of the best people the narrator had ever known, even up to the present. the book seems to implicitly echo sandburg’s challenge: “come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning” (sandburg 14-15). another innovative aspect that merits mention is the novel’s striking use of unorthodox typography and gothic fonts and crown icons when referring to gang names, which are often turned upside down. the university of new mexico press must be praised for the book’s design by felicia cedillos, which is hip and contemporary; the cover painting in the leger art tradition is by blackfoot artist, lauren monroe. sacred smokes, although undoubtedly a great work of contemporary native american literature, extends and updates some enduring tropes and traditions in american literature and culture. it is actually quite benjamin franklin-esque, which, again, might seem like a surprising comparison to make about an edgy, “gang-related” work of chicago fiction, but hear me out. in this book, the protagonist rises from poverty and urban squalor through initiative and hard work. through his father and other figures, such as his employer at a local italian restaurant, teddy learns diligence and practical skills, eventually lifting himself out of poverty through his intelligence and willpower. we should note that the author is a success story, an associate professor and the chair of native american studies at the university of montana, and a former assistant dean and director of the native american cultural center at yale university, among other distinctions. this book is not a vindictive gripe-fest about oppression and racism. in the book, racial antipathy flows in multiple directions; thin-skinned white readers, though i doubt they are reading transmotion, might whine that, with a couple of exceptions, every white or “whiteish” character in this book is of poor character, avaricious, repellent, grotesque, and usually worthy of the scathing, on-target satire, beating, or bullet he receives. but this is, after all, a book that begins with an epigraph from the report of an indian agent in 1854, writing that the blackfeet (sihasapa) band of sioux, from whom van alst seems to be descended, along with the honepapas (hunkpapa), were “continually warring and committing depredations on whites and neighboring tribes, killing men and stealing horses. they even defy the great white father, the president, and declare their intention to murder indiscriminately all that come within their reach. they, of all indians, are now the dreaded on the missouri” (van alst, n.p.). however, white people are also seen as a group who generally live well, who saw something they wanted, and took it; growing up working-class, teddy is envious, and wishes to have what they have. at the same time, he does not paint the world as one that categorically denies success and its trappings to people of color, though it presents special challenges to them. rather, the world of this book is somewhat nietzschean; the world is indifferent, and can be absurd, but individuals who exhibit drive, intelligence, and the will to power find ways to improve themselves. in frigid chicago, dwelling in a marginal neighborhood, teddy would often dream of the “warm air at night” of the west coast, we are told in “push it” (114). he imagines the trio of characters in the nicholas ray film rebel without a cause famously played by james dean, sal mineo, and natalie wood, at the griffith park observatory in los angeles: these kids could be make-believe parents too someday, less than zero parents, sure, but they’ll have kids of their own, and they’ll live in nice houses, ones with year-round azaleas transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 122 and pools and tiled roofs, and they’ll have that warm air at night and, shit, well i want that too, how the fuck is it these people get that, claim that, own that, like it was left at their doorstep and they just had to take it, no questions asked? where and what, after all, is justice but someone taking some goddamn initiative any goddamn way? (115, my emphasis) it is a bit nietzsche and quite franklin in the sense that teddy learns the lessons of thrift, diligence (industry), innovation, and reading habits that are counseled by franklin in his autobiography and in his iterations of old richard’s almanac. teddy first learns a lesson the hard way in “old gold couch” when he neglects to do his chore, washing the stacks of dishes in the sink, day after day, until this negligence finally prompts his father to do something shocking and drastic. the lesson sinks in. (this story also includes a wonderful allusion to gordon lightfoot telling stories “from the chippewa on down about the big lake they call gitchigoomi” (8); the pop culture references are wide and knowing). continuing the franklin theme, in “lordsprayer” the protagonist’s father tasks teddy with memorizing “the lordsprayer” before he can go out, and the experience of being given a new challenge, and using one’s abilities and ingenuity to meet the challenge and reach one’s desired end is another life lesson from dear ole dad, who, though often drunk and undemonstrative, yet conveys some bits of wisdom and advice to his son over the years. thanks to his “lesson in memory,” in the future, ted is able to memorize swatches of critical theory, such as the excerpt from vizenor’s manifest manners he memorized decades later (anthologized in the norton anthology of theory and criticism), which becomes a meta-commentary on the book we are reading: “postindian autobiographies, the averments of tribal descent, and the assertions of crossblood identities, are simulations in literature; that names, nicknames, and the shadows of ancestors are stories is an invitation to new theories of tribal interpretation” (qtd. in van alst 32). germane to sacred smokes, vizenor also writes in manifest manners: “the postindian simulations and shadows counter the dominance of histories and the dickered testimonies of representations; at the same time, trickster stories, transformations, and the shimmers of tribal consciousness are heard in the literature of survivance” (63). like ben franklin and sherman alexie, teddy always has his nose in a book, an avid reader who thirsts for knowledge, as seen in “great america.” (one story is about the tragedy of a friend’s illiteracy.) in “blood on the tracks/no mas,” teddy shows how he learned lessons of thrift from his father, who gave him a dollar a week. by necessity, he learns how to stretch nickels and dimes, and when pennies aren’t going far enough, he takes a job at an italian restaurant and works his ass off. he learns how to cook all kinds of things, which is a lesson he applies daily in cooking for his family, the narrator says, and he boasts that, decades later, he even pleases martha stewart with one of his scrumptious sangies (sic). in “push it,” teddy embodies the american virtues of innovation and entrepreneurship. after hitchhiking to new orleans with a friend and becoming stranded temporarily, while hanging out in a bar, a “handsome white man” with a heavy new orleans accent asks him what he’s up to. teddy says nothing much, he’s broke. the man asks if he has any skills, and teddy replies that he paints faces. the man gives teddy a twenty-dollar bill. teddy buys the face paint, hits the streets, works hard, makes a hundred bucks, and gives the handsome white man forty in thanks for his twenty-dollar loan. “i knew you be good for dis. good job, bwai” (122). even though we see michael snyder review essay: sacred smokes 123 teddy intermittently drinking and occasionally snorting lines, he yet embodies franklin’s virtue of temperance in the sense that he rejects the cannabis haze that many of his young peers often settled into, wishing to be more present and motivated. given that sacred smokes and there there were published within a few months of each other and are both about urban indians, it is impossible not to compare their relative merit here. there there does not compare favorably to sacred smokes, although it has been widely acclaimed by follow-the-leader book reviewers and perpetrators of “book-chat,” as gore vidal put it. although readers i know and respect, both native and non-native, have privately noted their disappointment in discovering a gap between the novel’s merit and its critical accolades, it would seem this assessment is an “incorrect” view that usually remains unuttered and that editors fear to publish. relentlessly dark, contrived, and weak in characterization, this oakland novel is notable mostly as a critical and commercial triumph for a new native american writer, not for literary or aesthetic excellence. its author seems to have been unaware of much of the rich history of native american literature that preceded his bestseller. when he was writing it, despite the fact that n. scott momaday’s house made of dawn (1968), the famous novel that kicked off the native american renaissance, is partly set in los angeles, and several later novels by writers such as vizenor, alexie, janet campbell hale, and louise erdrich had urban settings, orange believed that the urban indian experience had never been portrayed in literature, “as far as [he] could tell,” as orange told mother jones last year. the novel fortuitously benefitted from, first, good timing: its publication was contemporaneous with the decline of the #metoo-ed sherman alexie—who is referenced in sacred smokes as the subject of a talk given by the grown-up narrator at a native american literature symposium panel in the presence of his aunties. second, there there benefitted from marketing savvy and major-press muscle: a bright orange and yellow cover reminiscent of a traffic cone matches the memorable moniker “tommy orange,” which is a great brand name like tommy hilfiger, orange julius, or billy collins. such branding was instilled in orange growing up in an embarrassing way: “i very much knew i was white because my mom is white. she has orange hair, her last name is orange, we had an orange van at one point,” orange told the cbc. of course, it is not nice to make fun of someone’s name, but this is transmotion and i am liberated to do so by the spirit of gerald vizenor with his precedent of, among many other satiric depictions, mocking ojibwe aim leader and cocaine dealer clyde bellecourt as coke de fountain in his 1988 novel, the trickster of liberty (111-113). the trickster spirit of vizenor similarly flows through sacred smokes. just as the media in the early 1970s tripped over themselves to glorify and cover the “right on” actions of aim, a group that vizenor criticized at length, so today does the media, focused on identity politics but fairly ignorant of questions of literary quality, bend over backwards to hail there there as this new literary sensation. blazoned on the cover are two big feathers (natch) that clearly signify “indian” to the potential book buyer noticing stacks of the book in an airport or barnes & noble; and an-easy-to-remember title that makes facile reference to both radiohead and gertrude stein but connotes an urban indian’s yearning for indigenous land that was expropriated and covered up with pavement and railroad tracks. although there there is well-plotted, it is ultimately a workmanlike, nihilistic novel with little in the way of a redeeming message. it seems as influenced by an episode of 24 as much as any literary work (though the brief and wondrous life of oscar wao sometimes comes to mind), with everything closing in suspensefully on the transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 124 oakland pow-wow. the novel’s cast is just as ill-fated as the crew of the pequod in moby-dick, but less memorable in that some of its multiple dysphoric narrators and characters can sometimes blend together. there there is premised in tragic victimry, to use gerald vizenor’s phrase, giving many white and other non-native readers the opportunity to submerge in guilt and despair over how fucked-up these urban indians are, and really, how degrading life is in general. that sense of tragic victimry critiqued by vizenor, who is quoted early in van alst’s book, is exactly what is elegantly avoided in sacred smokes. there there makes the reader feel bad, but many of its readers want to feel bad, as in lo, the poor urban indian! yet the literati so wanted a replacement for sherman alexie. but this kind of thinking, of there being a place for just one special american indian writer known to the mainstream, is insidious and ignorant, when currently there is a boon of talent including van alst, tiffany midge, erika t. wurth, and natalie diaz, to mention just a few. this raises the question, why is a so-so book such as there there enjoying mega success with knopf, while van alst’s markedly superior sacred smokes was published by a southwestern academic press? though it has received awards such as the tillie olsen award for creative writing, in comparison its audience is much smaller and more reliant on word of mouth. unquestionably, it deserves a much wider readership. overall, sacred smokes is an inspirational story that is simultaneously raw and poignant and, in an odd way, an instructive tale illustrating the virtues of diligence, innovation, and applying one’s native talents. theodore van alst, jr. has created an exciting, compelling, and major work of literature. michael snyder, university of oklahoma works cited cbc radio. “‘i grew up knowing what i was, was a conflict’: tommy orange writes about challenges facing ‘urban indians.’” unreserved. 21 september 2018. www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-new-native-renaissance1.4831702/i-grew-up-knowing-what-i-was-was-a-conflict-tommy-orange-writes-aboutchallenges-facing-urban-indians-1.4832186. franklin, benjamin. autobiography of benjamin franklin. 1793. ed. frank woodworth pine. new york: henry holt, 1916. www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm. ---. “remarks concerning the savages of north america.” 1784. founders online. national historical publications and records commission. founders.archives.gov/documents/franklin/01-41-02-0280. oatman, maddie. “the stars of this stunning debut novel are a long way from the reservation.” mother jones. may/june 2018. https://www.motherjones.com/media/2018/06/tommy-orange-there-there-nativeamericans-oakland-urban-indians-1/. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-new-native-renaissance-1.4831702/i-grew-up-knowing-what-i-was-was-a-conflict-tommy-orange-writes-about-challenges-facing-urban-indians-1.4832186 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-new-native-renaissance-1.4831702/i-grew-up-knowing-what-i-was-was-a-conflict-tommy-orange-writes-about-challenges-facing-urban-indians-1.4832186 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-new-native-renaissance-1.4831702/i-grew-up-knowing-what-i-was-was-a-conflict-tommy-orange-writes-about-challenges-facing-urban-indians-1.4832186 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm https://founders.archives.gov/documents/franklin/01-41-02-0280 https://www.motherjones.com/media/2018/06/tommy-orange-there-there-native-americans-oakland-urban-indians-1/ https://www.motherjones.com/media/2018/06/tommy-orange-there-there-native-americans-oakland-urban-indians-1/ michael snyder review essay: sacred smokes 125 orange, tommy. there there. new york: knopf, 2018. sandburg, carl. “chicago.” 1914. poetry. poetry foundation. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12840/chicago. vizenor, gerald. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1994. ---. the trickster of liberty: tribal heirs to a wild baronage. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1988. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12840/chicago transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 171 lisa king, rose gubele, and joyce rain anderson, eds. survivance, sovereignty, and story: teaching american indian rhetorics. utah state university press, 2015. 240 pp. isbn: 9780874219951. https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press/item/2805-survivance-sovereignty-and-story huia tomlins-jahnke, sandra styres, spencer lilley, and dawn zinga, eds. indigenous education: new directions in theory and practice. university of alberta press, 2019. 560 pp. isbn: 9781772124149. https://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/922-9781772124149-indigenous-education survivance, sovereignty, and story is a foundational book that introduces american indian rhetorics into the field of composition. the editors develop the book on the foundation that stories shape and share worldviews and that indigenous stories are, in fact, rhetorical (3). this foundation becomes the exigence for the book: there is no shortage of books about how to teach american indian literature, but this is perhaps the first about teaching american indian rhetorics (6). because this book is meant to be accessible to a non-native audience, the pieces in this collection offer theoretical and practical insights about including american indian rhetorics in writing classrooms. to accomplish this goal, the editors identify three themes included in the title: the role of survivance in american indian rhetorics (7); the importance of sovereignty as a lens for american indian rhetorics (8); the centrality of story for american indian rhetorics (9). indigenous education is likewise foundational. tomlins-jahnke, styres, lilley and zinga curate a panoramic view of indigenous education theory and practice in its current state. the pieces in this collection acknowledge the importance of indigenous peoples’ connection to place— specifically, places in aotearoa, hawai’i and turtle island (xvi). within these colonized places, though, the authors in this collection write about education as a contested space—a physical, social, and deeply political space where indigenous voices are often silenced (xvii). this collection seeks to equip educators at all levels and in all academic fields to reclaim indigenous voices in the contested space of education. to better highlight this contestation, indigenous education includes some pieces by non-native authors, but the primary audience is indigenous educators (xix). the editors organize the chapters by the themes of vision (xxi), relationships (xxii), knowledge (xxiv), and action (xxv). together, these collections provide educators with a range of tactics for including indigenous voices in the classroom. first, though, they ensure that readers have a firm grasp of the problems surrounding indigenous sovereignty and education. in indigenous education, the first chapter by margaret maaka sets the foundation for the book, particularly the chapters about māori education, by summarizing the institutionalized assimilation of māori children in the midtwentieth century (3-38). in the very next chapter, sandra styres draws attention to issues of (de)colonization and the fine line between indigenizing and appropriating (39-62). both of these issues could be further analyzed through huia tomlins-jahnke’s argument that “epistemologies of ignorance” perpetuate systems of oppression that continue to marginalize indigenous peoples and their ways of knowing and being (83-102). indeed, dwayne donald critiques the epistemologies of ignorance embedded in public school curriculum (103-125). all of these problems echo lisa king’s opening chapter in survivance, sovereignty, and story which draws a https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press/item/2805-survivance-sovereignty-and-story https://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/922-9781772124149-indigenous-education noah patton review of survivance, sovereignty, and story and indigenous education 172 connection between the misrepresentation of indigenous peoples and the centuries-long struggle for sovereignty. after explaining the problem of indigenous oppression, both collections offer diverse strategies for moving toward a solution based on indigenous epistemologies. specifically, gabriela ríos shares the nahua wisdom of in ixtli in yollotl as an alternative rhetoric for first year composition (king et al. 79-95) and leonie pihama calls for kaupapa māori as a holistic standpoint in the broken world of higher education (tomlins-jahnke et al. 63-82). additional tactics in survivance, sovereignty, and story include sundy watanabe’s socioacupuncture—a method for breaking up the whitewashed curriculum of the academia (35-56)—and qwo-li driskill’s decolonial skillshare—a unique way of including indigenous embodied practices in advanced rhetoric classes (57-78). on a larger scale, jean-paul restoule and angela nardozi write about their experiences as part of the deepening knowledge project, a collective of canadian educators working to include indigenous history and culture in teacher education programs (tomlins-jahnke et al. 311-337). although both books are fundamentally concerned with issues of indigenous land rights, some chapters offer a more precise synthesis of indigenous concerns about place and education. because of the primary importance of place in indigenous education, several chapters deal more directly with the issue. first, katrina-ann r. kapāʻanaokalāokeola nākoa oliveira discusses traditional hawai’in understandings of place and metaphor as evidenced by kānaka mapping practices (171-187). in the very next chapter, spencer lilley tells of the importance of the māori language—actually, te reo māori—in understanding relationships to place in new zealand as opposed to colonized views of place (189-204). similarly, wiremu doherty uses kaupapa māori to understand and explain traditional connections between language and place (405-425). these chapters all bear some similarities to joyce rain anderson’s chapter in survivance, sovereignty, and story which urges writing teachers to include local tribal cultures as a sort of tribal placebased object-oriented ontology (160-169). much like issues of land and place, language is a central theme of both books, though it is examined more acutely in some chapters than others. k. laiana wong and sam l. no’eau warner argue that rhetorical sovereignty is a necessity when it comes to indigenous language revitalization, lest the colonizer be given the authority to censor what language is “appropriate” (149-170). frank deer explains the struggles of students for whom identity and language are deeply connected; being forced to attend school in an english-only setting can be damaging to their cultural identity (tomlins-jahnke et al. 233-253). conversely, the next chapter by margie hohepa and ngarewa hawera argues for the importance of training and preparing teachers to facilitate classes te reo māori (255-276). this sets mari ropata-te hei up to write a reflective piece about her experiences in teacher education and the te aho tātairangi immersion program (339-361). in survivance, sovereignty, and story, rose gubele takes a look into history to interrogate the ways colonization changed language development for the cherokee people (98-115) while jessica safran hoover writes about codeswitching as an intentional act of sovereignty (170-187). a few other themes present themselves in these collections. one such theme is the importance of multiple modes of learning and communicating. for example, in indigenous education robert transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 173 jahnke takes a closer look at māori art and its global context (427-452) which relates to angela haas’ argument about decolonizing digital and visual rhetoric classes (king et al. 188-208). beyond the visual, kimberli lee explores contemporary native american music as a space of survivance (116-137). daniel lipe takes us even further beyond the expected by relating indigenous culture and ontologies to the weaknesses in current science curriculum and research practices (453-481). although there are many themes tying these books together, they were edited under different contexts for different purposes. consequently, we must look at them separately to identify their particular strengths and uses. as mentioned above, survivance, sovereignty, and story has already become one of the books on the forefront of the conversation about indigenous rhetoric education. king, gubele, and anderson offer a thoroughly deep look into the practical application of indigenous rhetorics in the writing classroom. this book is a must-have for any writing teacher who cares about developing a classroom ethos that values and respects indigenous rhetorics. the authors give succinct, practical tactics for making small, positive changes in the writing classroom. however, this book might not be as useful or accessible for educators in other disciplines and positions. the insights about sovereignty and indigenous rhetorics are obviously applicable to any interested reader, but some of the lingo and expertise make this book most suitable for a specific audience. in contrast, indigenous education aims for breadth rather depth. the collected chapters cover a broad range of experiences, education levels, and expertise, which makes it more practical for a general audience. this book would be a useful starting place for indigenous educators looking for solidarity and inspiration for making changes to the systems in place. although the editors state that the primary audience is indigenous people, this book would be just as useful for a nonnative reader looking for a foundational knowledge of the issues surrounding indigenous education at large. the inverse of this, of course, is that the breadth of this collection can be somewhat overwhelming and less helpful in a practical capacity. educators looking for day-today tactics for developing classrooms inclusive of indigenous cultures might have a hard time engaging with any of the practical wisdom in these chapters. this book is most suitable for a general audience and purpose. both survivance, sovereignty, and story and indigenous education have done necessary work for the inclusion of indigenous epistemologies and cultures in education. although these books offer theoretical insights, the editors make it clear that each book is a call to action: indigenous and non-native educators alike have a responsibility to support and include the indigenous peoples on whose land our universities sit. the chapters in these collections offer ideas and encouragement to this end, and the hope is that readers will know and do better. noah patton, university of oklahoma transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 164 michael asch, john borrows, and james tully, eds. resurgence and reconciliation: indigenous-settler relations and earth teachings. university of toronto press, 2018. 369 pp. isbn: 9781487523275. https://utorontopress.com/us/resurgence-and-reconciliation-2 recent decades have seen a debate within north american indigenous studies in which a focus on mending indigenous-settler relations tends to be contrasted with an emphasis on assertive self-determination and cultural renewal. as its title suggests, this collection provides readers with an opportunity to engage with a community of scholars seeking a non-oppositional approach to this conversation. as its subtitle suggests, the volume is also invested in minding the ecological interdependencies of earth’s lands and seas. the conversations represented in this book emerged out of a series of dialoguing presentations involving its three editors held during 2012 and 2014 in mi’kmaq territory. the conversation was significantly expanded with a 2015 event in coast salish territory that brought together most of the collection’s contributors to engage with and respond to articulations of conceptual understandings and practical approaches to resurgence and reconciliation put forth by the project editors. one outcome of that dialogue is the publication of the book considered here, which retains and reflects the format and interactions of the 2015 exchange. as noted, the volume sustains a commitment to a non-oppositional approach. at the same time, it is even more deeply and extensively committed to the transformation of indigenous-settler relations, of the associated conditions of indigenous lives, and of human peoples’ relations with earth and other-than-human peoples. the collection gestures toward critiques of what it characterizes as a “separate resurgence” viewpoint, but this remains a rather abstract reference ultimately left unassociated with particular advocates. according to the collection’s introduction, “some practitioners of resurgence refuse and reject reconciliation-based relationships between settler and indigenous peoples, claiming they are assimilative or colonizing” (4). the editors leave these practitioners unidentified and their claims unattributed. a footnote linked to the passage just quoted does suggests that books by glen sean coulthard and audra simpson are “taken to be” “the classic texts for resurgence contra reconciliation,” yet the same footnote quickly jettisons substantive consideration of the complexities entailed, concluding that such a pursuit would be “a question for another time” (23, n1). the volume’s generally elusive treatment of what would seem a core premise of its project will likely irritate some readers while relieving others. and still other readers will see in it a sophisticated navigation of tensions that frees contributors to focus their attention and energies on more pressing questions, possibilities, and pitfalls. in any case, the chapters do deliver consistent, even while varying, critiques of the unacceptable status quo of indigenous-settler relations. most importantly for its collaborative endeavor, the contributors reject programs of resurgence and reconciliation that eschew transformative aspirations and thus would settle for some kinder, gentler colonialism. https://utorontopress.com/us/resurgence-and-reconciliation-2 joseph bauerkemper review of resurgence and reconciliation 165 i have never successfully written and only very rarely have i read a review of an edited collection that manages to capably account for the full range, depth, and power of its contributing voices and content. this review cannot but likewise fall short. while all of the contributions to the volume seek pathways away from the devastation of ongoing colonialism and toward just relations, they do so diversely and in some instances divergently. the collection includes considerations of treaty-oriented constitutionalism, biospheric interdependency, gendered dys/relationality, conventional international law, cross-cultural mis/communication, convergent condominium, ethnoecology, erroneous unilateral settler sovereignty, and storied treaty ecologies. the chapters share the overall project’s titular affirmation of both resurgence and reconciliation, as well as its active pursuit of transformation. some are assertively grounded in the concerns and knowledges of particular indigenous peoples, while some deliberately leverage the contours of dominant systems and frameworks. taken together they present a sophisticated, multidimensional, and dynamic continuum. my own current research, teaching, and outreach engagements lead me to be particularly drawn to john borrows’ emphasis on the “inherent limits” of both ecology and treaty-dependent settler authority, to kiera ladner’s incisive consideration of the hubristic assumption of crown sovereignty, and to kent mcneil’s related inquiry into canada’s sovereignty claims vis-à-vis native nations. i mention these not to suggest that they are the most important chapters in the collection, but rather because at this moment they happen to be the most important to me. other readers will find other chapters particularly timely and resonant. the voices brought together here have a wide array of insights to offer to a wide array of readers, and the collection also succeeds in providing an exceptional one-stop destination for wide and deep learning about indigenous resurgence and reconciliation in canadian contexts. moreover, the chapters collectively exhibit an interdisciplinarity that is sometimes tacit and sometimes observed but always present. with work cutting across law, ecology, political science, philosophy, anthropology, governance, environmental studies, history, ethnobotany, sociology, and public policy, the volume will be of interest not only to students and scholars embedded in those fields but also to those more oriented toward the questions and possibilities at hand rather than to conventions of method and academic discourse. the book could be deployed in full for undergraduate and graduate courses, and selections from it would also readily stand alone as syllabi components. and while it is a scholarly text published by a settler academic press, the concepts and debates it addresses have broad resonance and utility in numerous community, institutional, cultural, and political contexts. at both its core and margins, the collection aims to contribute to discussions and actions that change this world, rather than merely comment on them. it thereby and necessarily would resonate with community audiences well beyond scholarly institutions and indeed undermines simple distinctions one might assume to draw between communities and the academy. finally, the diverse and planetary readership of transmotion will benefit from this collection’s capacity to provide insight into how transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 166 conversations regarding resurgence and reconciliation are taking place in and emanating from indigenous studies in what is today canada. joseph bauerkemper, university of minnesota duluth microsoft word kruk-buchowska.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 286 charlotte j. frisbie (with recipes by tall woman and assistance from augusta sandoval). food sovereignty the navajo way: cooking with tall woman. university of new mexico press, 2018. 398 pp. isbn: 978-0-8263-5887-5. https://unmpress.com/books/food-sovereignty-navajo-way/9780826358875 food sovereignty the navajo way: cooking with tall woman is a detailed account of navajo foodways in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. it is based on the experiences and narratives of tall woman (asdzáán nééz, a.k.a. rose mitchell), a diné elder from chinle, arizona, whose long life spanned over a century (1874-1977) and with whom the author, charlotte frisbie, worked from 1963 to 1977. as a result of their collaboration, in 2001, tall woman’s life story was published in the form of a monograph (mitchell 2001). however, because of the limitations concerning the length of the publication, frisbie decided not to include tall woman’s recipes in it. food sovereignty the navajo way is thus meant to complete their previous work. frisbie states that because too much time had passed since the previous publication, she asked tall woman’s two surviving daughters, augusta sandoval and isabelle deschine, for assistance with the current book. moreover, the author decided against publishing information on the medicinal use of plants that were shared with her by tall woman at the request of the cultural resources compliance section of the navajo nation historic preservation department (nnhpd), who considered it to be traditional cultural knowledge in need of protection. chapter one, titled “an overview of the navajo diet and navajo dietary research”, starts with a description of navajo foods in navajo emergence stories which, according to different sources, credit different beings with bringing seeds (e.g., corn, beans, and squash) from the lower worlds and with creating different animals, such as goats, sheep, and horses. next, anthropological interpretations of navajo foodways are presented. frisbie briefly mentions the foodways present during the beginning of spanish colonization in the 1500s and describes the dietary adaptations forced upon the navajos by the long walk and their incarceration at fort sumner (1863-1868). this is also the period when the navajos started to become dependent on the us government for food. the following subchapter, “the twentieth century”, provides a detailed description of the navajo diet during particular decades and largely draws on previous anthropological studies, especially those by wendy wolfe. it outlines the adaptations brought about by historical events, as well as environmental, technological, cultural, and socio-economic changes, such as the world wars, the ongoing desertification of the reservation, the introduction of indoor stoves, or an increasing participation in a cash-based economy. frisbie concludes that these changes have resulted in a decline in the use of traditional foods, including wild foods, as well as traditional ways of acquiring and preparing them. at the same time, she asserts that corn and sheep have retained a “special place in navajo culture” and that home-prepared, traditional foods are preferred for special occasions, such as the girls’ puberty ceremony or weddings (29). furthermore, she quotes surveys which show how, with the current diet, the navajos consume too many calories and too much fat while, at the same time, they are undernourished when it comes to particular microelements. in this sub-chapter, frisbie also refers readers to appendix a of the book, which is a description of the commodity food program on the reservation. the following sub-chapter, “the twenty-first century”, briefly mentions current food sovereignty trends on the navajo reservation. it also focuses on the rise of the food sovereignty movement in zuzanna kruk-buchowska review of food sovereignty the navajo way 287 an international context: providing readers with a history of the development of the term coined by la via campesina (the international peasant movement), explaining the struggles of various peoples affected by the current food system globally, citing definitions of the term as used by the us food sovereignty alliance and pedal and plow (pedalandplow.com), and mentioning which countries have recognized the principle in their national constitutions and other laws. lastly, frisbie talks about the diné policy institute’s food sovereignty initiative, funded by the first nations development institute and w.k. kellog foundation, whose aim is to “examine the effects of modern food production on the environment, the economy, health, and navajo culture; to determine where the navajo originally obtained their food and how that differs from today; and what role colonization and food play in current health, social, and economic issues” (37). frisbie learnt about the project from a presentation by dana eldridge (2012), a dpi research assistant at the time, and through later conversations with her. according to eldridge, there is a growing interest in relearning food traditions on the reservation, as confirmed by articles in the tribal newspapers, the navajo times and leading the way. eldridge also describes the ultimately successful attempt (although not without resistance from the navajo nation council) on the part of the diné community advocacy alliance to introduce a two percent junk-food tax on the reservation. however, it is only by relying heavily on information obtained from eldrige that frisbie manages to frame the issue of navajo foodways in the context of past and present colonial policies towards the navajo nation and the decolonizing practices of the navajo people, especially grass roots organizations and the diné food sovereignty initiative itself. moreover, apart from tangentially mentioning some of its actors, the author fails to adequately present navajo food sovereignty in the context of the larger native american food sovereignty movement. what is also noticeable is the very scarce referencing of scholarly work on indigenous food sovereignty. frisbie simply refers to a few authors, instead of substantively discussing their work; moreover, the references only appear in the context of eldridge’s presentation: “[eldridge] mentioned the work of milburn (2004) on indigenous nutrition and the fact that today one in three navajos on the reservation has diabetes” (39). including more information on the native american food sovereignty movement and discussing scholarly literature on the subject would give the reader a fuller understanding of food sovereignty on the navajo reservation. chapter two, titled “subsistence practices in tall woman’s family”, offers a detailed ethnographic description, based on tall woman’s narratives, of what the navajos ate, the equipment they used to find, grow, and process food, and the methods they employed to prepare and store foods. it describes the meaning of different plants, animals, and cooking tools to the navajos, ideas about sharing food with family and community, the division of gender roles – in particular foraging and farming tasks, and the various culinary and non-culinary uses of particular parts of animals, among others. it also provides extremely detailed, instruction-like descriptions of the butchering of particular farm animals. the chapter starts with foraging practices, yet it focuses largely on the farming and raising of animals and crops. it provides an interesting account of the changes in farming technology that were visible on the reservation in the 1960s and of the traditional farming techniques that were still practiced in tall woman’s family. moreover, it contains a number of photos of tall woman and of cooking and farming transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 288 equipment, such as outdoor mud ovens, which neatly illustrate the detailed descriptions provided. as a whole, it underscores tall woman’s role as a provider of food in her family. chapter three, “defeating hunger by making something from the earth: cooking with tall woman”, is a lengthy (approx. 130 pages) account of tall woman’s recipes, which were divided into seven sections by her remaining children in 2014-2015: “wild foods”; “possible additives”; “cultivated crops”; “cake, breads, dumplings and marbles (…)”; “meat (‘atsį’)”; “stews, soups, and mushes (‘atoo’)”; and “drinkable substances (dajidlá)”. in the beginning of the chapter, frisbie once again refers to the navajo origin narratives and explains how it is the responsibility of navajo women to keep hunger – one of the monsters that was allowed to live among the people to remind them “that it was up to them to be actively involved in their own well-being” – at bay (113). the author explains that the recipes to follow are not like those readers may find in an anglo cookbook. one of the reasons is that tall woman cooked most of her food outside over a fire, in pits, or in an earthen oven. laudably, wanting to be as truthful to tall woman’s narrative as possible, frisbie retained the style in which tall woman recounted the recipes to her in the book. this means that some of them are in recipe format, with item-byitem descriptions, while others contain descriptions of what navajos would do with the foods, or where and when they would find them, and some of them are a mixture of both. furthermore, in some cases, several recipes can be found for one item. this chapter makes the overall text a great resource for anyone interested in learning about and cooking navajo foods, both foods that are considered more traditional and those influenced by american foodways, such as the popular frybread. the chapter also includes some photos of the dishes for which recipes are provided. in the last chapter “reflections”, the author reminisces on what she learned from tall woman and what she considers of interest for future research by other scholars. she suggests a botanical study of the plants used by tall woman (now that the descriptions of the plants are provided in the text) as well as a linguistic study of the names of the plants. she also proposes a comparison with other recipes published for the same foods. moreover, frisbie suggests further inquiry into the food sovereignty movement on the reservation. in this context, she mentions the recent rise in popularity of native chefs and their restaurants, such as loretta barrett oden (potawatomi) and navajo chef freddie bitsoie. she also remarks on the rising interest in food sovereignty and precolonial foods on the navajo reservation, mentioning the work of native seeds/search, which offers packets of heirloom seeds to those interested, workshops for community members on how to build earth ovens, as well as other agricultural and garden projects. the text also contains another appendix, appendix b, which provides a history of restaurants in chinle, arizona. frisbie states in its beginning that those not interested in the subject can feel free to skip it. as such, it does not add a great deal to the understanding of navajo foodways. furthermore, the book also contains a glossary of navajo words which the author uses throughout the book and which constitutes one of its major assets. in summary, the book is a useful and engaging resource for anyone interested in navajo foodways, navajo language pertaining to food, and navajo recipes. it is also a testimony to tall woman’s expansive knowledge of traditional foodways. moreover, it offers a brief overview of how navajo foodways have changed (especially in the twentieth century), an introduction to the legal and cultural definitions of food sovereignty, and current food sovereignty policies and practices on the navajo reservation (up to 2016). however, it neither engages in the wider zuzanna kruk-buchowska review of food sovereignty the navajo way 289 discussion on indigenous food sovereignty, nor adds to the theoretical discourse on the subject. the chapters describing the foodways and food sovereignty practices in tall woman’s family are not sufficiently contextualized within the little background on (indigenous) food sovereignty provided. therefore, the book might not be of great interest to academics who are working with the broader critical considerations of the issue, as opposed to an ethnographic study of navajo foodways. zuzanna kruk-buchowska, uniwersitet im. adama mickiewicza works cited eldridge, dana. “the food we eat”. the 19th navajo studies conference, march 14-17 2012, institute of american indian arts, santa fe, nm. presentation. milburn, michael p. “indigenous nutrition: using traditional food knowledge to solve contemporary health problems”. american indian quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3-4, 2004, pp. 411-34. mitchell, rose. tall woman: the life story of rose mitchell, a navajo woman, c. 1874-1977. edited by charlotte j. frisbie, university of new mexico press, 2001. microsoft word senier.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 234 review essay: duane niatum: a retrospective duane niatum. earth vowels. mongrel empire press, 2017. 96 pp. isbn 978-0997251760. http://mongrelempire.org/catalog/poetry/earth-vowels.html in 2017, duane niatum (jamestown s’klallam) published earth vowels, at least his 21st book. i say “at least” because it is genuinely hard to count the number of full-length books, selfpublished chapbooks, and anthologies niatum has produced since after the death of an elder klallam (1970), which most sources call his first book.1 this prolific poet has also placed countless pieces in native studies periodicals including american indian culture and research journal, literary journals like prairie schooner, and mass-market magazines like the nation. additionally, he had a unique position as the editor of a short-lived native american authors series at harper & row,2 for which he produced two major anthologies: carriers of the dream wheel (1975), updated as harper’s anthology of 20th century native american poetry (1988). these were field-defining collections on a par with geary hobson’s the remembered earth (1979) and, now, heid e. erdrich’s new poets of native nations (2018). niatum has been justifiably lauded: the before columbus foundation gave him an american book award in 1982, and the native writers circle of the americas gave him the lifetime achievement award in 2019. and yet no one has given niatum’s work a critical study, though at this point a book-length examination of his career would reveal a great deal about the growth of native american and indigenous poetry over the last five decades, and perhaps just as much about our field’s responses to it. disappointingly, he has not been much reviewed outside of native studies publications like sail, american indian quarterly, and wicazo sa review, or regional journals like western american literature and the raven chronicles. sail published two reviews of digging out the roots (harper & row 1978), one by maurice kenny and another by patricia clark smith. kenny, being the poet that he was, focused on niatum’s mastery of form: “to him a poem is the sum of its parts, not chopped prose lazily reclining for verse” (39). he also, along with smith, pondered the relationship between the poet’s klallam heritage and his education in western traditions. for smith, this was off-putting; she praised the indigenousthemed poems as “sensuous” and transparent (they “don’t send a stranger to klallam life scuttling guiltily to the library to read up on pacific northwest shamanism”), but criticized him for sometimes relegating content to form: “flashy and unnecessarily obscure imagery, where emotions and events are described so obliquely as to seem almost coy” (47). kenny was less bothered by these alleged inconsistencies, stating simply that the poetry “is as much a product of european as of klallam influence” (39). reviews of niatum’s poetry—and, one would have to admit, of poetry by other indigenous people and writers of color—continued in a similar vein over the years, oscillating between ambivalence about the “purity” of cultural expression and matter-of-fact acceptance that the poet could be and do many things at the same time. sail published no fewer than three reviews of songs for the harvester of dreams (u of washington p, 1981), all by major writers, all proclaiming niatum’s tremendous productivity and stature. one was a delightfully idiosyncratic piece by carter revard, which mainly complained about niatum’s love poetry—something most reviewers, in fact, seem to dislike. joseph bruchac put his fellow poet on a par with simon ortiz, siobhan senier review essay: duane niatum 235 leslie marmon silko, and james welch, expressing amazement that niatum had not by then received more critical attention. in bruchac’s evaluation, niatum drew nimbly on a variety of sources, including indigenous oral traditions, eastern thought and japanese poetry, and western classical poetic forms. he observed, too, that niatum tended to return consistently to several themes, including “kinship with american indian ancestors, both genetic and spiritual” (“offering it all to the sea” 14). jarold ramsey, meanwhile, lavished high praise on niatum’s talent and accomplishments, while railing against a critical establishment that kept refusing to accept american indian poets into the ranks of “major” writers. defensively, then, though he acknowledged niatum’s “delicately rendered” adaptations of traditional salish songs, he was also at pains to insist on the poet’s “growing urbanity” (9). the effect, in the end, is a review that belabors the “circumstantial remoteness of [niatum’s ancestral heritage] from his everyday life” and “the prospect of utter deracination” (10). these reviews, particularly ramsey’s, recall the literary criticism of the period, which was deeply preoccupied with debates over “mixed-blood” identities, hybridity, and ambivalence. but perhaps a few decades of tribalcentric and sovereignty-minded literary criticism make it possible now to read niatum differently. in earth vowels, a slim volume published in 2017 with mongrel empire press, jeanetta calhoun mish’s independent outfit in oklahoma, he is still working many of the same topics and forms noted by previous reviewers. there are the natural landscapes of the pacific northwest; klallam ancestors and kin; urban settings; poetic mentors and inspirations (roethke, bashō); and family relations, including broken relationships with children and romantic partners. he has been working this terrain, it’s worth noting, since well before the jamestown s’klallam received federal recognition in 1981 and began their own tribal resurgence; and he has remained active in his tribal community, including work with tribal youth on illustrations agate songs on the path of red cedar, published by the tribe in 2011. perhaps, today, we can understand duane niatum’s work as always already what heid erdrich hails as “poetry of a new time—an era of witness, of coming into voice, an era of change and of political and cultural resurgence” (ix). for example, niatum has long joined other pacific northwest indigenous writers in acting as a steadfast witness for salmon, both as image and as kin. to jamestown klallam people salmon is more than traditional sustenance; it is a material and spiritual “catalyst that brought [the people] closer together, a way for the people to maintain a continuance, a hold on their identity, a gathering sign, cause for celebration, a means of survival, a physical link to their heritage” (stauss ix). among the more powerful poems in earth vowels—and indeed among the more powerful ecocritical poems anywhere—is “the disappearance of the duwamish salmon”: how long have they laid buried in the sludge and grime of industry erasing the river’s breath and almost erasing the duwamish people who once paddled their canoes down its current swift as the wing of kingfisher? walking beside the river in 2009 you can transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 236 still hear the dreams and laughter of children picking serviceberry with their grandmother teasing a crow stealing berries from her basket. if patricia clark smith were to review these words today, my guess is that she might call our attention not so much to its “sensuous” or romanticized imagery, but to the political history of the green-duwamish waterway, which empties into elliott bay in seattle and is now a major superfund site. despite a century of industrial pollution that is choking the life out of the water (“erasing the river’s breath”), both the salmon and the duwamish people continue to inhabit and use these waterways. they are only “almost erased.” i take those children’s and grandmother’s “dreams and laughter” to be not only concoctions of the poet’s imagination, but realities—or at least literal possibilities, since duwamish people have been actively working on river, plant and wildlife restoration (“environmental justice”). they are re-indigenizing the river and seattle. decades ago, jarold ramsey and other scholars seemed to understand “urbanity” and “indigeneity” as more or less opposed, but today they would likely intuit a much more syncretic relationship between the two in niatum’s apostrophe to that city: seattle, too easily the age slipped a false-face mask on you, a glass and concrete fashion cone to give roaches the run of skyscrapers. although an alien in salish country, you were destined to become raven’s cousin, killer whale’s distant, ambivalent friend. (17) in stanzas like these, urbanity and indigeneity are not so much antithetical as they are palimpsestic, with images of ancient pacific northwest art and garb glimmering, holographically, through modern edifices. as the alliterative invasion of cockroaches implies, the battle between the human and the other-than-human is far from over. so, too, is the settler colonial project. seattle, the poem reminds us, well pre-existed its space needle; it endures as indigenous space, even if the new relations (cousin, friend) produced here are often distant and ambivalent. niatum loves a stanza; throughout his career he has used boxy sonnet-like forms; longish narrative free verse; and three-, fourand five-line stanzas, often numbered. the effect of these, as maurice kenny described it, is a balance of control and “form emancipated from strict structure,” as in the title poem of earth vowels: truth glows in the flaws of earth stone. a purple finch rises from the dream nest, ignites yellow violets with song. the creature with yielding sight opens the hour to its cave drawings, siobhan senier review essay: duane niatum 237 a rider of need balances our own, now the racer, now the raced upon. this wanderer from the sky blanket streaks beyond our eyes, disappears in the dream-wheel’s hues, cross-stitches us into the day’s vowel basket. (56) superficially, niatum’s lines can appear quaintly imagistic, but they often make surprising associations: truth “glowing” in rocky cracks; a bird’s vision “yielding”; “us” (and who exactly are we?) being “cross-stitched” into a “basket” of sounds. some earlier reviewers (e.g., smith) complained that this strained their patience; but perhaps, as readers of this literature have matured along with this poet, we can see the urgency of such defamiliarizing tactics. reviewing the crooked beak of love (2000), which uses very similar forms and images, margaret dwyer found that niatum was “ask[ing] readers to examine the world they pass through daily, and to find the spirituality and beauty of the environment there. the water we take for granted, the trees, plants birds and human elders we largely ignore, are avatars of a world much older and richer than we realize” (32). that world, of course, is also now facing catastrophe. so perhaps today we can see in niatum’s poetry an argument that is being more insistently articulated by more and more indigenous activists and scholars: that nature has agency, that the earth in fact speaks. in a similar vein, the exploding canon of native american and indigenous literature might also help us read this long poetic career anew. the dream-wheel, for instance—into whose hues that purple finch disappears—is a trope that has appeared in niatum’s poetry for decades, indeed in the title of his first anthology. some reviewers have found the image elliptical, including bruchac, who felt it evoked roulette (18). however, a character in richard wagamese’s 2016 novel dream wheels suggests a more useful, pan-indian understanding of this term: it’s “the sum total of a people’s story. all its dreams, all its visions, all its experiences gathered together. looped together” (320). earth vowels reads like a reprise of the dreams, visions, and experiences that niatum has long been gathering: ancestral villages in old cedar forests (“s’klallam spirit canoe”); treaty violations and the persecution of tribal leaders (“to chief leschi of the nisqually”); seasonal change (“ode to winter shoots”); or the pleasures of visiting europe (“on the streets of paris”). that last poem is a villanelle whose refrain, “the time for dreaming isn’t merely for the young” returns us to the dream-wheel, a loop of experiences that are collective rather than individual. this collective, cross-temporal orientation is true, maybe, even of those love poems that so irritated early readers including carter revard, who was bothered that he couldn’t tell whether a given poem was actually a “myth-poem,” or just a really vague love poem. admittedly, niatum’s voice tends to be a bit incantatory even when he is writing apparently autobiographically: i will not deny as a young man with a keg of testosterone, i imagined myself troubadour crow of sex and play (53). transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 238 later in life, though feeling more reflective, his tone still gestures toward the status of myth. but that may be purposeful. consider a poem to his estranged son, which hopes that before i’m but a memory horn in the night i count on us becoming friends . . .while nerves swim like fish in hope’s pond (33). this self-consciously lyric voice can actually heighten the heartbreak, especially if we read such poems as a “loop,” as the “sum total” of many indigenous families’ stories, not just niatum’s. read those lines, for instance, alongside the deathbed scene of “the story our mother’s absence left us”: we, your four children, sit with you like death clerks; pretend none of us will choke on this confusion clot. while sinking into the last coma, you told me you hated your mother for abandoning you, your brother and two sisters. a teen-ager hungry for revenge, you ran from your father’s house dreaming of the street drama to be found along the labyrinth of the city of plenty, plenty clams. read together, these stories about broken relations between parents, and between parents and their children, start to feel less like confessional poetry and more like a dream-wheel of intergenerational trauma. what is newer about the “relationship” poems in earth vowels is a greater emphasis on healing and reconciliation, even if the reconciliation is itself only a dream. after his mother’s death, her sister pearl redeems her with a different story: she whispered that no matter what went wrong in your lives, what tantrums or screams filled the air with the sound of smashed toys, grandma loved the difficult daughter with a heart the swallow-tail butterflies in grandpa’s rose garden courted each spring. …wrapped in your mother’s shawl, with rivulets of salmonberry dew down her cheeks, she spoke of your mother’s jokes, laughing and teasing the family into not collapsing inward on themselves. (37-38) aunt pearl’s gift is tremendous: a story that restores love and kinship in the very telling. and told by “we,” the stunned “death clerks,” to “you,” the larger-than-life mother chasing her dreams in the city’s labyrinth and her sister with the salmonberry-dew tears, this poem really does read like “the sum total of a people’s story.” siobhan senier review essay: duane niatum 239 in a much-quoted statement, niatum once disavowed the idea of a native aesthetic (“on stereotypes” 554). the master of transmotion himself, however, caught niatum out in a contradiction, noting that in his intro to the harper’s anthology, he also described native poets as sharing a “spirit of a common cultural heritage” (x). “the simulation of a ‘common cultural heritage,’” vizenor wryly remarked, “suggests a literary nuance but apparently not a discrete native aesthetics” (8). perhaps by now niatum will have changed his mind, or finessed his remarks; or perhaps tussling over tribal specificity versus pan-indianism versus universality are simply an enduring feature of this literature and its discussion. in 1982, ramsey and his colleagues were worrying about what appeared to be the central conundrum of native american poets at that time: the desire to be accepted as great poets without being relegated to the margins of “indian poetry.” in 2018, heid erdrich is to some extent confronting the same conundrum; but she and her colleagues seem able to write, at least, without fears of “utter deracination.” if poets like layli long soldier can write confidently from positions of lakota language and experience, and if poets like tommy pico can write from city spaces while still being considered irreducibly kumeyaay, perhaps duane niatum can now be (re)read as a resolutely s’klallam writer who has been steadily contributing to and paving the way for that broader indigenous poetic resurgence. siobhan senier, university of new hampshire notes 1 he published at least one earlier; for example, many bibliographies list an experimental verse drama called breathless (1968), but this is no longer available. despite the dearth of criticism, biographical essays about niatum are numerous; see for instance (lerner) and (niatum, “autobiographical sketch”) 2 often referred to as “controversial.” the only person i can find to address these controversies in print is joseph bruchac, who in 1982 questioned where the profits from the series were actually going, and noted that at least one talented poet he knew would have been eligible for the “indian” series but not for the “regular” publishing stream (“a good day to be alive” 3). works cited bruchac, joseph. “a good day to be alive: some observations on contemporary american indian writing.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 6, no. 4, fall 1982, pp. 1–6. ---. “offering it all to the sea: duane niatum’s new songs.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 7, no. 1, 1983, pp. 13–19. dwyer, margaret. “review of the crooked beak of love.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 14, no. 2/3, 2002, pp. 31–35. “environmental justice.” duwamish tribe, https://www.duwamishtribe.org/environmentaljustice. accessed 1 apr. 2019. erdrich, heid e. new poets of native nations. graywolf press, 2018. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 240 kenny, maurice. “review of digging out the roots: turning to the rhythms of her song, duane niatum.” newsletter of the association for study of american indian literatures, vol. 3, no. 3, 1979, pp. 38–39. lerner, andrea. “duane (mcginniss) niatum.” handbook of native american literature, ed. andrew wiget, garland publishing, 1996, pp. 479–82. niatum, duane. “autobiographical sketch.” i tell you now: autobiographical essays by native american writers, ed. brian swann and arnold krupat, university of nebraska press, 1987, pp. 127–39. ---. “on stereotypes.” recovering the word: essays on native american literature, ed. brian swann and arnold krupat, university of california press, 1987, pp. 552–62. ramsey, jarold. “review of songs for the harvester of dreams.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 6, no. 4, 1982, pp. 6–13. revard, carter. “does the crow fly? the poems of duane niatum.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 7, no. 1, 1983, pp. 20–26. smith, patricia clark. “review of digging out the roots.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 4, no. 4, 1980, pp. 47–49. stauss, joseph h. the jamestown s’klallam story: rebuilding a northwest coast indian tribe. jamestown s’klallam, 2002. vizenor, gerald. native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance. university of nebraska press, 2009. wagamese, richard. dream wheels. doubleday canada, 2010. microsoft word 651-3364-1-le.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 1 there is no question of american indian genocide melissa michal slocum “among the justifications for this opposition [to the un convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide] were that the physical destruction of groups was more serious than the destruction of their culture, that cultural genocide could result in ‘spurious claims’ being brought, and that the inclusion of cultural genocide could inhibit the assimilation of cultural or linguistic groups. ironically, delegates from some countries, including the united states and canada, were also apparently concerned that the inclusion of cultural genocide could lead to claims by indigenous groups.” tove skutnabb-kangas and robert dunbar the images and stories from my 2010 trip to the pacific northwest still guide me. i sit across the table from a man, slightly older than me. the water outside lapping the edges of alert bay near vancouver, canada, remains in my mind even now, just as the colder wind stays within my skin, chilling my bones. it’s warmer there by the food, and i pick at my bbq salmon. the salt mingles with the tangy, smoked sauce. “you worked with those at the museum?” i asked. “yeah, we did. they called us in to collaborate on an exhibit about our people.” the pride fills my breaths. we matter, i think. they might be listening. i am there as part of a group studying pacific northwest alaska native and first nations cultures. but it seems i end up studying more the problems with being spoken about as indigenous peoples by outsiders. “that’s cool. then they took your advice?” “no. not usually. we went in and told them what things were for or meant. and then they turned around and wrote it differently.” my eyebrows rise. i’m starting to not be surprised. i’m starting to get used to a regular turn about us that includes, but doesn’t actively listen, and so refuses to actively understand. you know, gaining meaning from the real stories. recognizing the truth in them and changing their own mindsets, their own misinterpretations. “that’s the way it usually goes,” he says. then he continues eating and our conversation moves to the cultural center. the indigenous peoples i meet over those four weeks in july change my understanding and my purpose for being. their stories gave me many voices that build one important case: we, melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 2 american indian peoples, are not really here. not in the minds of those who are non-native. our realities have, in fact, been erased from every space touched by us control. this is the ongoing genocide of our peoples. and yet, we are here, speaking up, theorizing with our stories. i am seneca, part of the haudenosaunee community which includes six nations: seneca, mohawk, tuscarora, oneida, onondaga, and cayuga. when the peacemaker brought us together for peace and brotherhood, he did so by bringing us to one community mind through attitudes of gratefulness and brotherhood. we were then open to one another’s ideas and to working together. my intent here is not to retell the story of the peacemaker. there are many important sources that already do so. 1 this inclusion of how the peacemaker opened our minds stresses the need for a reader’s open mind and for the reader’s call to be interactive with this introduction and with the issue as a whole. in my community, we open each activity with the thanksgiving address, or ganönyök, to remember this. we do this for two reasons: to show that we are thankful for all things on this earth, from the people to the plants and so on, and to bring all of us to the same mindset—one of balance, kindness, and love. at the end of each section of thanks, we say that now our minds are one. we are then in a mindset where we help one another. knowledges add to our own knowledges. we are riding in ships and canoes in the same river, but we don’t disturb each other’s journeys. before anyone continues through the essays in this issue, it is important that we are all on the same pathway of positive change and helping one another. so i ask, first, please listen to the following thanksgiving address video created by amber lane, an allegany seneca community member, given in seneca, before you read on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qbmblzgjco. there are some difficult topics ahead, and a balanced and open mind for all will move our minds forward. it’s imperative that the audience is actively involved in the process of understanding and redefining genocide. as the bridge between reader, knowledge of indigenous genocides, and the articles, i set forth an argument denying the question of american indian genocide that emerges out of haudenosaunee ways of knowing. i specifically focus on the united states in my argument because this is my scholarly background. however, these steps can be applied in different ways to other genocides throughout the americas. each section calls the reader’s attention to acts of witnessing that should be considered some of the defining factors of genocide. from the very title of this article, “there is no question of american indian genocide,” i mean to spark a dialogue amongst those who agree, those who haven’t thought about genocide in this way, and transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 3 those who deny american indian genocide, both inside academic spaces and within our communities and sites of work. my introduction will move through three assertions: 1) the current definition of genocide is derived from a legal model that relies heavily on a particular non-indigenous model of intent, which allows some scholars and non-scholars to take a position denying genocide; 2) by redefining genocide from an indigenous perspective, a good-minded positionality means this article adds to the currently narrow, legalistic definitions of genocide in order to account for both the experiences of and witnessings to the effects of policies and the processes of extermination of those who suffer from the policies; and 3) repositioning an understanding of the effects of this suffering from such an indigenous perspective will enable future revisions of legal discourse to allow all of us to better address the full scale of indigenous experiences. the history of the term “genocide” illuminates how american involvement, as well as that of other countries with indigenous populations, reframes the definition so that american indians could not make claims of genocide. american indian genocide has thus far been defined by outsiders who have not experienced genocide themselves. the definition of genocidal actions carried out against indigenous minds and bodies, as outlined here, shows that the united states carried out an erasure of these stories and was then, and has always been, involved in not simply the extermination process. american indian genocide viewed as a process rather than one moment better allows the definition of genocide to include and use our indigenous stories, both past and present, to prove genocide has been enacted as an ongoing process since colonization. during the erasures process, not only has american indian genocide been denied by the united states, but so too have genocides been carried out in other north and south american countries. i then define erasure as a part of the extermination process which, for american indian genocide, is an erasure of stories from daily conversations. gerald vizenor’s chapter, “genocide tribunals,” acknowledges a need for dialogues about genocide in controlled public spaces so that mindset changes can begin. he argues for the experiences of those who have died to be central in engaging in any argument about genocide because our ancestors’ perspectives show genocide occurring over hundreds of years. the final section calls the reader to become a part of the witnessing process, as listening/reading unsilences and denies erasure from further occurring. i build a case that shows there is no question of genocides in the americas. no section seeks to blame. each one follows the other to melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 4 offer reasons to use indigenous perspectives about genocide. what the essay does seek is to encourage us to have dialogues about the stories of genocide rather than exclude their importance in critical and educational spaces. using the term “genocide” here occurs outside of state and national considerations because many indigenous groups do not organize in this way. but we still must push back and tell our stories, as we seek to reframe minds and knowledge. at its very simple, but imperative, core, my argument is that we have a sovereign intellectual right to define genocide through experiential means. abenaki scholar lisa brooks argues that our sovereign intellectualism has been ongoing since before contact, but often is presumed to be “new” scholarship. indigenous scholars offer a unique approach to texts and ideas that must also be incorporated into academic pursuits (235). haudenosaunee values and ways of knowing offer a framework for realigning the question of american indian genocide from an indigenous positionality, but they are not the only ways. the discussion in this article will center on the question of genocide and genocide’s definitional history.2 when i was invited to create this introduction, i saw a need to discuss an indigenous consideration of genocide and why only seeing genocide from the united nations’ definition can be problematic. it may be easy to presume, as an intellectual, that american indian genocide is not a questioned genocide. however, few critical books discuss genocide on american soil,3 and most of those do not include direct interaction with people from those affected communities, allowing them to define genocide themselves. they instead focus on statistics and historical documents by colonizers and on only certain moments as genocide. rarely is the conversation about the impact of genocide on today’s generations or the overall steps that lead to genocide. as well, most curricula in the education system, from kindergarten up through to college, does not discuss in detail american indian genocide beyond possibly a quick one-day mention of the cherokee trail of tears.4 this exclusion leaves out not only the hundreds of other forced removals but also the histories before and after that indigenous peoples define as genocides and hundreds of years of events. therefore, the full scope of american indian genocide has not been critiqued within scholarship, nor is it a dialogue amongst citizens. when both spaces have this dialogue fruitfully, then we can engage in better relations. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 5 good-minded dialogues the great law of peace helps me think through how we resist invisibility and stake serious claims for not simply the inclusion of our stories as they already exist, but necessary, active understanding that highlights settler-colonial denial of its actions. brooks borrows a line from joy harjo that my use of the great law enacts: “i crave both literature and scholarship that shows us ‘thinking in our skin’” (242). as onondaga faithkeeper oren lyons outlines, haudenosaunee lifeways come from the great law of peace that creates the good mind: we lived contentedly under the gai enesha go’nah, the great law of peace. we were instructed to create societies based on the principles of peace, equity, justice, and the power of good minds. our societies are based upon great democratic principles of the authority of the people and equal responsibilities for the men and the women. […] our leaders were instructed to be men of vision and to make every decision on behalf of the seventh generation to come; to have compassion and love for those generations yet unborn. […] we were instructed to be generous and to share equally with our brothers and sisters so that all may be content. we were instructed to respect and love our elders, […] to love our children, indeed to love all children. (lyons) i am seeking to create a relationship that opens readers to what’s written in this issue and to a good-minded reconsideration of how we define genocide and truly hear survivors. good mind means a way of thinking and being that is both spiritual and relational and an intricate lifeway and a spiritual ideology where individuals and ancestors build a consciousness for a community. lakota scholar nicholle dragone, in her master’s thesis and forthcoming monograph, outlines the good mind through principles by way of lyons.5 the good mind theorizes through three principles: “peace in mind and community,” equity resulting in community justice, and “the power of the good minds, which embodies good health and reason” (lyons qtd. in dragone 47). the principles allow the good mind’s peace and connection to the world where no one wars or presumes they are worth more than another and that no knowledge or way of being is considered better than another. good health and reason presumes that, to heal and to have better relations as nations, we must tell our stories and that those outside of our experiences should listen to and utilize our definitions rather than their own. peace in mind and community sets up a calm melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 6 dialogue to hear these stories and to believe them. we therefore would have a conversation about genocide, about the term’s history, and how it impacts visibility of violence committed against us. it is inherently good-minded not to strictly eliminate a term or to fully take it over, but to add on to the definition. it is also inherently good minded to look carefully at our histories and learn from them. we do think about what’s gone on in the past as well as what dialogues exist now before moving forward. critically examining the definition itself is part of our witnessing. thinking with the good mind as a framework for being a good reader while reading the issue means acknowledging that there are many ways to define genocide and to explore in scholarship how to talk about these issues. the stories and histories included throughout this issue act as the defining factors of genocide in the americas. importantly, as oral traditions do, the sentences here must evoke such orality in order to help the reader/listener become involved in the stories. at the moment of reading, changes in the reader’s mind can move that reader momentarily outside of their positionality and their previous conceptions of genocide, whether legal or presumed. orality simultaneously decolonizes both the writing and the reader through the experiences we reveal. by using stories and orality, we evoke what leanne howe insists: that tribalographies theorize our ways of knowing and being, 6 including our genocides. the truth has to come from story spaces, from those who’ve experienced genocide and those who have arisen resilient. here, we expand those ways to critique and include narrative, for example, in tone and sentence style, including “me” so that orality is not only throughout the story but inside each sentence and each word. oral elements are intentional for two reasons: sound imparts voice and a storytelling engagement with readers evokes witnessing between scholar and reader. orality gets inscribed in multiple ways which may also look different from typical academic writing and sentence structure. it is conversational, which then may contain more casual language, repetition, direct address of readers, “that” and “which” used interchangeably for sound, a repeated phrase, intense details, dialogue, thoughts, and contractions. orality in writing calls for an active response from a reader—in turn becoming like a tribunal: the motivation to understand one’s own positionality, understanding that that positionality lacks knowledge about other people groups, seeking out more information from american indians themselves, having compassion for those atrocities that have occurred and still occur, not questioning if genocide happened, and desiring positive changes. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 7 tribunals as witnessing spaces “charles aubid declared by stories his anishinaabe human rights and sovereignty. he created a vital ‘fourth person,’ sense of presence and survivance, and defied the cultural hearsay of ethnologies, absence and victimry.” “…but the anishinaabe always understood their rights in stories.” gerald vizenor gerald vizenor gives a 2006 speech arguing that lived experiences act as evidence of violent, intentional wrongdoings. vizenor seeks stories, particularly those passed down orally through indigenous communities and families, to stand as important, accepted evidence of genocide, acting as another type of witnessing. the presence of these stories, including the fourth-person accounts of those who have died, are the stories we should hear as testimony in discussions of genocide. charles aubid, a central person in vizenor’s speech, who argued in court to keep control over their manoomin or wild rice harvest, brings in fourth-person accounts from stories passed down to him during his courtroom testimony. he proves that our oral stories are vital witnessings to genocide, violence, and erasure (135). because of aubid’s lived experiences in the court system, vizenor calls for genocide tribunals—spaces for testimony of these witnessings—to create dialogues which will then stop generations of wrongdoings. vizenor argues that when we invoke a sense of presence, we stir fears because our stories outline attrition processes and lay the groundwork for defining american indian genocide. he seeks for future generations of natives and non-natives an empowering understanding of sovereignty and the forced absences of american indians from legal processes. vizenor’s goal is positive changes to laws, so he suggests that genocide be brought up in university settings, particularly law schools (138). the tribunals would “justly expose,” through “venues of reason” the “continental ethnic cleansing, mass murder, torture, and religious persecution, past and present” (139). vizenor finds problematic that, without these tribunals, there lacks reason and acknowledgement of these crimes which means that the “perpetrators of serious crimes against native american indians have seldom been punished, and the insidious deniers of genocide protect the impunity of the perpetrators” (140). there are generations of students moving into legal systems, then, who don’t have a full understanding of violence on us soil. melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 8 tribunals act as a go-between within western and non-western senses of justice. vizenor specifically desires conversations in universities, particularly with law students in moot courts, much like mock trials, because “[t]he point of these proposed genocide tribunals is to consider native equity, moral accountability, the reasonable competition of evidence, and to create narratives of survivance” (139-40, 144). he’s seeking for the law to make space for indigenous iterations which includes narrative in spaces. we can then teach different approaches to understanding how the law could work. too, university spaces allow for thinking beyond the united nations genocide definition. and the hope would be to change how the legal system traditionally thinks when new lawyers gain a stronger understanding of the issues and positively evolve the law. vizenor seeks, therefore, a mindset and community change, resulting in changing treatment of one another—much like the haudenosaunee—now our minds are one. when we recognize that genocide is more than a specific event where mass killings are employed, and that it’s a planned process, then vizenor’s tribunals have teeth—the kind of proof that cannot be made invisible. the questions of genocide: history unsilenced when i first read the phrase, “the question of genocide,”7 i assumed scholars might explore genocidal actions. however, when i learned that this phrase began by denying the holocaust and, from there, many other genocides, i became angry that even today, in 2018, we still cannot have open dialogues about genocide. scholars have too often employed the phrase to rhetorically deny that genocide occurred within a nation’s boundaries. in the process of denying genocide, countries have therefore also negated the experiences of victims. genocide is challenged when groups of people actively pursue the recognition of their genocide. then, their stories and experiences are denounced. the phrase originated in alain finkielkraut’s 1998 work, the future of a negation: reflections on the question of genocide, where he studies french critics, particularly robert faurisson, who tried to deny adolf hitler’s attempt to exterminate jewish peoples. other scholars have since used this phrase to investigate genocide, some coming to the conclusion that the violence against a people group is genocide.8 other texts suggest certain histories do not meet the legal definition of genocide, and the term is overused and misused in regards to these experiences.9 transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 9 genocide was not an official term until defined by raphael lemkin for the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. he framed the definition after the holocaust to correspond with what had occurred so that responsible nazi leaders could be prosecuted—moving genocide into a legal argument. however, lemkin’s deep interest in histories of violence influenced his outline of genocide (lemkin 2013, 134). it’s important to note that lemkin himself was a polish jew who escaped europe to america after german forces invaded poland (united states holocaust memorial museum). he understood the depths of genocide.10 the historical examples of genocide that lemkin brought with him to the convention ranged in multitudes of variations, none exactly the same extermination process (lemkin 2013, 138). phyllis bardeau, a seneca elder and language expert, recommends defining the term from the moment itself. bardeau argues that the stories that surround any event act as necessary evidence for how we should define that event. although lemkin called upon multiple genocides as examples for the convention, he understood how fluid the definition would need to be to fittingly protect every nation. in order to revise and rethink genocide and absence, american indian stories are imperative to drastically altering the narrative, just as testimony was to the holocaust. i borrow from holocaust studies not as a comparison between genocides which devalues one or the other. we must be careful not to become “rival narratives of genocide,” as chickasaw scholar jodi byrd warns (311). i work against “disavowing” those experiences and toward having all experiences work together to help tell a fuller, more complete story of american indian genocide. the convention i discuss completed work important and imperative to the prosecution of genocidal actions resulting in the holocaust. however, importantly, therein the history also lay moments of denial by other counties of their genocides. crucial moments and decisions at the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide denied certain key factors for prosecuting genocide that actually help other countries avoid responsibility for their own genocidal actions. the convention was held on december 9, 1948 and used lemkin’s definition as a foundation for the united nation’s adoption of resolution 260, officially enacted in 1951. an ad hoc committee put forth three subparts to the definition of genocide for article ii and iii of the resolution: physical, biological, and cultural (skutnabb-kangas and dunbar 79-80). each was inspired by lemkin’s outline, but melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 10 edited his original definitions. physical and biological definitions were passed and included with the following language: in the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (united nations office on genocide prevention and the responsibility project) however, an addition of cultural genocide was barred from the united nations’ definition because countries were afraid of “spurious claims” (skutnabb-kangas and dunbar 80). they were concerned such claims would stop certain peoples from positively assimilating to the dominant country’s social and legal customs. yet from those expectations of assimilation, the expected loss fits cultural genocide. most notably, canada and the united states were afraid indigenous populations would then make claims of cultural genocide (skutnabb-kangas and dunbar 80-81). the very dominant cultural ideals that enforced genocide and harmed the lives of millions were left to decide how to define genocide. the convention also decided that claiming genocide would not be retroactive for legal recourse. any country having experienced genocide previous to the 1948 convention could not claim genocide. the problem with the united nations’ definition specifically for indigenous peoples is that it is created by non-indigenous peoples who have more often focused on nation states as the subject of genocide within boundaries created by those who marked national territories over indigenous lands. however, the past is integral to defining american indian genocide since it’s been witnessed from the beginning of colonization. consider laguna pueblo author leslie marmon silko’s description of pueblo time: the pueblo people and the indigenous people of the americas see time as round, not as a long linear string. if time is round, if time is an ocean, then something that happened 500 years ago may be quite immediate and real, whereas something transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 11 inconsequential that happened an hour ago could be far away. think of time as an ocean always moving. (silko) the past affects the present, which affects the future, which passes directly down through a community across time. the genocides that happened so many years ago are just as detrimental today. that’s why they continue to be known through oral traditions; stories, which silko also emphasizes, distinctively mark those passages of time. application of indigenous considerations of time and its influence on genocide must be how we theorize through american indian genocide. to that end, cultural genocide becomes an imperative part of this adding on to. silko’s consideration of time could mean that there is no statute of limitations on american indian genocide because of how genocidal actions deeply impact our lives today. some of the language in the un definition evokes a way of broadening that could fit indigenous genocides. scholars such as tove skutnabb-kangas and robert dunbar and mvskoke/creek scholar k. tsianina lomawaima have contended that forcible removal of indigenous youth to boarding schools and stripping of language and culture fits the united nation’s genocide point of physical removal of one group to another. others, such as benjamin madley and brendan c. lindsay, argue that american indians have experienced genocide and outline past state genocidal actions, although not national ones. neither madley nor lindsay seek legal recourse, but instead use historical written documents and accounts to provide evidence of genocide. dakota scholar chris mato nunpa outlines how each section of the un definition can be seen through both historical moments and the lived experiences of his nation. we do not teach these genocidal histories within most educational institutions. using the un definition, whether with legal or scholarly intention, doesn’t thus far seem to work to change a national mindset. what’s now necessary within this dialogue is a closer reading of cultural genocide through silko’s wave-like time which crosses over itself. when we view genocide as a longer process that moves from one generation to another, more impactful in the present moment than what’s occurring in the present moment, we can better understand why that part of the definition is so vital. too, cultural genocide points to why the united states would have agreed to remove cultural genocide and not acknowledged us influence on how the legal definition could work. the un genocide definition might work for some nations, but by not incorporating indigenous epistemologies and perspectives, even the idea of having a definition that implicates perpetrators does not live up to the full potential the convention was created to prevent. melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 12 the layperson does not think about genocide as a legal term, but instead as an experiential one. violent actions against people groups, such as the holocaust, south african apartheid, and slavery, are often taught without discussion of the legalities of the time, but instead as what occurred to whom. the fact of the matter is, the outcomes of settler colonial decisions have been the destruction of indigenous peoples. if we focus more on extermination than on intent, we gain ways to stop the process. as haudenosaunee people, we would not simply come up with a new term. we would first investigate and unpack what’s being used now and how our experiences could bring about changes to perceptions of how genocide works in other situations. by using haudenosaunee terms of adding on to, if we add back in the section on cultural genocide, the past absence of it illuminates an erasure of histories. since other scholars have done work reading through the current un definition, this essay discusses why cultural genocide is a valid adding on to which offers more stakes in american indian genocide claims of a longer duration of genocide. therefore, the failure to incorporate cultural genocide as a tenet of genocide is of significant historical importance in investigating relations between the us and tribal nations. when first presented to the convention, cultural genocide was defined as destroying the specific characteristics of a group: “any deliberate act committed with the intent to destroy the language, religion, or culture of a national, racial, or religious group” (skutnabb-kangas and dunbar 80). this could be exampled in the following: 1. prohibiting the use of the language of the group in daily intercourse or in schools, or the printing and circulation of publications in the language of the group; 2. destroying or preventing the use of libraries, museums, schools, historical monuments, places of worship or other cultural institutions and objects of the group. (ibid) tribal nations each have their own national systems, languages, and religious practices. all of these were outlawed by the us government in some way. indigenous language was, and still is, removed from many education systems. we were forced to move off of both historical and sacred spaces, and many of those spaces have been either bulldozed over for development or contaminated by environmental toxins. during each of these steps, a personhood is stripped from the body and the soul. cultural genocide is the ongoing genocide that, in the case of the united states, continues after initial contact and removal. upon initial settler colonialism, genocide took place as immediate murder of american indians, raping, and burning and pillaging of villages transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 13 and crops. once we take the historical turn to removal from land to reservations and removal of children from tribal nations to boarding schools, the process slows down and seeks removal of the american indian soul from his or her ways, versus an extermination of body. the breakdown of the kinship structure here is the legacy and how extermination transforms into acts of cultural genocide over time. cultural genocide outlines that there can be a drawn-out duration that impacts groups over time and years to deconstruct a people’s culture. the extermination process particular to the case of american indian genocide, we can learn that genocide is fluid, and we should re-define it every time. there are critical genocide studies lenses in place which can offer some ways to investigate genocide’s fluidity. clinical professor of law sheri p. rosenberg has argued for viewing genocide as a process, rather than an event. rosenberg states that process is important because it inherently breaks down the logic for the processes which ensue to exterminate immediately, as well as to exterminate over time. as she notes, because the term genocide has become so narrow due to “the emphasis on legalism,” scholars and the public miss “that genocide is a fluid and complex social phenomenon, not a static term” (17). examining process rather than event theorizes how there is no one genocide or one way to exterminate, an argument the definitional actions of both lemkin and bardeau outline. presuming genocide is simply the act of extermination is a disturbing privileging of a certain trauma. as the editors argue in the introduction to hidden genocides: power, knowledge, memory, the question isn’t whether genocide occurred or not, but instead why has that genocide become so hidden by a political force that it isn’t discussed (irvin-erikson, et al. 1-17)? as history shows, there can be the creation of an important and largely influential legal document which carries out the prosecutions intended, but still has histories of negative power moves buried within the creation process. when a small group is allowed to police definition, it becomes convenient for the people doing the harm to continue executing genocidal steps. critiquing genocide through stages unique to a situation places the power back with those impacted in good-minded ways. the problematic presumption is the fear that redefining genocide seeks criminal investigations. issues which bring about fear-based thinking cloud the good mind. my hope is that understanding this history will allow us, in time, to refine the legal discourse, by first unclouding what occurred before. melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 14 first coined by helen fein, then used by mark bradbury, donald bloxham, and rosenberg, the concept of attrition marks a pathway to the perpetrators and makes hidden genocides visible. each of these scholars, as well as other critical genocide studies scholars, noticed that genocide is more often a long-term process rather than immediate violence (rosenberg, et al. 109). attrition does not replace genocide; rather, it interrupts the narrow definition utilized previously by the un and expands how genocide unfolds within perpetrator systems and actions. as rosenberg and everita silina explain, genocide by attrition refers to a slow process of annihilation that reflects the unfolding phenomenon of the mass killing of a protected group, rather than the immediate unleashing of violence and death. the methods of genocide by attrition describe state and non-state policies and practices that deprive individuals of a specific set of human rights that do not cause immediate death, but rather lead to the slow and steady destruction of the group. (rosenberg, et al. 107) the action of analyzing using attrition defines intent and genocide through the genocide itself, adding on to how we might read the united nations’ broader definition. neither rosenberg nor silina desire a new definition of genocide or adding to its terms, but rather a more refined way of viewing the definition already in place. i would disagree here. attrition offers an opening for new positionalities and additions previously denied by the removal of cultural genocide. attrition shows current genocides still in place, as well as traces of past genocides. there is then fluidity to genocide and therefore should also be fluidity to how we might define it and its intent. process is important to understanding how coloniality uniquely carries out extermination, because, as maría regina firmino castillo argues in this special issue and as lemkin pointed out, coloniality will always have a relationship with genocidal ways. coloniality destroys those who are in the way of colonial control (firmino castillo 33-4). without intense investigation of the process, and without proven extermination attempts, it’s easier to deny genocide and claim to save the savage indian from him or herself. as alain finkielkraut argues about holocaust denial, if rhetoric is spread wide enough by someone in power and their actions are perceived as humanitarian—for example, monetary government support of tribal nations, such as health care or resources specifically for enrolled members, or even the “setting aside” of land to create reservations—it will be believed. the negation takes on a life of its own so that logic presumes those in power helped rather than harmed (xvii). transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 15 each genocide is distinct, and those distinct traits define for that group their genocide. the extermination processes being distinct and different is not what makes it impossible to define genocide. it is what shows us that genocide comes in many packages, processes, and politics. we need many stories for the public to understand invisible genocides. erasure: a step in the genocide process why don’t we take action with this term “genocide” when so many stories from many countries clearly show genocide in their own distinct ways? when thousands of voices are speaking out, the question really is not if an event was genocide, but what fear forces people to deny genocide or to make it invisible? erasure is the set of rhetorical devices used by a perpetrator to rid history of their involvement in genocide acts, as well as to remove all traces of their victim’s existence from body to traditions to kinship ties. the erasure process, when viewed as part of extermination processes, allows genocide to be determined from more than moments of mass extermination: genocide then becomes more clearly a planned, drawn-out, living part of colonization. erasure connects mass immediate extermination to the policies and practices which then keep the extermination ongoing within cultural genocide—one continuous genocide. when genocide stories are excluded from the national dialogue and mindset and not taught within national educational institutions, there is an erasure of stories detailing the long extermination: a removal from land, a removal from family, a removal of ways of knowing replaced with colonized ways, and finally a removal of histories and stories from national systems. cultural genocide carried out using erasure rhetorics is a literal destruction in capacity of an individual’s ability to live as tohono o’odham, as navajo, as puyallup. what remains is a silent social national acceptance that american indian genocide is neither talked about nor recognized. erasure is also the ridding of american indians from a system simply expecting assimilation, rather than honoring differences. assimilation becomes a systematic erasure of a people because it requires that american indians make american ways their main ways of being. hidden genocides also argues that using the concept of “hidden” allows for “critically examining cases of genocide that have been ‘hidden’ politically, socially, culturally, or historically in accordance with broader systems of political and social power” (irvin-erikson, et al. 2). the editors recognize that “certain cases of genocide [have been] denied, diminished, or ignored” (ibid). when history is erased, that is part of the attrition process. the editors point out melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 16 troubling us history showing that genocide was hidden in america after the late 1800s. an 1881 report from the us commissioner of indian affairs outlines both the indian question and the policy of extermination: “one of two things must eventually take place […] either civilization or extermination of the indian. savage and civilized life cannot live and prosper on the same ground. one of the two must die” (qtd. in irvin-erikson, et. al 3). at one moment in time, extermination was an accepted end to american indian ways through both bodily death and assimilation. today it’s hidden. erasure is a process of rhetorics changed over to meet mass social expectations but still engaged in slowly etching away personhood. if you take away our right to tell those stories, you take away our ways of witnessing past atrocities and how those become today’s trauma. what’s problematic is that the system that denies us our right to seek justice is a western system put in place by those who carry out genocide. when perpetrators are protected, the stories hold no true meaning to non-natives and therefore have a more difficult time creating change in relationships. the stories are then made to seem as if they are one event or one person’s story rather than the multiple killing ways. extermination steps have occurred in the united states from contact to today’s erasure, and we can see those actions more clearly if we critically examine them as a process of stages meant to see out the finality of the erasure process. there is an inherent desire by those in power for the deletion of identity, personhood, and rights in body and/or mind; those less than have no either/or in assimilative situations. they must relinquish to the powerful their own ways of knowing and being in order to survive (as we see above from the us commissioner) because the only other option is a daily fight to practice their traditions. take for example the reasoning in richard henry pratt’s 1892 speech on his conception of running american indian boarding schools. he argues for assimilative practices to “[k]ill the indian, and save the man.”11 within those words, there is an understanding and acceptance that the “indian” part of those students is going to die and is meant to die. pratt carries out the commissioner’s policy with governmental funding of his boarding schools. boarding schools only began closing after the passing of the 1978 indian child welfare act, when american indian parents regained their legal rights to send their children to schools they chose. processing american indians into the american system through assimilative education went on for over 86 years via boarding schools. today, such public rhetoric exists differently, but seeks similar ends. erasure occurs through a rendered narrative rhetorically altered so that realities about american indians no transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 17 longer exist in national mindsets. because erasure becomes so deeply embedded in the nation’s systems, the system creates hidden genocides. the question of american indian genocide therefore becomes a national question to investigate: not the genocide itself, but how the policies then and now still carry on those assumptions of extermination. nunpa states that “the united states is conspicuous by its silence, and it suppresses the truth of what really happened in its development as a nation” (97). he, too, argues for lifting the veil of invisibility placed around american genocídaíres: “as a consequence of this historical amnesia, the u.s. public does not see that its government and society was established through genocide” (98). he outlines how and where us actions have fit five of the united nations’ criteria for genocide, “and yet this genocide has still remained hidden” (ibid). he believes the dialogue requires participation by non-native scholars because policy makers and other academics often will not take our concerns seriously. at stake for him is that the dialogue must be had by more than american indian studies scholars. without such involvement, his outline showing how our genocide fits each category will go unnoticed by the public. i add that american indian genocides remain hidden because we trigger questions that illuminate the us intent to kill. the rhetorics in place that hold the un definition of intent as the deciding marker of genocide, too, allows for other scholars to circle around the problem of intent. so, when nonnative scholars do make such arguments without our indigenous perspectives involved, it becomes too easy to continue genocide denial. alex alvarez, a political science scholar, does such circling and warns there was no intent to harm american indians; therefore, it would be difficult to label the actions in the united states as genocide (159-67). however, our stories are stories of destruction enforced by a larger system. how the united states forcibly removed american indians from their homes and land and forced american indian youth into western education systems is not saving american indians, as alvarez argues, but causing long-lasting and detrimental violence against indigenous knowledges. you don’t have to destroy a body to destroy a people. over time, mental destruction is less obviously provable and depends on personal narratives for the effect to be demonstrated. then a country cannot see its own implications in extermination. tying attrition to intent helps make this connection between intent and the good-minded adding on and illuminates genocide as a drawn-out process distinct in each situation—which is also how bardeau would consider intent. therefore, intent should be melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 18 redefined with each situation of genocide as much as genocide should be redefined within each situation of genocide. genocide occurs on us soil and has done so transcending historical boundaries of simply first settlement in the form of murder, rape, trauma, kidnapping, scalping, forced assimilation, forced removal, laws, loss of whole tribal nations and languages, killing of land, and devastation from misrepresentation in media, education, and politics (nunpa 98-105). some of these parts of the american genocide process involve physical death, and some involve a mental death—a removal of ways of knowing, thinking, and theorizing. when such erasure occurs so deeply within a system that so many non-natives don’t recognize the violence against american indians as ongoing genocide, it is in fact a distinct removal of a people group from the national mindset. although rosenberg and silina and those above do not discuss mental death and historical trauma, these are important markers of attritional genocide for indigenous peoples as well. unlike well-known genocides such as the holocaust in europe and genocide in darfur, where institutional policies of truth and reconciliation publicly attempted both to apologize and to educate their nations about genocide, the united states has avoided the start of a healing process and a readjustment of knowledge and national mindset.12 in 2010, president barak obama included in a defense bill a three-line apology “on behalf of the people of the united states” for maltreatment of american indians (capriccoso). he received some rebuke for such a quick and almost hidden action which supposedly reconciles hundreds of years of violence against indigenous peoples. however, publicly, this small acknowledgement and the criticism that followed did not result in impactful changes. apologies should come in the form of a change in action, national mindset, and understanding in order for reconciliation to take place. obama’s apology appears as though the government is sorry for its actions, but a true apology institutes a change in action. hiding the apology follows past rhetorical erasures. listening becomes the second witnessing “it’s not that we have lost the old ways and intelligences, but that we are lost from them.” linda hogan transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 19 returning to my opening story, indigenous peoples are not lost from our traditions. the museum director erased the stories given to him in order to follow the expected rhetoric about american indians. ignoring the stories keeps the erasure process going. but our stories will always retain our traditions, as well as the rights and sovereignties charles aubid showed, as our witnessing to genocide and our true presence. the stories situate the power within our nations, thereby denying the question of genocide and lifting the veils of silence which keep the questions hanging in the air. through stories, we come back to our identities and our ways. recognizing these histories and their outcomes, both as native and non-native peoples, we take our witnessing power back. too, those hearing or reading the stories become important to the process of stopping genocide because that then stops the stages of extermination. witnessing means naming the atrocities, recognizing the effects of those atrocities still taking place today, and telling the stories. these are steps towards healing, which i define further in a forthcoming monograph, but they begin by many sides telling and listening—a witnessing process only able to continue if those listening are open. for haudenosaunee peoples, being cleansed is how we clear our clouded minds—the things that keep us from our good minds. there must be a release that is then replaced with positive people, places, and ideas.13 when we grieve loved ones who have passed away, we must go through ceremony to heal. the facts and stories below, and in particular the articles which follow, are this issue’s witnessing and cycle of clearing the air because indigenous histories are being made visible. indigenous genocide draws from the attrition process and is a slow genocide which compiles and compiles death and trauma. the slow pace results in intentionally declining numbers of indigenous people and their land that we can see occurring across over 518 years in both body and mind. david stannard estimates that indigenous populations in north america (north of mexico) during pre-columbian periods were upwards of 8-12 million with the americas totaling 75-100 million, which still may be a low estimate (268). he argues that habitation of the americas began around 70,000 bc, and that populations were larger than previously thought, thus proving that massive societies existed before contact with multilayered, intelligent communities. the population of american indians in 1900 from us census statistics were at 237,196. nunpa estimates these numbers show a 98.5 percent rate in decline of native populations in the united states, numbers which indicate an extermination magnitude (97). melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 20 there have been many ways between then and now that have been and continue to be an extermination pathway. extermination now exists as an inherited, intergenerational trauma which passes on into our bodies so long as genocide continues. one way has been assimilation practices such as forced americanized education. there is a wealth of scholarship on these histories doing exemplary work discussing boarding schools and their violent outcomes.14 when we scholars spend so much time, however, writing the theories, numbers, and criticisms, it can become easy to forget that there are people connected to those horrors—people whose experiences prove the intent to exterminate without needing any further words—the beginnings of the witnessing process. i embed the following video excerpt here because merely reading about the events could not fully impart the experiences as being told orally. the clip i include is from our spirits don’t speak english, a documentary on indigenous boarding schools that contains interviews with boarding school survivors, scholarly commentary, photos, and historical information. in this clip, an interview with chippewa cree community member, andrew windyboy, expresses his experiences at two boarding schools: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdshqtbh5d4&t=106s. when you hear the words, there is no question that assimilation does unjustifiable damage. too, the shame imparted by a system that believes you should kill your indian self, or that you should only be a mascot running around a football field, or that you should exist in the past with teepees, has resulted in the highest suicide rates amongst a people in the country. american indians are committing suicide at 21.5 percent per 100,000 of american indians, a number 3.5 times higher than other group rates. as rachel a. leavitt and her fellow authors contend at the center for disease control, the suicide rates are correlative with factors such as where they live, if they knew others who committed suicide or passed on, and substance abuse. residential status in particular could result in someone not receiving culturally competent care, which has been known to be preventative to such suicide occurrences with american indians (leavitt, et al.).15 as well, today, thousands of missing american indian men and women have been kidnapped and murdered. american indian women are murdered at a rate ten times higher than other women nationally (pember 2016).16 without a comprehensive data collection system, there is no true number of just how many women, let alone men, are murdered. as whisperkish argues in her tedx talks, violence against indigenous peoples has been normalized, particularly against women, and control of the indigenous body became accepted at the moment of transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 21 colonization. importantly, she incorporates dimensions of oral traditions through her vocal intonations which becomes another way to witness in storytelling (www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg2jjam0p-u). she raises and lowers her voice, changes her tone from soft to angry, and emphasizes certain words and stories. her talk involves the audience present at the tedx, as well as those watching online, where emotional tones emphasize important silences and gaps in audience knowledges. listening seeks an emotional reaction from the audience, to also raise anger in their bodies or for them to listen more closely when the tone goes soft. by requiring involvement in the talk, the audience pays more careful attention—at least this is what whisperkish appears to seek—she can’t let her audience walk away without hearing her because the us has done little to ameliorate documenting the epidemic against american indian women. whisperkish becomes that documentation in that moment. her audience will remember those facts and histories better because of the performance and the emphasis in tones and will hopefully pass the stories on, creating a cycle of witnessing. the collection: working against erasure and genocide in the americas lisa brooks points out that she has “come to most value scholarship that recognizes intellectual work as an activity that has effects on and participates in the ‘real’ world that we inhabit. perhaps the concern to which we should turn is the need for thought that acknowledges its embeddedness in experience, which cultivates and expresses an intimate relationship with the world in which it thinks” (242). this introduction and the articles that follow are argued and organized through both experiences and tribal and community perspectives. linda tuhiwai smith, ngāti awa and ngāti porou, māori scholar, has argued that the researched must become the researchers. she urges indigenous scholars to use their own tools in order to decolonize projects and frame our experiences our own ways. after the release of her seminal text, decolonizing methodologies, one might think that academia would change entirely how we expect research to look and be about and by indigenous peoples. but we still have evolutions to make in research—so here, we too evolve indigenous methodologies and theorizing practices. because we will be discussing genocide and absence in this issue, i have included arguments, my own and those of the other scholars, that honored those real-world intimate and intellectual activities born out of our resilience and experiences with genocide. this issue by no means desires seeking, at this melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 22 juncture, any legal case against any country. our arguments re-see genocide so that we can move through a healing process. in the call seeking articles for this special issue, the editors and i sought a space to discuss genocide in the americas. the call was fairly open because tribal nations experience genocide differently. what we received were many angles voicing how we, as indigenous peoples, survived colonization by both spanish and american settlers and how north and south american choices have affected the way the united states treats indigenous histories and knowledges. resilience and resistance despite forced and intentional erasure became a theme that, more than ever, witnesses how we are not conquered people and how we are worthy of speaking and evoking our sovereign intellect. the three articles included in this issue all argue for clearer understandings of north and south american histories—histories colliding with settler colonial narrative control that indigenous peoples have resisted through daily living and their own ways of knowing and being. each article and my introduction weave together personal experience with the experiences of others to theorize genocide. those writing from and about south american genocide are also affected by us settler-colonial discourse as it impacts dialogues about indigenous peoples in their own countries. as well, those from south america living in the united states constantly encounter misrepresented narratives about colonial control of their homes. the core topic of genocide and indigenous peoples seems either silenced or misrepresented altogether by american dialogues, seemingly to avoid conversations leading to questions of their own genocidal actions. storytelling in indigenous communities, which my introduction and the articles enact in different ways, becomes a witnessing for indigenous peoples acting against political and legal choices made to erase us. witnessing through words allows others to understand those realities and makes bodies, either dead or traumatized, visible. when the invisible becomes visible, stories can heal through that witnessing and recognition of pain. but if the dominant culture still does not recognize genocide stories, those deaths go unresolved. i and the authors who follow argue that indigenous genocides and the national absences of our resulting realities are important markers of history and the present day. the stories told throughout the critical works here show extermination and its many sides, processes, and perpetrators. we each argue that genocide is not in the past and is still suffered in different ways by american indians and other indigenous populations. understanding and knowledge are the transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 23 path to healing. recognizing that we are resilient, and some of us intentionally resistant because we have fought back with our survival and within our own knowledges and ways of being, will help us all heal. the 2013 us census estimates today’s american indian populations at 5.2 million which shows our numbers increasing (united states census bureau). much of that comes from unsilencing and recognizing our souls require healing as much as our bodies and minds. this collection shows some of these stories. the more we engage in these conversations, the more we arrive at a space not just of inclusion, not just of having people hear us, but of those listening and understanding and becoming active learners who care about how they ask questions, seek out information, and interpret said information in peaceful ways. consider these articles as a foundation to vizenor’s genocide tribunals—the dialogues that openly and actively deconstruct genocide and build resilience. because if we do not raise our voices, we cannot move forward. if we do not tell our stories, we cannot see the trauma and the resilience. if we do not understand, we cannot all heal. the first article in our special issue investigates how story imbeds in the land, surviving through the people to whom the land is intimately tied. with a journalistic and scholarly style, historian steve andrews, in “creation stories: survivance, sovereignty, and oil in mha country,” describes how the mandan, hadatsa, and arikara nations retain land control, even though the colonizer forced absences of those nations by controlling treaty language. andrews argues that a crease implies a fold unfolded, a mind made up and then unmade, and an opening that refuses the very closure that created it. through two interviews, he traces the implications for tribal sovereignty as it pertains to the interviewees, lisa and cory. interwoven and creating the true narrative through the essay, are four different types of creation stories: the tale told by oil; the stories told by cory and lisa and the examples they embody that take sustenance from that deep past in order to progress toward a workable and sustainable future; and finally, the critique of the dominant culture’s political creation story. molly mcglennen in “chasms and collisions: native american women’s decolonial labor” similarly argues that the artwork we create enacts survivance, while also illuminating long histories of genocide. indigenous artwork creates indigenous visualities that trouble settlercolonial designs of signifying the indian—engaging audience awareness that settler-colonial images act in troubling ways as the markers of authenticity rather than indigenous experiences. chitimacha/choctaw artist sarah sense and cherokee artist shan goshorn create complex, threemelissa michal slocum “there is no question” 24 dimensional narratives of native women that resist metonymic settler-colonial constructions, which not only perpetuate fetishized stereotypes but also normalize and justify ongoing violence against native women. both artists’ visual narratives are the types of stories that prove genocide at the same time as they intensify a critical discourse of survivance. in “what ma lach’s bones tell us: performances of relational materiality in response to genocide” maría regina firmino castillo argues that performance was used to implement violent ontological impositions during guatemala’s genocidal war against the ixil maya (19791985) while highlighting performance’s role in ontological regeneration in postwar guatemala and other places undergoing similar struggles. castillo uses chela sandoval’s semilogical deconstruction to reveal that the acts of violence committed against the ixil was not only staged to commit genocide but also to impose upon survivors’ specific ontological dispositions aligned with state interests. in turn, survivors also engaged in performative activities to regenerate ixil ways of being and relating to territory. the argument deepens understandings of how genocide and ecocide are braided together with ontological destruction. the question is not whether this is american indian genocide. there are instead questions we must continue to examine even beyond our special issue. the question is: how do the perpetrators keep getting away with it? the question is: why has america worked so hard to rid from all structures the presence of american indians, except if controlled rhetoric, forced laws, or revised histories? the question is: how does genocide only get defined by the perpetrators? the question is: why do those who stole the land, forced removal of millions from their land, raped women, gave smallpox-laced blankets to tribal nations, burned entire crops, massacred entire or nearly entire nations, educated to assimilate to kill the indian, and has and still is killing the very land they stole still control the narrative? how has this logic not been broken down, torn apart, and flung to the far reaches of the vast oceans to disappear? how does genocide keep happening over and over–– different peoples, different patterns, same logic, same deniers–– across the world? a long history of intergenerational genocide exists from contact through today, and not simply intergenerational trauma because the genocide has been passed down, evolved within political systems, and ingrained in all tribal communities—so hidden that it doesn’t seem like genocide. each nation and each individual of that nation is affected. the act of erasing implies intent to tamper with historical record, education systems, and public knowledge. that would mean it was a choice that this history and these stories were simply left to float out into the wind, transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 25 intentionally away from public knowledge. forcibly removed. thought to be in places from which they would not return. hoped would not return. a slow genocide is still an intentional genocide. when you want to be more dead than alive because of these systems—isn’t that genocide? when the borders you live within treat you as if you are already dead—isn’t that genocide? this audience remembering the above points becomes a better experiencing audience now open to redefining genocide through those who have experienced the cycles of extermination—cycles that are a process which can be broken by unclouded good minds. there is no question of american indian genocide. and our theories are still here to combat any question. notes 1 for further discussions of the peace confederacy and its impact on haudenosaunee communities, please see the following sources: a.w. paul wallace, white roots of peace; treetv, “the peacemaker and tadadaho”; penelope kelsey, reading the wampum: essays on hodinöhsö:ni’: visual code and epistemological recovery (65-80); jeanette rodriguez, a clan mother’s call: reconstructing haudenosaunee cultural memory. 2 in a monograph i am developing, i discuss how these dialogues can be healing and how the good mind and haudenosaunee values can act as theoretical approaches to trauma, genocide, and reconciliation. 3 see, for example, david e. stannard; benjamin madley; brendan c. lindsay; edward b. westermann; and gary clayton anderson. other books, such as those by samantha power and john toland, also have dialogues about genocide and us reactions to genocide. power does not discuss american indian genocide, but specifically details america’s lack of involvement and silence in genocide within other countries. toland deconstructs how hitler’s logic was inspired by america’s use of the removal and reservation system. 4 after a formal study i completed with 25 voluntary students, informal discussions with 8 years of students in my classrooms, colleagues, friends, and family, this appears the rule, rather than the exception of what is learned. 5 please see nicolle dragone’s “haudenosaunee literature: a view from outside the culture.” ma thesis, university of oklahoma, 2002. dragone’s work argues for applying a tribal nation’s theories to its own literature for a deeper, more respectful critique and understanding of the text. she builds a case for reading haudenosaunee literature using a haudenosaunee-based theoretical model developed by wisconsin oneida, carol cornelius. 6 see leanne howe, choctalking on other realities. 7 see native america and the question of genocide. melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 26 8 please see ronald grigor suny et al., the question of genocide: armenians and turks at the end of the ottoman empire. 9 see michael m. gunter, armenian history and the question of genocide and alex alvarez, native america and the question of genocide. 10 for more information on how lemkin developed the term “genocide,” see totally unofficial: the autobiography of raphael lemkin by raphael lemkin (edited by donna-lee frieze) and raphaёl lemkin and the concept of genocide by douglas irvin-erickson. 11 “‘kill the indian, and save the man’: captain richard h. pratt on the education of the native americans.” history matters. historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/ 12 there have been other spaces, too, which have formed truth and reconciliation commissions, such as canada, columbia, australia, and the list could on. some are ongoing commissions. some have been commissions which existed for specific times. some commissions sought justice specifically for genocide or crimes against humanity. other commissions sought investigations of single events. it’s important to note that many commissions have had problematic systems or ways of carrying out reconciliation. for more information, see “measuring the impacts of truth and reconciliation commissions” by michal ben-josef hirsch, et al. 13 this is part of our condolence ceremony, which is a grieving process when someone passes away. for further discussions of this ceremony, see taiaiake alfred’s peace, power, righteousness: an indigenous manifesto. 14 see david wallace adams's education for extinction; colin calloway’s indian history of an american institution: american indians and dartmouth; k. tsianina lomawaima’s “domesticity in the federal indian schools: the power of authority over mind and body”; joseph johnson’s to do good to my indian brethren: the writings of joseph johnson 17511776; jon reyhner, et al. a history of indian education; margaret connell szasz’s indian education in the american colonies 1607-1783; and clifford e. trafzer, et al edited collection, boarding school blues. 15see also laura santhanam, et al, “suicide among american indians nearly double national rate.” 16 see this article for more information on the tribal access program for national crime information which was launched in 2015: newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/missingand-murdered-no-one-knows-how-many-native-women-have-disappeared-lgvn2pw97e6dg_guqcpmq/ works cited adams, david wallace. education for extinction. up of kansas, 1995. alfred, taiaiake. peace, power, righteousness: an indigenous manifesto. oxford up, 1999. ---. wasasé: indigenous pathways of action and freedom. broadview press, 2005. alvarez, alex. native america and the question of genocide. rowman and littleman, 2014. anderson, eric clayton. ethnic cleansing and the indian: the crime that should haunt transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 27 america. u of oklahoma p, 2015. bardeau, phyllis. facebook message. facebook. 2 feb. 2017. ---. definitive seneca: it’s in the word. edited by jaré cardinal. seneca-iroquois national museum, 2011. bloxham, donald. the great game of genocide. oxford up, 2005, p. 69. brave heart, maria yellow horse, et al. “the american indian holocaust: healing historical unresolved grief.” american indian and alaska native mental health research, vol. 8, no. 2, 1998, pp. 56-72. brave heart, maria yellow horse, et al. “historical trauma among indigenous peoples of the americas: concepts, research, and clinical considerations.” journal of psychoactive drugs, vol. 43, no. 4, 2011, pp. 282-89. brooks, lisa. “digging the roots: locating an ethical, native criticism.” reasoning together: the native critics collective, edited by craig womack, et al., u of oklahoma p, 2008, pp. 234-64. byrd, jodi a. “‘living my native life deadly’: red lake, ward churchill, and the discourses of competing genocides.” american indian quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2, 2007, pp. 310-32. calloway, colin. indian history of an american institution: american indians and dartmouth. dartmouth college press, 2010. dragone, nicholle. “haudenosaunee literature: a view from outside the culture.” ma thesis, university of oklahoma, 2002. fein, helen. “genocide by attrition 1939-1993: the warsaw ghetto, cambodia, and sudan; links between human rights, health, and mass death.” health and human rights, vol. 2, no. 2, 1997, pp. 10-45. finkielkraut, alain. the future of a negation: reflections on the question of genocide. translated by mary byrd kelly, u of nebraska p, 1998. firmino castillo, maría regina. “performing kab’awil: relational materiality against genocidal derealizations.” transmotion. fall 2018. fryberg, stephanie a., et al. “of warrior chiefs and indian princesses: the psychological consequences of american indian mascots.” basic and applied social psychology, vol. 30, no. 3, 2008, pp. 208-18. george-kanentiio, doug m. iroquois on fire: a voice from the mohawk nation. praeger publishers, 2006. melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 28 gunter, michael m. armenian history and the question of genocide. palgrave macmillan, 2011. hirsch, michal ben-josef, et al. “measuring the impacts of truth and reconciliation commissions: placing the global ‘success’ of trcs in local perspective.” cooperation and conflict, vol. 47, no. 3, 22 august 2012, pp. 386-403. hogan, linda. the woman who watches over the world. w.w. norton & co., 2001. p.14. howe, leanne. choctalking on other realities. aunt lute books, 2013. irvin-erickson, douglas. raphaёl lemkin and the concept of genocide. u of pennsylvania p, 2016. johnson, joseph. to do good to my indian brethren: the writings of joseph johnson 17511776. edited by laura j. murray, u of massachusetts p, 1998. kelsey, penelope myrtle. reading the wampum: essays on hodinöhsö:ni’: visual code and epistemological recovery. syracuse up, 2014. pp. 65-80. “‘kill the indian, and save the man’: captain richard h. pratt on the education of the native americans.” history matters. web. 15 nov. 2015. historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/ lane, amber. “thanksgiving address.” youtube. 28 dec. 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qbmblzgjco. accessed 10 march 2017. leavitt, rachel a, et al., “suicides among american indian/alaska natives – national violent death reporting system, 18 states, 2003–2014.” morbidity and mortality weekly report, vol. 67, no. 8, 2 march 2018, pp. 237-42. lemkin, raphael. axis rule in occupied europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress. the lawbook exchange, 2005. ---. totally unofficial: the autobiography of raphael lemkin. edited by donna-lee frieze. yale up, 2013. lindsay, brendan c. murder state: california's native american genocide, 1846-1873. u of nebraska p, 2015. lomawaima, k. tsianina. “domesticity in the federal indian schools: the power of authority over mind and body.” american ethnologist, vol. 20, no. 2, may 1993, pp. 227-40. lyons, oren. “haudenosaunee faithkeeper, chief oren lyons addressing delegates to the united nations organization opened ‘the year of the indigenous peoples’ (1993) in the united nations general assembly auditorium, united nations plaza, new york city, december 10, 1992.” rat haus reality press, 1 aug. 2017, transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 29 ratical.org/many_worlds/6nations/olatunin92.html. madley, benjamin. an american genocide: the united states and the california indian catastrophe, 1846-1873. yale up, 2017. nunpa, chris mato. “historical amnesia: the ‘hidden genocide’ and destruction of the indigenous peoples of the united states.” hidden genocides: power, knowledge, memory, edited by alexander laban hinton, et al., rutgers up, 2013, pp. 97-125. irvin-erikson, douglas, et al. “introduction: hidden genocides: power, knowledge, memory.” hidden genocides: power, knowledge, memory, edited by alexander laban hinton, et al., rutgers up, 2013, pp. 1-17. pember, mary annette. “missing and murdered: no one knows how many native women have disappeared.” indian country today, 11 april 2016, newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/missing-and-murdered-no-one-knows-howmany-native-women-have-disappeared-lgvn2pw97e6dg_-guqcpmq/. accessed 11 november 2017. power, samantha. “the problem from hell”: america and the age of genocide. 2002. basic books, 2013. reyhner, jon, et al. a history of indian education. eastern montana college, 1989. rich-heape films. “our spirits don’t speak english: indian boarding school.” youtube. 24 jan. 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdshqtbh5d4. accessed 23 jan. 2009. rodriguez, jeanette. a clan mother’s call: reconstructing haudenosaunee cultural memory. suny p, 2017. rosenberg, sheri p. “genocide is a process, not an event.” genocide studies and prevention: an international journal, vol. 7, issue 1, article 4, 2012, pp. 15-23. scholarcommons. scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=gsp rosenberg, sheri p., et al. “genocide by attrition: silent and efficient.” genocide matters: ongoing issues and emerging perspectives, edited by joyce aspel and ernesto verdeja, routledge, 2013, pp. 106-26. santhanam, laura, et al. “suicide among american indians nearly double national rate.” pbs newshour, 30 sept. 2015. www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/suicide-rate-among-youngamerican-indians-nearly-double-national-average/. accessed 15 oct. 2017. silko, leslie marmon. “an interview with leslie marmon silko.” interview by thomas irmer. the write stuff, 1995, http://www.altx.com/interviews/silko.html. melissa michal slocum “there is no question” 30 skutnabb-kangas, tove and robert dunbar. indigenous children’s education as linguistic genocide and a crime against humanity? a global view. gáldu čála – journal of indigenous peoples rights, no. 1, 2010. p. 80. stannard, david e. american holocaust. oxford up, 1993. suny, ronald grigor, et al., eds. the question of genocide: armenians and turks at the end of the ottoman empire. oxford up, 2011. szasz, margaret connell. indian education in the american colonies 1607-1783. u of nebraska p, 2005. toland, john. adolf hitler: the definitive biography. doubleday and company, 1976. trafzer, clifford e., et al., eds. boarding school blues. u of nebraska p, 2006. treetv. “the peacemaker and tadadaho.” youtube, 17 sept. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ivzighphvw&t=60s. tuhiwai smith, linda. decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. zed books, 2005. united nations office on genocide prevention and the responsibility project. “genocide background.” www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.html united states census bureau. “facts for features: american indian and alaska native heritage month.” u.s. department of commerce, 12 nov. 2014, www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2014/cb14-ff26.html. accessed 16 oct. 2016. united states holocaust memorial museum. “coining a word and championing a cause: the story of raphael lemkin.” holocaust encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/coining-a-word-and-championing-acause-the-story-of-raphael-lemkin. accessed 4 oct. 2018. vizenor, gerald. “genocide tribunals.” native liberty: natural reason and cultural survivance, u of nebraska p, 2009, pp. 131-58. wallace, paul. white roots of peace: the iroquois book of life. clear light publishers, 1994. westermann, edward b. hitler’s ostkrieg and the indian wars: comparing genocide and conquest. u of oklahoma p, 2016. whisperkish. “violence against native women is not traditional: whisper at tedx abqwoman.” youtube, uploaded by tedx talks. albuquerque, nm. 11 feb. 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6pz9v6lzcu. accessed 1 oct. 2014. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 152 philip j. deloria. becoming mary sully: toward an american indian abstract. university of washington press, 2019. 324 pp. isbn 9780295745046. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295745046/becoming-mary-sully/ since the turn of the twenty-first century, the walls of the narrow enclosure called “modernism”—a structure with rooms designed principally for denizens of new york city and western europe—have been blown apart by a global re-evaluation of the many modernisms that have co-existed and flourished in the last one hundred years. prominent scholars of modern african art (mercer 2005, hassan 2010, o’brien et al., 2012) as well as scholars of latin american modernism (ramírez and olea 2004) have been documenting this phenomenon for two decades. but with few exceptions (anthes 2006), scholars of native north american art have turned to this phenomenon only recently (phillips 2010, 2015, harney and phillips 2018). philip deloria’s study of the remarkable work of his great-aunt, mary sully (born susan mabel sully, 1896-1963) adds depth and nuance to our understanding of the many forms that modernism takes outside of the metropolitan mainstream. sully’s legacy to the art world was a box of more than 100 colored pencil drawings that she called “personality prints.” each of these is a vertical triptych, the ostensible subject of which is often a figure from popular or highbrow culture. film impresario florenz ziegfeld, actor and dancer fred astaire, and writers eugene o’neill and gertrude stein (plates 4.8 and 4.9) are among them. in other instances, she grapples with something more abstract: “easter” (167-172), or “children of divorce” (82-83). trained in history and american studies, deloria gets high marks as an art historian in this book, successfully and persuasively reading these images iconographically, stylistically, and socially. in addition to the expected reading of each triptych alone, he cleverly deciphers them across the horizontal registers, concluding that their meaning as a collected oeuvre is to be found in the way that sully defined the top-most image as the “signifying abstract”: generally representational designs in which the iconographic clues have the most clarity. the middle registers contain the “geometric abstract” in which sully uses all of her draftsmanly talents for pattern, symmetry, and repetition. the bottom registers, the “american indian abstract,” generally contain what the author describes as “overdetermined images that want to leap out of any categorical box that might try to contain them” (114), sometimes drawing from what we might think of as native imagery—beadwork, quillwork, hide-painting, and the like—as well as from the broader visual realm that, over the last century, native people have incorporated as deeply as the rest of us. deloria explains the haphazard way that these survived the artist’s death, first forgotten in the archives of her distinguished sister, the writer and dakota linguist ella deloria (1889-1971), then nearly destroyed, and eventually passed on to the author’s mother, who gave them to him (4-5). his scrutiny of these astonishingly complex works, which veer from the representational to the abstract and decorative, wrestles not only with family biography but with the cultural history of modernism in art, as well as what modernism meant to twentieth-century native people. in part, it is a logical continuation of his previous well-received books (deloria 1998, 2004) that shake up received truths about native people and others; in part it is also a loving family memoir. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295745046/becoming-mary-sully/ janet catherine berlo review of becoming mary sully 153 sully’s work sits comfortably within the american art historical canon with which she was certainly familiar, and deloria compares her favourably with marsden hartley, charles demuth, john sloan, and others, reminding us that “one did not need a passport to breathe the air and drink the water of modernism” (147). sully was her sister’s driver and companion during the many summers of ella’s ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork across the plains; during the academic year the sisters principally lived in new york city, at least during much of the 1930s and 40s. here sully was exposed to a panoply of modern popular culture, from which she drew much of her subject matter. in the museums of new york, as well as within her family and during the long trips across the plains, sully’s eyes were filled with the native imagery that rubs shoulders so comfortably in her work with the popular, the modern and the cosmopolitan. while deloria does not compare sully with artists who have principally been understood within the vexed categories variously known as outsider, visionary, or self-taught art, her life and work has much in common with some of them. she was a socially uneasy and reclusive commentator on popular culture, like joseph cornell and henry darger (hartigan 2015, bonesteel 2000); her work reflects turbulent inner emotional and spiritual states as well as a reckoning with the larger modern world, like that of josephine tota, theora hamblett, and minnie evans (berlo 2018). the author speculates that today mary sully might be diagnosed with depression, anxiety disorder, or bipolar disorder, and treated pharmaceutically (85). her art was clearly her refuge, and we are the better for it. she provides a brilliant nuance to our understanding of the many modernisms that flourished in the mid-twentieth century, and her great-nephew is a most worthy interlocutor for her art. janet catherine berlo, university of rochester, new york works cited anthes, bill. native moderns: american indian painting, 1940-1960. durham, nc: duke university press, 2006. batchen, geoffrey, guest editor, world art. 4:1 (june 2014). special issue on local modernisms. berlo, janet c. “tears of blood: visionary women at the margins of twentieth-century art.” jessica marten, ed. the surreal visions of josephine tota. rochester, ny: the memorial art gallery, 2018, pp. 32-54. bonesteel, michael. henry darger: art and selected writings. ny: rizzoli, 2000. deloria, philip j. playing indian. new haven, ct: yale university press, 1998. ---. indians in unexpected places. ks: university press of kansas, 2004. harney, elizabeth and ruth phillips, eds. mapping modernisms: art, indigeneity, colonialism. durham, nc: duke university press, 2018. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 154 hartigan, lynda, ed. joseph cornell: wanderlust. london royal academy of arts, 2015. hassan, salah. “african modernism: beyond alternative modernities discourse.” south atlantic quarterly. 109:3 (summer 2010) pp. 451-473. huyssen, andreas. “geographies of modernism in a globalizing world.” new german critique. 100 (winter 2007) pp. 189-207. mercer, kobena. cosmopolitan modernisms. cambridge, ma: mit press, 2005 o’brien, elaine, et al., eds. modern art in africa, asia, and latin america: an introduction to global modernisms. wiley blackwell, 2012. phillips, ruth b. “aesthetic primitivism revisited: the global diaspora of ‘primitive art’ and the rise of indigenous modernisms.” the journal of art historiography. 12 (june 2015) pp. 1-25. ---. “aboriginal modernities: first nations art, c. 1880-1970,” anne whitelaw et al. eds. the visual arts in canada in the twentieth century. oxford university press, 2010, pp 349-369. ramírez, mari carmen and héctor olea et al. inverted utopias: avant-garde art in latin america. new haven, ct: yale university press, 2004. microsoft word barrett-mills.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 113 kent roach. canadian justice, indigenous injustice: the gerald stanley and colten boushie case. mcgill-queen’s university press, 2019. 307 pp. isbn: 9780773556386. https://www.mqup.ca/canadian-justice--indigenous-injustice-products-9780228000730.php it is more than three years since colten boushie, a young man of the red pheasant cree nation, was murdered on the stanley family farm in rural saskatchewan. gerald stanley, the defendant whose case was constructed upon a sequence of tragic and remarkably unlikely coincidences operating in concert, was acquitted on february 9, 2018. the murder, trial, and eventual acquittal were each seismic reaffirmations of the intrinsically violent cornerstones of a settler colonial legal doctrine that serves to dispossess indigenous peoples in canada. in stanley’s trial, as ken williams (cree from the george gordon first nation) commented, “the system did not fail the colonisers” and kent roach seeks to show his readership how and why this case is emblematic, not aberrative, of the canadian criminal justice system (media indigena). in canadian justice, indigenous injustice, roach unpacks the negligent policework, sub-par prosecution, and judicial irregularities that yielded a not-guilty verdict. in doing so, he illustrates that these very inexplicabilities are deeply embedded within the settler colonial imaginary of a lawful canada. canadian justice, indigenous injustice traces a significant instance of the “gap between law and justice” in the colten boushie murder trial, wherein a more fundamental legal argument unfurled by proxy (179). a shift occurred, incrementally but steadily, whereby the defence of one’s property mutated from being the source of gerald stanley’s exculpation from blame, to being his tacit justification for the murder. the transformational undercurrents at play resemble the dynamics of what unangax scholar eve tuck and k. wayne yang term “settler moves to innocence… those strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all” (10). roach’s account follows a path that is acutely attuned to this fraught context, and his analytical methodology draws on histories that exist within and without the canadian legal canon to underscore “the impossibility of reconciliation unless there is a full accounting of the truth, and specifically, the multi-faceted and multigenerational harms of colonialism on indigenous people” (12). of course, many would curtail that quoted sentiment at reconciliation. numerous scholars, including billy-ray belcourt (driftpile cree nation), have argued compellingly that reconciliation represents “an affective mess… stubbornly ambivalent in its potentiality” with a tremendously disproportionate pressure on indigenous peoples to accede to the state’s levelling terms. that roach’s contribution so effectively demonstrates the fundamental absurdity of what yellowknives dene scholar glen coulthard calls “the optics of recognition and reconciliation” which “produce neocolonial subjectivities” in the legal sphere is, however, ironically inconsistent with his reluctance to question reconciliation as a vehicle for the indigenous justice he champions (156). i raise this tension here to give a lens for my review; roach does timely and impressive work in canadian justice, indigenous injustice, but it is work that is sometimes flecked with strange foci and odd critical omissions. if it is the case that truth “may be a barrier to reconciliation,” then a more rigorous examination of the criteria that coalesce to constitute reconciliation is required (12). roach explains at the outset that his project uses “a criminal process approach” to undertake a holistic study of the justice process from policework through to sentencing, across legal representation and media representation. this slant is deployed to “place the stanley/boushie case in its larger historical, political, social, and legal context,” and thus exposes a slew of deeply lodged, interwoven deficiencies of the canadian judicial system that contravene the jake barrett-mills review essay: canadian justice, indigenous injustice 114 superficial equality and plurality of sovereignties that the nation espouses (11). roach identifies the most egregious aspects of the trial to be ones that sit well within the bounds of canadian judicial protocol, encapsulating the structural inequities that exacerbate these issues. it is an impressive take-down of the fallacious paradigm of neutrality that buttresses canadian (and more generally settler colonial) law writ large; a framework that “enables actors of the settler state [to] continue their predictable looped playback of regret, apologies and promises for a better tomorrow” (nunn, 1331), as evinced by prime minister justin trudeau’s controversial “we must do better” afterword contribution to the proceedings. the first chapters establish the lattice of historical, socio-economic, and political contexts that precipitate the current legal relationship between the settler province of saskatchewan and its indigenous peoples. roach is firm that “[c]riminal trials” such as gerald stanley’s “should not be a contest of historical grievances. but if they become one, there should be equality of arms” and any such parity must begin with a sustained inquiry into canada’s grievous colonial history (169). the bulk is subsequently dedicated to examining the trial with this social history foregrounded, taken in tandem with a number of criminal cases that share parallels with boushie’s murder. roach then turns to the legislative and social legacies of the case for indigenous and non-indigenous folks. he gestures toward proposals for judicial reform that stress the remedial potential of canada’s numbered treaties and the inclusion of indigenous legal frameworks, congruent with shiri pasternak’s claim that “simultaneous operations of law may take place in a single area, across distinctive epistemological and ontological frameworks” (148). the cloaked prejudices that feed into demographic jury selection, the controversial use of peremptory challenges, and the racialised denigration of indigenous witnesses in the boushie murder to preclude indigenous presence in the trial all receive a wealth of scrutiny. these are patently unsurprising—yet unexpectedly complex—phenomena that roach guides his reader through adroitly. indeed, the author excels at expressing dense legal traditions in a nearnarrative manner that is simultaneously comprehensible for the non-expert reader and compelling to the specialist. legal argot is accompanied not just by explication, but by direct application to verbatim, human excerpts from the trial transcript, then extrapolated to comment on the structural fabric of the canadian justice system. stanley’s defence peremptorily dismissed five “visibly indigenous jurors” from an already underrepresented pool of eligible candidates and, in a move entirely compliant with the canadian legal mechanisms, was not obliged to provide a reason (95). roach conceptualises the notoriety of these challenges not just in terms of the lightning rod that they represented to the case, but also the myriad concealed prejudices and clusters of structurally racist policies that such tactics reinforced. implicit bias is one such factor that roach grapples with throughout, with particular reference to the inadequacy of combatting it via the specious notion of randomness in the judicial process. “eliminating” bias, in fact, simply transfers it to a faux point of neutrality within an inherently discriminatory legal architecture. this is not to say that the elimination of bias is not a worthwhile pursuit, but that this purported panacea is often yet another settler move to innocence. roach observes that the court and, by extension, the settler-canadian social imaginary have “elevated random selection that treated everyone the same over substantive equality that [is] attentive to disproportionate impact” (101); random selection unfailingly privileges the majority at the expense of minorities. this is the type of ersatz parity that comes under steady fire throughout as a covert tool of indigenous suppression, and roach transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 115 emphasises that it is incumbent upon members of a just society to “question public exercises of power even by twelve anonymous fellow citizens who are conscripted to do a difficult job” (13). roach concomitantly forwards a persuasive take on just how entrenched property has become to the notion of just cause. this is not necessarily new ground, but roach does give an especially cogent interpretation. a self-defence gambit was never employed by stanley, yet roach calls out the inferred omnipresence of defence of property throughout the trial to reveal that “the boundaries between defence of property and self-defence are fluid” in this and other murders of indigenous people (204). i hear roach’s argument as echoing the type of critical charge levied against the similarly “neutral” anatomy of the sciences by ojibwe pedagogist megan bang and douglas medin; roach ceaselessly foregrounds the notion that the hard questions and answers that arise from colten boushie’s murder “depend on who’s asking” (medin and bang 10). roach even goes so far as to suggest that a jury comprising both indigenous and non-indigenous representatives could be parsed as a right conferred by the peacekeeping clause of treaty 6. it is in such moments of bold acuity that canadian justice, indigenous injustice excels. unfortunately, these elements are occasionally lost in a barrage of procedural information. it is creditable that roach endeavours to write for a lay-audience, but one gets the sense that he does not always trust them enough to grasp the salient points informing his perspective. passages in the text where roach lingers on details of the trial that he has already covered comprehensively could be sacrificed to more fully explore indigenous legal alternatives, as he does with the appeal to the treaty 6’s peacekeeping clause and the numbered treaties more generally. essential yet ultimately swollen sections on stanley’s hang fire defence and the peremptory challenges that were evoked in the trial could be condensed to good effect. in return for this trade-off, roach could devote sufficient space to begin to follow up the question posed by the final chapter “can we do better?” with “how can we do better?” gerald stanley’s acquittal generated international ripples within canada and without. bill c-75, passed into law in june 2019, amended the criminal code to abolish peremptory challenges, in order to nullify discriminatory deployment. writing prior to the bill’s royal assent, roach argues that c-75 is a necessary step, yet still insufficient on the greater scale. alongside other band-aid measures, there “may be improvements” that arise from such piecemeal reforms, “but they do not even begin to address the legacy of colonial and systematic discrimination” that they purport to solve (207). abolishing peremptory challenges amounts to papering over the problem of indigenous exclusion within the judicial system without confronting the lack of active indigenous inclusion, two issues which roach locates as intimately related, but not diametric. consequently, roach proposes a remedial tactic that foregrounds indigenous treaties in the redress of the crown’s racist justice system. his line of reasoning here is promising but unavoidably inchoate, in line with mi’kmaq scholar bonita lawrence’s contention that the settler colonial formation “produces a way of thinking—a grammar—which embeds itself in every attempt to change it” (25). as anishinaabe legal theorist john borrows explains in his foreword, “treaties between indigenous peoples and the crown are foundational agreements. they formed our country on the prairies and beyond. they are also our highest law because they are constitutionally recognized and affirmed” (viii). this is a reconciliatory sentiment that roach carries forward, and indeed one part of an important discussion that goes otherwise untouched. though sophisticated and astute, roach’s critique fails to adequately interrogate the dicey presupposition that the numbered treaties are themselves appropriate rubrics for harmony jake barrett-mills review essay: canadian justice, indigenous injustice 116 between an inherently possessive settler colonial state and indigenous peoples. borrows attests that “[c]olonization has broken both the treaty and aboriginal law and cultural teachings” (xii). yet we must also remember that colonization brokered the terms of treaty 6. not unilaterally, of course—i do not mean to diminish the roles that indigenous peoples had in the design and negotiation of treaties—yet the very presence of the crown as a party to this negotiation is proof positive of colonialism’s embeddedness as an actant in the diplomatic process, not just the cause of its failure. indeed, scott richard lyons (ojibwe/dakota) has argued forcefully against the reductive and racist narrative of indigenous gullibility that clings to the idea of informed assent via the use of “x-marks” in early treaty-making with colonising forces. by and large, roach follows in just this spirit. he refuses to rest on a deleterious dichotomy of indigenous absence and presence, and this complexity underpins most of his thesis. yet where lyons’ complication of the internal agonistics of such “coerced signs of consent made under conditions not of our own making but with hopes of a better future” executes a difficult balancing act (40), canadian justice, indigenous injustice leans at times a little too far towards a reading that implies a jarring colonial ambivalence. roach acknowledges that treaty 6 was finally fully signed in the december of 1882 when many of the indigenous peoples it was to apply to faced starvation, and “the physical hunger of indigenous people and colonial government’s fears about possible conflict with them were factors in the negotiation of treaty 6” (17). despite this awareness, he hesitates to trouble the matrices of power that inhere in that embryonic political context. for all of the excellent work that roach performs to foreground indigenous legal understandings in canadian justice, indigenous injustice, he consistently couches this work in a tenor of mutual aid which invariably conjures an attendant implication of mutual responsibility. i do not doubt roach’s intentions, but as the breadth of his investigation should suggest, enriching the state of canada “by greater awareness of, and respect for, indigenous law” (232) is unequivocally not a responsibility of indigenous communities; it is a hitherto enforced legacy. roach asserts regularly that the treaties held between the crown and first nations hold the potential to provide informative guides for the future of justice as “a foundation to reclaim common ground on the basis of mutual consent and assistance” but without the specificity one would hope to see (37). roach seems to expend a lot of energy on the premise that the treaties can work and perhaps not enough on looking at the manifold material and social conditions that have fed into their historical inefficacy in buttressing the rights of indigenous peoples in canada. scholarship on the subject of the politics of reconciliation by indigenous theorists is rich and somewhat conspicuous by its absence from roach’s argument. nonetheless, his approach reminds us that observance of treaties is not optional, and that adherence is not somehow gracious on the part of the settler state. despite the aforementioned paucity of indigenous critics, roach never descends into prescription—there is no pretension to fully understand nor judge indigenous laws, only a demand for the space for indigenous communities to define and apply these laws (229). during his analysis of the indigenous witnesses at stanley’s trial, roach relays the important ways in which the canadian court was complicit in the infringement of cree law. eric meechance and belinda jackson were both friends of colten boushie’s and witnesses to his murder. quite aside from disparaging their trustworthiness with barely veiled racial prejudice, stanley’s lawyer scott spencer “confronted jackson with a photo of the deceased as he had already done the day before with meechance… a violation of cree law with respect to a deceased’s journey after death” (156). on neither occasion did anyone outside of the court’s gallery pay mind to this significance. key here is the way in which roach situates this transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 117 instance of injustice within a frame that is not constrained to a discussion of mere cultural difference, which, in the hierarchical settler purview, is a category that occupies a position below that of the law. roach is talking about cree laws, not cree beliefs, and this is where his work exhibits a generative deviation from the settler colonial historical norm which presumes indigenous alternatives to be “a soft form of law” (228). liberal canada pays ample lip-service to ambiguous notions of indigenous self-determination yet tends to hold fast to its juridical singularity without any substantive concession. the nation is consistently recalcitrant towards accepting that the “normative lifeways and resurgent practices” expressed by indigenous peoples might nourish “alternative structures of law and sovereign authority” that are “grounded on a critical refashioning of the best of indigenous legal and political traditions” (coulthard 179). by illuminating the pervasiveness of this national systemic attitude against indigenous legal self-determination, roach makes the intrinsic violence that attends to it abundantly clear. perhaps even to a fault. roach made the decision not to involve colten boushie’s family during the book’s production, a decision which i think bears some coverage here. as a methodological choice, roach conscientiously elects not to interview anybody personally involved in the case to “avoid increasing the trauma they already have experienced” (11). however, according to a report by ntawnis piapot (piapot cree nation), aspects of roach’s rehashing of the story have performed this traumatising work regardless. colten’s cousin jade tootoosis was critical of the fact that the boushie/baptiste family were neither asked for their consent nor forewarned of the book’s production and release, which fell near the one-year anniversary of stanley’s acquittal (piapot). tootoosis also objected to the book’s original cover: a vertically split panel, half black, half red, with gerald stanley’s face set in dotwork style alongside one of the photos of colten boushie most used by the media. it is an admittedly coarse image that has since been changed by the publisher at roach’s request. that being said, with its timeliness and potential for wide-ranging appeal, roach’s contribution to this conversation could have a wide influence on reading lists in the field of canadian law and settler colonial jurisdiction more broadly. this book provides crucial insight into the areas where the law and justice enjoy scant nodes of commonality, avowing that indigenous laws must not be blithely binarised as adversarial to canadian law but instead as concurrent and coherent alternatives. roach offers a narrative of inequity that, despite its maddening injustices, starts to desanctify the monotheorism of settler law and instead travels toward an understanding of “the many-tentacled system by which indigenous law and federal canadian law can relate” in ways that are not de facto antagonistic (garcia 268). this work delineates a vital move. but instead of being a move towards settler innocence, the kind of mutually integrative relationships between indigenous and settler laws that roach marks out a nascent trajectory for start to move away from settler innocence or, at the least, rigid settler definitions of innocence. one would hope for further scholarship to continue along this trajectory and to readily understand, as roach does here, that “indigenous laws” are just that and not a euphemism for something else. this kind of scholarship is already emerging apace. spearheaded by john borrows and val napoleon (saulteau first nation), the university of victoria in canada launched the “world’s first indigenous law program” in 2018 from which students will “graduate with professional degrees in both canadian common law (juris doctor or jd) and indigenous legal orders (juris indigenarum doctor or jid)” (“world's first indigenous law program”). though interactions between indigenous peoples’ laws and settler laws will doubtless be characterised by “[c]ontingency and incommensurability,” endeavours like this engage in the “complex process of affective labor” (rowe and tuck 8) needed for any wider imbrication of legal frameworks to occur. and it is within the reading jake barrett-mills review essay: canadian justice, indigenous injustice 118 lists of such projects, subject to approbation and problematisation, that roach’s work could be of assistance. with his incisive interrogation of the various settler moves to innocence made during the stanley trial, the incendiary media coverage, and what the legislative aftermath represents, roach’s contribution reminds us that declaring “‘[n]ot this’ makes a difference even if it does not immediately produce a propositional otherwise” (povinelli 192). the recognition and integration of indigenous legal and cosmological understandings that roach advocates will help to orient discourses of indigenous law and serve as an augmentative perspective to the decolonisation of canada’s legal system. jake barrett-mills, university of east anglia works cited belcourt, billy-ray. “political depression in a time of reconciliation.” active history. 15 jan. 2016, www.activehistory.ca/2016/01/political-depression-in-a-time-of-reconciliation/. coulthard, glen sean. red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, 2014. garcia, edgar. “pictography, law, and earth: gerald vizenor, john borrows, and louise erdrich.” pmla.134:2 (2019): 260-279. harp, rick, host, and brock pitawanakwat and ken williams, guests. “injustice for colten boushie.” media indigena. episode 102, media indigena, 15 feb. 2018, www.mediaindigena.libsyn.com/ep-102-injustice-for-colten-boushie. lawrence, bonita. “real” indians and others: mixed-blood urban native peoples and indigenous nationhood. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 2004. lyons, scott richard. x-marks: native signatures of assent. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, 2010. medin, douglas l. and megan bang. who’s asking?: native science, western science, and science education. cambridge, ma: the mit press, 2014. nunn, neil. “toxic encounters, settler logics of elimination, and the future of a continent.” antipode. 50:5 (2018): 1330-1348. pasternak, shiri. “jurisdiction and settler colonialism: where do laws meet?” canadian journal of law and society. 29:2 (2014): 145-161. piapot, ntawnis. “book about gerald stanley case upsets colten boushie's family due to lack of consultation.” cbc news, 21 feb. 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/boushie-family-triggered-by-roach-book1.5026486. povinelli, elizabeth a. economies of abandonment: social belonging and endurance in late liberalism. durham, nc: duke university press, 2011. rowe, aimee carrillo and eve tuck. “settler colonialism and cultural studies: ongoing settlement, cultural production, and resistance.” cultural studies ↔ critical methodologies. 17:1 (2017): 3-13. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 119 tuck, eve and k. wayne yang. “decolonization is not a metaphor.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society. 1:1 (2012): 1-40. uvic news. “world’s first indigenous law degree launches with historic and emotional ceremony.” university of victoria, 22 oct. 2018, https://www.uvic.ca/news/topics/2018+jidprogram-launch+news. microsoft word 955-article text-5179-1-2-20201110.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) i editorial with the publication of volume 6.2, the editors of transmotion are thrilled to be able to continue to highlight the diverse range of scholarly and creative work being produced in the field of indigenous studies today. the scholarly articles included in this issue engage with older, dare we say “canonical,” novels by gerald vizenor and louis owens, while also holding up exciting new work by cherie dimaline in indigenous ya fiction. we also feature an interview (posthumously published) with poet janice gould, a cento (employing the ishakkoy language) by jeffrey darensbourg, and our always robust collection of book reviews. in “spiralic time and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty: idle no more and the marrow thieves,” laura de vos connects cherie dimaline’s post-apocalyptic ya novel with the consciousness-raising work of the idle no more movement. focusing on the centrality of round dancing to idle no more participants, de vos highlights the ways the experience of time central to the movement’s activism serves to counteract or respond to the underlying assumptions of a canadian national temporality of reconciliation that is linear and progressive. unlike the dominant ideology of the canadian state, which thinks of historical redress through the process of reconciliation as in and of itself, idle no more focuses on the spiralic (cyclical, but transformed for the moment rather than mere repetition) resurgence of cultural traditions and ancestral knowledges, an experience of time that is better able to intervene in the work of decolonization. de vos further argues that dimaline’s the marrow thieves (2017) does similar consciousness raising work on radical relationality, charting indigenous youth’s power to build their futures in the now. the novel's organizing principle of spiralic time puts indigenous youth at the center, a move that helps further highlight the temporal aspect central to the idle no more movement. similar to round dancing, the marrow thieves offers a counter reality to that of canadian settler “progress” and “reconciliation.” writing directly to indigenous youth to invite them to see themselves as part of a continuing spiral of indigenous presence going back to when time began and continuing into a time when they themselves will be ancestors, dimaline emphasizes indigenous youth’s central role in resurgence, both within and beyond idle no more. francisco delgado’s article, “sordid pasts, indigenous futures: necropolitics and survivance in louis owens' bone game” examines the link between racial subjectivity and death continuing a conversation that began with the publication of achille mbembe’s 2003 article “necropolitics” and which has been extended into the field of indigenous studies most notably by jodi byrd (chickasaw). elaborating on mbembe’s and byrd’s frameworks, delgado offers a necropolitical reading of louis owens’ 1994 transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) ii novel bone game, arguing that the book prompts readers to discuss and reconcile the historical relationships between death and subjectivity and, more importantly, explore the possibilities of indigenous futures and sovereignty. delgado also draws on other indigenous scholarship, such as leanne betasamosake simpson’s concept of “indigenous freedom,” vine deloria jr.’s critique of anthropology, and gerald vizenor’s notion of “survivance,” in his analysis of the struggles and survivance strategies of owens’ characters, all of whom emphasize native agency and sovereignty over the predominant, mainstream narrative of native tragedy. hogan schaak’s “the physical presence of survivance in the heirs of columbus” highlights the importance for critics of recognizing that vizenor’s fiction often represents a space where theoretical concepts developed in his non-fiction essays acquire new layers of sophistication and complexity. focusing in particular on the concept of “survivance,” schaak argues that heirs (1991) does not simply deploy vizenor’s pre-existing framework, but surpasses it, crafting and testing a new definition of this key critical term. schaak maintains that, particularly through the character of stone columbus, vizenor adds a new dimension to survivance, extending the concept beyond its generally agreed upon definition as personal and intellectual liberation from identity constraints to encompass physical and communal healing as well. we are honored to be able to include lisa tatonetti’s interview with koyoonk’auwi writer and scholar janice gould (1949-2019), which was completed shortly before gould’s death. in “poetry, activism, and queer indigenous imaginative landscapes,” tatonetti first contextualizes gould's work and career and then discusses it in three sections: questions on seed (2019), gould's latest poetry collection; questions on california; and questions on queer indigenous history. the insightful discussion here serves as a fitting tribute to the work of a wonderful writer, whose work deserves continued critical attention. finally, we also offer an illuminating interview between transmotion editor, james mackay, and ktunaxa poet, smokii sumac. sumac, whose first volume of poetry, you are enough: love poems for the end of the world grew out of the online poetry practice that led to his being awarded the 2017 indigenous voices award, discusses transitioning, facebook poetry, influences and inspiration, and much more. conference: please note the call for papers for the 42nd annual american indian workshop to be held online and in association with transmotion, july 12-17 2021. the theme is “the sovereign erotic”. the cfp and further details can be found here: https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/conf -- transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) iii as a reminder to our readers, transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ”about” section). david carlson december 2020 theodore c. van alst james mackay david stirrup bryn skibo-birney transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 162 david e. wilkins. red prophet: the punishing intellectualism of vine deloria, jr. fulcrum publishing, 2018. 350 pp. isbn: 9781682751657. https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/red-prophet-products-9781682751657.php a table entitled “recommendations for native peoples and governments” appears in the first few pages of lumbee legal scholar david wilkins’ red prophet. it is an astounding six pages long and documents seventy-six policy recommendations over the span of forty-six years. by far the longest and largest table i have ever seen in a humanities book, it offers a condensed version of the book at large, which functions as a sort of long-form annotated bibliography of vine deloria’s most significant contributions to native policy and politics. interspersed with the author’s personal correspondence with vine deloria over the course of two decades, the catalogue of deloria’s policy contributions is impressive. like the clean lines and categories of the six-page-long table, wilkins neatly organizes these contributions into three chapters that are then divided into short—sometimes only two-page-long—sections that outline a litany of deloria’s policy recommendations about some of the most important issues facing native peoples. these brief but numerous sections give the reader a clear sense of the truly impressive range of deloria’s work, not to mention the volume of what he produced over the course of his forty active years of writing and political advocacy. they address over a dozen interrelated areas of focus, including education, self-determination, sovereignty, treaty rights, healthcare, land return, jurisdictional disputes, tribal leadership, the environment, intellectual history, religion, medicine, science, and much more. although wilkins provides a comprehensive accounting of deloria’s contributions to policy, it is clear as readers make their way through the book that a few key areas stick out as major highlights in his oeuvre. anyone familiar with deloria’s career might recite his influence on landmark legal battles over the interpretation and enforcement of treaty rights and tribal sovereignty, and with its named focus on detailing and highlighting deloria’s contributions to native policy and politics, red prophet is primarily about these key aspects of his work. in a passage about an interview that appeared in a 1973 issue of akwesasne notes, wilkins reminds us of deloria’s sharp and ethical commitment to sovereignty and treaties: politically, he said the real crisis in the relationship between indigenous nations and the united states lay in the fact that the federal government had not yet formally and emphatically recognized that ‘indian tribes are sovereign nations as guaranteed in the hundreds of treaties…and that you [federal government] can’t interfere with our property rights, life style, anything that is important to us’ (39). although deloria’s legacy in this regard is well-known (and well-studied), i still found the emphasis on sovereignty and treaties refreshing in an age where research and writing on treaties and treaty rights as the basis of sovereignty has lost favor. wilkins chooses also to emphasize deloria’s unflinching critique of academic knowledge produced by and about native peoples. “anthropologists and other friends,” a chapter by deloria that was made famous with the 1969 publication of his landmark book, custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto, is still regularly taught in introductory courses on native american studies. generations of native intellectuals and teachers have drawn upon this chapter to help students understand one of the https://fulcrum.bookstore.ipgbook.com/red-prophet-products-9781682751657.php melanie k. yazzie review of red prophet 163 basic tenets of native intellectualism: “indigenous peoples can speak, think, and act for themselves” (4). but for deloria, speaking, thinking, and acting needed to be done with the goal of addressing the major issues facing indigenous peoples. throughout the book, wilkins offers candid exchanges with his mentor (wilkins is one of deloria’s most celebrated students) to contextualize deloria’s expectations for native intellectuals to undertake writing and research for the direct purpose of political advocacy. wilkins recounts a response he received from deloria to a letter he wrote requesting advice on his first book: “deloria was bemoaning the fact that a substantial number of native academics appeared to have a stronger allegiance to their disciplines that to their own peoples. this, he argued, was frightening because one might then conclude that ‘in a crisis they will side with the whites and will not, under most circumstances, do anything to help indians’” (127). for deloria, the purpose of intellectual labor was “to do a better job of educating the public about indigenous rights and epistemologies” in an effort to promote indigenous self-determination, enforce treaty rights, and design real projects that could bolster tribal sovereignty in measurable ways. the action-oriented foundation of deloria’s work clearly influenced wilkins, who has served as a foundational thinker and advocate for native policy and law in his own right for the last twenty-five years. works like american indian politics and the american political system (now in its third edition) and tribes, treaties, and constitutional tribulations, which wilkins coauthored with deloria, are touchstones for comprehensive understanding of the history of federal indian law and policy, particularly the relationship of tribal sovereignty to state rights, constitutional law, executive power, and congressional legislation. the lineage of native intellectualism that deloria and wilkins represent comes through in the book’s celebration of “the deep complexity and sincerity of deloria’s thinking” (123). while this makes red prophet an invaluable resource for contemporary thinking and advocacy about policy and law, the book does at times feel hagiographic. its contribution to indigenous intellectual history might have been strengthened by placing deloria in conversation with other native thinkers, leaders, and activists who have made equally significant and critical contributions to shaping sovereignty and self-determination, most notably indigenous feminists like joanne barker, audra simpson, and jennifer nez denetdale. it is important to remember that while deloria is certainly a tour-de-force in the history of native american studies, he is also one of many indigenous thinkers and leaders who belongs to a long tradition of indigenous intellectuals that precede and follow his work. i imagine this is how deloria would have positioned himself. melanie k. yazzie, university of new mexico microsoft word jbm, doerfler, final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 275 adam spry. our war paint is writers’ ink: anishinaabe literary transnationalism. suny press, 2018. 256 pp. isbn: 978143846881. https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6530-our-war-paint-is-writers-ink.aspx the anishinaabeg are known for transformation and adaptation. our ancestors migrated to the lands where the food grows on water (manoomin/wild rice) and created mino bimaadiziwin (a good life), which followed the cyclical transformation of the seasons. they had a long and rich tradition of storytelling that functioned as a means to remember historical events, regulate behavior, sustain relationships with humans as well as with other beings, and provide entertainment. as the number of european traders and, later, american settlers, grew the anishinaabe relied on their long-standing values to guide them as they adapted new technologies. we continue to adapt today and have an active and robust literary presence. in our war paint is writers’ ink, spry traces the ways in which anishinaabe writers used new technologies of expression—such as the novel, lyric poetry, and journalism—to speak to non-natives in a legible way. while there is an astounding and diverse body of work, he details a clear pattern of anishinaabe writers presenting their nation as strong and legitimate. they employed literature as a tool to shape public opinion to their advantage. spry also considers the ways in which euro-americans have used the act of writing to imagine anishinaabeg. when taken as a whole, these texts offer new insights into the often-contentious relationship between two nations. spry works to read “across the boundaries of settler-states and indigenous nations” to “challenge our understanding of the role literary writing plays in the ongoing dynamic of settlercolonialism and indigenous resistance” (xx). in addition, he asserts the importance of form and genre and argues for more research into indigenous forms of genre. spry begins with the play hiawatha, or nanabozho: an ojibway indian play (1923/2011), which has largely been criticized and marginalized by contemporary scholars. he traces the complex history of this drama and identifies it as a point of convergence, drawing connections to earlier anishinaabe writers, euro-american writers, and contemporary anishinaabe writers, asserting that we can both acknowledge the complications of this work while also celebrating it as an act of anishinaabe persistence and survival. spry challenges the reader to think about anishinaabe and euro-american writers as participating in a process of exchange. this text defies neat boundaries between settler and indigenous, as do many of the other works examined throughout spry’s book. thus, this play introduces a central argument of the book, which is that “writing allows cultural material to move independently jill doerfler review of our war paint is writers’ ink 276 between indigenous and settler contexts, taking new meanings and different political valences as it goes” (4). spry’s arguments fit well within the long-standing anishinaabe sensibility that readers and listeners must come to their own understandings of stories and that these understandings will deepen, adapt, and transform over time. our war paint is focused on the post-treaty-making era from about 1886 to the present, with each chapter following a shift in us federal indian policy: the dawes general allotment act of 1886, the indian reorganization act of 1934, the termination efforts of the 1950s, and the tribal self-determination policy since 1973. spry’s inclusion of anishinaabe and non-anishinaabe writers provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the context in which the works were written and have been read. his careful historical research reveals a complex network of native and non-native writers who were reading each other’s work both at the time the works were written as well as long after, demonstrating the dynamic nature of their engagement. spry draws upon gerald vizenor’s theory of transmotion throughout the book, both for textual analysis as well as for a broader understanding of the ways in which anishinaabe understand and employ sovereignty. the chapters are well organized and necessarily dense to effectively convey the transnational exchange between the anishinaabeg and the united states. spry masterfully weaves connections throughout the book. in chapter 1, “revolutionary in character: translating anishinaabe place and time in the progress,” spry details the ways in which theo beaulieu, the anishinaabe editor of the newspaper, progress (from 1886-1889), published politically motivated translations of anishinaabe sacred stories to influence the present and envision the future rather than to understand the past. in chapter 2, “englishman, your color is deceitful: unsettling the north woods in janet lewis’s the invasion,” spry shares new findings regarding lewis’s little-known historical novel. he uncovers an extraordinary record of collaboration and argues that, while lewis is non-anishinaabe, the novel can be read as an example of anishinaabe nationalism. spry provides long overdue analysis of vizenor’s reexpressions of frances densmore’s translations of anishinaabe nagamonan (songs) in chapter 3, “what is this i promise you?: the translation of anishinaabe song in the twentieth century.” in chapter 4, “a tribe of pressed trees: representations of the state in the fiction of louise erdrich,” spry suggests that, despite critiques by scholars including arnold krupat and elizabeth cook-lynn, we can find a version of nationalism in erdrich’s works. he delineates the ways in which several of erdrich’s characters work within the “third space of sovereignty,” through both self-governance as well as leveraging federal and/or state resources. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 277 spry ends the final chapter by noting that, while nationalism has certainly provided a powerful means for anishinaabeg to defend values and traditions, perhaps we need a new strategy that is more strongly aligned with our values. he suggests that “mino bimaadiziwin’s radically expansive idea of interdependency – which stretches the idea of social obligations beyond the mere humans to plants, animals, manidoog, and everything else that comprises that natural world… may eventually mean leaving behind the idea of nationhood altogether for a more expansive and inclusive understanding of what it means to lead a good life” (179). this question is worthy of consideration as we face increasing threats from multinational corporations and as many anishinaabe nations face dwindling populations due to blood-quantum-based citizenship requirements. if we then turn to spry’s analysis of “initiation song” as reexpressed by vizenor in summer in the spring, we are reminded that “so long as the anishinaabeg are capable of reimagining and reasserting who they are as a people – a continually new people – they will weather the storm” (spry 183). anishinaabe writers will continue to use literature as one means to imagine our future and to work toward mino bimaadiziwin. as many anishinaabe writers before him have done, spry pushes the reader to see beyond binaries, to see complex webs of relationships and innovative adaptations to unthinkable circumstances. he offers a new methodology for the study of anishinaabe and native american literatures, which includes engagement across time and nation in order to understand the various ways in which literature has and can shape policy, challenge fundamental assumptions, as well as offer new visions for the future. jill doerfler, university of minnesota duluth microsoft word mcglennen-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 170 jules arita koostachin. unearthing secrets, gathering truths. kegedonce press, 2018. 100 pp. isbn: 9781928120148. https://kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/104-unearthing-secrets-gathering-truths.html jules arita koostachin’s debut collection of poems, unearthing secrets, gathering truths, is a highly personal and interior journey through themes of remembrance, continuance, trauma, and connection. a project over twenty years in the making, unearthing secrets, gathering truths reveals the author’s “extensive knowledge working in indigenous community” (97). the collection’s biography tells the reader that koostachin was born in moose factory ontario, raised by her creespeaking grandparents in moosonee and her mother, a survivor of the canadian residential school system. the biography also interestingly reveals how koostachin—a band member of attawapiskat first nation, moshkekowok territory—has “established herself within the film and television community” throughout canada and the united states, winning awards in documentary and film work, acting, and directing. because many of her projects commit to supporting youth and women as well as language and cultural revitalization, koostachin’s “about the author” reads like a living and public prologue to the very intimate world of her poetry. while this world undoubtedly has shaped the poet’s film and acting career, the book builds a poetic environment culled from cree language and relations. four sections with cree subtitles frame unearthing secrets, gathering truths: inninewak, wikwam, mitewin, and iskwewak. these subtitles, like many of the cree words koostachin uses in her collection, are either directly translated through the glossary she provides or become apparent via context within the poems themselves. in translation, the four sections—“human beings,” “home,” “mitewin (which is not defined, but my best approximation would be “dream” or “medicine”), and “cree womyn”—shape the contours of the very finely outlined community of influences and landscapes from which the author speaks. whether in english or cree, however, koostachin’s poetic language implies a gathering effect, a language that is as directional as it is relational. indigenous languages, as they do, essentially prompt philosophies for living: kiiwaytenook wapano nakapayhanook shawanook niipii iskotew molly mcglennen review of unearthing secrets, gathering truths 171 aski mee’kwetch kichi manito. (12) these lines end koostachin’s poem “god and me” (found in the first section) and gesture for her reader the grounding basis from which she writes against remembrances of a broken family, violence and abuse, and the long histories of colonial and christian invasion in her community. the elements, gathered as the lifegiving forces, grant an accessway “to make new for the truth of [her] identity” (12). as koostachin sets out the collection, however, she is eager to provide guidance to her reader and to these acts of unearthing and gathering. the first poem of the collection, “inninewak – the human beings of moshkekowok,” is cast by a litany of repeated words that will echo and deepen over the course of the book. visually compelling, “inninewak – the human beings of moshkekowok” acts in some ways as a map for the rest of the poems, with “human,” “people,” and “life” running down the page and emptying out to “cree / cries / call,” and finally “human / cries / dreaming” at poem’s end. visual and aural rhythms preoccupy this map of the people. this mapping of the people, moreover, links the ways they are protected to the ways they are claimed through the land itself. in “dancing aatimwak,” the speaker says, dancing aatimwak want us to listen the protectors of our people protectors of the moss swamplands joining us with the others… we are rooted generations before me gather all beings speaking the same language… i will listen again. (6) indicative of the entire collection, where there is a constant and robust fusion of home, land, people, and language, koostachin leans on these cree guides to ask: “what is freedom in a colonial world?” (10). the signposts in koostachin’s poems seem to point to the overwhelming relationality to land, “essence / trunks of the trees holding our stories safe,” and to the “stories living in our mothers…iskwewak side by side with eyes wide open” (14-15). transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 172 some of koostachin’s most interesting poetic lines are found in the details of the land that the speaker describes with the entirety of her senses: “longing for renewal / unraveling my sweet disorder / stench of rotten berries / stings my nostrils” (21). and some of them are found in many of the dream sequences that move in and out of moments within and between poems: “i take kokoom’s hand in mine / we walk out the door / so this is sovereignty?”, and later, “kokoom and i dream / we enter the passage way / … entire relations converse / there is no divide” (28; 30). as another type of passageway, dreaming is a powerful conduit for the speaker. poems such as “watch and watched” and “light switch” are some of the most illuminative poems in showing how memory and dream are working with and against each other throughout the speaker’s interior journey. through difficult references to sexual violence, “watch and watched” delineates what is hidden not only by the suppression of memory but by the violence of colonial legal systems and the inheritances of broken lifeways. through actions of transformation, the speaker in this poem dreams in order to understand how to “dream again” and how to unlock the door unleash me from his hold i want to breathe again i need to take myself back. (35) in the second half of the collection, the theme of female protection becomes even more refined, turning those “preying eyes” of the “man with eyes like water” to the “healing warmth of niipii” which pre-empts a healing a song, “releasing her” (40-41). indigenous femininity and land shape the protection the speaker seeks. this protection is not formed by turning away from the inheritances and experiences of trauma, but rather by acts of being found: “maskwa finds me / digging me out from the sand / infant spirit untangled” (60). being watched over by generations of women and the bear clan into which she was born and who will look after her her entire life, the speaker finds her way out of danger. the speaker finds poetry as her mechanism to release the trappings of violence. while there are instances throughout the collection where koostachin names her defiance to intergenerational and epigenetic trauma, those hauntings still “visit her children” (68). but time and again, koostachin’s poetry engages the resistance embodied in cree language, her means to recall the relevance of its philosophies for living, protection, and healing. through her poetry, it seems, koostachin determines a less fractured future. molly mcglennen review of unearthing secrets, gathering truths 173 in the final poem of the collection, “returning to the tracks,” the poet seems closest to understanding what freedom can mean for her, and it is cree relatives who signal the directions toward that sense of liberation. by the time the reader arrives at the end of unearthing secrets, gathering truth, one may feel she has traveled the pathways with the speaker, tracks lit along the way, telling her she has been accompanied all along toward a home. fans of luci tapahonso, ofelia zepeda, margaret noodin, and other poets who work with their indigenous languages may be drawn to koostachin’s debut collection. others may simply admire a life-long dedication to community—and a poet’s documentation of that. unearthing secrets, gathering truth is a welcome addition to the thriving native poetry scene. molly mcglennen, vassar college microsoft word brignell-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 162 tai s. edwards. osage women and empire: gender and power. university press of kansas, 2018. 230 pp. isbn: 9780700626106. https://kansaspress.ku.edu/subjects/women-s-studies/978-0-7006-2609-0.html a report by the center for american women and politics (cawp) found that a record 18 native american women ran for congressional office in 2020 (“native american women candidates in 2020”). this is a particularly important statistic for a number of reasons, but primarily because there were zero native american women in congress before sharice davids (ho-chunk) and deb haaland (laguna pueblo) were elected in kansas and new mexico respectively in 2018. however, this does not mean that native american women lacked political agency or were without significant political voice prior to the twenty-first century. this crucial point forms the backbone of tai s. edwards’s osage women and empire: gender and power. edwards opens osage women and empire by quoting correspondence from christian missionary reverend william f. vaill, published in 1827 by the american board of commissioners for foreign missions. in this correspondence, vaill claims that osage women were bound to a degrading life of unceasing drudgery and servitude, whilst osage men reclined at ease in their camps, smoking and telling stories. in response, edwards poses a number of questions that ultimately guide her study: were nineteenth-century osage women truly exploited and subjugated in such a manner? can we trust the conclusions of men such as viall, whose judgement is likely clouded by an entrenchment in european patriarchy and female subordination? edwards’s study provides straightforward answers to these questions by bringing osage gender construction and complementarity to the foreground in her work. in doing so, osage women and empire addresses a glaring gap in the study of the osage empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a gap edwards attributes to a gendered scholarly bias that associates the historiography of war, diplomacy, and politics with masculinity. edwards identifies a further gap within several decades of scholarship on native north american women, wherein scholars have referred to women holding important roles in osage society but largely overlooked the complementary nature of gender roles. edwards’s intervention with osage women and empire is an exemplary piece of work that more than addresses these gaps in both academic modes of inquiry. an overall emphasis on the importance of gender complementarity binds edwards’s study together across four central chapters. the core text is only 132 pages—the remaining page count is made up of detailed notes and an extensive bibliography. the rhy brignell review of osage women and empire 163 four main chapters are roughly equal in length and bookended by a fairly detailed introduction and a brief conclusion. chapter one provides readers with the necessary tools to understand the basics of osage cosmology and the particular way that an osage worldview informs and necessitates complementary gender roles. chapter two traces the impact of european colonization on osage expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, detailing the incorporation of europeans into systems of osage dominance and exchange, systems that depended on gender complementarity and subsequently thrived. chapter three is located in the early nineteenth century, when the osage empire declined as the us settler empire was born and began expanding westward. edwards is explicit in her portrait of us imperialism as manipulative, exploitative, and genocidal, but such a portrait does not leave the osage painted as helpless victims. edwards emphasizes the continued role of osage spirituality, the facilitation of a mobile lifestyle, and the utilisation of european missionaries to combat the encroaching us presence on their lands. chapter four follows the osage to their kansas reservation, an environment that placed new pressures on traditional gendered work. edwards argues that the continued implementation of gender complementarity in their religious and economic structures allowed the osage to control and direct change in specific ways. the study draws from a variety of sources, combining traditional archival materials such as missionary records, traveller narratives, and ethnographies with works from both osage and non-osage historians and scholars. edwards acknowledges the significant biases present in the vast majority of her chosen archival materials, often using that bias as a springboard for discussions of gendered prejudices, misappropriations, and misinterpretations. the text features ten black-and-white photographs interspersed throughout which provide useful reference points for the subjects discussed. chapters two, three, and four also mirror the chronology of three maps by bill nelson (included in text) depicting the changing boundaries of osage territory across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. the final map appears in the conclusion, depicting total land loss divided by each treaty responsible. osage women and empire is not intended to be a definitive guide on osage spirituality or political history, and thus it functions well as a broad and accessible historical overview. the combination of historical context and analysis of gender flows well from page to page and, where it may occasionally lack depth, it excels in breadth. for the reader who requires more historical granularity, edwards acknowledges the extensive works already written by twentieth-century osage scholars such as john joseph mathews or louis burns. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 164 there are places where edwards does drill down and her analysis is given an opportunity to shine. for example, the latter half of chapter three features a particular focus on the relationship between osages and protestant missionaries. drawing from disparaging notes made by missionaries at the time, edwards convincingly argues that gendered domestic production and hospitality carried out by osage women and girls visiting the missions played a significant role in maintaining diplomatic ties with americans during the nineteenth century. this example is one of many throughout the text where edwards draws from a source saturated in ethnocentric and colonial bias and instead manages to find and emphasize the agency of osage women during a period, and indeed a field of scholarship, that has tried to write them out. edwards does leave one avenue of inquiry understudied. in chapter one, there is a brief acknowledgement of the presence of trans* and/or two spirit individuals in the notes of nineteenth-century missionaries and travellers. edwards makes the point that although gender was constructed into polarized male and female roles in osage society, these roles were not bound by sex and included a range of gender identities. the point is all-too-brief, however, as edwards does not acknowledge alternative gender roles nor the possibility for gender identities beyond the colonial scope in any of the subsequent chapters, leaving open the necessity for further scholarship in this area. osage women and empire functions both as an excellent and long-overdue intervention in historical scholarship on the osage empire that emphasizes the critical role of gender complementarity and as an easily digestible overview of existing scholarship that is accessible to academic and non-academic readers alike. rhy brignell, university of east anglia work cited “native american women candidates in 2020.” center for american women and politics, https://cawp.rutgers.edu/election-analysis/native-american-women-candidates2020. accessed 5 august 2020. microsoft word andrews-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 179 richard van camp. moccasin square gardens. douglas & mcintyre, 2019. 160 pp. isbn: 9781771622165. www.douglas-mcintyre.com/book/moccasin-square-gardens the stories of tlicho writer richard van camp tend to alternate between the sentimental and the sinister. frequently they also are funny and/or sexy. he established this pattern with his first collection in 2002, angel wing splash pattern, and it continues with his latest, award-winning short-story collection, moccasin square gardens, which won the 2020 alberta literary awards’ georges bugnet award for fiction. the sinister element is the most compelling in moccasin square gardens. two stories will create interest in van camp’s next graphic novel project. “the wheetago wars i: lying in bed together” and “the wheetago wars ii: summoners” tell of a near-future when monstrous forces have been awakened by the environmental degradation created by resource exploitation. after spending the night with the narrator of “lying in bed together,” a beautiful female messenger from the future tells him, “these wheetago are older than christ, and they have been counting on our greed as humans to warm the earth so they can return” (50). the wheetago are called “body eaters,” and the narrator, with the help of the messenger, has visions of their arrival; the consequences of that event are described in “summoners” in fractured, violent imagery of humans struggling for survival. these stories are part of a project intended as a series of graphic novels that, according to van camp, will be “far more terrifying and far more hilarious” than the walking dead (black). other stories in the cycle are included in godless but loyal to heaven (2012) and night moves (2015). another short story from moccasin square gardens that belongs in the sinister category is “i am filled with a trembling light.” this story participates in a common theme for van camp: justice (or revenge) against those who victimize members of their own community. another common theme found in this story is the struggle within a native community between the use and misuse of traditional or spiritual medicine. in it, a young man who is dying from cancer seeks reprieve from a debt owed to a notorious criminal, and, in the process, he turns the medicine back on the criminal and onto a police officer who has hurt young people in his community. the story has interesting twists and continues van camp’s exploration of how members of an oppressed community oppress others. scott andrews review of moccasin square gardens 180 “the promise” and “man babies” are stories from the sentimental category. they continue the van camp pattern of telling stories of male competition or friendship; his male-female relationships are almost always romantic. i deem the two stories sentimental because, by the end of such stories, the differences between characters are resolved, frequently with hugs and declarations of affection. “the promise” tells of the resolution of a years-long conflict between best friends, and “man babies” tells of a conflict between a man and his spoiled, adult stepson. the term “sentimental” in criticism often is used as a pejorative, but i do not mean it that way. imagining resolutions to real-world problems and acknowledging emotions are important in the social work of literature. even though the sentimental stories of moccasin square gardens are not as effective as those from earlier collections—for instance, “show me yours” and “dogrib midnight runners” from the moon of letting go (2009)—van camp’s stories remain committed to imagining paths through hardship and ways to heal broken relationships. he imagines better lives for people in the communities of the northwest territories that he has spent his career writing about. finally, “aliens” is perhaps more interesting for what it does not do rather than what it does. it sets up an intriguing context for the story but does not elaborate, despite the world-changing impact of that context. “star people” have arrived and hover over the world in dark “obelisks” (11) (perhaps in an allusion to ted chiang’s novella “story of your life” on which the film arrival was based). the visitors are cleansing the oceans, it seems, but the humans are not sure what else they are doing: “most people just watch tv or facebook now, waiting for something to happen” (11). the rest of the story is about a romantic encounter between two characters, shandra and jimmy. jimmy has lived in fort smith his whole life but has remained a “mystery… cruising around by himself” (13). after their date, shandra tells her friends that jimmy is “beautiful,” but different: “there are no words for what he is…” (21). the second thing the story does not do is tell the reader the exact nature of jimmy’s difference. van camp has set up this narrative gap not only by making shandra unable to fully articulate her experience with jimmy but also by moving us one step away from her experience. she tells the narrator and the narrator tells us, so we have no immediate experience of shandra and jimmy together. the narrator imagines that jimmy is “aayahkwew, neither man or woman but both,” but we do not know that for a fact (22). not knowing is part of the point; the true nature of jimmy’s difference is not as important his beauty. as readers, we suspect the story’s two mysteries are connected: the star people and jimmy. that is not to say that jimmy is an alien; his apparent gender diversity would transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 181 make that a potentially troubling connection. jimmy has always been in fort smith and, as the narrator states, jimmy’s gender or sexuality is not something new to this community—they have ancient words for it. perhaps the connection is between the cleansing of the world the star people are initiating and, in the reader’s world, the broader, although gradual, cleansing of prejudices against people like jimmy. “aliens” first appeared in love beyond body, space & time: an indigenous lgbt sci-fi anthology in 2016. part of the collection’s goal is the survivance of native communities and lgbt native people in particular. in an introduction to love beyond body, space & time, niigaan sinclair writes, “let love guide us as we understand, work, and change” (19). van camp’s stories throughout his career indicate he would agree with that sentiment. scott andrews, california state university northridge works cited arrival. directed by denis villeneuve. paramount pictures, 2016. film. black, ezra. “author anticipates zombie graphic novel.” nwt news north. 11 january 2020. https://nnsl.com/nwtnewsnorth/author-anticipates-zombie-graphic-novel/ accessed 1 may 2020. chiang, ted. stories of your life and others. tor books, 2002. nicholson, hope. love beyond body, space & time: an indigenous lbgt sci-fi anthology. bedside press, 2016. van camp, richard. angel wing splash pattern. kegedonce press, 2002. ---. godless but loyal to heaven. enfield & wizenty. 2012. ---. night moves. enfield & wizenty. 2015. ---. the moon of letting go. enfield & wizenty, 2009. microsoft word lopenzina.doc transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 267 lisa brooks. our beloved kin: a new history of king philip’s war. yale up, 2018. 448 pp. isbn: 9780300244328. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300244328/our-beloved-kin what makes lisa brooks’ our beloved kin so engaging (and essential for scholars of early american and indigenous studies) is the studied manner in which it extracts new narrative light from an old forest, disentangling indigenous stories, concerns, and agendas from the mire of colonial documentation and religious orientation that has, up until this point, shaped and defined the way the 1675-77 colonial conflict known as king philip’s war has been understood. having sifted through many of these primary materials myself, i know this is no small task. settlercolonial history has a way of snowballing, beginning in a neatly packed ball of claims and assumptions but gaining mass and momentum as it rolls, becoming an engine of its own making. while it might be constantly added to, it remains difficult to get out of its way, or to trace the impression it has left back to the top of the hill and ask “what if we had rolled the ball this way instead?” in a sense, this is the project of decolonization to devise strategies for recovering indigenous lives and histories from the accumulated mass of colonial documentation and placing before us a path, a history, a world that we have essentially been denied as a result of the racial biases so firmly packed into the known historical archive. drawing upon many of the strategies and critical interventions used in her first book, the common pot: the recovery of native space in the northeast (2008), brooks’ study covers the events surrounding king philip’s war from an indigenous-centered perspective. for brooks, who is abenaki herself, the key to gaining entry into this newly configured network of stories and landscapes is the notion of kinship. most histories of the war struggle to take into account the bonds, obligations, and extended familial relationships that informed indigenous lives in the seventeenth-century northeast. by beginning to trace the threads of those relationships, one also begins to apprehend the geographical connections and commitments by which native space was ordered and defined. to acknowledge and honor these connections allows for a narrative that stands largely in opposition to the claims forwarded in the opaque and spiritually dense parcel of colonial documentation by which the war has been known. at the center of brooks’ narrative are not the familiar cast of characters the self-fashioned frontier hero benjamin church, puritan preacher to the indians john eliot, or even, for the most part, the wampanoag leader king philip himself, although certainly they all play a part. brooks is more interested in understanding the lives of indigenous figures who, until very recently, stood at the furthest margins of the historical narrative; figures such as the nipmuc james printer who was “indentured” into the colonial printing trade as a young boy but later becomes part of the resistance, his brother job kattenanit who found himself thrust into the role of colonial spy in order to ensure the safety of his family, and the saunkskwa of the pocasset, weetamoo, who must find a way to protect and preserve her community through the trials of war. although weetamoo’s influence as a leader of her people was only vaguely understood by puritan chroniclers of king philip’s war (and even less so by later historians), she was recognized by the wampanoag sachem ousamequin (more popularly remembered as massasoit) as the “true heir” to the pocasset sachemship, “our beloved cousin” and “kinswoman,” the “beloved kin” of the book’s title (4). drew lopenzina review of our beloved kin 268 brooks is able to trace some of this history by paying close attention to the names and relationships outlined on treaties, petitions, and land transactions struck between the colonists and their indigenous neighbors. from these documents we see how certain colonial agents, who in past histories appear animated by a public-spirited cry for self-defense, turn out, perhaps not surprisingly, to be stakeholders in aggressive puritan landgrabs (115-118). but brooks’ reading of these documents also helps clarify the way indigenous leaders were also attempting to shape and interpret the nature of these agreements. for seventeenth-century natives, treaties were beginning to complement the traditional practice of wampum exchange to seal and record diplomatic agreements. in their proceedings with the colonists, native leaders followed traditional wampum protocols, as brooks tells us, explicitly “invoking bonds of kinship” which also “drew bounds around the land,” marking the territories to which they lay claim and those recognized as belonging to others within the larger kinship network. transactions that colonial brokers broadly interpreted in their own favor, were understood differently by natives such as ousamequin who reproaches the puritans at one point, for wrongly claiming land on pocasset neck belonging to one namumpum. namumpum, brooks informs us, was the name by which weetamoo went prior to the outbreak of war. ousamequin cautions, “i never did nor intended to put under plimoth [plymouth colony] any of my kinswomans land but my own inheritance and therefore i do disallow of any pretended claime to this land” (29). ousamequin, like other indigenous leaders of the time, exerted what control he could over these difficult and coercive processes, but it’s small wonder that such interventions often go overlooked in an archive where names are either frequently changing, misspelled or misidentified, native women leaders are not recognized as powerbrokers, and the documents themselves are meant to provide legal cover for fraudulent claims. bad faith practices like the one referenced above were a staple of colonial interactions with the natives and were a large reason why war between the two groups became inevitable. in the same way that brooks allows for a rereading of treaties by mapping them out on the ground, and through hard-to-divine kinship ties, she teases out a fresh interpretation of the ensuing war, drawing upon narratives such as mary rowlandson’s 1682 sovereignty and goodness of god in a way that privileges the epistemological worldview of the natives who accompanied the captive puritan goodwife on her famous “removes.” rowlandson was led by her wampanoag, narragansett and nipmuc captors deeper and deeper into what seemed to her a “howling wilderness.” for the natives, however, this was ‘a valley of horticultural hamlets, long inhabited by ‘mobile farmers’ who cultivated some of the most fertile fields in the world” (271). understanding an indigenous archive of the land itself helps the reader break through the forest primaeval conjured by the distressed rowlandson in her narrative and become witness to a transformed landscape with a deep storied history of occupation and usage. the stories, themselves, offer a framework for comprehending how native people understood their relationship to the land and the obligations they sought to bring the puritan colonists in line with as humans sharing this space. rowlandson’s worldview, shaped by cosmological puritan extremes of perceived good and evil, projected biblical language upon her environment that helped feed the cultural imaginations of future generations of settlers. as brooks, however, comments, “although rowlandson imagined she ‘wept’ by the “river of babylon,’ she remained on the central indigenous highway of kwinitekw [the connecticut river] but she could see only “wilderness and woods” (279). transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 269 jill lepore, neal salisbury, michelle burnham and others have unpacked the reversal of gender roles encountered by rowlandson, as well as the misreadings of indigenous motives and incentives relayed by rowlandson and others, but few have managed to ground them so persuasively in a world of indigenous logic, memory, and custom. by bringing these misunderstood or poorly interpreted impulses to life, brooks also heightens our notions of the human drama of these events, what was at stake for indigenous peoples swept up in the conflict of king philip’s war, and how much was lost. for many, like james printer and job kattenanit, the war was one in which brother fought brother. native individuals newly converted to the christian faith were asked to prove their loyalty in unimaginable ways and exercised agency under the most dire of circumstances in trying to safeguard their war-dispersed families. some of these natives, because of religious training administered by their settler neighbors, were able to read and write and so left a scattered trail of documents detailing their trials and interventions. even in these traces, brooks notes, native authors were aware of having to demonstrate “fidelity to multiple relationships and to each other in order to renew the trust among them and achieve the possibility of peace. they also had to demonstrate their trustworthiness . . . that they would convey messages with integrity and accuracy . . . to demonstrate that they would act like kin” (297). finally, brooks helps to clarify certain events that have appeared mysterious or difficult to interpret as the war began to grind down. her research suggests that indigenous leaders began to broker a truce in may of 1676 and proceeded under the assumption that both the settlers and natives would return to their homes in time to plant for spring. mary rowlandson’s release from captivity was one of the terms of that truce. but the colonists, sensing that their native neighbors had let their guard down, betrayed the terms of that negotiation, attacking a native fishing village of mostly women and children at peskompscut, a location known today as turner’s falls, massachusetts, after the colonial captain who led the ensuing massacre. with this vicious betrayal, the war was back on and, although both philip and weetamoo would be killed in the months ahead, brooks argues that the war actually raged for another year at least, as abenaki and other natives north of the massachusetts border continued to fight for their territory and their way of life. our beloved kin brings these dramas to life with both rigor and imagination. brooks’ ability to retain focus on indigenous lives, despite the colonial packaging of these archival events always seeking to intrude and take over the narrative, is in itself a remarkable accomplishment. at times brooks offers passages that attempt to take us into the perceptual worlds of some of the historical figures, cultivating, as she says, a “sense of embeddedness” that helps situate the reader within the world of her indigenous subjects (15). such brief interludes are punctuated, however, by new scholarly revelations and, most importantly, new interpretive frameworks that will assist general readers and scholars in their attempts to extricate themselves from a history that has been too long colonized. it should also be noted that brooks has developed a website which serves as companion to the book, offering high resolution maps, deeds, and images that bring the reader directly to the source material and help them visualize the world brooks has so generatively (and lovingly it might be said) labored to recreate and reclaim on the printed page. (https://ourbelovedkin.com/awikhigan/index) drew lopenzina, old dominion university microsoft word veeraraghavan-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 142 victoria lindsay levine and dylan robinson, eds. music and modernity among first peoples of north america. wesleyan university press, 2019. 330 pp. isbn: 9780819578631. https://www.hfsbooks.com/books/music-and-modernity-among-first-peoples-of-northamerica-levine-robinson/ kyle t. mays. hip hop beats, indigenous rhymes: modernity and hip hop in indigenous north america. suny press, 2018. 180 pp. isbn: 9781438469461. https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6543-hip-hop-beats-indigenous-rhymes.aspx modernity is a charged topic when it comes to scholarship on, with, and by indigenous people(s) because of the ways colonial apparatuses, including the academy, have seized on the concept to frame indigeneity as belonging to the past in ways that occlude political agency in the present. indigenous people, it seems, must retain traditional cultural ways while obviously being fully modern as well, according to the simplest definition of the modern, which is to say, living fully in the contemporary moment. it is not actually a paradox, but through the distorting lens of colonial dispositifs it can appear as one. in music studies, this apparent bind is reflected in the entrenched ordering of classical, popular, and traditional musics. this institutional ordering reproduces disciplinary investments in these categories that effectively forces scholars of indigenous music-making to choose: which formation will render this music and these people legible? two new books seek to reset the discourse on indigeneity, modernity, and music. music and modernity among first peoples of north america is a collection of essays edited by victoria lindsay levine and dylan robinson. hip hop beats, indigenous rhymes: modernity and hip hop in indigenous north america by kyle t. mays is a monograph based on the author’s ethnographic work with indigenous hip hop artists and members of the communities that have sprung up around them. both books engage in what one might call performative enactments of modernity that bring discourses and people together. at their base, both books are sensitive to the ways modernity is fraught—shot through with the tremulous question of membership. the persistent feeling of being left behind is not a problem of temporality per se, although temporal maneuvers may produce it. nor is it a direct product of modernity defined in temporal terms, or the distribution of goods and amenities that we associate with the very modern imperative of development. the experience of being told—either directly or through governmental apparatuses and epistemic orderings—that one is not lee veeraraghavan review essay: music and modernity among first peoples and hip hop beats 143 modern, that one does not have a commensurable voice and therefore an equal say, is what these contributions seek to rectify, each in their own way. music and modernity among first peoples of north america has a lofty ambition: “to refocus the ethnomusicology of american indians/first nations toward new perspectives on indigenous modernity and to model decolonized approaches to the study of indigenous musical cultures,” as victoria lindsay levine writes in her introduction (2). the product of a careful, ten-year germination, the fifteen essays that comprise this volume are united by the metaphor of a dance, as invoked in heidi aklaseaq senungetuk’s prologue. senungetuk describes how inupiaq dance groups often invite guests to participate in a puala, an invitational dance that allows for a degree of improvisation while adhering to certain protocols. she extends this invitation to the reader, noting that the puala form in some ways mirrors the process of writing this book. what makes this collection unique is that each author had the opportunity to read the contributions of the others and incorporate their insights. the book is thus not organized by “theme, theoretical orientation, geographic area, or chronology” (3); rather, the authors chose to weave conceptual strands from one chapter into the next. many hands make light work, and by bringing together very different essays with a shared focus on the contemporary and on music (broadly defined), the authors and editors make it clear how rich the reality of indigenous musical practice in north america is today. the editors have taken care to include studies of traditional, popular, and classical music, while highlighting the arbitrary borders between them. for instance, gordon e. smith’s exploration of mi’kmaw funeral practices reveals how the vehicles by which tradition is enacted are modern. essays on popular music include t. christopher aplin’s detailed tour of the construction of a global indigenous consciousness through hip hop, set against a backdrop of migration and mediatization as both ideology and lived experience; and christina leza’s exploration of how hip hop activism at the u.s.mexico border facilitates a negotiation of native american and latino indigenous identities. finally, dawn avery’s analysis of the contemporary indigenous classical music scene makes clear that it is both diverse and vibrant. in addition to discussing a range of music, there are chapters devoted to politics and policy, as well as indigenous musical and sound ontologies that push the boundaries of what music studies had historically considered music. these range from the essays on music’s role in activism by anna hoefnagels, elyse carter-vosen, and the aforementioned chapter by christina leza, to analyses of music’s confluence with transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 144 governmental apparatuses. for example, byron dueck elucidates how indigenous culture is treated as expedient through the example of powwow instruction sponsored by educational and child welfare apparatuses (part of the legacy of residential schools) in winnipeg. john-carlos perea interrogates how universities police space by analyzing how his own institution has treated powwow musicking as “noise.” turning to indigenous ontologies, dawn avery challenges the idea that indigenous classical music compositions are intrinsically tied to ideas of pastness—european cultural heritage in particular—by suggesting methods of musical analysis that are in keeping with indigenous (kanienkéha) teachings. dylan robinson introduces indigenous ontologies into the analysis of performance art by drawing attention to the functions of song and address in works by peter morin (tahltan) and rebecca belmore (anishnaabe). and jessica bissett-perea’s chapter on inuit sound worlding in television documentaries explores how a visual sovereignty might be enacted. the volume is bookended by historiographic and theoretical essays. david samuels’ opening essay reexamines frances densmore’s recording practices to show how ethnomusicology’s idea of modernity was constructed. beverley diamond’s penultimate chapter offers a critical reappraisal of the binary between tradition and modernity, suggesting action-oriented ways of being—such as different modes of listening—as an alternative analytic. finally, trevor reed’s concluding essay draws on bruno latour’s theory that the idea of modernity is constructed through a two-part process: hybridization or translation followed by purification. through the example of his own work repatriating hopi song recordings, reed shows how indigenous people are agents of the hybridization and purification process. ultimately, he suggests that processual ways of understanding modernity and its agents could help us break free from the confining set of terms associated with modernity that we have inherited. music and modernity among first peoples of north america is a critical contribution to scholarship on indigenous music, showcasing the diversity of contemporary indigenous music-making as well as the different methodologies and positionalities from which indigenous and settler scholars have approached them. not only does it provide a solid overview of the field, this collection shows how we can be in dialogue—however subtle—with one another, even across large differences. while it would be premature to herald any particular model of scholarship as decolonized, the fact that the editors of this book took such scrupulous care to produce this work in a collaborative way does enact a different model, and it is a generous, hopeful one. lee veeraraghavan review essay: music and modernity among first peoples and hip hop beats 145 the desire for inclusion—a shared stake and an equal voice—runs through kyle t. mays’ hip hop beats, indigenous rhymes. mays brings his own voice as a black and indigenous scholar into the discourse, and it is almost through his voice—his choice to combine hip hop vernacular with academic prose—that a sonorous sense of subjectivity is evoked. mays’ writing is engaging, accessible, and unselfconscious. he frequently uses the first-person to enter into a more personal dialogue with his readers. for example, the passage below where he tells us what the book is about is clear and its rhythm pulls the reader in: in this book, i make one major claim: indigenous hip hop might be one of the most important cultural forces that has hit indigenous north america since the ghost dance movement in the late nineteenth century. straight up! hip hop allows for indigenous people, through culture, to express themselves as modern subjects. they can use it to move beyond the persistence narratives of their demise, or their invisibility, or the notion that they are people of the past incapable of engaging with modernity. now, let the story begin. (3) the quoted section ends with the literary equivalent of a beat drop. mays punctuates his prose with verbal interjections that conjure a musical analogue (e.g. the record scratch of “check it”). this contributes to a sense of hip hop as a lived-in way of experiencing the world. the musicality of the writing is one of the book’s best features, particularly because mays’ musical analyses focus for the most part on the content of the lyrics. it might otherwise be easy for the reader to lose sight of the fact that while the world of indigenous hip hop exists at the intersection of multiple force vectors, it is a musical world. mays’ prose conveys a sense of what it might mean to live in it. the book has five body chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of indigenous hip hop. the first chapter articulates the stakes of mays’ claim that hip hop positions indigenous people as modern subjects. he juxtaposes the use of racist sports mascots as an example of how indigenous people have actively been erased, portrayed as extinct, to assert that indigenous people are nevertheless fully modern. other chapters open onto the claims that different identity groups might make of indigenous hip hop artists. so, there is a chapter on masculinity and feminism in indigenous hip hop, as well as a chapter teasing out some of the complex points of encounter, contention, and accord between black and indigenous peoples. the second chapter is a bit of an outlier, as the only purely descriptive chapter in the book, focusing on the fashion of indigenous hip hop. as far as overall methodology is concerned, mays offers descriptions and interpretations of lyrics, iconography, and relevant secondary sources transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 146 such as documentary films and sample curricula, mixed with insights from interviews he conducted, including a chapter-length interview with lakota rapper frank waln. hip hop beats, indigenous rhymes is designed to complicate simplistic or essentialist views of indigeneity and hip hop (indigeneity as distinct from blackness, hip hop as intrinsically masculinist). this is important work, but it is hampered by mays’ lack of precision when using key terms and a tendency to pull his punches. take for example this passage where mays defines modernity: by modernity, i am taking a simple yet complex definition put forward by scott richard lyons. he writes, ‘to embrace indigenous modernity is to usher in other modern concepts...including the concepts of decolonization.’ decolonization itself has varying definitions, but one of my favorites is put forth by decolonial theorist frantz fanon. he writes, ‘in its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives. for the last can be first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between the two protagonists.’ i am not advocating the use of violence for radical social change, per se, but i am calling indigenous hip hop artists warriors, armed with both words and art. this art can, in turn, get people—especially the seventh generation—moving to change their existing social conditions. (23) the problem with this definition is that it is not a definition. lyons is outlining the implications of adopting indigenous modernity as a stance, one of which would be a necessary engagement with the idea of decolonization. mays seizes on this turn as an opportunity to quote an uncompromising passage by fanon; however, he twists it so it reads counter to fanon’s spirit. fanon’s very next sentence is, “this determination to have the last move up to the front, to have them clamber up (too quickly, say some) the famous echelons of an organized society, can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course, violence” (fanon 3, emphasis mine). defining a key term by elaborating on a tangent and then advocating for the opposite of what the author of that tangent intended suggests to me that mays chose the passage for its affective impact, without engaging with fanon’s call for violent uprising against the state. this is probably wise from a standpoint of self-preservation, but it raises important questions concerning the role of the scholar in a world yearning for transcendent rupture in the direction of justice. mays’ disavowed desire points to the ways the traumatic reality of violence imposes limits on how we scholars permit ourselves to understand the many expressions of indigenous modernity. did the last already clamber up, or is it yet to occur? and if it is yet to occur, are we blinding lee veeraraghavan review essay: music and modernity among first peoples and hip hop beats 147 ourselves to possible circumstances? is the metaphor that of a dance, or a war? is it words and art, or red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives? in his chapter on the intersection of blackness and indigeneity, mays draws upon his experience as a black and indigenous man to advocate for the necessity of viewing the categories as not mutually exclusive. it is disquieting, though, to see anecdotal evidence employed frequently to explain insensitive uses of indigenous iconography by black individuals. for example, mays describes his encounter in an airport with a black man wearing a shirt with a racist image by the rapper t.i. on it. the exchange is brief though, and the conclusions drawn too broad: ...i saw a brotha in group a wearing… a shirt that has an indian chief head; it is the emblem of t.i.’s grand hustle gang label. i had to ask him, ‘whas goin’ on, bruh. yo, what does the chief head symbolize on that shirt? i’m native and was just curious.’ he responded, ‘it’s just the hustle gang symbol, just about doin’ you, bein’ yourself.’ i just nodded and said, ‘cool.’ this brief anecdote suggests that many black americans might be clueless about native mascots and representations. (90) this is not the only instance of unsubstantiated speculation. for example, he says that “[i]t is difficult to explain the function of indigenous representations in hip hop culture, but if i could speculate, i would imagine black folks find something noble in native histories, a white settler masculinist version, where they desire to align themselves with being a chief, the best artist in the game” (51). i suspect mays’ positionality comes into play here: he offers up examples of insensitive behaviour, generalizes them, and then empathizes with each side without excusing the behaviour. this is a heavy burden for one individual to bear, though—it is a heavy emotional burden, and it comes with a heavy burden of proof. a method that grapples with its own limits—perhaps a phenomenological approach—would be more informative and evince greater care, for the researcher and subjects alike. the chapter on gender is similarly empathetic, while being richer in ethnographic detail. there remains a tendency, though, to issue a call to arms and then backpedal. while drawing conclusions in order to influence the direction of future research in the area, mays writes: is there room for an indigenous hip hop feminist framework? hell yeah! i think we need to begin to further consider that the work being put in by native female artists is a form of indigenous feminism. we can utilize the dope scholarship of black hip hop feminists in order to develop indigenous hip hop feminist theories that are not essential in nature, but transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 148 are multifaceted, place the experience of indigenous women within hip hop and how that is represented, within settler colonialism, race, class, gender, and sexuality. i want to be careful, though, as a black/indigenous male. indeed, indigenous women can and have always spoken for themselves; my family and all of the indigenous women who continue to influence me greatly are a testament to that. i am in no way attempting to speak for them. but it is some shit worth noting, and should be considered for future scholars working in the field of indigenous hip hop. (83-4) this is a welcome gesture toward acknowledging work being done outside academic channels while nudging scholars toward adopting an intersectional analytic. but mays renders himself transparent in the next paragraph by claiming that he is not engaging in the act of representation. is citation not a form of representation? why claim that these groups speak for themselves and, moreover, that he as the scholar writing about them is not? it seems to me that the cause of justice, whatever its manifestation, is not served by abdicating our scholarly responsibilities in order to make room for the expertise of others. better to add one’s voice than to erase it. when it comes down to brass tacks, i want mays to speak for himself, and not only as himself. mays’ authorial voice is a striking one, and it belies his timidity in the above examples. his melding of scholarly and vernacular language is the great strength of the book, a stylistic choice that comes out of a desire to bridge his academic readership and his indigenous interlocutors. underpinning this is an ethical commitment to accessibility and building community. however, it raises some interesting problems. the many ways academics use language are all for the purpose of communicating research findings at the same time as situating those findings with regard to pre-existing scholarship. there is some overlap between this purpose and, for example, the way mays gives shout-outs throughout the book. nevertheless, scholarly claims (if not diction) tend toward parsimony, whereas hip hop is larger than life. at times, mays’ pumped-up style and ear for wordplay can make exposition and passing comments read like major—even controversial—claims. for example, “[t]he 1970s marked a complete reversal in us policies toward american indians, from termination to self-determination” (26). i can’t help but wonder how the book would read if mays had committed to writing the body of the text exclusively in hip hop vernacular, and relegated all the scholarly buttressing, including historical context, to an extensive series of footnotes. the sheer amount of work being done by mays’ voice imparts to his arguments a lonely feeling. but the production of scholarship is, at its base, a communitarian effort lee veeraraghavan review essay: music and modernity among first peoples and hip hop beats 149 (neoliberal atomization and the corporatization of the university notwithstanding) and, much like modernity, we partake of it through engaging with the fruits of one another’s labour. i would have liked to see mays engage with literature examining the relationship that indigenous artists—including hip hop artists—have with their publics, the marketplace, and governmental institutions. scholars, including most of the contributors to music and modernity among first peoples of north america, have explored these dynamics in interesting and productive ways. it’s never too late to join the dance. lee veeraraghavan, university of pittsburgh work cited fanon, frantz. the wretched of the earth. grove press, [1961] 2004. microsoft word 873-article text-4619-1-6-20191130.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 88 the truth about yoda stephen graham jones long ago, in an america not so far from us, really, captivity narratives were all the rage. a captivity narrative is the harrowing tale of someone captured by the indians, someone who had to—gasp—live with the savages, and suffer all the mistreatment and indignities. then, come the sixties and seventies, the spiritual descendants of all those captivity survivors started wearing beads and vests and headbands, and growing their hair out, and resisting the government. right around then, we got star wars. those captivity narratives had never stopped happening, though. at least not for me. growing up indian, when the people up on the screen aren’t like you but you kind of like them all the same, the obvious thing to do, it’s abduct them. make them come live with you. i was capturing people left and right. rambo, because he had a headband and a cool knife. john mcclain from die hard; his guerrilla warfare tactics fit right in. conan the barbarian, because he could teach these town people a thing or two. spider-man, because he lived with his aunt, and always had trouble coming up with enough change to buy his school lunch. kyle reese from terminator, because he looks like the guy who hangs out by the gas pumps, and has stories you can’t begin to believe. star wars too. star wars first, even. broad-stroke, star wars is a crew of die-hard rebels pitted against the big dark evil empire—the empire that has wave after wave of white infantry to send out into the (star)field. and, where the empire has not just bigger guns, but the biggest gun ever, what the rebels have are these elegant, cool, traditional weapons. and they’ve got x-wing fighters too, the trustiest ponies ever, which they use to slash in for raid after raid, and then they’re gone again before the empire even knows what’s happened. darth vader? more like darth custer. and, leia, with her hopi hairdo, her homeland isn’t just taken from her, it’s turned to (space)rubble. but that just makes her fight harder. luke, he’s been adopted out of his tribe, has been forced into (space)farming, but is always looking up to the sky for home. is there a more indian name than skywalker? maybe: han solo, that living embodiment of an indian who is not stephen graham jones “the truth about yoda” 89 going to wait to get his request to cross the reservation line approved. he just hits that hyperspace button and goes. and, like all indians, he believes in bigfoot. he has to: bigfoot’s his copilot. and don’t forget that luke and leia being twins, so many of the tribes have stories about twins either messing up or saving the world—sometimes both. it’s what they do. what really gives away that star wars is native, though, it’s yoda. he’s an indian grandmother if there ever was one. not because he’s nine hundred years old and on a cane, not because the words he’s translating in his head always come out in the wrong order, and not because he’s where messed-up kids retreat to, to figure a few things out. it’s because about the first thing he says, it’s “how do you get so big eating food of this kind?” it’s because his refrain, it’s pretty much “hear you nothing that i say?” it’s because he tells this gangly kid stumbling through his house that “you must unlearn what you have learned.” it’s because he always has a pot of something cooking over the fire. it’s because he turns that stumbling boy into a warrior. yeah, i needed some indian role models, growing up. i needed some indian heroes. and i didn’t have to go far, far away. i just had to go to the theater. thank you, star wars. yoda: episode 1491 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byxx6njmtiq transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 147 drew lopenzina. through an indian’s looking glass: a cultural biography of william apess, pequot. university of massachusetts press, 2017. 293 pp. isbn: 9781625342591. https://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/through-indians-looking-glass and i can tell you that i am fully satisfied with the manner of my creation, fully—whether others are or not. — william apess drew lopenzina is associate professor at old dominion university of early american and native american literatures with a phd in english from the university of new hampshire. through the looking glass argues that william apess was an early nineteenth century indigenous author who exemplified the “terrible negative voice” (a walt whitman metaphor) that challenged the hegemony of dominant american literary discourse’s celebration of settler colonialism by “directly confronting the dominant narrative structures presented in ‘novels, histories, newspapers, poems, schools, [and] lectures” (1-2). lopenzina hopes his book will make readers aware of the enormity of the injustices against indigenous peoples by rendering their “stories and claims visible once more” through a cultural biography of william apess (2). lopenzina’s text includes numerous scholarly works and key concepts by native american authors and critics. for instance, he uses gerald vizenor’s term “survivance” when describing the work of apess as well as apess himself, whom he describes as a “dynamic figure of liminality or hybridity” (4). it can be argued that apess’s liminality and hybridity, as with his indigenous contemporaries, are the outcome of the lack of investment in record-keeping that the u.s. government demonstrated toward the people and peoples it had a vested interest in erasing. given these constraints, lopenzina constructs a cultural biography that “holds up apess’s life as a lens through which to view the dynamics of native lives in the northeast” (7). or, as apess poetically phrases it, “through an indian’s looking-glass darkly” (7). feminist scholars will appreciate that this cultural biography does not fail to acknowledge the contribution of women who mentored apess, such as his aunt sally george and anne wampy (143). finally, the author desires to discover why apess’s life and work continues to be a cultural lacuna while elucidating “apess’s place on the literary, cultural, and historical map…” (251). one of the key concepts addressed in lopenzina’s text is “unwitnessing.” acts of unwitnessing consist of rhetorically erasing inconvenient truths such as the “persistence of native peoples and their cultures” (3). the author cites numerous examples of canonical authors, including tocqueville, cooper, whitman, thoreau, and emerson, as unwitnessing the resilience and integrity of individuals and communities they observed firsthand. for instance, tocqueville famously unwitnesses the persistence of native peoples when he writes in his highly acclaimed and iconic democracy in america that america’s indigenous peoples are fated for “inevitable destruction” because of, in his words, their “implacable prejudices, their uncontrolled passions, their vices… and savage virtues” (qtd. 2-3; democracy in america). james fenimore cooper not only prognosticates the inevitable demise of indigenous inhabitants but claims it has already occurred in defiance of his own proximity to his native neighbors (53). although lopenzina does not cite specific examples from the works of whitman, thoreau, and emerson—although those do exist—he does note that america’s extensive biographical archiving of their lives and works, while neglecting apess’s life, is testament to another equally insidious form of unwitnessing (9). lopenzina also highlights that, in popular culture, unwitnessing may be observed in the bias against natives who look like apess: an “evangelizing, book-writing, temperance-lecturing promoter” (19). lopenzina argues that apess rhetorically mocks popular https://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/through-indians-looking-glass rachel tudor review of through and indian’s looking glass 148 colonial tropes by titling his biography a son of the forest when he was primarily raised in urban environments (20). lopenzina observes that it is within the discipline of history itself that one of the most egregious and damaging examples of unwitnessing may be found: namely, george bancroft’s ur-text of american history, the history of america from colonization to present times, published in 1834. bancroft’s colonial distortion of history “decrees that prior to colonization the whole of the continent ‘was an unproductive waste. throughout its wide extent, the arts had not erected a monument. its only inhabitants were a few scattered tribes of feeble barbarians, destitute of commerce, of political connection, and of morals’” (23). lopenzina laments that these assertions are all too often widely repeated today. these misconceptions reoccur in texts that purport to be historically accurate because they have become a part of america’s national identity and legal fiction (24). lopenzina notes that bancroft’s own textbook contradicts itself where he “records the systematic destruction of pequot crops” while simultaneously asserting that native landscapes were a wasteland (24-25). interestingly, apess wrote an account of the war of 1812 that, if not for the project of unwitnessing, should and would be of value to historians because of “its consistently ironic tone… his account is a surprisingly modern critique of military absurdity and inefficiency” (101). the author asserts that the unwitnessing of apess stems not only from “prolonged historical disinterest” but also from “an archival negligence that runs through the field of early native studies” (111). another species of unwitnessing is the legalized fantasy that one drop of ‘negro blood’ negates a native person’s rights as an ‘indian’ to their tribal land and treaty rights. the fallacy of this racialized construction of indigenous identity was the source of some of apess’s “most poignant rhetorical arguments” (54). this legalized fantasy also contributed to the practice of bonding out native children which margaret ellen newell terms as a project of “judicial enslavement” for “generations of native children” that wrenched families and communities apart while subjecting children to violence, forced labor, and sexual exploitation (newell; lopenzina, 70). lopenzina asks readers to compare apess’s narrative to slave narratives in order to comprehend the full magnitude of the trauma apess experienced (72). in actuality, apess’s mother was literally a slave without the pretense of the legal legerdemain of “bonding out.” finally, lopenzina attests that the schoolhouse on catamount hill has an honor roll of speakers— “stearns, myers, strong, wolcott”—but “their most famous preacher [apess] is never counted among them” (155). this elision may also be considered an example of unwitnessing in our national landmarks. lopenzina’s background in english is apparent in his critical review of apess’s writings. lopenzina claims that a son of the forest is a potent example of a “negative work in which the assumptions of the dominant culture are systematically dismantled and inverted, reflected back on a predominantly white audience in harshly critical terms” (173). this scholarly background is also clear in his appraisal that a son of the forest is apess’s declaration of his humanity and demand for respect as an innovative thinker and critic (173). in addition, lopenzina classifies and distinguishes the genre of apess’s biographical narrative as a special form of “spiritual autobiography,” which “recasts john bunyan’s pilgrim’s progress” from apess’s own unique cultural perspective and lived experience (63). in fact, lopenzina argues that readers would be well-advised to consider apess’s texts in reference to other “discourses of piety” (67). furthermore, he notes apess’s use of sophisticated forms of “rhetorical reversals” to create stories that defeat an inattentive reader’s expectations—a thoroughly modern technique (65). transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 149 more broadly, lopenzina observes that apess’s writing deliberately frustrates readers by defying conventional understandings of meaning and artless exposition (66). apess, it may be argued, provided the exemplar of the genre of cultural biography by viewing the wrongs he was subject to as part of “larger machinations at work” (17). he sought to “bear witness” to the “complex social forces” and “powerful tide of history” that were responsible for his conditions (17). heartbreakingly, apess states that, ultimately, he is unable to chronicle the full “intensity of our sufferings” (21). indeed, there are injuries for which words have not been invented. lopenzina’s expertise in critical theory is illustrated by his particularly helpful precis of apess’s oeuvre: simply put, apess was in conflict with history itself (234). he resisted “the semantics of colonial discourse” by rejecting the common derogatory and subjugating tropes of dominant discourse such as “savage,” “barbaric,” and “wild” (175). furthermore, it is apess’s own metaphor, that of the “looking glass,” that most readily describes his project of exposing the dominant discourse as one that “only magnifies the qualities white people wanted to see” (193). lopenzina notes the vital role of storytelling in indigenous communities, as well as including contemporary studies that present storytelling as a “path to overcoming trauma” (123). he cites the work of trauma experts who conclude that healing and well-being are products of “strong, enduring, cultural frameworks, or the ability to fully embrace a narrative” (122). in other words, storytelling is essential to cultural preservation and community restoration. lopenzina refers specifically to the work of trauma specialist jonathan shay, who uses the concept of “themis” or “what’s right” to explicate a person or community’s understanding of what it means to be a good mother, father, son, daughter, or neighbor. for shay, trauma is the “betrayal of themis,” through a “violent and unanticipated fragmentation of what once seemed a sage and integrated worldview” (qtd. in lopenzina, 122). shay argues that only by a communal sharing of the traumatic experience through storytelling can that trauma be processed and overcome. however, in a colonial context, the colonizer’s well-being is threatened by any appeal to an alternative themis whereby they are the wrongdoer, and their sense of right and wrong is thrown in disarray. thus, the colonial “culture itself is a construction that attempts to contain traumatic knowledge through coercive hegemonic power” (132). native american readers will appreciate the poignant and painful anecdotes from apess’s texts that lopenzina highlights as symptomatic of the ills that still plague our lived lives. for example, apess’s professional aspirations and personal dream of becoming an ordained reverend in order to help indigenous communities were repeatedly thwarted because of discrimination. he earned the right to be ordained through relentless study, serving as a “circuit riding” preacher, and publishing his sermons at his own expense. the first step to being ordained required the granting of an “exhorter’s license.” even at this stage, though, he was strongly “opposed by certain members of the congregation… the discord arising over his candidacy nearly split the congregation” (162). nevertheless, he persisted. and, after successfully serving as an “exhorter of the word,” he applied to be ordained by the episcopal methodist church. in 1828, apess was denied (164). he reapplied in 1829 and expected to be ordained, but was denied again (167). although lopenzina does not dwell on this particularly heartbreaking event in his life, i invite you to think for a moment what a profound disappointment this must have been for him. imagine the humiliation and shame he must have felt as he ploughed those lonely miles and ministered to those isolated congregations. imagine how his hopes must have grown when he applied a second time, along with those of his wife and children as they waited for the desired outcome. only, it rachel tudor review of through and indian’s looking glass 150 was not to be. he was never given an explanation—only a perfunctory rejection. apess’s response to discrimination was to write his autobiography, and “just a little over two months later, he deposited the manuscript of his autobiography, a son of the forest, with… the patent office for copyright… refused ordination in the church, he located another bold avenue to begin to offer his message to the world” (168). eventually apess was ordained by a seceding group of methodists—the protestant methodists—and apess’s “impossibly long road to ordination was finally complete” (187). apess did not rest on his laurels. he used the status and clout of an ordained minister to help the mashpee indians to regain control of the resources they needed for their livelihood during the mashpee revolt of 1833 (199). it could be argued that this was the first civil rights protest in u.s. history, because it was premised on apess’s apprehension of “how resiliency and effectiveness of a marginalized resistance to power would have to be conducted through the acquired moral authority of directed nonviolent action or civil disobedience” (198). like dr. martin luther king, apess was arrested, and subsequently was sentenced to thirty days in prison (209). similarly, too, “apess used his night in jail as a means of holding up american democracy itself before his indian’s looking glass, and the reflection proved unsettling to a number of people in relatively high places” (205). again, for native readers, this has resonance—think ‘water protectors,’ for instance. lopenzina describes how some detractors tried to silence apess by publishing lies about him. among the most notable were that he was a “‘colored man’ rather than a pequot… calling into dispute his ordination, and… charging that he had collected church monies for his own use” (219). these were pernicious attacks on his sense of self and identity as well as his life’s work. how it must have stung a man who valued the printed and spoken to word to see his reputation so misrepresented and published abroad. apess, in a move that no doubt surprised his libelers, sued and won in court. instead of taking the full recompense allowed by law, however, he gave up his claim for the restoration of his good name by having them publish a full retraction of their defamations. this act, in my mind, illustrates his themis. lopenzina conveys apess’s writing which claims that he did this: “‘in order to show them that i wanted nothing but right, and not revenge, and that they might know that an indian’s character was as dearly valued by him as theirs was by them.’ he concluded by wondering, ‘would they ever have thus yielded to an indian, if they had not been compelled?…though an indian, i am at least a man, with all the feelings proper to humanity, and my reputation is dear to me; and i conceive it to be my duty to the children i shall leave behind me, as well as to myself, not to leave them the inheritance of a blasted name’” (220). thus, when representing himself, as well as when he was representing the will of the mashpee indians, apess sought justice, not money. native readers will recognize the stark contrast between indigenous and colonial philosophies of justice. apess and the mashpee sought reparative justice whereas american jurisprudence is focused on compensatory justice. these are not only dissimilar, but the outcome of one often precludes the actualization of the other. in the instances cited in the text, if apess had taken ‘damages’ as measured in dollars and cents, instead of having the men who libeled him retract transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 151 through publication their spurious and hateful lies, his reputation and good name would not have been recovered. he understood that no amount of money alone would restore his good name. likewise, if the mashpee had accepted money for the loss of the resources that provided them their livelihood, they never would be an independent self-sustaining community. apess’s death did not relieve him of the burden of continuing being an ‘indian.’ after his death it was widely reported that he died from “the demon rum” and that he “possessed the real traits of the indian character, cunning and the disposition to never forgive an enemy” (248-249). the aspersion that apess died of alcoholism has been so embedded in our culture that robert warrior’s “eulogy on william apess” repeats it—albeit in sympathetic language. i was pleased that lopenzina addressed this fallacy by finding the coroner’s report of his death and having it evaluated by a “number of physicians who have declared it a textbook case of appendicitis” (248). in reference to the so-called “real traits” of the indian, apess identifies these as “forbearance, sympathy, permanence” (229). lopenzina’s through an indian’s looking glass: a cultural biography of william apess, pequot is a valuable and long overdue study of william apess and the cultural context of his lived life. this book is a welcome addition to the field of native american studies, as well as numerous others besides. although some of the academic jargon and arguments may be challenging, i have no hesitation recommending this book to readers in general. this is a salient and cogent reminder of the long history of indigenous struggles for justice, as well as an affirmation of indigenous values and survivance. rachel tudor works cited newell, margaret ellen. “the changing nature of slavery in new england, 1670-1720.” reinterpreting new england indians and the colonial experience. colin g. calloway and neal salisbury, eds. colonial society of massachusetts, 2003. shay, jonathan. achilles in vietnam: combat trauma and the undoing of character. scribner, 1994. tocqueville, alexis de. democracy in america, vol. 1. vintage books, 1945. warrior, robert. “eulogy on william apess: speculations on his new york death.” studies in american indian literatures. 16:2 (summer 2004) pp. 1-13. microsoft word jbm, sear, final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 313 jan peter laurens loovers. reading life with gwich’in: an educational approach. routledge, 2020. 264 pp. isbn: 9781138616691. https://www.crcpress.com/reading-life-with-gwichin-an-educationalapproach/loovers/p/book/9781138616691 in reading life with gwich’in: an educational approach, jan peter laurens loovers revisits two years of ethnographic fieldwork and historical research that he undertook with teetłʼit gwich’in people living in fort mcpherson, in canada’s northwest territories. this book makes contributions to ethnographic and historical anthropological work with and about gwich’in people and their lives historically and presently. the ethnographic component of loovers’ discussion focuses, and reflects, on his own experiences of learning from teetłʼit gwich’in people on and through the land. loovers frames his discussion by introducing two concepts he developed based on his own observations and his engagement with relevant scholarly literature. the first he terms an “educational approach towards life” that embodies both (gwich’in) knowledge transmission and the process of learning and being taught where “you have to live it” (3). the second concept he terms “reading life,” where he expands the definition of “reading” to include reading the land and reading texts as “ways of conversing” (emphasis in original; 3). both these concepts make an appearance in the book’s title, reading life with gwich’in: an educational approach. structurally, this 264-page book is divided into four thematic parts titled: “introduction to an educational approach,” “a sentient history,” “losing elders, keeping life going,” and “life on the land.” each part is comprised of either two or three chapters that fall within the section theme. at the end of the book there are two appendices. appendix a (“dramatis personae”) details the names and descriptions of teetłʼit gwich’in community members and other people mentioned in the book and is followed by appendix b (“note on gwich’in topology”) which details gwich’in place name meanings, spellings, and translations taken from the gwich’in online atlas. the book ends with a bibliography and an index. the prologue opens with a vignette of a chilly (and ultimately educational) snowmobile trip into the “bush” that loovers took with neil colin during his dissertation research (xv). loovers explains that this account illustrates five themes he addresses in this book: knowing, reading, travelling, the land, and gwich’in teachers. based on these themes, loovers writes that the following pages of the book will “outline an educational approach towards life and (indirectly) exemplify what methodologicaltheoretical implications this has on writing scholarly books and doing anthropological victoria sear review of reading life with gwich’in 314 research” (xvii). in a footnote, loovers briefly discusses his “inner debate” about whether to call this approach “pedagogical” instead of “educational,” and that regardless of what terminology he uses, his “intention is to underscore that the approach is processual and incorporates the practices of learning, teaching and being taught, and becoming knowledgeable”, all in a culturally-grounded context (xxii). after reading the prologue, i was keenly interested to know more about the specific methodological aspects of the “methodological-theoretical implications” loovers mentions and how he himself is (indirectly) exemplifying them. loovers does not include a conventional methodology section where he explicitly outlines his research methodology and/or his methodology for writing about his research. in the first chapter, “ecology, education, collaboration,” loovers orients his work in relevant theoretical and scholarly literature and briefly explains several of his methodological choices, such as to do few formal interviews and to share drafts of his written work with concerned teetłʼit community members in order to incorporate their feedback. as such, i would have welcomed and enjoyed a discussion of the specific “methodological-theoretical” decisions loovers made in structuring his text and in how he presents his research, his arguments, and his claims. with the exception of the introduction and conclusion, each chapter in this book either focuses on elements of teetłʼit gwich’in history or loovers’ own fieldwork. in the history chapters, loovers weaves together different historical records and shared memories to give a history of teetłʼit gwich’in people and their histories with, and connections to, their land and place. he also addresses the history of literacy and change within the community. in the chapters where loovers discusses his own fieldwork, he focuses on his experience of learning with and from teetłʼit gwich’in people both on the land and through the close relationships he built while an engaged participant in daily community life. throughout the book, loovers includes teetłʼit gwich’in words, phrases, and place names in gwich’in first and english second, which both foregrounds gwich’in language and knowledge systems and regularly reminds the reader of the physical, cultural, and historical space being discussed. with regards to language, in different chapters and footnotes, loovers briefly discusses the history of gwich’in language documentation, particularly as it pertains to the different orthographies (writing systems) that have been used to write the language historically and presently. as such, and as a linguistic anthropologist, i would have appreciated a section where loovers explains and reflects on his own orthographic decisions, particularly in relation to why he generally chooses not to mark tone in the gwich’in words he includes. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 315 each chapter of this book is uniquely engaging and informative, but, at times, i found it difficult to identify the ways in which the chapters individually, and as a whole, come together to support loovers’ central arguments for “an educational approach towards life” and “reading life.” at first, i wondered whether there was a specific, and not immediately transparent, motivation behind the way that loovers chose to structure each chapter and the book as a whole. about a third of the way through reading, i started contemplating whether this opacity was in fact a methodological decision on loovers’ part, where he set out to use a sort of indigenous pedagogy that entails “teaching” the reader through example and stories rather than through direct explanation as a way of supporting and illustrating his central arguments. i wondered whether in the conclusion he might explain how the teachings from each chapter work together to indirectly exemplify and illustrate his observations and claims. this type of explanation was not the focus of the conclusion or epilogue. however, in a footnote to the conclusion title, loovers explains that “the conclusion has been very much a collaborative and edited writing with tim ingold as we were trying to piece together different chapters in my postgraduate thesis” (emphasis in original; 231). it seems that the relatively individual nature of each chapter and section of the text may not reflect a methodological or stylistic decision on loovers’ part, but is more likely a product of the fact that the book is comprised of sections previously published separately and other sections adapted from loovers’ dissertation. this does not detract from the relevance or importance of the work loovers has done or the claims he makes; rather, it means that, for the most part, each chapter in the book operates well as a somewhat standalone piece which contributes in different ways to further ethnographic and historical knowledge about teetłʼit gwich’in people, their lives, and their pedagogies. victoria sear, the university of british columbia microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 76 red paint: the defacing of colonial structures as decolonization jeremiah garsha “peace and freedom. welcome. home of the free indian land.” or perhaps it can be read as “welcome peace and freedom [this is the] home of free indian land.” with an absence of punctuation, this message, handwritten in red paint on alcatraz’s water tower, invites rereading and repositioning. originally painted in 1969, the writing can still be seen today. the tower sits on the northwest side of the island, coming into view too as ferries bring 1.7 million annual tourists to alcatraz from san francisco’s waterfront. the former prison facilities became a national park in 1973, maintained and operated by the united states federal government’s national park service. the red painted message, inscribed on a towering federal structure, is a lingering reminder of the occupations of the island by indigenous activists between 1964 and 1971.1 this article opens with an exploration of the alcatraz occupation and an unpacking of the messages painted onto the closed prison as they frame the further case studies below. not only were the 1960s protest movements and specifically the occupation of the island a watershed moment of long building constructions of broader indigenous identity formation as it coalesced under national connections, but this moment of protest can be seen as solidifying a foundation on which a global indigenous decolonization movement is being built and painted in red. the inscription on the tower declaring and claiming the island “free indian land” creates an enduring text. it recolors the white tower in red paint. it subverts the towering structure from a state controlled panoptic tool of surveillance into a new text that highlights, in red, a bloodstained past of violence and disenfranchisement.2 it is this rewriting of narratives that makes the water tower on alcatraz a text of decolonizing literature playing out in public spaces. the water tower’s inscription, in fact, is a literal palimpsest. after decades of exposure to high ocean winds and salt-water corrosion, the painted message had faded and chipped away to be illegible. the water tower itself had rusted and become unstable. in 2012, after spending $1.5 million and nearly a year on the construction, the water tower was rebuilt. the national park service took the unprecedented step of replicating the message, perhaps the only time the “federal government [was] in the business of preserving graffiti” according to national park jeremiah garsha “red paint” 77 service spokeswoman alexandra picavet (qtd in wollan). while indigenous activists and artists were the ones who traced over the original letters, the fresh paint transformed the faded reddish terra-cotta that matched the nearby golden gate bridge into a bolder and brighter red paint. it was reported that in the first month after the new tower was unveiled, “park service employees noticed a significant rise in the number of tourists who then asked questions” about the painted message and the history of the occupation during guided tours (ibid). the occupation of alcatraz is seen through an inter/national perspective, both from a contemporary perspective and from the beginning.3 the activists were american indians4 from many nations, coming from across the united states and canada. yet during the occupation they self-identified as “indians of all tribes.” while activists occupying the island identified individually as sioux, santee-dakota, seneca, mohawk, shoshone, hoocąągra, cherokee, inuit, and blackfoot, as well as mixed heritage, on alcatraz the activists came together under a supratribal organization, making for what this article calls transnational-indigeneity.5 their use of red paint while “holding the rock” was evocative of the burgeoning “red power” movement, one of many protest movements throughout the globe during the 1960s. red paint was also, as will be shown, a pragmatic choice of a decolonizing tool, creating echoes in subsequent defacements across the world. the case studies in this article, spanning over a half century and existing in the united states, namibia, and australia, are explored as visual texts under critical theory and literary analysis.6 this paper explores the intertextuality of red paint thrown on colonial structures as a form of decolonization by challenging and subverting the narrative of the former installations. painting these texts is part of a broader toolkit of actions taken by indigenous authorial activists that can be read transnationally. red paint has a specific symbolic nature when cast onto established colonial structures.7 with its ease of access and bright eye-catching hue, red paint as a form of protest writing is ubiquitous. yet, when used by indigenous people on structures installed by or deemed to represent colonial powers, it becomes a shared act of reclamation and connects to a deeper connected meaning, subverting both the structure and the narrative it produces in its defacement. deconstructing these colonial “relics” with the use of red paint repurposes them as a decolonizing instrument and a source of indigenous reclamation. the occupation of alcatraz, in this article, is the archetypal example of using red paint in such a fashion. acts of “vandalism” of colonial structures predate the 1964-71 occupation, and transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 78 indeed were by no means invented by or limited to north american indigenous protests. at alcatraz, however, and under the focus of national media attention and brightly painted onto federal structures, the defacement of the iconic prison structure helped solidify using red paint as a tactic to give voice to the burgeoning red power struggle. the occupation, lasting for many years, provided a testing ground which lead to a convergence of activism, branded in red. when red paint was subsequently deployed on colonial structures globally, it alluded, textually, to the occupation of alcatraz and to the protest tactics used by north american indigenous activists. in this article, three case studies are employed to trace the evolving use of red inscription on colonial structures and how this can be seen as illustrating shades of transnational-indigenous decolonizing practices. i begin with an exploration of the occupation of alcatraz. much of the historiography on twentieth century american indigenous activism focuses on the occupation as the watershed moment for the organization and protest by american indians.8 overlooked in this scholarship is the specific use of red paint and its powerful use for rewriting, often literally, historical and hieratical texts to include an indigenous presence. this article is methodologically structured interdisciplinarily, in order to read the cultural and political significance behind the use of red paint on material objects in the public view as texts. red paint is used to highlight injustices for a public gaze, and thus is often undertaken within the milieu of an international audience through media attention. therefore, the targets of red paint augmentation are the overt ones—towering buildings, imposing monuments, and onesided narrative plaques. in all the case studies examined herein, the painted structures are federally or municipally owned, which makes such inscriptions protests against colonial states and their inheritors. they are also all structures that are intended for tourists.9 therefore, i use a visual analysis of the painted material objects, contextualizing them historically and culturally, while also attempting to connect the movements behind the defacement into an entangled web of transnational indigenous activism. the paint creates a new signifier, and this article puts the old structures in conversation with their “red de/faced” counterpart. legal history, the culture of criminology, sociology, critical theory, and political science combine with subaltern and literary studies in order to produce a polyphonic and global narrative of indigenous protest and reclamation through material culture.10 i have grounded my argument in not only what the object becomes after it has been painted, but in the way it is to be viewed as decentering colonial master-narratives. jeremiah garsha “red paint” 79 this article is organized chronologically, in order to showcase the connections between the use of red paint by indigenous activists and viewing episodes of defacement as intertextual forms of reclamation. i move from the occupation of alcatraz by “indians of all tribes” to the protest events by the american indian movement (aim), specifically its 1970 thanksgiving day painting of plymouth rock in massachusetts, disrupting the 350th anniversary ceremony of the landing of the pilgrims. included in this plymouth case study is also aim activist russell means’s pouring of red paint on the statue of columbus in denver, colorado during the same year. means was present at the plymouth rock protest and thus directly bridges these two examples into a linked protest movement. thanksgiving day ceremonies also connect back to alcatraz, as the united states national park service now formally recognizes the occupation of alcatraz every year with “the indigenous people’s sunrise gathering.” while the park facilities are closed for the thanksgiving day holiday, the national park service allows visitors on the island to observe “unthanksgiving day,” a bonfire ceremony, with dances and speeches from members of the indians of all tribes. more than 5000 people attended the 2018 event.11 i then move to more contemporary moments that evoked the same methods of red paint on problematic colonial structures. the 2004 “vandalism” in risdon cove, tasmania, connects to plymouth rock in the sense that it was the site of the first landing of english settlers on the australian continent. it is also simultaneously the site of the first genocide against the palawa people.12 in this section i explore the use of red paint on the bowen monument after the 1995 handover of risdon cove from the australian government to aboriginal authorities. this is an attempt to show how the red power movement created modern methodological tools of protest, of which red paint is one, as well as an example of reclamation through defacement that has influenced indigenous activism across the globe. the third main case study ends with the 2016 vandalism of the marinedenkmal in swakopmund, namibia. once again, here indigenous activists poured red paint over a namibian inherited celebration of colonialism. by coloring the marinedenkmal in a leitmotif evoking blood, the hegemonic statue is decentered to include an often-silenced indigenous presence. america, australia, and namibia are united in a history of colonial genocide. while the historical circumstances differed in each, all three countries have yet to fully come to terms with their settler complicity and oppression of native peoples. red paint defacement stands as one of many practices aimed at decolonizing public spaces. the allusions to the red power movement transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 80 of the 1960s are elucidated when indigenous actors use red paint to interrupt the colonial enshrinement of these settler societies’ national narratives. “vandalism” presents a problematic approach for academic analysis.13 due to its illegality and the monetary punishments and criminal adjudication attached to the action, vandalism often takes place under a clandestine cloak of anonymity. the actions are often left to speak for themselves (literally so in the case of graffiti messages). in my case studies the individuals responsible for the use of red paint are largely unknown, even in instances where an individual or group may have taken credit for the act of vandalism. i have thus chosen to use the term “defacement,” as red paint is used to subvert the narrative and create an indigenous memorial out of a former colonial monument. the illegality of pouring red paint on these structures is part of its non-violent civil disobedience underpinnings within a spatial practice. moreover, vandalism and defacement are often marked, in the words of nic sammond and anna creadick, by ephemeral qualities of “extreme and explicit temporary-ness […] in both its creation and its consumption” (139). the paint is quickly cleaned off and the artifact restored.14 the capture of it by the media or in other forms of documentary evidence, or else active preservation of the defacement, creates permanence and a shareable presence. in his landmark study on graffiti, criminologist jeff ferrell pointed out that “research into […] forms of graffiti writing can expose not only the dynamics of crime and culture, but the lived inequities within which both evolve” (5). examining the red paint and its message is thus interconnected with the material object on which it is cast. ferrell also notes that graffiti writers are engaged in a “shared aesthetics of […] subculture” both localized in its specificity of message and canvas, but also connected to “individual and collective innovations […] which continue to expand, both historically and geographically beyond […] into a larger world” (11). while ferrell’s study centers on american urban youth as “taggers,” the position of this “interweaving of broader cultural processes” when taken as one of the instruments in the toolbox of the disposed,15 graffiti and painting colonial structures are used to highlight “injustice and inequality […] the domination of social, [historical], and cultural life […and] the aggressive [and continuing] disenfranchisement” of minorities by the “institutionalized intolerance” of “political and economic authority” (11-16; farrell: 1999, 414). graffiti, which the use of red paint discussed in this article, in part, falls under, has a cultural export function when applied to resistance against colonialism more generally.16 as ferrell and his sociologist coeditor clinton jeremiah garsha “red paint” 81 sanders showed in cultural criminology, the political use of painting on government owned structures has gained a sense of public acceptance, specifically when applied as a form of resistance to imperialism. while domestic in practice, with red paint defacement being hyperlocalized to a particular site and unique historical narration, as a tool of decolonization, its exportation internationally highlights the transnational-indigeneity of shared resistance and reclamation. red paint is used to ruin colonial ruins. it is a suggestive and symbolic act, and the splashing of red paint onto material structures uniquely leaves these colonial reminders physically intact, yet recolors the historical narratives these constructs attempt to celebrate. the act of graffiti and defacement is not unique to indigenous causes. nor, of course, is the color red. yet, when employed by indigenous activists, red takes on a layered meaning. red can stand in for “redness,” part of reclaiming of the derogatory terms “red man” and “redskins” that so colored american settler perspectives of native peoples and continue to proliferate popular culture in a myriad of ways.17 in her detailed study on “red” as signifier for american indians, nancy shoemaker focused on the iconography of red and white colors in southeastern indian culture as well as indigenous creation narratives and the ceremonial practice of red paint. the colors red and white “articulated a dualism between war and peace,” wrote shoemaker, where “the ‘red’ or ‘bloody’ path meant war” as war chiefs painted themselves red to show their political authority in leading at times of battle, compared to the white-dressed civil chiefs (632). focusing on the cherokee nation, shoemaker explained that the use of red-brown face paint was a means of evoking the “blood-red natural powers of the body” (638). raymond fogelson gendered this reading when he argued that the connection between red and death in combat lined up with its red twin of menstrual blood and women’s ability to create new life (173-75). both interpretations hold true when indigenous actors use red paint defacement. it stands in as a declaration of war against the colonial construct, a path toward bloodiness. indeed, as we shall see, red paint is often splattered on these objects in order to resemble blood—invoking the bloodstained history that is often silenced by imperial celebrations. yet this paint also bleeds new menstrual life into the object, creating a new structure from the old, and with it a more accurate narrative of the past. red also carries an indigenous connotation when looked at internationally. in the namibian and australian contexts, the color red is directly linked to native people in the official transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 82 national flags.18 the namibian national flag features a band of red, which represents “the namibian people, their heroism and their determination to build a future of equal opportunity for all (“national symbols”).19 the aboriginal flag of australia consists of black and red bars, with a yellow circle in the center. while the flag’s creator, aboriginal artist harold thomas, maintained that black represented the aboriginal people, the color red rooted the aboriginals as autochthonous, representing the red ochre painted on their bodies to spiritually connect with the land. coincidentally, the occupation of alcatraz took place during the creation of each of those flags. the flag that would later become the national namibian flag was created in 1966, two years after the first attempted occupation of alcatraz. the aboriginal flag of australia debuted in 1971, the very same year the final alcatraz occupiers were forcefully removed. when the aboriginal flag was flown over the “aboriginal tent embassy” in canberra, it laid claim to an occupied point on the lawn facing the old parliament house, creating an inter/national nexus point for indigenous occupation. aboriginal australians from across the nation had come together under a makeshift assembly of tents to advocate for land rights in the very same year the “indians of all tribes” occupiers were removed from alcatraz. both of these flags, with the prominent display of red, were created in fights over belonging, ownership, occupation, and how history would be displayed. when the second wave of alcatraz occupiers waded ashore on november 20, 1969, the color red was symbolically used in their request to buy back alcatraz from the us government for the “fair and reasonable” terms in which they were originally paid: “twenty-four dollars in glass beads and red clothe” (qtd in kelly, 2; emphasis mine). further subverting the colonial constructs used to dispossess american indians, this group of activists claimed the island “by right of discovery […] in the name of all american indians.” from its inception, the occupation of alcatraz was an inclusive site for all american indians, rather than reclamation in the name of the ohlone people, to which the area was traditional homeland. in his history of the occupation, troy johnson wrote “the movement was to promote no one individual or one tribe […] but rather native americans from all tribes across the united states” (53). thus the activists titled themselves “indians of all tribes” using inter/national connection. occupier richard oakes recalled that the name was chosen because of the diverse network of activists at play: we represented five different tribes, so we claimed [the island] in the name of the indians jeremiah garsha “red paint” 83 of all tribes, not just one tribe. [november 9, 1969] was the first time we used the name which would become our name on the island. (qtd in johnson, 58-59) occupier peter blue cloud stressed the collapsing of rural and urban divides that had separated groups. he recalled that “never before had the dream of indian unity been put into reality in such a sudden way as at alcatraz,” where people “from reservations and urban settlements, government boarding schools, street gangs or giant cities, plains, and desert, horse people, sheep herders, fisherman of the coastal rivers, hunters of the frozen north” had come together and found that “we had come home. our mother earth wanted us here, for we are the land” (qtd in johnson, 117). the inter/national occupiers quickly transformed the face of the island, pragmatically repurposing stores of red paint housed in the former prison buildings and used to maintain the nearby golden gate bridge. using this paint, slogans were written as a way to “broadcast messages for those who would look upon the island during the occupation” (johnson, 67). in a statement to the press, the indians of all tribes weaponized historical narration, stating: “we now have a more powerful weapon. the people of this country know a little of the real history and tragedy of the indian people today. what they do not know is the tragic story of the indian people today. we intend to tell them that story” (qtd in burling, 55). the occupation of alcatraz was itself an attempt to create a more accurate and more visible narrative of american indian history. red paint assisted in spreading the message of red power, with the slogan “red power” appearing as graffiti across former prison buildings, along with messages that confront historical narratives, such as “custer had it coming.” when time magazine reported on the red power movement in a 1970 cover story, the story acknowledged “indians suffer as harshly [as blacks] from biased history books,” noting that textbooks used in schools at the time wrote of the salvation the pilgrims brought to the mentally “deadened” american indians (“the angry american indian”). the red power movement shared similar tactics and terminology with the civil rights movement led by black activists. just as african american protesters carried out sit-ins to bring attention to and fight against systems of segregation in the american south, american indian activists waged “fish-ins” to protest against the stripping away of their water and wildlife rights in the pacific northwest (fixico, 183). the red power movement, moreover, came into being in the early 1960s within a relationship to the other protest movements by minority groups: women, transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 84 students, anti-vietnam war protests, and a more overt connection to the rise of black power militant nationalism (leahy and wilson, 141; red power media). the occupiers of alcatraz used the tactics of non-native activism in order to bring national and international focus to the special concerns of american indians (smith, 85). occupiers at alcatraz painted, in red, a clenched fist on the former warden’s quarters, aligning with the african-american symbol of solidarity and power, as well as the symbol of a raised fist made iconographic by south african activists in the african national congress (anc). the sign “warning keep off. federal property” was crossed out to read simply “indian property,” with the “keep off” prohibition conspicuously absent in a way that invited conversation, viewing, and peaceful visitation to the island. other red slogans appeared on walls reading “you are on indian land” (underline in original), as a welcoming to other indigenous north americans, irrespective of tribal affiliation, to join the protesters on the island. signs close to the shore originally installed by the federal government to keep visitors away from the closed penitentiary now signaled the takeover of land ownership, shifting “warning keep off u.s. property” into a red banner of “warning keep off indian property” (fortunate eagle, 114; emphasis mine). media coverage of indian occupation spread a localized event into national news. in his analysis of press coverage at alcatraz, david milner showed the shifting tonal responses to the occupation, beginning with “uncharacteristically sympathetic and even-handed coverage” during the early occupation stage, before transitioning to “images of warlike, violent indians reminiscent of earlier colonial reporting” as federal agents prepared to raid the island in 1971 (milner, 74). while many news agencies followed the occupation, notably the new york times and the washington post, it was the local san francisco chronicle that remained deeply embedded. in fact, as milner underscored, chronicle reporters collaborated with the occupiers; having received advance notice of planned protests by the occupiers, and having been asked “not to break the story prematurely” (qtd in milner, 76). the images of graffiti and painted slogans, easily if not intentionally visible to press photographers using boats and onshore visitations to report on the occupation, provided visual texts to capture what occupier adam fortunate eagle called the “international importance [of] a defiant act of indigenous people” (120).20 it is important to note that both newspaper and television reporting were done in black and white during this period. therefore, the color of the jeremiah garsha “red paint” 85 painted messages was absent to national and international readers not present at alcatraz. at this stage in the protest, the color red, while used, was chosen more due to its availability, as barrels were found already on the island. in this way, the defacement of the structures was done using written words, rather than evoking the spilling of blood. as a text, alcatraz’s recoloring was done through graffiti, palimpsest, and the raising of flags and banners. it was the messages themselves, rather than the color of the paint that rewrote alcatraz during the nascent period of the red power movement. that red paint was still the medium used, allows the occupation of alcatraz to simultaneously launch other reddened texts, and, many years after the occupation, become a self-referential text, as it is the red-painted messages, now preserved by the national parks service, that captivate visitors into becoming readers of these narratives. the occupation was originally, as one activist noted, “a stunt […] to publicize a cause […] which was intended to put its message on a bigger stage via the media” (qtd in smith, 8586). memoirs from the occupiers show that much of the graffiti was done in the early days of the occupation. efforts were made to create “a more serious sign […] something that suggested more than mere vandals were” present on alcatraz (fortunate eagle, 152). beyond the large banner on the water tower depicted at the opening of this article, as well as handmade flags flown from guard towers, coordinated efforts at creating a larger visual image, such as a list of demands that could be read from afar, never materialized. media attention, too, waned, as the occupation stretched to nineteen months and nine days. when armed federal marshals raided the island on june 11, 1971, they did so tellingly outside of the media gaze, where the lingering cameras covering the occupation were blocked by a coast guard perimeter. with the occupiers arrested and the island back in federal control, authorities allowed a press tour of the formally occupied zones days later. a chronicle reporter captured the final image of red graffiti painted on a wall amongst the rubble. the article the following day concluded with: “another sign, sad and pathetic […] looks yearningly out to the bay bridge: ‘where’s our chief?,’ it asks” (qtd in fortunate eagle, 201). veterans of the occupation, joined by new protesters, continued waves of decolonizing protests on deemed colonial sites both during and after the events at alcatraz. on thanksgiving day, 1970, occupier john trudell, along with russell means and dennis banks, joined with the newly created american indian movement to stage a more visceral provocation. aim was a more radical political organization than the indians of all tribes movement, gaining support of transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 86 “america’s new left and politically oriented counterculture,” as well as mainstream attention (smith, 144). while the indians of all tribes movement stayed fixed on the alcatraz occupation, aim used the public attention to push for a series of national protest movements across the us (johnson: 2008, 220). alcatraz’s antecedal roots both inspired and legitimized its protest channels. when trudell, means, and banks, along with members of twenty-five indian tribes, arrived in plymouth, massachusetts, they cited the alcatraz occupation as “a symbol of a newly awakened desire of the indians for unity and authority in a white world” (johnson: 2008, 240). adopting a more confrontational approach, aim activists then disrupted the town’s thanksgiving day commemoration. 1970 marked the 350th anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims at plymouth rock. as a tourist event, the town had commissioned the reconstruction of a ship, named mayflower ii, tethering it to plymouth rock. the ship facsimile and its direct connection to the stone created the stage for a national protest. aim activists led the thanksgiving day protest by congregating around plymouth rock, spitting and dumping waste on the rock (“taking back plymouth rock”). led by russell means, aim members also boarded and occupied the mayflower ii, allegedly draping themselves in torn down flags. the original plan had been to burn the ship; however, means instead chose to bury plymouth rock under layers of sand (smith, 151), in a more symbolic, less destructive, and temporally impermanent form of protest. the mayflower ii was a newly created item specifically for this ceremony, whereas plymouth rock was deemed as a more authentic and therefore more appropriate target. the protest and occupation of the mayflower ii did not lead to any arrests and surprisingly little media attention.21 that evening, however, aim leader john trudell, himself a veteran of the alcatraz occupation, returned to plymouth rock and painted it in red, a replication of the tactics used on alcatraz. the red paint on plymouth rock made national news and the media coverage has been credited as “catapulting aim into the national consciousness” (“taking back plymouth rock”). while the red messages at alcatraz could be reported in black and white, at plymouth it was the color choice by trudell that made for such a visceral rewriting on the rock. much like the occupation of alcatraz, the settler significance of the rock(s)22, and their stand-in for the brutal treatment of american indians provide daises for protest, both of which were painted red. the timing of both events, lining up with the more radical protest era of the 1970s as well as specifically occurring around the thanksgiving national holiday, are notable features in a mosaic jeremiah garsha “red paint” 87 of protest. the us government’s attack on aim activists at wounded knee in 1973 historically and publically buries the smaller protest movements such as the painting of plymouth rock, replacing the images of red with the more militarized photos of american indians holding firearms. it is striking that none of the aim activists were arrested at the 1970 plymouth protest. the effect was a sense of legitimacy in using symbolic forms of protest to draw attention to indigenous grievances and historic injustices, showcasing inklings of broader public support. russell means’s activism continued under banners of red paint, as in 1989 when he was arrested for pouring buckets of red liquid on a statue of christopher columbus. the charges were dropped, however, when the denver court concluded that his defacement of the statue was protected under the first amendment.23 in 1992, the denver columbus day parade was canceled until 2000, due to concerns regarding clashes between protesters and marchers (banda). when the annual columbus day parade returned, aim activists, including means, also returned to the streets to perform civil disobedience, fulfilling their earlier vow to enact “an active militant campaign” in their demands that federal and local government “remove anti-indian icons.”24 while centered in the american context, aim’s anti-columbus movement featured an international call to decolonize national narratives, through education of accurate history and its public display: we encourage others […] in every community in the land, to educate themselves and to take responsibility for the removal of anti-indian vestiges […] there is no better time for the re-examination of the past, and a rectification of the historical record for future generations, than the 500th anniversary of columbus’ arrival. there is no better place for this re-examination to begin than in colorado, the birthplace of the columbus day holiday. (morris and means) inspired by means, during the 1992 traveling exhibition to mark the quincentenary of columbus’ voyage, aim activist vernon bellecourt threw a pint of his own blood onto the sails of a replicated version of one of columbus’ ships.25 the science museum of minnesota, hosting the exhibition, chose to “leave the sail blood-stained throughout the remainder of the show” (cooper, 330). pouring red paint fundamentally links to the connection of blood and the experience of bleeding. the colonial experience is one of bleeding, and red liquid, either as a stand-in for blood or as blood itself, is a leitmotif of a blood stained past. american indian transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 88 activists, in following from the occupation of alcatraz and the makeshift use of stored red paint, had created an accessible but meaningful tool of protest which could recolor historical narratives and highlight the violence and continued aggression against indigenous peoples beyond american borders. alcatraz is a site of stagnation and a symbol of state controlled violence. it has a history of interning american indians in the nineteenth century prior to the construction of formal prison buildings as it became a federal penitentiary. it can therefore be read as an imperial monument. the occupiers’ use of red paint to create graffiti messages, images, and re-appropriated signs of ownership was pragmatically driven, due to the limited supplies occupiers could bring and the storehouse of red paint already on site. yet it was an appropriate tool to employ against the material object itself, using the tools of the state against itself. with alcatraz creating an anchor point, aim’s use of red paint as an expression of spilled blood, painted a resistance to settlerbased national history. painting plymouth rock in blood red struck at the origins of the american foundation mythos, targeting the very site of the landing of the pilgrims, and targeting celebrations of columbus. here, the monument of plymouth rock and statues of columbus are objects to be shown as “bloodied,” signaling the genocide of american indians under colonialism, further triggered by the 1973 murder of indigenous activists at the same site as the 1890 wounded knee massacre. red paint as blood became an effective shorthand to reference historical and ongoing violence against indigenous people.26 grounded in the protest movements of american indians, it is this use of red paint that has been picked up by indigenous activists internationally. the monument stone at risdon cove, tasmania marks the site of the first landing of colonists on the island. it too has become locative marker for protest to more fully incorporate indigenous history into tasmanian historical narratives. located just outside the capital city hobart, risdon cove was the 1803 landing site where lieutenant john bowen established the formal colonial center of van diemen’s land (modern-day tasmania). intended to be the first settlement by british agents, on may 3, 1804, the soldiers encountered a group of around 300 palawa hunting kangaroo. the british soldiers opened fire using heavy cannon, “killing a great many of them” according to the convict edward white, who gave testimony in 1830. the massacre at the very landing site of the colonists links the first episode of genocide against the palawa with the settlement of the island. jeremiah garsha “red paint” 89 marking both the site of white settlement and the ultra violence that accompanied it, a monument to bowen was erected during the 1904 centenary. using locally sourced stone, an obelisk was created with the brief inscription “this memorial erected to commemorate the centenary of the landing at this spot of lieut. bowen. r.n., on september 1803, was unveiled by his excellency, the governor, sir a.e. havelock […] 22nd february 1904.” the narrative of historical violence is notably absent from the obelisk itself, in much the same way that plymouth rock merely displays the etched on date “1620”. the colonial master narrative is the only one on display. yet just as when aim painted the rock red, so too can the bowen monument represent simultaneously the twins of settlement and violence. in 1995, risdon cove was returned to the palawa community as part of a countrywide land reform act. managed by the tasmanian aboriginal corporation (tac), shortly after the handover, a poll was conducted amongst the palawa to determine the fate of the bowen monument. responses ranged from removing the obelisk entirely, to recentering its narrative with the creation of new plaques, which told a more accurate account of the site and island’s history, inclusive of palawa experiences.27 while the land itself is managed by tac, the monument sits on a site of shared access, where it is open to the public during daylight hours. while the poll was open, activists defaced the obelisk, covering it in red paint to signify the blood spilled by the massacred palawa on this site. according to reg watson, a revisionist settler descendant and self-appointed caretaker of the monument, red paint was also splashed onto the monument on december 11, 1995, the same day as the official return of the land to the aboriginal community (watson). as a decolonizing tactic, using red paint to deface the bowen obelisk links to a global network of protest against one-sided historical narratives under transnational-indigeneity. poll respondents did not mention the defacement of either the obelisk or american indian traditions of using red paint to alter the narratives. yet, as settler societies working through decolonization movements, both tasmania and america are rooted in a colonial past littered with imperial celebrations. red paint defacement as a protest against the physical narrative structures subverts statues and deconstructs them to instead stand in as markers of violence. as argued above, red paint in this context, poured and splattered on these objects, creates a visceral image of blood. indeed, bleeding and forced blood loss through violent acts embodies much of the physical colonial experience worldwide. red paint, with is malleability and plasticity can therefore be used to give new and potent meaning to these objects and thus deconstruct the colonial narratives transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 90 with decolonizing historical accuracy. it is this reminder and memorialization of blood and violent experiences, used for indigenous causes, that links red paint defacements as a pattern within shared transnational decolonization movements under projects of reclamation. while the palawa poll respondents did not address the defacement of the bowen monument, they did show awareness of the problematic one-sidedness of the historical narrative that is put forth to tourists. one informative response looked toward the international community, stating that: [f]or the last 193 years, white tasmanians have lied not only to their children, but to the rest of the world about their arrival, and the invasion of tasmania. to remove the monument may satisfy our immediate desire to emphasise our control over our own land, but it is not enough compensation for the years of denial that our ancestors have had to contend with. (interim aboriginal land council of tasmania branch meeting, february 20, 1996) this respondent wanted both the old monument to exist, while creating a new structure that subverts the former and: tells the truth about the murder of our people present day white tasmanians, overseas and mainland visitors to risdon cove should be able to compare the lies of the present monument to the truth about the massacre of innocent men, women and children […we cannot] deny these visitors the right to compare the truth with the lies […] we must enable people to compare and decide for themselves, not control what they should view and read. this has been the way of white tasmanians not the way of our old ones. (ibid) in this article, i have argued that painting monuments in red blood accomplishes this desire. it leaves the old structure but repurposes it, visually subverting the hierarchy of the settler narrative in order to bring forward the narrative that settled land is itself a monument that, unchallenged, continues colonialism. by making these sites bleed again, through red paint, the narration shifts from imperial celebration to a display of memorialization for the murdered indigenous groups. indeed, the bowen monument has been painted red, and in this way it has been reclaimed. watson stated the monument had been “vandalized” on at least four occasions. while american indian activists like means and other aim members called for a national and global removal of all anti-indigenous celebrations of conquest, some white tasmanians, personified jeremiah garsha “red paint” 91 here by reg watson, call for the “repair, protection, and promotion of monument[s]” (watson). in 2004, as a lead up to the bicentenary, the tasmanian newspaper the mercury recounted the history of risdon cove in weekly featurettes. owing, in part, to the recent defacement of the monument, attention to the monument itself and the past history of genocide took center stage. just one day prior to the bicentennial, actor richard davey presented a 90 minute free public reading of edward white’s testimony, taking the form of a staged play of reenacting “the report of the 1830 committee of inquiry into the causes of the conflict between settlers and aborigines.” during the may 4, 2004 ceremony, hundreds of palawa converged at risdon cove. a traditional dance was performed and a message was read in palawa kani to the ancestors, showing, as tac secretary trudy maluga pointed out, that european colonizers “killed us off in this place […] stole our land, took away our people and imposed their religions on us […] but our presence here today shows they have not destroyed us” (briggs, 3).28 for the bicentenary, the palawa covered the bowen monument in a white sheet splattered with red paint, showing, in the words of attending senator bob brown, that “we need to face the awful truth: our history is written in blood” (briggs, 3). in a connection to transnational-indigeneity, the covering of the bowen monument in red paint challenges the still standing colonial monuments and the power structures they exert. palawa grievances of unrecognized violence, land theft, loss of language, religion, and culture, align with those of north american indians and first nation people, and it is fitting that all of these communities have used red paint to bring attention to these issues and recreate the old monuments as inclusive versions of this history. this now globalized approach unites these groups in bringing attention to a history of settler inflected violence as well as decentering these narratives in order to create a visually prominent protest movement. the use of a white sheet over the bowen monument presents an interesting example of protest aimed at inclusion. just as some respondents of the 1996 poll regarding the future of the monument suggest that it should be left intact, but repurposed, so too can the sheet be viewed as a form of inclusion. the sheet covered the offensive obelisk, silencing its inaccurate transcription of historical events. yet the sheet also protected the monument. it protected the monument from the symbolic painting of blood as well as protecting it during the ceremony, should mob mentality have caused a further desire to destroy the monument in that moment, like the aim activists’ calls to burn the mayflower ii. the sheet acted as a dual defense, protecting activists transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 92 from the monument and protecting the monument from the activists. the sheet was removed after the bicentennial and the monument returned to its position of being hidden in plain sight. in 2011 tac created three plaques, facing and surrounding the monument. each in one color of the aboriginal flag, the plaques are wordless, using photos and images to add in a permanent presence of indigenous surveillance to a site that sits empty most days. in this way the red paint has been transformed into red, black, and yellow painted signs that subvert the message of the monument to include the experiences of indigenous people. while alcatraz’s layered history displayed for millions of tourists each year, and the transformed risdon cove have undergone public consultations, the namibian coastal town swakopmund remains steeped in colonial nostalgia. buildings have angled bavarian-style roofs to repel the snow that will never fall in this beachside resort town. german is the most widely spoken language, and the sandy beaches and beer gardens are the main tourist pull. with a large german-namibian community and unmarked concentration camps, the historical past of the 1904-1908 genocide is largely absent, save for memorial park cemetery, an enduring symbol of reconciliation and a laudable example of inclusion where the bodies of genocide perpetrators are interned in the same walled-in cemetery as their victims (barnard). the town’s prominent monument is the marinedenkmal, a statue of two german marines on a large rock near the town’s municipal center. erected in 1908 to celebrate the suppression of ovaherero and nama colonial resistance, the statue has sat untouched for nearly 120 years. on april 2, 2016, during the annual reparation walk through the town, where indigenous ovaherero and ovambanderu march to bring attention to the unacknowledged german-inflected genocide and its refusal to pay restitution, participants covered the statue in red paint. in many ways it is surprising this had not occurred earlier, and that it was the swakopmund statue and not the much more visual reiterdenkmal, unveiled in 1912 in the colonial capital of windhoek, to become namibia’s first defaced monument. the activists who “vandalized” the marinedenkmal did so, in the words of political scientist elke zuern, in order to “tie the presence of the [statue] to unaddressed colonial crimes.” while the defacement was over a century in the making, it occurred in 2016 during the protracted but publically expected official recognition of genocide by the german government.29 the prolonged legal and political deliberation between the german and namibian governments provided the context for the act of red paint on the marinedenkmal as an attempt to remind the international community, as well as jeremiah garsha “red paint” 93 swakopmund’s german-speaking settler inheritors, of the unhealed colonial wounds, still bleeding. interestingly, some prominent namibian activists have condemned the act of red paint defacement. ovaherero chief vekuii rukoro stated that “as a chief i do not support vandalism in any shape or form” (qtd in shiku). while the chief felt that after 26 years of independence, the time had come for the statue to be removed, echoing the 2009 words of namibian president pohamba regarding the removal of the reiterdenkmal, where both men have stated that namibians “need our own monuments,” the ovaherero chief wanted to see the statue removed in “orderly fashion […] and it does not mean it must be vandalized.” the red paint on the marinedenkmal created two important ramifications. the first is that it reopened attention on colonial wounds within an international context, as media outlets as large as the new york times picked up and ran features on the defacement of the statue in a town of under 50,000 inhabitants and located deep in southwestern africa. the second is that it has disrupted the community-based celebrations of colonialism. the red paint highlights and renews calls for the removal of the statue. as zuern postulated, the threat to remove the monument showcases the german-speaking community’s fear of their own impermanence in the relatively recent independent nation. “the thing that worries the german speakers in swakopmund” zuern surmised, “is that this is a site where they have annual commemorations […] it’s not just this monument with all the symbolism that entails, but actually a site they use to commemorate the deaths of the marine troops and to rally the community” (qtd in onishi). like reg watson in tasmania, the red paint is aimed at the small but vocal white minority and the revisionist narration they wish to defend. in clinging to this false version of history, settler-descended communities engage in genocide denial. red paint overtly challenges these narratives, forcing, at the very least, dialogue and discussion toward a more inclusive and more accurate construction of events. red paint on monuments, in its loaded meaning and with its ease of deployment, is a powerful and effective form of protest. in analyzing the ways settler societies like america, australia, and namibia have enshrined and glorified their colonial past in monuments, and the ways these have been challenged by transnational-indigeneity, it becomes clear that the structure to which the paint is applied is just as telling, if ephemeral, as the paint itself. the narration of these stone structures is not only subverted, but is in fact reappropriated with splashes of red transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 94 paint. as this article has shown, the strength of red paint defacement comes from the global spread of its use against colonial history and by bringing attention to continuing colonial policies. red is a highlighter, capturing media publicity, albeit temporarily, in order to decolonize the hegemony of colonially imposed history. red paint highlights disenfranchisement, and as a non-violent protest tool, it can create alliances between international indigenous groups as well as, importantly, recruit non-native people to these causes. in his book red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition, glen coulthard, drawing on frantz fanon, argues that indigenous recognition projects often take the form of litigation and “delegation of land, capital, and political power,” and as such are in danger of reproducing the very form of colonialism “demands for recognition historically sought to transcend” (3). red paint, therefore, is a bottom-up approach to decolonizing without becoming entangled in colonial systems, aligning itself with what coulthard sees as a resurgence of indigenous cultural practices outside of state controlled discourses. the tasmanian case study above showcased that beyond the red paint, traditional dances and the reading of praise to palawa ancestors in a critically endangered language reinforces a localized recognition movement.30 red paint also creates transnational connections of solidarity. as an artistic medium of blood, it punctuates a shared colonial history. it challenges one-sided settler narratives not by the removal of former physical structures, but by leaving these relics intact yet powerless and silent. the celebration of imperial legacies instead becomes a memorial to violence, and the imposing statue now speaks to indigenous causes. it transforms these structures into a new version that brings public attention to often-unacknowledged events and existing power dynamics that still need to be altered. red paint is a testament to the spirit of the transnational red power decolonizing movements, serving as link to globally entangled defacements of colonialism, now colored red. notes 1 the occupation dates are interrupted and not fixed. the occupation began with a one day “sitin” in 1964, then returned in force on november 20, 1969, and lasted until june 11, 1971, when the final 11 protesters were forcefully removed by federal marshals. see, “alcatraz, occupation of”, in todd leahy and raymond wilson’s historical dictionary of native american movements (plymouth, uk: the scarecrow press, 2008), 4. jeremiah garsha “red paint” 95 2 with the exception of the lighthouse, built higher up on the island’s topography, the water tower is the tallest freestanding structure on alcatraz. 3 i have borrowed this term from steven salaita’s book inter/nationalism: decolonizing native america and palestine (minneapolis, university of minnesota press, 2016). salaita uses “inter/nationalism" as an umbrella term of amalgamation, standing in for “solidarity, transnationalism, inter-sectionality, kinship, [and/or] intercommunalism” [ix]. the case studies presented in this article span over 60 years and reach outside of north america to encompass namibia and australia. in order to fully showcase the more recent globalized context of indigenous actors linked above geographic barriers, i have used my own term “transnationalindigeneity,” which exists pluralistically with other forms of self-identification. this is not to say that all activists identify with these terms, nor is it to suggest a truncation of identity under a lens of pan-indigeneity. 4 in reflecting on the longue durée history of indigenous groups in the american west, with specific focus on its disruption by colonial settlement and waves of violence, benjamin madley points out that “dislocation and tribal fluidly characterized […] indian life. forced removal to small, distant reservations shared by multiple tribes” was common, and as “[r]efugees […] fled into the new areas” they intermarried and often “permanently relocated.” as such, madley concludes that it is “not always possible to precisely identify california indians by tribe.” when the sources do not precisely identify the nations of indigenous individuals or groups in question, madley follows “the twenty-first century california indian practice of using the term indian or california indian” (15). this chapter follows the practice employed by madley by referring to regroupings of native peoples with the terms “native,” “indian,” and “indigenous” interchangeably. where individuals and groups have chosen to identify with a tribal or national affiliation, i indicate this. however, as this article is focused on the plasticity of the term “indigenous” in a globally connected expanse using blanketed terminology is often the very point. this is done in order to showcase the global links of native peoples. see benjamin madley’s an american genocide: the united states and the california indian catastrophe (new haven: yale university press, 2017), 15. 5 i have employed this term to show instances where indigenous cultures and practices have linked together to form a transnational movement and constructed identity. individual tribal affiliation exists heterogeneously within transnational-indigeneity. i deploy the term in order to stretch these connections across continents, reading transnational-indigeneity as the joining of distinct groups while still providing a space for complex and pluralistic identities, rooted in “inter/nationalism.” i use this term in order to focus on the shared anti-colonial resistance tactic of writing in red paint on colonial structures, a practice through which indigenous groups across the world create commonalities and thus engage in a form of dialogue with one another. 6 there are many ways this article could have been written. i have eschewed writing this as a historical paper, and rather read the structures painted red as visual texts under literary analysis. they are narratives and counter narratives as much as sites of protest under affect theory. this is not to lessen the risks indigenous actors have taken to reconstruct their history in a public form but rather to read the narratives they have created under post-structural critical theory, where the historical and cultural contexts situate the visual texts, but where the narratives these texts create can be analyzed as artwork and connected globally under intertextuality. thomas r. lindlof and bryan c. taylor, qualitative communication research methods, 4th ed. (london: sage, 2018), 75-76. transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 96 7 i am guided by eric cheyfitz’s chapter ‘the (post)colonial construction of indian country: u.s american indian literatures and federal indian law’, in the columbia guide to american indian literatures of the united states since 1945, ed. eric cheyfitz, (new york: columbia university press, 2006), 1-124. cheyfitz argues that decolonization processes have yet to reach the postcolonial stage in the united states, because american indians are still colonized citizens under federal laws. i extend this notion to the settler states of namibia and australia. 8 examples range from inclusion in howard zinn’s a people’s history of the united states: 1492-present (essex: pearson education limited, 2003), pp. 524-529 to the accounts of activists such as adam fortunate eagle and tim findley’s heart of the rock: the indian invasion of alcatraz (norman: university of oklahoma press, 2002), to full monographs such as troy r. johnson’s the occupation of alcatraz island: indian self-determination and the rise of indian activism (urbana: university of illinois press, 1996) and sherry l. smith’s hippies, indians, and the fight for red power (oxford: oxford university press, 2012). 9 the exception being the messages originally painted on alcatraz, as the island had yet to become a tourist mecca. yet these messages are now firmly part of the island’s narrative and are even part of a national park service guided walking tour. 10 as the acts of “vandalism” studied in this article all came into being long after the formal end of colonialism and episodes of genocide, i am guided by marianne hirsch’s work on postmemory, the inherited “personal, collective, and cultural trauma” in subsequent generations of survivors and the cultural and political interventions, visually inspired, that become a “form of repair” (5; 22). see marianne hirsch, the generation of postmemory: writing and visual culture after the holocaust (new york: columbia university press, 2012). 11 in keeping with a theme of protest inclusion, the 2017 ceremony featured colin kaepernick, the famed nfl player and former san francisco 49er who first took a knee during the singing of the national anthem to protest the treatment of minorities in america. this past year the history of alcatraz occupation was celebrated with more globalized issues such as calls to fight climate change and migration issues. see jose fermoso “a thanksgiving bonfire at dawn: celebrating native american resistance on alcatraz”, the guardian. 22 nov 2018. accessed 28 nov 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/22/thanksgiving-native-american-sunriseceremony-alcatraz-occupation-protest 12 palawa is the term many tasmanian aboriginal people identify as, linking to the name of the first man created from the kangaroo by the creator. as such, i use this term to refer to tasmanian aboriginal people throughout this article. 13 the term “vandalism” is used in quotation marks to distinguish it as being more than the destruction of property. the examples in this article are ones of political protest, resistance, and narrative reclamation. furthermore, as shown below, the use of red paint on these structures does not destroy the physical object but rather re-centers it as a challenged and altered site. 14 unless the protest movement itself is deemed worthy of preservation, in which case the challenged, painted objects becomes the dominant narrative in the hierarchy of remembering. the painted messages and images at alcatraz has remained, the painted mayflower ii and colonial statues in tasmania and namibia have returned to their “status quo.” 15 these tools include the “day to day” and often less visual means of protests against establishments as most prominently highlighted in james scott’s weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance (new haven: yale university press, 1985). 16 the use of red paint is simultaneously graffiti, a mural, and a new physical structure. jeremiah garsha “red paint” 97 17 see, for example, the 1953 disney film peter pan and its now controversial song “what made the red man red?” which was only a decade old when the alcatraz occupation officially began. in her article “how indians got to be red”, nancy shoemaker argues that american indians of the southeast self-identified as “red” when encountering the othering effects of occupied categories like “white” and “black”, with “red”, in its opposition to “white” being a metaphoric category of position, which shoemaker likens to school colors, rather than “racial categories rooted in biological difference” (637). indians became red, shoemaker concludes, “as a consequence of trying to define “whiteness” (641). 18 lulie nall, of the penobscot nation, created what she hoped would become the national american indian flag in 1968, which flew from one of the guard towers during the alcatraz occupation. she wrote that the color red “represents the american indian who shares his tepee with fifty state governments. yellow, black and brown people are represented in the fields they help toil and join” while “the gap in the tepee represents the last gap of discrimination”, in delfin vigil, “disputed alcatraz invasion flag on block”, sf gate, 24 january 2008. accessed 2 january 2019. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/disputed-alcatraz-invasion-flag-onblock-3231419.php#photo-2374087 19 while the flag was officially adopted as the national flag for namibia in 1990 after the nation gained independence from south africa, the flag’s colors are adopted from the party flag of the south west african people’s organization (swapo), the militarized liberation organization that fought a 24 year long war with south africa. as such, while the red today is hauled as representing all namibians, at the time of swapo’s founding, the red stood in for the indigenous groups fighting against white rule under apartheid. in an odd aside, the creation of the flag has been claimed by plymouth, england born roy allen, who claims the red was “the blood that was shed in the war” for independence. in both cases, red connects to the similar native american trope of blood and battle. see “allen from plymouth… the man who designed the namibian flag” the namibian, 23 oct 2015. accessed 22 nov 2018. (https://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?page=archive-read&id=143453). 20 fortunate eagle also recounted the hyperlocalized social transformations taking place on the island itself during the occupation, with a group of children subverting the game of “cowboys and indians” to be “federal agents and indians” played amongst the occupied cell block lawns (120). 21 of the media coverage that emerged, györgy tóth has argued that it was sympathetic toward aim, in that means cast as descendant of massasoit in photographic compositions, and through headlines such as “russell means raises a fist for indian power at plymouth” and “while the nation feasted […] indians bury ‘that rock’ at plymouth” appearing in the new york times. see györgy tóth “performing ‘the spirit of ’76’: u.s. historical memory and countercommemorations for american indian sovereignty,” in amanda gilroy and marietta messmer, (eds.) america: justice, conflict, war. (heidelberg, germany: winter university press, 2016), 138-140. 22 the nickname of alcatraz island is “the rock.” 23 this was a fake blood substance, rather than the more destructive use of paint. it is possible that had means used paint, he would have been charged with vandalism, whereas the fake blood was more temporary and therefore a protected form of free speech. 24 the long-standing opposition to columbus day in the united states remains a focal point of protest. for an analysis on the microhistorical conflict between memory and counter-memory transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 98 within patriotic and nationalist narratives surrounding denver’s columbus day events, see sam hitchmough’s “‘it’s not your country any more’: contested national narratives and the columbus day parade protests in denver.” european journal of american culture, volume 32 issue 3. (september 2013), 263-283. 25 means had also used bodily fluids as a from of protest, such as in 1970 when he stood atop mount rushmore and urinated on the carving of george washington’s head. see russell means and marvin j. wolf, where white men fear to tread (new york: st. martin’s press, 1995), 170. 26 i have previously researched the preserved desecration of massacre site plaques in california. see jeremiah garsha, “‘reclamation road’: a microhistory of massacre memory in clear lake, california,” in genocide studies and prevention: an international journal. volume 9: issue 2, 69. 27 the hobart office of the tasmanian aboriginal centre holds a file on risdon cove. within are newspaper clippings relating to the protests at the bowen monument as well as surveys and collected letters from the palawa community. during my fieldwork in august 2013, i was given special permission by tac to consult these records. i am grateful to the tac and the palawa community in hobart for allowing me access to these responses and for their permission to quote from these files for my research. 28 indeed, when i personally met with tac officials in hobart on august 11-12, 2013, they repeatedly stressed that one of the main reclamation projects at risdon cove would center on creating an education center for the teaching of palawa kani. 29 as of the time of this publication, recognition and an official apology from the german government have yet to materialize. 30 the tasmanian example created a space for this, as the red paint was applied to a cloth wrapping the monument, and thus had not criminally “vandalized” the monument. similar to this is the “unthanksgiving day” ceremonies at alcatraz, now organized in cooperation with national parks agents. works cited “allen from plymouth… the man who designed the namibian flag” the namibian, 23 october 2015. accessed 20 march 2018. www.namibian.com.na/index.php?page=archiveread&id=143453. “the angry american indian: starting down the protest 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accessed 20 march 2018. www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/namibia-genocide-monumentsreparations-germany. microsoft word danne jobin.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 261 syan jay. bury me in thunder. sundress publications, 2020. 102 pages. isbn: 9781939675958. https://sundress-publications.square.site/product/bury-me-in-thunder-by-syanjay/98 syan jay's (dził łigai si'an n'dee) first poetry collection, bury me in thunder, walks a thin line between exploring grief and healing through vulnerable, tender poems while also, at times, shrouding language in secrecy to maintain a sense of safety and privacy. the different stages of a thunderstorm – cumulus, mature, and dissipating – structure the collection into three parts and suggest a narrative arc towards release or resolution. written after the author moved back home to take care of their mother following a stroke, the collection tackles the intergenerational trauma created by a legacy of colonial violence and the cultural rupture caused by the fact that the speaker’s mother was adopted by a family outside the reservation. this legacy has real implications: “my mother can’t teach me / our words, her father stripped of voice and face, / leaving her alive but evaporated” (90). these lines gesture towards the cultural loss that affects two generations and pushes the speaker to search for restorative practices. several poems describe experiences of gendered violence and explore the speaker’s articulations of gender. syan jay, who is agender, declared in an interview with kimberly ann priest, “[m]y priority will always be to my transgender and nonconforming kinships” (n.pag.), and their poetry explores these issues carefully in an attempt to wrestle them from a history of harm, as seen in the opening lines of the first poem, “a person born without lungs”: my body is made of absences, of meaningless gender, of a colonizer’s language, of unbearable things wrought from servitude and genocide. my body is an ocean of graveyards. (15) the body bears signs of settler colonial violence, is shaped by the coloniser’s language, and is marked by its experience of trauma: “my sex is unbearable, both witness / and participant to violent desire” (15). binary gender identities are a colonial imposition that also reinforce racial categories (driskill, et al.). mediated by the “colonizer's language,” the speaker’s meaningless gender” designates a site of oppression. while bury me in thunder brushes a devastating portrait of how body and language are affected by colonisation, poetry also functions as a tool to describe and reclaim experience in order to envision alternatives. the “wish / for safety, danne jobin review of bury me in thunder 262 equal parts / human and held” (16) gestures towards the possibility of wholeness and the process of healing, neither of which are ever fully completed. the poem “feasting on dysphoria and sparrows” underscores misgendering and the experience of objectification, as the speaker describes, “[a] man is telling me i am a woman,” as well as the violence of having one’s “personal made public” (51). the language used to render sexual violence is raw and direct: “i am part of the exhibits / touted on stage for men to fondle,” as the speaker turns into a gendered, racialised, “othered” specimen: “the ‘thing’ displayed naked before / crowds” (56). terror and fascination, anger and desire, denial and honor uncomfortably bleed into one another. naming is an important ritual that ties a person to the land as well as community. as names are often gendered, they bear particular weight for transgender and nonbinary people. in “time, names, and found things,” the speaker asks, “[w]e don’t name our girls with things that can die […] but what happens when i am not girl / and not boy? do i inhabit the name / of ghosted things, undead things?” (86). in other words, when your community does not know how to name you, do you become something more, or less, or other than a living human? naming becomes a function of the land, the place where “you asked for the river to name you / and she named you fragility / and she named you aching / and she named you bruised kneecaps” (31). these given names demand that the speaker integrates pain and grief as constitutive elements of their identity. the river can also take that name and memories away, as in “a home prone to amnesia”: “i waited for the river, / who swam and shifted with threat below, to sweep / away the hometowns and memories with them, and reach up, / pull my name right out of me” (69). in this collection, naming has at least as much to do with being claimed by the land as by family, which has powerful implications for trans* people who often need to rename themselves. it is also described as a fluid process, which the river can impart but also claim back. bury me in thunder casts memory as a geography but the land goes far beyond metaphor: it is constitutive of the body and makes flesh porous to its environment. manifestations of trauma are imprinted onto land and bodies, as in “before the land breaks”: “i breathe in, there is coppered earth on my tongue. / the land thickens under my shoes, as my body de-forests / itself among the lava and rock” (50). here, the speaker tastes soil and minerals even as their body “de-forests itself” in an uneasy but constant exchange between land and body. natural landscapes are also a stage for violence, as in “rawhide for the archer’s knot,” where the speaker and their aunt become deer in a field, a hunter’s prey, and “uncles skin our legs to give us camouflage,” as though raw wounds would enable them to blend into the environment, the wounds opening them up to their surrounding like “salmon carcasses” transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 263 (81). the natural world is simultaneously shelter and threat. in “what the hills look like at night,” land erupts out of the speaker’s injury: “as we sat to watch / fire take the mountains, the blood / on my bandaged hand blossomed into three peaks” (48). the body becomes the landscape. in jay’s poetry, there are no closed categories, no weatherproof lines. at all times, material reality is liable to rupture and blend into another dimension that is still grounded in the textures of flesh and earth. these poems embed the speaker within a web of land, histories, and people. metaphors of eating, devouring, birthing, being swallowed, or breaking into/out of another body run through the collection, further challenging the notion of a discrete individuality. teeth are a recurrent motif in many poems, as in “root soup,” where they are cooked to feed a family (73). like bones, teeth can yield information about someone’s childhood landscape. in the same interview with kimberly ann priest, jay remarks: our teeth provide evidence of where we are from. the land and what we have access to during childhood will influence how our bones grow. scientists use isotope chemistry to look at tooth enamel and bone in order to measure geochemical signatures that carry evidence of where a person lived as a child. we can tell how someone lived, what they ate, and their access or barriers to nutritional food and clean water. the body carries so much and yet, we do not think of what we can find beyond what we say. what can the body say? (n.pag.) bury me in thunder, then, examines what the body says in its communication with place and community, the family systems disrupted by colonial violence. storytelling constitutes another type of food that can be offered to appease the ghosts of the past, by both “seasoning the earth for seeds to feed our families” and forgetting “hunger from the stories we eat from our shared palms” (83). despite the pain of remembering and the frailty of catering for possible futures, the speaker is “making / a map for my family to find home” (22). that family peoples many of the pages, and the collection itself is dedicated to the author's mother. there is an abusive stepmother (20), a grandfather (85), a brother (37), sisters (55), uncles (40) and trickster aunties (65), and a lover (53). this sense of kinship extends to ancestors when the speaker states that “death has made powerful / ghosts for you to talk to” (49). in fact, the opening poem asserts, “i am built from ghosts” (15). in another, the speaker says, “the ghost of my grandfather will feed me / acorn dumplings, tulapai” (87), showing that ancestors can provide nurturance as well as strength. longing to connect with her past, the mother “needle[s] danne jobin review of bury me in thunder 264 thread into stories, / aching to unbury her family” (90). here writing, as a form of storytelling, connects with the ancestors once more, framing the poem as healing ritual, capable of (re-)enacting ceremony. the epigraph also refers to writing as creating worlds through magic, a skill attributed to the speaker’s mother. song (59), sage smoke, and dance (63) hold space for a new kind of desire and connection to place and the ancestors. even though “the people / here don’t know how to sing / the songs that close wounds” (88), there is space for pain to open up towards multiple signifiers: “a wound // can hold meaning / can hold tenderness // that pain is not monogamous // &holds many lovers” (62). the last poem, “silver o,” describes loss and grief while also offering a kind of resolution in which the speaker is “returning to a different home” (93). this is the dissipating stage of the thunderstorm, signaling both resolution and separation. bury me in thunder does not promote easy notions of recovery but rather suggests ways of embracing ambivalence and contradiction. university of kent works cited driskill, qwo-li, et. al. sovereign erotics: a collection of two-spirit literature. tucson: university of arizona press, 2011. priest, kimberly ann. “interview with syan jay, author of bury me in thunder.” sundress publication blog, 10 february 2020. https://sundressblog.com/2020/02/10/interview-with-moira-j-author-of-buryme-in-thunder/. accessed 6 mar 2021. microsoft word editorial.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) i editorial the contents of volume 5.2 of transmotion reflect the interdisciplinary breadth of our editorial vision, which allows us to continue to highlight the diverse range of work being produced by scholars in the field of indigenous studies today. the scholarly articles in this issue explore texts and topics in the realms of contemporary film, visual art, museum studies, and musical performance. in “do you recognize who i am?: decolonizing rhetorics in the indigenous rock opera something inside is broken,” shannon claire toll analyzes the decolonizing rhetorics displayed in an indigenous rock opera that toured california and the southwest united states in the fall of 2016. applying leanne howe's concept of tribalography, toll discusses the decolonizing potential of this musical performance, focusing on the implementation of nisenan oral tradition, history, and language in its libretto. leveraging the advantages of our online platform, toll’s article also includes links to songs from the production to allow the reader and listener to experience the music and nisenan language featured in the work. while toll’s piece engages, in this way, in a bit of “curation” for the benefit of our readers, courtney cottrell’s “indian made: museum valuation of american indian identity through aesthetics” takes us directly into the heart of some key theoretical questions in museum studies. cottrell explores that ways that ethnographic museums create and communicate a taste for american indian art through their acquisition practices and their “rhetorics of value.” she goes on to argue that these rhetorical practices are creating rigid standards for what constitutes american indian art that is deemed worthy for museum display, standards that often exclude traditional art forms and contemporary motifs deemed important by tribal nations and individual american indian artists. cottrell concludes her piece by exploring how some tribal museums (such as the oneida nation museum) are employing their sovereign authority and citizenship standards to develop more inclusive collections and broaden the taste for american indian art. contributing to this taste-expanding work, kristina baudemann’s “laughing in the dark: weird survivance in the works of bunky echo-hawk and daniel mccoy jr.” employs and extends vizenorian theoretical lenses to explore the role of humor in the work of two major contemporary visual artists. focusing on the surreal, strange, outraging and simply weird elements in the artwork of bunky echo-hawk and daniel mccoy jr., baudemann introduces the concept of “weird survivance” as a way of encouraging readers to remember that survivance is not exclusively produced by positive and pleasing images. her article focuses instead on dark humor—a kind of laughter that is spurred by confrontation with the weirdness of our reality, and that comes from a place of sadness, frustration, or even disgust, in spurring renewal and resistance. in this way, she engages in the playful, transmotional exploration of critical categories that is part of the spirit of this journal. finally, turning to film, we have matt kliewer’s “translating images of survivance: a trans-indigenous corporeal analysis of spear and maliglutit.” drawing on michelle raheja’s theorization of visual sovereignty, kliewer argues that, while the creation of tribally specific images of survivance represents a fundamental process in reinforcing visual sovereignty and enacting self-determination, the application of survivance characteristics across tribal boundaries creates a powerful inter-tribal, globally indigenous challenge to the colonial gaze. analyzing indigenous images from vastly different geographical and colonial contexts, he suggests, allows us to find common colonial images that transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) ii indigenous image makers strategically deconstruct and remake in performative acts of intertribal sovereignty. by analyzing stephen page’s spear and zacharias kunuk’s maliglutit, kliewer demonstrates how this inter-tribal aesthetic directly engages western colonial film conventions and colonial imagery, reframing narratives where indigenous bodies encounter and resist their historically limited positionality in filmic mediums. we complement these articles, as always, with our wide-ranging reviews section and cuttingedge creative work. for this issue, we feature a piece by sámi poet, niilas holmberg titled “máttu oahpus / a lesson from an ancestor.” we are pleased to reprint this poem, both in the original sámi version and in an english translation. our readers will appreciate brad hagen’s sharp reflection piece, a meditation “on dreamcatchers” that opens up into wider consideration of memory, tradition, and identity. we are also pleased to feature a reflection (with video accompaniment) on indigeneity in star wars, by stephen graham jones. with too many reviews to highlight individually here, we will content ourselves with drawing particular attention to matthew fletcher’s graphic review of john borrow’s law’s indigenous ethics. fletcher’s piece highlights the innovative expansion of the boundaries of academic writing made possible by our journal’s format. also deserving of specific mention here is deborah madsen’s review essay (really an article in itself) of adam dahl’s, empire of the people: settler colonialism and the foundations of modern democratic thought, which madsen considers as a thought-provoking, yet limited, example of “complementary scholarship” for the field of indigenous studies. -- transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ‘about’ section). david carlson december 2019 theodore c. van alst james mackay david stirrup microsoft word contributors 4_2.docx transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 250 contributor biographies stephen richard andrews is an associate professor at grinnell college, where he teaches mostly 18th and 19th century american literature. his primary research interests are literary pragmatism, the poetics of landscape, and the cultural history of baseball. he has published work on w.e.b. du bois, william james, and synaesthesia; on melville’s “benito cereno” and issues of copyright; on adoption and the captivity narrative; and on the early culture of baseball. trevino brings plenty is a poet and musician who lives, works, and writes in portland, or. he is singer/songwriter/guitarist for the musical ensemble ballads of larry drake. he has read/performed his work at poetry festivals as far away as amman, jordan and close to his home base at portland’s wordstock festival. in college, trevino worked with primus st. john and henry carlile for this poetry work, studied with tomas svoboda for music composition, and jerry hahn for jazz guitar. trevino is an american and native american; a lakota indian born on the cheyenne river sioux reservation, south dakota, usa. some of his work explores the american indian identity in american culture and how it has through genealogical history affected indigenous peoples in the 21st century. he writes of urban indian life; it’s his subject. other titles by trevino include: wakpá wanáǧi, ghost river (2015); real indian junk jewelry (2012); shedding skins: four sioux poets (2008). jenny l. davis is a citizen of the chickasaw nation and an assistant professor of anthropology at the university of illinois, urbana-champaign where she is the director of the native american and indigenous languages (nail) lab and an affiliate faculty of american indian studies and gender & women’s studies. she earned her phd in linguistics at university of colorado, boulder in 2013. she was the 2010-2011 henry roe cloud fellow in american indian studies at yale university, and a 2013-2014 lyman t. johnson postdoctoral fellow in linguistics at the university of kentucky. her research focuses on contemporary indigenous language(s) and identity, with dual focuses on indigenous language revitalization and indigenous gender and sexuality. annmaria de mars has a ph.d. in educational psychology, with a specialization in applied statistics and psychometrics and over 30 years of experience in evaluation research. she is president of 7 generation games and an adjunct professor in the department of applied engineering at national university. gary f. dorr was the media coordinator for the rosebud sioux tribe’s shield the people project.gary served over 11 years in the united states army as a military police sergeant. he has several combat deployments in the iraq, kuwait and saudi arabia area, and a total of four years in the republic of south korea. after his service he attended haskell indian nations university where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of science in business administration in 2004. after graduating from haskell, he worked for several years in the field of tribal land management for the coeur d’alene and nez perce tribes in idaho. this is where he firmly established himself as and remains an active advocate for tribal landowners’ rights. transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 251 he maintains a personal relationship to the land as a landowner, hunter, traditional salmon-gaffer, and gatherer under the stipulations reserved to the nez perce people in their 1855 treaty with the united states. gary also served as an elected member of the nez perce tribe fish and wildlife commission. gary served as a buffalo hunt coordinator and treaty language representative to the nez perce tribe executive committee. maría regina firmino-castillo is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher who works at the crossroads. born in guatemala, her research trajectory crisscrosses national borders and fields of inquiry, among these: critical dance/performance studies, decoloniality, ecocriticism, and new materialism. firmino-castillo’s current book project, tentatively titled choreographies of catastrophe: corporeal ontogenesis in the post-anthropocene, discusses choreographic responses to the catastrophes of modernity/coloniality, including ecological devastation, enslavement, femicide, genocide, and violence against people living non-normative genders and sexualities. the performances discussed in the book were chosen not for their aesthetic genre or place of origin, but because they demonstrate corporeal modes of ontogenesis, that is, the rehearsing and bringing into being of more livable worlds in the midst of current catastrophes. at the same time, the book examines performances that envision and begin to embody vital futures even in the post-anthropocene, the immanent era in which humans, no longer dominant, are compelled to enact radical kin-making across life forms. firmino-castillo is also co-editing, with jacqueline shea murphy (ucr) and karyn recollet (university of toronto), an anthology on global critical indigenous dance studies. chad s. hamill came to northern arizona university in 2007 and received his phd in ethnomusicology at the university of colorado in 2008. his scholarship is focused on song traditions of the interior northwest, including those carried by his spokane ancestors. in addition to his book, songs of power and prayer in the columbia plateau, he has produced numerous articles centered on columbia plateau songs and ceremony, exploring topics ranging from sovereignty to indigenous ecological knowledge. prior to his current position as vice president for native american initiatives, hamill served as chair of the department of applied indigenous studies at nau and as chair of the indigenous music section of the society for ethnomusicology. currently, he sits on the advisory council of the smithsonian’s center for folklife and cultural heritage. he also serves as vice president and treasurer of the spokane language house, a 501c3 that contributes to the sustainability of the spokane language. erich longie is the cultural consultant for 7 generation games. he was born and raised on the spirit lake nation of which he is a member. he is the president of spirit lake consulting and of cankdeska cikana community college. molly mcglennen was born and raised in minneapolis, minnesota and is of anishinaabe and european descent. currently, she is an associate professor of english and native american studies at vassar college. she earned a phd in native american studies from university of california, davis and an mfa in creative writing from mills college. her creative writing and scholarship have been published widely. she is the author of a collection of poetry fried fish and flour biscuits, published by salt’s award-winning “earthworks series” of indigenous writers, and a critical monograph creative alliances: the transnational designs of indigenous transmotion vol 4, no 2 (2018) 252 women’s poetry from university of oklahoma press, which earned the beatrice medicine award for outstanding scholarship in american indian literature. melissa michal slocum is of seneca descent. she teaches and writes about creative writing and literature. her criticism focuses on education and representation of indigenous histories and literatures in curricula and how her community’s good mind acts as a theoretical way of incorporating not simply indigenous issues in the classroom, but also understanding of such issues. her creative work explores historical trauma within her own community. she seeks to show the many ranges of nativeness and agency. the result from colonization isn’t simply a community greatly affected by trauma, it is also a resilience which comes from an interconnectedness and spirituality which derive from the good mind. those traits create a strong community which retains a sense of self-worth. she received her mfa from chatham university, her ma from the pennsylvania state university, and phd from arizona state university. she has been grateful to read at the national american indian museum in dc and the amerind museum in dragoon. she also received an neh summer fellowship. melissa has work appearing in the florida review, yellow medicine review, and the university of iowa’s international writing program’s narrative witnessing project. her short story collection, living on the borderlines, is due out with feminist press february 2019, and she has finished her novel. she is now working on a non-fiction collection as well as her critical monograph, haudenosaunee good mind: combating literary erasure and genocide of american indian presence with literature curriculum and literary criticism. her short story collection was a finalist for the louise meriwether first book prize. microsoft word hogan schaak.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 273 gerald vizenor. satie on the seine: letters to the heirs of the fur trade. wesleyan university press, 2020. 369 pp. isbn: 9780819579348. https://www.hfsbooks.com/books/satie-on-the-seine-vizenor/ gerald vizenor’s latest novel, satie on the seine: letters to the heirs of the fur trade (2020), is a historical fiction set on the river seine in france and is concerned with events leading up to and proceeding through wwii. it follows a couple of native americans… in france… between the world wars… what injustice. absurd. this is no way to tell a story of motion. i can’t even keep a steady voice. summary, mannered and grey, may as well be wearing an armband and heiling history. can you summarize a color? can you objectify motion? grounded on the fascist-friendly side of the columbia river across from the staunchy port of socialists, i was struck blind by vizenor’s luminous the heirs of columbus (1990); stumbling into the deep blue with my inheritance, i drowned. i bobbed up near the headwaters of the mississippi and was promptly sloshed out to international waters to drown again. i finally flowed into the blue blue seine, where eric satie designates me an heir of the new fur trade. now, i’m doubly heired. blue is the color of motion. this book is a blue inheritance, not a history. (one moment, i need to open eric satie’s gymnopedies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs6o3qfimsc&t=2743s&ab_channel=%e2%99%a bhqclassicalmusic%e2%99%ab) ok. hogan schaak review of satie on the seine 274 the lilt of satie’s blue notes sets the ethos for brothers basile beaulieu and aloysius. no one is safe—not even the icy posers of socialism and communism with twisted shadow-fascist boners—from the renewed fur trade that the brothers breathe into being and exchange through these letters of resistance to stereotype and tragedy. their history is one of motion on the seine that sweeps its readers towards liberté before and during the fascist occupation of france by nazis and vichy french collaborators. the brother artists, one a painter and the other the writer of this epistolary novel, the two self-proclaimed white earth nation natives, resist fascism with paintings, hand puppets, mongrels, friends, poses, music, miming, wine, motion, and teases. i am an heir of the fur trade. the native heirs have teased me. to tease manifest inheritance is to choose native provenance over the manifest manners of history. native provenance is a movement against the betrayal of cultural creativity. it is “transmotion,” “a spirited and visionary sense of natural motion” instilling a survivance that resists “the pushy ideologies of nationalism, ethnographic simulations and models” with “totemic stories of creation” in the face of “churchy” separatist creeds (vizenor 2019, 37). as an heir of the new fur trade, i now know the tease of a fascist inheritance and heart-stories that confirm the pain of pogroms and revenge that have been hidden in the creeping shadows of wwii. totems like nazi puppets teased on french waterways. the brothers beaulieu salvage hand puppets from street debris and tease out unlikely conversations, leaving beautiful blue bruises of poetry on the inheritors of history. herr hitler and gertrude stein debate over a flaming mein kampf in 1933 while a crowd of moody onlookers, under the deadly spell of booky bonfires in germany, wake smiling to the native dream songs of liberté, mercy, and hope that suggest native provenance. bright blue bruises on a stark reality. as an heir of the new fur trade, my history has been loosened again. the furry totems of death—beaver skins, martin, and mink, worn as a sign of ironic posturing over those starving in tattered clothes being scolded for eating city pigeons—are reinstated as transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 275 totems of native provenance in the stories of the new fur trade. natural motion is restored in each instance of ironic life over serious serious death. the exchange between vizenor’s natives and the french is renewed in the natural motion of mixing and the heart of human liberté is laid bare for each reader as the shadows of nostalgic fascism come to blinding light. blue shadows > shadows. a native has no right of art and voice within their own country, so say the brothers. the white earth brothers, war-torn veterans, exiles, jews, and mongrels gathered on the house-barge le corbeau bleu, are all natives. the white earth brothers compare their presence in america to the presence of their native crew in fascist forced france. even nathan crémieux, a more entitled french local, gains a native ethos as he acknowledges himself an heir of the new fur trade. though his voice and liberté are stifled by fascist frauds, nathan funds the houseboat on the seine and provides wine, cheese, and a ghost dance art gallery and sends resistance literature, such as herman melville’s moby dick, to the motley barge crew as he takes up arms against the invaders with the lusty inheritance of separatism and revenge. moby dick motion and herr ahab. anyheir’s native. the “niinag” (penis) trickster puppet of massive interchangable shafts (satie 14), the slang “cum” crémieux name adorning nathan’s person and gifted art gallery, and the boner-killing nazi doctor of death in this novel all suggest a sort of life in humor directed at the prudish inheritance of separatist chastity. these epistles suggest unfathomable relatedness in tease after tease. endless dong zingers. open ethos. a google tab is a necessary tool on this fluid journey. this history of motion makes more references than the waste land, but with a presence that suggests the liberté of life and native provenance over the rubble of history. each reference is recorded by basile and does not pretend to be “the facts, and nothing but the facts, thank you.” the cubist picasso is praised for the motion and liberté of his art, but no mention is hogan schaak review of satie on the seine 276 made of his more unsavory side and fascist abuses of women. gertrude stein is called out harshly for her authoritarian betrayals even though she chastises hitler. many authors, artists, and figures of liberté and against liberté are simply evoked. they serve a purpose in the plot, but the reader should provide the rest of the motion. drift on liberté. the incentive is to drift, even beyond the narrative and historical resistances, as the various facts and fictions suggested by the letters coalesce in the reader. music should be played, detours in literature should be made, histories perused, and long walks walked while reading these letters. but, the heart-stories of massacre and the names of the wrongfully dead and rightfully courageous should not be teased. sénégalais soldiers denied the right to victory march in paris by supreme commander and racist dwight eisenhower and the slaughtered residents of oradour-sur-glane commune are represented in all seriousness. blue stories shadowed. say their luminous names. this novel is a totemic beaver pelt busting down the autoroutes of history on the back of a blue raven. i have to ask myself how i can review any work of the elusive viz and what right i have as white dude american to do so. if i capture the motion of the novel, its ethos and liberté as a work and on myself, then i have represented it the best i can. native provenance, provenance, provenance. vizenor’s work is totemic as it reminds us of a native provenance. as nathan crémieux shows, anyone can be in motion. native provenance isn’t separatist, but is the assertion of life and motion that upholds all animal and human liberté. history is fiction. history is fiction. history is fiction. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 277 after watching the comment fascists, anti-semites, pepe memers, and bozos on youtube and in twitch comments all day, vizenor’s ideas reverberate like a liberté bell in my american noggin. the separatists are ever present, present, present, and vizenor provides us with transformative histories of truth in fiction to fight with. but is this work practical? how many people can bear his style and enjoy the sweep of liberté he indulges? will any of this trickle down to the twitch fascists and pepe memers who, unlike the nazis of this novel, employ a deadly humor instead of a deadly stare? headintheclouds reading? it only takes an heirs or satie, and maybe a teacher of native provenance, to stoke one’s ethos of liberté. vizenor’s novels have a special ability to transform the way we think. the capacity of satie stands out among vizenor’s works. it immerses the reader in a sea of being, a way of thinking, and a web of relationships that isn’t just suggested and/or tested, as it may be in heirs or elsewhere. indulge in the motion of satie, encouraging the enjoyment of drowning and drifting to the bone-dry inheritor of manifest destinies and fur trades. much of it will resonate with and enrich the native scholar, activist, or pursuer of liberté. the penis jokes may resonate with the fascist inheritor of the fur trade. maybe start there with them. either way, you won’t be the same. and as this novel shows, native provenance only loses when it no longer has any totems. that’s reason enough to read. native provenance is liberté. drift on the gymnopedies. become totemic blue. idaho state university works cited vizenor, gerald. native provenance: the betrayal of cultural creativity. university of nebraska press, 2019. microsoft word geoff hamilton.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 268 gerald vizenor. native provenance: the betrayal of cultural creativity. university of nebraska press, 2019. 199 pp. isbn: 9781496216717. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496216717/ in his 1995 essay “a supposedly fun thing i’ll never do again,” david foster wallace notes how his imagination has long been haunted by the scene in moby-dick “where the cabin boy pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he finds himself floating in” (wallace 262). wallace adds that when he teaches another famous story of a shipwreck, stephen crane’s “the open boat,” he hopes to evoke in his students what he has “always felt” himself, a “marrow-level dread of the oceanic [, …] the intuition of the sea as primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls” (ibid). curiously, this nada is conceived as at once a void or pure absence, and also as potentially populous, full of horrible “things” (ibid). either way, wallace’s fear – often echoed in his representation of terrestrial milieus – is that a nonhuman environment is fundamentally hostile and intractable to sense-making, a perpetual threat to the vulnerable human pipsqueak. one of the virtues of gerald vizenor’s native provenance: the betrayal of cultural creativity (2019) is its compelling reminders of a counter tradition. the collection’s dozen essays reaffirm the author’s faith in the possibilities of “a spirited and visionary sense of natural motion” (37) that, though often “betrayed” by both wilful and adventitious misconceptions, has always been a crucial element of (though it is certainly not exclusive to) “native creation stories, visionary dream songs, and literature” (37). making his own assessment of moby-dick in “native transmotion: totemic motion and traces of survivance,”1 vizenor dwells on the novel’s evocation of a nonhuman environment that ultimately “provides a sublime transcendence of sorrow, separation, cultural closure, and victimry” (47). by these lights, melville’s white whale swims free of any narrow human-focused allegory, becoming “a spectacular portrayal of literary transmotion, a spirited and mysterious image of natural motion in the ocean, in the book, and in the imagination of the reader” (48). if, for vizenor, there is a nada here in melville’s work, it is affirmative and generative (evoking the word’s classical latin root nāta, “born”) – a liberating unfixity amidst identities that allows for endless creative flux.2 wallace, i suggest, stands at the rather dismal endpoint of a euroamerican literary tradition that once held a partially kindred sense of natural liberty, but now, for the most part, has lost confidence in the nonhuman environment as a vivifying geoff hamilton review of native provenance 269 tutor. vizenor’s essays point to the dynamic vitality of an alternative sensibility still thriving in contemporary indigenous art: “natives are forever in natural motion with ironic creation stories, and the new literary artists are answerable to the traces of transmotion, that mighty cosmototemic curve of the unnamable in cultural survivance stories” (51). extending a dialectical consideration of wallace and vizenor – who, intriguingly, share dominant thematic interests in the status of irony, the contours of a “decentered” selfhood, and the potential means of personal and collective healing – seems helpful in illuminating what is, at least for this reader, most profound in the latter’s work. how these authors imagine the conditions of a therapeutic social order, oriented toward euroand native america respectively, seems particularly revealing. wallace’s representations of alcoholics anonymous meetings in infinite jest (1995), or (more bizarrely) the bureaucracy of the internal revenue service in the pale king (2011), posit such organisations as frail but potentially salvific bulwarks against an all-encompassing void – means of surviving, that is, the nada that drove pip mad. within such places, an atomic self is largely left on its own to connect with whatever traces of a merely personal divinity it can discover. vizenor’s own fictional works, as well as the essays published in this collection, proffer a divergent vision suggestive of what i call eunomia (“good law/pasture”), a blending of the human and natural/divine orders in which the self is understood as capable of communing with a vibrant nexus of interrelated being. in vizenor’s estimation, melville’s ishmael ultimately reflects a version of such eunomic autonomy, for he is said to have “created a sense of presence and situations of transmotion with tropes, diction, character expressions, irony, and comparative scenes” (51). such a character can, that is, hear and endorse the divine in the nonhuman world around him – and the relationship is reciprocal. a modern castaway with, as vizenor notes, “an ironic biblical name” (46), ishmael is understood to express, in his eunomic sensibility, an unironic faith in that name’s literal hebrew meaning: “god listens.” for vizenor, positive, liberatory, reciprocal relationships with the natural/divine ought to, and might still, inform and reform political institutions. hence, in “survivance and liberty: turns and stays of native sovereignty,”3 the new constitution of the white earth nation is conceived as having honored “totemic associations with nature” (33), for the “moral imagination, heartfelt ideas of native liberty, natural motion and change, ethos of governance, and the sentiments of survivance and sovereignty were embraced in [its] egalitarian articles” (35). the expression of such possibilities has, vizenor emphasizes, often been obscured or “betrayed,” but we may find it even in historical documents such as federal treaties, which, under attentive study, reveal an insistent transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 270 “native presence, the oral and scriptural stories of transmotion, and traces of inherent native rights, or an ancestral visionary sovereignty” (88). wallace, like many of his euroamerican contemporaries, positions himself as skeptically treading water above a sunken tradition, alone together with other shipwrecked souls. vizenor suggests that, no matter its past and ongoing betrayals, a longstanding communal enterprise, binding the human and nonhuman, still floats. vision is one of the guiding metaphors in these essays, and vizenor is, as ever, interested in surveying “natural motion” with a sinuous alternation of retrospection and prospection. the contemporary artists he celebrates are temporally distant but imaginatively proximate heirs to an archaic tradition: “native and indigenous cosmototemic artists created the first memorable scenes of presence, natural totemic motion, and survivance on the slant of stone and in the great shadows of monumental caves more than thirty thousand years ago on every continent” (43). the betrayal of that legacy includes, for vizenor, the authors of “commercial literary victimry” (40), as well as theorists such as michael dorris, who have “resisted the concept of a singular native literary aesthetics” (126), and david treuer (leech lake ojibwe), who “rarely observes in his commentaries the marvelous visionary traces of native transmotion and aesthetics” (127). legitimate engagement with native provenance and providence, vizenor affirms, can be found in the eunomic sensibilities of contemporary visual artists, “who have created scenes of transmotion with conceptual contours, temper of colors, and original abstract forms, patterns, and customs” (102), and contemporary native novelists, who have “created the totem tease and consciousness of animals in dialogue and descriptive narratives and overturned the monotheistic separation of humans and animals” (127). what is always anxiously ironized in wallace’s thought – a belief in the soundness and ongoing viability of a tradition’s key conceptual legacies – survives, as survivance, in vizenor’s. in fact, the vital expression of “natural motion” by native american authors can, for vizenor, be traced and honored in a de facto canon. impishly but no doubt sincerely, he offers the following genealogy which suggests the historical constancy of some his own central conceptual framings: “samson occom, joseph brant, william apess, george copway, black elk, charles eastman, chief joseph, sitting bull, luther standing bear, white cloud, william warren, and many other native diplomats, published authors, and restive storiers worried about the course of racial separatism and might have written that it was the cause of native rights, visionary sovereignty, continental liberty, and peace that made them resistance authors” (79-80). all such authorship deploys a form of the purposeful ironic play discoverable in “an geoff hamilton review of native provenance 271 anishinaabe dream song,” offering “a gratifying tease of nature and a creative totemic sense of presence” (38). this irony – again unlike wallace’s, which typically underscores a sense of isolation and is often most dynamic in exploring versions of paralysis – is resolutely communal and productive, suggestive of a vigorous belief in the possibilities of totemic pacts (algonquian totem: “dwelling together”). vizenor’s cosmopolitan interests, and his eclectic intellectual borrowings from non-indigenous sources, are sometimes invoked as evidence of his marginal status among native american authors. as his own oeuvre and self-estimation suggest, however, he models t.s. eliot’s point in “tradition and the individual talent,” that significant novelty finally only springs from a faithful engagement with, and transformation of, a living heritage. university of toronto notes 1 as vizenor notes: “[this essay] was expanded from a conference lecture at kings college, london, in may 2014. an earlier version of the essay, “the unmissable: transmotion in native american stories and literature,” was published as the inaugural essay in transmotion […] and included more examples of visionary motion in native literature and in moby-dick by herman melville” (vizenor 181-82). 2 nāta can itself be traced back to the proto-indo-european root *gene(“give birth, beget”), whose “derivatives [refer] to procreation and familial and tribal groups” (“*gene-” etymonline.com). one might find here, too, a correspondence with one of those derivatives, hinduism’s nada: “inchoate or elemental sound considered as the source of all sounds and as a source of creation, and thus as present within every created being” (oed “nada” n.2). 3 this work “was published as an essay in a shorter version in a special issue of revue française d’études américaines, ‘les nations de l’intérieur: the nations within,’ paris, france, 2015” (181). works cited elliot, t.s. “tradition and the individual talent.” t.s. eliot: selected essays. gardeners books, 1999, pp. 3-11. “nada, n.2.” oed online, oxford university press, march 2021, www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/entry/124783. accessed 28 march 2021. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 272 wallace, david foster. “a supposedly fun thing i’ll never do again.” a supposedly fun thing i’ll never do again: essays and arguments. back bay books, 1997, pp. 256-353. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 167 devon a. mihesuah and elizabeth hoover, eds. indigenous food sovereignty in the united states: restoring cultural knowledge, protecting environments, and regaining health. foreword by winona laduke. university of oklahoma press, 2019. 390 pp. isbn: 9780806163215. https://www.oupress.com/books/15107980/indigenous-food-sovereignty-in-the-united-sta in her 1999 book, all our relations: native struggles for land and life, winona laduke introduces her discussion of environmental issues and the negative impacts of colonization (both direct and indirect) on indigenous communities. she explains “the last 150 years have seen a great holocaust. there have been more species lost in the past 150 years than since the ice age. during the same time, indigenous peoples have been disappearing from the face of the earth” (1). her book from 20 years ago addresses ongoing issues that are still present today, though she poses questions and possibilities of hope for the future of native tribes. similarly, she writes “the survival of native america is fundamentally about the collective survival of all human beings. the question of who gets to determine the destiny of the land, and of the people who live on it— those with the money and those who prey on the land—is a question that is alive throughout society” (5). laduke’s investigation of this division highlights a topic that is still alive today, and indigenous food sovereignty in the united states is a text that continues the discussion because it addresses this question, highlights the activism and goals currently in place in 2019, and demonstrates hope for the future of tribal communities who do not own the land or officiate neoliberal practices, but resist the power structures that do. winona laduke writes in this text’s foreword: despite the $13 billion corporate food industry, 70 percent of the world’s food is grown by families, peasants, and indigenous farmers…in a time when agrobiodiversity has crashed and world food systems are filled with poisons, our seeds remain, and they return. these are our stories: stories of love and hope (xiv). laduke’s role as an economist, environmentalist, feminist, and activist demonstrates how close she is to the topics that this edited collection addresses. her foreword to the book emphasizes the idea of returning to indigenous food practices and the ways that individuals or communities have actively initiated these processes to counter the extreme damages from the food industry. similarly, laduke’s work and the work highlighted in indigenous food sovereignty reflect not only a desire to change a heavily flawed corporate system, but the authors also draw attention to public practices that are enacting these changes. devon a. mihesuah’s and elizabeth hoover’s edited collection discusses important concepts surrounding the commodification and marketization of food in the united states, specifically emphasizing the negative impact colonization has had on the decline of tribal communities’ environmentally conscious and healthy practices. this book significantly foregrounds public projects that aim to restore food sovereignty to native american people, and it functions as both a criticism of neoliberalism and as a hopeful message about the growing changes activism can bring. mihesuah and hoover set up their book by directly blaming colonial systems of operation https://www.oupress.com/books/15107980/indigenous-food-sovereignty-in-the-united-sta katie wolf review of indigenous food sovereignty in the united states 168 at both the state and federal levels for the loss of indigenous food practices and the statistically proven decline in native people’s health. they write that “over the past several centuries, colonialism has unleashed a series of factors that have disrupted indigenous communities’ ability to retain control of their food systems. in many cases, this interruption was intentional” (4). the authors then follow up with moments from history that have either directly or indirectly enforced the decline in indigenous food practices, including the forced introduction of boarding schools, relocation programs in the 1950s, environmental change brought about by industrial practices, and u.s. governmental food rations (5-6). unfortunately, these federal and state practices that have intentionally labeled native people as subordinate individuals on their own lands have also heightened neoliberal practices and have led to an emphasis on the economy that dehumanizes those that are forced to participate in it. neoliberalism embeds in its structures a system that continues the marginalization of communities by not permitting much room for social or economic mobility. in a section about the transformation of food production in alaska native communities, melanie m. lindholm explores the shift in morals and the economic damages that a neoliberal, corporatized system of food production has created. she explains that alaska natives have traditionally hunted in the cold climate, specifically relying upon a healthy, marine-based diet, and they typically utilize all parts of the animal to avoid being wasteful (161). the differences between tradition and the contemporary economization of food therefore signifies an increasing amount of waste, a system that does not value animals beyond their food profit, and a forced assimilation for those who must participate in the market in order to achieve success. lindholm explains that the “combination of corporate control over what foods are available, who can afford them, and how they are produced can be termed nutritional colonization because it exploits people’s labor, health, environment, and well-being” (162). thus, this chapter (and others in the book like it) addresses the issues indigenous communities experience when they feel forced to assimilate to a system ruled by profit and the commodification of traditional skills. similarly, this marketization of food preparation and consumption attempts to erase tribal practices and, in effect, distances descendants from the cultural traditions of their ancestors. in an attempt to advocate for a return to food structures through indigenous sovereignty after the damages of colonial practices and political structures have taken a toll on diverse tribal communities throughout the country, mihesuah and hoover incorporate interviews from members of different tribes who detail their personal experiences with food systems and their goals to attain indigenous food sovereignty. stories that account for working in the food industry but advocating for native dishes alongside european or american ones, exercising treaty rights to fish, and criticizing the unhealthy commodity foods from the usda are among stories that make this text powerful, homing in on issues that impact people both systematically and individually (37-40). by acknowledging that discriminatory food practices and poor health conditions on reservations and among poverty-stricken native communities are direct results of colonization, mihesuah and hoover place direct blame on the ways that a profit-driven market negatively impacts the people who had been exercising effective food and ecological practices long before settler colonialism. the stories and research within this book therefore demonstrate transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 169 the direct engagement of the authors with the public, and they also reflect the public’s collective concerns about maintaining knowledge of traditional food practices so that diverse native cultures can continue to persist, despite the u.s. systems that attempt to erase their history and dominate their lifestyles. in another chapter about the decline of health among indigenous peoples, mihesuah explains the ambitions of the food sovereignty movement as follows: to be a ‘food sovereign’ tribe would ultimately mean, then, that the tribe has the right to control its food production, food quality, and food distribution. it would support tribal farmers and ranchers by supplying machinery and technology needed to plant and harvest. the tribe would not be answerable to state regulatory control, and would follow its own edicts, regulations, and ways of governance. its members would have educational and job opportunities (95). rather than simply acknowledging and critiquing a flawed system that privileges one group of people over another, this book poses a solution to the problem and explains that there is hope in enacting a reclamation of some tribal sovereignty. thus, this text contributes an important message about public engagement in practice and the various ways communities can advocate for their rights to control the land and the systems of food production that their ancestors once maintained a successful, unopposed authority over. this text relates to ongoing discussions within food studies and public intellectual studies because it identifies individual and public concerns of people living in a society dominated by consumerism and the marketization of everyday items or practices. in the context of mihesuah’s and hoover’s work, someone examining the problematic role of major corporations on public consumption could read this text within the context of the capital power the food industry exerts on u.s. society. this book demonstrates that food has become a commodity that no longer revolves around utilizing available resources in the environment while being as resourceful as possible with the products, and it has instead become heavily integrated within the neoliberal market system that works to generate finances. in this way, public engagement practices like the ones listed throughout this text advocate for indigenous food sovereignty and work to disrupt the system of commodification that rests on mass production and the waste of materials. furthermore, mihesuah and hoover connect their ideas about public intellectualism and public practice to larger problems within federal and state systems that emphasize commodity culture on a wide variety of levels. they highlight that initiatives with motives to reclaim sovereignties mean different things for different levels of activism. while indigenous people are facing challenges from the colonial ideologies set in place for oppression, their communities remain resistant to these structures and have initiated movements to reclaim traditions that enforce cultural continuity. mihesuah and hoover explain that, “[i]n the native american context, whether as sovereign nations or ‘domestic dependents’… tribes have been integrating the katie wolf review of indigenous food sovereignty in the united states 170 struggle for food sovereignty into broader efforts of self-determination” (10). this idea of selfdetermination reoccurs throughout the book—emphasizing indigenous communities’ goals to resist federal contexts that label them as dependent or incapable of being self-sufficient. in fact, this text boldly and accurately blames the european influences of colonization for many of the major challenges the u.s. is experiencing, but also for issues that influence the larger global structure. by identifying concerns across the u.s., including arctic regions, the authors make a strong argument in favor of indigenous communities who “view traditional foods as being affected by political, economic, environmental, and other changes in the world” and should therefore be protected (165). mihesuah’s and hoover’s text therefore acts as a work of resistance, both by advocating for a return to indigenous food sovereignty and by demonstrating how people are engaging with this movement throughout the country. this work will be beneficial for students, scholars, and wider public audiences who are particularly interested in concepts of tribal sovereignty, political systems of oppression, and public engagement that intends to challenge those very systems that have been negatively impacting marginalized groups. thus, indigenous food sovereignty in the united states is a detailed text that effectively conveys hope for the future of indigenous communities while criticizing colonial practices—emphasizing that there are serious repercussions for abandoning tradition, and there is beneficial power in reclaiming indigenous authority over food and environmental practices. katie wolf, university of nevada, reno work cited laduke, winona. all our relations: native struggles for land and life. south end press, 1999. microsoft word 759-article text-4792-1-11-20200306.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 1 electronic computer and stub pencil: poetry and the writing-in of ralph salisbury a. robert lee on an electronic computer’s memory chip i am writing about myself as a writer -a dog chasing its own tail… most of my poetry and much of my fiction has been composed with a stub pencil. the pencil a one-legged skater, trying not to stumble. so far, so good 186 the merest first reading of so far, so good (2013),1 ralph salisbury’s autobiography deservedly awarded the river teeth literary nonfiction prize, can leave little doubt of a life early to negotiate frequent challenge. the tough farm upbringing at the edge of depression-era subsistence, for him as “third child of an irish american mother and an english-cherokee-shawnee father” (5) and for his siblings in fayette county, iowa, meant the very threads of survival—undernourishment, a dead child brother, winters, devoted parents and aunt but occasional paternal drink and gun violence. a world war ii enlistment in the us air force as specialist gunner, and which he joined under-age, not only promised to expose salisbury to aerial bombardment of germany (his war-service ultimately remained that of trainee) but made war a kind of persisting engram for him. the chance mis-registration that saved him from taking part in usaf missions in korea becomes a related touchstone. an adulthood pledged to peace, vietnam to iraq, together with ecological activism, further put him on the line as did bouts with pneumonia and later with cancer and heart problems. increasingly, the imperative to come to terms with the war and peace within his own life augments into confronting that of the world. but if all these factors situate salisbury in the one unfolding of his life, so, quite as quintessentially, a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 2 do connecting others. first has to be his “mixed race” (95) legacy in all its old and new world spiral, its pride and yet vex. although tribally un-enrolled, caucasian (a term he favors) in appearance, and small of physique, he returns with self-aware frequency to his situating native identity. “my immediate family’s last-ditch indian survivor” (242) he designates himself. “we indians” he says, when writing of the 1992 quincentenary of columbus’s “discovery” of america (267). yet for all the references to his sunrise prayers or to cherokee traditions of sacred tobacco and respect for the seasons, and for his ancestral cherokee grandmother, he has the honesty to ask “am i still an indian?” (241). in this he shares status with, say, louis owens or jim barnes, writers to whom indigenous legacy supplies reference and locale but who remained tribally un-enrolled. in an interview with the danish scholar bo schöler in 1985 salisbury speaks, if a little tendentiously, of native “regional” authorship: native american writers are part of the new regionalist movement. thus we will be grouped with, for instance, scandinavian americans who are coming up more in awareness of their regional cultures, as are all ethnic groups in america. (33) the other factor, and that to which this essay gives its emphasis, lies in the call to literary authorship. the recall of boyhood creativity, the jottings and small drawings, point to the eventual larger resolve of “my writer’s urge to tell the truth” (196), aided in kind by his kentucky father’s itinerant stories and five-string banjo songs, and by fondest second marriage to his writer-wife ingrid wendt. contemplating the course of this personal pathway in the light of a re-found photograph he observes with some poignancy: a nineteen-year-old bomber crewman, only a year from beginning his writing career, yields to an eighty-two-year-old writer of poetry and prose. (265) transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 3 other way-stations related to acts of writing equally feature, whether teacher training at the north iowa teachers college, studies on the gi bill for an mfa in 1951 at the university of iowa with robert lowell as one of his mentors, or the follow-on into different professorships, but, most of all, in english and creative writing at the university of oregon (1960-1994). likewise, the rockefeller-bellagio award and residency by lake como adds its weight, as do fulbright professorships in norway and germany and each further european trip. there can be added the usis lectureship in india, editorship of northwest review (1965-70), co-translations with harold gaski of the sami poet nils-aslak valkeapää, and each public and campus reading. computer or stub pencil, prose or verse, salisbury acknowledges authorial possession of his life’s trajectory to have been an abiding impetus. authorship, even so, was not to mean some mere exercise in self-reflexivity, though there would be self-reflexivity involved. that holds across the eleven poetry volumes, for which light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected 1950-2008 (2009) acts as representative anthology, and the three story-collections for which the indian who bombed berlin (2009) and its title-piece especially provides a trove. each major fold of event finds address in so far, so good, but so, inerasably, does the overlap with how and why he becomes the poet and story-writer. *** the process of “re-authoring” the timeline from birth to war marks the very opening page of his autobiography: bullet-shattered glass clattering onto my baby bed. i awake and cry, into darkness, for help. do i remember this? or do i remember being told? i will feel it, whichever it is. i will feel it, chill bomb-bay wind buffeting my eighteen-yearold body, a mile above an old volcano’s jagged debris; feel it, seeing photos of jewish concentration camp children, huddled together for warmth, photos a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 4 of korean orphans, huddled together, homeless in blizzard after american bombing – bombing in which, twenty-five, i had refused an order to join. (1) if the self-queries given here link childhood to adulthood, drive-by iowa shooting to nazi camp and wartime korea, they also reflect the author taking hold of his creative latitudes and longitudes (“do i remember this… or being told?”). how, runs the implicit accompanying question, to assume authority of word, coordinating literary voice? the issue of the figura of salisbury as the writer behind, and within, his own body of texts, clearly operates throughout, as much his way of situating himself as “mixed” midwestern farm-boy or airman or even professor. so far, so good, for all the plentiful life-history it supplies, also incorporates full indication of his literary calling. salisbury also registers the detail of his life, especially the emphasis he gives to his boyhood, in terms wholly aware of how life-writing like so far, so good creates its own kind of fiction. self-interrogation enters early when he speaks in his prologue of starting “most days for most of my life… trying to write. why?” (3). he alleges so far, so good best be understood in the teasing phraseology of “a hopskip-and-jumps-andmaybe-some-dancing-memoir” (4). “imagination” is to be apostrophized as “shield,” the solvent for “free association, spontaneity, a wholeness of moment, a union of past and present” (4). in other words, if this is to be a line-graph of actual autobiography it is equally to be responded to for its performative elasticity. the risk could have been of over-consciousness. in fact, it makes for considerable density and layering. ruminatively, and with so far, so good as his “not-too-soon-to-end cherokee-shawnee death song,” he ponders his english name-heritage and pitches himself as “the shakespeare of pig-food bearers… a post-elizabethan word magician” (15). as though in ancestral affiliation and a reflection of his own call to word, he equally gives praise to sequoia for his cherokee “written symbols” (39). working repairs to his present-time house cause him to remember the electricitytransmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 5 less family farm and the “several books written with pencil” (60) in anticipation of those composed on computer screen. avian reference, with its implication of literary flight, aligns bird and bomber, air and earth (“i can’t remember when i began to dream of exploring earth by flying,” 79). he profiles himself as “fifteen-year-old bookworm” (130) whose youth-time rescue of two drowning girls links to “what compels me to write” (133), namely life-saving as though mirrored in their literal and figurative senses.2 even one of his severest dramas, that of the eighteen-year-old armorer precariously helping save fellow crew-members from likely death when an in-flight bomb slips its casing, comes under his self-circling “have i exaggerated?” (163). the question plays into the overall creative awareness of deploying keyboard and pencil: by now i am so modern i have become addicted to a computer keyboard for creating prose, but for poems, elusive as deer among dawn mists, my rifle is a stub pencil, like those with which i first drew cowboys and indians and other combatants and like those with which my father recorded the days the bull was observed in the act of creating calves. (240) so far, so good gives a full enough repertoire in situating salisbury within mixed native and white identity, along with the economics of class, european and asian war, the university and its customs, peace activism, and always the ancestry of cherokee and fellow tribes. markers range from the sand creek massacre to hiroshima, huckleberry finn to the red badge of courage. these, salisbury concludes in sum, constitute “my memories of life flowing into the computer screen” (272). they do so, however, in a way such that the overall serial refracts his rite of progression into poetry and authorship, the outrider determinedly written-in by his own insider. *** a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 6 to turn from so far, so good to the poetry is to become sharply aware of how much of this pattern of self-figuration inheres for salisbury, whether in the context of his take on native identity, or early family iowa, or war, or ecology, or the role of poetry. the voicing of each, allowing for how they inevitably also filter the one into the other, links always into the image of himself as the writer under near-destined summons. each poem, in kind with his storytelling, bears this kind of hallmark as if always the writer is, to the one degree or another yet without over-intrusion, writing himself. salisbury’s native-white genealogy, incontestably, gives a major pivot to this writing-in, not least when localized in “a declaration, not of independence” which opens rainbows of stone (2000). there he summons birthright in the wryest of terms: apparently i’m mom’s immaculately-conceived irish-american son, because, social-security time come, my cherokee dad could not prove he’d been born. (3) this is salisbury as mock-jesus, the bureaucratic de-legitimization of his native father the quite shrewdest taunt. one suspects, too, the implied wider irony. tribal peoples unable to offer paper certification of birth obliquely shadows the indian citizenship act of 1924 with its almost surreal conferring of their “right” to americanization. in life and writing, cherokee signature for salisbury, whatever the family attenuations and acknowledgement of anglo and irish roots, recurs for him as an inescapably situating point of reference. it may well have done so the more given his ability to pass for white. at the same time, and nothing if not again selfsituatingly, so far, so good serves to remind of his insistence on the inadequacy of versions of himself as somehow un-whole: “i am a cherokee/shawnee-english-irish person, not part this part that but all everything, whatever that is” (242). transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 7 “a declaration” profitably segues into “an indian blows up mt rushmore and indianizes what cannot be resanctified,” another opening poem, this time drawn from like the sun in storm (2012).the effect conjured is one of the imagined dismantling of each “father of their country” presidential head, carved by gutzon borglum, white supremacist klan supporter in his time, from black hills granite. this is settler history’s “rushmore” word-inverted into “rush less. not more” (4) and “thanksgiving” likewise into “thanks-taking day” (4). jefferson has become “marble-wigwamed,” lincoln emancipated by “indian-giving generations” (4). it is also a poet’s riposte. teddy roosevelt as rough rider gives way to salisbury or his persona as “rough writer” (4). if “vanishing american” pervades, then “native american” contests, and repudiates, that cliché through “tongue petroglyphs” and “pow-wowing ears” (4). salisbury manages a deft contra-dance; “make peace not war” (4) becomes his requiem to tribal dispossession in “the shadows of desecrated peaks” (4), and yet at the same time tribal continuance and to which through his own scripts and its reader-listeners he envisages his shared contribution. the gallery is as various as frequent. “being indian” in rainbows of stone focuses attention on the evolving complication of mixed native heritage. the opening of “who we were seemed simple when gun/dropped meat onto plates” (5) yields to the poet’s father, provoked into a killing and probable life imprisonment “if a lawyer had not convinced the governor / to pardon an indian” (5). in turn a personal shelf of memory gathers of a cherokee “granny’s apples and tales”, of “road snow, mud or dust, from my parents’ farm,” and the library-learning of “colonial tyranny” (5). each, on the poem’s evolving disclosure, has played its part in his mixedblood entry “into the 20th century” (5). little surprise, perhaps, that salisbury’s closing line asserts “being what i was [was] not ever simple again” (5). “a rainbow of stone,” the collection’s near-title poem, brings a yet fuller native diorama into view, the universe of “thunder’s home” and “creation” to be remembered against “factories smoking guns… a bomber” (65). one order of a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 8 planetary being has incriminatingly yielded to another, that of “my cherokee people’s buffalo, deer / plantations, even our holy town, / echota” to “crime, monoxide, disease, and other city uncertainties” (65). if a right balance can be restored, a four-directions-full human ecology as it were, then in the poet’s eye “the whole earth will be toe-to-toe / rainbows” (66). thunder god and “your home” so again can phase into nature’s right equilibrium. the poem situates salisbury in visionary mode, modern versifier yet also aspiring indigenous seer. a similar ambition of scale holds for “a 20th century cherokee farewell to arms” (26-7). child fantasies of becoming a tribal warrior supply a juncture, disconcertingly, with the allied world war ii bombing of dresden and follow-up in atomic japan. the poem then veers back from what might have been “oxygen” or “cherry blossom,” the end to “killing skills” (26) whether past or still in prospect: the screams of victims to be the screams of cherokee tortured and massacred – and of all the people who have ever been or will be lovers or killer. (27) the lines convey salisbury’s wary lamentation born out of his own emplacement within modern war but, quite as equally, within the haunt of native history. *** the first years of salisbury’s life serve his poems as a form of lattice, not only actual self-history but as the very genesis of his vocation as poet. the preface to rainbows of stone (2000) gives a succinct gloss: i need to recall the vanishing farming and hunting traditions with which i was raised. they are the landmarks i need if i am to keep to the medicine path i feel is mine. (i) these beginnings supply requisite footfalls and echoes throughout the volume. alimentation becomes its own drama in “of pheasant and blue-winged teal” (“dad’s killed / buffalo, deer and bear, respectfully,” 10). prairie homestead and transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 9 weather presides in “without thunder” (“twelve, i was shocked out of dreams by what / whatever makes thunder had done to the barn,” 18). farm animals and their role are remembered in “unloading” (“two huge geldings hauling home, easily, the mountain of hay my aching arms had raised,” 21). the killing of a predatory weasel presages other and later war-killing in “frost baby harp seal pelt” (“blizzard-drift shape i clubbed / and pried out of trap-teeth baited / with guts of victim-chicken,” 96). the poetry wholly un-sentimentalizes the legacy. farming and hunt emerge as indeed the family’s spare terms of survival with salisbury, the real but also figurative presence of the boy-poet, put to steer his way through, and beyond, them. quite one of salisbury’s most affecting poems in this regard is to be met in rainbows of stone’s “a harvesting,” with its link between seasonal just-about subsistence and the poet’s imaginative crop from his past. taking its point of departure from an image of growth in the shape of a fern frond “curling around a finger of air” (117), the poem moves on to the poet’s dead musician father “strumming / iced vines above his grave… english, irish and cherokee tunes.” (117). this is the father whose “trigger-finger” and “hunt / for food, for generations” (117) embodies life-will, the refusal of defeat. one almost thinks of breugel’s “the hunters in the snow,” dogs, snow, light. for if the lines bespeak a starker world, one of under-nutrition and necessity, they also point to the poet’s “harvesting with tongue, then pen” and to “feasting, dancing, courting again begun” (117). the balance is finely struck, the two kinds of crop “harvested” and celebrated with the poet as mediating presence. emphasis, however, falls time and again upon remembered eat-or-die survival in the face of odds and which will through the course of salisbury’s writing segue into his anti-war life ethos. a poem like “for my daughter, 10 then and now 11” gives voice to exactly those connections. set “on this farm / my home / i’ve returned to” (78) it conjures back from past time “wild dogs tearing sheep / to selfsopping rags / when i was ten” and “our dog fleeing from a rabid skunk / around a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 10 and around our yard / until dad’s shot” (78). the prevailing memory, however, lies in helping birth the calf “i pulled out of the heifer’s gene-narrowed young withers” (78). this scene of utter life, even if the obstetric calf is likely destined for the butcher’s “no doubt rusted to dust by now blade” and bombers gnaw the air like “enormous rats,” links to life’s obduracy (78). the metaphor he deploys perfectly encodes this will to life “like leaves of corn / growing towards ripening,” (78) whether that of his “safe-for-now daughter” or that of himself (78). immediate ancestry finds memorial fashioning in “family stories and one not told” from the 2009 collection light from a bullet hole (“our irish mother’s tongue,” “dad’s… pipe smoke tethering in our ears,” “great grandmother… her cherokee-shawnee braid loosened at last” 29). it does again in “to my mother’s father” as chronicled by “your grandson, his family visiting done, / on his way home” (218). “for my sister,” she, too, as he thinks of her at the family homestead in later age, is remembered for “hair gray as the shingles of the farm” (34-5). whether the voices of family, or scant mealtimes and farm accidents to his brothers, plough horses and seedtime, rabbits and gophers, school-going and winter snow, salisbury’s beginnings press hard. the imaginative force of writing himself in from early family life seized from farm and hunt can be little doubted: it bespeaks the very fibers of his formation as person and poet. *** war and peace, as “green smoke” in rainbows of stone underscores, conjoin in the b-24 bomb episode that continues to haunt him: and yes, eighteen, i saved eight men. nine if i count myself, corralling a bomb banging wild like a colt against our own bomb-bay, and now i’m a poet and try to save everything i love. (28) transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 11 the framing oppositions do immediate figurative duty. “it’s world war two again” is tethered to “now i’m a poet” (28). the black death-threat of the “bomb-bay” grates against the regenerative green growing around the “graves of some friends” (28). the poet, awakened at “six in the morning” by long distance phone-news of a downed crewman who shares his own exact name and who has been saved by the rescue squadron, tracks back to his own near-destruction aboard the training plane. the one happenstance meets another. time-present tracks back into timepast. east coast atlantic gives way to oregon pacific. the poet, arisingly, sees himself the by-chance rescuer of the living. humane, custodial, un-clichéd, it can be thought symptomatic of ralph salisbury’s insistent stance for life over death. this same event again finds remembrance in “a bomber crewman’s dance around the dead,” one of the highly personal war poems gathered in blind pumper at the well: poems from my 80th year (2008) and whose section-heading salisbury entitles in upper case: “war: declarations, evocations and condemnations” (38). the poet’s precarious “18-year-old self,” dangling “from a catwalk two miles / of freezing air about peaks” seeks to un-jam a wayward shackle with its bomb-load attached (38). the detail is insistently physical, raw hands on steel, the chilled body poised over a bomb that “could instantly kill eight, / including me” (38). were the “safety wire – a copper cobra” (38) to rip those, too, at ground-level below might die. the task, however, its altitude and daring once negotiated, brings back into view the plane’s basic purpose: …bomb and bomber were joined in unholy matrimony, not to be put asunder, until divorce would tell a story, with no ending. (38) salisbury’s metaphor of marital joining and breakage, the prospect of bomb released from bomber, acts as both memory and forewarning. the poet himself may a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 12 well have dangled, but so does humankind in its sundered “story” of quite unended warring. these poems have their company across the salisbury oeuvre. family and war have their outlet in “war on, one brother, sixteen, and i, try to be men” (82). harking back to the farm’s “corn-stalk-cutting machine,” and its ability to “slice me into bacon strips” as he works the land with the brother who will become his “soldier-brother,” he creates a contrast of not one but two kinds of machine (82). the earlier, culled from “68 years” of back-memory, invokes “planting,” albeit itself dangerous with horse-reins gripped and mud underfoot. the other, with his brother in military service, invokes the un-planting implicit in a “war-besotted world” (82). both kinds of hazard count but rarely more so than in the willed condition of armed conflict. if salisbury queries so-called “indian wars” in poems like “canyon de chelly,” be it in frontier america’s “name of civilization” or in conquistador spain’s “name of the virgin,” so his poetry alights on modernity’s unrelieved penchant for military violence (48). a quartet from blind pumper at the well bid for consideration. “old german woman, some wars” envisages an aged american poet helping an even more aged german “survivor of bombs” as she descends from a tram (40). the both of them carry war-history: he in his remembrance of bomb revenge for britain’s world war ii coventry, she of the reich’s marching soldiers. he ends literally in askance at his own once-again writing-in (“my fate to live to write to be / ignored, or read, by all / i would love to save,” 40). the contrast of two different sites accrue in “a cherokee airman remembers two wars” (41); one the trail of tears forced removal of the cherokee in the 1830s and, in a time-leap forward, the bombing of laos and other asia in the 1960s. salisbury writes as though inside his own double or even own double-double, the once tribal warrior of the mississippi basin, the future high-tech warrior embroiled in the mekong predations, “the moment’s shade,” (41). transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 13 “my country again threatening aggression (this time, for oil in iraq)” shifts into yet more contemporary terrain (29). “our crusaders,” this time, have become corporate bankers whose middle east appetite has again led into war and with it the desecration of “the union of women and men – and children – with earth” (29). natural resources have become unnatural, oil as ultimate “ocean” available only as war currency and to go un-thanked and un-uncelebrated “in cathedral / or temple or mosque” (29). “a nightmare after 9-11” (46) has the poet indeed caught up in dream-terror, the evisceration of the tribes into “vanishing americans” and the act whereby “imperialism’s wronged” have “turned planes, and themselves, into bombs” (46). he imagines himself a would-be stay against both “columbus’s invasion” and an inheritor of the “poetry” of moon and tides each in natural motion “aeons” (46) before the new york attack. as war-poet, his span europe to asia to the middle east to the ever-present danger of global nuclear calamity (in “night sky, indian ridge” he speaks of “our, nuclear target, home,” 27), salisbury gives claim to yet another major writing-in. *** ecology, manifestly, holds yet another sway in salisbury’s poetry. rarely can that have been more emphatic than in the four-poem oil sequence in rainbows of stone, his environmentalist alarm at sheer reckless pollution imaged with characteristic vibrancy. “around the sun, the alaskan oil spill” (68), tracing the exxon valdez calamity in prince william sound, alaska in 1989, opens with the streak as “spacecapsules-globules”. born of ancient evolutionary process (“ghost lizard-birds’ coevals”), its modern abuse has led the quest for oil to become the pollutant of seabirds (“re-entering the atmosphere / in the nostrils of terns”). wings, dark, saturated, have turned into “witch-wings.” nature’s balance has been unbalanced. “each tern is sacred” insists the poem. the oil itself, equally, “formed from the dead – is sacred.” overall, “each moment of life is sacred.” this is sun-given-life as the poem’s title indicates, a gift of “breath” wholly the opposite of the oil spill and a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 14 “not to be wasted” (68). a second stanza links the poet’s flow of blood inside his own arteries to the earth’s oil (“i understand my blood, / its cargo vegetable and animal”). in self-acknowledging “words” he sees fatal endangerment in either spillage (68). “oil spills, 1966, 1989” (69)—given over to the torre canyon reef collision off land’s end, cornwall, the worst in uk history, and again to the exxon valdez— connects salisbury family history to each disaster. the poem looks back to roman england, where the name salisbury with its meaning of salt-storage originates, and then sideways to the 1966 of the vietnam war, israel’s defeat of the arabs, and the civil war of biafra. the contrast arises between animal killing “to keep my indian people from extinction” and the arbitrary killing of habitat and people. saltpreserved native-consumed meat invites a truce “with the creatures whose lives we’d made ours” (69). but modernity’s glut lies far in excess of required subsistence. the closing stanza acts as summary: oil spills, more cars, oil, wars and suicidal murders’s bullet holes in children’s children’s children’s ozone protection, our literature today, tomorrow’s page. (69) if the mien is sardonic, 1966 or 1989 as a “literature” of crude-oil tanker spill, car, bullet, ozone or child, and with the “page” of the future likely more of the same, then it remains for the poet “fed / by a grant (conceived to prevent poets’ extinction)” to issue written and written-in warning. “ocean enough: exxon’s alaskan oil spill” (71) avails itself of more closely native-referenced bearings. it uses a deft avian contrast, oil-impaired bird, and salisbury’s own possible membership of the cherokee/yunwiya “bird clan.” reports of “spilled tons” have been accompanied by the headline cant of “the price of progress.” the poet thinks back to the extinction of prairie chicken “that / kept transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 15 us from starving during the great / depression” as necessity but also guilt. he also thinks of tsk-skwa, the cherokee for mating, birds sprung from prehistoric pterodactyl but become “ghost-fledgling” in the wake of desecration of ocean and “corpse-poisoned shore” (71). “oil spill spreading” (72) shares this vision. time-scale has meant centuries of “oil put under pressure.” opportunism has led to the lure of “black gold,” a “siberia” of “imprisoning indians” and “oil company guns.” the upshot, courtesy of exxon valdez, has been “ink-black / fossil-blood on a white / alaska shore” (the inserted scriptural trace not to be missed) and yet more ominously under hunger for exploitable resources the “danger of being, forever, / the night of nuclear-winter” (72). the “i” of the poem, salisbury in persona, gives himself no exemption in the chain of exploitation (“i’m a killer, a carnivore”). his writing-in, albeit minute in scale, so links into the always immensely greater cost, the earth’s vulnerability, “hurling towards extinction,” (72) in the face of each act of environmental predation. *** writing and its actuation in its own imaginative right assumes a defining importance throughout each salisbury poetry-collection. even so, in “personal poem, perhaps in the manner of tu fu” from like the sun in storm, salisbury is not above affecting the off-hand as though himself the merest good-luck poet: i drift in a poem an apple tree, ripening before first frost, throws off, without apparent thought. (28) in fact, there can be little mistaking his skills, the fine-tuning of metaphor, the adeptness with periodical line-sentence. across all the domains which draw him it is always the poetry that dictates, however consequential the matter at hand. “without apparent thought” may give off an impression of zen-like osmosis. in fact, it exactly belies salisbury’s summoning of self to craft. a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 16 “words concerned with words,” the second poem in blind pumper at the well, approaches something of his writer’s credo. how best to keep language oxygenated, free of political or other sham? for him the answer lies in literary goodpractice, that of the poet above all. to this end he invokes a column of writers whose work has been preserved against odds: the great jewish hungarian writer miklós radnóti, killed by the nazis, but whose work was saved by his wife (“the years of love in her husband’s words,” 4) or the intervention of robert bridges in saving the poetry of hopkins and max brod in the case of kafka and their “lifetimes of words” (4. the final stanza takes its swipe at the pretend-truth of “millions of words / of leaders” as against, in a sharp paradox, “the betrayals of faithful friends, who saved loving and deathless, words” (4). alluding to the “fidelity” in this respect of his own wife, he looks to his best fortune in anticipating the prospect of so being further written-in. a whole concourse of similar writerly self-allusion invites notice. in “for years and years,” a poem given to dreams of death by accident, the first of them in childhood recalls himself with “legs no longer than pencils” (114-5). “slitting the tongue, so that crow should be parrot,” salisbury’s remembrance of cutting his wounded crow’s tongue in the name of having it “sing,” he links it to his eventual bardism as “age bends my trigger-finger on pen” (137). “caring for the soon to be born,” self-glossed as “a final heartbeat likely to leave / grandchildren and poems not yet formed,” offers the very synopsis of the poet at work with “stub-pencil sharpened on trigger-finger nail” and bound “to scribble the times / of destinies, which would – war not yet nuclear – be born” (140). salisbury’s fellow-writer tributes and affinities each add to the writing-in, whether “for octavio paz” (“this magician” 63),“jim barnes, choctaw” (“jim barnes is trading the world” 81), “for simon ortiz” (“his words circle the world” 78), or “two poems in memory of nils-aslak valkeapää” (“remembering the chernobyl disaster year, when nils-aslak and i first exchanged poems” 65-6). perhaps verse transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 17 like “green cows” (71) serves to draw the threads together. late-written, aware of pressing mortality (“alive, still”), salisbury gives thanks for maple trees and their leaf-sugar (“seventy foot tall green cows”) and beech trees (their squirrels and the gathered nuts “to bag and crack”). these are trees that yield “growth ring / on growth ring – a poem” (71). the allusion commands attention. it would be apt to think of salisbury’s lifetime writing-in as his personal species of growth-ring, the poem within his poetry. notes 1 work by ralph salisbury used by permission of the literary estate of ralph salisbury. copyright © 2020 by the literary estate of ralph salisbury. all rights reserved. no reproduction without permission of the estate. 2 this episode is again summoned in “swimming in the morning news.” the lines read of his awakening and remembering “the day i awkwardly swam/and saved two young women from drowning,” as against “today, the somber wing of poetry so many’s / sole chance to survive.” (like the sun in storm 65). works cited salisbury, ralph. blind pumper at the well: poems from my 80th year. salt publishing, 2008. ---. “caring for the soon to be born.” war in the genes, 2006. reprinted in light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected, 1950-2008. silverfish review press, 2009: 140. ---. “for octavio paz.” going to the water, 1983. reprinted in light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected, 1950-2008. silverfish review press, 2009: 63. ---. light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected, 1950-2008. silverfish review press, 2009. a. robert lee “electronic computer and stub pencil” 18 ---. like the sun in storm. the habit of rainy nights press, 2012. ---. rainbows of stone. u of arizona p, 2000. ---. so far, so good. u of nebraska p, 2013. ---. “slitting the tongue, so that crow should be parrot.” war in the genes, 2006. reprinted in light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected, 1950-2008. silverfish review press, 2009: 137. ---. the indian who bombed berlin and other stories. michigan state u p, 2009. schöler, bo. “‘… i would save the cat.’ an interview with ralph salisbury.” american studies in scandinavia, vol. 17, no. 1, 1985, pp. 27-34. microsoft word gray-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 159 seth schermerhorn. walking to magdalena: personhood and place in tohono o’odham songs, sticks, and stories. university of nebraska press and the american philosophical society, 2019. 258 pp. isbn: 9781496206855. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496206855/ walking to magdalena reflects a decade-long dialogue between the author, seth schermerhorn, and members of the tohono o’odham nation. the main driver of the book is to uncover and understand the ways in which the principles and practices of christianity have been adapted and co-produced by indigenous tradition. in the introduction, schermerhorn notes that analysis in this field too often leans towards discussion of what christianity does to indigenous cultures, as opposed to what indigenous cultures do with christianity. this important critical distinction establishes both the content and the methodological decisions that shape this book. much of the study provides fascinating and detailed conversations with tohono o’odham participants in the pilgrimage to magdalena, a journey from arizona to mexico. unlike traditional narratives of the pilgrimage to compostela, northern spain—a comparison noted in the book where the destination is more often the principal focus—in this narrative account the word “pilgrimage” is replaced with “process of the journey,” to ensure that participation, not destination, is the subject of analysis. the embodied experience of travelling and journeying as a collective across this at once ancestral and contemporary landscape provides the core focus for analysis. in each of the five chapters, different strands of christian and indigenous practices are explored though very specific means, focusing on personhood, place, songs, and wooden staffs, connecting geographical, spiritual, and material realities. in the introduction and chapter one, and in keeping with established interventions in the field of indigenous methodologies and systems of knowledge construction—specifically lisa brooks’s contribution in her ground-breaking text, the common pot (2008)—place is given priority over time, meaning that where an event happens is given priority over when. in this way, the author sets out to show that “the o’odham have made christianity their own by embedding it within their ancestral landscapes” (23). prioritising place and challenging the dominance of historicism, which schermerhorn does by navigating established spatial and cultural theorists, soja, bourdieu, and foucault for example, allows him to cut through chronological sequences of colonisation that might normally set a more linear critical framework for analysis of the legacies of christianity brought by colonisation. kathryn n. gray review of walking to magdalena 160 indeed, the historical framework—which relates the legacies of catholicism brought by spanish colonial rule, legacies which would normally set the context for such an analysis—appears towards the end of the text, in an appendix. the methodological implications of this move are revealing: it allows the voices of the o’odham travellers to speak their religious traditions, past and present, not necessarily as a legacy of colonisation, but as their indigenous catholicism reflects lived, everyday practice. the anthropological research methods, gathering testimony through conversations and recorded interviews, is shaped by the author’s decision to follow the methods of jill dubisch, where “observant participation” is prioritised over observing participants (13). further, following james clifford’s work, schermerhorn also rejects the traditional model of the binary where the anthropologist writes what the “native speaks” (13). instead, a more collaborative model of co-production is created and deployed, modelled on peruvian anthropologist marisol de la cadena who insists on the “colaboring” of cultural or anthropological knowledge and understanding. ultimately, this approach has the effect of successfully challenging the loaded binary distinctions between what de la cadena (and schermerhorn) have described as “their belief and my knowledge” (qtd. in schermerhorn14). the central challenge proposed by the study—where place is prioritised over time, where the land and embodied experiences of walking, song, and material objects become the focus for different chapters—allows a composite narrative of indigenous christianity to emerge. importantly, this exploration of indigenous christianity is not driven by time-markers but by lived experiences and cultural memory. chapter one prioritises the links between person and place: designated sites in the landscape are layered with stories, actively supporting the development of personhood as individuals move through that landscape and understand the agency of ancestral land. in chapter two, schermerhorn creates what he calls a song map. this mapping exercise is based on accounts of the songs sung during the different parts of the journey, cumulatively creating a song series for each of the different routes taken to magdalena. crucially, the songs are mapped onto the landscape, taking the singers and the audience through traditional landscapes, acknowledging indigenous knowledge and meaning-making as part of that process. the following chapter focuses on material culture and the walking sticks that support the walker physically, it’s true, but the symbolism is much richer. the author contends that the sticks (generally each individual has the same stick for their many journeys to magdalena in their lifetime) have become personal archives, with the addition of ribbons and notches, transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 161 documenting lived experiences of the journeys and offering stories that offer access to the ethical or moral imagination. chapter four focuses on the journey, attending to categories of movement that reflect specific cultural resonances. again, the destination is not the final goal, rather it’s the dynamic process of walking, of being in motion, of being “a good walker,” which sets the terms for an analysis of personhood. defining “a good walker” is learned and practiced, rather than perfected, and becomes an art as well as an action. personhood, like the walker, is therefore analysed as a state of being in process. chapter five, where divergent claims about the where, when, and how of catholic influence on o’odham culture emerges, draws the strands of the book together: people are connected to places rather than times, and lived experience, the everyday, navigates ancestral and conceptual landscapes. the subject-matter of the book is original: a decade-long partnership with the o’odham, built on trust, offers the reader insights into contemporary, every-day, lived religious experiences of this indigenous catholic community. it’s a complex and, at times, contradictory or incomplete account, where internal disagreements about cultural memories and values add to the veracity of lived experiences and vitality of a community at ease with negotiation, change, and adaptation. it appears as an ethnographic study of an indigenous community, and it is. but it’s also an autoethnography, where schermerhorn consciously positions himself as a participant, an observer, a friend, and a travel companion. the conscious revelation of self, as it sits alongside the presentation of the o’odham, allows the author to acknowledge his position as the author, without effacing the co-production of this work with his partners in the o’odham community. kathryn n. gray, university of plymouth work cited brooks, lisa. the common pot: the recovery of native space in the northeast. u of minnesota p, 2008. microsoft word apache-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 155 janice gould. seed. headmistress press, 2019. 75 pp. isbn: 9781733534505. https://headmistress-press.square.site/product/seed-by-janice-gould/59?cs=true janice gould’s latest and last collection, seed, compels us to reconsider a need to return to the beginning and to connect that beginning in the formation of a poem to a sense of self, and where the poem may travel. her words lead you through a personal pilgrimage of a specific beginning for discovering the beauty of language, heartache, and longing. gould’s poetic journey uses language to express the emotion and experience in her struggle to accept her many facets of identity. reading through each poem also invites a search for truth and acquisition, faith for acceptance, emergence, and discovery, of loss, and resolve. these various poetic expressions then return to a rebirth, a new beginning. the emotional transitions expressed throughout her collection resonate as each poem is recited: finding solace in times of despair and encountering the ever-evading truth—the truth of where she travels and will soon long to bare—missing but always remembering. in this poetic assemblage gould helps envision a return to her truth and what struggles will be accepted when she finally realized herself in identity—once her identity arrives. to understand her journey, gould forces us to start with a beginning, “a poem” (1). the written word gould displays become the objects and personas that depict her in this collection. each poem begins with a word title or concept as a benediction over each poem. this idea of benediction conveys her journey as a sojourner in each place and time. this journey ends with the poem “beyond knowing” which brings her back to the beginning where this search through despair circles back to the books beginning, “looking / is the beginning / of seeing…” (67). each poem is a small prayer saving a place for solace, for resolve. i had the pleasure to be on a panel with gould during the jaipur literary festival in boulder, colorado, “orientations: writing sexuality” on september 25, 2017, and to read alongside her at the counterpath, “in conversation with colorado front range native writers & scholars, series ii” on september 17, 2017. during these times we spoke about poetry and identity. she sang a few songs, she played her guitar, and we talked some more. her words are like her songs, easy on the ears, with the despair hiding behind the soft language conveying so much of herself. gould continuously seeks truth and honesty. in her poem “contradiction” she constantly searches through the expectation of identity, she often sacrifices herself and doubts her identity, not expressing how she was meant or intended to exist. always “naming herself as silence” (41). “a poem” (1) states this beginning crisosto apache review of seed 156 is about to flower full force from my abdomen, my spleen, my wrists, my ankles. i could feel the pip of it in last night’s dream that kept threading its way back to sacred land, … (1) expressed in these words is the presence of a beginning that points out a specific place of emergence, “her abdomen.” the area she describes does lead all to a place of “sacred land,” where the emergence of existence stems (1). the recognition of such a place also recognizes the beauty, the purity of poetry. knowing the body is a large part of acknowledging herself in these poems, where she travels and connects to places as a germinating memorial to land, to the body, to time, and to resolve. using the “seed” as a metaphor allows us to view the minuscule interconnectedness between the soil and seed. the offering and receiving of life “unconditionally” (3). this point of origin is a reference point to allow herself to travel and remember the complex existence and relationships in her poems. the concept of emergence and becoming lends an urgency to the acknowledgment of self and place. in the poem “weed,” her words express the delicateness of self and place. comparing herself as a “weed in your perfect garden” is an example of the delicate interconnectedness of self and place (6). gould acknowledges this instance and finds value in what is inherently something natural as itself, the value, meaning, and purpose in a “weed” and a “rose”: after that i grew intentionally, absorbing every drop of moisture that fell from her leaves, droplet by droplet, onto the thirsty patch of soil that sustains me. (6) gould speaks often about the identity of self, placing each poem in moments of recollection. these recollections are like “migrations” and habitual patterns solidified on a landscape, such as a river, or a canyon, or animal trial. many of these formations or events take place in small moments which happen over time, some carved over a millennium, some in a drizzle of “feminine” rain (11). the language gould captures transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 157 places her in these spatial patterns to let us know the controlling nature of who she is and who we are as a habit, carving its way through history and this world. her poem, “migration,” is an example of this historical habit: too worn down to celebrate our freedom, we vanish quickly like indians, making our way north and west, rattling down the highway in an oversized truck. (9) this notion of self and placement is indicated in many places of her collection. like a grotto, a place to contemplate. inside the lingual moments are the remembrances of comfort, the embraces—that offer tenderness and peace. identity is a theme throughout her collection. the identity of the female, lesbian, person of color, and as a “tomboy” is represented as a “contradiction” (41). gould depicts the constraints of honesty and truth towards “self” and identity. the expectation of decorum and how others see her adoration for what her heart wants and seeks. her spirit seeks freedom away from despair and from not being able to express her true self. gould envisioning herself existing in this immense universe but only remembering the tiny moments that make the most differences in her life such as a “wall in the garden,” or “feeling the night wind on our faces” (17). awareness is the virtue that pushes her to continue moving forward and adapting to a better self. in this constant pull in identity she “calls her name silence in a stance, tantalized by another girl’s grace” (42). the concept of place and spiritual acceptance and the constant justification of her identity as a sin for being a lesbian is the ongoing struggle gould encounters often. whether in idaho as a child feeling the snow on her face and melding into it( 43), or in the valleys of oregon remembering the interaction and negative response from her friend’s mother as “disgusting” (49), gould challenges the tension through contemplation and meditation. the contemplation leads to faith and resolve of spiritual acceptance through things unnoticed, today—“trees, water, music” (57). the concept of place has a sacred space in this collection, the discovery, and connection to everything beautiful. taking moments and willingly allowing herself to watch a day unfold and letting that motion become part of her being. recognizing there is beauty all around and “observing the fiery residue” (58). in this moment of acceptance, gould experiences a connection to faith towards trust intertwining with “beauty all around and spiraling out like happiness” (59). this concept of whirling crisosto apache review of seed 158 beauty in all is the direction that leads her to sacred places where she can contemplate natural beauty and sanctuary. gould references chimayó, which is also the title of her poem, and the small sanctuary in new mexico. this place of solace helps resolve her struggle for love and longing inside herself and to those she loves—to a constant search and commitment towards the truth about herself inside the recognition of beauty (24). the heaviness of miracles and persistence through time and memory hold a sacredness allowing a moment of awareness and belonging to a holy sacredness on the breezes and patio singing praises for all love (25). gould addresses life consistently happening and noticing life as it consistently happens, never missing moments because those moments can escape us. she also wants us to notice the small, especially those in the dark and dank because everything wants to be noticed (15). the last poem of the collection is a reverent poem called “beyond knowing.” in this poem, gould reverts to the beginning, specifically her epigraph from marilou awaikta’s novel 1994 selu: seeking the corn-mother’s wisdom: “a cherokee elder told me, ‘look at everything three times. once with the right eye. once with the left eye. and once from the corners of the eyes to see the spirit [essence] of what you're looking at’” (epigraph). the return to a beginning and opening the poem with a similar language is the conceptual idea gould wants the reader to realize. the importance of returning to places that mold and allow her to reflect, contemplate, and meditate on a pilgrimage through life. returning to specific memories is a return to “poetry” (67). returning to a beginning is a kind of rebirth—or renewal. a journey without reflection is a “denunciation of self” (67). the pilgrimage through the corridors of life, if we choose to acknowledge life, allows us to look all around and notice the unnoticeable. the “intention of looking beyond the curvatures of the earth” and beyond the “blue sky” is part of the faith she seeks and the truth that sustains the search (67). “integument” is the idea of becoming grounded in who she is (67). becoming the seed that will germinate unconditionally, recognizing the “small truths” and blending with the light of the sun (68). seed is a heartfelt and honest journey of reflection, longing, and discovery. the last poetic testament left with us, gould sows a collection worthy of continued growth and harvest. crisosto apache, rocky mountain college of art and design microsoft word 897-article text-4830-1-9-20200401.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 39 communities of grief: surviving war in the fiction of ralph salisbury1 miriam brown spiers in that the people might live, jace weaver explains that, “[t]he cherokee can never forget the trail of tears—not because of some genetic determinism but because its importance to heritage and identity are passed down through story from generation to generation… such cultural coding exists finally beyond conscious remembering, so deeply engrained and psychologically embedded as to be capable of being spoken of as ‘in the blood’” (8). later, he argues that “[i]n the case of native americans… grief can never be finally ‘abolished.’ any native scholarship or intellectual work must, however, take the ongoing and continual healing of this grief... as both a goal and a starting point. it must expand the definition of liberation to include survival. natives engaged in literary production participate in this healing process” (weaver 38). weaver’s argument draws a powerful connection between historical trauma and the role of literature in documenting, exploring, and resisting that trauma. these claims are easily borne out in many works of native literature—such as leslie marmon silko’s ceremony or leanne howe’s shell shaker—which tell the stories of traumatized characters who, by the end of the novel, have acknowledged and begun to process those traumas through the support of their communities. silko’s tayo, for instance, receives guidance from two medicine men, ku’oosh and betonie, while howe’s auda billy draws on the strength of her extended family, including her ancestors, to resist redford mcalester, the greedy and corrupt chief of the oklahoma choctaws. but it is perhaps more difficult to understand how weaver’s claims can apply to works of native literature that seem to tell less uplifting or empowering stories—works miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 40 like cherokee writer ralph salisbury’s last collection of short stories, the indian who bombed berlin. as the title indicates, these stories focus primarily on the experiences of native soldiers and veterans; although salisbury’s characters suffer from traumas similar to those in other works of native literature, very few of them achieve any resolution. salisbury wrestles with the continual grief that arises not only from the stories of removal and colonization that have been passed down through generations of cherokee relatives, but also from the experiences of war shared by those same relatives. this grief, too, lives “in the blood,” where it is passed down to the soldiers’ children and spread to their wives and widows, ultimately infecting not only the veterans, but also the families who struggle—and often fail—to heal their fathers and sons, their cousins and nephews, their uncles and brothers. to understand how stories that depict such hopeless cycles of violence might contribute to the project of literary production as a healing process, we might turn to cherokee scholar daniel heath justice’s discussion of indigenous literatures. building on weaver’s concept of communitism, justice argues that indigenous people’s stories have been integral to [our] survival—more than that, they’ve been part of our cultural, political, and familial resurgence and our continued efforts to maintain our rights and responsibilities in these contested lands. they are good medicine. they remind us of who we are and where we’re going, on our own and in relation to those with whom we share this world. they remind us about the relationships that make a good life possible. (why indigenous literatures matter, 5-6) in justice’s conception, the very existence of the stories, regardless of their content, also serves a purpose. so, while salisbury rarely offers the kind of roadmap that we find in ceremony or shell shaker, the stories themselves are a reminder of cherokee presence, and they are built on a foundation of cherokee values. specifically, they transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 41 reinforce the importance of community and storytelling. as a result, the indian who bombed berlin works to build relationships and, thus, to construct multiple communities: first, a community of characters who appear and reappear, in slightly varied forms, from one story to the next; second, a community of warriors and veterans whose experiences, shared within and between stories, become the first step in the healing process described by weaver; and third, taken as a whole, the book joins an ongoing conversation among other native writers, such as silko, jim northrup, and william sanders, who tell the stories of native veterans surviving american wars. given that many native men of salisbury’s generation served in the u.s. military during world war two, it is unsurprising that the men at the heart of his work are often soldiers and veterans. as alison bernstein explains, when japan made its surprise attack on pearl harbor, there were 4,000 american indians in the military. by war’s end, approximately 25,000 indians had served... these figures represented over one-third of all able bodied indian men from age 18 to 50, and in some tribes the percentage of men in the military was as high as 70 percent. (40) these incredible rates of participation necessarily led to equally high rates of impact in native communities, both during and after the war. bernstein also notes that “[t]he number of indian deaths and casualties [in world war two] easily equaled and probably exceeded those of whites and other minorities as a proportion of the number who fought” (61). thus, regardless of their geographic and temporal distance from the battlefield, salisbury’s stories are nonetheless shaped by world war two and the wars that follow—in korea, vietnam, and the ongoing conflicts in the middle east—which together form the backbone of modern american history. in the indian who bombed berlin, those wars are completely immersive: although the stories rarely describe miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 42 scenes of active duty, each conflict remains alive as the protagonists tell war stories and struggle to return to civilian life. stories about wounded veterans are a prominent part of the collection: an early story, “bathsheba’s bath, bull durham bull, and a bottle of old granddad,” introduces cousin kenny, a world war two veteran in his early twenties who “had been sent home missing one eye and missing part of his mind” (salisbury 16). later, “a vanishing american’s first struggles against vanishing” follows another world war two veteran, dirk dark cloud, as he fights his war “again and again when memories, buried like land mines, exploded in [his] alcohol-addled mind” (salisbury 123). even in stories that are ostensibly about other themes, the aftermath of war looms in the background. “white snakes and red, and stars, fallen,” is the story of eight-year old seek ross, told through the disagreement between seek’s white teacher and his father, a cherokee veteran of world war two, over how to respond to seek’s story about being chased by three wild dogs. at the beginning of the story, the two adults are already at odds with each other: the teacher has attempted to raise money for a “new, rust-proof flagpole, whose shining height would... show that all she’d endured in this cultural badlands had been for the nation defended by her dad, killed while invading algeria” (salisbury 6). seek’s father sees the new flagpole as “useless,” an attitude that may contribute to the teacher’s refusal to believe seek’s story, as well as her decision to confiscate the pistol that seek’s father allows his older brother to carry for protection (salisbury 10). thus, although the story takes place in a rural american town several years after the second world war has ended, its presence still looms. these two characters’ personal experiences also highlight the extreme contrast between people living in the same small town. the differences in gender, race, and class that divide seek’s father and his teacher repeat often throughout the collection, largely because salisbury’s characters tend to live away from reservations and outside transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 43 of native communities. this, too, may be attributed to the second world war, which “reduced the cultural and physical isolation of thousands of indians from the mainstream” and represented “the first large-scale exodus of indian men from the reservations since the defeat of their ancestors” (bernstein 171, 40). many american indians had a relatively positive experience during the war, where they were fully integrated into white units and “’found that they could participate with whites on what they considered to be an equal basis’” (bernstein 136). as a result of those experiences, many native veterans chose “to seek employment off the reservation after the war” (bernstein 148). this attempted integration into mainstream american society, though it often failed, is responsible for some of the racial intermarriage that we see in salisbury’s stories. in many cases, members of the same family are racially and ethnically mixed: in addition to seek’s cherokee father and white mother, the dark cloud family, who are the focus of nine interconnected stories, includes a cherokee father and his german-american wife, whose first husband, a fallen soldier, was lakota; in “bathsheba’s bath, bull durham bull, and a bottle of old granddad,” lack and his cousin kenny have a cherokee grandmother and a white grandfather; in “ival the terrible, the red death,” ival’s “real father” was a member of the ioway nation, and his mother is “a half-blood widow” whose second husband is non-native; in “a volga river and a purple sea,” we learn that sy, an arapaho teenager destined to serve in world war two, will later marry a “blond, hero-worshipping wife” (salisbury 39, 41, 34). the fact that these characters live away from and marry outside of native communities does not suggest that they or their children are any less native, a theme that is repeated throughout salisbury’s work. arnold krupat’s introduction to light from a bullet hole, for instance, cites salisbury’s own claim that “i am not part indian, part white, but wholly both” (73). the attitudes of salisbury’s protagonists reflect this miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 44 claim, as they rarely hesitate to identify themselves as “indian,” despite being repeatedly mistaken for members of some other ethnic group. those who served in world war two are often mistaken for “the enemy,” like the cherokee narrator of “some indian wars, some wounds,” who describes “having been despised back home as the supposed son of some italian immigrated to build railroads, bridges, and cities,” or like dirk dark cloud, who is assumed to be italian by an american sergeant who “wouldn’t let me carry my rifle until he’d emptied it” (salisbury 114, 165). in the much more serious scenario depicted in “a volga river and a purple sea,” sy is shot “by a buddy who’d mistaken sy’s arapaho face for japanese” (34). non-native veterans also bring their prejudices back home, so that a soldier turned milk truck driver sees a cherokee child by the side of the road and honks his horn in the “world war two code ‘v’ for ‘victory, [the boy’s] skin a reminder of japanese” (34, 3). perhaps the most unexpected example of mistaken identity occurs in “the new world invades the old,” which tells the story of sher, a nez perce man working as an army translator in greece. he is approached by a greek woman who asks him to impregnate her because her sterile greek husband nonetheless expects her to produce a child. as the woman explains to sher, “’to save my marriage i must have a son, and you are dark like a greek, dark like my husband’” (57). in each instance, non-native people’s inability to recognize native identity reinforces the idea that american indians are “vanishing americans;” though salisbury wryly suggests that they have “been vanishing for approximately five hundred years” (121). this comment, together with the stories themselves, make it clear that american indians very much exist in the present—and also throughout american history—but the indian who bombed berlin nonetheless depicts the sense of isolation that individual american indians experience as they are repeatedly misidentified. because the native character in each story is so frequently the only one in a given scene, there transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 45 is almost never an opportunity for two native folks to exchange a wry glance, to laugh at euro-american ignorance, or to find solidarity in a shared experience. when several of salisbury’s protagonists stand up to the strangers who misidentify them, the nonnative characters simply respond with a different set of insults. the cherokee narrator of “some indian wars, some wounds” explains that he is “not italian, i’m indian,” to which one of the drunken soldiers harassing him responds, “’[a]nd another redskin bit the dust’” (116-17). racist encounters like these are not limited to the military, either. in “losers and winners: an ongoing indian war,” one of the few stories with a female protagonist, a cherokee poet named irene has a brief relationship with her older—and married—creative writing instructor. while still in her bed, irene’s professor tells her that, “’yours must remain a one-term try at writing [because] you’re shy, irene, like most of the indian women i’ve taught’” (95-96). irene’s story is an effective reminder that the military is hardly the source of racist attitudes; native people encounter casual racism in a wide variety of circumstances. they may first be isolated by these experiences, but most of salisbury’s veteran protagonists also remain trapped within their own grief and suffering due to the trauma experienced during their military service. most obviously affected are the veterans themselves, who come home mentally and emotionally as well as physically damaged—like dirk dark cloud, who can no longer tour the country as a professional banjo player after losing part of a finger in world war two. even this relatively small injury has a huge effect on dirk’s life, but salisbury also tells the stories of men who have lost far more, like whippoorwill willis, who returns home blind in one eye and with a “bullet-shattered foot” (110). serious as the physical injuries are, they are frequently overshadowed by the post-traumatic stress disorder that many of salisbury’s veterans suffer. dirk, for instance, drinks “kill-all spirits... to drive off spirits miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 46 he’d killed in world war two,” while cousin kenny drinks to escape the nightmares that keep him awake (122). though salisbury draws a clear connection between his characters’ military service and their alcoholism, bernstein notes that, in the absence of reliable statistics, it is difficult to know whether alcoholism among indian veterans rose as a result of their service experiences. a more likely explanation was offered recently by a former navajo code talker. this veteran admitted that among his thirty buddies, he alone had become an alcoholic, but that several other veterans had taken to drinking only after they failed to find work back on the reservation.” (136) the code talker’s observation echoes some of dirk dark cloud’s experiences: after his banjo-playing career comes to an end, he marries a german-american widow and settles in the border town of custer, south dakota, where he works as a factory janitor and “spend[s] his once-a-month disability check to get insanely, violently drunk in custer’s bottomless keg, the bar whose topless waitresses would serve indians” (salisbury 129). dirk’s reliance on alcohol is compounded by his feelings of frustration and inadequacy when he is unable to provide for his family. he complains that “’[b]anks make a man feel damned small. my word ain’t good enough. they got to have this goddamned paper a man can’t understand except where to sign it. i’ll work, work, work and starve till i drop, and there’s nothing i can do about it—nothing—not a goddamned thing—nothing!” (salisbury 125). although salisbury does not go into detail about dirk’s financial situation, it is likely that his frustration stems from a maddening experience shared by many native veterans: after world war two, these men were entitled to loan programs set up by the veterans’ association (va), but most banks did not extend credit to indian veterans since they assumed that the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 47 government provided support for these ‘wards.’ as a result, indians had difficulty securing business loans and could not get credit to purchase livestock, equipment, or lands outside the reservation. (bernstein 145) thus, although dirk has taken ownership of his wife’s small farm—land that presumably belonged to her first husband, a lakota soldier who died in the war—and although he is entitled to support as a veteran of that same war, inaccurate assumptions about american indians prevent him from taking advantage of the resources he has rightfully earned. like the veterans described by the navajo code talker, dirk uses alcohol to cope not only with his traumatic wartime experiences, but also with the continued systemic racism that he has encountered since returning home. in both dirk’s and kenny’s stories—as in many others—the veterans’ families struggle to care for these men upon their return home. although dirk’s wife and kenny’s aunts understand that the soldiers’ injuries are the result of their experiences in combat, they have a limited capacity to provide for the men’s needs or heal their wounds. concerned about protecting her own children, kenny’s aunt threatens to banish him from her home if he continues to drink, while dirk’s wife, though not a devout church-goer, resorts to asking the local priest to convert her husband “from a once-a-month drunk indian to a once-a-week christian indian” (salisbury 19, 138). neither response is particularly effective, but the families have few other resources available and are otherwise trapped in the cycles of violence that the veterans bring into their homes. ival recalls “drunken whippings he and his half brother had suffered in childhood” at the hands of his step-father, an “old marine” who likely also bullied ival’s dying mother “into not seeing a doctor until it was too late” (salisbury 40). in “bathsheba’s bath, bull durham bull, and a bottle,” it emerges that cousin kenny, who comes home to find his mother dying of cancer, may have shot her to end her suffering. although we do not see that scene directly, we follow kenny’s younger miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 48 cousins as they discover feathers swirling above the trash-burning barrel; upon closer inspection, the cousins “sift charred pillow-case remnants among subsiding flames. risen from a bullet hole, centering a blood stain, white ashes had swirled away on shrieking wind” (16). the discovery helps to explain why kenny spent the night after his mother’s funeral lying “’by [her] cold grave, a carryin’ on so mournful he set all the hounds to howlin’ with him’” (16). in the story of the dark cloud family, which is explored extensively in part three of the indian who bombed berlin, dirk terrorizes his son, juke, when he has been drinking: “juke and ann, his sister, would gleefully bleat, ‘baa, baa, beah, beah,’ scrambling and gamboling over tobacco tins tacked flat to cover holes that months back, pa—drunkenly yelling, ‘durned little nigger-skinned indniun’—had shot around juke’s feet” (salisbury 122-23). it is here that we also learn about juke’s “first warrior deed:” at nine years old, he intervenes in a fight between his parents and charges his gun-wielding father to prevent him from shooting his mother (127). the concept of veterans suffering from ptsd is not a new one, of course, but in salisbury’s stories it counterintuitively becomes the framework through which community is established. weaver argues that “natives define their identity in terms of community and relate to ultimate reality through that community,” an idea echoed by justice in his discussion of cherokee nationhood (weaver 35). according to justice, [c]ommunity and its web of social relationships are the structural foundation of cherokee life... it is in relationship with the tribal nation that the individual cherokee is defined, whether one is fullblood or mixedblood, raised as an outlander or rooted in the soil of the ancestors, conservative or accommodationist or on any point of the spectrum between. (our fire survives the storm, 23) transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 49 thus, despite these characters’ position as “outlanders,” estranged from native and non-native communities, from their own families, and even from themselves, they are nonetheless defined by their relationship to their tribal nations. moreover, the arrangement and collection of their stories, literally bound together and symbolically connected through repeated patterns and shared experiences, establishes another kind of community. not only does salisbury trace individual characters and multiple generations of the same family across stories; he also builds a community of native warriors and veterans whose experiences, shared within and between those stories, emphasizes their relationship with and responsibility to one another. as justice argues, disconnection is cause and consequence of much of this world’s suffering. we are disconnected from one another, from the plants and animals and elements upon which our survival depends, from ourselves and our histories and our legacies. when we don’t recognize or respect our interdependencies, we don’t have the full context that’s necessary for healthy or effective action. (why indigenous literatures matter, 4-5) through the form of a short story collection, salisbury allows his characters—and his readers—to reconnect, discovering commonalities and reconsidering individual experiences within their broader historical and cultural contexts. one clear cause of these characters’ isolation is the fact that, in order to survive war, they have had to kill. this fact is sometimes casually acknowledged, as in “a way home,” when whipp recalls his friends saying, “’[s]orry ‘bout that,’... to joke away the killing they had had to do” (111). elsewhere, ival remembers “the first german [he] had killed, [who] had been hunched into bushes beside his truck” (41). in “white ashes, white moths, white stones,” twelve-year old “lack’s kind, gentle big brother wulf [was] killing people in unthinkably distant, unreal europe” (28). juke, the son of dirk dark cloud, grows up to become a soldier and is “awarded two medals for killing miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 50 strangers” (127). as these details echo across stories, readers can realize what individual characters rarely do: their experiences, however terrible, are also common. and, while their commonality does not make them any less awful, it does offer a path out of isolation. if these experiences are not unique, then it becomes possible to form a community of other veterans who share similar struggles. in addition to forming a community among veterans, military service has also forced these men to engage with the processes of imperialism and globalization. one certainly unintended consequence of this experience is that many native soldiers begin to build community with “the enemy.” sher sheridan, in “the new world invades the old,” “witnessed the torture of an elderly filipino tribesman and, sickened by the sight of knives moving over skin as brown as that of his father, wished it was u.s. imperialism’s contemporary commander staked to the earth floor of the interrogation tent” (salisbury 53). sher acknowledges that his “angry wish was rooted in... knowledge that white invaders had taken his nez perce people’s homeland, raped women, and mingled their blood with his family’s blood” (salisbury 53). similarly, in “laugh before breakfast,” dirk dark cloud tells his son, parm, stories about killing “some of them highfalutin fellers what does the planning, them enemy offysirs.” once, his telescopic sight had found a white-haired man so important, the enemy soldiers had not only saluted but bowed. ‘that old colonel or general, he looked,” parm’s daddy mused, “like the gentleman you are named for—parmenter, my old great uncle what always gived me candy when he’d see me.” (132) dirk is so struck by the man’s familial resemblance that he chooses not to kill him. as he explains, “[h]e was lucky he was the spitting image of uncle parmenter, so rich and well-dressed and proud and so good to me when i was little” (135). in both stories, the protagonist establishes some relationship, some similarity and sympathy, with the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 51 supposed “enemy,” despite all the training that has encouraged him to dehumanize those men. in this sense, sher’s and dirk’s stories serve as a defiant reversal of the earlier story of sy, the arapaho soldier who earned a purple heart when he was wounded “by a buddy who’d mistaken [his] arapaho face for japanese” (34). in that story, the unnamed “buddy” has been so well trained to find the enemy that he sees danger lurking everywhere, while sher and dirk are instead able to recognize similarities and build relationships. a remarkable ability to build community is perhaps one of the best ways to handle the “grief that can never be finally ‘abolished,’” as weaver describes it (8). although he refers to the trail of tears as one example of that grief, weaver extends his argument to speak more broadly about the ways in which “[f]ive centuries of ongoing colonialism in america, as in other colonial societies, has led to an erosion of self and community due to the dislocation resulting from cultural denigration, enslavement, forced migration, and fostered dependency” (37). the indian who bombed berlin displays the effects of that ongoing colonialism both in the veterans’ ptsd and in the stories’ expansion to include multiple generations spanning hundreds of years. in “laugh before breakfast,” another story about dirk dark cloud, salisbury describes dirk’s habit of getting drunk at a bar called custer’s bottomless keg, where veterans fought, again, america’s wars—with words, with fists, and sometimes with knives or with guns. veterans of machine-age war fought the indian wars, citing treaties as if they’d read them, or proclaiming manifest destiny as inevitable as a weather system moving from ocean inland. veterans fought the civil war... young again, grandfathers fought again the war to end all wars, a war without end in memories... middle-aged fathers fought again the war that had amputated one of parm’s father’s banjo-chording fingers, some toes, and part of his mind. (salisbury 129-30) miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 52 the scene weaves together similar threads scattered throughout the collection, emphasizing the all-encompassing role of warfare in american history and its central role in shaping many native lives. drawing on memories that extend back as far as the civil war, it is clear that, for salisbury’s characters, the memories of war exist “in the blood,” much like the trail of tears in weaver’s account (weaver 8). those memories are passed down within individual families as well as in the larger community of veterans. the grandmother of twelve-year old lack, the main character of “bathsheba’s bath, bull durham bull, and a bottle of old granddad,” had three sons, “all of whom she raised to manhood, only to lose the eldest in the war lack’s father had survived, the war to end all wars, called—now that another war had begun—world war one” (salisbury 15). here, the narrator quickly highlights the influence of war on each new generation of the family: this is also where we meet cousin kenny, who is introduced as “the son of the brother who’d been gassed to death, in a battle that lack’s father and uncle clyde had survived” (16). a neighbor further describes kenny’s situation: “’[p]oor boy, he never had him no daddy, account of the one cussed war, and account of this new cussed war, not never no wife to take his mother’s place now that she’s gone” (16). the extended family has to take kenny in after his mother’s death; in turn, lack, who must share a bed with his cousin, struggles to understand why kenny tosses and turns all night, while lack’s mother worries that “her twelve-year-old son might catch the ‘bad-disease’ off sheets ‘profaned’ by [his] bachelor cousin” (16). by positioning kenny among his father, uncle, and younger cousins, salisbury further emphasizes the multigenerational impact of war within native families. salisbury’s narrative technique of collapsing time—particularly in the first section of the book, “coming to manhood: some initiations”—further emphasizes those intergenerational experiences. the section’s four stories all depict boys too young to transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 53 enlist or be drafted; nonetheless, all four include the protagonists’ experiences in combat, thus defining these characters by the wars that lie in their futures. “a volga river and a purple sea” opens with the clause, “[w]ar three years in his future” (31). this is the story of sy, the arapaho boy who will later be wounded by a buddy who mistakes him for japanese. but before that trauma, sy will break his ankle ice skating, spend the summer learning to swim in order to rebuild strength, and try to touch his best friends’ older sister’s breasts while playing in the river. the omniscient narrator reframes otherwise commonplace events in terms of their future effects—noting, for example, how sy’s “somewhat improved... awkward dog paddle... would, in three years, save his life” (32). by juxtaposing sy’s “sex-and guilt-ridden” behavior at age fifteen with his ability to “escape drowning with half of his squad” a few years in the future, salisbury underscores the incredible youth of soldiers whose preand post-war lives will be defined by their military experiences (33, 34). the connections between past and future are driven home in another story from part one, “white snakes and red, and stars, fallen.” in focusing on nine-year old seek and his fifteen-year old brother, the story offers another unexpected glimpse into the future: “[h]is brother killed in the korean war a few years later, seek would remember... the exchange as close as he and his brother would ever come to saying, ‘i love you’” (9). because salisbury establishes the future importance of an ostensibly minor event as it happens, we are further reminded of the connections across time that may only become visible at a later date. at the end of this story, too, the narrator highlights the intergenerational relationships built by imperial warfare: “seek would watch as the flag from his brother’s coffin was folded as small as a blanket wrapped around a new-born baby and placed in their combat-veteran father’s trembling hands” (14). we see the father lose his son in a mirroring and reversal of cousin kenny’s relationship to his dead father. following the description of the son’s funeral, the story zooms out to make a miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 54 larger claim and, once again, to remind readers of the patterns that unite all humans: “seek became, like millions of others, a soldier, a killer. then... he watched over children, his own and those in an indian school... nine months of school leading to graduation—nine months of pregnancy leading to birth—life—death” (14). through the stories in this section, salisbury ultimately creates the impression that time is both cyclical and inescapable. while this may not be a particularly comforting thought, it once again serves to offer community among the otherwise isolated characters in each story. emphasizing patterns that resonate across time also allows salisbury to make larger connections between modern wars and the history of american colonialism. although their experiences of war may build connections between men who feel estranged from their families, their communities, and themselves, salisbury nonetheless condemns the imperialist system that is responsible for fragmenting those identities and communities in the first place. the book does not dwell on explicit connections, instead trusting readers to weave together the threads of distinct stories. when dirk dark cloud feels frustrated by his inability to earn enough money to feed his family, salisbury refers to him as “an indian adam” who “accuse[s] his stolen rib’s christian people of stealing land, after murdering indians” (126). the “stolen rib” here refers to dirk’s german-american wife, implicating the larger history of colonialism in this individual relationship. in another brief critique of the u.s., salisbury notes that “sy had missed his history class’s trip to see the heads of indian-plundering heads of state, carved into jim, joe, and jeanine’s sioux ancestors’ sacred mountain, whose new name mandated the conquerors’ mode of life, rush more” (33). the sentence is almost a throwaway, unnecessary in terms of the story’s plot. thematically, however, it is an important reminder once again of the resonance of the united states’ imperialist policies in the present. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 55 those critiques, and especially the paradoxical position of cherokee soldiers serving in the u.s. military, become sharper and more explicit in “a way home.” here, the narrator explains that whipp, son of a cherokee mother and a white father, got his “indian name, whippoorwill,” from a neighbor woman who “told stories that had created a role model, a father figure, a hero, chief john ross, guwisguwi, a mixedblood who’d sacrificed his wealth and risked his life to do what he could for his cherokee people” (110). although salisbury does not go into any additional detail here, readers who are familiar with cherokee history will understand that ross “risked his life” to defy the american government—that is, the very government for whom whipp has now risked his own life. where ross made sacrifices on behalf of the cherokee people, whipp has sacrified his own health on behalf of the country responsible for the violent removal of his people from their homelands. notably, whipp did not make those sacrifices willingly, having spent a year protesting the vietnam war before being drafted—a fact that casts further doubt on the united states’ narrative of righteous patriotism and imperialism. perhaps the clearest critique of american imperialism appears in “some indian wars, some wounds,” an at least partially autobiographical story about a cherokee soldier assigned to guard duty at an airbase. salisbury’s obituary notes that, although he enlisted in the air force at age seventeen, “he never engaged in active duty,” going on to explain that “the only killing he did during his military service was the rabid skunk he shot, while on guard duty one night, at an airbase near mccook, nebraska” (“ralph salisbury, obituary”). this story, told by a first-person narrator rather than the third-person more common to this collection, tells a similar story of a guard who shoots a rabid skunk. in this version, however, the narrator also shoots a decorated sergeant in the thigh. the sergeant, heavily inebriated, refers to the narrator as a “redskin” and threatens him with a broken bottle, leading the narrator to shoot his superior officer in miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 56 self-defense (salisbury 117). the incident is officially declared an “accidental discharge,” which, according to the narrator, “added to my and to my warrior forebears’ long-ago humiliation, but i’d won some sort of cherokee victory in the only history that really matters, the one in one’s own head” (117). salisbury’s positioning of this incident as a “cherokee victory” allows him to reclaim a potentially humiliating story about being bullied and insulted—instead suggesting that, because the narrator (like salisbury) is able to leave the military without killing or serving on active duty, he has triumphed over american imperialism. ultimately, these conflicting notions of america as both noble and violent are at the heart of the indian who bombed berlin. the paradox is best summed up in the story of the dark cloud family. in “laugh before breakfast,” after dirk tells the story of how he spared the life of the high-ranking enemy officer who looked like his great uncle parm, salisbury suggests that, “[l]ike america itself, parm had two fathers—one loving, one not” (136). much later, when parm has been wounded in vietnam and is recovering in a hospital bed, he tells a visiting priest that, “’i was raised by two fathers, father—one sober and kind and good, one so crazy drunk he’d shoot around his children and scare hell out of them” (152). parm’s father, both white and cherokee and suffering from ptsd after serving in world war two, is undeniably both good and bad. as salisbury compares dirk to america itself, he acknowledges the united states’ dual nature: a combination of the heroics and patriotism that are supposed to come with protecting one’s country paired with the imperialist structures and racist individuals responsible for carrying out that work. salisbury’s native veterans see both positions; so do the families who are left to cope with the fallout. sher, the nez perce army translator, explains that he “had learned to hide his feelings... from racist soldiers fighting for the army of democracy” (53). here again we see that the damage done to transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 57 native peoples through official u.s. policies such as removal is repeated through the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. the patterns that salisbury establishes throughout the indian who bombed berlin build relationships not only between individual protagonists, but also between generations of veterans and their families, and among all american indians who have felt attacked and invisible in the mainstream united states. beyond the book’s relationships, then, salisbury’s stories also situate him within a larger community of native writers telling the stories of american indian warriors and veterans. that community includes authors like leslie marmon silko (laguna pueblo), whose novel ceremony follows a world war two veteran suffering from ptsd; anishinaabe writer and veteran jim northrup, whose poems and short stories often focus on vietnam veterans; and william sanders (cherokee), whose novel the ballad of billy badass and the rose of turkestan follows a veteran of the first iraq war. as in salisbury’s stories, each of these texts highlights the patterns of imperialism that war makes manifest. another cherokee writer, william sanders, also draws specific connections between the history of cherokee removal and the united states’ continued ethical violations. while salisbury’s whippoorwill willis looks to john ross as a role model, sanders’s protagonist billy badass takes the comparison a step further when describing his experience of working with kurdish rebels during his time in the u.s. army (salisbury 110). billy explains that the american soldiers worked with those rebels until they were no longer useful, and then “left them to starve or be massacred” (sanders 43). watching their struggle, it occurs to billy that “this is what the trail of tears must have looked like. another bunch of people, like us, who made the mistake of counting on the honor of the american government... because we made the same mistake, you know. the cherokees helped andrew jackson fight the creeks, figured that would get us better miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 58 treatment, and the son of a bitch double-crossed us the same way.” (sanders 44) though sanders’s comparison is more direct than salisury’s, both writers draw connections between the history of cherokee removal and modern american wars in order to identify the patterns and effects of american imperialism, casting doubt on the righteousness of the american cause. jim northrup’s poem “ogichidag”—the ojibwe word for “warriors”—offers a more succinct critique of militarization: in just twenty-one lines, the speaker describes old men’s stories of world war one, his uncles’ return from world war two, his cousins’ time in korea, and his own experiences in vietnam (164). the poem ends by looking to the future: “my son is now a warrior/will i listen to his war stories/or cry into his open grave?” (northrup 164). his question is reminiscent of the stories dirk dark cloud tells his young sons. after describing his father’s service in world war one and his own service in world war two, for instance, dirk adds, “and just in time for you, parm, and you, juke, [the government will] get us into another ruckus, as sure as god made little green apples” (salisbury 124). through such specific and personal examples, salisbury and northrup critique the never-ending wars that have shaped their families’ lives. though both writers identify the same problem, their stories imagine quite different outcomes: northrup’s characters often begin to heal when they return to and find support in their own communities, while salisbury’s veterans are more likely to remain isolated and “war-damaged” (145). in “veteran’s dance,” for instance, northrup tells the story of lug, an anishinaabe veteran who, “ever since the war... [had] felt disconnected from the things that made people happy” (22). the story begins as lug returns home to attend a powwow where he reunites with his sister, judy. with her help, lug visits a spiritual leader in the community and checks into an in-patient transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 59 program to treat his post traumatic stress disorder. although judy is his primary source of support, much of that support comes from her ability to locate and access resources within the larger community: she calls the vet center and talks to a counselor who recommends the in-patient program; she visits the spiritual leader on her brother’s behalf; and, at the end of the story, she takes lug to a powwow where he can connect with other native vets. although the treatment program helps him, lug “was anxious to rejoin his community. he wanted to go home” (northrup 32). at the powwow, then, he jokes with a cousin who is also a vet before dancing the veteran’s honor song (34). lug’s ability to heal is clearly connected to his ability to integrate back into his anishinaabe community, and, although his sister initiates the process, they both draw on a variety of resources along the way. this story stands in stark contrast to the indian who bombed berlin, where veterans frequently struggle because they have access to so few resources beyond their families. for the stories set during and after world war two, at least, that difference may be based on the limited medical understanding of post traumatic stress disorder at the time, as opposed to the more complex definitions of ptsd that developed in the aftermath of the vietnam war. in fact, we know that lug’s story takes place in the 1980s or later because he tells judy about visiting the vietnam veterans’ memorial in washington, d.c., which was not completed until 1982 (vietnam veterans memorial fund). by this point, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm) was in its third edition (dsm-iii), which included an entry for post traumatic stress disorder that had been missing from dsm-ii, published in 1968 (andreasen 69, 68). on the other hand, dirk dark cloud returned from world war two in the 1940s, before the first edition of the dsm had even been published. the dsm-i, published in 1952, did include a diagnosis for “gross stress reaction,” which “was defined as a stress syndrome that is a response to an exceptional physical or mental miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 60 stress, such as a natural catastrophe or battle” (andreasen 68). notably, this definition requires that the condition “must subside in days to weeks,” a requirement that would have excluded the experiences of many veterans (andreasen 68). despite the existence of this category in dsm-i, its removal from dsm-ii in 1968 indicates the lack of attention paid to veterans’ experiences—and, presumably, the lack of resources available to treat a disorder that could not be formally diagnosed between 1968 and 1980. beyond medical and popular understandings of ptsd, however, there is a second important distinction between dirk’s experience and lug’s: lug has a community to which he can return, while dirk seems to be entirely isolated. before the war, dirk makes a living as a traveling musician. when he meets his wife afterwards, he simply stays with her in south dakota. although he tells stories of his childhood in appalachia and names one of his sons after his great uncle parmenter, he does not seem to have a relationship with any living relatives (salisbury 132). this disconnection can be blamed, at least partially, on the long history of cherokee removal, which salisbury hints at when he describes dirk’s “outgunned cherokee forebears,” who “fled to wooded hills and into that flimsy sanctuary, memory” (123). in the first introduction to the dark cloud family, salisbury sums up the history of indian genocide that defines the united states: whole tribes had disappeared into the smoke of cannons, the only memory left of them descendants of enemies’ memories. indian hunting grounds had been cut into halfor quarter-mile-wide farms, the sacred earth drawn and quartered, as were bodies of pigs that juke would help butcher—as were human bodies in history books. the indian heritage of juke’s father, dirk dark cloud, had been drawn—that of his children, parm, ann, and juke, quartered. (121-22) transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 61 salisbury is clear that individual native people continue to exist, but his stories highlight the ways that american indian policy has left tribal nations fragmented and tribal lands drastically reduced. although the cherokee removal took place more than a hundred years earlier, its effects continue to shape cherokee lives in the twentieth century. we never learn the full story of dirk’s childhood, but the fact that he grew up in kentucky rather than north carolina or oklahoma, coupled with his lack of family connections, suggests that dirk, unlike lug, has never been part of a larger native community. the history of euro-americans stealing cherokee land, which was already well underway in the nineteenth century, must also be considered in the context of termination, which became official federal policy in the wake of world war two. as bernstein explains, “[t]he rapid integration of indian citizens into white america became the goal of federal policy” in the 1940s, paving the way for house concurrent resolution 108, passed in 1953, which “redirect[ed] the federal effort away from tribal development and towards tribal assimilation” (159). ironically, native peoples’ exemplary service in world war two was used as a justification for termination in the 1950s. according to bernstein, given white america’s perception that individual indians had proven that they were capable of exercising their citizenship responsibilities during the war, it seemed only fair that federal guardianship over the tribes and their lands be eliminated when the emergency passed. (159-60) although dirk’s cherokee land and community had been disrupted long before termination, the policy might nonetheless have affected him as the new owner of land in south dakota that had belonged to his wife’s first husband, a lakota soldier who died in the war. more broadly, termination sent a clear message to all american miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 62 indians about the value of their military service and the u.s. government’s continued disregard for treaty responsibilities and the sovereignty of native nations. within this context, we might better understand why salisbury’s veterans are so often isolated and why their stories so frequently have unhappy endings. northrup’s veterans benefit from the advances made by the american indian movement and other native activists during the 1960s and 70s, which led to the reclamation and preservation of land, as well as a cultural revival that may have made way for the presence of a spiritual leader in lug’s community, in addition to the mental health resources available to veterans, both native and non. although salisbury’s stories are rarely as hopeful as northrup’s “veteran’s dance,” there is some sense that younger generations, the veterans of vietnam rather than world war two, might have more success: in the last story about the dark cloud family, we follow dirk’s youngest son, juke. as his father predicted, the american government has started another war—this one in vietnam—in time for his son to become a veteran, too. after returning to the u.s., he seems to be trapped by his ptsd and survivor’s guilt, unable to leave his dead-end job as a hospital janitor and equally unable to make a serious commitment to his girlfriend, who is eager to leave town and “make a decent living someplace else— maybe have kids of our own” (salisbury 187). by the end of the story, however, juke has professed his love to his girlfriend and quit his job, as the “veterans counselor” recommended he do (190). these small victories suggest that there is still hope for juke: the existence of a veterans counselor indicates that he is receiving professional support—more like northrup’s lug than salisbury’s other protagonists—and his decision to commit to his girlfriend hints at a source of emotional support. it is that much more encouraging that his girlfriend, alita, is also native, and that she imagines starting a family with juke, so that the “vanishing americans,” to use salisbury’s tongue-in-cheek term, might resist vanishing for another generation. the story ends transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 63 with juke saying to alita, “’leave here? i will. i really will’” (salisbury 190). while this is not as explicitly triumphant as lug’s decision to dance a veteran’s honor song with his sister, it does imply that juke still has the potential to break the intergenerational cycle of trauma and thus begin to envision a future for himself. beyond juke’s relationship with alita, salisbury also points to the importance of building community among indigenous peoples as a way of healing. those relationships are casually scattered throughout salisbury’s work: in “the new world invades the old,” sher sheridan has a brief encounter with a russian woman who declares “that czarist russia had oppressed her own people, from a siberian population,” which leads her to profess “hatred for what america had done to indians;” in “two wars, two loves, two shores,” the merchant-marine seaman ayun encounters a sami woman who explains that “’[w]e are reindeer herders, overwhelmed by europeans centuries ago, just as your indian people were. now, ours is a nation within other nations. i work for the russians, but i haven’t forgotten that they burned our ceremonial drums and burned our priests” (56, 63). similarly, sanders’s billy badass enters into a relationship with janna, a kazakh woman whose description of her people’s experiences of forcible resettlement sounds much like the cherokees’ experience of removal (46). in each case, individual relationships serve as a reminder that indigenous peoples exist around the globe and that they are united in their experiences of colonialism—and, most importantly, in their survival of genocide. as the unnamed sami woman tells ayun, “we sami survived, and we will outlast the nazis, too” (salisbury 63). silko’s ceremony similarly highlights patterns of imperialism and the importance of building community in order to resist and reverse those patterns. just as sher sees his father in “the torture of an elderly filipino tribesman,” silko’s protagonist, tayo, sees his uncle josiah’s death in the execution of the japanese soldiers he is ordered to miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 64 shoot (salisbury 53, silko 7). many of salibsury’s stories also echo silko’s depiction of ptsd, which includes veterans dealing with alcohol addiction, getting into fights, and reminiscing about their popularity with white women, a phenomenon that robert dale parker describes in his discussion of “restless young men” in native american literature. according to parker, these young men live amid the often misogynist cultural mythology that contact with euroamericans (even long after such contact is routine) has deprived indian men of their traditional roles... moreover, their world has not managed to construct an indian, unassimilating way to adapt masculine roles to the dominant, businesssaturated culture’s expectation of 9-5 breadwinning. (3) because parker traces this phenomenon through earlier texts, like john joseph mathews’s sundown and d’arcy mcnickle’s the surrounded, before turning to a discussion of ceremony, his “restless young men” are not necessarily veterans, which suggests a larger phenomenon at work. even in ceremony, where the protagonist is a veteran, his experiences of isolation and disconnection from his family and community predate his service in world war two. many of salisbury’s protagonists might also be described as “restless young men,” but, for these men, their behavior is explicitly connected to their military service. the children and teenagers who are the protagonists of the early stories do not suffer from the same symptoms, and salisbury seems particularly interested in the contrast. we see this most starkly in the story of fifteen-year old sy, whose single-minded goal is to impress the young women around him. while telling the story of sy’s hijinks, salisbury interjects stark reminders of sy’s future as a soldier: sy was “unable to foresee his being awarded a purple heart medal,” and he had “[n]o way to know that in breaking his ankle bones and thus learning to swim, he’d escape drowning with half of his squad” (34). through these glimpses into the future, which have the effect of transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 65 presenting sy’s present experiences and concerns as frivolous, salisbury seems to suggest that his combat experience will be at the root of sy’s future unhappiness. beyond dealing with the physical injuries and trauma borne of combat, however, bernstein emphasizes that american indian veterans’ “sudden and unprecedented exposure to the white world contributed to a new consciousness of what it meant to be an american indian, and a sharpened awareness of the gap between the standard of living on most reservations and in the rest of american society” (171). in this case, perhaps salisbury’s protagonists, unlike silko’s, are unaffected by this phenomenon before the war precisely because so many of them are already disconnected from native communities. although they encounter constant racism, these young men have grown up assimilated into mainstream american culture in ways that tayo does not experience until he enlists. while this experience may lead to greater dissatisfaction after the war, having grown up in a native community also enables tayo, like lug, to return to that community for support. some members of his community, like emo and auntie, continue to inflict damage on tayo, but the resources he needs to heal can also be found at home. echoing justice’s claims about the importance of community, salisbury’s stories point to the importance of building connections. as justice argues, “even those who are to varying degrees detribalized assert a relationship through perceived absence, and retribalization depends upon reestablishing those bonds of kinship” (our fire survives the storm, 23). for silko, “kinship” refers not only to other people, but also to the world at large. tayo must see the similarities between josiah and the japanese soldiers; he must understand how human behavior can affect a drought; and he must learn to see how witchery has shaped the world. for salisbury’s protagonists, on the other hand, the goal is often simply to establish kinship with another person. the stories that come closest to happy endings conclude with the miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 66 beginnings of new relationships: in addition to juke and alita, we see whipp profess his love for ann, a young woman he met on the plane home from japan, in “a way home;” in “losers and winners: an ongoing indian war,” american indian veteran raymond asks his cherokee classmate irene on a date; in “some vanishing american military histories,” juke dark cloud, now a wounded veteran like his father, admits that “yes, dad, you had some right to your own craziness, and i forgive you for getting drunk and shooting around my little feet a few times, and past my head” (salisbury 170). although juke’s relationship with his father remains complicated—more so because dirk is already dead by the time juke is able to forgive him—their shared experiences also allow for a kind of relationship that was impossible earlier in juke’s life. in each of these texts, it becomes imperative that we recognize the impact humans have on one another and on the world at large. the narrator of salisbury’s titular story concludes that “i can’t restore men’s, women’s, and children’s lives, but i can try to make my own life, and those of others, somewhat better—can still try to change injustice to justice, still try to keep our species’ suicidal tantrums from rendering us all extinct” (206). in his own obituary, published eight years later, salisbury is quoted as saying, “[m]y work is offered to the spirit of human goodness, which unites all people in the eternal struggle against evil, a struggle to prevail against global extinction.” by acknowledging humans’ responsibility to one another and the necessity of building community, both within and beyond the stories themselves, salisbury’s fiction offers a way to participate in the healing process—a roadmap offering myriad paths toward “the healing of this grief” and a way to maintain “the relational system that keeps the people in balance with one another, with other people and realities, and with the world (weaver 38; justice, our fire survives the storm, 24). transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 67 notes 1 work by ralph salisbury used by permission of the literary estate of ralph salisbury. copyright © 2020 by the literary estate of ralph salisbury. all rights reserved. no reproduction without permission of the estate. works cited andreasen, nancy c. “posttraumatic stress disorder: a history and a critique.” annals of the new york academy of sciences, vol. 1208, no. 1, 2010, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05699.x. accessed february 25, 2020. bernstein, alison. american indians and world war ii: toward a new era in indian affairs. university of oklahoma press, 1991. howe, leanne. shell shaker. aunt lute books, 2001. justice, daniel heath. our fire survives the storm. university of minnesota press, 2006. ---. why indigenous literatures matter. wilfrid laurier university press, 2018. krupat, arnold. “native writer profile: ralph salisbury.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 21, no. 1, 2009, https://muse-jhuedu.proxy.kennesaw.edu/article/265771. accessed december 10, 2019. northrup, jim. walking the rez road. voyageur press, 1993. parker, robert dale. the invention of native american literature. cornell university press, 2003. “ralph salisbury, obituary.” university of oregon, 30 oct. 2017, https://crwr.uoregon.edu/2017/10/30/obit-salisbury/. accessed december 13, 2019. salisbury, ralph. the indian who bombed berlin and other stories. michigan state university press, 2009. miriam brown spiers “communities of grief” 68 sanders, william. the ballad of billy badass and the rose of turkestan. wildside press, 1999. silko, leslie marmon. ceremony. penguin books, 2006. the vietnam veterans memorial fund. “history of the vietnam veterans memorial.” the vietnam veterans memorial fund, https://www.vvmf.org/about-thewall/history-of-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial/. accessed february 25, 2020. weaver, jace. other words: american indian literature, law, and culture. university of oklahoma press, 2001. microsoft word 931-article text-5707-1-18-20210811-1.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 197 war and violence: reading david treuer’s prudence as native north american war fiction cassandra krauss superficially, david treuer’s 2016 novel prudence seems typical of the canonic euroamerican war novel; detailing both combat in europe and the complexities of personal relationships in minnesota during the 1940s and ‘50s, treuer tells of the battleand home-fronts, emphasizing the shifting boundaries of violence. he insists that: people think of minnesota as a quiet place full of nice people and […] of world war 2 as a noble effort that happened far away. [prudence turns] that all around: minnesota is not as quiet […] and world war 2 [did not] happen far away, it happened right here. (mumford) like virginia woolf’s mrs. dalloway, or ian mcewan’s atonement, both genredefining war novels, prudence collapses the distinctions between past and present, between here and over there.1 this collapse allows for a profound exploration of violence, demonstrating its pervasive reach. contrary to the portrayal of wars (and other violence) as deviations from the norm, prudence showcases a continuous u.s. american aggression, refusing the narrative of the united states as inherently pacific, extolling the ideals of liberty and equality. treuer develops this interrogation further, centering the role that native bodies play in these games of violence. prudence questions the established structures that enable and necessitate war, thereby investigating and challenging the legitimacy of the u.s. american nation state. prudence hinges on the events of an afternoon in 1942, exploring their immediate and long-term effects. treuer tells the stories of billy and frankie, reunited for “one last glorious august, one last innocent holiday before frankie cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 198 [joins] the world and the war” (prudence 9). while frankie, white, middleclass, has just graduated from yale university, billy, who is ojibwe, has been “peeling spruce for five cents a stick” and “gutting and filleting fish” for the past years (41). despite their different life situations and recurring geographic separation, billy and frankie have spent their teenage summers falling in love with each other, developing an emotional and physical relationship that has stretched into early adulthood. however, while billy seems secure in both his love for frankie and his own queerness, frankie tries to hide his same-sex desires, locked in the expectations of mid-twentieth century white masculinity. on the afternoon of frankie’s arrival in minnesota, his friends inform him that a pair of german prisoners of war has escaped from a nearby prison camp, and frankie suggests a search party to capture the escapees. overzealous and intent on proving his manhood, frankie mistakes grace, a young ojibwe girl hiding from the authorities, for the pows and fatally shoots her. grace dies in her sister’s arms, the titular prudence, leaving her traumatized. billy, realizing frankie’s impotence in the face of responsibility, claims grace’s murder. frankie deploys soon afterwards, having resolved neither his relationship with billy nor admitted the truth to prudence, taking up a post as bombardier in europe. as historical fiction, prudence suggests a traditionally rendered war novel. fundamental to the euroamerican imagination and its literature, violence and war have found their way into fiction since the epic poetry of homer’s iliad (written between 1260 and 1180 bc), continuing through the elizabethan dramas of william shakespeare and the realist novels of leo tolstoy and stendhal, to the anti-war narratives of the twentieth century; its objective, as mcloughlin argues, to give meaning to chaos and manage the violence: “writing about war somehow controls it, imposing at least verbal order on the chaos, [making] it seem more comprehensible and therefore safer” (13). however, the implicit aestheticization transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 199 through language, as well as the historization of events necessarily leads to a representation that allows (and even encourages) romanticization of war, while establishing violence as essential to the cultural and societal fabric of europe and, particularly, that of northern america. based on documented events (the presence of german prisoners of war in minnesota, the sequence and geography of world war 2, the details of training and aerial combat) and historical figures (the teenage, ojibwe prudence bolton), treuer seems to follow this desire to control the past. a self-proclaimed world war 2 expert, he states that he undertook diligent research, reading histories, perusing soldiers’ autobiographies, and “imagining himself into [frankie’s] plane” to capture the true feeling of experiencing war (grossmann). and yet, while prudence allows the “re-experience [of] the social and human motives which led men to think, feel, and act just as they did in historical reality”, typical of the historical novel, treuer surpasses this objective, bending history and exposing its biased narratives (lukács 44). the novel’s catalyst is prudence herself. “based on a historical person thrust into a rural minnesota community”, treuer envisions his main character as the incarnation of prudence bolton, a young native woman, immortalized as the first woman that ernest hemingway claims to have had sex with (grossmann).2 bolton is further recorded as having committed suicide with her partner at age 19. this is, as treuer emphasizes, all that is known about her. while there are “thousands and thousands of pages devoted to the life of hemingway […] all we know about this native woman is two sentences”; information that reduces her to her gender and death, robbing her of an extended existence in the world (grossmann). bolton’s historical near-invisibility highlights how history treats native north americans (and native women in particular), “never really [allowing them their own] complicated, flawed, and tumultuous human experience”, leaving them as anecdotes to white lives instead (grossmann).3 treuer declares further that bolton “stayed with [him] cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 200 because [her treatment] betrayed a kind of systemic unfairness”, and that he thus envisioned his novel as her story, allowing her “an attempt at self-possession and recovery” (davies). in an effort to amend history, treuer thus tries to give her story space, her chapter the only chapter told in first person. it should however be noted that treuer here follows both in the complicated footsteps of male authors appropriating female voices and of authors more generally trying to excavate narratives that have been violently suppressed. despite the already monumental task of locating native histories and voices in a master narrative that denies, curtails and limits their existence, treuer here insists that he can reclaim prudence’s story, a woman who has been utterly lost to and by history. there is a certain “impossibility of recovery” when engaging with records “whose very assembly and organization occlude certain historical subjects”; prudence is a footnote to hemingway because the grand narrative necessitates both his sustained existence and her absence: the historical narrative is dependent on this duality (helton et al 1). saidiya hartman argues similarly, stating that recovery of lost histories is indeed impossible as the dead cannot speak (12). in her essay “venus in two acts” (2008), she discusses the barely remarked upon death of two girls at the hands of a slave trader. hartman states that “the loss of [such] stories sharpens the hunger for them. so it is tempting to fill in the gaps and provide closure where there is none” (8). like prudence’s story that lacks all details about her life, the two girls seem to demand more information, more history. and yet, hartman cautions against this, the potential new story also violent in obscuring the structures of power that have silenced it. these stories thus become complicit—to an extent—in further disguising how history manufactures reality. hartman asks instead to “[strain] against the limits of the archive” and step back from trying to “[recover] the lives” or “[redeem] the dead”, thus moving to “paint as full a picture of the lives of the enslaved as transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 201 possible” (11). while this is undoubtably treuer’s objective, it bears remembering that “rescuing” prudence from obscurity and affording her “self-possession” is complex, particularly via a male voice. prudence begins her teenage years as a victim of repeated rape, this immediately manifesting the dispensability of female native bodies in us american settler society and mirroring the experiences of native women from the beginning of colonization into the twenty-fist century. treuer however does not give in to victimry completely, so avoiding a dangerous stereotype. instead, he places the violence against prudence into a larger context of u.s. aggressions. prudence almost nonchalantly explains that her rapist “was one of them who had been away to the great war”, linking warfare with rape and destructive masculinity (prudence 237). this further connects the historical and contemporary mistreatment of native women with the violence of world war 1. prudence’s rapist, a veteran, is presented as a violent man who exerts power over the vulnerable, crucially unsettling the idea of heroism linked to war, instead revealing a system of sustained violence that connects the homeand the battle-front. violent men, and their brutality against native women, were central to westward expansion across the united states; the eventual removal of native peoples and the establishment of secure white settlements almost conditional on the amount of violence tolled out by the settler-colonizers: more violence ensures more territory, faster. treuer stresses this connection. prudence remains casually linked with sex (both consensual and non) throughout the novel, before having sex with billy after his return from fighting in world war 2. while their encounter is not physically violent, it is emotionally fraught, billy’s motivations layered in a yearning for frankie. the section culminates in billy’s brutal declaration that frankie never loved prudence, and that his care of her following grace’s murder was entirely motivated by guilt—guilt at having been the shooter and the inability to shoulder the blame (prudence 213). sex, while cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 202 consensual, is again coupled with war-colored masculinity, billy’s unnecessary revelation nourished by his trauma-induced drinking, as well as his need to claim frankie for himself. although prudence and her sister manage to escape their abusive childhoods (and later boarding school), prudence is permanently traumatized by her sister’s murder. grace’s death, also arguably an indirect consequence of war (and confused masculinity), is never fully resolved. neither frankie nor billy are directly punished for the murder; the implication here being that the lives of native women are aggressively dismissed and consistently exposed to a white violence inherent in the colonization of the americas.4 as sarah hunt argues colonialism relies on the widespread dehumanization of all indigenous people—[…] children, two-spirits, men and women—so colonial violence could be understood to impact all of us at the level of our denied humanity. yet this dehumanization is felt most acutely in the bodies of indigenous girls, women, two-spirit and transgender people, as physical and sexual violence against [these groups] continues to be accepted as normal. (qtd. in reclaiming power and place 230) prudence seems to function here as representative for contemporary native concerns, spotlighting the continued effects of colonialism in northern america. while this is surely relevant, it again raises the specter of treuer’s appropriation of prudence’s story. utilizing her to depict the struggles of an entire group of people arguably robs her of a personal fate, devaluing her yet again—apparently the opposite of treuer’s goal. alongside prudence, treuer uses the imprisonment of german soldiers in minnesota camps as impetus for the novel’s unravelling. as detailed by tracy mumford, world war 2 created a demand for soldiers, and subsequently, a lack of able-bodied men on the home-front, and thus a labor transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 203 shortage; in minnesota (and other states) this shortage was met by the importation of german pows: they harvested beets outside of hollandale, minn. and worked the lumber camps of itasca and cass counties. more than 15 camps were established in minnesota, housing some of the 400,000 pows brought to the united states. (mumford) while introducing “the enemy” into middle america fueled wide-spread anxiety over escaping and marauding prisoners, only very few managed to actually flee the camps. as gunnar norgaard, the assistant executive officer at algona (iowa) argued, “the american guards discouraged any notions the germans may have had about escaping, with stories about a surrounding wilderness inhabited by timber wolves, bears, and dangerous indians” (qtd. in lobdell).5 however, on october 28, 1944, two german prisoners managed to escape. trying to return to germany via the mississippi and new orleans, they surrendered three days into their escape. treuer coopts this incident and, dismissing notions of historical accuracy, molds it to his own narrative: in prudence, the prisoners escape two years prior in 1942 (before the widespread establishment of german prison camps in the united states), deliberately challenging the established historical timeline. treuer seems to be doing two things here; while gesturing towards historical authenticity—the escaped prisoners—and thus manifesting the legitimacy of his narrative, he also consciously upsets it—by setting the escape in the wrong year and state—thus “[demonstrating] the gap between written text and truth” (de groot 11). superficially this again seems characteristic of historical fiction, historical fact expelled by playful narrative manipulation; here however it also exposes a native north american tendency to disregard the established progression of time. where euroamerican epistemologies view time as linear, developing from a to b to cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 204 c, native time is variously understood as “a rubber band, stretchable, or as little loops”, as time running parallel, neither past nor future but “always [as] all the times, [differing] slightly” (qtd. in dillon 26). and precisely because the prisoners’ escape sets the story in motion, explicitly challenging the set course of history, it suggests a skepticism of time as fixed, preferring a native concept of mutable time. the incident of the escaped prisoners is a means of illustrating that essentially it does not matter when (or if) the prisoners escape, as the events that lead up to their escape as well as those that follow will happen regardless: frankie will die, the relationship between billy and frankie will crumble, and prudence will commit suicide. while such a coupling of inevitability and timelessness also prevails in english modernism, (notably in works by virginia woolf and james joyce), it here stipulates an even more comprehensive critique of violence and war. read as such, prudence implies that the strict ordering of time that underlies history suggests a portrayal of violence as contained, as a bounded segment on the progressing thread of history; war and violence thus come to be seen as deviations from the norm, as lapses and not as the continuous force that they actually are. this recalls the bracketing of violence such as slavery, the vietnam war or the institution of residential schools, instances presented as aberrations that do not represent the “real” american or canadian national character. north american history, told from a settler-colonizer point of view, absolves itself from violence, instances of the same reduced to exceptions, reactions necessary to protect and promote freedom and democracy. by insisting on the irrelevance of linear time and historical accuracy, treuer proposes that violence spreads into every corner of northern american existence, just as the german pows insist on encroaching on rural minnesota. even though the prisoners never directly interact with any of the transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 205 main characters, their mere presence shatters the illusion of separation from war and violence, manifesting war in the heartland of the united states. this manifestation is further cemented through the character of emma, frankie’s mother, who is confronted daily with the reality of war, wondering “why they [had] to put the camp right there, where you could see it out of the front windows?” (prudence 4). emma’s observation immediately adds yet another layer: the home, conceptualized as the sphere of women, comes into direct (visual) contact with the realities of war, destabilizing both the idea of safety in the home, and the distance of women from war more generally.6 the proximity of the pows unsettles the idea of the civilian (here in the form of emma) and forces her, as proxy for american women and children, directly into the periphery of war. such a portrayal of the home-front is again reminiscent of modernist writings of war. with the advent of global warfare in the early twentieth century, war was no longer physically removed from the home. in the united kingdom this first became apparent during world war 1; accustomed to wars in the colonies, the fighting in france was suddenly very close. paul fussell even argues that “what [made] experience in the great war unique and [gave] it a special freight of irony [was] the ridiculous proximity of the trenches to home”; those living in kent could hear the shells and bombs exploding across the channel (69).7 in her novels mrs. dalloway (1925) and to the lighthouse (1927), virginia woolf focusses on the war’s closeness and interruption by manifesting violence in the every-day of 1920s london, stressing both the continued presence of the war and its ability to spill over supposedly fixed spatial and temporal boundaries. a contemporary of woolf’s, sigmund freud stresses that world war 1 was the first (western) war to ignore “the distinction between civil and military sections of the population”—which is precisely what emma experiences in minnesota (279). cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 206 while she is far removed from the battle-front, the war teases her from her front porch and from inside her home, exacerbating the fact that frankie is also about to actively join the war. the war is thus very much present in the every-day and not removed across the ocean. it does bear mentioning that the line drawn between civilians and combatants has always been fluid; particularly in northern america, where the colonizing governments made use of settlers to further their military agendas (notably in westward expansion and the removal of native nations). contrary to the idea of safe civilians, native women and children have always been under threat by the united states and canadian governments and settlers always part of violent colonization, both thus directly exposed to violence. moreover, emma, as a white, property-owning employer, suggests the substantial role that white women played in the process of colonization, reminding the reader that even if emma sees herself (and has been taught to do so) as removed from violence, she has always been at the center of it. arguably, protecting the home from outside threat can be realized as a prime motivator for westward expansion as well as continued aggression by settler-colonizers against natives—the very invention of the savage and untamed land beyond the home of the settler-colonizer implies the necessity of (violent) protection, placing the home, and with it the woman, at the epicenter of violence. emma thus comes to personify white settlers encroaching on native land, her very existence underlining the absurdity of a safe home within northern america. white violence against native north americans is always already implied in the americas, completely invalidating the idea of separate zones of safety and danger. ultimately, the insertion of settler-colonizers creates a geography of violence; the united states cannot transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 207 offer a safe home to anyone. treuer returns briefly to the idea of europe spilling across the atlantic at the novel’s conclusion, introducing a jewish man into rural minnesota and further blurring the perceived differences between “here” and “over there”. cast as a survivor of the holocaust, he intrudes on the lives of mary, a native woman and local bar co-owner, and her husband gephardt, a german. again, the sanctity of the home is upset, this time more literally than it is for emma; the jewish man importing violence from europe into the heartland, shooting at both mary and gephardt, actively reminding them of the horrors of world war 2. the violence of his appearance also adds a succinct parallel between the shoah and native genocide in north america.8 the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the third reich during the 1930s and 40s is a reiteration of the same “racial hierarchy built around [the] shared project of territorial expansion” of colonialism: the same ideas of racism, exploitation and geographical expansion (manifest destiny as an american version of the nazi ideology of lebensraum) that fed the very idea of colonialism are at work in continuing native extermination and the jewish holocaust of the twentieth century (mishra). while there is an obvious continuity in the oppression of others here, treuer also upsets this parallel of suffering by implicating a jewish man in making a native woman unsafe. whether this indicates that experiencing trauma does not entail immunity from perpetrating abuse (also mirrored in frankie, a gay man, killing grace, a native girl), or the more general observation that violence will find a way to persist, prudence vehemently insists on the repetitive brutality of violence. the jewish man’s appearance also gestures towards the existence of concentration camps in europe, which in turn, hints at reservations, pow camps, and the japanese american internment camps of world war 2 which saw citizens removed from their homes, dispossessed and incarcerated in cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 208 camps in the midwest. treuer’s jewish man links these experiences, drawing the nazi concentration camps into the united states, while also casting a wider net that includes other colonial enterprises, such as the british camps for boers during the boer wars at the beginning of the twentieth century. as toland states: hitler’s concept of concentration camps, as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of english and united states history […] he admired the camps for boer prisoners in south africa and for the indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of america’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity. (202) this not only emphasizes the predominance of violence against others globally, it also calls into question the very character of the united states more generally, its presentation of freedom and democracy revealed as a possible hoax. the u.s. emerges as built on oppression, dispossession and brutality perpetrated by whites. it also undercuts the efforts of the americans in world war 2, the shock at german racism revealed as hypocritical. ultimately, treuer seems to say that violence does not have to be brought onto american soil in the twentieth century, as it already exists, lurking at the heart of united states identity. in conjunction with the pows, treuer also illustrates how war is brought literally into the home by returning us american soldiers. both felix, the ojibwe caretaker of frankie’s parents’ property, and billy return from europe marked by their respective war experiences, physically carrying their trauma from over-seas into minnesota, further unsettling the idea of bounded spheres and emphasizing the absurdity of the notion of non-violent transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 209 spaces. by allowing both of these returning soldiers to be native—frankie does not return—treuer again inverts the narrative, presenting home-coming not as triumph but as extended catastrophe, the treatment of native north american veterans—ostensible heroes—a continuation of settler-colonizer abuses. while mid-twentieth century native american literature (silko, momaday) detailed the traumatic effects of combat on native soldiers, recent novels and scholarship have moved to highlight native heroism, focusing on such figures as francis pegahmagabow, tommy price, and ira hayes, as well as immortalizing war experiences in novels and biographies such as joseph bruchac’s (abenaki) code talker (2005) or bradley james’s flags of our fathers (2001).9 as waubgeshig rice (ojibwe) formulates: [for] all my life, francis pegahmagabow has personified legend. […] pegahmagabow was, and continues to be, the most prominent figure from our community of wasauksing first nation. growing up in the 1980s, decades after he died, my cousins, friends, peers, and i heard story after story about his triumphs and troubles fighting for canada in the first world war. (mcinnes xi) while pegahmagabow, one of the most highly decorated world war 1 soldiers, is correctly remembered and celebrated as showing exceptional competence in the field, his ensuing efforts to ensure political freedom and independence for first nations peoples are ignored in official eurocanadian tellings. his political career came to an abrupt end in the 1930s when canadian policy changed; he even lost his position as chief. his life is reduced to his participation in world war 1, made to fit a narrative that furthers the mythology of integration and heroic war effort, central to how canada presents itself on a national and international stage. in prudence, treuer interrogates this idea of war heroism by returning cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 210 felix and billy (from world war 1 and world war 2 respectively) to minnesota. for both the war is a continuation of deprivation and loss, culminating in a staid normalcy, exposing a continuous, normalized violence against native north americans of which war is only a heightened form. introduced by emma as the quintessential “stoic indian”, felix slowly emerges as deeply affected by his involvement in world war 1. he demonstrates both the perpetuity and impossibility of containing violence spatially and temporally, again linking violence perpetuated against native peoples with the world wars of the twentieth century. felix goes to war because his options are limited, both in his community and in a wider u.s. american context, exemplifying the dearth of opportunities for native men at the beginning of the twentieth century and the interconnections between disenfranchisement and joining the military in the u.s. he first hears of the war at a drum dance, where an older man: [is speaking] about the war overseas. [the man] walked back and forth and spoke loudly about how he was going on the war path as their grandfathers had done. felix sat along the edge in the shadows with his wife. he listened and watched. he had no position on the drum. all doors were closed to him. so, after the dance he approached the singer and said he’d go with him. (prudence 34) this recalls research by rosier and holm that suggests that native men went to war “as their grandfathers had done”, thus following a warrior tradition, as well as underlining the dearth of other opportunities. treuer recounts almost none of felix’s combat experiences, stating only that he had “clubbed three men to death with his rifle, had shot nine and had stabbed five with his bayonet” instead returning him to the united states to find both his wife and child dead by influenza (prudence 158). the spanish flu of 1918 was a transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 211 deadly pandemic that spread quickly across war-ravaged europe and further to northern america and across the globe. researchers have identified étaples, a hospital and military base, as being as the center of the disease. while there are other theories that see the virus originating in kansas or china (and then brought to europe by american soldiers or chinese war laborers), it is linked inescapably both to war and europe, which allows for a comparison with european diseases brought to the americas during colonization. diseases such as smallpox, cholera and measles killed an estimated 90% of native north americans, effectively working as form of viral genocide. by introducing disease into the story, treuer connects the theater of european war with the spread of illness: both european warfare and european disease invade and destroy native lives and communities, thus identifying felix and his family as victims of euroamerican violence. it also returns to the ultimate unsafety of the home: felix cannot protect his family (even by potentially finding financial security or improving their social status through serving in the military) as the threat is already always inherent to existence in north america.10 bereft, felix returns to the drum dance, receiving “heaped blankets […] and pressed tobacco plugs” as acknowledgement for his service (prudence 159). this is further significant because felix only receives thanks from within his own community, reflecting holm’s findings that native soldiers went to war not to attain respect from whites but from their own community and underlining that as a native man it does not matter what he does, the settler-colonizer community will never honor him. while he now sits alongside the “old men who remembered 1862 and 1876 and 1891”, accepted into the ranks of nineteenth century soldiers, he is adrift, taking what is awarded to him without comment of joy (159). by explicitly including the years 1862, 1876, and 1891, treuer emphasizes the perpetual nature of cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 212 violence, particularly that of us american violence against native north americans. felix’s experience in world war 1 is cued as smoothly following nineteenth century wars, stressing the similarities between colonial violence and global warfare. as pankaj mishra argues, euroamerican history aims to explain “the world wars, together with fascism and communism, simply [as] monstrous aberrations in the universal advance of liberal democracy and freedom” rather than as more pronounced manifestations of a continual violence against others. the dates given correspond to wars between native tribes (primarily the lakota sioux), defending their lands and treaty rights, and the u.s. government, striving for more land and resources, motivated by greed and racism.11 the link drawn between the elders and felix’s modern experiences carries this first global war into the circle of violence perpetrated by the u.s., stressing both the constancy of war and alluding to the necessity of violence in maintaining the u.s. nation state. billy, like felix, manages to survive his war, returning to minnesota in 1945. with billy, treuer insists on presenting a native war veteran forgotten by society and left alone with ptsd, further upsetting the narrative of heroism rooted in war. before returning billy to minnesota, treuer falls into an almost canonic representation of warfare, detailing billy’s deployment as a member of the 2nd division. billy “had advanced, one in a division of ants, from normandy on d+1 across the aure and into trévières, up hill 192 and down into saint-lo and from there to brest” (prudence 195). this description coincides with the division’s documented movements. by describing billy’s progress through france in accordance with military records, prudence affords an authenticity to billy that places him, and other native soldiers, within history, as solidly located in a global violence. simultaneously, treuer transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 213 however also again destabilizes historical narrative. by telling billy’s story so close to the recorded facts, he is “consciously [deploying] fictional tropes to attain [a] quality” that is usually the property of historical documentation, thus demonstrating the narrativity of the same (de groot 111). prudence thus does both: unsettle the authenticity of historical fact and anchor native soldiers in the history of global warfare. on his return to minnesota, billy’s injuries make him unsuitable for manual labor, and he starts working as “a spotter in [a] fire tower” (prudence 185).12 billy physically carries the war into the united states through the damages wrought on his body, the body deemed necessary to protect the united states now incapable of returning to its former abilities, ultimately leaving him financially challenged and struggling to provide for his wife and two children. in addition, billy constantly “[feels] greasy and low and dragged out, as though at the end of another march through the bocage” (181). a mixed terrain of woodland and pasture, bocage is characteristic of the normandy landscape where billy spent most of his war. bocage played a significant role in world war 2, as it complicated progress against german troops; billy’s memory and comparison of trudging through bocage again manifests france in minnesota, confusing geographical boundaries that should suggest safety. billy reflects on his trauma, realizing that “being around […] uniforms, even being around […] other servicemen” puts him “out of sorts”; he thus avoids visiting veteran affairs (189). the war has also turned billy into an avid daydrinker, if not into an outright alcoholic; driving home from town he routinely stops “at a bar in royalton” as well as various veterans’ bars, drinking vodka while he drives (189; 199).13 while this reads as a familiar narrative of trauma—alcoholism, flashbacks, injury—treuer here casts it in a specifically native context, demonstrating the continuity of billy’s treatment by the cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 214 whites around him that does not change by his contribution to the “war effort”. while he is originally accepted as a playmate for frankie while they are growing up, both emma and jonathan (frankie’s father) remark on the fact that billy is socially and racially inferior to them and that frankie needs to realize this reality. billy is valued in his youth as a hard worker around town, as well as a helper to felix, but only within limits that do not extend beyond manual labor at a clear remove from the whites. treuer here seems to suggest that billy’s participation in world war 2 is simply another step in his “being worked” by the settler colonizer while he remains solidly marginalized when deemed not useful. thus, billy, even though he survives, functions as anathema to the returning hero, offering a counternarrative to the newly inscribed heroism of native soldiers who have, through their service, been elevated and established as successful and valuable parts of us american society—so long as they remain usable within the grand narrative. as holm states, “for a significant number of indian veterans the return to the united states was not what they had expected” (national survey 24). the opportunities claimed as rewards for military service almost never materialized, and most veterans “discovered that [service] had only lowered their status within the american mainstream” (24). this contextualization is powerful as it subverts the corollary of heroism and war that continues to dominate much of the literary and historical discourse on native participation in war and instead opens up a space to acknowledge that the very idea of “noble service” (regardless of who goes to war) serves primarily to reinforce national narratives and ensure the continued existence of the nation state.14 writing war through native bodies prompts a realization that north america is mired in violence. emphasizing the continuity of violence against transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 215 native others allows treuer to connect the beginnings of colonial oppression with westward expansion, to twentieth century global warfare and the treatment of native people today. it also allows for a broader view of the violence inherent in colonialism and white expansion throughout history and across the globe: the same ideologies of violence that govern the abuse of native people are at play in international wars and global genocides, the concept of racial superiority and the push for land that motivated colonial rule in the americas, asia and africa is at work in the jewish holocaust, the exploitation of raw materials in the congo during the nineteenth century, the annexation of poland in 1939, and the westward push ordained within manifest destiny. by repeatedly centering the connections and continuities of violence, prudence unsettles the master narrative of the united states as a democratic nation based on the ideas of freedom, equality and opportunity for all, revealing it instead as a perpetrator of racial injustices, oppression and sustained violence against those considered other. at the same time however, treuer also creates space for new ways of telling a north american past that while exposing these contradictions also affirms the continuous existence of native peoples. prudence, felix, billy and mary all demonstrate an ability to survive, and while they do not thrive, they very much exist within the present of treuer’s story, locating themselves as contemporaneous. with prudence, treuer creates a historical novel that moves native soldiers and lives into focus, while also revealing history as a narrative constructed to tell a particular story. treuer not only joins native history with us american history, he also inserts himself—and the stories of prudence, billy, frankie and felix—into the canon of war fiction: by imagining the life of prudence bolton, alluding to mcewan’s atonement, and pointing to hemingway, treuer situates himself and native stories at the center of a cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 216 global literary tradition. notes 1 treuer was directly inspired by atonement, “impressed by how ian mcewan picked apart time and place and wrote a character-driven novel about people caught up in events above themselves” (grossmann). 2 hemingway was quoted as saying that “the first woman [he] ever pleasured was a half-breed ojibwe woman named prudence bolton” (grossmann). 3 hemingway’s 1933 short story “fathers and sons” also tells of “trudy” (short for prudence), the narrator naming the native north american girl as the beginning of his sexual exploits. the story also features an indigenous character named billy who while not explicitly part of nick and trudy’s intimacies is privy to them. clearly autobiographical, the short story also relates to violence and war, the father (nick adams) driving his son through his hometown after a hunting excursion; nick adams is loosely based on hemingway’s own life and a number of short stories follow his life from boy to young man, detailing his work as an ambulance driver during world war 1, as well as his return to the united states after the war. treuer also includes a character named ernie who almost catches billy and frankie midkiss, his name surely a nod to hemingway, strengthening the connection further. ernie can be read as an inversion of the native anecdote character, here hemingway himself becomes the anecdote to prudence’s story. 4 it could be argued that frankie and billy are punished for their transgression after all – frankie dying months before the war’s end and billy living a life devoid of happiness. 5 the correlation of wolves, bears, and “indians” is telling for the 1940s attitude towards native people; an attitude that treuer marks in prudence. 6 by extension it thus also destabilizes the gendered spheres of war as masculine and the home as feminine, indicating that there is, again, no separation possible here and that the assumed difference is falsely maintained by such dichotomies. 7 arguably, for the united states, this closeness is echoed in the japanese attack on pearl harbor in december 1941. as the first true attack by a foreign nation on u.s. american soil, pearl harbor made it very clear that the u.s. were implicated in global warfare. 8 this parallel is not new – it has been gaining traction since the late 1990s, and while it remains controversial – many oppose the comparison, claiming it lessens the nazi atrocities – it appears in numerous essays, short stories, poetry and novels. see: sherman alexie (“the game between the jews and the indians is tied going into the bottom of the ninth inning” (1993), “fire as verb and noun” (1996)), eric transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 217 gansworth (haudenosaunee) (“american heritage” (2006)), ward churchill (a little matter of genocide (1997)), etc. 9 ira hayes is a particularly interesting case, as he was highly decorated and participated in the much publicized raising of the flag at iwo jima. ironically, hayes “could not vote when he returned to new mexico” after service; he died of alcoholism at the age of 32 (rosier 116). however, the photograph of hayes and his compatriots is still reproduced and used liberally to “symbolize the success of ethnic integration” in the u.s. (116). 10 for native north americans, the spanish flu was even more devastating than for whites, the “mortality rate was four times greater than that of white americans living in large cities” (qtd. in lyons 31). 11 1862 refers to the dakota war of 1862, an armed conflict between the united states and several bands of the dakota. after numerous treaty violations and failure to correctly distribute annuity payments by the us government, causing increasing hardship and hunger among the dakota, the dakota attacked euroamerican settlers. in the aftermath, 38 dakota were hung, the largest mass execution in us history. 1876 refers to the great sioux war (or black hills war), a series of battles between the us and the lakota sioux/northern cheyenne. wanting to secure gold, the us wanted to buy the black hills. the cheyenne and lakota refused. the final agreement of 1877 officially annexed sioux land and permanently established reservations. finally, 1891 refers to the ghost dance war, an armed conflict between the lakota sioux and the united states which lasted a year, culminating in the massacre at wounded knee where the 7th cavalry murdered approximately 300 unarmed lakota sioux, primarily women, children and elders. 12 in his survey on vietnam veterans, holm mentions that almost 50% of native north american veterans faced unemployment after their service, “despite the fact that many of them achieved relatively high education levels after their military service” (national survey 21). this marginalization of native american vets is visible from world war 1 onwards, their systemic discrimination central to silko’s ceremony and wagamese’s medicine walk. the combination of ptsd and limited work opportunity forced many native veterans into poverty and substance abuse, their “service” to their country forgotten. 13 the alcohol that billy consumes is given to him exclusively by white men; possibly a passing remark on the role that the settler-colonizers played in exposing native north americans to alcohol and addiction, and a further nod to the dichotomy of abuse and dependence experienced by settler colonizers and native populations. 14 while this essay does not discuss billy’s sexuality, it is relevant: by depicting billy as traumatized by both war and frankie’s continued refusal to acknowledge their love, treuer suggests a link between the two rejections. frankie’s inability to acknowledge and denial of their relationship marks the power of a heterosexual cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 218 ideology that forms the basis for the values of bravery and heroism that define the masculinity deemed necessary for warfare. frankie’s understanding of his own masculinity as flawed due to his feelings for billy must be rectified by joining the war effort and establishing a normative masculinity. this version of masculinity is celebrated in war, and frankie, once he realizes the errors of his behavior, dies, implying that war allows no space for other forms of masculinity. frankie ultimately cannot survive because there is no space for his version of masculinity in the united states; billy, however, does survive but settles into a heterosexual relationship that fails to satisfy him. works cited allen, chadwick. blood narrative. indigenous identity in american indian and maori literary and activist texts. duke university press, 2002. davies, dave. “prisoners of war and ojibwe reservation make unlikely neighbors in prudence.” npr author interviews, feb. 23, 2015, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/388461490?t=1620988841243. accessed april 19, 2020. de groot, jerome. the historical novel. routledge, 2010. dillon, grace. walking the clouds. an anthology of indigenous science fiction. university of arizona press, 2012. freud, sigmund. “thoughts for the times of war and death.” the standard edition of the complete psychological works of sigmund freud, vol. 14 (1914-1916), hogarth press, pp. 275-300, 1957. fussell, paul. the great war and modern memory. oup, 2013. hartman, saidiya. “venus in two acts.” small axe, vol. 12 no. 2, 2008, pp. 1-14. helton, laura, et al. “the question of recovery. an introduction.” social text, vol. 33, no. 4, 2015, pp. 1-18. gaffen, fred. forgotten soldiers. canadian defense academy press, 2008. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 219 lobdell, george. “minnesota’s 1944 pw escape. down the mississippi in the lili marlene.” minnesota historical society, http://collections.mnhs.org/mnhistorymagazine/articles/54/v54i03p112123.pdf. accessed 16 jan. 2020. lukács, gyorgy. the historical novel. penguin, 1976. grossman, mary ann. “readers and writers: ojibwe author david treuer on prudence.” twin cities pioneer press, 14 feb 2015, https://www.twincities.com/2015/02/14/readers-and-writers-ojibwe-authordavid-treuer-on-prudence. accessed 15 jan 2020. mcewan, ian. atonement. vintage, 2002. mcloughlin, kate. “war and words.” the cambridge companion to war, edited by kate mcloughlin, cup, pp. 15-24, 2009. mishra, pankaj. “how colonial violence came home: the ugly truth of the first world war.” the guardian, nov 10, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/10/how-colonial-violencecame-home-the-ugly-truth-of-the-first-world-war. accessed 10 may 2020. mumford, tracy. “the secret history of prisoner-of war-camps in minnesota.” mprnews, march 25, 2015. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/25/books-bcst-treuer-prudence. accessed may 5, 2019. reclaiming power and place: the final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women girls, vol. 1., 2019. rice, waubgeshig. foreword. sounding thunder: the stories of francis pegahmagabow, by mcinnes, michigan state university press, 2016, pp. xi xv. rosier, paul c. serving their country. american indian politics and patriotism in the twentieth century. harvard university press, 2012. toland, john. adolf hitler. the definitive biography. anchor, 1992. cassandra krauss “reading david treuer’s prudence as… war fiction” 220 treuer, david. prudence. riverhead books, 2015. ---. interview by dave davies. “prisoners of war and ojibwe reservation make unlikely neighbors in prudence.” npr, feb. 23, 2015 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/388461490. accessed 10 june 2020. woolf, virginia. mrs. dalloway. vintage classics, 2016. microsoft word madsen.docx transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 92 review essay: expanding settler colonial theory adam dahl. empire of the people: settler colonialism and the foundations of modern democratic thought. university press of kansas, 2018. 272 pp. isbn: 9780700626076. https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2607-6.html this is a thought-provoking book that probably makes an important contribution to dahl’s specialist field of political science, but it is neither an intervention in american studies nor critical indigenous studies and so may be of limited usefulness to readers of transmotion— with the decided exception of the final chapter (published as an essay in polity in 2016), devoted to william apess. this chapter is of general interest both for its innovative approach, which brings together the arguments developed throughout the book, and for the successful pairing of unexpected texts, which is a consistent strength of dahl’s method. elsewhere, dahl overwhelmingly addresses settler political theorists in the interests of illuminating the central contradiction of us settler colonialism: that settler political sovereignty, grounded in the right to self-government based on labor devoted to the “improvement” of expropriated native land, requires the disavowal of the violence of dispossession and also the denial of indigenous land rights based not on political reasoning but inherited racialized cultural prejudices. i am reminded of peter fitzpatrick’s quite brilliant philosophical treatment of similar legal contradictions in law as resistance: modernism, imperialism, legalism (2008), in a review of which i described how fitzpatrick addresses the imperial western claim to universal jurisdiction, a ‘self-universalizing’ claim that promotes european power especially in relation to ‘discovery’ and colonization. however, this self-proclaimed universality depends upon the categories of civilization versus savagery in order to enact the constitutive exclusion of the ‘savage’ and ‘barbarous’ which, if included in the category of the ‘universal’ would destroy it (madsen 573). such constitutive paradoxes are central to dahl’s project, particularly the tension between assertions of logically stable political reasoning and the destabilizing impacts of cultural reasonings, the ultimate source of which is, of course, the definition as terra nullius of all indigenous territories unclaimed by christian nations under the doctrine of discovery. in his address to the eleventh session of the united nations permanent forum on indigenous issues (may 2012), seneca elder oren lyons made clear the ongoing obstacle to the active realization of the 2007 united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples represented by the doctrine of discovery: “the ‘doctrine of discovery’ initiated from the papal bulls of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are responsible for over six centuries of crimes against humanity, setting a standard of exploitation that nation states now call ‘international law’” (lyons 1). international law, or at least theorizing of the legal rights possessed by american colonists in relation to british imperialism, forms the basis of dahl’s central historical argument, and yet the foundational doctrine of discovery receives very cursory treatment. indeed, dahl’s omissions dramatize most clearly his settler focus: in a book about constitutionalism in the us, there is no mention of native constitutions, not even those that fit the restricted historical scope of his study. on the chickasaw constitution of 1856, nothing. cherokee removal and the marshall decisions—yes—but the constitutions of the cherokee nation (1827 and deborah l. madsen review essay: expanding settler colonial theory 93 1839)—no. the choctaw removal treaty of dancing rabbit creek (1830)—yes—but the choctaw constitution of 1834? so, it seems a little disingenuous, in the closing discussion, to make a claim to contribute to the decolonizing of democracy by promoting historic native influence on constitutional thought without taking into consideration what indigenous nations have historically already achieved. the portrait of native america that emerges from the book as a whole might be described using gerald vizenor’s term, “native victimry.” and—a relevant point for scholars with an interest in vizenor’s work—there is no mention at all of his constitutional writing. as i will explain later, the absence of any attention to gerald vizenor’s political writings on democracy, native sovereignty, and constitutionalism is both highly conspicuous to a reader of transmotion and regrettable. consequently, i have found the primary value of dahl’s book in the linkages that i make with the work of other scholars outside the rigorous limits that he has imposed. with all due respect for the principle that reviewers should not criticize a book for failing to be the one they themselves would write, i have to say that dahl offers little to readers from scholarly fields peripheral to his own. at the same time, his book offers fertile ground for building a network of allied ideas based on each reader’s particular interests. the intertextual network forming in my mind as i read seemed important enough not only to keep me reading but to keep reaching for other books as i made my way through empire of the people. the remarks that follow essentially map out my route, in a kind of dialogue between adam dahl’s main arguments (which, in fairness to him, are presented in some detail) and my “yes, but what about…?” responses. the title of the dissertation from which the book originates, empire of the people: the ideology of democratic empire in the antebellum united states (2014), is much more accurate than the book title in terms establishing readerly expectations of the historical period under discussion. dahl addresses the period that encapsulates the revolution, from the mideighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth. the inclusion of walt whitman’s 1871 democratic vistas extends the timeline, but otherwise discussion is rigorously confined to this period. this temporal focus is both an advantage in terms of coherence and precision but it also creates significant weaknesses, especially when dahl could very profitably look back from his location in the early republican period to american colonial models and influences that would supplement his overwhelming use of british and european political theorists (more about that shortly). provocatively, dahl shifts discussion away from the documents of the “american creed” in his meticulous readings of texts that are unexpectedly chosen and quite surprising in the relevance that he exposes: the northwest ordinance (1787) in his first and second chapters, the opening of alexis de tocqueville’s democracy in america in the third chapter, ralph waldo emerson’s writings of the 1840s in the fourth chapter, and whitman’s poetry and prose in the fifth. william apess is the less surprising subject of the final substantive chapter. the book is organized into three parts: two introductory theoretical chapters set out dahl’s central arguments concerning federalism and empire; us settler colonialism and democratic culture occupy the following three chapters (on dispossession, manifest destiny, and slavery, respectively); the final part consists of a single chapter on apess’s indigenous critique of the basis of settler sovereignty, and an “afterword” that offers some thoughts on the potentials for decolonizing democratic theorizing. motivating these chapters is the central argument that federalism is not, in fact, antithetical to empire but rather organizes a certain kind of settler colonial empire (46); that is to say, us federalist, democratic theory is mutually constitutive with settler colonialism and, like the us empire, is equally grounded in colonial violence and the disavowal of native dispossession. this line of argument allows dahl to shift his account of dominant modes of democratic political thought away from the concept of popular sovereignty encapsulated in the notion of transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 94 “the people” and its consequent erasure of native presence. rather, using writings by richard bland, virginia delegate to the first continental congress, and thomas jefferson’s “a summary view of the rights of british america” (1774), dahl explains the theory that internal colonial autonomy derived from the idea of equality between settlers and metropolitan subjects. consequently, settler birth-rights transferred in the process of migration—together with “contractual colonization” or “the labor theory of empire” (32)— produced an understanding of settler sovereignty as grounded in the performance of colonizing labor: the work required to create permanent settlements. he points out, perceptively, that this set of ideas created the notion of a “federal empire” (32) based on what he calls “federative replication”: the principle of both settler colonial action and its organizational form (dahl 25, 72). a surprisingly marginalized presence in this discussion is craig yirush’s important 2011 book, settlers, liberty, and empire: the roots of early american political theory, 1675-1775, which makes the same basic argument: that [i]n the wake of the glorious revolution, then, a view of empire crystallized in english america which was based on the equal rights of all of the king’s subjects; the grounding of those rights outside the realm in the efforts and risk taking of the settlers themselves; the confirmation of these rights in charters and other royal grants; the subsequent acquisition of territory from the natives by purchase or conquest; and the transformation of what the settlers saw as a ‘wilderness’ into flourishing civil societies (77). yirush also devotes an entire chapter to one of dahl’s chosen texts, richard bland’s the colonial dismounted: or the rector vindicated. in a letter addressed to his reverence containing a dissertation upon the constitution of the colony (1764). however, yirush’s book is not cited in connection with the colonial dismounted and, indeed, yirush’s work is relegated to a few isolated endnotes. this is unfortunate, because yirush offers a detailed and nuanced account of the period between the glorious revolution and the american revolution to show how these guiding ideas emerged. this is important because, certainly in puritan apologies for migration and tracts that promoted migration to new england, as well as documents like the 1691 massachusetts charter, the notion of equality and equal rights between metropolis and colony is not obvious. focusing on republican figures like benjamin franklin, john adams, and thomas jefferson, dahl does not consider the issue of conceptual provenance, which would seem to be key to his assertion that such ideas had lasting cultural as well as political impacts. as yirush observes, “most histories of early american political thought ... begin ... with the looming imperial crisis in the aftermath of the seven years’ war, as if the ideas that drove opposition to imperial reforms from the mid-1760s on had no antecedents” (4). this is where dahl’s first part begins, with a discussion of democracy in relation to empire, constitutionalism, and federalism, in the context of the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 70s. he argues that contradictions within the theory of empire allowed settlers to interpret their right to self-rule as being entirely consistent with and equal to their status as citizens of the british empire (34). in this balancing of imperial and provincial/settler sovereignties, dahl finds the settler colonial roots of us federalism: the idea of a central federal government that is combined with protections for each colony. out of the associated debates and conflicts over the location of the imperial center—westminster or north america, the metropolis or the colonies—the concept of colonial equality emerged as crucial to the discourse of democratic sovereignty, but this debate over “equality” was complicated by diverse interpretations of the meaning of equality in the context of colonial dependency. general deborah l. madsen review essay: expanding settler colonial theory 95 resistance to the notion of dependency motivated a new idea of empire, a vision of federal imperialism that distributed authority equally across “constituent units of empire” (27)—i.e. the american colonies—as shown in such documents as benjamin franklin’s “observations concerning the increase of mankind” (1751) and his albany plan of 1754. franklin proposed that on the basis of continual demographic expansion (the trope of translatio imperii), based on unlimited access to free land, eventually more british subjects would live on the us side of the atlantic than in britain, thus shifting the balance of power to a new western empire. added to this, the settler allegiance to a notion of social mobility tied to spatial mobility and property ownership underpinned the idea that the stability of republican institutions must depend on the availability of land to support an agrarian populace, and so the removal of indigenous peoples to make land available was an integral part of this american idea of empire. royal prerogative versus settler sovereignty provides the context for dahl’s analyses in chapter one concerning the central role of land and settler attitudes towards land in the aftermath of the seven years war and the royal proclamation 1763. dahl focuses on the northwest ordinance (1787) and the question it sought to answer: will the northwest territory be governed by the continental congress or by virginia via its royal charter? thomas paine’s views, set out in common sense (1776) and public good: an examination into the claims of virginia to the vacant western territory (1780), confirmed the notion of terra nullius and opposed the influence of corporate land companies, promoting instead the argument that possession of the western land must serve the “common good” as a common right of all citizens. as dahl points out, these arguments serve as the logical complement to the idea that, after the revolution, both political and territorial sovereignty will be transferred to “the people.” the mechanisms by which settled territories would be incorporated as republican states into the federal union are discussed through the 1780 land resolution, jefferson’s 1784 land ordinance, and james monroe’s northwest ordinance (1787). the latter determined that new territories would start as colonies, dependent on federally appointed governors until the population reached 5,000 inhabitants—dahl refers to this as a period of “imperial tutelage” (37)—and then would be incorporated with the same rights as all other states in a process that dahl calls the “embodiment of imperial federalism” (37). the most important element of this model was the mechanism for an ongoing process of colonization, which could be extended to distant territories (and dahl notes that jefferson had his eye on south america). this structure offered a mechanism of colonization that was no longer organized around colonial dependence on a metropolitan center. but despite appearances to the contrary, dahl perceptively argues, this mechanism did not eschew colonial violence; on the contrary, the northwest ordinance institutionalized the expropriation of indigenous lands despite avowed equality between indigenous peoples and settlers. dahl notes that henry knox acknowledged native land rights and proposed a policy of land acquisition based on native consent via purchase and treaty or peaceful assimilation, with dispossession through military conquest as a last resort (for knox, the avoidance of military conquest distinguished us colonization efforts from the brutality practiced by spain and britain). as dahl rightly emphasizes, though, settlement itself was seen as a strategy of native dispossession rather than federal incorporation. the chapter ends with an interesting comparison with features shared by other british settler colonies of the nineteenth century, through the theories of edward gibbon wakefield concerning what hegel termed “systematic colonization” (dahl 41), in order to propose that the status of the northwest ordinance, as the model for the british concept of “an empire of settlement,” is a kind of “magna carta of the colonies” (45, 46). here, dahl could have taken into account, or at least gestured towards, much earlier english theorizing of american colonization. during the elizabethan period, for transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 96 instance, the arguments made by richard hakluyt in his principal navigations (15981600)—and also by his contemporariess—established many of the points that are highlighted in dahl’s treatment of wakefield’s theories. the second chapter explains dahl’s central concept of “constituent power,” as opposed to “constituted power,” by borrowing andreas kalyvas’s conceptualization of the difference between authority delegated by “the people” to institutionalized representatives (constituted power) and the “constituent power” of popular authority “to begin, end, or modify those institutionally delegated powers” (dahl 48). the “coloniality” of this constituent power lies not only in the authority to establish new republics but additionally to eliminate existing regimes of sovereignty. in this, dahl locates the settler justification to expropriate native lands by disavowing indigenous governance that is found to be in a “savage” state and on “vacant lands,” and via the “vanishing american” trope. through john locke and thomas paine, dahl reads the intersectionality of the “sovereignty clause” and “emigration clause” of the 1777 vermont constitution as an instance of this constituent power: in the context of the vermont republic’s erasure of both british imperial sovereignty and that of new york. he then analyzes justifications for the establishment of new republics along the transappalachian frontier in the 1770s and the following decade, highlighting concrete examples of the use of colonization (on the vacant land that enabled the claim to settle in “a state of nature”) as the basis for the exercise of constituent power through democratic consent. this discussion makes excellent use of jean o’brien’s concept of “firsting” (colonial settlement as the “first” civilized occupation of land) and “lasting” (the discourse that casts indigenous inhabitants as the last of a vanishing race) to apply the concept of constituent power to the wataugan claims to settler sovereignty. dahl argues that the threat of imperial disintegration implicit in the exercise of this constituent power—the settling of new republics independent of congressional authority—was mitigated by the northwest ordinance, which redefined selfdetermined settler expansion as a mechanism of consensual incorporation into an expanded territorial federal empire by prescribing the republican form of new settler states. this argument is elegantly summarized in dahl’s quotation from antonio negri: constituent power is “absorbed, appropriated by the constitution, transformed into an element of the constitutional machine” (insurgencies, qtd in dahl, 64). the power of representation to instantiate a settler regime and to erase native presence is conveyed in dahl’s treatment of jefferson’s famous concept of the us as an “empire of liberty.” dahl engages this concept in the context of jefferson’s 1785 land ordinance, which divided land into square-mile parcels and created a territorial geography that both commodified land and also rooted democratic sovereignty in the land. as dahl explains, this reconceptualization of land was a powerful counterpart to historical colonization, achieved through jefferson’s use of the mythology of the pre-modern, “vanishing,” indian. the erasure of indigenous relationships to land, fundamental to this process, dahl clarifies through an account of native opposition to the settler concept of land commodification articulated by tecumseh (shawnee) and black hawk (sauk), and their critical exposure of the treaty system as a form of colonial violence that is representative of corruption and inequality rather than expressive of popular consent. here, dahl’s focus on republican democratic thought neglects the settler colonial actions of the founders as land speculators. for example, benjamin franklin was a major investor in the grand ohio company (1769), which notably petitioned king george iii for 2.4 million acres in the ohio valley (franklin n.p.). and george washington’s career as a surveyor of the ohio valley would provide relevant context for the discussion of the northwest ordinance: washington’s half-brothers were among the organizers of the ohio company (1747), formed to obtain royal grants to lands in the ohio valley, and “[b]etween 1747 and 1799 washington deborah l. madsen review essay: expanding settler colonial theory 97 surveyed over two hundred tracts of land and held title to more than sixty-five thousand acres in thirty-seven different locations” (lehrman institute, n.pag.). such details are particularly relevant in view of the motif that runs throughout dahl’s book concerning the role of land surveying as a conceptual mechanism of settler colonial remapping of territory. even more conspicuous in dahl’s exclusive emphasis on democratic relations of consent is neglect of what philip gorski, in american covenant: a history of civil religion from the puritans to the present (2017), calls the american tradition of “prophetic republicanism,” which gorski traces back to new england puritan reliance on apocalyptic biblical rhetoric to justify the expropriation of indigenous lands through the theology of sacred covenant relations. at this point, it may seem that i am asking for an entirely different kind of book but dahl repeatedly gestures towards covenant-regulated communal relations—in connection with the watauga compact and the cumberland compact, for instance, in this chapter. here, too, reference to (studies of) earlier colonial models of federation could be more than alluded to and more fully integrated into dahl’s discussion. the mayflower compact is briefly mentioned in the introduction but john winthrop’s “a model of christian charity” (1630) and, significantly, puritan justifications for colonial settlement—such as john cotton’s sermon addressed to the departing winthrop fleet, “the divine right to occupy the land,” later published as gods promise to his plantation (1630)—would seem to be very relevant, given the unremarked references to the “providential gift” of vacant land found, for example, in dahl’s quotations from the federalist papers also in this chapter. although gorski’s project differs significantly from dahl’s, focusing more on an analysis of the intersections among american traditions of religious nationalism, civil religion, and radical secularism that have produced “prophetic republicanism,” i found reading the two books in conjunction very rewarding. in part two, dahl turns from discussion of democracy in constitutional contexts to cultural forms and democracy as a social state, with specific reference to the emergence of the ideology of manifest destiny and the controversies surrounding slavery. focused primarily on the nineteenth century, this section could have made profitable reference to studies like alyosha goldstein’s essay “colonialism, constituent power, and popular sovereignty” which, appearing in 2014 would have been unavailable for inclusion in dahl’s 2014 dissertation but could easily have been incorporated into his 2018 book (he does reference goldstein’s 2008 essay on “proprietary regimes, antistatism, and u.s. settler colonialism”). i have opted to highlight this essay because goldstein covers the same period and much the same conceptual ground, arguing that “[t]hroughout the long nineteenth century, it was precisely the fraught and unsettled relations among the practices of constituent power, popular sovereignty, colonialism, and slavery that conveyed the spuriousness and impossible grandiosity of us claims to sovereignty as absolute, exclusive, and indivisible” (150). where goldstein’s essay goes on to “suggest some specific ways in which indigenous [sic] peoples challenged and disrupted us settler claims to constituent power and national coherence while also reimagining their own terms of political belonging” (149), dahl is concerned with showing how settler expansion provided coherence to emergent democratic theorizing. thus, he begins in chapter three with tocqueville’s democracy in america (1835, 1840; unfortunately, the bibliography does not provide details of the translator or editor) to show tocqueville’s erasure of colonial violence and indigenous erasure through his constructivist mapping of the natural environment that—as dahl explains with reference to patrick wolfe’s work—functions as a “container” for us democratic politics. tocqueville’s privileging of american over spanish and russian colonization depends on this disavowal of american violence, dahl argues, in favor of an account of the treaty basis of american colonization in contrast to colonial militarism in the south (spain) and northwest (russia). he references tocqueville’s appeal to “providence”—“his imagery of indigenous [sic] absence in transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 98 democracy reinforces the notion that north american land providentially belongs to white settlers” (dahl 83, emphasis added)—and notes tocqueville’s dating of the origins of us democracy with the founding of the original colonies, quoting tocqueville’s identification of puritan congregationalism with the model of consensual self-government (see my point above). rather than developing these ideas, dahl uses them to exemplify the arguments he has already established concerning the destructive and constructive powers of constituent settler sovereignty. there is a certain repetitiveness in the discussion of tocqueville, which is marked by continual returns to earlier points, suggesting to me that tighter editing may have created space for a much more expansive discussion of the ways in which tocqueville’s text intersects with those analyzed in part one, to sketch a specifically american tradition of democratic thought: with roots in new england congregationalism, its peculiar styles of rhetorical thinking, and its elizabethan imperial origins. a related omission that illustrates this repetition is the cursory treatment of tocqueville’s use of the doctrine of discovery— which is not defined until fifty pages later in the context of slavery, and then exclusively in terms of lockean political theory and the infamous us supreme court decisions of chief justice marshall—that leads immediately to an account of terra nullius that simply repeats the discussion in the preceding chapter. instead, dahl could have drawn on joanne barker’s account of marshall’s powerful role in introducing the doctrine of discovery as the foundation of us federal indian law; as she writes: “marshall invoked [the doctrine of discovery] as though it were a well-founded legal principle of international law. it took on the force of precedence because marshall invented a legal history that gave it that status” (barker 2005, 14; see also oren lyons, quoted above). rather, in this section of the book dahl reorients existing interpretations through the lens of settler colonial studies. chapter three treats tocqueville’s observations about race and race-based slavery in relation to the erasure of native political formations to argue that the difference between settler colonialism and chattel slavery as systems of domination lies in the settler desire for native land as opposed to black labor, and consequently this difference emphasized black bodies as an obstacle to assimilation into white settler social structures, which was not the case for proponents—like tocqueville—of native “vanishing” through acculturation. more interesting to me is dahl’s discussion of tocqueville’s writings about french colonial expansion in algeria, for which us settler colonialism provided the precedent. on the subject of precedents, chapter four’s analysis of manifest destiny displays the results of dahl’s neglect of a deep historical account of the american “mission” and the claim to be a “redeemer nation.” a single endnote gesturing to ernest lee tuveson’s 1968 book, redeemer nation: the idea of america’s millennial role inadequately fulfills this function. instead, dahl approaches manifest destiny in relation to the “safety valve” theory of colonization, where bountiful available western land provided an outlet for escape from eastern urbanization and industrialization, and as a necessary ideological component of us democratic empire, which situated itself against both european feudalism and indigenous tribalism. he illustrates this mechanism firstly through a reading of john o’sullivan’s coinage of the term in the context of the annexation of texas (1845) and the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo (1848); secondly through the logic of “consensual colonization” exhibited in key documents related to indian removal in the 1830s (dahl 114); and, finally, through ralph waldo emerson’s romanticization of expropriated “nature” as a source of democratic impulses in his political writings of the 1840s. in all three groups of texts, “consensual colonization” relies on an intersection of interests, on the parts of both of settlers and natives, which facilitates agreement that reconciles—and promotes—us expansion, native elimination, and the principles of popular democracy. deborah l. madsen review essay: expanding settler colonial theory 99 expropriated native land is at the center of dahl’s treatment of american slavery in chapter five and his account of the conflict between the “survey” system that favored elites, and so encouraged a kind of aristocracy reminiscent of feudalism, and the “homesteading” system that promoted free labor and free soil policies. the first, which served federal financial interests by raising revenue, is opposed to the latter, which situates the federal government’s use of land in the interests of popular sovereignty. through this opposition, dahl develops his arguments concerning chattel slavery. very provocative in this connection is his link between abraham lincoln’s racialized vision of the western territories as a “safety valve” for poor whites leaving slave-holding states and the arguments about manifest destiny in his preceding chapter. the political views of galusha a. grow (speaker of the house of representatives, 1861-1863 and supporter of the homestead act of 1862), lincoln, and lincoln’s secretary of state william henry seward preface the chapter, which then engages in detail with walt whitman’s poetry and his essays in democratic vistas. the relation between free labor (i.e. neither chattel nor wage slavery) and settler colonialism is highlighted by the enabling assumption of the availability of sufficient free land for ownership and cultivation by settlers, and dahl’s point that land is rendered “unfree” by both the restrictions of an aristocratic plantation society and native ancestral rights, in contrast to settler labor that renders land “free.” in this context, dahl makes a powerful case for whitman’s centrality to ideologies of settler colonialism as resultant of “how he attached radical-democratic principles of popular sovereignty to broader frameworks of settler expansion” (dahl 143). his interpretation of whitman’s theory of the us democratic “empire of empires” is a point of conjunction for many of the terms dahl has analyzed in previous chapters. to this, he adds whitman’s perception of the performativity of language— exemplified by the power of the words of the declaration of independence to create the us nation—put into the service of settler colonialism in a number of ways: most particularly, whitman’s own “personification of the settler-citizen as the force of democratic expansion” (146) and his deployment of indigenous languages (notably through the use of native names) that are assimilated to a democratic settler identity within whitman’s use of the “vanishing american” myth. thus, in this chapter, whitman represents the apotheosis of settler-colonial thinking in his theorizing of territorial expansion as not just a political and economic necessity to the nation but also the moral and cultural source of the american democratic ethos that has global implications for the future direction of history. dahl’s project shifts gears in part three, titled “unsettling democracy,” which deals with counter-narratives and comprises the final chapter, devoted to a lengthy consideration of william apess and “the paradox of settler sovereignty.” dahl defines this paradox in terms of “attempts to draw the boundaries of popular sovereignty [that] can never be done by purely democratic means, [so] law and sovereignty always rest on violence and exclusion” (157): illustrated by his account of daniel webster’s “plymouth oration” (1820). to my mind, and probably for most readers of transmotion, this is the most interesting section of the book. here dahl turns his full attention, and all of the arguments that have been developed throughout, to a native political theorist. his account of indian nullification develops an interpretation based on apess’s fundamental opposition to settler sovereignty, and provides a political-theoretical reading that would be nicely complemented by philip f. gura’s detailed biographical narrative of the mashpee revolt in his life of william apess, pequot (2015). dahl’s treatment of the text is nuanced; he offers an intelligent and well-documented response to david j. carlson’s view that apess sought a compromise solution—based on “indian liberalism”—to the issue of mashpee desire for territorial sovereignty and an end to the imposed paternalistic “overseer” system that deprived them of control over their ancestral lands. pointing out that liberal conceptions of “rights” do not recognize the foundational transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 100 violence of settler colonialism, dahl uses fanon to particularly good effect (echoing his earlier references to french-colonized algeria) as a basis for his argument that colonialism creates a binary conception of political space (liberal settler versus occupied native space) that generates the subject category of “the settler,” defined by “notions of equality and popular sovereignty” (dahl 159). however, it is also here that the settler focus of the book is most clearly revealed, when dahl writes: “this chapter extrapolates [fanon’s] point to suggest that the political subjectivity of settlers – marked by notions of equality and popular sovereignty – are similarly produced through practices of settler conquest” (159). i confess that i had to read this sentence more than once. happily, in this chapter, dahl in fact fails to show how settler conquest produces settler political subjectivity. rather, in a detailed and persuasive account of prevailing debates about states’ rights and federal constitutionalism, he argues that apess’s interventions in indian nullification of the unconstitutional laws of massachusetts relative to the marshpee tribe; or, the pretended riot explained (1833) and eulogy on king philip (1836) must be read through the concept of “nullification” as at once a refusal of us settler sovereignty and a powerful narrativizing strategy that performatively exposes “democracy’s constitutive exclusions” (160). “as a result,” dahl concludes, “nullification becomes an indigenous [sic] concept that marks the limits of settler authority and asserts the political autonomy of indian communities” (160). in this chapter, significant argumentative traction is provided by native political theorizing, represented by the work of robert nichols, audra simpson’s mohawk interruptus (2014), joanne barker’s native acts (2011), and glen coulthard’s red skin, white masks (2014). however, these voices are muted by the stylistic habit (here and throughout the book) of acknowledging sources with an endnote that simply provides the author’s name and title; there is little effort to contextualize references and so there are few opportunities to engage substantively with complementary arguments, and i was disappointed that the usefulness of the notes as a resource is further weakened by the fact that they are not indexed. having said that, this chapter is a tour de force, presenting nuanced and insightful readings of apess’s texts that leave no doubt concerning their exceptional revolutionary power. in the absence of this chapter, one would be hard pressed to agree that the book achieves dahl’s ambition to furnish “the basis for a decolonial theory of democracy that de-normalizes settler experiences as the unsurpassable horizon of democratic politics” (184). certainly, it is with insight that dahl offers contexts within which to situate the foundational role of settler conquest in discourses of us democracy and to theorize possibilities for decolonization. the afterword, subtitled “decolonizing the democratic tradition,” where he explicitly addresses this latter issue, is especially disappointing for a reader of transmotion who, presumably, has an interest in the works of gerald vizenor. the absence of any reference at all to vizenor’s crucial interventions around the concepts of native sovereignty and tribal constitutionalism is, to me, quite shocking. dahl makes two primary points related to his concept of decolonized democracy. incidentally, one might ask whether this is a misleading issue; given dahl’s interest in relations between democracy and constitutionalism, a decolonized concept of constitutionalism may have been a more productive problematic to engage. to develop his first point, that of “a nonsovereign conception of democracy that sheds the desire to define self-rule in terms of control and mastery” (dahl 187), he bases his discussion on joan cocks’s book, on sovereignty and other political delusions (2014), and her account of taiaiake alfred’s idea of indigenous counter-sovereignty. his second point concerns “a relational conception of democratic identity that avows the constitutive influence of indigenous [sic] political ideas on the western democratic tradition as well as the productive role of relations of colonial domination in shaping democratic thought and culture” (dahl 189). he relies primarily on the work of the argentine-mexican philosopher enrique dussel, deborah l. madsen review essay: expanding settler colonial theory 101 and the american feminist political theorist iris marion young to develop his discussion of “transmodernity” as a world-system of democratic federalism. here, vizenor’s concept of transmotion is a very notable absence but more egregious is dahl’s secondhand description, via young’s account, of iroquois federative governance as a constitutional model. there are two further problems here: first, dahl explicitly refuses to acknowledge well-documented critiques of the so-called “haudenosaunee influence theory,” like philip levy’s meticulous interrogation of the work of donald grinde and bruce johansen in “exemplars of taking liberties” (1996). this refusal to take account of opposing viewpoints weakens the power of dahl’s arguments. secondly, and much worse, is dahl’s recourse to abstract speculation about potentials for the “constitutive influence of indigenous [sic] political ideas on the western democratic tradition” (189) when the example of the new constitution of the white earth nation, for instance, would provide fertile material for concrete analysis. granted, the theory of the influence of the haudenosaunee confederacy’s great law of peace on the us founders fits well with his timeframe, but i had expected to find at least an abbreviated discussion in dahl’s endnotes of the white earth nation: ratification of a native democratic constitution (vizenor and doerfler 2012), vizenor’s remarks in his 2013 interview with james mackay about the circumstances of his writing of the constitution and the historic documents that provided his model, as well as vizenor’s theoretical discussions of native sovereignty, for example in fugitive poses (1998), and some of the scholarship inspired by vizenor’s work on the white earth constitution, such as joseph bauerkemper’s essay “the white earth constitution, cosmopolitan nationhood, and the fruitful ironies of relational sovereignty” (published in this journal in 2015), as well as the essays by david carlson and lisa brooks in the 2011 special issue of studies in american indian literatures devoted to “constitutional criticism,” edited by james mackay. indeed, alyosha goldstein’s 2014 essay, cited above, does precisely this in the conclusion where goldstein proposes: against the numerical weight and majority rule of settler popular sovereignty, indigenous [sic] sovereignty exposes the us nation-state as perpetually fragmented and incomplete, if nonetheless preponderant and lethal. the white earth nation’s decision to draft and, in 2013, adopt a new constitution – which deliberately enacts indigenous [sic] sovereignty in a manner distinct from the native national constitutions written under the auspices of the indian reorganization act of 1934 – provides one form that indigenous [sic] democratic constitutional self-making might take (152). comparison with this essay highlights the extent to which dahl is not interested in indigenous issues in any fundamental way, except to lend traction to his analyses of settler political theory and settler colonial history. two elements of goldstein’s work offer particularly striking contrasts. first, goldstein positions indigenous sovereignty in relation to “the unruliness of [settler] constituent moments [jason franks’s “enactments of ‘the people’ that ‘invent a new political space and make apparent a people that are productively never at one with themselves’”] that assemble multiple dispossessions and their provisional resolution on behalf of the greater good of ‘the people’” (149). secondly, and linked to this destabilizing effect of native sovereignty, goldstein explicitly refuses the narrative of settler triumphalism and corresponding native victimry; for example, his concise and cogent interlinking of the major legislative and judicial moves that followed the northwest ordinance of 1785, culminating in the indian appropriation act of 1871, serves the argument that “rather than indexing the historical triumph of settler sovereignty, this act, and legislation that followed in its wake (such as the major crimes act of 1885, the general allotment act of 1887, and the indian citizenship act of 1924), can be understood as failed measures to extinguish indigenous [sic] sovereignty, whose ongoing exercise and remaking instead illuminates the transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 102 perpetual frustration of us aspirations” (151, emphasis added). to my mind, along with the vizenorian resources mentioned above, this essay—together with goldstein’s introduction to formations of united states colonialism (2014), and his 2008 essay, “where the nation takes place: proprietary regimes, antistatism, and u.s. settler colonialism”—is among the essential contextualizing resources alongside which dahl’s book is best read. in concluding, i have to admit that dahl’s book has got inside my head and under my skin— how else to explain the sheer length of this review? even though the prose is sometimes theoretically dense to the point of opacity and can get bogged down in abstract terminology, the ideas and arguments provoke thought and productive connections with complementary scholarship. one of the questions that has haunted me since reading empire of the people is: when is a doctoral dissertation not a doctoral dissertation? the simple answer: when it is published as a scholarly monograph. the more complicated subsidiary question then arises: how is a monograph different to a dissertation? according to the oft-quoted authority on this question, william germano, a good dissertation is an original contribution to knowledge. no one would disagree with that. but he goes on to explain: “from a publisher’s perspective, the good dissertation is a work of intellectual substance that makes a contribution to the author’s field and that can reach enough readers to support the investment necessary for publication” (germano 9-10, emphasis added). although i am not a political scientist, i am sure that dahl’s book makes an important contribution to his field; as an informed but more general reader, coming to this book from a literary-historical-cultural environment, i am not convinced that dahl really opens up his arguments to the wider academic readership to which germano refers. that work of generalization, of finding hooks to allied scholarship that extends, enriches, and complicates dahl’s contribution, has been left to his readers. that is rather unfortunate for the wider relevance of dahl’s project but it is quite fortunate for those like myself who can find in this book threads with which to weave a greater intertextual network—comprised of each reader’s own conceptual connections. dahl has provided fertile ground for this kind of exploration and expansion. deborah l. madsen, university of geneva works cited barker, joanne. “for whom sovereignty matters.” joanne barker, ed. sovereignty matters: locations of contestation and possibility in indigenous struggles for selfdetermination. lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2005. 1-32. ---. native acts: law, recognition, and cultural authenticity. durham, nc: duke university press, 2011. bauerkemper, joseph. “the white earth constitution, cosmopolitan nationhood, and the fruitful ironies of relational sovereignty.” transmotion 1. 1 (2015). https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/111 accessed 25 july 2019. carlson, david j. sovereign selves: american indian autobiography and the law urbana: university of illinois press, 2006. “the charter of massachusetts bay” (1691). the avalon project: documents in law, history, and diplomacy. lillian goldman law library. yale law school. deborah l. madsen review essay: expanding settler colonial theory 103 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mass07.asp#1 accessed 25 july 2019. source: the federal and state constitutions colonial charters, and other organic laws of the states, territories, and colonies now or heretofore forming the united states of america compiled and edited under the act of congress of june 30, 1906 by francis newton thorpe. washington, dc: government printing office, 1909. cocks, joan. on sovereignty and other political delusions. london: bloomsbury academic, 2014. cotton, john. “the divine right to occupy the land.” reiner smolinski, ed. gods promise to his plantation (1630) libraries at university of nebraska-lincoln. electronic texts in american studies. paper 22. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/22 accessed 25 july 2019. coulthard, glen. red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2014. dahl, adam j. empire of the people: the ideology of democratic empire in the antebellum united states. 2014. university of minnesota digital conservancy. http://hdl.handle.net/11299/167047 accessed 25 july 2019. ---. “nullifying settler democracy: william apess and the paradox of settler sovereignty.” polity 48. 2 (spring 2016): 279-304. https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2016.2 accessed 25 july 2019. fitzpatrick, peter. law as resistance: modernism, imperialism, legalism. burlington vt: ashgate, 2008. franklin, benjamin. “the formation of the grand ohio company, [june? 1769].” founders online. the american philosophical society and yale university. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/franklin/01-16-02-0083 accessed 25 july 2019. germano, william. from dissertation to book. chicago & london: university of chicago press, 2013. goldstein, alyosha. “colonialism, constituent power, and popular sovereignty.” j19: the journal of nineteenth-century americanists 2. 1 (spring 2014): 148-153. ---. ed. formations of united states colonialism. durham, nc: duke university press, 2014. ---. “where the nation takes place: proprietary regimes, antistatism, and u.s. settler colonialism.” south atlantic quarterly 107. 4 (2008): 833-861. doi: 10.1215/003828762008-019 gorski, philip. american covenant: a history of civil religion from the puritans to the present. princeton: princeton university press, 2017. grinde, donald a. jr. the iroquois and the founding of the american nation. san francisco: indian historian press, 1977. transmotion vol 5, no 2 (2019) 104 grinde, donald a. jr. & bruce johansen, exemplar of liberty: native america and the evolution of democracy. los angeles: american indian studies center, 1991. gura, philip f. the life of william apess, pequot. chapel hill, nc: university of north carolina press, 2015. hakluyt, richard. principal navigations, voyages and discoveries of the english nation. 3 vols. london: 1598-1600. ed. edmund goldsmid.1884. project gutenberg, 2005. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7182 accessed 25 july 2019. johansen, bruce e. forgotten founders: benjamin franklin, the iroquois, and the rationale for the american revolution. ipswich, ma: gambit, 1982. kalyvas, andreas. “popular sovereignty, democracy, and the constituent power.” constellations 12. 2 (2005): 223-244. lehrman institute. “the founders and the pursuit of land.” n.pag. n.d. https://lehrmaninstitute.org/history/founders-land.html accessed 25 july 2019. levy, philip a. “exemplars of taking liberties: the iroquois influence thesis and the problem of evidence.” the william and mary quarterly 53. 3 (1996): 588-604. lyons, oren. “haudenosaunee statement on the construct known as the doctrine of discovery, a history: a seat at the table.” eleventh session of the united nations permanent forum on indigenous issues 7-18 may, 2012. agenda item 3 – may 8, 2012. www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/2012/session-11-crp1.pdf accessed 25 july 2019. mackay, james, ed. “constitutional criticism.” special issue, studies in american indian literatures 23. 4 (winter 2011). mackay, james. “constitutional narratives: a conversation with gerald vizenor.” in jill doerfler, niigaanwewidam james sinclair, & heidi kiiwetinepinesiik stark, eds. centering anishinaabeg studies: understanding the world through stories. east lansing: michigan state university press & winnipeg: university of manitoba press, 2013. 133-148. madsen, deborah l. review of: law as resistance: modernism, imperialism, legalism by peter fitzpatrick. burlington, vt: ashgate, 2008. journal of postcolonial writing 46. 5 (2010): 573-574. mayflower compact (1629). pilgrim hall museum. http://www.pilgrimhallmuseum.org/mayflower_compact_text.htm accessed 25 july 2019. o’brien, jean m. firsting and lasting: writing indians out of existence in new england. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2010. simpson, audra. mohawk interruptus: political life across the borders of settler states. durham, nc: duke university press, 2014. tuveson, ernest lee. redeemer nation: the idea of america’s millennial role. chicago: deborah l. madsen review essay: expanding settler colonial theory 105 university of chicago press, 1968. vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 1998. vizenor, gerald and jill doerfler. introduction by david e. wilkins. the white earth nation: ratification of a native democratic constitution. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 2012. winthrop, john. “a model of christian charity” (1630). the winthrop society. http://www.winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php accessed 25 july 2019. wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research 8. 4 (2006): 387-409. yirush, craig b. settlers, liberty, and empire: the roots of early american political theory, 1675-1775. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2011. microsoft word jbm, cooper, final.docx lydia cooper review of drawing fire 284 brummett echohawk with mark r. ellenbarger. drawing fire: a pawnee, artist, and thunderbird in world war ii. edited by trent riley, foreword by lt. col. ernest childers. university press of kansas, 2018. 248 pp. isbn: 0700627030. https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2703-5.html drawing fire immerses readers in a meticulously detailed sketch of war, specifically, of the u.s. invasion of sicily and italy from 1943 to 1944, through the eyes of decorated pawnee veteran brummett echohawk, of the 178th regimental combat team, 45th infantry division: the “thunderbirds.” like many memoirs of famous native americans, echohawk’s experiences, while written by himself, have been edited and presented by another, in this case mark r. ellenbarger, along with historical guidance from trent riley. ellenbarger pitches drawing fire this way: “this work serves the purpose of revealing for the first time what it was like for these young native americans serving among other american indians in the european theater” (xvi). in terms of structure and content, ellenbarger explains that echohawk completed “chapters” of the manuscript that would become this book and gave a typed copy of this manuscript, along with “an old intelligence case,” to ellenbarger after echohawk’s stroke in 2005. taking this manuscript, ellenbarger relied on “oral history interviews and personal notes” to embellish the contents of echohawk’s own contributions (xv). in an epigraph to the first chapter, ellenbarger states “this was his [echohawk’s] legacy, and the thought of embellishment could not and did not enter his mind” (1, italics his). presumably, ellenbarger means to convey that the content of the chapters themselves derive from echohawk’s own manuscript. like many such curated and edited memoirs, however, the extent to which the reader encounters the unvarnished “authentic” voice of the author remains somewhat ambiguous. yet—as i will discuss later—drawing fire conveys a sense of immediacy and authenticity. in terms of content, the book focuses on echohawk’s experiences of combat, with only brief references to his life before, even to military life prior to the transport ship headed to sicily. the first seven chapters cover the invasion of sicily, (july 9/10–august 17, 1943); the eighth chapter covers the invasion of italy (sept 9, 1943); and the final chapter covers the battle of anzio (january 22–june 5, 1944, ending in the capture of rome). i want to make the point here that my review approaches this book from the perspective of a literary scholar rather than an historian. the historicity of the book will be a project for others. ellenbarger, and presumably public historian riley, do offer a gloss of helpful tidbits which contextualize names, dates, references, and context; this gloss adds particular points of interest that would connect well with other course material in an indigenous studies history or literature class. the book also contains a transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 285 helpful glossary and timeline along with a dramatis personae at the end of the volume, making it easily searchable and useable. as an example of what i mean when i suggest this book’s potential interest for a class, echohawk mentions the thunderbirds’ own version of the common military expression fubar: for native american troops, he says, some situations were “fouled up like the bureau of indian affairs” (29). without lengthy explanation of the bia’s complicated relationship with indian country, ellenbarger adds a note that offers readers this insight: one issue of the bia’s vocational journal contains an enthusiastically admiring and yet uncomfortably racist depiction of echohawk. they note that he, like other native american service members, was a great soldier because of an “‘enthusiasm for fighting’” (footnote, 14). one imagines that this memoir, read alongside other primary and secondary sources, would come alive for students in such subtle moments as these. as a literary text, drawing fire has its limitations. not only is the narrative weighted with minutiae, but there are some syntactically awkward moments as well. as they begin the ground offensive in sicily, for example, echohawk notes: “ahead i don’t see last arrow’s squad,” and two phrases later, “ahead i spot green shrubbery” (33). indications like this of a light editorial hand on ellenbarger’s part conveys a sort of authenticity, a lack of polish that creates a disarmingly “real” voice. the reader senses that they are in the hands of an artist and a soldier, not a wordsmith. syntactic uniformity, a didactic tone that exposes pawnee and other native american words, religious practices, cultural reference points, and verbal repetitions bog down an otherwise high-octane and rewarding first-person narrative about the ground invasion in europe. that being noted, the narrative is rendered almost entirely in the first-person and the present tense, so that it reads like a combat diary. it’s a narrative characterized by a deluge of specifics meant to convey accuracy and attention to historical and contextual detail. echohawk’s interspersed comments give little sense of personality, but are nonetheless vulnerable and profoundly human. for instance, as the landing craft approaches their target destination, the beaches of scoglitti, echohawk muses, “i am not a brave man… got to control my fear… got to control my fear” (16). in addition to these brief glimpses of profoundly human emotion, the narrative offers insight into echohawk’s personality and values—moments that are, again, brief yet luminous. when they’re advancing toward scoglitti, worried that they’ve overshot their lz (landing zone), messerschmitts start streaking by overhead. echohawk remarks that he knows his men have practiced squad tactics, but he is reluctant to simply shout orders, even in lydia cooper review of drawing fire 286 this fear-drenched moment. “i’m not a hard-bitten sergeant,” he says. “i explain, then lead” (22). of most interest are the glimpses of the man’s internal tension, the tension between warrior and artist. toward the beginning of the ground invasion of sicily, echohawk and his squad have taken a structure they call the pillbox. echohawk goes into the building, which had been used as a bunker, and hears the drone of insects. he looks down and realizes that he’s standing “in a pool of blood specked with the flies” (40). he dashes out of the building, wipes off his boots, and struggles to regain his composure. “i want to be a brave warrior,” he reminds himself, and to do so, he must “[n]ever look back… yet there is an urge to draw this” (41). but he and his men move on. later, they find a recently abandoned command post, and echohawk finds a drafting table. he stuffs several sheets of drawing paper and pencils into his shirt as they move through (69). the urge to record, the urge to capture the aesthetic and emotional viscera of this terrible and alien experience, and the urge to kill—to be a warrior—drive this narrative forward. for the reader, however, it is echohawk’s artistic vision that renders his experiences uniquely disturbing, uniquely gripping. at one point, echohawk shoots an enemy machine gunner (it’s not specified whether the man fights for the italian or german army). turning to confront the enemy’s assistant gunner, echohawk notes this new man has a gruesome flap of his ear hanging in his face; he also notices that the assistant gunner “has a fresh haircut with sideburns shaved” (95). the intimacy of such a remark—and the vulnerability of that image, the raw pink skin of a new shave under the blood and grime of a severed ear—is haunting. in addition to artistic language, drawing fire contains reproductions of many of echohawk’s drawings; the book is worth the purchase for these astonishing works alone. even more than offering an artist’s perspective of a particularly brutal ground invasion, drawing fire explores the war through the eyes of indigenous americans. echohawk points out that their original division insignia was the swastika; it was changed to the thunderbird because of nazi german appropriation of the swastika (10). the degradation of such an ancient and meaningful symbol is not just a point of interest but a poignant reminder of how little time elapsed between the genocidal push against plains nations and the service of plains nations citizens in the u.s. armed forces. at one point, echohawk talks about a pawnee tradition in which the leader of a war party recites a poem of inspiration, as his father had told him before he left. he recalls that his grandfather had given those same words to his father before he served in world transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 287 war i; as a young warrior, echohawk’s grandfather had heard the same recitation “on the great plains” (46). in the same way that beauty and horror collide in the image of the swastika, so much history is packed into these brief glimpses of echohawk’s relationships to the pawnee nation and to the united states. there are moments of raw honesty, but a careful reader will also note where echohawk, patriot and warrior, chooses silence. he mentions, but does not explain, the oklahoma allotment system (43), just as he brushes over the complicated history between the pawnee on the one hand and the cheyenne and arapahoe on the other. at one point, missing the pawnee powwow, echohawk and his fellow native american soldiers recite stories they have heard from different elders about their elders’ war stories. echohawk recalls a pawnee man who was awarded the congressional medal of honor during the conflict on the plains (138). the pawnee scouts worked with the u.s. federal forces, while others’ elders would have been fighting against them. yet these differences are erased, subsumed by the later shared history that forced their people to oklahoma. he demonstrates common cause, affinity, and deep friendship with his cheyenne and arapahoe fellow service members and elides their complicated history between enmity and an alliance of loss. a patriot who relays his patrilineal heritage of war—fighting for the u.s. and against—he declines to talk about the invisible time period between the latter and the former. another intriguingly light touch appears in echohawk’s characterization of the 45th infantry division. at one point, echohawk calls the 45th a group of “cowboys, oilfield roughnecks, sunup-to-sundown farmers, and top-notch boxers” mustered to federal service, hardy and “good ol’ boys at heart” (143). as evidence, he recalls a night when they were stationed in boston, in 1942 (before deploying to sicily). echohawk describes how “we” got passes into town for a night out, although in the rest of the narrative he carefully avoids the personal pronoun so that the reader is uncertain what, if any, role echohawk himself played in the events. in a bar called the silver dollar, a group of tall men from the company—echohawk describes exemplars as “a 6’4” sioux indian, another a 6’6” pawnee”—walk into the bar. a woman customer screams that there are “‘indi-yans!’” and a fight breaks out between cops, mps, civilians, and the service members. he describes the “lively” fight, but also mentions that a nightclub “caught fire” and several people died that night. he is here referring to the coconut grove fire, in which nearly five hundred people perished. concluding that abruptly violent story, he says that the 45th was indeed a “rough bunch” (143). from the narrative framing of the story, echohawk seems to indicate that the rowdy bar fight he and his companions engaged in was somehow linked to the deadly grove fire, although this does not lydia cooper review of drawing fire 288 historically seem to be the case. it is unclear what his purpose is in this moment, unless it is to cement in his readers’ minds the relatively less violent, racially-motivated conflict in which he was embroiled with the far more violent accidental fire, to suggest the complexity of indigenous experience in wartime. there is evidence throughout his narrative that echohawk is crafting a particular image of himself as a warrior. he is careful to flavor scenes of combat with references to fear, to a desire to be brave—to the human attributes of war. yet depictions of his own and other american troops’ actions in battle are never depicted with brutality and savagery. he even, for the most part, avoids using slurs military personnel were encouraged to use for enemy combatants. one of the few times in which the narrator refers to german soldiers as “krauts” comes after echohawk finds the remains of a second lieutenant he knew (150). shortly after this scene, echohawk finds one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the memoir—a soldier from c company and a part-choctaw medic still in the process of unwinding bandages to treat him, both dead and slumped where they sit. german soldiers had shot down at them from a half-track with machine pistols. “a rage churns” in echohawk as he witnesses this scene (156); his sketch of the scene is fantastically rendered, simple and devastating (155). then, after he is wounded near anzio, he survives the night while german soldiers ransack the belongings of his fallen companions; the next morning, crawling out to the road, he thinks “damn krauthead bastards” (204). this is an understandable rage. almost no other indications of rage, fury, anger, or any other form of violent emotion color his depictions of combat. instead, echohawk’s primary mode of communicating interpersonal interaction is humor. even in cases where the reader might detect a hint of anger, echohawk meticulously conveys it with a generous coating of sly fun or witty repartee. in response to an annoying (white) grunt who marvels to echohawk that “indians” are a “‘kinda warrior-soldier,’” echohawk replies dryly that he just “‘shake[s] with patriotism’” (43). later, the battalion medic, medicine man, commends their battalion for a successful night raid, but does so mocking u.s. cinematic depictions of american indians. he describes how, in the movies, they never fight at night, but “‘you ‘skins did all right!’”— particularly considering they weren’t in need of a shave, “‘wearing a sioux war bonnet, kiowa war shirt, cheyenne leggings, cherokee moccasins, and navajo jewelry’” as hollywood stereotypes, usually performed by white actors, suggest (86). in this scene, the men guffaw, a release from the tension of the day at the expense of white american stereotypes. in another scene, last arrow (potawatomi) and san antone (comanche) fake an attempted scalping to scare a german prisoner, both exposing transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 289 pervasive racist stereotypes and providing a moment of levity at the expense of a german captive, but furthering u.s. military aims (166-7). as combat intensifies, echohawk’s narrative moves more swiftly through time. in late 1943, he is wounded and sent to the 33rd general hospital in north africa. he goes awol in order to return to combat in italy (185). shortly afterwards, he returns to active duty—just in time for the assault on anzio, an important target on the way to rome. anzio, echohawk says, is “an inferno” (187). during an all-out attack on “the factory” outside anzio, echohawk and eleven others are gunned down. “[w]e have been slaughtered,” he says, with characteristic brevity and pathos (199). last arrow is killed in this onslaught, and the death of his close friend haunts the remainder of the narrative. from anzio, echohawk spends most of the rest of the campaign in a military hospital, so he offers little more than a historical overview of the offensive from the time between february 16th and may 23rd, 1944. he concludes his memoir with a brief homecoming scene. furloughed in 1944, echohawk is greeted in oklahoma with a ceremony in which he and two other pawnee thunderbirds are given a warrior’s song. this scene, like the summarized narrative about the end of the campaign, is in the past tense. he concludes his memoir with the image of the thunderbirds saluting an american flag, a flashback to bayonet charges in sicily and italy, and the “sweet call of a bobwhite” (215). the emotional vibrancy of this last scene characterizes the book as a whole. it is short, meticulously detailed about combat experience, but brief and suggestive in its treatment of its characters. this memoir would be enhanced by being read alongside other materials that offer historical context and draw out its evocative hints and references. on its own, drawing fire entertains and inspires. and readers may learn a little along the way. at the very least, it is a gift to know that this book, recounting the memoirs of a thunderbird and offering several of echohawk’s stunning drawings, has made its way to our hands. lydia cooper, creighton university microsoft word 920-article text-4896-1-11-20200607.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 19 the poetry of ralph salisbury: syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision eleanor berry the opening poem of ralph salisbury’s rainbows of stone, published in the first year of the present century, articulates and embodies a central theme of his poetry—the interconnection and inter-relatedness of all creatures, times, things. it is, as its title puts it, “a declaration, not of independence” (3).1 this “declaration” opens conversationally, but the seemingly casual tone quickly turns devastatingly ironic: apparently i’m mom’s immaculately-conceived irish-american son, because, social-security time come, my cherokee dad could not prove he’d been born. he could pay taxes, though, financing troops, who’d conquered our land, … the conversational style soon shifts into something hardly sayable. the bulk of the poem consists of two long, curiously complex sentences. here is the first: eluding recreational killers’ calendar’s enforcers, while hunting my family’s food, i thought what the hunted think, so that i ate, not only meat but the days of wild animals fed by the days of seeds, themselves eating earth’s aeons of lives, fed by the sun, rising and falling, as quail, hurtling through sky, eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 20 fell, from gun-powder, come— as the first americans came— from asia. eased into the poem by the conversational style of the opening, readers may stumble repeatedly as they attempt to negotiate the syntax of this sentence. the subject is deferred by two participial phrases, one nested with the other—“eluding … while hunting…” the object of the first participle is modified by two possessives, “killers’ calendar’s,” one likewise nested within the other. this is difficult to process—and made more so by the dense texture of sound repetition. the poet is obstructing readers’ movement through the poem, slowing us down, and we would do well to attend not only to his words but to his constructions and to what these constructions, by their very nature, convey. deferral of a subject by modifiers signals that the subject cannot be understood apart from particular circumstances. nesting of elements emblematizes the containment of one thing within another. both of these features together suggest that nothing is simple, nothing is unto itself. once we reach the subject, “i,” the predicate, “thought what the hunted think,” follows immediately in the same line, but then the sentence is extended by a result clause, “so that i ate …,” which is itself extended by multiple nested modifiers of the verb’s object: the days of wild animals fed by the days of seeds, themselves eating earth’s aeons of lives, fed by the sun, rising and falling, as quail, […] transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 21 hurtling through sky, […] fell, from gun-powder, come— as the first americans came— from asia. each modifier is itself modified through ten layers of elaboration, and each of the last two modifiers is interrupted by an internal modifier. this structure is a veritable embodiment of dependence. after this breathand brain-taxing sentence, the syntax briefly relaxes into a simple clause with a compound predicate and minimal modification—until a “but” launches a second independent clause: but, with this hand, with which i write, i dug, my sixteenth summer, a winter’s supply of yams out of hard, battlefield clay, dug for my father’s mother, who— abandoned by her husband—raised, alone, a mixed-blood family and raised—her tongue spading air— ancestors, a winter’s supply or more. (3-4). the crucial information is arrived at only by digging down through layers of syntax. the clause is repeatedly interrupted by modifiers of various types—prepositional phrase, relative clause, adverbial phrase, participial phrase, absolute construction. the poet’s paternal grandmother makes her appearance only as the object of a prepositional phrase, but this deeply subordinate grammatical element becomes the tail that wags the dog of the clause. the grandmother’s agency asserts itself as forcefully and surprisingly for readers of the poem as it evidently did for the 16-year-old future poet. the main clause elements are simple: “i dug … a winter’s supply of yams out of hard, eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 22 battlefield clay…” but that is not all there was to it. coming into the knowledge of his cherokee ancestry was not simple for this young man, and the syntax the mature poet has found to convey that experience embodies its complexity. such use of syntax is pervasive in rainbows of stone, but it was already a significant element of salisbury’s poetry two and even three decades earlier. in pointing at the rainbow (1980), a one-sentence poem, “family stories and the one not told,” deploys several of the poet’s characteristic constructions to tell of his family’s concealment and his own “spading” up of one previously unacknowledged native american ancestor (light from a bullet hole 29). “our irish mother’s tongue would stitch / wool glowing needles of the wood stove wove,” the poem-sentence begins, straightforwardly enough in the first line but already obstructing our parsing in the second. the monosyllabic noun “wool” is followed, without any relative pronoun, by a relative clause with a long noun phrase as subject of the monosyllabic verb “wove,” and the dense weave of assonance, alliteration, and internal rhyme not only imitates what it describes but also makes the underlying syntactic structure harder to discern. we are prepared for a poem of dense entanglements. the first independent clause is then followed by a second: “and there was bread and milk hunger made us / lovingly recite[.]” again a straightforward assertion is complicated by a relative clause following the complement without a relative pronoun. the complexity then deepens, as the sentence is extended by a subordinate temporal clause, interrupted by another contact relative clause, then further extended by a series of absolute constructions. lineation and syntax come into phase at the end of the ninth line, and there, except for a telltale comma, the poem seems momentarily complete: while the rattle of fast freights, empty bottles recalled, sped dad transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 23 north, his pipe smoke tethering in our ears great grandpa’s mules no yankee patrol could tell from grime, but the absolute construction conjuring an ancestor-subject of the father’s family stories is then followed by another, conjuring another ancestor, this one not present in those stories: “great grandmother locked / behind a tobacco-browned stockade, / to keep the word ‘colored’ from her kin[.]” the poem doesn’t let us stop here, even momentarily. instead, it launches, with the monosyllable “one,” following “kin” at the end of its line, a long relative clause: … one of whom would spade with his tongue enough earth out of his brain to raise her coffin to blaze like a meteor, though the sentence is again potentially complete at a line-ending, the poem continues past that boundary to enact, in a final absolute construction, what the lines just quoted have described: her cherokee-shawnee braid loosed at last to spread black sunshine on a snow horizon. the characteristic usages of salisbury’s poetic syntax seem to have emerged as means for carrying out the moral work of recovering suppressed family and cultural history. there are precedents for doing such work in poetry and for developing a syntactical style peculiarly fitted to do it. an important one can be found in the work of robert lowell, who was salisbury’s teacher at the university of iowa. salisbury received his mfa from iowa in 1951, and lowell taught there from 1950 to 1953. at that time, lowell was between the pulitzer prize-winning lord weary’s castle and the eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 24 breakthrough life studies, which would win the national book award and become a classic of what would be known as confessional poetry. he was working on the long dramatic narrative “the mills of the kavanaughs,” continuing to write a taut metrical verse while on the brink of shifting into a looser, but still densely textured nonor quasi-metrical verse (mariani 190-91). in a 1985 interview, salisbury recalls that he had started out writing free verse, but then i began studying with robert lowell, and he was doing end rhyme patterned verse. for me this probably connected with having grown up hearing my father sing old kentucky hill country songs which were end rhyme patterned. anyway, i started writing end rhyme patterned poems (schöler 31). it is hard to imagine a greater cultural distance than that between this teacher, a boston catholic patrician co, and this student, an irish-cherokee veteran raised in rural poverty. that the young salisbury would associate lowell’s metrics in lord weary’s castle and the mills of the kavanaughs with “old kentucky hill country songs” is a measure of that distance. in the 1985 interview, salisbury implies that lowell’s influence on his work was limited to versification: gradually i moved all the way back to free verse because it was the natural way for me to grow, but i still value my imitation lowell period, because it gave me some insights into musicality (schöler 31). perhaps, though, the term “musicality,” as salisbury uses it here, should be interpreted more broadly. i suspect that imitating lowell gave the young poet a sense of the possibilities of non-standard syntactical structures, together with dense sound textures, and of their value for conveying an ethical vision otherwise all but inarticulable. in passages from “the mills of the kavanaughs,” like the following, supposed to be spoken by the character anne kavanaugh to her dead husband, salisbury might well have seen how transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 25 syntax could embody complexities of heritage and history. i have boldfaced the conjunctions and relative pronouns launching the clauses that repeatedly extend the sentence at deeper and deeper levels of subordination. “our people had kept up their herring weirs, their rum and logging grants two hundred years, when cousin franklin pierce was president— almost three hundred, harry, when you sent his signed engraving sailing on your kite above the gable, where your mother’s light, a daylight bulb in tortoise talons, pipped the bull-mad june-bugs on the manuscript that she was typing to redeem our mills from harding’s taxes, and we lost our means of drawing pulp and water from those hills above the saco, where our tenants drilled abnaki partisans for charles the first, and seated our republicans, while hearst and yellow paper fed the moose that swilled our spawning ponds for weeds like spinach greens (lowell 82). the sentence refuses to end until it has gathered into itself all the actions and situations, occurring at different times in the past, that the speaker feels to have bearing on the present. besides lowell, there is another writer whose work may have shown salisbury possibilities for making syntax a vehicle for embodying the bearing of ancestors’ lives and historical events on the present. william faulkner’s late novel requiem for a nun was published in 1951, the year salisbury received his mfa degree. there he may have read the now-famous declaration, “the past is never dead. it isn’t even past” (46). there and in faulkner’s novels and stories of the previous two decades, salisbury may well have read and contemplated the power of the extraordinary, page-long sentences eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 26 in which are interleaved events of different eras, including “the simple dispossession of indians,” the building of the courthouse, and the inexorable development of the town: the hands, the prehensile fingers clawing dragging lightward out of the disappearing wilderness year by year as up from the bottom of the receding sea, the broad rich fecund burgeoning fields, pushing thrusting each year further and further back the wilderness and its denizens—the wild bear and deer and turkey, and the wild men (or not so wild any more, familiar now, harmless now, just obsolete: anachronism out of an old dead time and a dead age; regrettable of course, even actually regretted by the old men, fiercely as old doctor habersharn did, and with less fire but still as irreconcilable and stubborn as old alec holston and a few others were still doing, until in a few more years the last of them would have passed and vanished in their turn too, obsolescent too: because this was a white man's land; that was its fate, or not even fate but destiny, its high destiny in the roster of the earth)—the veins, arteries, lifeand pulse-stream along which would flow the aggrandisement of harvest: the gold: the cotton and the grain (faulkner 5; 25-6). reading such sentences (the passage above constitutes no more than about a third of the sentence from which it is drawn), he may well have been struck by the possibility of forging a syntax capable of embodying the dispossession of native americans, the obsolescing of “wild men,” from the point of view of a descendant of those dispossessed and rendered obsolete. salisbury was using syntax for such complex, morally charged articulations at least as early as 1972, when his first collection, ghost grapefruit, was published. “boyhood incident recollected in tranquility” is a confession of a crime and an unfolding of the retrospectively recognized nature of that crime (light from a bullet hole 16). the poem runs for 19 irregular-length lines before it reaches a period. before transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 27 that, major syntactical boundaries are marked by em-dashes and colons, punctuation that signals not only reaching a boundary but continuing beyond it. the first three lines deliver a complete independent clause, but with the normal order of clause elements inverted and with the object disproportionately elaborated: “a snake with the head and foreflippers of a frog, / a frog with enormous snake stern—a boy / at the brink of eden stoned[.]” reading, we, like the boy, are first confronted with the image of the apparent snake-frog in all its monstrosity. syntactical expectation is then for a verb, with the elaborate noun phrases as its subject. but the verb is deferred; another and contrastingly unelaborated noun phrase intervenes: “a boy.” thus, the syntactical and phenomenal monstrosity is not to be the subject of the still-awaited verb, but its object. and then the verb is further deferred by an adverbial phrase, “at the brink of eden,” lifting the scene to the level of myth and conveying that the anticipated action will be determinative, will constitute a fall into knowledge. so long deferred, the single monosyllabic verb, “stoned,” has all the force of the action it names. deferral of clause subjects and/or verbs is a common usage in salisbury’s poetry, and it does far more than enhance the textural interest of language. it enables readers to experience aspects of the meaning viscerally as well as cognitively. here, the long-deferred verb is followed by a dash and a line-break, marking an end that is also, crucially, a precipitant of further development—which will turn out to be one of understanding. through the syntax of the rest of the poem, we, as readers, participate in the emergence of that understanding. understanding is developed through an attempt to re-see from different perspectives and, accordingly, to re-name, what the boy saw and to comprehend the action he took in response to the sight. this process is enacted by the syntax. the fourth line of the poem gives the first re-naming: “stephen-saint—snake-frog—god.” who or what was stoned? stephen, who was martyred by stoning and made a saint. eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 28 the awkward compound “stephen-saint” suggests a peculiar composite being, as does, of course, the compound “snake-frog.” following another dash in the same line, “god” at first seems another name for the victim of the stoning, but as we round to the next line, we’re led to re-interpret it as the subject of the verb “saw.” god’s vision of the victim is described as one might an artist’s depiction of a saint: “a halo of red rim / stretched jaws, sash black-speckled green and whitish middle.” that is one version. the next line introduces another version, another clause: “human scientist in that instant verified:..” the object of “verified” extends over the remaining 12 lines of the poem, beginning with a string of three noun phrases, the last of which is elaborated by a relative clause and then extended by an absolute construction, containing a gerund that itself is followed by a string of three more noun phrases as its object, the last again elaborated. in its multiple extensions and elaborations, the syntax embodies the monstrosity, the monstrousness, of what the words seek to name. here is the whole heavily right-branching clause, formatted to show the layers of subordination: human scientist in that instant verified: murder of fellow fauna two-fold, a hunt without appetite blessed with success, empty belly balked by a rock, that rules so much by ignorance and monstrous fear of what seemed monstrous … boy-man, man-woman in dread of the hand’s doing, cringing from knowing, simply: the size of a snake’s mouth, the size of a frog’s waist, the appetite of the world’s meat so much more than the mouth can ever encompass although compelled by emptiness to try transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 29 as in the later “family stories and one not told” and the much later “a declaration, not of independence,” the crucial recognition is arrived at only in a deeply subordinate syntactical element. it is there that, through reading and parsing, we arrive at the knowledge the boy came to through the act of stoning and the reflection it occasioned. in the 1985 interview, when asked about his use of enjambment, salisbury spoke of it as helping to give “a sense of voice driving at something, speaking, or with inner voice thinking, very passionately and intensely” (schöler 31). it is not so much occasional instances of enjambment as it is the whole syntactical style of his poetry that creates the sense of an “inner voice thinking, very passionately and intensely.” the poem “out of the rusty teeth,” published a couple of years before that interview, in the collection going to the water: poems from a cherokee heritage, invites readers to follow, through a syntax of piled-on appositives and absolute constructions, a train of impassioned thought. trigger for this urgent meditation is a quoted phrase, “’trapped in dark corridor,’” which opens the poem and is repeated twice in the succeeding lines’ associative reflections (light from a bullet hole 43-4). the thinking recorded in, and enacted by, the poem proceeds by fits and starts, through passages both separated and connected by dashes. the poet is considering whether, and, if so, how, the phrase “trapped in dark corridor” might apply to him. the syntax is dominated by absolute constructions—most free-floating, apart from any associated full predication—and by noun phrases in apposition to one another—again mostly free-floating fragments. in such a syntax, actions are conveyed as compact with, folded into, states of being: events are never over, but embodied or, perhaps more accurately, encysted. these encysted events insist on being recognized, as the phrase “trapped in dark corridor” insistently repeats itself in the poet’s mind. eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 30 so who and what is he that this phrase should concern him? there is the matter, laid out in the poem’s first verse paragraph, of his name—“family name / from earldom and bishopric near stonehenge, sun/ worshipers built”—and his face—“my face like that / of the late nineteenth century / ‘lesser star’ cherokee shaman herr olbrechts captioned ‘j’”—and of their incongruous association.2 such a name with such a face, such clashing yet peculiarly related inheritances (the “earldom and bishopric” of the poet’s family name is located “near stonehenge, sun/ worshipers built,” as the “cherokee shaman” whose facial features he shares was presumably, in a phrase that appears later in the poem, “a new world sun/ worshiper”), might indeed constitute a sort of entrapment in history’s “dark corridor.” “trapped in dark corridor,” the poem repeats at the beginning of its second verse paragraph. now, though, the poet refutes the implication that the phrase applies to him. appropriately, he does so in the only full independent clauses in the poem: but my steel traps caught fur coats for the rich for years, and all i am caught by, really, just now, is time and the urge to leave a few words other than my names carved in stone—… even in the defiant assertions of these two coordinate independent clauses, however, the matter of the poet’s name insistently comes up again, and the second clause (more specifically, a post-modifier of its object) is extended by a linked pair of absolute constructions that spell out its meaning—the meaning not only of his family name, but also of his given one: “the last meaning ‘salt town’, / ‘wise wolf’ the first, in languages mostly lost—[.]” transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 31 with its first line—“‘wise wolf salt town’—” the third verse paragraph picks up on the names in their recovered earlier meanings, then, in a pair of appositional noun phrases, each modified by a relative clause, riffs on the surname “salt town,” derived (as the poem’s opening passage has told us) from an english “earldom and bishopric,” in terms of the poet’s personal history and present stance: lord salt town who salted down bloody pelts, to save them from spring sun— “the bishop of salt town” who preaches the saving of skins and words, words, words, words, like “trapped in dark corridor”— with the object of the prepositional phrase that ends this verse paragraph, we are back to the phrase that has set the poem in motion. in this third utterance, the phrase conjures a vision, articulated in two parallel absolute constructions, of christian soldiers and cherokee warriors confronting one another by the light of tapers and torches in what is evidently a dark, narrow space: tall tapers throwing my cruciform shadow onto onrushing brilliantly emblazoned cherokee priest-robes and naked muscles red-painted for war, pine torches hurling my cherokee foetal death-curl silhouette onto crosses on armor advancing to expunge a new world sun worshiper, his name on three children, less durable than stone, … in this vision, the poet-speaker casts two shadows, a cruciform one onto cherokee garments and bodies, a fetus-shaped one onto christian soldiers’ armor, as the two opposed groups advance toward each other. in this confrontation where a pagan native american is defeated, his name expunged, the poet’s younger self fights on eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 32 both sides, as the next two lines make explicit in another absolute construction: “a battle of shadows joined / in the skull of a boy…” the poem does not end with this articulation, in fitting syntactical form, of past violence inflicted and suffered by ones “trapped in dark corridor” as replayed in the mind of a boy who would become its poet-author. instead, it continues, through an extended relative clause, to render the actions of the boy, himself a trapper: … who ran on the sun on snow, frost white as whiskers of weasels in his nostrils, to take, out of the rusty teeth of his traps, common brown mink and, one time, from the gleaming jaws of a dream, a glittering black glory the glittering heavens may not ever flesh again. from the poetry of his earliest collections to that of his most recent, salisbury, perhaps spurred by lowell’s and faulkner’s examples, shapes syntax into an adequate vehicle for conveying the presence of past violence and the speaker’s at least partial complicity in it. the poem “canyon de chelly,” set in the anasazi ruins at that site, is a later example of this, included in rainbows of stone. like the early “family stories…,” it is a one-sentence poem. the poem-sentence opens with a locative clause that identifies the setting in terms of two past instances of violence against its navajo inhabitants: where americans, in the name of civilization, and conquistadors, in the name of the virgin, massacred navajo braves in the womb… (48) only after establishing this context does the poet name the subject of his sentence— “anasazi walls”—and then he interrupts the subject-verb-object sequence, first with a transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 33 participial phrase modifying the subject, then with an adverbial clause modifying the verb. both modifiers defer anticipated sentence elements with references to the site’s heritage of violence from outsiders: … anasazi walls, echoing centuries ago-forgotten athabascan invasion, repeat and repeat, as if to learn by heart— for future warning or welcome— only then is the deferred object named—“footbeats”—the noun preceded and followed by modifiers that associate it with both recent and remote instances of nations’ violence against other nations: “japanese-shod footbeats of / an irish-englishcherokee survivor of nuclear war[.]” thus, halfway through the poem-sentence, in the object of a prepositional phrase modifying the object of the main clause’s verb, we arrive at the principal focus of the poet’s concern here—himself, with his particular heritage and personal involvement in history. the second half of the poem elaborates on that heritage and involvement through two phrases in apposition, both heavy with modifiers. a reformatting of the lines shows the layers of grammatical subordination: a brother, in prayer, in blood and in hours lived learning the generations of brick upon brick set about kiva, kitchens and beds, involuntary countryman of those invading […] vietnam this time, and of “j.w. conway … santa fe … 1873,” boast carved into wall surviving as a confession which could have been mine eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 34 more times than one, that being is not belonging characteristically, the poem’s crucial moral recognition appears only in a deeply subordinated syntactical element of a sentence repeatedly extended beyond where it is potentially complete. it then continues for another two lines—an absolute construction that constitutes an ironic mini-coda: “the home he desecrated / one victor’s grave stone.” part of the work done by the syntax of salisbury’s poetry is to articulate relationships between visually similar phenomena from different realms. the poet’s visual imagination brings them together, and his moral intelligence makes connections between them. there are several instances of this in the poems examined above. sometimes they contribute to the poem’s texture; sometimes they are central to its structure. “wild goose, eaten, and owl, knitted to hang on wall,” a poem in salisbury’s 2006 collection war in the genes, is one that takes shape from a series of yokings (or, to borrow the poem’s principal image, knittings) together of phenomena normally regarded as unrelated (42). beginning with a metaphor conveyed by an appositive—“gray petal, soon to fall from crimson dawn, / a wild goose”—the poem proceeds through three sentences broken over five line-groups to connect the goose, in its hunger and in its “migrant’s flight,” to the poet-speaker; in its ceaselessly moving wings, to the speaker’s mother, with her ceaselessly moving knitter’s fingers; and, in its visual appearance as a petal against a contrasting background of sky, to blossoms against a contrasting background of branch in the wall-hanging that the mother has knitted. as in the early “boyhood incident recollected in tranquility,” the opening line and a half of the poem present a striking visual image of conjunction. here, the conjunction is metaphorical and syntactically conveyed by apposition. the basis of the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 35 connection between petal and goose seems purely a matter of visual resemblance. however, as the clause continues over the rest of the opening four lines, and as then the compound-complex sentence extends through a second independent clause in the second, longer line-group, a dense weave of more conceptual connections is created. … a wild goose, hearing me imitate a call to join a gaggle of strangers for dinner is met by flocks of shot, and life, which flew thousands of miles through air, shared with words, stills between teeth, retriever, resolute as poet, struggling against the current to bring the dead back to the living’s need. the gray-petal goose is now understood as a fellow creature, impelled by loneliness and hunger “to join a gaggle of strangers for dinner.” the retriever that swims against the current to bring the shot goose to the hungry human trickster-shooter-poet is conceived as doing work equivalent to the poet’s—“to bring the dead / back to the living’s need.” wild, domesticated, and human are conjoined by shared needs and traits. these morally significant connections emerge gradually through layers of syntactic modification, becoming fully apparent only through the absolute construction, “retriever, … struggling … to bring the dead / back to living’s need,” which ends the long sentence. this syntax both embodies the complexities of connection that it articulates and takes readers through a correspondingly complex process of parsing to grasp them. the relatively short sentence that forms the group of three lines in the middle of the poem offers readers a bit of rest as the poet delivers a somewhat self-deprecating and jocular reprise of the difficult articulation just made: “no phoenix flight of trilling eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 36 syllables, / my feeding-call’s honks lured meat / for mother to cook, for our family to eat.” “mother,” introduced in the role of family cook, is no sooner mentioned than, in the poem’s final sentence, shown to have been active in other ways—ways that connect her to the migrant goose with its “ceaseless … wings.” her poet son, the poem’s speaker, in his poem-making activity, is connected to both the mother who knitted and the goose whose flight was directed toward its kind’s warm wintering grounds. all these connections are articulated in a single sentence extending over a seven-line group and a final couplet. her fingers, as ceaseless as wings seeking sufficient summer, wove red yarn into blossoms on a bough an owl’s black prey-piercing claws above me clutch, while, stark winter years to endure, i try to make my pen knit another migrant’s flight, warm gulf, ancestors’ nesting place, a future to hope for, though far. interposed between the subject, “her fingers,” and the predicate, “wove …,” is the long adjectival phrase implicitly linking her to the goose migrating south for the winter. her weaving has produced a work of art, a wall-hanging showing red “blossoms on a bough an owl’s black / prey-piercing claws above me clutch.” the visual image of red knitted flowers on a bough recalls the image of the goose as a gray petal against a crimson sky that opened the poem. the knitted owl’s “prey-piercing claws” recall the retriever’s teeth between which the shot goose stilled. the strained syntax—a contact relative clause with a heavily premodified subject and a preposed adverbial phrase delaying its monosyllabic predicate—slows reading and makes these details obtrude. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 37 the sentence, potentially complete, is then extended by a temporal clause, whose subject, “i,” is deferred by an adverbial infinitive phrase with inverted word order (the object placed before the verb). with his mother’s woven work hanging on the wall above his head, the poet-speaker, now in the “winter years” of his life, seeks to do his own knitting with words, to make with words his own “migrant’s flight.” with that phrase, the sentence is again potentially complete, but again it is extended, this time after a line-group break and with an absolute construction. with the words of this final couplet and this final sentence element, the poet conjures the hoped for destination of his flight—his “ancestors’ nesting place”—and completes the poem’s web of connections. over the long span of his writing career, ralph salisbury has employed in his poetry a distinctive syntactical style that serves the essential function of conveying his moral vision. through nesting of possessives and relative clauses, he represents the containment of one thing within another, often its opposite. through the use of absolute constructions rather than full subordinate clauses, he gives a sense of the actions they designate as entailed in, rather than separate from, the fully predicated action(s) of the sentence. through apposition as a means of presenting metaphor, he equalizes the prominence of the items linked. through omission of a relative pronoun before relative clauses, he promotes the contents of the relative clause to near equivalence with that of the clause modified. through reduction of the copula to an easy-to-miss sibilant, he brings subject and complement close to parity. through repeated deferral of anticipated sentence elements, he intimates how much is bound up with, and contributive to, what each deferred element presents. through all of these usages in combination, he embodies the interrelatedness and interdependence of all earth’s peoples and creatures, alive and dead, and all the elements of their environment. eleanor berry “syntax as vehicle for conveying an ethical vision” 38 notes 1 work by ralph salisbury used by permission of the literary estate of ralph salisbury. copyright © 2020 by the literary estate of ralph salisbury. all rights reserved. no reproduction without permission of the estate. 2 “herr olbrechts” is frans olbrechts, a belgian-born ethnographer who studied under franz boas at columbia and in the 1920s did field work among the cherokee. works cited faulkner, william. requiem for a nun. 1950. vintage books, 2011. lowell, robert. lord weary’s castle; and the mills of the kavanaughs. harcourt, brace & world, 1951. mariani, paul. lost puritan: a life of robert lowell. w. w. norton, 1994. salisbury, ralph. ghost grapefruit and other poems. ithaca house, 1972. ---. light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected, 1950-2008. silverfish review press, 2009. ---. rainbows of stone. university of arizona press, 2000. ---. war in the genes. cherry grove collections, 2006. schöler, bo. “‘… i would save the cat.’ an interview with ralph salisbury.” american studies in scandinavia, vol. 17, no. 1, 1985, pp. 27-34. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 90 poetry, activism, and queer indigenous imaginative landscapes: conversations with janice gould lisa tatonetti “i’ve always felt that my memory of california, my imaginative landscape, is not entirely my own but is embedded in the memory of many tribal people, my own tribe, the koyangk’auwi maidu, in the other small nations of indian people who inhabited california before it was ever named and was still turtle island.”—janice gould1 koyoonk’auwi writer and scholar janice gould (1949-2019) was born in san diego, grew up in berkeley, california, and earned her ba and ma from the university of california, berkeley and her phd from the university of new mexico.2 a poet, essayist, musician, photographer, teacher, and theorist—to name just a few of her accomplishments and interests—gould, though she might seem quiet or introspective at first meeting, was a force to be reckoned with. her passing on june 28, 2019 of pancreatic cancer was a significant loss, first to her family—her longtime partner, mimi wheatfield, her two sisters, her nephews, and mimi’s son and granddaughter—then to her many friends and her aikido community, and, finally, as i’ll speak more about here, to the larger literary community. gould was an important voice in queer indigenous writing and is part of a generation of artists who sowed the seeds for the incredible blossoming of twospirit/queer indigenous writing and theory in the twenty-first century. together with authors and friends like beth brant (bay of quinte mohawk, 1941-2015), chrystos lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 91 (menominee, b. 1946), paula gunn allen (laguna pueblo, sioux, lebanese american, 1939-2008), vikki sears (cherokee, 1941-1999), and maurice kenny (non-citizen mohawk, 1929-2016), gould was part of the first wave of indigenous writers to openly embrace sexual diversity and to depict queer or two-spirit indigenous people as lynchpins of their communities. as a california native person, gould was a product of the dislocations and incredible challenges that face indigenous people in this region in the wake of attempted genocide. gould engaged her connections to and dislocations from her koyoonk’auwi heritage most deliberately in her first three poetry collections—beneath my heart (1990), earthquake weather (1996), and doubters and dreamers (2011). these texts address ongoing processes of identifications, practices, and locales that elsewhere i have argued we might term indigenous assemblages.3 such mobile and generative sites coalesce around the shifting nature of events, experiences, and perception, around the known and unknown. and such embodied movements, as gould speaks of in these interview exchanges, mark the texture of her life as the daughter of a white father and a koyoonk’auwi mother who was taken from her family after her mother’s death and placed in an informal adoption arrangement that led to her being raised by three white sisters from kansas. in gould’s second collection, earthquake weather, she explains that her mother, vivian beatty, was born in beldon, california to harry and helen (nellie) beatty, both mixed-blood koyoonk’auwi people living in what historically would have been their nation’s territory.4 when her mother died of cancer, vivian was subsequently adopted by beatrice, henrietta, and clara lane, three sisters living in the san francisco bay area. gould’s preface tells the story of her family’s move from san diego to berkeley when she was nine. in this relocation to the house of her mother’s adoptive family, to use her words, “berkeley’s proximity to the sierra nevada and the small town of belden, on the transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 92 feather river, where my mother, vivian beatty, was born in 1914” functioned as a catalyst that led her to become “firmly attached and sensitive to my california indian, or konkow heritage” (viii). gould’s family took frequent trips back to these regions and, while she overtly acknowledges her lack of specific cultural knowledge, as we’ll see in the following interview, she also speaks about the embodied connection she felt to the landscapes that were the home of her indigenous relatives and ancestors. gould’s somatic responses suggest that there are connections between humans and the other-than-human world that exist before and beyond settler colonial confines and the psychic impacts of colonial violence. as another indigenous californian writer, deborah miranda (ohlone-costanoan esselen/chumash) argues, the dynamic restructuring of often-jagged cultural shards into what she terms a “mosaic,” includes the need to acknowledge, rather than merely shunt aside, the realities of cultural fragmentations in many indigenous california histories. in bad indians: a tribal memoir, miranda explains, “we’ve lost our language, our lands, our religion, our literature (stories and song). none of these things are recuperable, no matter how hard we work” (136). she continues, “i’m not whole. and yet, i am whole. what the hell! i’m a whole mosaic. deal with it, world. white and indian, and not only that, but indian and reinventing myself in this post-colonial art project i’ve inherited” (136). i want to suggest then that as we consider gould within a california native context, we keep in mind the active processes of indigenous assemblage, the power of memory and physical return, and the frank realities and aftermaths of attempted genocide. *** as our interview exchanges show, gould is a poet interested in craft and contemplation. her newest collection, seed (2019), highlights this attention to lyric detail and, at times, lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 93 formal patterns of meter. in terms of thinking across her entire body of work, gould’s books include the aforementioned beneath my heart, earthquake weather, and doubters and dreamers, together with the force of gratitude (2017) and seed. furthermore, along with publishing extensively in anthologies and journals, gould wrote personal and critical essays and served as an editor as well. notably, together with dean rader, gould edited the first collection of scholarly work on native american poetry, speak to me words: essays on contemporary american indian poetry (2003). before her death, gould had just completed editing a generous spirit: selected works by beth brant (2019), which is a beautiful and necessary return to brant’s influential writing that includes an afterword by miranda. i’d known janice gould for some fifteen years or more before her death, having been a fan of her work since my graduate school days at ohio state in the late 1990s. we met sometime after 2005 and corresponded often about sovereign erotics from about 2008 on. in those and subsequent years, we were in contact frequently as i was writing about her poetry and essays. i brought her to kansas state during this period and also had the good fortune of seeing her at many conferences and panels. across these years, janice was unfailingly kind and generous, sharing family history, giving permissions, and telling stories in our email conversations, occasional phone calls, and coffees/meals when we were in the same spaces. we had fallen out of regular contact for a time, however, when she contacted me in 2018 to tell me about both the upcoming publication of seed, and, at the same time, about her diagnosis. the news was simply heartbreaking. i had long wanted to do a substantial interview with janice about her work and history. in late fall 2018, after we’d exchanged a number of emails about seed, which she shared with me and i blurbed, i tentatively reached out about conducting that interview. my hope had been to go to colorado, but by late december janice’s energy transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 94 had begun to fail—a combination of the cancer itself and the subsequent treatments; at the same time, my own mother had fallen seriously ill. given the limitations of both our lives, janice suggested email exchanges so that she was able to answer questions as her energy allowed. the questions and answers that follow arise from those exchanges. i split and sent my questions in three segments; she would complete and return one section to me and i’d send the next. i include them, then, in their three parts. part one engages her most recent poetry collection, seed; part two engages california—though that focus also arises in other sections—and in part three, janice answers my questions on her memories and involvement in queer of color and queer indigenous histories. the questions in these three sections were answered from january to april 2019. subsequently, they are not always in the same format—one appears as interstitial comments in which janice inserted responses in a different colored font to my questions and the subsequent two are written as letters. in the latter two sections, i append my questions in footnotes when relevant. because i find, and have always found, janice gould’s stories, poems, and thoughts by turns compelling and thought-provoking, and because this is one of the last interviews she completed, i offer our exchanges in their nearly complete form. *** part one: questions for seed lt: seed is a gorgeous, contemplative collection. it was really a privilege to have the opportunity to read it as it heads toward publication. can you talk about the collection? how it developed? what you see as its core? jg: i started seed as a manuscript in september 2018, but much of the writing probably emerged from a thought or desire i had been mulling over for some time, and that had lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 95 to do with a question i’m not sure i ever asked aloud. was it possible for me to write from the dictates of spirit, from a place within that wasn’t exclusively about me? i had “finished” writing a kind of memoir using something like a form of prose poems or vignettes; some of those pieces were fairly extensive. i had worked on that writing a long time, and i was interested in finding my back to a more lyric form of poetry. in 2017 my partner mimi and i were asked if we’d like to be part of a small, newly formed writers’ group in town. we joined and had a few sessions with some other women writers in our community. for some reason, it really helped me find my voice again. it also helped me think about the craft of writing. it was exciting and nourishing to be with other writers who were also considering questions of craft: how best to convey a story, build a character, how to clarify one’s thinking/writing, how to find the right image. you need to understand that this is not part of my work life at all. i don’t teach creative writing, i’m not in an english department, and discussions about books and literature are not particularly interesting to my students, whose orientations are more typically sociological. my actual creative life has nothing to do with being in a milieu of writers and scholars who think about things more or less the way i do. the first poem in the collection, “a poem,” was one i brought to our writers’ group. it came to me more or less intact, and i wrote it down. even though it called on a landscape i have put in words before, it also came from dream landscape, one that is similar to our worldly reality, but is always its own place. i’m fascinated by that place (and places) that return to me over months and years—or to which i’m returned. and i felt that i could perhaps write honestly from that dream perspective, that perhaps it was a way to open to spirit differently. the last sentence makes it seem like i had organized thoughts about this process. i didn’t. it was more a feeling about which i was not fully cognizant. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 96 lt: as the title suggests, there’s a beautiful movement of growth in seed from the first stirrings of germination to emergence to bloom and beyond. these natural transformations most often parallel human emotions in the poems—love and a deep contentment as well as loss and, sometimes, a sense of mourning (of past loves, past lives). can you talk a bit about this? about the movement of the collection and/or these parallels. jg: the collection was not planned. i realized after i had written the poem “seed” and some of the other “garden” poems that i could start with “a poem,” which ends “as if a poem could emerge from a seed.” it was coincidence because i’d written “a poem” a year before and then had more or less forgotten about it. as i periodically do, however, i went through some older poems i had stored away, and when i found it, i realized it would work with the other writing, most of which, as i said, began around september 2018. i wanted to write about the beloved, who is also the beloved. i wanted to write about the mother, who is also the mother. this allowed me to move into the realm of the ideal, yet i am someone who remembers that our feet are planted on the earth. thus, many of the poems move between an ideal garden and my own poor rose garden, between an actual cabin where mimi and i lived, and a cabin upon whose porch a group of angels could be sitting after the rain. but this makes up only a part of the collection. in september i went to women’s aikido camp in santa fe, new mexico. i can be a bit anti-social, and i wanted some privacy, so i stayed about forty-five minutes away at an inn where we had lodged before in the village of chimayó. after each day’s aikido session was over, i would stop at a market and buy something for dinner, usually just cheese, fruit, wine and bread. then i’d return to the inn and sit outdoors with a glass of wine while evening came on and watch the birds flitting around in the cherry tree, listen lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 97 to a donkey braying somewhere. i would relish that particular mildness that happens in new mexico in september. i knew i could write, and though i was there ostensibly for aikido, i had a feeling a poem or two was waiting for me and i knew i needed to make good use of this time. most of the “new mexico” poems in the collection come from that time away by myself. but i also just wanted to reflect on the sacredness of certain times of day. i suppose in some religious traditions these are marked and prayer is required. i don’t feel that way. i love how different times of day have different meanings. of course, this means that one must actually take the time to reflect on sun-up or twilight, and i imagine that many if not most people would find that a silly and time-wasting exercise. lt: i was struck by the poems that gesture toward writing, toward your process and feelings about the creative endeavor. i’m thinking here of “poetry” and “integrity” or even “sunday” and “beyond knowing.” will you share a little bit about your writing process and/or your relationship with poetry and language and how you came to it? jg: as for poems about writing, i figured it was my time to say something about this creative act. my relationship to writing has been fraught. as a young person i somehow felt what a poem could be, and thus like many young people, i was drawn to wanting to create this personal expression. in my first attempts, i was using metaphors and images without fully knowing what those terms meant. but later, reading poetry in literature classes in high school, for example, poetry confounded me. i was pathetically stupid about poetry, mute and frightened. it did not make me hate poetry, but it hurt me that what others saw clearly remained opaque for me. eventually i grew up enough to become intrigued all over again with what a poet can do with language. i had some good teachers who helped me transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 98 to understand better what i was not confident enough to understand before. intuitively i began to feel not just the richness of sound and the beauty of image, but the rhythm of language that moved the poem forward. i don’t know if i have a writing process. much depends on having free time and repose. but there is some mysterious requirement that i don’t really understand that isn’t about time or repose. it’s a feeling that if i sit down to write, i will be able to follow through with it. i sometimes have ideas for poems—especially lately, being sick for several weeks—but i know that if begin, i will stop, the language won’t come. i won’t know where i’m going. lt: along the same lines, i’m also interested in how you would identify—do you see your poetry as autobiographical or confessional or are those not the right terms at all? jg: some of my poems are semi-autobiographical. in other words, i don’t necessarily separate fact from fiction when it is meant to be blended, because that is what creates the seed of the narrative or story. i would not say my poems are confessional because these are not exactly confessions of guilt or contrition—more a sort of exploration of moments that i relive (mentally, emotionally) from time to time where i need to understand my vulnerability or shame, the difficulties of being a young lesbian in a world hostile to gay people. lt: i find “contradiction” absolutely captivating. in it, the speaker (you? she?) calls themself a “tomboy” and names a desire for women, that is “clearly a sin / that never feels wrong / except when i am found out.” this aligns with poems like “snow,” “mrs. ryder’s hands,” and “fierce defense.” these poems detail a young woman’s queer coming of age in a world that does not accept same-sex desire. they’re painful and raw lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 99 and remind us how thin and recent lgbtiq/two-spirit acceptance is and how difficult these realities were (and, let’s be real, are still in many cases). can you talk about your relationship with, thoughts about these poems, and decision to include them in this collection? as an aside, this set of poems remind me, in the best of ways, of beneath my heart and earthquake weather. jg: “snow” and “contradiction” (and i would include “black hair”) are more recent arrivals than “mrs. ryder’s hands” and “fierce defense,” both of which i wrote years ago and then stored away. as you point out, they are in the vein of some of the poems in beneath my heart and earthquake weather. i think these poems needed a home, and i just decided to add them to seed. i did hesitate a little, though, because i felt the rawness of those poems might jar against the more contemplative (quieter?) poems. but i like the intensity of those poems. i like their fierceness and passion. i want to add that contemplation is not benign, not a benign activity; perhaps it is the result of an activity. anyone who has meditated knows what a struggle it can be to keep coming back to breath or mantra, to return one’s focus to whatever inward light one is seeking. there is pain or at least frustration at moments in how elusive this search can be. but then… there it is again, that still clarity. lt: there are many poems in seed that speak to what feels, for me as a reader, a deep peace or contentment, even if sometimes tinged with sorrow. i’m thinking of “eventide,” “simple,” “benediction,” “ahimsa,” and more. am i imagining this? and, if not, is this thread arising from a particular moment, experience, a broader sense of knowledge, a particular place you find yourself in life and/or writing? transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 100 jg: i have studied aikido for many years and have given a lot of thought to the deep beauty of this art. some people would call it a martial art. i call it a path. like any path, it presents its challenges, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. my study of aikido has changed me. i have had to deal with anger and judgments i thought i had already dealt with. i have had to seek ways to be more compassionate, more empathetic, more humane. this answer goes hand in hand with the response to the prior question you asked. lt: i have your published collections—beneath my heart (1990). earthquake weather (1996), doubters and dreamers (2011), the force of gratitude (2017), and seed (i’ve never been able to get my hands on alphabet! )—spread out across my table. they are dog-eared and tabbed with different colors and underlined. i find your work, by turns, stunning and painful and beautiful and often read it aloud to both myself and others. i’m currently, for example, completely obsessed with the last lines of “weed”: creator made me for some unstated purpose, perhaps to annoy and displease you, to disrupt your fundamental beliefs about order and meaning. or to offer you another way to see beauty. how do you see the body of your work? can you chart a movement, change, shift, development—insert your own descriptor here—across your books? take us anywhere you’d like with this question as you think across and among your books. lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 101 jg: in my first couple of collections i was concerned with creating a lesbian voice that was also a native american voice. i was not trying for the erotic but for the intimate. that is still one of my goals: to open readers to the possibility of intimacy—with a loved one, with themselves, with the poem. it seemed important to emphasize my native identity because i’m a california indian (concow or koyoonk’auwi). while the number of california indian writers is growing today, when i began publishing there were only a few others that i knew of—frank la pena, for one. there were no presses that i knew of that were seeking creative writing by california indians. artists and basket weavers were better known to the public. there is a bloody history in california when it comes to indians. the mission system, the creation of haciendas, and the enslavement of indians as peons to work on those large ranchos. the gold rush—in a whole other part of california—brought the seizure of indian lands by whites who wanted to strike gold and get rich quick. meanwhile, indians were without legal status. they became increasingly pauperized. i felt i needed to somehow get that story across—not just the story of my own struggles with my mother, with homophobia, etc.—but the fact is, i grew up in berkeley, california. i spent a good deal of my life in california. and as i grew as a poet, i knew there were other tales to tell, right from my own family. that’s when doubters and dreamers emerged. in that book, i also wanted to play with more formal structures—the opening poem, “indian mascot, 1959,” for example, is a sestina. i was beginning to bring in my relatives as characters who had an impact on me, and the landscape of the feather river canyon. i was delighted when university of arizona press was able to get rick bartow’s “two views of hawk” for the cover. i think that book is beautifully produced. it was a finalist for a couple of prizes, including the colorado book award. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 102 i was very pleased when headmistress press accepted my chapbook manuscript, the force of gratitude. it was a finalist for the charlotte mew poetry contest. that book includes some of the prose poems or vignettes i was working with in my as yet unpublished memoir, if that’s what it is. so, there are autobiographical elements in that book as well, and attention to landscape. finally, i am very grateful and happy that headmistress press was excited about seed and was willing to publish it in january 2019. it will have a showing at the awp conference in portland, oregon. i only wish i could be there, but much depends on how i feel after the treatments (i have stage four pancreatic cancer). lt: is there something else, something more you’d like to share as you think about seed either on its own as a collection or in relation to the rest of your work? jg: i love seed. i was delighted with the cover that mary merriam designed—using a 1950s black and white photo of my dad and me. i’m deeply appreciative of the good words that other writers contributed to the volume with their blurbs. i’ve also been so pleased that seed came to me when it did. poetry work, for me, can take a long time. so, it was something of an astonishment that over the fall i was able to just keep writing. it was the beloved who said, “find the first word… and go from there,” and each time that word came to me, i had something to say. i am not sure if that will happen again, but i’m grateful to or for whatever force or mystery it is that allows me to write poetry. part two: questions on california lt: can you meditate a bit here on how you see your relationship to california, to koyoonk’auwi landscapes, and/or to koyoonk’auwi history today? lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 103 california looms large in histories of the red power movement. i’m thinking, in particular, of the two occupations of alcatraz, especially the eighteen-month occupation that began in november 1969 and ended in june 1971. were you living in berkeley during the take-over? can you share a bit about your experience of that era? poems like “history lesson” (beneath my heart), “easter sunday” (earthquake weather), and “indian mascot, 1959” (sovereign erotics and doubters and dreamers), among many others, teach readers something more than what “easter sunday” calls the “rich, false history of california” (41). you’ve been doing this work of pushing folks— especially non-native folks—to see the often-difficult realities of california history for some thirty years now. will this always be a part of your creative/theoretical work? has headway been made here? finally, can you comment on the community of california writers today—whether indigenous california writers or native writers who call california home. (this could be a shout out to folks you love, a reverie on what’s happened there since you started your career, or another approach of your choice.) *** jg: hello lisa, i will try answering your questions as best i can. i’ll begin with my relationship to california, a complicated topic. since i have not lived in california for many years, and because i have lost significant relatives and simply do not know others of them, it seems my relationship to california has become considerably thinner. and when i speak of california, i am speaking mostly about the northern part of the state. i lost some connection to southern california after my family moved to berkeley. interestingly, transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 104 however, when i returned to san diego in fall of 2017, i remembered exactly how to get to the neighborhood on pt. loma where i spent the first nine years of my life. i guess we maintain relationship through memory and imagination of place—its smell, the feel of the air, important people, events, and activities that created the cloth of experience, visually, aurally, tactilely. my sisters and i were aware of our american indian heritage, but what that meant in real experiential terms is hard to define. there were no specific concow (koyoonk’auwi) objects that served as reminders of our ancestry other than some old photographs of my mom’s mother, father and siblings. we also had photos of the town of belden and some of its inhabitants, the railroad, the feather river and surrounding mountains, and glimpses of the beatty family homestead. my grandparents, who i never met because they died before i was born, were both “halfbreeds,” as the term had it. my grandmother was french and concow and my grandfather irish and concow. after my grandmother died, my mother’s dad, harry beatty, allowed my mom, vivian, to be “adopted” by the lane sisters, three white women who were interested in adopting or fostering an indian child. my mom was possibly between seven and tenyears-old when this occurred. the story of her mother’s death, her father’s abandonment of her, the break with her siblings, her apparent adoption by the lanes, and much more, were tales my mother imparted to us over the years. the land still had meaning because of my mom’s memories. my parents would take us camping on the feather river, or we would stay at our aunt lillian and uncle ivan’s homestead, which was set back from the river several hundred yards, and about a mile from belden’s main street (it really only had one street). we spent time exploring the area by car, driving to places that had historical meaning and [importance] for some indian people who had memories of significant sites where ceremonies may have been performed. for us, removed in time and culture from some lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 105 places, these areas might be beautiful, but we had no particular attachment to specific places, or knowledge of what might have gone on among the concow or maidu people fifty or a hundred years earlier, other than what happened to members of our family. nevertheless, for me, especially as time wore on and i became more familiar with the history of the region, belden, the feather river, and other towns and sites became significant. the map of my knowledge expanded regionally, linguistically. i still feel a strong fascination about the life of indian people, especially during the colonial era, just before and after california was seized from mexico and eventually became part of the united states. greg sarris (miwok) points out in his writing that among the pomo, tribal people who lived west of the concow across the sacramento valley, some preached what could be seen as a kind of assimilation, except that it wasn’t. for example, dressing in western garb might better protect indian women from the ravages of colonial white male settlers than the traditional clothing, which was scant. no doubt by the time of the gold rush, which began in 1849, some indian people had already adopted euroamerican clothing and were employed as farm laborers, laundry women, cooks, wood cutters, and vaqueros. my grandparents dressed in late 19th, early 20th-century style. as a young person, i hiked and backpacked in the sierra nevada and the coast range, on the john muir trail and in the los padres and yola bola wilderness areas. we spent time on the coast, especially at pt. reyes national seashore, where we could observe sea lions and sea otters, elk, deer, and many birds. there are many regional parks in the bay area, and we hiked in and explored these places as well. we learned to sail on san francisco and tomales bays, went rock-climbing at indian rock park in berkeley and in yosemite. we rode horses in the east bay hills. we lived about three blocks from uc berkeley land, what was essentially open space when we were kids. the steep hills east of the campus were full of wild oats and milkweed, and in the canyons transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 106 there were oak and laurel trees, chaparral, and poison oak. we watched the fog roll in through the golden gate and over the bay, right up and over the hill that we lived on. my older sister and i attended merritt junior college, which was an old technical/vocational school on what used to be grove street and later became martin luther king boulevard. it was there, taking a journalism class, that i became interested in what was going on at alcatraz. i wanted to visit the island. shy as i was, i imagined that i would talk with some of the indian people who were out there. a couple of friends and i located an office in san francisco that must have served as the public relations headquarters, among other things. a young arrogant indian guy was in charge, and he basically told me i could not go out to the island. he was so supercilious that i became incensed and walked out on him in the middle of his spiel. a few days later, my older sister and i went to the friendship house in oakland and spoke with an older indian gentleman there who told us that alcatraz was thought to be a place of bad luck for california indian people, and he kindly discouraged us from trying to go there. my sister and i decided to listen to him. i would guess that especially the older indian man could see what a naïve and sheltered kind of young person i was. i really had no firm idea of what the issues were that native people were protesting and that sparked the take-over of alcatraz island. i had not yet become politicized in any cognizant way. that didn’t start to happen until i took women’s studies classes (again through merritt) and began to acquire a language for what i felt, thought, and experienced. being now so far from california in time and space, i have only a vague idea of what is going on in native california, artistically and in other ways. i know that more scholarship is going on among the young scholars who are earning their doctoral degrees, and i applaud that. lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 107 part three: questions on queer indigenous history jg: dear lisa, thanks for all your questions, all the work you’ve gone to in asking them… and for your friendly, scholarly self! it's been fun thinking about these questions and wondering what answers i will find to them. how would i think about the three decades, ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s? many sociopolitical shifts and changes went on over that period of time. i found my own footing, though it took quite a while, because i was busy being angry for many years, and it was not until my mother passed away and i found my partner, mimi, that i began to settle down psychologically and emotionally. i was still in a lot of turmoil, even through the ‘90s. i had so many changes to go through, so many challenges. there was a lot of social unrest in the bay area [during that period]. after the people’s park protests and violence in 1969, governor reagan sent the national guard to berkeley and barbed wire was strung up along university avenue, down to the berkeley yacht harbor, where the guard was encamped. from up on the hill, we could see clouds of tear gas being shot at protesters. the zodiac killer was on the loose, and all kinds of other bizarre killers and rapists were suddenly making headlines. i also believe a brisk business in drugs and prostitution was on berkeley streets during the early ‘70s. the general level of revolutionary fervor increased as militant arms of the black panthers and brown berets made their presence known. in 1974 the symbionese liberation army kidnapped patty hearst a mile from where i worked; they had assassinated the superintendent of oakland schools, dr. marcus foster [in 1973]. many of them eventually met their end in a shoot-out in los angeles. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 108 as a young lesbian, i had no idea what i would be or do in the world. i had moved away from home, had lived in oregon and colorado, had returned home after the breakup with a girlfriend, was attending various junior colleges—merritt and laney—and delving into different majors every few months, wanting to find “practical” employment but being bored out of my mind with 9-to-5 jobs. i had fallen in love with a straight white woman, and, of course, i was experiencing all the intensity of her ambivalence [and also] the deep grief of not being able to talk about this with my family or old friends from whom i had become increasingly isolated. i was just beginning to experience what it meant to be out of the closet. gay pride was a nascent movement in the early ‘70s, but it gathered strength during that decade.5 i had begun working at i.c.i-a woman’s place bookstore. it was billed as an information center, and it certainly provided needed texts for women interested in building the women’s movement, feminist theory, etc. it was also a center for lesbian artists, poets, and activists. some excellent scholarship on the role of feminist bookstores in raising consciousness has recently been published. these were vital sites for organizing and activism, for sharing music, poetry, and prose literature, for developing a political consciousness. i participated in the berkeley oakland women’s union (i called it bow-wow) through the cultural arts contingent made up of singers, actors, and other artists. we marched in a couple of the gay pride parades, singing and playing instruments. i met cherríe moraga at a woman’s place; we already knew of each other. i marched with her and some of her friends during [a] gay pride march. i was attending uc berkeley in the 1980s. i majored in linguistics and focused my attention on native american languages. i became friends with a small number of graduate students in that program, and graduated cum laude, having written up some work on the hopi language. i had also been awarded a fellowship to do field work in lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 109 alaska through the alaska native language center. i worked on an athabaskan language called salcha; there were but two speakers left of that language. while i was at uc berkeley, i also took classes in native american studies, sitting in at times on gerald vizenor’s literature class and later attending wendy rose’s literature class, meeting poets maurice kenny and mary tall mountain. later i applied to and was accepted into the ph.d. program in linguistics, but dropped out of it, worked for a year in the department, and applied to the master’s program in english at uc. that is where mimi and i met; she was a year behind me in the program. oddly enough, the english department did not offer any classes in minority literature at that time. these were mainly taught through ethnic studies. mimi and i decided to organize a class through the english department in which we would read literature by north american women of color. we were able to call on friends and faculty to help us with this project, including professor sue schweik, who agreed to sponsor the class. we enlisted a number of women to teach the class, including cherríe moraga and ana castillo, norma alarcón, merle woo and nellie wong, elaine kim, paula gunn allen, and others. the english department was skeptical that the class would make, but on the first night nearly fifty women showed up. some were students, others were staff. i met beth brant probably in the mid-1980s. i think beth had come out to california for some kind of literary residency. it was at least year or two before my mother died. i drove beth out to marin county where she would be housed in residence for some days. a year or two later beth returned to the bay area, possibly when mohawk trails came out. she called me to say that gloria anzaldúa, who was living in south berkeley or emeryville at the time was having a party at her place and i should come meet her. i brought my girlfriend, mimi, with me. i recall that gloria had a computer and was working on the text of borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. she showed us bits and pieces of the text; it seemed magical to me. later, after mimi and i moved to transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 110 albuquerque, gloria stayed with us during a national association of chicano & chicana studies (naccs) conference. through beth i met michelle cliff (and later i met adrienne rich, both in albuquerque and in portland, oregon, where she had come to do a reading.) beth was instrumental in helping get my first book, beneath my heart, published with firebrand books. she sent a manuscript of my poems to nancy bereano and suggested that it might be a good candidate for publication. nancy agreed, and in 1989 that book was published. beth also helped me to meet chrystos, who came to albuquerque to read at full circle books, a women’s bookstore in town. later, chrystos stayed with us on yet another trip to the southwest. joy harjo was living in albuquerque, and she came to my reading at one of the bookstores, which is where we met. in addition to meeting other native women writers, my partner and i met lesbian poet margaret randall and her partner, the artist barb byers. the returning the gift conference in norman, oklahoma brought many, many native american writers together. that is where i met vickie sears, as well as linda hogan, betty louise bell, and others whose names i am not remembering now. some of my poetry was included in an anthology, edited by joseph bruchac, that came out of that conference. after obtaining my ph.d in english from the university of new mexico, many opportunities opened up for me in the 1990s. for one thing, while studying at unm, i received a ford fellowship, which helped support my scholarly work. grants from the national endowment for the arts and from the astraea foundation for lesbian writers helped with the creative work (i took time from my studies to write). over the years i have met many other native american writers and scholars, both gay and straight, both through my work as a scholar and also through my work as a poet: greg sarris, craig womack, qwo-li driskill, daniel justice, malea powell, ellen cushman, joyce rain lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 111 anderson, virginia carney, deborah miranda, cheryl savageau, margaret bruchac, heid erdrich, elizabeth woody, nancy mithlo, suzan harjo, marty de montaño, inés hernández-ávila, and many others. i have benefitted enormously and learned much from the friendships and acquaintanceships that i’ve had with my fellow native americans and with other non-native scholars, like dean rader, hertha wong, deborah madsen, and yourself. in fact, dean and i put together the first (and only?) scholarly book exclusively focused on american indian poetry, speak to me words. as for the term “two spirit,” i think it can be a useful descriptor, but there is a sort of ambiguity to it, and it seems to cover a wide variety of social-sexual expressions— and it feels like everyone gets lumped in together, even though everyone is quite different in how they live their sexual/erotic identities.6 i’ve used it to describe myself in the past, partly because (in my mind) i have some androgynous qualities that i cannot deny. chrystos once called me a “soft butch” when i was much younger. but i have no idea how i’m perceived these days, perhaps simply as an older woman, maybe a lesbian, with a short haircut. i think it’s still true, that quote you supplied from the ariel article. for some of us, it is perhaps not such a burden to be “out.”7 among liberal colleagues where i work, for example, being a lesbian is not an issue, as far as i can tell. being a native american lesbian poet is not a problem (probably since most people don’t read my books—and i am just such a nice person!) it does not seem to be an issue for my students, and i expect that a percentage of them come from evangelical christian families that have little tolerance or love for lgbtq people. but these young folks are in school to learn, to be exposed to thoughts and ideas that they probably did not grow up with. whether they accept in the long term (internalize) the wide diversity of thought and expression that they are learning about, i don’t know. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 112 i’m aware that there are vast parts of the country at least as conservative as colorado springs, and in small communities it may still be that if a person is lgbtq, they feel safest staying in the closet. i suspect that undisclosed erotic activity goes on in every community, and that it isn’t discussed openly because in so many ways it still is not safe to live an honest life as the person you know yourself to be, loving whom you wish to love. and i’m speaking of both native and non-native communities. we live with a legacy of religious fervor that raises its bigoted head every now and then, fearful and intolerant of difference, and believing it has the right to judge and condemn others. i am way out of the loop when it comes to younger lgbtq native american writers, except for my friendships with jennifer foerster and byron aspaas, both wonderful poets.8 this has to do, in part, with the way i work. i’m a bit of a recluse. also, i am very careful about the work i take in to myself because other people’s writing can affect the process of my own composing. i really have to love the poetry i encounter otherwise i won’t feel like spending any time with it. some contemporary writing, whether by native or non-native poets, leaves me cold because it seems to have no internal fire or reality. some of it seems far too wedded to “language,” but the language seems to refuse the beggar at the door (the common reader) who needs light and warmth and a scrap of food. it’s hard to be a poet. the apprenticeship takes time. we learn from others, we experiment, but then we have to make our own way and find a language that can bear our truth. i guess that’s the only advice i can give: do your work and do it honestly and generously. sometimes that will mean encountering challenges or problems that are hard to solve, but it’s important to persist if poetry means anything to you, and if it’s to survive in a world where suffering is ever present, but where joy remains possible. *** lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 113 i leave this final conversation wanting more of janice gould’s words. her thoughts on her poems, on writing, and the details she relates here about the queer coalitions of which she was a part at a crucial time in the rise of queer multiethnic and indigenous literatures and activisms speak to how much more she had to share, how much more that we could learn from her gorgeous art and rich experiences. further, janice’s thoughts throughout these conversations point to how our embodied understandings of self and place shift in relation to time, to proximity, to health, and to the ebb and flow of memory. in thinking of the movements of gould’s experiences in/of california, i return again to the frame miranda offers us for the active process of indigenous assemblage: “i’m not whole. and yet, i am whole. what the hell! i’m a whole mosaic. deal with it, world. white and indian, and not only that, but indian and reinventing myself in this post-colonial art project i’ve inherited” (bad indians, 136). gould acknowledges this inheritance and its potential fragmentations throughout her writing, yet, as we see in the final words she offers here, still looks toward a world where “joy remains possible.” it is that world she leaves with us as her legacy. notes 1 quoted in “janice gould” from the geography of home: california’s poetry of place, christopher buckley and gary young, eds., 85. 2 the spelling of koyoonk’auwi (also known as concow or konkow maidu) varies in english. as seen in the epigraph that begins the text, gould was at that time using “koyangk’auwi.” i use koyoonk’auwi, the spelling employed in her most recent work, throughout. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 114 3 see tatonetti, “chapter five: toward queer indigenous methodologies: indigenous assemblage and queer diasporas in the work of janice gould,” the queerness of native american literature. 4 gould’s parents and relatives lived in the wake of california indian genocide. besides remaining extant in oral histories, these events have also been documented in numerous historical texts. in particular, brendan c. lindsay’s murder state has documented “the creation, through the democratic processes and institutions of the people of the united states, of a culture organized around the dispossession and murder of california indians” (2). this dispossession, the subsequent attempted fragmentation of indigenous kinship systems of the remaining california indian peoples are key factors behind the gould’s mother’s adoption. see the preface to earthquake weather and gould’s “singing, speaking, and seeing a world” for more on her family history. 5 this section responds to two questions i posed: 1) “as someone who thinks a lot about the early years of queer indigenous lit—the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s—it seems like there was this amazing convergence of writing and thinking and art. how would you think about that time? with the gay american indians forming, this bridge called my back, living the spirit, and a gathering of spirit coming out, and your first books,—beneath my heart, alphabet, and earthquake weather—being published. were you consciously aware of (what i see as) a seismic shift happening?”; and 2) “ok, this is totally a question for me—i’ve always wondered—were you in the gai? and did folks writing/publishing in the ‘80s/early ‘90s (you, beth brant, paula gunn allen, chrystos, maurice kenny, vicki sears, carole lafavor, connie fife, sharron proulx-turner and more…) know each other, hang out at all?” 6 janice’s response here is in answer to this question: “do you remember when you first started hearing the term “two-spirit”? what did that feel like/mean for you? was it a descriptor you took up immediately? is it one that still fits for you today?” 7 the particular question to which she refers is: “your 1994 essay in ariel, “disobedience (in language) in texts by lesbian native americans” is incredibly important. just as you were part of that first wave of creative writing, you were also in the vanguard of scholars doing critical/theoretical work on queer indigenous/two-spirit literature, as well. this essay in particular, which i still often teach, is hard-hitting and unapologetic. you talk overtly about california’s settler colonial history and, among other things, about the power of the erotic in indigenous lesbian writing (sears, brant, and chrystos). there’s a quote in that piece i’ve cited so many times: lisa tatonetti “conversations with janice gould” 115 i am aware that in speaking about a lesbian american indian erotics, and even more in speaking about lesbian love, i am being disloyal and disobedient to the patriarchal injunction that demands our silence and invisibility. if we would only stay politely and passively in the closet, and not flaunt our sexuality, we could be as gay and abnormal as we like. (32) what do you think when you look back at that quote, at that piece, some twenty-five years later?” 8 this paragraph and the next respond to this question: “there’s a really amazing group of queer young indigenous writers publishing right now. do you have any thoughts about the new generation of two-spirit/queer indigenous writers? advice for them?” works cited brant, beth (degonwadonti). a generous spirit: selected works by beth brant, edited by janice gould, sinister wisdom, 2019. ---. mohawk trail. firebrand books, 1985. buckley, christopher and gary young. “janice gould.” the geography of home: california’s poetry of place, edited by christopher buckley and gary young, heyday, 1999, pp. 85-90. driskill, qwo-li, daniel heath justice, deborah miranda, and lisa tatonetti, eds. sovereign erotics: a collection of contemporary two-spirit literature. u of arizona p, 2011. gould, janice. beneath my heart. firebrand, 1990. ---. “disobedience (in language) in text by lesbian native americans.” ariel: a review of international english literature, vol. 25, no. 1, 1994, pp. 32-44. ---. doubters and dreamers. u of arizona p, 2011. ---. earthquake weather. u of arizona p, 1996. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 116 ---. seed. u of arizona p, 2019. ---. “speaking, singing, and seeing a world.” placing the academy: essays on landscape, work, and identity, edited by jennifer sinor and rona kaufman, utah state up, 2007, pp. 254-268. digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/20 ---. the force of gratitude. headmistress press, 2017. lindsay, brendan c. murder state: california’s native american genocide, 1846-1873. u of nebraska p, 2012. miranda, deborah. bad indians: a tribal memoir. heyday, 2013. tatonetti, lisa. the queerness of native american literature. u of minnesota p, 2014. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/20 microsoft word carroll-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 165 frank kelderman. authorized agents: publication and diplomacy in the era of indian removal. suny press, 2019. 286 pp. isbn: 9781438476179. http://www.sunypress.edu/showproduct.aspx?productid=6762&sename=authorizedagents authorized agents analyzes the relationship between native american literature and indian diplomacy in the nineteenth century from the missouri river valley to the great lakes. this meticulously researched literary history examines an array of native american-authored texts produced in the context of indian diplomacy in the era of removal by the settler-colonial united states. from 1820 to 1860, tribal leaders and intellectuals collaborated with coauthors, transcribers, and interpreters to address the impact of the crisis of forced removal and american imperialism on indian peoples. the literatures of indian diplomacy, like much early native american literature published in english, were produced out of necessity to defend and protect indian lands and lives, advocate for indigenous sovereignty and autonomy, and participate in settler-colonial political institutions in the context of land theft and settler occupation. kelderman’s careful reading of literatures produced through the context of indian-settler diplomacy demonstrates the power of indian oratory and writing to represent indigenous perspectives, persuade colonial agents, shift settler institutions, and appeal to us publics. offering the term “authorized agents” to name indian diplomats, writers, intellectuals, and tribal leaders who participated in an array of collaborative publication projects that brought native perspectives of american imperialism into the public sphere, kelderman’s study of literature produced through indian diplomacy pays due attention to a body of work that has been previously underexamined in the field of native american literature. authorized agents makes a significant contribution to critical debates in native american and indigenous studies regarding the relationships among native people’s agency, indigenous sovereignty, and literary representation. kelderman acknowledges that by the nineteenth century the figure of the native diplomat had become a trope in the us public imaginary as “scenes of treaty-making had become a fixture of increasingly romanticized cultural narratives about us-indian encounters… that popularized a distorted or even sanitized version of the colonial relations between indian nations and the united states” (3). in the face of these popular cultural misrepresentations, kelderman acknowledges how, in fact, native diplomats bore “witness to the concerns of individual indian nations and the state of intertribal relations, in ways that affirmed indigenous sovereignty” and launched “critiques of american institutions” (3). kelderman illustrates that native diplomats did not merely alicia carroll review of authorized agents 166 participate in colonial institutions, but that they fundamentally shifted settler institutions by interjecting native perspectives and challenging colonial assumptions. he argues that indian writing and oratory produced through institutions of diplomacy are foundational to early native american literatures in english. the book’s introduction, “indian removal and the projects of native american writing,” provides a thorough overview of historical and political contexts, theories, and concepts necessary for understanding native american writing, both self-written and transcribed from oratory, produced during the indian removal era. the four body chapters that follow trace the histories and legacies of publication projects produced by indian diplomats and their interlocutors in tribally specific and intertribal negotiations for power and place. complementing the book’s text, readers will enjoy more than two dozen illustrations representing native diplomats, handwritten letters, native-made maps of indian lands, and other helpful and fascinating archival documents. the first chapter, “‘kindness and firmness’: negotiating empire in the benjamin o’fallon delegation,” details the historical and literary record of an 1821 delegation to washington, d.c., overseen by benjamin o’fallon, the subagent at the upper missouri indian agency. the delegation participants included nine pawnee leaders and eight representatives from four other native nations in the missouri river valley. kelderman reads the transcribed oratory of sharitarish (chaui pawnee) and ongpatonga (omaha) to show how they critique colonial ideas about civilization which attempted to justify settler expansion. addressing the limitations of diplomacy for indigenous peoples to retain their homelands, kelderman explains how delegations to washington constituted an alternative to us military force as federal agents sought to intimidate and subdue indigenous leaders through displays of us hegemony and dominance. nevertheless, the upper missouri delegates “brought indigenous forms of decisionmaking to bear on the formulation of indian policy in washington” (46). this chapter defines kelderman’s broadly useful key term, authorized agent, as “an indigenous representative whose words were read as expressions of indigenous perspectives within scenes of diplomacy” (62). chapter two, “‘our wants and our wishes’: frontier diplomacy and removal in sauk writing and oratory,” traces sauk literature that addresses the effects of settler encroachment and indian removal in the 1830s and 1840s. this chapter shifts the scene of indian diplomacy from washington, d.c. to the “frontier,” as kelderman notes that “although delegations to washington were a fixture in us-indian relations, the routines transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 167 of indian diplomacy more typically took place in indian country,” for example, in indian agency offices and intertribal councils (74). this chapter expands the literary archive of sauk and meskwaki removal after the black hawk war (1832) by examining the most famous sauk text from this period, life of ma-ka-ta-me-she-kia-kiak (1833), alongside the writings and oratory of the civil chief keokuk and the tribal leader hardfish. black hawk produced his as-told-to autobiography in collaboration with editor john barton patterson and interpreter antoine leclaire, and the publications of keokuk and hardfish also were produced with the aid of textual collaborators. kelderman’s comparison of these publications considers transcribed native oratory as a form of native american literature in english and “offers a new perspective on the question of indigenous agency and representation as it played out in the history of removal” (75). whereas black hawk’s bestselling autobiography offers his perspective on the war and critiques the settler-colonial treaty system, keokuk is often read as an assimilationist. kelderman explains that keokuk developed “a pessimistic view of staving off settler expansion” because, during visits to washington, d.c., he witnessed the growing settler population and military might of the us and consequently became convinced that his people must form an alliance with the americans (79). however, keokuk also intervened in colonial institutions through his oratory and “sought to change the conditions of interaction with the united states” by suggesting that councils “be held in sauk political space, on their own terms” (83). keokuk’s publication projects attempted to bring negotiations with his primary interlocutor, william clark, the superintendent of indian affairs in st. louis, “into a mixed indigenous-settler public sphere, in which his oratory carried tribal authorization and resisted being co-opted by the agenda of the settler state” (84). kelderman makes a case for keokuk’s agency, however constricted by the colonial logics of the treaty system: “keokuk’s diplomatic efforts sought to continue an existing mode of social and economic organization that was rooted in the traditions of sauk life. no matter how compromised they were, his textual collaborations asserted a sauk political voice within the networks of the colonial government” (110). finally, kelderman addresses intratribal conflict and disagreement by reviewing tribal leader hardfish’s public challenges to keokuk’s policies and chiefdom which fomented a faction of sauk-meskwaki people against keokuk and the other civil chiefs. chapter three, “‘the blessings which we are now enjoying’: peter pitchlynn and the literature of choctaw nation-building,” examines the significance of writing and literature to the creation of the choctaw nation with a focus on diplomat and educator peter pitchlynn. pitchlynn conducted a survey of choctaw lands in indian territory and wrote a report that defended choctaw land claims and also mediated between alicia carroll review of authorized agents 168 choctaw leadership and colonial government and religious groups to advocate for public education for choctaws. significantly, kelderman does not shy away from complex issues of race and class as he addresses the fact that pitchlynn’s choctaw nation-building rhetoric “buried the social and cultural differences that existed” within the choctaw nation, including pitchlynn’s denial of the privileges of education to lower-class choctaws or to the enslaved african americans who lived in choctaw nation––more than 100 of whom were enslaved by pitchlynn himself (147). kelderman engages postcolonial theorists including homi k. bhabha and frantz fanon to examine the complexities of identity and agency in seemingly assimilationist or otherwise problematic colonized subjects such as pitchlynn who, kelderman asserts, “constructed the project of ‘civilization’ as a form of choctaw exceptionalism vis-à-vis other indian nations––a rhetoric of nation-building that hinged on a form of colonial mimicry” (152). followed by a brief afterword, the fourth and penultimate chapter, “rewriting the native diplomat: community and authority in ojibwe letters,” reads ojibwe literature from 1827 to 1860 to argue that published representations of native leaders and councils became “a means to assert indigenous sovereignty within transnational cultures of diplomacy and philanthropy” (29). in the face of popular us culture that sanitized the figure of the indian diplomat as “an emblem of american nationalism and empire,” this chapter examines ojibwe writing and oratory that “complicated the representation of tribal political authority in american literary culture, reasserting the political value of indian diplomacy in a new publication landscape” (168). kelderman reads poetry, autobiography, pamphlets, and speeches published by jane johnston schoolcraft, peter jones, and george copway who carved out a place in the american literature canon where the figure of the native diplomat represented the political voice of indigenous peoples. authorized agents contributes to a trend in native american literature scholarship that seeks to broaden the nineteenth-century canon, in part by reassessing what counts as literature. perhaps due to the conventional understanding of an author as one who writes, authors such as william apess and elias boudinot “have long stood in for the full breadth of indian nations that bore the brunt of removal policy in the nineteenth century” (213). consequently, with the notable exception of black hawk’s as-told-to autobiography, the production projects of native authors who created works through collaboration with translators, editors, transcribers, and other collaborators have been critically underrepresented. however, as kelderman argues, the transcription of indian oratory is a central part of the origin story of what we call native american literature today. therefore, authorized agents extends critical conversations about the transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 169 fundamentally collaborative nature of early native american literatures in english, including work by scholars such as andrew newman and birgit brander rasmussen, who examine how early native american literatures hinged on collaborative forms of writing; matt cohen, who discusses indian diplomacy as publication events characterized by cross-cultural interaction; eric cheyfitz, who explores collaboratively written american indian literatures produced through a range of situations from cooperation to coercion; arnold krupat, who developed seminal work on collaboratively written american indian autobiography; and lisa brooks, phillip h. round, and james h. cox, who address the links between indigenous publication and indian diplomacy. kelderman’s impressive first monograph deftly navigates the paradox of native american literary representation during the era of indian removal by recognizing the limitations of native authors’ anti-colonial agency and also asserting the power of their publication projects’ literary representations of indigenous peoples as political actors rather than pitiable victims or romanticized “noble savages.” kelderman engages organization theory’s concept of a project to coin the term indigenous publication projects, “mediated forms of indigenous representation that are produced with nonnative collaborators, which take place in institutional and diplomatic networks but also intervene in them” to “construct indigenous counter-discourses within colonial scenes of interaction” and emphasize “the strategic agency of native authors who navigated diplomatic publics within government and civil society” (12). in its assertion that agency “should not be seen as simply an abstract human capacity for action but as a negotiation between the structural and the situational,” kelderman’s authorized agents is useful for understanding the significance of literary representation and agency of native writers and orators in the context of settler colonialism (24). alicia carroll, university of california, irvine microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 27 indigenous anthropocenes in poetry: mvskoke homelands in jennifer elise foerster’s bright raft in the afterweather kasey jones-matrona in his book, red alert: saving the planet with indigenous knowledge, daniel wildcat calls for a “cultural climate change” (5). this would entail a change in our thinking and actions regarding climate change and the environment. to wildcat, the best solution for spurring a cultural climate change is “indigenuity,” his term for indigenous ingenuity (74). mvskoke (creek) poet jennifer elise foerster’s work begins to answer this call for a cultural climate change by amplifying an indigenous-specific, and mvskoke-specific, notion of the anthropocene in her second collection of poetry, bright raft in the afterweather (2018). she blends time, weaving past, present, and future (in no particular order) to convey a catastrophic future mirrored by difficult but resilient mvskoke pasts and presents. in a 2017 interview with the university of arizona press, foerster discussed the environment in bright raft in the afterweather. foerster states, “the characters of the poems are suffused by their ecologies and energy systems, including the systems we can’t see” (ua press). foerster often features recurring characters and voices in and across her collections, and these characters have important connections to the environment and to mvskoke stories. foerster also discusses important connections between poetry, the environment, and healing. she states, “poetry, i believe… can reveal the invisible landscapes, histories, and stories that we’ve forgotten, that we need to remember in order to continue. when i say ‘transform’ i’m talking about healing, which naturally involves ecological balance” (ua press). bright raft in the afterweather highlights the kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 28 importance of traditional ecological knowledge (tek) and cultural healing in narrating one version of a mvskoke anthropocene. foerster utilizes this moment of the anthropocene to story mvskoke homelands, histories, and futures by recognizing human and nonhuman agency. i read foerster’s poetry as a symbiocene, a balance between human and nonhuman, and a poetics that seeks to heal, not solely express survival. the mvskoke anthropocene in bright raft in the afterweather, conveys mvskoke specific experiences of colonial climate disaster leading to broken contracts with the natural world along with mvskoke ingenuity in survival and imagining futures. indigenous anthropocenes the term anthropocene is one used popularly in scholarship now, although there are efforts to restructure the study of this epoch to take non-western perspectives into account. eugene stormer began the study of the anthropocene in the 1980s, and atmospheric chemist paul crutzen popularized this term in the early 2000s (grusin vii). the anthropocene is “the proposed name for a geological epoch defined by the overwhelming human influence upon the earth” (grusin vii). however, scientists cannot agree on exactly how recently this era began. scientists debate the start of the anthropocene, ranging from 1610, to the start of the industrial revolution, and even as late as 1964 for reasons such as a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the increase of fossil fuel burning, and peaks in radioactivity (lewis, maslin 175-177). the date does matter, although it may never be agreed upon, because it affects the perception of human action on the environment (lewis, maslin 177). geographers simon lewis and mark maslin note that the arrival of europeans in the caribbean in 1492 along with the “subsequent annexing of the americas led to the largest population replacement in the past 13,000 years,” and “the cross-continental movement of food and animals alone contributed to a swift, ongoing radical reorganization of life on earth without transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 29 geological precedent” (174). this summation of the profound impact of colonization on indigenous populations allows for an argument of a much earlier start date to the anthropocene. many indigenous scholars date the beginning of the anthropocene based on environmental impact at the beginning of european colonization of the americas. recent studies reveal that european settlers killed roughly “56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in south, central, and north america” (kent). this led to a rise in abandonment of farmland followed by reforestation that decreased carbon dioxide levels, and by 1610, “carbon levels changed enough to cool the earth” (kent). the genocide of indigenous peoples and the swift shift in land management changed the temperature of the earth. in her book a billion black anthropocenes or none, kathryn yusoff writes that “black and brown death is the precondition of every anthropocene origin story” (yusoff 66). the beginning of any anthropocene narrative includes enslavement of africans and/or genocide of indigenous peoples. similarly, donna haraway writes, “it’s more than climate change; it’s also extraordinary burdens of toxic chemistry, mining, depletion of lakes and rivers under and above ground, ecosystem simplification, vast genocides of people and other critters… in systematically linked patterns that threaten major system collapse” (159). genocide is directly and systematically tied to environmental destruction, and yusoff notes that while colonial anthropocenes all start the same way, no population experiences the anthropocene in the same way, hence the plural of the term. further, various tribal nations have experienced (and continue to experience) the anthropocene differently. citizen potawatomi scholar kyle powys whyte argues that what indigenous peoples “are currently facing is not different from environmental destruction of settler colonialism in north america” (1). settler colonialism brought the destruction of local plants, animals, and lands, along with the genocide of indigenous peoples. just as kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 30 kent’s argument previously linked genocide to environmental destruction, whyte also draws the connection between initial colonial struggles harming tribal lands and waters to contemporary twenty-first century struggles. whyte argues that “in the anthropocene… some indigenous peoples already inhabit what [their] ancestors would have likely characterized as a dystopian future” (whyte 2). the dystopia that colonizers created for indigenous peoples upon first contact only persists today, and it functions in complex systems that threaten various forms of sovereignty. while many focus arguments on the start date of the anthropocene, it is also important to shift the focus of the study of this epoch to humanitarian and environmental concerns stemming from colonization. elizabeth deloughrey argues that “postcolonial critiques of the world-making claims of ecology and empire have been overlooked in the scramble for originary claims about the anthropocene” (12). here, deloughrey contends that more pressing questions entail asking whom and what practices caused the anthropocene. this is also why scholars argue about the naming of anthropocene. heather davis and zoe todd argue that the “anthropocene is a universalizing project; it serves to re-invisibilize the power of eurocentric narratives” (davis et al. 763). in their scrambling to date the anthropocene to the 1600s or later, scholars and scientists overlook questions about early colonial structures and systems. lewis and maslin argue that “the anthropocene as the extension and enactment of colonial logic systematically erases difference, by way of genocide and forced integration and through projects of climate change that imply the radical transformation of the biosphere” (769). this is precisely why we must tease out tribally specific anthropocene narratives, in order to combat colonial erasure and to highlight the ways indigenous traditional knowledge systems helped tribes to survive the origins of colonial catastrophe. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 31 mvskoke anthropocene in bright raft in the afterweather bright raft in the afterweather is divided into 4 sections: “before the hurricane,” “at the midnight galleries,” “after i bury the nightingale,” and “the outer bank.” some common threads are the movement of the sea, the slippery nature of memory, the disjointed body or the disembodied self, and fractured or circular time. in the poem, “river,” a woman questions “what if we were to dream / each moment before us as we dream / each moment behind us?” (16-18). imagined futures and remembered pasts, along with imagined pasts and remembered futures, are critical to foerster’s collection. through these memories and reflections, mvskoke homelands are conjured, from the past, present, and future. gan et al. believe that there are ways to study this kind of palimpsest of both human and nonhuman life as they theorize the “ghosts” of the anthropocene. they write, “the winds of the anthropocene carry ghosts—the vestiges and signs of past ways of life still charged in the present” (gan et al. 1). these “ghosts are the traces of more-than-human histories through which ecologies are made and unmade” (gan et al. 1). this argument implies that both making and unmaking constitute the anthropocene, not unmaking alone. the notion of anthropocene ghosts also closely relates to david farrier’s concept of future fossils. farrier writes, “in my search for future fossils, i took to the air, the oceans, and the rock, from the bubble of ice drawn from the heart of antarctica to a tomb for radioactive waste deep beneath the finnish bedrock” (22). farrier stresses the significance of scouring for “landscapes and objects that will endure the longest and the changes they will undergo” and recognizing that seeking future fossils is also a “search for what will be lost” (22). the notions of anthropocene ghosts and future fossils are particularly powerful in connection with foerster’s poetry. the characters and agents in the collection haunt the landscape and seascape, the nonhumans, especially, kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 32 exist within their own temporalities, living long before and after humans. these are mvskoke anthropocene ghosts. foerster examines the colonial culpability relevant to environmental destruction while paving a way for mvskoke futures. bright raft in the afterweather creates a productive anthropocene intervention because her poetry imagines (or describes an already current) catastrophic present and/or future while conveying the relationship mvskoke peoples have with the environment to begin to heal colonial human impact. old woman and the sea creation stories are imperative to all homelands (both physical and spiritual). the first poem of the collection “old woman and the sea” relays a kind of creation narrative through the dialogue of three different agents: a woman figure named hoktvlwv, the speaker of the poem, and the sea. a note at the end of the poem tells readers that “hoktvlwv” is mvskoke for elderly woman. throughout the collection, hoktvlwv often appears as a female spirit or figure of the coastline. hoktvlwv may also be analyzed as a time traveling ancestor. channette romero theorizes the use of spiritual temporalities, especially as they are utilized in literature written by women of color. her concept of “spirit time” seems relevant in understanding who hoktvlwv is in foerster’s poetry. spirit time “describes a temporality where spirit beings and ancestors literally reinsert themselves into the present” and “this temporality shows how all times are connected, how the past always touches the present through the existence and embodiment of spirits” (57). hoktvlwv appears in order to help create futures while also embodying the past and mvskoke traditions in the collection. the reference to hoktvlwv as an “old woman” in the title also supports the analysis that she is an ancestor or spirit with powerful traditional knowledge. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 33 “a star, the sun, was born in the dark. / salt leached from rocks. / the ocean rusted” the poem begins (1-3). the poem alternates between italicized stanzas and non-italicized stanzas, creating the distinction between hoktvlwv’s voice and the speaker’s voice. the speaker and hoktvlwv are “talking / at the shore beside the tin carcasses” (4-5). a new world beginning from a previous ending is implied from these lines through language like “rusted” and “carcasses,” which suggest a kind of deterioration. the poem also states, “the continent drapes its burnt cape behind us” (9). the scorched mass of land and water creases and decays from slow violence. rob nixon defines slow violence as “violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence as delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is usually not typically viewed as violence at all” (nixon 2). a few examples of slow violence that nixon identifies that are relevant to foerster’s poetry include climate change, deforestation, and acidifying oceans (nixon 2). the forced removal from mvskoke lands in the southeast by the u.s. government and military is one form of slow violence against both the land and mvskoke peoples. according to the muscogee (creek) nation website, “the muscogee (creek) people are descendants of a remarkable culture that, before 1500 ad, spanned the entire region known today as the southeastern united states” and “the historic muscogee, known as mound builders, later built expansive towns within these same broad river valleys in the present states of alabama, georgia, florida and south carolina.” to mvskoke (creek) peoples, “what was important were the rivers, the piedmont, the coastal plain, and the fall line, for these natural features defined the nation and marked its limits” (green 1). the mvskoke nation had a “small fertile crescent,” “heavy tree cover,” and six major river systems (green 2). forced removal and so-called voluntary emigrations beginning in 1827 separated mvskoke people from their traditional homelands, though, and this would prove traumatic to the land and to the mvskoke. kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 34 climate change is another form of slow violence, but foerster does not suggest that it is impossible to heal from this slow violence. she proposes a way forward while acknowledging this violence inflicted upon the natural world. in “old woman and the sea,” readers are warned about the impact of humans emerging from the natural world, but potentially failing to return enough care and reciprocity to it. indigenous scientific literacies and tek offer further insight to this problem, though. indigenous scientific literacies are one expression of “indigenuity” that pre-date all other knowledge systems. grace dillon writes, “indigenous scientific literacies are those practices used by indigenous native peoples to manipulate the natural environment in order to improve existence in areas including medicine, agriculture, and sustainability” (25). indigenous scientific literacies impact everyday life, along with ceremonial and traditional practices, while shaping how indigenous peoples interact with nonhumans. robin wall kimmerer writes that “the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous harvesters is rich in prescriptions for sustainability. they are found in native science and philosophy, in lifeways and practices, but most of all in stories, the ones that are told to help restore balance” (179). tek is all about achieving and sustaining balance between the human and nonhuman worlds, but it can be difficult to sustain balance when colonization disrupts these practices. kimmerer also reminds her readers to turn to story to better understand the goal of balance. hoktvlwv shares a mvskoke story about creation. hoktvlwv is able to hum/speak/sing things into existence. the poem states “hoktvlwv hums / a ship’s light passes” (10-11). she seems to possess the power to conjure the ship into existence, or at the very least, detect the ship’s arrival through the signs that the sea provides. in this way, hoktvlwv is able to read and communicate with the sea. lines 12-15 of the poem read: lava, ash transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 35 and song began us. the foam drags back, unclenches its hand. the natural elements of lava and ash, along with song, constitute the beginning, or re-beginning, of a mvskoke narrative here. hoktvlwv hums and sings, but the sea also produces a song of its own. the movement of the sea is constant. there is a push and pull between shoreline and sea, a giving and a taking away as the sea foam of the waves touches the shore and recedes. the personification of the hand of the sea also relays the grasp and control that the sea has over the land and humans alike. kimmerer writes that “the animacy of the world is something we already know, but the language of animacy teeters on extinction” (57). kimmerer notes that indigenous knowledge inherently purports that nonhumans and the natural world are alive and agential, but western cultures seek to undermine this fact. the term “animacy” and the idea of personification of nonhuman worlds also threaten the true enchantment and thought, in eduardo kohn’s terms, of plants, animals, water, land, and all other nonhuman agents. in his book how forests think, eduardo kohn writes, “if thoughts are alive and if that which lives, thinks, then perhaps the living world is enchanted. what i mean is that the world beyond the human is not a meaningless one made meaningful by humans” (72). kohn’s approach to anthropology is one that considers the amazon rainforest as a host of various thinking and living beings that are no less important than humans. ecosystems and animals are also indigenous to place, along with humans. kohn’s notion of enchantment is one that provides a great bridge between human and nonhuman in terms of the anthropocene. the nonhuman world is enchanted, and in listening closely to its messages, human and nonhuman can heal their relations. kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 36 in “the old woman and the sea,” the movements of the waves mirror the relationship between the natural world and humanity. reciprocity and balance is intended, but is not always achieved. later in the poem, the speaker tells us that hoktvlwv writes in the sand: “what the sea returns / is enough” (19-20). she etches this sentiment into the coastline. readers may question if humans return enough to the sea, though, with this declaration. the sea has its own kind of currency that it gifts hoktvlwv, a figure of balance. earlier in the poem, the speaker states, “sand dollars clink at our feet” (17). the tide sends in this symbol to hoktvlwv and the speaker. later, hoktvlwv “clears a briar path” (24) with “coins in her cart” (23) and the poem ends with the line “her tracks are jagged and deep” (26). hoktvlwv collects the blessings that the ocean has offered and moves inland. hoktvlwv walks away from the shore further inland and leaves traces of her presence for the speaker to follow. she works with and against nature here, clearing briars and imprinting her feet to the earth. this path is one for the reader to follow throughout the rest of the collection. the term “old woman” is a name found in nahue stories and contemporary indigenous narratives with “hoktvlwv” as one particular mvskoke example. the name of this poem may also be a re-naming or re-working of the ernest hemingway novel the old man and the sea. foerster’s poem features the female figure hoktvlwv and a speaker who listens and learns about the sea and its languages. hemingway’s novel features an old man protagonist and his young friend who fish together off the coast of cuba. the protagonist, santiago, struggles with a marlin and shark in the novel. in “old woman and the sea” there is no article “the” before the title like there is in the old man and the sea, which suggests more of a communal approach to nature in contrast with the rugged male individualism of hemingway’s title and the themes in the novel. hoktvlwv is a spirit figure who teaches the speaker of the poem about a transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 37 symbiotic relationship with the sea, whereas santiago is alone in his quest to catch the marlin throughout most of the novel. although santiago may think of the marlin as a worthy adversary, he does not seem to establish or seek a mutual relationship with the ocean or its beings. he just wants to catch and kill the marlin. hemingway expresses a dualistic man vs. nature ontology as santiago reflects heroic individualism in trying to tame nature. whether the title of the poem is a reference to hemingway’s novel or not, the human-nonhuman relationship contrast is noteworthy to consider. nightingale “nightingale” is a four and a half page poem that appears roughly mid-way through the collection. hoktvlwv also appears in this poem, but on land, along with a nightingale and the speaker. “i’ve heard the nightingale tapping at the window, / seen her singing in the pitch-black trees” (1-2) the poem begins. the black trees are important in this poem as a source of memory and permanence. the trees are also a kind of anthropocene ghost. researchers have studied the changes in the use of southeastern mvskoke homelands after forced removal. foster et al. studied the fort benning military reservation, which is “situated along the fall line which borders the appalachian piedmont and the gulf coastal plain in central georgia and alabama” (150). they discovered that: the military base is on land that was occupied for at least 15,000 years by native americans. the native population used the land for hunting and seasonal occupation for the majority of that time and then during approximately the last 2000 years engaged in shifting cultivation of native plants. they fished and hunted for deer, bison, and turkey. the native horticultural techniques included removing trees by girdling the trunk, burning undergrowth, and multicropping the same field every year until the crop yield was unsatisfactory, after which they kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 38 would establish new fields nearby (williams 1989:35). fields were usually on the rich soils near major rivers such as the chattahoochee river (foster 2003). the land was used in this way until around 1825 when the native american peoples were forcibly removed to alabama and eventually to indian territory (now oklahoma). (150-151) after mvskoke removal, the use of land shifted drastically. the history shows that “settlers from georgia and other regions of the united states began using the land for intensive agriculture” (foster et al. 151). to study the change in geographic features of the land, foster et al. used land survey maps and satellite data (151). they also “supplemented archaeological settlement data with historic data from ‘witness trees.’ witness trees are land boundary markers that were recorded on historic maps by government land surveyors” (foster et al. 151). originally, “pine forests dominated the landscape at fort benning in the early 1800s. native americans lived where fort benning is located until about 1825. at that time over 75 percent of the land area was in pine forest with the second highest category, mixed forest, covering only about 12 percent” (foster et al. 153). however, “by the early 1970s, pine forests had declined to about 25 percent of the cover, and deciduous forests dominated the landscape” (foster et al. 154). from these studies, it is clear that settlers, specifically the u.s. military, quickly altered mvskoke homelands and depleted the forests. however, the data collected by researchers also reveals that the palimpsest of mvskoke presence remains. foster et al. conclude that “anthropological data offer information about human impacts on the past, the intensity of the impact, and the type of impact. historical data are necessary for an understanding of culture and the relations of power that underlie how humans interact with landscapes” (155). the mapping and tracing of fort benning that foster et al. performed is an important approach not only to track transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 39 the colonial changes to a portion of mvskoke homelands, but to also trace the mvskoke history and cultural practices embedded in the land. the foster et al. study of “witness trees” of the southeastern mvskoke homelands provides for a way of understanding how natural monuments witness the nonhuman and human activity of a landscape. daniel williams calls nonhuman witnesses “attestants” to theorize “the sense of an ensemble bridging human and nonhuman worlds in a testimonial sense” (7). williams writes, “the portmanteau concept of the nonhuman witness… helps disclose the narrative, ethical, and ecological work performed by peripheral objects in literature, showing the necessary entanglement of human and nonhuman concerns” (2). in “nightingale,” the witness trees seem to extend the boundaries of homelands, creation, loss, and re-creation beyond physical levels. they are attestants to change over time. the dark trees in “nightingale” have a profound impact on hoktvlwv and the speaker. the speaker states, “hoktvlwv walks out in the moonrise. / she wakes the nightingales, pierces their throats, / steals the eggs and the blind chicks crackling” (810). hoktvlwv is a figure of both creation and destruction, death and birth. she propels an awakening of the nightingales and the resting earth. the attestant trees are present for the continual cycles of slumber and reawakening of the human and nonhuman worlds and the transformation that occurs in the poem. the poem continues: later i carried her into the woods— scratched off sap—balm for her body—stitched us a new bark throat (12-14) the speaker utilizes sap and bark from the dark tree to heal hoktvlwv, and the verbs “carried” and “stitched” suggest a kind of birth and re-making. the speaker fashions a kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 40 bark throat and the tree becomes part of hoktvlwv’s body. hoktvlwv embodies the tree, then, which is a marker and witness of mvskoke history and story. the tree has its own time and slow rhythm. as a much older enchanted (in kohn’s terms) being than humans, the tree possesses the power and knowledge to heal. the healing witness/attestant tree also binds human and nonhuman in the poem. elizabeth grosz studies the phenomenon of the “nature/culture opposition,” which implies that nature is “understood as timeless, unchanging raw material, somehow dynamized and rendered historical only through the activities of the cultural and the physical orders it generates” (45). grosz takes issue with this perspective that nature is something that is changed by humans and culture instead of a set of forces with agency. grosz argues that “the natural is not the inert, passive, unchanging element against which culture elaborates itself but the matter of the cultural, that which enables and actively facilitates cultural variation and change” (47). for mvskoke peoples, and for all removed and relocated indigenous tribes, the natural world and new landscapes in indian territory inevitably led to some changes in cultural practice based on place. upon mvskoke peoples’ arrival to indian country after forced removal, “the quality of the soil and water, and the diversity of the flora and fauna, varied greatly… depending on location” (haveman 151). haveman describes the new mvskoke land: the western creek country was a mix of rolling and gently rolling prairies, cut up by numerous rivers and streams. timber grew in “streaks and groves” along the riverbanks and was interspersed throughout the prairie lands. cottonwood, various species of oaks, and pecan were the most common tree types. the area is sandstone, limestone, and shale country, and the rock not only underlay much of the terrain but also was exposed in many areas near the rivers and tributaries. (152) transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 41 the new landscapes and waterways changed the way mvskoke daily culture functioned and they experienced issues building homes and obtaining fresh water (haveman 151). the nation’s website states: for the majority of muscogee people the process of severing ties to a land they felt so much a part of proved impossible” and they were forcibly removed by the u.s. army unlike some who took money in exchange for ceding their land. the removal from homeland was extremely traumatic. but, “within the new nation the lower muscogees located their farms and plantations on the arkansas and verdigris rivers. the upper muscogees re-established their ancient towns on the canadian river and its northern branches” (“muscogee creek nation history”). this eventually led to “a new prosperity” (“muscogee creek nation history”). the natural world always has agency that shapes and changes culture. returning to the upset of nature/culture opposition, mvskoke history clearly demonstrates the connections between natural surroundings and culture. further, donna haraway’s notion of “naturecultures” directly erases the nature/culture divide as she expresses that her companion species manifesto tells “a story of co-habitation, co-evolution, and embodied cross-species sociality” (4). the surrounding natural world will always influence culture. but human culture can also cause destruction to the natural world as we see with the mismanagement of mvskoke southeastern homelands by the u.s. military post-removal. mvskoke oral traditions also enlighten the role of the dark trees and the nightingale in this poem. according to one creation story, the cowetas, a muskhogean-speaking group, were “delayed during their emergence by a root of a tree that grew in the mouth of the cave” (grantham 17). in this story, the tree had the power to slow the emergence of people, sending a message of lack of readiness in the kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 42 land for humans. animals are also significant nonhumans. birds “are an important class of upper world beings among all creek groups. they have the ability to transcend all three worlds” (grantham 32). the three worlds grantham refers to here are the upper, middle, and lower worlds of creek cosmology. the middle world is considered to be the earth where humans dwell and the upper and lower worlds are where powerful spirits and/or “departed souls” reside (grantham 21). this does not mean that these worlds cannot and do not intersect and interact, though. the nightingale in the poem has the ability to travel among the worlds and send messages to other beings. this interaction, along with hoktvlwv’s communication with humans and animals, points out the interrelated web of human and nonhuman beings. in her pivotal indigenous feminist book the sacred hoop, paula gunn allen argues that “the structures that embody expressed and implied relationships between human and nonhuman beings, as well as the symbols that signify and articulate them, are designed to integrate the various orders of consciousness” (63). therefore, as allen argues, human and nonhuman consciousness always do, and should, overlap. the roles are reversed between hoktvlwv and the speaker later in the poem as hoktvlwv nurtures the speaker. the speaker awakes “in a bathtub to an old woman / sponging down [her] bloody abrasions” (45-46). hoktvlwv heals the speaker, gently cleaning her wounds. later in the poem, there is a bit of slippage between hoktvlwv’s and the speaker’s voices. the speaker states, “i have slipped through the cracks / of the clock hands, / peeled the bark from my throat” (76-78). the speaker mended hoktvlwv earlier in the poem by pressing bark to her throat, but now they peel it from their own neck while they slip through the clock. time is non-linear as the speaker becomes hoktvlwv or hoktvlwv and the speaker blend into one figure. this may even refer to the speaker returning to the past with hoktvlwv as a figure from the future. the speaker then states: transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 43 old woman, immortal bird perched in your silent, forever-green glade will you weave me a nest, lay me down in the shade? (72-75) here, it is possible hoktvlwv may be the immortal bird or the old woman who walks alongside the immortal bird, and they last through a time of eternal greenery and life. the speaker asks hoktvlwv to make her a dwelling or resting place to lay them down. the nightingale as an “immortal bird” relates to an earlier reference in the poem. the speaker refers to the nightingale as an “old ghost” (34). the shade in this passage may represent the end of a human life, or just a period of dormancy between the ending and beginning of worlds. in one of the last lines of the poem, the speaker says, “leave the root in the ground, / cut just above the node” (84-85), which alludes to their awareness that one must sever part of the growth of the tree in order for new life to flourish in the future. the root of the tree returns back to the coweta story of the root of the tree as an agent in the story of human life. it is a symbol and witness to or attestant of new life. lost coast the poem “lost coast” traces the continuous splitting and reassembling of the continent through non-linear time. there is a simultaneous unmaking and remaking occurring in the poems. rené dietrich argues that “remaking becomes necessary in order to counter the threat of nothingness experienced in the historical catastrophe” (331). further, “more than a post-apocalyptic poem simply being a creation after the destruction, and standing for the possibility of creation in the face of destruction, the processes of creation and destruction are inextricably linked” (dietrich 336). the ending and beginning of worlds in catastrophic and indigenous anthropocene poetics kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 44 document the simultaneous making and unmaking which cannot be separated. the remaking or re-building that hoktvlwv facilitates also suggests that what makes a homeland is spirit and memory, not just a physical place. foerster’s poetry reveals that homelands are not rooted in one solitary place. homelands can be physical geographical spaces. they can be embodied. they can spiritual. and they can be rebuilt. “lost coast” is the second-to-last poem in the collection and by far the most directly catastrophic in theme and tone. “the continent is dismantling. / i go to its shores— / the outer reaches of a fracturing hand” (1-3) the poem begins. this dismantling and fracturing may refer to contemporary climate change causing the splitting of earth and glaciers or may refer even as far back as splintering pangea. in “lost coast” the speaker refers to the city as “a ship in a bottle” (10). the city appears to exist within a fleeting, ephemeral moment in time. it is easily manipulated, and will most likely end up being tossed into the ocean. hoktvlwv appears again in this poem and the following lines refer to her: she birthed twin girls by blowing sand from her palm’s crease— moon unsheathed from clouds, cities bloomed from her mouth. (5-9) hoktvlwv creates two humans out of sand that emerges from her own hand. with the reveal of the moonlight, cities are shaped and they flourish, stemming from hoktvlwv’s being. the two line breaks in this passage function to create space on the page transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 45 representing the progression of creation which involves both hoktvlwv and the moon and night sky. like the other poems in foerster’s collection, there is a continuous push and pull, a cycle of destruction and re-creation. the ocean is a hungry tide, coming to swallow the earth that humans have polluted and destroyed. but the speaker also longs to bond with the sea and create a connection. the speaker states, “dense fog spills over studded chimneys” (13). these lines paint imagery of air pollution spilling out from building chimneys and human chimneys, harming public health, which also harms the environment’s health. the human pollution directly connects to rapid changes in the environment, reinforcing the contemporary effects of the colonial induced anthropocene. the lack of a symbiotic relationship between humanity and the environment also leads to a loss of spiritual connection. the air is clouded with smog and pollution. the speaker of the poem states, “often i have gone to the sea / and not been able to find it” (45-46). the speaker does not refer to the literal inability to be able to find the sea, but the inability to connect with the water spiritually because of a broken relationship. kimmerer writes, “cultures of gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity. each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship” (115). when this relationship is broken, both human and nonhuman suffer. along with the “lost coast,” the poem features an urban center where people commute by train, and the speaker tows their “trash to the curb” (18). these mundane tasks are contrasted with catastrophic events like hurricanes and coastal flooding. hoktvlwv’s “body splits into continents” (43). these lines are separated from the previous stanza to create the physical separation on the page as well. later, the speaker states, “this continent is a memory / remapped each morning” (56-57). hoktvlwv is part of this continual re-mapping and re-making. mishuana goeman writes that “our ability to understand the connections between stories, place, landscape, clan kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 46 systems, and native nations means the difference between loss and continuity” (300). stories and memory of loss, of unmaking, also aid in re-making and creating. hoktvlwv embodies the fracture and the re-making of home and homeland. foerster specifically refers to mvskoke homelands in the southeastern united states as stated in the following lines: “the southeastern deltas / will soon be blooming. soon / the ark will sail without me” (62-64). the blooming may refer to the flourishing of the tribe, or algal blooms, or an invasion of settlers, or all of the previously mentioned simultaneously. the biblical reference to the ark that leaves without the speaker also creates the possibility of several connotations. it represents the mvskoke people who left on their own and traveled up to alabama or migrated west “voluntarily” with money from the u.s. government in their pocket. it also represents forced removal, the throngs of mvskoke people who were mercilessly forced out from the southeast by the u.s. government. the fracturing continent also stands in for the fractures of mvskoke culture caused by displacement. it represents the duplicity of existing within multiple physical homelands and nations along with the scattering of the population and goals to transfer homelands to spiritual embodied homelands. in the poem, the ocean splits the city. “dissembled by the sea / the city collects itself / ravenously around me” (77-79). the speaker and the city are surrounded by the sea. one woman survives the coastal flooding: i gather eelgrass tangled in foam weave a raft of seaweed beneath the churning fog transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 47 blow white sand from the creases of my palm until there is only one woman in the sea and me in the remains of a coastal city. (86-95) the speaker uses her ingenuity to survive the storm, weaving a raft. she is the only woman in the sea. again, there is slippage between the speaker and hoktvlwv. earlier in the poem, hoktvlwv blows sand from her palms to create a new world, but here, the speaker does the same until they are the only person left in the remains of the city. this brings us back to the first poem in the collection, “the old woman and the sea,” where hoktvlwv emerges from the sea to help create a new world. hoktvlwv is a powerful mvskoke figure of survival and ingenuity. the settler colonial population looking to combat catastrophic human impact on the earth have much to learn from indigenous peoples. lewis and maslin write, “this indigenous resistance in the face of apocalypse and the renewal and resurgence of indigenous communities in spite of world-ending violence is something that euro-western thinkers should have as we contend with the implications of the imperial forces that set in motion the seismic upheaval of worlds in 1492” (773). the united states department of agriculture (usda), for example, has only recently started to consider indigenous scientific knowledge a valuable asset in the face of climate change. reports and literature reviews produced by the usda recognize the “possibility” and potential of tek paired with western science to slow climate change (vinyeta et al.). one such report states, “indigenous populations are projected to face disproportionate impacts kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 48 as a result of climate change in comparison to non-indigenous populations” (vinyeta et al. i). however, the usda must realize that indigenous populations have already faced disproportionate devastations due to settler colonialism having affected their homelands and cultural practices and inflicted other trauma such as language loss due to not only obvious colonial practices such as boarding schools, but also to a warming climate and environmental change that make words along with practices obsolete. if the resistant usda, for example, wants to truly address climate change, then they will need to acknowledge indigenous experience and knowledge and work with indigenous communities. in “four theses” chakrabarty argues that “we have to insert ourselves into a future ‘without us’ in order to be able to visualize it. thus, our usual historical practices for visualizing times, past and future, times inaccessible to us personally—the exercise of historical understanding—are thrown into a deep contradiction and confusion” (197198). “lost coast” poses mvskoke survivance in the face of the anthropocene, past, present, and future. it also models coping and survival for the western world while encouraging re-evaluation of the anthropocene in regards to its ties to colonization and removal. as readers can see in these three poems from foerster, it is possible to visualize a time “without us” in the past and in the future in order to bring justice to nonhumans and begin to make efforts to achieve balance. conclusion the 2020 supreme court ruling in the case of mcgirt v. oklahoma affirmed “that much of eastern oklahoma falls within an indian reservation” (healy, liptak). this was a win for the mvskoke nation on multiple levels. ian gershengorn, one of the lawyers who argued on behalf of the tribe in the hearing, stated, “congress persuaded the creek nation to walk the trail of tears with promises of a reservation—and the court today transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 49 correctly recognized that this reservation endures” (kickingwoman). mcgirt v. oklahoma simultaneously ensures that the mvskoke nation has tribal jurisdiction over crimes committed on their reservation while providing federal recognition of mvskoke sovereignty over the land. after centuries of suppression of indigenous knowledge, language, and cultural practices, through mass genocide, forced removal, devastation of homelands, boarding schools, and continued discrimination, indigenous peoples and lands have survived many catastrophes. catastrophe and unmaking are part of re-making, especially for indigenous peoples. the anthropocene seems new to settlers who have never weathered such devastation to the degree that global indigenous populations have due to colonialism and its horrid realities. art, poetry in this case, can help relay the reality that not only have indigenous peoples experienced human-induced radical change to culture and the environment before, but that they have survived and recreated. mishuana goeman suggests, “rather than rely on settler-colonial legal systems that restructure native lands and assert settler ownership, native communities need to promote the forms of spatiality and sovereignty found in tribal memories and stories” (301). jennifer foerster’s keen focus on reviving mvskoke homelands on the page promotes sovereignty and storytelling while challenging accepted narratives of the anthropocene, imposing one specific mvskoke anthropocene narrative. beyond human sovereignty, acknowledging nonhuman agency can build reciprocal indigenous futures devoid of colonial epistemologies that pollute the mind, body, and spirit. as one example of this recognition of the ties between human and nonhuman, robin wall kimmerer recognizes lichens as “some of the earth’s oldest beings... born from reciprocity” (275). kimmerer writes: these ancients carry teachings in the same ways that they live. they remind us of the enduring power that arises from mutualism, from the sharing of the gifts kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 50 carried by each species. balanced reciprocity has enabled them to flourish under the most stressful of conditions. their success is measured not by consumption and growth, but by graceful longevity and simplicity, by persistence while the world changed around them. it is changing now. (275) as kimmerer listens to lichens and communicates their invaluable lessons, foerster looks to nonhumans and mvskoke anthropocene ghosts to inform humans how the world has changed, is currently changing, and how to translate catastrophe into healing. this healing preserves homelands, forms futures, and may ultimately begin to restore balance. works cited allen, paula gunn. the sacred hoop: recovering the feminine in american indian traditions. beacon press, 1986. chakrabarty, dipesh. “the climate of history: four theses.” critical inquiry, vol. 35, no. 2, 2009, pp. 197–222. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596640 davis, heather and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme, vol. 16, no. 4, 2017, pp. 761-780. deloughrey, elizabeth. allegories of the anthropocene. duke university press, 2019. dietrich, rené. "seeing a world unmade, and making a world (out) of remains: the post-apocalyptic re-visions of w.s. merwin and carolyn fourché." cultural ways of worldmaking: media and narratives. edited by vera nünning, ansgar nünning, and birgit neumann. de gruyter, 2010, pp. 329-354. dillon, grace. “indigenous scientific literacies in nalo hopkinson's ceremonial worlds.” journal of the fantastic in the arts, vol. 18, no. 1, 2007, pp. 23-41. farrier, david. footprints: in search of future fossils. farrar, 2020. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 51 foerster, jennifer elise. bright raft in the afterweather. university of arizona press, 2018. foster, thomas, et al. “studying the past for the future: managing modern biodiversity from historic and prehistoric data.” human organization, vol. 69, no. 2, 2010, pp. 149-157. gan, elaine, et al. “introduction: haunted landscapes of the anthropocene.” arts of living on a damaged planet: ghosts and monsters of the anthropocene. edited by elaine gan, anna tsing, heather swanson and nils bubandt, university of minnesota press, 2017, pp. 1-14. goeman, mishuana. “(re)mapping indigenous presence on the land in native women's literature.” american quarterly, vol. 60, no. 2, 2008, pp. 295-302. grantham, bill. creation myths and legends of the creek indians. up of florida, 2002. green, michael. the politics of indian removal: creek government and society in crisis. university of nebraska press, 1985. grosz, elizabeth. time travels: feminism, nature, power. duke university press, 2005. haraway, donna. “anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationcene, chthulucene: making kin.” evinronmental humanities, vol. 6, no. 1, 2015, pp. 159-169. ---. the companion species manifesto. prickly paradigm, 2003. haveman, christopher. bending their way onward: creek indian removal in documents. university of nebraska press, 2018. proquest ebook central, https://ebookcentral-proquestcom.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/lib/ou/detail.action?docid=5214852. ---. rivers of sand: creek indian emigration, relocation, and ethnic cleansing in the american south, university of nebraska press, 2016. proquest ebook central, https://ebookcentral-proquestcom.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/lib/ou/detail.action?docid=4228697. kasey jones-matrona “indigenous anthropocenes in poetry” 52 healy, jack and adam liptak. “landmark supreme court ruling affirms native american rights in oklahoma.” the new york times, 9 july, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/us/supreme-court-oklahoma-mcgirtcreek-nation.html. accessed 12 oct. 2020. horton, jessica. “indigenous artists against the anthropocene.” artjournal, 2017, pp. 48-69. kent, lauren. “european colonizers killed so many native americans that it changed the global climate.” cnn, 2 feb., 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/world/european-colonization-climate-changetrnd/index.html. kickingwoman, kolby. “supreme court ruling ‘reaffirmed’ sovereignty.” indian country today, 9 july, 2020, https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/supremecourt-ruling-reaffirmed-sovereignty-4kqxsmetluw4lpbgsw6pza. accessed 12 oct. 2020. kimmerer, robin wall. braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants. milkweed, 2013. kohn, eduardo. how forests think: toward an anthropology beyond the human. university of california press, 2013. lewis, simon and mark maslin. “defining the anthropocene.” nature, vol. 519, no. 1, 2015, pp. 171-180. malm, andreas and alf hornburg. “the geology of mankind.” the anthropocene review, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014, pp. 62-69. “muscogee (creek) history.” muscogeenation.org, 2016, https://www.muscogeenation.com/culturehistory/. nixon, rob. slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. harvard up, 2011. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 53 romero, chanette. activism and the american novel: religion and resistance in fiction by women of color. university of virginia press, 2012. todd, zoe. “indigenizing the anthropocene.” art in the anthropocene, ed. heather davis and etienner turpin. open humanities press, 2015. ua press. “five questions with poet jennifer elise foerster.” ua press, 28 march 2018, https://uapress.arizona.edu/2018/03/five-questions-with-poet-jennifer-elisefoerster. vinyeta, kirsten and kathy lynn. “exploring the role of traditional ecological knowledge in climate change initiatives.” usda, 2013, pp. 1-39. wildcat, daniel. red alert: saving the planet with indigenous knowledge. fulcrum, 2009. williams, daniel. “coetzee’s stones: dusklands and the nonhuman witness.” safundi, doi: 10.1080/17533171.2018.1472829. whyte, kyle powys. “our ancestors’ dystopia now: indigenous conservation and the anthropocene.” routledge companion to the environmental humanities. edited by ursula heise, jon christensen, and michelle niemann, pp. 1-10. yusoff, kathryn. a billion black anthropocenes or none. university of minnesota press, 2018. microsoft word brian hudson.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 249 geary hobson. the road where the people cried. mongrel empire press, 2020. 60 pp. isbn: 9781732393530. http://mongrelempire.org/catalog/poetry/road-where-people-cried.html i grew up on land that was promised to my tribal nation. i am a citizen of the cherokee nation of oklahoma (cno), whose reservation status was confirmed by the supreme court of the united states on july 9, 2020. my hometown of bushyhead, oklahoma, was always-already “indian country,” to put it as a critical theorist, which i claim to be. “indian country” is a legal term that reminds all citizens of the united states that we live in a republic. we are not merely one nation, but many nations joined by treaties. with its recent ruling, our republic’s most powerful court has demonstrated willingness to uphold these treaties. while this decision brings hope to native folks, it remains to be seen whether the hundreds of treaties the united states has made with tribal nations will likewise be honored. we should thank native activists such as suzan shown harjo and many others who have been tirelessly protesting land theft, statues, and racist mascots for decades to regain control over our stories. this historical moment in which we find ourselves regarding indian country—where sovereignty is confirmed and racist signifiers are denied—is why geary hobson’s new book of poetry, the road where the people cried, is such a timely reminder of the endurance of the cherokee people and our sovereignty. hobson’s book, which features beautiful cover art by the late janet lamon smith, focuses on several figures in cherokee history, along with fictional characters whose voices ring true. these voices help the reader imagine the hopelessness and despair and also the determination of the cherokee people before, during, and after the trail of tears, one of the most genocidal acts in american history. in his prologue, hobson uses an arboreal metaphor to emphasize the many nations that branch from one republic. the book revolves around the most traumatic event in modern cherokee history, beginning during removal and consisting of twenty-eight poems in four sevenpart sections. the second section takes place before the trail of tears. the third section returns to the time of removal, and the final section is set after the trail of tears. the book is at once a celebration of where we are today as cherokee people and a reminder of how we got here. hobson’s collection opens with harrowing imagery in the first line of the first poem, where the voice of the historical figure rain crow tells us to look and listen (“sgé! brian k. hudson review of the road where the people cried 250 listen!”) (1). rain crow describes a scene during the forced march. five dead cherokees’ bodies “lie in stiffened attitudes” beside “the frozen road / in a stand of leafless hackberries” (1). in the same vein, fictional character susie wickham muses in another poem, “you know, a dead child is a sure-hard fact to face,” referring to the many children along the trail of tears who died among one-quarter of the tribe before reaching what is now called oklahoma (2). death and despair appear early in hobson’s collection, but so does determination. in “going snake,” we are told that, at eightytwo years old, the prominent cherokee leader and eponymous subject of the poem keeps “looking straight ahead and never back, / straight into the face of death, / straight to the west” (5). hobson’s poetry is carefully crafted with precise diction in both english and cherokee, bringing to mind the work of another cherokee poet, gogiski (carroll arnett). besides his careful choice of words, hobson uses the absence of words (indicated by spacing) to create poetic effects through typography. in “this world,” which is set in the time before the removal, the speaker says, “look closely you will see the world” while explaining cherokee cosmogony (12). the same technique helps us visualize both the road in “richard old field speaks” and richard’s belief that other cherokees “will have it much harder / than us trying to go over ruts” as the collection moves back to the period during the removal (23). during the protests of 2020, i watched statues of andrew jackson in mississippi and elsewhere coming down, at least temporarily, from their undeserved pedestals. these statues not-so-passively celebrate jackson’s policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide against my people. they also celebrate his disregard for the laws of our republic in his failure to enforce chief justice john marshall’s ruling on cherokee sovereignty. hobson warns us that the specter of jackson can appear in unexpected places with his poem “meeting andrew jackson in an albuquerque bar,” a poem about a drunk man encountering the man who is arguably our most infamous president. the speaker of this poem tells us, “i almost fell off the barstool when i saw him” (38). the narrator confronts the apparition, recounting jackson’s crimes against humanity. the only response the speaker receives, however, is a reciprocating glare from “crazy tennessee eyes” (ibid). this interaction with jackson is suspect not only because of the anachronistic setting, but also because of the unreliability of the speaker, who admits to being a “bar-drunk” (ibid). nevertheless, his warning is timely: the specter of andrew jackson can appear in any time or place. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 251 hobson’s the road where the people cried is an important and timely collection that shows us the significance of remembering the trauma of the trail of tears by vividly describing the removal in all its sensory details. hobson’s book was published in a year when, despite a pandemic, indian country exercised its agency through increased activism and voter turnout to send a clear challenge to signifiers of genocide. this challenge requires, first of all, that we remember the 574 nations that compose the republic of the united states. remembering the laws of all our nations along with our stories will help keep our republic vigilant against the next time the specter of jackson reappears. central new mexico community college microsoft word jbm, dixon, final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 290 jake skeets. eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of fowers. milkweed editions, 2019. 96 pp. isbn: 9781571315205. https://milkweed.org/book/eyes-bottle-dark-with-a-mouthful-of-flowers the english epigraph to jake skeets’ debut, national poetry series award winning collection eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers reads: “from here, there will be beauty again.” the first word of this sentence indicates movement as well as inheritence. the second indicates the present condition in a specific location—here. the following three words indicate a state of being at some point in the future, but serve less as a prediction than as an assertion, as if by stressing beauty (the sixth word, the thing itself, the subject of the sentence), skeets might bring it into being. but he will only be able to do so by acknowledging everything that came before, which he makes clear with the final word—“again”: a word which simultaneously points to both the past (i.e. there has been beauty before) and the future as conceived in the present. in literally rounding out the sentence (i.e. from here might begin the sentence again), this final word indicates the cyclical nature of time, and specifically, its regenerative function. it is therefore not the final word—there is no punctuating period to terminate the sentence—and the utterance thus curls backward (or forward) upon itself to repeat ad infinitum. the book likewise moves in a circle, for skeets pulls the epigraph from the collection’s last poem—one of the “in the fields” series—which in turn, lifts lines from d. a. powell’s “boonies.” powell’s poem ends with the lines “we all are beautiful at least once. / and, if you’d watch over me, we can be beautiful again.” in the epigraph, skeets edits powell’s words to emphasize place—the setting of the collection—which becomes a fully embodied presence throughout the course of the poems: this place is white cone, greasewood, sanders, white water, bread springs, crystal, chinle, nazlini, indian wells, where all muddy roads lead from gallup. the sky places an arm on the near hills. (4) this place is “drunktown” (1). this place is “indian eden” (1). this place is “split in two” (1). “clocks ring out as train horns” (1), snippets of description crackle from the police radio—“native american male. early twenties. about 6’2”, 190 pounds. / has the evening for a face” (61)—and newspaper headlines in “the indian capital of the world” read: man hit by train man found dead possibly from exposure in a field woman hit by semitruck attempting to cross freeway nathan bradford dixon review of eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers 291 woman found dead in arroyo man hit walking across road man found dead near train tracks (67). the phrase “man found dead in a field” repeats four times before it begins stuttering back and forth on the page as if someone shook the newspaper or the lens of the poet’s camera. as if the dogs—or the poet—who “mauled” the man’s remains have strewn (i.e. sown) the man’s body “among flowers” so that he might speak again (67). again and again, skeets reaches for images of human beings becoming the landscape—seeping into their surroundings. as “boys watch ricegrass shimmer in smoke… they know becoming a man / means knowing how to become charcoal” (20). in “afterparty,” the speaker’s “tongue coils on the trigger before its click,” and “corn beetles scatter out / no longer his bones” (7). skeets titles one didactic poem “how to become the moon” (40) and, in “thieving ceremony,” lovers “become the black wool of a night sky” (38). these poems act as cocoons from which the characters bloom into something more than human, and the present tense always provides an opportunity for metamorphosis: we become porch light curtained by moth wings, powdered into ash. (27) by dwelling in the present tense, skeets keeps his readers in a state of flux—always becoming. but he also keeps them on their toes by constantly changing his time signature. the flit of a moth wing elongates into a lifetime in the second poem of the “in the fields” series, when the speaker comments on his lover, who “chants [the speaker’s] body back to weeds,” and who will “one dayy… forget about wounds and lower himself too into bellflower” (46). in the title poem, time compresses to an image: intestines blown into dropseed strewn buffalograss blood clots eyes bottle dark mouth stuffed with cholla flower barberry yellow plant greasebush bitterweed (60) transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 292 in this case, the shape of the poem itself seems to move—in time—with the landscape which it describes and, even as human presences blend back into the environment through the course of the collection, so the environment itself becomes a human presence. skeets manages to make geological words like “monocline,” “diatreme,” and “laccolith” ring with a humanoid sexiness in the poem “maar,” which spills over with the fecundity of the earth. geological, biological, climotological, and cosomlogical elements sing a pulsing lovesong to one another where “buffaloburr veins around siltstone / mounds on the monocline” and “flow rock smooths over into oar / cutleaf cornflower overgrown,” where “bulb liquid overflows into grasses,” and “blue flax left as moans / that foam into the sky” (28). like the elements in “maar” the poems throughout this collection speak back and forth to one another. when the speaker in “buffalograss “siphon[s] doubt,” from his lover’s throat, he recalls not only “his cousin trying to show him how to siphon” in “siphoning” (25), but also the “gasoline ceremony” of the “boy’s first time watching porn. his mouth turned exhaust pipe” (26), and his “virginity,” which he looses with “clouds in his throat” (27). the reader recalls that “drunk is the punch. town a gasp” (1) and that the two boys at the “afterparty” hunker into one another and “tank down beer” (7). the act of sucking air recalls all of the teeth in the poems, the open mouths, the whispers, the breaths sucked away. it highlights the constant metanarration about poetry itself and the concern skeets has with the way things are said. the two “in the fields” poems and “comma” come to mind, but especially “red running into water,” in which skeets breaks down the pronunciation of specific navajo diacriticals by using violently dynamic images that recall the poem “naked” in which skeets likewise uses diné bizaad. this is the language with which he also begins and ends the collection, the final salutation repeated four times—stacked one on top of the other—recalling “the creation story where navajo people journeyed four worlds” (24). but even this story refuses the mythic label so often lobbed at native america, and opts instead for a narrative of multiplicity and humor. “some navajo people say there are actually / five worlds,” skeets writes, “some say six” (24). the people disagree through dialogue in the present tense and pull the past along with them. every “retelling”—every repetition—is a little bit different in this lovesong. images repeat themselves as well within the book, which is full of bottles, bones, and beetles. full of boys trying to find their way among “the truck and the char and everything else” (16), boys who might “unlearn… how to hold a fist” by holding a hand nathan bradford dixon review of eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers 293 (76), boys who might learn “to be a man by loving one” (36). these poems, and the boys and men within these poems, must—of necessity—speak back and forth to one another because of the ever-present violence that threatens to split them all apart. settler colonialism makes myriad inroads within skeet’s collection where the landscape’s economic exploitation mirrors the gernerational poverty, violence, and alcoholism that plague the heart of indian country. in the first section of “let there be coal,” “the boys load the coal. inside them, a generator station opens its eye. a father sips coal slurry from a styrofoam cup” (21). in the third “in the fields” poem, “pipelines entrench” behind a lover’s teeth, and the speaker hears “a crack in his lung like burning coal” (46). in “truck effigy,” a man “swallows transmission and gasket,” and “an eye alters into alternator” (13). in “comma,” a toddler sleeps, “fetaled in big snow / beneath i-40” (48), and in “american bar,” the speaker proclaims “this town will kill you,” its “steel talons thread[ing] raw wool into sidewalks” (69). in making the environmental degredation of the colonized space explicit, skeets explains how train tracks and mines split gallup in two (22) then he adds an aural image to the mix of the visuals of concrete, coal, and steel. after the speaker in “glory” sees a young boy get hit by a train, the phrasing mimics the wheels on the rails, first in “i don’t know. i don’t know. i don’t/ know. i don’t know,” and again when “it sounds like a river,” “ariverariverariverariverariverariverariver” (62). these onomatopoeic phrases echo the “rail spike teeth” which “tsk tsk tsked” in the title poem, the train tracks telling the listening boy that they “would catch him if he would just only just only just only just only / jump” (60). readers can hear settler colonialism chugging into this place upon the myth of progress, upon the empty promises of forever-expansion, upon capitalist industry hammered into the earth. these fragmentary scenes lead us to reflect on the fact that gallup, new mexico is named after a railroad paymaster. the town reeks of colonization and is perhaps best known to white americans as a setting for hollywood westerns, a stop on route 66, or perhaps as the famous locale of the celebrity-frequented el rancho motel. skeets alludes to all of these conceptions of this place as “white space” which mauls remains like dogs (11) or else provides a place for scavengers like crows and letters to do the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 294 same (58). it is “white space” on which the poetic persona arranges his “father’s boarding school soap bones” in order to call the arrangement “a poem,” and “white space” on which the face of the persona’s uncle “becomes a mirror,” until a train horn punch shatters the mirror frees him from the page my uncle leaps from the (56) here, the stanza breaks off mid-thought, and the facing page—a blank page—thus becomes the white space from which the uncle has lept, or rather, is leaping. he exists in the present tense, moving beyond the “white screen,” “before” which he stands (52). skeets’s use of the word “before” resonates in this instance with multiple meanings. the speaker sees his uncle before (prior to) seeing the white space which frames him; his uncle stands in the landscape before it becomes (prior to it becoming) a colonized white space; his uncle stands before (in front of) the white screen which erases the landscape—the context—in which he and the speaker have both existed and in which they both continue to exist. these lines appear in the poem “drift(er),” which comes “after benson james, drifter route 66, gallup, new mexico, 06/30/79 by richard avedon,” the photograph which skeets uses as the cover image of his collection. the photograph itself brings to mind the pages in claudia rankine’s citizen in which the repeated and ever-increasingly smudged phrases “i do not always feel colored” and “i feel most colored when i am thrown against a sharp white background” face one another across the spine of the book (rankine 52-3). the utterances, which look as if they are stenciled onto brick, seem to reference citizen’s own cover image, a photograph of david hammons’s art pice, in the hood (1993), which is comprised of a hood ripped from a hoodie and mounted on a white wall. but even this photograph includes a shadow which avedon’s photograph of skeets’s uncle does not. the observer of avedon’s photograph, therefore, does not know from which direction the light comes. this throws into question the time of day, the time of year, and every other marker of setting, the photographer effectively erasing everything but the singular subject, and thus setting the subject adrift in a sea of whiteness. skeets argues through his poetry that this subject—his uncle, benson james, the “man with shoulder-length hair / dollar bills fisted”—cannot be caught in a camera’s eye, nathan bradford dixon review of eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers 295 cannot be fixed in a space made up of erasure. the man moves beyond the framing device—a white sheet of paper taped to the side of a building—and beyond the lens (and the photogropher behind the lens) that attempts to fix the man there: see his lips how still how horizon how sunset […] (52) the man’s face encompasses—and is encompassed, in turn, by—the landscape. skeets frees him from the blank white space by placing him in context. to be liberated from “white space” means to return to the landscape. this book is a re-membering of the past—a past within the whole frame, the landscape writ large and all-inclusive. as skeets has written of his book in “drifting: a cover image story”: “i want to add what was made invisible. i want to bring the light back so we can have our shadows again. to give us back the morning so we can have the night.” the word “still” (qtd. above) crops up repeatedly throughout the collection, but it always refers to survival through an ever-changing present—a living continuity that is never stagnating, never immobile. these poems are not nostalgic. they vibrate with queer desire, the words coupling together in the landscape to make context for movement among them. read “beardtongue,” “pronghorn,” “pigweed,” “ricegrass,” “snakeweed” (20), “eyeteeth,” “snowmelt,” “tumbleweed” (76). before “railroad” (45), “pipeline” (46), “sledgehammer” (21), “drunktown” (1), is “larksupr and beeplant on the meadow” (28), is “sandbur” (30), “thunderhead” (31), “horseweed” (6), “horsetail” and “buffalograss” (39), is “the letter t vibrating in cottonwoods” (39). the reader can hear the “heartbeat” of the speaker like a “brushfire” (17) as it burns through this landscape of doublewords, a landscape which is always in a state of becoming. all of history piles into the present, and the speaker points out that it is “such a terrible beauty to find ourselves beneath things/ such a terrible beauty to witness men ripen” (68). of course the word “ripen” implies the idea of cyclical time and the seasons, and skeets complicates the idea of backsliding in such a schema by repeating powell’s “we could be boys together,” but adding the word “finally” (76). he suggests that to “unyoke,” to “undress,” to “unlearn” might provide a template for moving forward (76). skeets has been watching over the world from which he comes and is remaking it in the image of those who came before him, thus remaking it in his own image and in the images of those that will come after. the form of this book does not match its function; the form is its function. it does what it says will be done—the past, the present, and the future couple into doublewords and blend, couple and blend. the landscape and the people of the landscape—the people from the landscape—couple and blend, couple transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 296 and blend. the book becomes its own self-fulfilling proficy: it makes beauty again, from here nathan bradford dixon, university of georgia works cited powell, d. a. “boonies.” 2011. poetry foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/54985/boonies. rankine, claudia. citizen: an american lyric. graywolf, 2014. skeets, jake. “drifting: a cover image story.” milkweed editions. 25 march 2019. https://milkweed.org/blog/drifting-a-cover-image-story. microsoft word 908-article text-4832-1-6-20200401.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 131 the vitruvian man and beyond: spirit imperative in the life and poetry of ralph salisbury ingrid wendt ralph salisbury, my brilliant, passionate, and deeply-spiritual cherokee-shawneeenglish-irish-american husband, began his every day, just after sunrise, by going outdoors to say his morning prayers — acknowledging and offering gratitude to the spirit presences inherent in earth’s creation.1 standing upright, feet firmly planted, with arms at his sides, he’d start by facing east, for two or three minutes, silently praying to the great spirit of all and then, feet unmoving, he’d pray to the spirit of the east, bringer of sun, on whom re-birth depends. at the conclusion of these opening words — which were constant from day to day, and sacred, not to be written down — he’d raise his arms parallel to the ground (envision leonardo da vinci’s “vitruvian man”2) and pivot, at the waist, his entire torso 90 degrees: first, to the right, then back to center, then to the left, and back to center again, where he’d lower his arms and turn his whole body to face and pray to another spirit of the four directions; and again, at prayer’s conclusion, he’d raise his arms, pivot, and repeat the same pattern, until each spirit had been addressed. turning again to face the east, he’d conclude with prayers to the spirit of the sky and to the spirit of the earth, “from which growth comes, in which my loved ones lie.”3 whether it was on our east-facing balcony, with the city of eugene, oregon, spreading across the valley far below our hillside yard and the large vegetable garden we planted every spring; or wherever his writing and his teaching took him, be it the landscaped grounds of the villa serbelloni, high above lake como; or the autumn tundras of norway and finland, 250 miles north of the arctic circle; or gazing at one of ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 132 countless other vistas that spread before him, he silently, humbly, prayed, expressing the hope that through his respectful attention and the attention of other indigenous people around the world, creation may continue to sustain us. like the “vitruvian man,” who stood perfectly centered in the fusion of a circle and a square, ralph stood fully present in the fusion of both a dual and a non-dual world — the place where opposites dissolve — where spirit is fused with the physical, where subject and object, self and other, as well as past and present, form an inseparable unity into which one’s own being is an integrated whole, immersed in the sacred reality of the universe. this place of fusion also represents where ralph stood with regard to identity. when asked to which of his people he paid primary allegiance, native american or caucasian, ralph’s answer was often to paraphrase a passage from luigi pirandello’s short story “war,”4 in which a bereaved father says that he “does not give half of his love to one child, half to another, he gives all his love to each of his children. i am a cherokee-shawnee-english-irish person, not part this part that but all everything, whatever it is.”5 in conversation, he’d often say “i would give all of my love to my indian people, and all of my love to my white people. i am not part indian, part white, but wholly both.” thus, indian and white, ralph stood in his own physical and spiritual space at the center of the overlapping circle and square. this inner space, which defies categorization, was the space from which ralph drew courage and the motivation to bear witness for all people, especially the victims of injustice. that sense of oneness, of inter-connectedness, which infuses all of ralph’s work, stemmed from his belief that divinity is “imminent” within each element of creation. and here i tread carefully, and as respectfully as possible. ralph seldom spoke directly of his beliefs, and i — neither theologian nor scholar of indigenous studies— come from a family and a cultural heritage very different from his own. what i have pieced together transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 133 comes from many years of closely reading ralph’s poetry and from what i know of his intentions; from deep conversations not only with him, but with other indigenous writers, in which i participated; from my own wide readings; and from conversations with scholars of native american literature and religions. if this essay speaks wrongly of ralph’s beliefs, and/or the beliefs of his cherokee and other indigenous people, i take full responsibility, and i apologize, in advance, to whomever these words might offend. to the best of my understanding, and as this essay will, throughout, elucidate with reference to specific poems, ralph believed that spirit is not separate from creation. spirit is “immanence,” not “transcendence.” the “god of all,” to whom ralph prayed, was not the god of western theology who created the heavens and the earth, while remaining separate from them.6 god did not create the world and then admire his creation from an outside vantage point. in indigenous theologies, god remains within all earthly beings; every rock, every tree, every pool of water, every animal — every element of nature is “sensate” and aware of our presence, just as we are aware of its presence. in the words of ecological philosopher david abram: for the largest part of our species’ existence, humans have negotiated relationship with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every …. entity that we happened to focus upon. all could speak, articulating in gesture and whistle and sigh a shifting web of meanings that we felt on our skin or inhaled through our nostils or focused with our listening ears, and to which we replied — whether with sounds, or through movements, or minute shifts of moods.7 ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 134 when hunting deer, for example, the animal ralph saw was not “a” deer, but “deer” — the proper name of a relative — the embodiment of an inexplicable life force, which must be acknowledged and thanked. ralph’s “negotiated relationship,” this “exchange” between animals and himself, as he was hunting and fishing, consisted of a wordless awareness, a “shift” of consciousness, of “mood,” rather than ritual speech; but we see in his poems its verbal equivalent. in his poems ralph asks forgiveness from the animals he’s killed for food (he never killed for sport); he asks forgiveness from all beings he may ever have harmed, for he was “one with them.” “by naming others, whether they be human or more than human,” says professor john baumann, scholar of religious studies, “you are acknowledging their existence, you are acknowledging the ‘sensate intelligence’ of something that senses you, as you sense it, in the same way, whether past or future or present. every time you name something you’re bringing it into existence, you’re acknowledging it, it acknowledges you, and now you’re forming this reciprocal relationship with your world. that reciprocity is at the core of indigenous thought.”8 and it isn’t only the “living, animate” that is “sensate,” it’s also what the western mindset terms “the inanimate”: stones, rocks, mountains, water, minerals, and the like. i’m reminded of a deeply spiritual moment ralph and i once shared, when the renowned sámi poet, visual artist, and musician nils-aslak valkeapää, at his home on the finnish tundra, carefully handed to each of us, in turn, a very large stone. “hold it,” he said, “in your hands. it will breathe.”9 it did. we felt it. i am still without words to describe it. in addition to his belief in the “sensate” oneness of all creation, ralph also felt that every aspect of our world is in a state of constant change, constant flux, its future existence dependent on the continuation of “right practices” (also referred to as “right transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 135 actions”) and the attention, gratitude, and respect to which he — in line with tradition and in harmony with indigenous people around the world — committed himself to observing.10 seen in this context, ralph’s morning prayers were also a form of “right action.” by acknowledging and addressing the sacred deities, he was not only giving thanks and speaking words of supplication; he was, with his words, doing his part to keep creation intact and viable. only on one, very special occasion, at the south rim of the grand canyon, when our daughter martina was nine, did ralph speak his prayers aloud and in our presence. every other morning, as long as he was physically able, he chose to be alone and out of doors, no matter where his travels took him, and to silently repeat the same verbal sequence: his own words interwoven with the language of ritual he’d discovered many years before, during his readings of james mooney’s collection of the sacred formulas of the cherokees (1891), and mooney’s comprehensive publication of cherokee history, myths, and legends, published in 1900.11 ralph especially appreciated the works of belgian-born frans (sometimes spelled franz) olbrechts, who lived among the cherokee people and completed, edited, and published mooney’s second book of sacred texts in 1932.12 ralph did, however, offer his readers — in the introduction to his sixth book of poems, rainbows of stone — the words with which his daily prayers concluded: “i thank the creator for my small place in the immensity, power, glory, and beauty of creation. i pray that i may be worthy of my medicine path and live well enough and long enough to fulfill my destiny.”13 in rainbows of stone he also included a poem titled “six prayers,”14 which follows the same sequence and contains the essence as his morning prayers but uses different words. “six prayers” is more of an approximation: a consciously crafted poem that stands on its own, with literary turns of phrase and images that echo throughout his entire oeuvre. in the poem, ralph begins by addressing the cherokee ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 136 god of thunder, who once, during a fierce storm, when ralph was 15, struck him with lightning as he was climbing through a wire fence, during harvest time, far out in the fields of his iowa family’s farm. that spirit power turned, now, into ally — for he came to believe, later in life, that this event “marked” him to carry out a mission15 — ralph asks for help in shaping the poem he will write that day, its subject usually unknown to him until he put pencil to paper: a poem which he hopes will nourish the spirits of his people, just as rain has always made possible the growing of beans, pumpkins, and yams to nourish their bodies. in stanza two, ralph’s prayer, again, is not for himself alone, but for the earthly renewal which only the spirit of the east can bring, as seen in the images of sun, to awaken the birds and melt the mountain snows, thereby ensuring the ongoing supply of water upon which life depends. in stanzas three and four, he prays that his words might help humankind to connect with each other, to live in harmony, as creation intended us to do. stanza five returns us to the request of stanza one — aid with his writing — but this time, ralph prays his words may help readers of the future, in whose world “the green of even the tallest pine/ is wolf tooth white” (a reference, i believe, to nuclear winter) — a future when growing food (metaphorically, providing hope, providing color) may be next to impossible.16 stanza six brings in a bittersweet awareness: the sacred earth holds ralph’s loved ones (father, mother, brothers, aunt); yet earth’s “black loam” 17 (ralph’s often-used metaphor for the sacred soil of creativity) contains seeds/words that he trusts will grow, after the warmth of his hand turns snow (paper) to life-giving water (the catalyst which allows his words to flow). thus, a poem which has edged toward darkness — as does much of ralph’s work — ends on a note of light, of optimism. humankind has, yes, wreaked havoc upon itself and upon our world, and will do so again and again. yet, as demonstrated here and transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 137 elsewhere in his work, ralph never lost hope that life on this planet, as we know it, may endure. six prayers thunderer god of the turbulent sky may my turbulent mind shape for my people rain clouds beans pumpkins and yams. east spirit dawn spirit may birds awaken in the forest of teeth whose river your color must say frozen mountains’ prayer that you will loosen them. spirit of the north whose star is our white mark ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 138 like the blaze we chop in black bark where the trail home divides even in our homes we need you to guide. spirit of the sunset west may gray clouds hiding friends from me glow like yours that we grope toward each other through a vivid rose. spirit of the south direction of warm wind warm rain and the winter sun like a pale painting of a morning glory help me spirit that in my mind humble things a man may give to his child may grow transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 139 the blue of berry orange of squash crimson of radish yellow of corn when the green of even the tallest pine is wolf tooth white. spirit of the earth keeper of mother father sister brother loved ones all once praying as i pray or in some other way spirit the black dirt is like the black cover of a book whose words are black ink i can not read but i place my brown hand on snow and pray that more than snow may melt. ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 140 ralph’s existential understanding of creation, which came from many sources — among them, the earth-wisdom of his parents, amplified by his near-death experience with lightning, together with his commitment to honoring friends who died in world war ii,18 and, later, with finding an olbrechts’ photograph of the cherokee medicine man jukiah, to whom ralph bore uncanny resemblance — gradually led him to the full realization that he was being called upon to dedicate his life, his teaching, and his writing to a complex “spirit imperative”: a sense of sacred duty, which he referred to (by turns) as his medicine path, his spirit path, his destiny. this sacred duty was, quite simply, to use his love of language and his gift with words “to heal” and “to save,” though as he once so humbly stated, “if i am in any sense a medicine man, my ceremonies are my fiction and my poems.”19 indeed, the words “to save” appear throughout ralph’s many books of poems.20 one of their earliest appearances is in a poem titled “their lives and the lives”: “my life maybe bettered but not lengthened / by lives i have tried to save in words….(italics mine).21 in “an indian war, possibly not the last,” a poem written for his younger brother rex (who made the air force his career, rising to the rank of colonel), ralph wrote, “i fight an indian war/ again, not hand to hand,/ but hand to pen,/ taking a stab at/ making less meaningless/ a page’s white skin, // to try to save a future for generations….”22 the imperative to save appears also in “this is my death dream,” a poem about a fever-vision he had as a three-year-old child: the enormous family barn was balanced on his thumb, holding (he realized, in retrospect) all the animals “terrified/ i’ll drop them/ to smash amid kindling./ how can they know/that fever from/ the heavens will burn/ their home before i’m grown, and/ the only way they’ll be saved/ is for me to survive/ lightning and war/ and remember them…..”23 in the poem “green smoke,” which retells an event that happened during air force training (ralph corralled transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 141 and tied down a bomb which had rolled loose from its moorings) he writes: “and yes, eighteen, i saved eight men,/ nine if i count myself, … and now i’m a poet and try to save everything/ i love.”24 ralph’s commitment “to heal and to save” is also revealed in the very titles of poems written not as re-creations of original cherokee sacred formulas, but as poems intended to keep his own sometimes-flagging spirit alive, as well as the spirits of his readers — poems with sometimes whimsical, sometimes serious, titles: “a cherokee secular formula to cure egoism,” for example, and “a defense against the evil without and the evil within,” “a ritual for approaching my death,” “a ritual not to feel alone.” “war in the genes, a reveille for mustering the dead.” “death song, my own.” “a prophecy, wish, hope or prayer.” “a medicine man, his natural perspective.” “cherokee manhood-vigil vision.” “a cherokee ars poetica.” “a ritual seeking a voice.” and many more: telling the truth, but telling it “slant.”25 titles of other poems reveal ralph’s commitment to go beyond the limits of felt experience. words by columbian novelist laura restrepo — “the duty of the writer in violent times is to keep history alive” — serve as epigraph for ralph’s poem “potatoplanting, a native history,” which includes a reference to the genocide of his people by those who “skinned men” as we now skin potatoes.26 in “these sacred names,” ralph’s felt duty to passing along (saving) the history of his people extended also to keeping alive, through naming, the spirits of respected cherokee elders: chief guwisguwi (john ross), tsali (charlie), sequoia (george guest, guess, or gist), tagwandahi (catawbakiller), itagunahi (john ax), and ayunini (swimmer). in these the people (the aniyunwiya) come back against bayonets, against extinction, ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 142 rejoining kin, beneath the clay, beneath the rivers of the carolinas, kentucky, tennessee and georgia, to join in a sacred dance, in echota, the holy city, the maiden whose death dooms us all, the beautiful daughter of the sun.”27 in the poem “’katooah,’ we say,” ralph imagines “how it was, / the lighter women taken, and the darker, / more fertile, land. // … but yunwiya now call each other ‘cherokee,’ / the choctaw insult name ‘cave men,’/ altered by white contempt, that verbal victor. // ‘katooah,’ i repeat / for pleasure of sound — … // and hear ‘the u.s.,’ on / a russian or asian or arab’s / contemptuous tongue.”28 ralph’s multi-faceted imperative to heal the spirits of those still living and those to come, and to save — through speaking them into existence — the ways, beliefs, names, histories, and customs of his cherokee forebears, is not, however, to be found only within these (and many more) specific poems, within his daily prayers, and within book titles based on cherokee myths (going to the water: poems of a cherokee heritage, spirit beast chant, pointing at the rainbow, a white rainbow, and rainbows of stone). nor was his mission to save only his cherokee people and their heritage; ralph wished, as well, to acknowledge, honor, and preserve the memories of those 90% of all tribal peoples in the americas whose lives and cultures were decimated by invading europeans.29 among many such poems are “canyon de chelley,” “montezuma’s castle — cliff dwelling — arizona,” and “a costal temple ruin, 1992,” written during one of our many trips to mexico. another dimension of ralph’s commitment to other indigenous people can be seen in poems declaring kinship and a spiritual connection with the living descendants of those tribes which did survive — transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 143 “medicine-meeting, hoopa, 1994,” for example; “for my swinomish brother drumming across the water”; and “for octavio paz,” the mexican nobel laureate, whose indigenous ancestry figures prominently in his writing. one might even go so far as to say that ralph’s two-fold imperative –“to heal” and “to save” — is manifest, one way or another, in almost every poem he wrote: poems to preserve the names, stories, and story-telling voices of his immediate and extended family; poems which speak into “continuous being” the sacred world around him; poems expressing a sense of mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kinship that extended to all people, everywhere in the world; poems that praise and celebrate, and in so doing, attempt to save all that is beautiful and true, while protesting all that is not. taken together, these various manifestations of ralph’s spirit imperative to save “all he loved,” were nothing less than a wish to save the world. and he said as much, in his final years, often declaring that his life and his writing were dedicated to the tribe of the world, the human tribe. “though i have lived and worked among the intelligentsia of many nations, my writing comes from having lived as a questing, mixed-race, working-class individual in a violent world, and my work is offered to the spirit of human goodness, which unites all people in the eternal struggle against evil, a struggle to prevail against global extinction.”30 as choctaw/cherokee scholar and novelist louis owens once wrote of ralph’s poetry, “every line is something like prayer.”31 ~ ~ ~ what led a boy of mixed-race ancestry — born and raised on an iowa farm, in a house that, until he was fifteen, had no electricity or indoor plumbing; a boy whose elementary education, through the eighth grade, was in a one-room, country school — what early influences were strong enough to keep ralph going steadily forward, through a lifetime ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 144 of challenge, to the place of deep wisdom in which he quietly strove to unite all people in the struggle “against global extinction”? as objectively as possible, i suggest that ralph’s goodness and steady optimism were inborn, were part of his very dna, of who he was. although he’d be first to say that he was not perfect, one need only look at family photos taken during the great depression of the 1930s and during world war ii — in which ralph is, almost without fail, the only one smiling — to see the inner radiance that was there from the very beginning. nourished and given direction by the teachings of both parents, ralph’s love of life was deepened and expanded by his intimate relationship with the land, with land’s creatures, and with the cycles of birth, growth, death, and regeneration, which he experienced first-hand, as “givens.” growing up the middle child of the five who survived infancy, ralph was not formally introduced to any organized religion. his family belonged to no church. he did, however, as do many children, incorporate into his vocabulary the random, isolated words from the christian lexicon that were spoken at school and in town; words he encountered in the school’s encyclopedia (which he read all the way through) and in whatever novels he could find. his family did not celebrate religious holidays, there were no christmas presents, no tree, though his father did, on occasion, cut a christmas tree for the school from the tip of a large, side branch of a farmyard pine. yet, ralph often credited each parent with having instilled in him a deep awareness of an order to the world, of things that existed “beyond our knowing” and were important to recognize and respect. rachel carson, world-renowned naturalist and early environmentalist, has said, “if a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”32 that person was ralph’s irish-american mother, who’d been transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 145 asked to stop attending her third-grade sunday school class at the methodist church because she asked too many questions. she formed ideas of her own, however, and years later taught her son what he, as an adult, often said was “something like pantheism.” on more than one occasion his mother told him that god was to be found in all living things—the flowers, the trees, the birds and other animals—a belief he accepted without question, for it made sense that everything he already loved was sacred. who or what god was, his mother didn’t say, nor did she teach him to pray. but their shared belief in “god-in-nature” is evident throughout his every book. does this make ralph a “nature poet,” as one commonly uses this term? i offer a very qualified “yes,” and suggest that his work might better be described as “ecopoetry,” long before that term came into fashion. for, although a love of nature infuses much of his work, that love is almost always coupled with an awareness that our sacred world, as we know it, is at all times (and never more so than today) on the verge of destruction, its harmony offset by human intrusions ranging from small and almostinconsequential, to the enormous and irreversible. i cannot count the times, beginning with our first long car trip together, he spontaneously quoted, in full, gerard manley hopkins’ poem “god’s grandeur,” which begins with joyful images of a glorious world, and quickly moves to lines of despair. “generations have trod, have trod, have trod;/ and all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;/ and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil/ is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.”33 ralph’s poems praising the beauty of nature likewise, quite frequently, make similar leaps into a darker awareness. lines expressing delight at seeing a hummingbird at the feeder might jump to an image of bombers; a poem about the conical top of a ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 146 deodar cedar, tossing in the wind, moves (via surprising associations) into a memory of hiroshima’s destruction near the end of world war ii. this coupling of the beautiful and sacred with its opposite (or the threat of it) appears throughout ralph’s work, beginning with his first published book, ghost grapefruit. “beyond the road taken” invites the reader to “draw close; …./ between these feet …/ is a crocus i would save from browsing deer/ save for you the small beauty the sun/ and snow left me, yellow petals low like myself/ in tall green, which lumbermen will find ,/ one day, a good investment. ….” (italics mine)34 another early poem recalls a verbal exchange between an unseen mother and child, in the back yard of the house next to ours in fresno, california, where we lived 1969-1971. in this poem the “impatient mother” of the title (so different from his own), wreaks — in one small moment — havoc on the spirit of her child, rejecting and stifling not only her child’s delight and wonder but also the child’s love offering. too small to break the roots, she offers her impatient mother a flower potted in the whole earth “i found it for you i found it for you i found it for you.” “oh, shut up “but i found it i found it i found it.”35 transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 147 ralph’s father’s spiritual influences were of a different order, consisting in great measure of teaching-demonstrations of “correct action”: namely, the farming and hunting practices he’d, himself, learned while growing up “mixed blood” in the kentucky hills, a hardscrabble life in which he’d had but two years of formal schooling, a life in which some cherokee traditions survived, though unnamed and (presumably) unrecognized as such, and many more were lost through intermarriage with whites. though ralph’s father never told his children of his cherokee heritage (a fact they learned, as adults, at his funeral, from his darkest-skinned, kentucky-raised brother) — with possibly some shawnee thrown in (a theory based on ralph’s great-grandmother’s “given” shawnee name, “chicabob”36) — in his memoir ralph writes, “dad essentially lived as cherokees had lived for centuries.”37 his father planted according to phases of the moon, “raised his sons to follow a traditional cherokee hunter and warrior ethic, and to farm, following cherokee traditions, the [way] now called ecological or organic.”38 this way of farming involved returning to earth — plowing into the earth —what today’s city gardeners call compost but on the farm was called barnyard waste. implicit, of course, in this instruction, was the indigenous concept of “sacred reciprocity.”39 the barnyard waste on ralph’s parents’ farm included not only vegetable waste, but the by-products of butchered farm animals and of the wild game (rabbits, squirrel, duck, deer, fox, weasel, and pheasant) that ralph learned to trap and to hunt—first with a bow and arrow his father helped him fashion “out of a willow or a maple branch…. lamenting that he did not have hickory, as he’d have had in kentucky….”40 and later, with a gun, for food to keep the family alive during the great depression of the 1930s: a time when many family meals consisted solely of cornbread and milk, or potatoes with ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 148 white-flour gravy, or bread spread with lard, for flavor and for whatever protein it might contain. his father also initiated him into several ceremonial rites of manhood. ralph was “blooded” when his father helped him kill his first animal: an ill chicken, a mercy killing, described in a poem titled “first kill, 4th year.” “ ... his son his future — dad/ has fitted my finger, thin/ as the sick chicken’s claw,/ around trigger curved like the beak of hawk. ….”41 yet ralph’s “real blooding,” he says, “came at age twelve, [the traditional cherokee age, he said, for rites of manhood] when i first hunted alone and brought back meat, two pheasants….”42 “adrenalin still high, i felt proud, but … i also felt a humility, which merged with a larger humility, the humility of knowing that i had taken a life to sustain my life and the lives of my family. my family’s cherokee prayers for the life taken had vanished as cherokee lives had been taken, generation after generation, but the feeling, the awareness would live in me and would live in other humans as long as there was human life to sustain itself by feeding on other life.”43 though his father said no prayers upon the taking of life, he did instill in his son a recognition that the animals he killed had spirits of their own, which must be respected. his father taught him to think as the hunted think, something ralph talked about often. “my father told hunting stories, in which animals were real characters. you understood that he’d thought a lot about the animals in order to be able to hunt them successfully, and you understood that what the animals were had become a part of my father’s life— not just their meat becoming a part of his body. …”44 “i have tried to get some sense of my father’s spirit life—and my own—onto the page.”45 these early teachings recur, in a variety of forms, in poems of hunting and/or fishing that, together, form a strong subject-thread that runs throughout ralph’s work. in “their lives and the lives”46 — a poem mentioned earlier in this essay — the physical transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 149 lives of the trout, and even of the worms ralph used to catch the trout, have become (physically) part of his body. his waist, his personal “equator,” has been growing. but more than physical enlargement, ralph’s spirit has grown larger, as well, by taking these animals’ spirits into his own. in keeping with indigenous tradition, he asks forgiveness from both trout and worms, a ritual grown from respect, humility, and gratitude. returning us to the main theme of this essay, “their lives and the lives” also illustrates two distinct components of ralph’s overarching spirit imperative “to save”: one, that his hope that his words will save the (inner) lives of his readers; and two, his unstated wishes to save and pass along to future generations the stories and myths of his cherokee people, to call these stories “into being” and into our own awareness. in this case it’s the (not particularly pleasing) myth of “raven mocker” (which ralph reprinted, in full, as epigraph), who tears hearts from living creatures to lengthen his own “grewsome” [sic] one.47 their lives and the lives having sacrificed four worms and torn four lives from river and fed somewhat a world and slightly increased my own equator, the cry of a raven falling with dusk down mountain, i think of raven mockers plunging meteor teeth into hearts and adding men's years to their own “grewsome” lives. my life maybe bettered but not lengthened by lives i have tried to save in words, i pray ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 150 for forgiveness from four rainbow trout, their scales as brilliant as dawn river's torrents, their lives and the lives of some worms, which knew earth well, now part of my own. another clear sense of his father’s spirit appears in the poem “for my swinomish brother drumming across the water,” mentioned earlier in the context of declaring kinship with other tribal peoples.48 here the son-become-poet lets his swinomish “brother” know that he has, also, followed the paths of “right action” and “reciprocity” by using as much of the deer as he could, returning to earth, “our common home,” that which he cannot use. i am both brother and killer of deer, whose hide i will strip from my family’s meat and offer all not needed back to the earth, our common home. yet also, in this poem, another important spirit awareness tiptoes in, one i believe ralph came to on his own: the recognition that, because he and deer are “one,” when he speaks it is through deer’s lips; the words (the blossoms) deer grazes among will spread — as blossoms will grow and seed and spread — and in so doing, they will convey, in poems, what ralph feels. i have lived so many seasons of venison i feel that, in uttering what i feel, it is deer who grazes, mouth transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 151 plucking whatever will blossom and wither and seed pastures of air, which i would share with others forever or as far as pastures have anything to give to sky. again, we see ralph’s optimism, as well as his sapience: his words, “which [he] would share/with others,” will endure “forever or as far/ as pastures have anything to give to sky” — hopefully, as long as there are eyes and ears to read and hear it, which may (or may not be) forever. this ebullient poem consists of an overlay of image upon image: metaphors which, taken together, create an invisible, conceptual reality impossible to apprehend through our five human senses. and it leads us to another consideration, of just where this interaction — this putting of feelings into word-blossoms — takes place. where else but in “pastures of air….”, before they are transcribed onto the page — for ralph considered his poems, like the stories he heard as a child, part of an oral tradition; his hope was that they be heard, if possible, before being seen on the page, and he was conscious, at all times, of cadence, of rhythm, of the pulse of his language. and here, with the mention of “air,” lies subtle but strong evidence of ralph’s awareness of another indigenous concept, its inclusion in this poem stemming from what i believe was ralph’s intuitive, inner knowledge of what has always been part of ancient belief systems: that “breath” is inextricable from “spirit.” as baumann confirms, “the etymology of ‘psyche,’ the term we use for that sense of who we are or what we belong to, in greek means ‘soul,’ it means ‘mind,’ it means ‘breath’ or ‘gust of wind.’ ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 152 ‘pneuma’ in greek, which meant ‘spirit,’ was also the word for ‘wind,’ ‘air,’ ‘breath.’ the latin term ‘anima’ which we’ve defined as ‘spirit’ or ‘soul,’ is derived from the greek term ‘animus,’ which meant ‘wind.’ in sanskrit, ‘atman,’ the very core, that piece of brahman which is independent of, yet totally part of, brahman, means ‘soul,’ but it also means ‘air’ and ‘breath’. we see this through all cultures.”49 in similar fashion, the words “to inspire” and “inspiration” also take on new meaning. “in-spire”: in‘into’ + spirare ‘breathe’: from the middle english enspire, from old french enspirer, from latin inspirare ‘breathe or blow into’: originally used to refer to a divine or supernatural being imparting an idea or truth.”50 referring to the book holy wind in navajo philosophy, by james mcneley,51 baumann continues. “this concept of ‘air/breath’ being inseparable from ‘soul,’ at some point took on the meaning of an immaterial, spiritual presence, and that’s where … ‘god’ or ‘deity-like’ creatures arose in western religions and in eastern religions. but in native spirituality, [spirit] stays as air, it stays as wind, it stays rooted in the physical world.”52 a vast number of recurring images in ralph’s poems can be viewed through this lens, starting with the title poem which opens his first book, ghost grapefruit, a poem acknowledging his kinship with, and indebtedness to, william shakespeare, which begins, “my poems are filed in grapefruit crates,/ whose cardboard spacers shape air/ — which shakespeare also shaped —/ like grapefruit segments for/ ghost hamlets….”53 perhaps someone, someday, will focus on the many times ralph uses the words “air” and “breath,” as well as the words “words” and the “tongue” which “shapes” (or “spades”) them, the “ear” which hears them, the “nostrils” which carry “air/spirit” to the brain’s recognition; to examine the often-linked image of blossoms to some of these words; to examine the myriad of contexts in which these images are used; and to relate transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 153 the images to ralph’s spirit imperative ‘to save,” manifested through “naming” and “calling into existence” the essence of creation, his ancestral people, and the “tribe of the world.” the word “tongue,” for example, appears 32 times in light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected 1950-2008.54 sometimes the tongue is his own. other times it is the tongue of some other person, or some element of creation, speaking to him. such a poem is titled “an ancestor’s tongue.” it bears, as epigraph, a cherokee myth about sun and moon, it describes the various ways ralph has seen the moon, and, near the end, includes these lines: “i feel it faunal an ancestor's tongue through/ an animal mask narwal dog seal or bear/ telling all: moon along a beach/ of mist ….” (spaces between words in the original).55 in another poem it is ralph’s own words he hopes will someday be raised on someone else’s tongue. this poem, “dad’s old plowing buddy, met,” ends in the form of a prayer: may i have enough to give to deserve to be raised, from time to time, on someone’s tongue as air more nurturing, more enduring or anyway lighter than stone.56 in the poem “family stories and the one not told,” ralph would call again “into being” the life of his cherokee-shawnee great-grandmother chicabob (whose braids are now in the safekeeping of our own daughter, martina) and whose story one of her kin (ralph, speaking in third person) wishes to “spade with his tongue enough earth ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 154 out of his brain to raise her coffin to blaze like a meteor, her cherokee-shawnee braid loosed at last to spread black sunshine on a snow horizon.57 the acts of calling into being, of saving, all that ralph loves, reaches new heights in one of his most exuberant poems, “a fancy dancer, ascending among mountain flowers,”58 a poem singular in its adherence to one particular (though complex), dreamlike vision. here, the entire poem not only speaks into being the elements of creation (in which ralph imaginatively, joyfully, dances) it also celebrates his deeply felt sense of connection with members of other tribes. in this poem, ralph places himself within the ongoing pan-tribal, native american “fancy dance” movement that began in the 1920s and 1930s, originally created in response to, and in defiance of, the 1883 governmentimposed ban on native american religious ceremonies, tribal dances, and the practices of medicine men.59 one might again notice images we’ve seen in poems already cited, plus other, related, images which are sprinkled throughout ralph’s body of work: “sun,” “gene,” “blossoms,” “petals,” “breath,” “air,” “season,” “step,” “words,” “poetry,” “molecule.” a fancy dancer, ascending among mountain flowers i am dancing to bees’ zither rhythms, and, with their gracious or drunkenly heedless permission, am dancing with the scent of centuries of millions of beautiful women with transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 155 each breath each step through blossoms toward clouds imperceptibly thins. without missing a molecule of more and more ethereal air, i’m dancing with timberline pines, which shrink, degree by chilling degree, cone after generation of cone, their sweet, sun after sun, season on season, growth, as pygmy mammoths, my fellow mammals, gene on gene, grew smaller, to survive, as has, century after century, word after compressed word, our poetry. particles of mineral syllables beneath each foot’s sole’s eloquent cells, i am dancing, with giddy expectation, on stone only glaciers have carved, when, out of some utterly beyond me lexicon, dawn wind, a fancy dancer, from every tribe, whirls petals faster than any man, thought by exuberant thought jigging, toward summit and exhaustion’s rhapsodic anticipation of fulfillment, can. ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 156 parenthetically, this poem might bring to mind words of walt whitman, whose rhapsodic “song of myself” begins, “i celebrate myself, and sing myself,/ and what i assume you shall assume,/ for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. // my tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air….”60 ralph calls it “molecule,” whitman calls it “atom.” the science is a bit different, but the concept is the same — as is the image of tongue, the pulse, the rhythm, the tone of giddy inclusivity, the unbridled love of sacred earth. i suggest, however, that unlike whitman, ralph’s underlying intention and belief was that his poem, his exuberant words, would — like the words of his morning prayers — help keep the cycles of the universe in flux, in a state of constant creation. several other word clusters in “fancy dancer” demonstrate one more key element in ralph’s personal belief system: the concept of “simultaneity.” the moments in which the fancy dancer makes his way to the mountaintop are moments in which “cone after generation of cone,” “sun after sun,” “season on season,” “gene on gene,” “century after century” are embedded. the past is not past but exists within every present moment we live. a snippet of another poem, “a declaration, not of independence,” also demonstrates the concept of simultaneity. within the meat of quail lie, compounded, the past lives of countless other lives. . . . while hunting my family’s food, i thought what the hunted think, so that i ate, not only meat but the days of wild animals fed by the days of plants whose roots are earth’s past lives, all fed by the sun, rising and falling, as quail, hurtling through sky61 transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 157 just as, “century after century,” “gene on gene,” “sun after sun” is present in the mountain landscape through which the dancer ascends, so, too, the quail contains within itself a great chain of past lives, all of them fed by “earth’s past lives,” as earth has been (and continues to be) fed throughout all time “by the sun.” we might compare this view of the universe to that of poet william blake, who saw a “world in a grain of sand … a heaven in a wild flower, … and eternity in an hour.” unique to ralph’s own vision, however, as we see in other lines of “a declaration…” and in other poems, is his recognition of past human innovations and human contributions that have gone into improving and benefitting our lives today. in “fancy dancer,” it’s the contributions of poets and poetry which have survived — though diminished in size, perhaps a reference to epic poetry — to inform our ways of looking at the world. in “a declaration…,” ralph lets us know that the quail hunter’s success also depends on the lives of other humans, a dependence that crosses national boundaries as well as those of time. had humans not, centuries past, invented gunpowder, the quail would not come “hurtling through sky, // [felled by] gun-powder, come— / as the first americans came— / from asia.”62 ralph’s sense of history and of connectedness to other humans around the world is closely linked with gratitude: not only for the inventors among them, but for the labors of working-class people with whom he never stopped identifying, even after years of teaching at the university level at home and abroad. the poem “after heart-bypass surgery, another ritual for continuing struggle” offers another example. here it is the raw materials from overseas and centuries of human labor, that allow ralph’s foot to be “shod with soft/ rubber—from trees french legionnaires ordered planted/ by indoingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 158 chinese, tapped now by vietnamese,/ supplying an american corporation named, for victory, nike. …. “63 a more recent, and a very short, poem — written after receiving a (remarkablynow-possible) phone call while camping in the mountains — illustrates ralph’s gratitude for a moment’s delight which would not have happened, were it not for human labor (implied in the making of cell phones) and, farther back, for the mesozoic age — from which, after all that lived and died was compressed into oil, has come the plastic components of cell phones — and for the eons of ancestors, whose genetic mutations resulted in the formation of his own ear, allowing him to hear, over thousands of miles, new york to oregon, his granddaughter’s voice. awakened by cell phone awakening, beneath pines where a border of earth the river dried from gives thanks to rain, i hear the lovely and loving chatter my daughter’s year-old daughter sends through silicon crystals transmitted into eons of green metamorphosed into petroleum reborn as plastic, and, yes, into the centuries of families which formed my ear.64 transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 159 the word “eons” plays a major role in this poem, as it does in many others.65 “eons”: a word more sweeping in its inclusiveness than decades, or centuries, or even millennia. ralph’s pleasure in small things and his belief that small moments were everywhere, just waiting to be found, was intrinsically linked to his inborn optimism and an ever-present awareness of simultaneity: of the “eons” residing within each moment, that have led to each moment, but are hidden as the pit of peach is hidden, in the indescribable juiciness of each and every passing day. a poem very different in content (though it also revolves around the image of petroleum/oil and the word “eons”) is “around the sun, the alaskan oil spill.”66 here, ralph’s view of a universe in constant creation takes us into the future. through great compression of image and metaphor — a visual comparison of globules of spilled oil to space capsules (which will go into the atmosphere via the nostrils of arctic terns) — we see a universe always in flux: a universe in which a tern (having unwittingly inhaled oil) will someday return to earth, to decompose and end up being part of ongoing creation. even ralph’s own “cells may return” as something else. different, also, in tone from “awakened by cell phone,” “around the sun, the alaskan oil spill” carries forth ralph’s belief of god-in-nature, instilled by his mother, and is one of his clearest, strongest, and most direct rebukes of humans who would sacrifice the harmony of nature for material gain, and a declaration of what “the sacred” truly is. here, as well (as in earlier poems, but now with an all-inclusive vision), he speaks into being, with the all the “breath [his] mind can hold”: nothing less than the holiness of all creation, in all of its connectedness, all of its cycles. around the sun, the alaskan oil-spill ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 160 space-capsule-shape globules of oil re-entering the atmosphere in the nostrils of terns, an ocean of air between words’ furthest surges and home, i say a tern may return, eons from its final breath, and smother some other creature— and i say my cells may return, eons from poems: which say each tern is sacred, its flesh to become new life, to go on sustaining lives; which say that oil— formed from the dead—is sacred, not to be wasted or used to gratify greed; which say, with all the breath a mind can hold, each moment of life is sacred, and timelessness and death. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 161 perhaps the most comprehensive, wide-ranging, and joyful declarations of ralph’s love of life, his sense of gratitude, and his sense of mission, is the “epilogue” which concludes his prize-winning autobiographical memoir, so far, so good (and which will conclude this essay, as well). written when ralph was 82, the epilogue can be seen as a long, radiant, prose poem — or a teaching demonstration of what i, in the language of literary analysis, have abstracted into such words as “multi-faceted and multi-dimensional … spirit imperative.” here we have it — a paean, a psalm, a tapestry of thanksgiving for his own long life, a love song for the universe, in all of its seamlessly interwoven, wondrous and simultaneous, past and present elements — written in a style deliberately elliptical, as ralph’s poems, his images, were elliptical embodiments, through language, of his sense of standing, like the vitruvian man at the center of so many interconnections, so many overlays, so many memories — a prose poem that is, in style and content, the essence of the word with which the epilogue begins: “simultaneity.” here ralph recalls his youthful pursuit of enlightenment: his reading about human development, about the aboriginal senoi “dream peoples” of malaysia, about eastern religions; reading freud; reading whatever he could find, that might help him on his spirit quest, to fathom the mysteries of the universe and of the human mind. here we have his life-long condemnation of war, and the awareness that beauty and goodness is always threatened by violence, as he experienced it often, in his childhood, in the social environment of the great depression, during military training, and as it occurs throughout every lifetime, every century. here we have example after example of his personal resilience, of his determination to find the best that each day offers, to live as full a life as possible while, at the same time, following — as long as possible — his ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 162 spirit path, his medicine path, his destiny, his spirit imperative to save not only his ancestral heritage, not only moments in history and memories he brings to the page, not only the beauty of any given day, but the very future of our world: to protect future generations from “those whose love of power threatens to destroy our children’s children’s children and render humans extinct.”67 and still, through it all, to rejoice in the splendor of each given day. epilogue simultaneity. access to one's entire life in any moment. to see or to feel the universe in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour. to live, not by the calendar, so useful in sentencing criminals. ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. … what went on for generations of adaptation goes on in each new child — and human embryos still have gills and tails in the womb. dream recall. meditation. dianetics. ….. time travel all the way back through the faunal scale to the beginning of life. science fiction. religion. simultaneity. fascists shooting at my brother as he escapes prisoner of war camp while my brother is aiming a gun at my father and going to kill him if he doesn't stop abusing our mother, while someone is enduring a winter night to shoot the glass out of a window above my baby bed. simultaneity. simple mindedness. why not. . . . why am i not walking in the sunshine of my eighty-third spring, a spring i would not be seeing out this or any other window had not medical skill progressed to the ability to transplant a blood vessel from my ageing left leg to my ageing heart? my heart, receiver of stolen goods, thriving — leg still o.k., like any living thing robbed of anything short of life — why am i not walking, my eyes stealing the beauty others have labored to create, in front yards most will labor one third, approximately, of their lives to own? why are my feet and my mind not tagging along with my gaze and my mind into the reality of this day’s, this instant’s inexpressible splendor? my mind unites with the hand clutching this pen — same tool with which bored clerks were busily recording their century’s piracy’s booty and inhumane worship of wealth. gloriously, transcendentally "mad" william blake experienced the world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour. as mad as blake, whether gloriously and transcendentally so or not, i am trying to experience again and again at least some of my transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 163 past, in a computer chip, and to translate it into ink, in the hope that others may experience a tiny piece of a time i would like to call mine — a time i try to save from those whose love of power threatens to destroy our children’s children’s children and render humans extinct. i hope to feel myself fifteen again and again and afraid of death and trembling and trying to do what a son and a man, a man, should be expected to do, defend his home. i hope to sense again and again the fragrance of fallen maple leaves, the bouquet of a stranger's perfume, an island of impossible dreams in an arctic ocean of air, the brilliance of sun in daffodils, the daffodils i would give my wife, my complex, fascinating wife of 40 years, when, tired, and beautiful, utterly, unutterably beautiful, she returns from her work day — eight hours of william blake's eternity. unaware that i am trying to destine her to live the rest of her and william blake's eternities in a computer chip — itself, so i understand, a grain of sand — she will suggest, i hope, a walk, a walk through sunlight finding fulfillment in forsythia — forsythia seething like terribly beautiful — and reassuringly distant — lightning, forsythia a molten thunderbolt hurtling toward sky and into two ageing lovers' delighted eyes. so, enough of this purple poeticized prose, somebody, somebody with a body still as young as a newly created poem, may say, hurling youthful flesh — past my awed, admiring, aged eyes — toward no place else but bed. "forsythia," by god, i affirm, in my eighty-third spring's hours and hours of eternities. "forsythia," yes, by god, "forsythia," by god, and by chance or by hook or by crook or by a poet's warped way of looking at facts, but by god, whatever else, by god, by god, by god! and wild ducks, yes, rain or shine, raincoat or t-shirt, hundreds and hundreds of wild ducks so numerous and varied i couldn't even begin to count the jewels the force of their landing will scatter across water shining like a silver platter, yes, ducks, wild ducks, mallards, like the ones i'd get soaked and shiver and shiver for hours to harvest from blue or gray sky for my family's often bare meat platter, wild ducks, bless their beauty, their forgiving, fearless and greedy gabbling enjoyment of life as intense as my hopefully equally forgiving own. trumpeter swans, for sure, straight lines of black-marked white flowers, growing in a blue or a gray sky garden, and trumpeting, yes, creating a music — presumably about arduous effort and anticipation of food and of mating — mating for life, i am told, for life —and whatever each swan may feel about death and ongoing life, is all, i believe, that beethoven could express. and now, again and again, snow geese, a great, white, incredibly beautiful ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 164 blizzard descending on the gray waters of the bay — a beautiful blizzard to these ageing eyes — soon, too soon, to close — a blizzard a beautiful reminder of winters gone and winters to come and to melt again into forsythia blossoms under egg yolk color sun.68 transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 165 notes 1 work by ralph salisbury used by permission of the literary estate of ralph salisbury. copyright © 2020 by the literary estate of ralph salisbury. all rights reserved. no reproduction without permission of the estate. 2 the “vitruvian man” is a pen and ink drawing by leonardo da vinci, c. 1490. it shows a male nude standing within both a circle and a square and is said to represent the renaissance “ideal” of human and mathematical proportion. its title refers to notes da vinci made, in the margins of his drawing, from his readings of the 1st-century roman architect marcus vitruvius pollio. 3 ralph salisbury, so far, so good (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 2013), 251. 4 luigi pirandello, “war,” from the 1925 collection of short fiction raccolta donna mimma, part of the 15-volume series of stories for a year (1922-1937). pirandello’s actual words, in translation, are, "parental love is not like bread that can be broken to pieces and split amongst the children in equal shares. a father gives all his love to each one of his children without discrimination, whether it be one or ten, and if i am suffering now for my two sons, i am not suffering half for each of them but double..." [pirandello’s own two sons were captured during world war one.] 5 salisbury, op. cit, 242. 6 ralph called this god by various names, including “god of all creation,” “creator and god of all,” “god who can not be named,” “god of the universe,” and others. 7 david abram, the spell of the sensuous: perception and language in the more-thanhuman world (new york: pantheon books, 2017 edn.), ix. 8john baumann, ph.d. in religious studies, independent scholar, in conversation with the author, march 10, 2019. 9 nils-aslak valkeapää, in conversation, at his home on the finnish tundra, september 1994. the sámi people, formerly called laplanders, are the indigenous people of northernmost scandinavia and the northwesternmost part of russia. often referred to, by outsiders, as the “white indians of the north,” their culture, customs, language, and literature have survived centuries of nordic oppression, at the hands of non-native peoples of all four countries. valkeapä was, in his lifetime, a multi-media artist celebrated around the world. 10 conversation with colleagues in tromsø, norway, led to the following lines from my poem, “questions of grace”: “ánde somby, sámi lawyer, son/ of reindeer herders descended from/ reindeer herders farther back than anyone/ knows, tells how when his ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 166 father had to kill/ one of his own he talked to it, petted it, ‘deer,/ i’m sorry you happened to be here just at this/ wrong time. whose fault is it i do this?” ingrid wendt, in surgeonfish (cincinnati, oh: wordtech editions, 2005), 43. 11 james mooney, the sacred formulas of the cherokees (7th annual report, bureau of american ethnology. 1891), 302-97. james mooney, myths of the cherokee. (us bureau of american ethnology, 1897-8 annual report, 1902.) 12 frans olbrechts completed, revised, and edited james mooney’s second collection of sacred formulas (which also included cherokee history and myths), titled the swimmer manuscript: cherokee sacred formulas and medicinal prescriptions (washington, d.c.: smithsonian institution bureau of american ethnology, bulletin 99, 1932). 13 ralph salisbury, rainbows of stone (tucson, arizona: university of arizona press, 2000), xii. ralph wrote similar sentences in so far, so good. on page 262, he wrote “...i pray that the god of the universe will allow me to live long enough and well enough to fulfill my medicine path, my destiny, in writing, in teaching -in becoming as good a person as i can be.” and on page 269: ‘’’may i live well enough and long enough to fulfill my destiny,’ is my prayer. may i fulfill my medicine dream. may i follow my medicine path to its end. and may i and may my loved ones live a life of beauty and happiness after death.” 14 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 103-104. 15 in his memoir ralph recounts the time when “a thunderbolt, hurled by one of our principal spirits, red man, the big thunder, touched me but left me alive.” op. cit., 266. 16the threat of “nuclear winter,” as the result of multiple, massive firestorms that would follow in the wake of nuclear war, was a scientific concept that arose in the 1980s and was very much on ralph’s mind, as it was in the minds of us all. the theory suggested that fires could send so much ash and soot into the atmosphere, that sunlight could not enter, the globe would cool, and major agricultural losses would ensue. while it’s tempting to think that ralph, in this poem, was talking about climate change, “six prayers” appeared in the year 2000, six years before al gore’s film “an inconvenient truth” announced to the world the devastation global warming will wreak, if left unaddressed. 17 black soil — truly black soil, not a metaphor — is specific to the area of iowa where ralph was born and raised. this image appears throughout his work. 18 ralph spoke often of his intention to honor the friends he lost during world war ii, by writing poems and stories that would convey not only their personal experiences but the true realities of war, which he saw as hidden behind propaganda and the lies of politicians. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 167 19 ralph salisbury, “between lightning and thunder,” i tell you now: autobiographical essays by native american writers, arnold krupat and brian swann, eds. (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1987; 2005 edn. by bison books), 26. 20 i am indebted to the scholarship of arnold krupat, who first called attention to this theme in his brilliant introduction to light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected 1950-2008 (eugene, oregon: silverfish review press, 2009), 10. 21ralph salisbury, pointing at the rainbow: poems from a cherokee heritage (marvin, south dakota: blue cloud quarterly, 1980), 9; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 30. 22ralph salisbury, war in the genes & other poems (cincinnati, ohio: cherry grove editions, wordtech communications, 2006), 76. 23 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 123-124; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 119-120. 24 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 28; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 93. 25 “tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” is the often-quoted first line of the emily dickinson’s poem #1129. 26 salisbury, war in the genes, 18. 27 salisbury, pointing at the rainbow, 14-15. 28 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 60; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 106. 29 the centuries-long genocide of the first peoples of the americas was officially sanctioned by pope alexander vi, in his papal bull “inter caetera,” of 1493, also known as the “doctrine of discovery.” this edict authorized spain and portugal to claim for their respective countries any lands “discovered” by explorers, to colonize them, and to dominate over their inhabitants, resulting in a global momentum of domination and dehumanization. the edict continued to be used by other governments, including the united states, as late as the nineteenth century, to justify the ongoing, systematic genocide of native americans. recommended viewing: “the doctrine of discovery: unmasking the domination code,” a 2014 documentary film directed and produced by attorney/scholar sheldon peters whitehorse. 30 these precise words do not appear in any of ralph’s published works, but he included them often, in this exact form, in the biographical statements requested by publicists, during his later years. 31 louis owens, from the dust jacket endorsement of rainbows of stone. 32 rachel carson, the sense of wonder (new york: harper and row publishers, 1965), 55. 33 gerard manley hopkins, “god’s grandeur,” written 1877, published posthumously in poems of gerard manley hopkins, robert bridges, ed. (london: humphrey milford, 1918). 34 ralph salisbury, ghost grapefruit (ithaca, ny: ithaca house, 1972), 41. ingrid wendt “the vitruvian man and beyond” 168 35 salisbury, op. cit., 55. [an aside: ralph’s use of the word “short” is puzzling; perhaps he is referring to his height, for he was, all his life, painfully aware of being the shortest male (5’7”) among his peers.] 36 geary hobson, arkansas quapaw/cherokee writer, professor, and friend, gave him this suggestion in personal correspondence sometime in the 1980s, long after ralph had already conducted extensive research into cherokee history and culture. except to pay tribute to the possibility of shawnee ancestry, ralph’s primary felt, indigenous identity was cherokee. 37 salisbury, so far, so good, 39. 38 loc. cit. 39 the precept of “reciprocity” is at the heart of indigenous practices around the world and is one of the recurring themes in robin wall kimmerer’s highly recommended book of essays, braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants (minneapolis, mn: milkweed editions, 2013). 40 salisbury, so far, so good, p. 39. 41 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 7. 42 salisbury, “between lightning and thunder,” 24. 43 salisbury, so far, so good, 100. 44 salisbury, “between lightning and thunder,” 20. 45 loc. cit. 46 salisbury, “their lives and the lives,” pointing at the rainbow, 9. a revised version appears in light from a bullet hole, 30. 47 the spelling of “grewsome” appears as ralph found it, in james mooney’s myths of the cherokee. 48 ralph salisbury, “like the sun in storm (portland, oregon: habit of rainy nights press, 2012), 10. this poem was written in the town of la connor, washington, on the shores of puget sound, where we were living for a month. the swinomish reservation was located just across the water, on fidalgo island. 49 baumann, loc. cit. 50 this etymological tracing can be found in multiple sources. 51 james mcneley, holy wind in native philosophy (tucson, arizona: university of arizona press, 1981). 52 john baumann, loc. cit. 53 salisbury, ghost grapefruit, 3. 54 the word “tongue” can also, of course, mean “language.” it’s possible that sometimes ralph deliberately used this word as a double entendre, as in the poem “’katooah,’ we say,” where the country name “u.s.” is spoken on (not in) a foreigner’s transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 169 tongue. my sense is that, in most cases, ralph was referring to the muscle that resides in the mouth. 55 ralph salisbury, going to the water: poems of a cherokee heritage (eugene, oregon: pacific house books, 1983), 54; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 68. 56 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 116. 57 salisbury, pointing at the rainbow, 1; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 29. 58 ralph salisbury, blind pumper at the well (cambridge, uk: salt publishing, 2008), 8. 59 the fancy dance, a derivative of the war dance, is said to have been created by members of the ponca tribe. it has now become part of pow wows held across the united states and around the world. 60 walt whitman, “song of myself,” from leaves of grass, first edition 1855, selfpublished. 61 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 3; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 87. 62 ibid. at the time the poem was written, the bering land bridge theory was more or less accepted and was not, as it is today (2019), the subject of some controversy and contention. 63 salisbury, war in the genes (cincinnati, ohio: cherry grove editions, wordtech communications, 2006), 112; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 139. 64 salisbury, like the sun in storm, 80. 65 close readers might discover that in earlier books, ralph used the british spelling “aeons,” same word, same concept. both spellings are correct. 66 salisbury, rainbows of stone, 68; reprinted in light from a bullet hole, 109. 67 salisbury, so far, so good, 272. 68 op. cit., 270-274. microsoft word grover.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 353 denise sweet. palominos near tuba city. holy cow! press, 2018. 75 pp. isbn: 9780998601045 http://www.deesweet.com/ “…would i run again and again to return where my education would unfold in seasons, within harvested stories?” denise sweet, “mapping the land” denise sweet must surely have been born a storyteller poet and expressed herself in that way from the time she could speak. palominos near tuba city is a collection of forty new and selected poems that spans the decades of her life as a recognized, published poet. sweet, an ojibwe of white earth, minnesota, has lived and experienced societal / historical changes of the 1970s through today. her latest work, published twenty years after sweet’s acclaimed songs for discharming, is a mature collection that includes very recent poems as well as some from early publications. in the time between the two books sweet has been wisconsin’s poet laureate, a professor, a mother and grandmother, a traveler to many parts of the world. and a poet who lives her work. the poetry in this collection includes global as well as tribal and regional topics that are at their heart traditional ojibwe ways of looking at the world, time-honored teaching and passing on of knowledge that has reinforced generations of learning and recounting history. the number four, significant in ojibwe culture (there are four seasons, four directions, four races of mankind), is present in the organization of the collection into four sections: “mapping the land,” “the strangers,” “rough rock,” and “homing in.” as a contemporary ojibwe poet sweet expresses in her writing the observations, consideration and recording / recounting of the world around her in a fashion that is literary and historical as well as uniquely ojibwe; as we read her poetry we become a part of this. for readers unfamiliar with some of the ojibwe language and terms in the poems she has provided a glossary at the beginning of the book. “mapping the land,” the poem that begins the lyrical story that is this collection, allows us into sweet’s interactions with an elderly native man who as a child attended the indian boarding school in tomah, wisconsin; it is this relationship that sets the tone of the book. “like the back of your hand … you learn the land by feel” he begins, and then, spitting chew occasionally into a five-pound coffee can, voices the story that he chooses to tell sweet on that day and at that time, in the speaking style of an ojibwe old-timer, an elder. a generation behind him, she thinks hard as he talks of being sent away from home to the boarding school in tomah, the lay of the land familiar after several attempts at running away, and the triumph of making it “home in a week by sunrise! every time! they’d never catch us!” he teases her about running as a sport; she ponders the aspects of relays, marathons, treadmills, of running just to run, “with no destination, no purpose,” unlike the old man’s stories. looking directly at her, which is what an old-time ojibwe man would do when making an important point, he tells sweet that he never finished 7th grade, which opens her thoughts to the profound differences in their generational experiences – could she have survived what the old man survived? if she had succeeded, would her education be that of ojibwe people of earlier generations, learned in stories and in an existence in rhythm linda legarde grover review of palominos near tuba city 354 with the seasons? and what, in spite or because of the privileges, gains and advantages, material and otherwise of our own lives that are so different from the old man’s, have we descendants of those boarding school children and that era missed? with the wistfulness and guilt familiar to those of us who have touched and loved that earlier generation, she tells the reader, “the sudden twist of regret hung in the air between us. i hardly knew what to say -” it is easy to picture sweet re-living the time spent with the old man as she organized her work in this collection; this reviewer, a longtime admirer of her work, did just that. although each poem can stand alone, all can be read within the context of the first, which reinforces sweet’s awareness of earlier generations, how the lives of those generations touch hers. the experiences of our ancestors and ourselves, and what we have made of those experiences, will touch the lives of our descendants, a concept that sweet applies to much, if not all, of her writing. some of the poetry in the collection uncovers intrigues and wonders woven throughout everyday happenings: an assertion of female spirit and knowledge playfully written in “zen and women’s way of parking”; a conversation with sweet’s mother closing a circular conversation of flippancy and contempt halted by an enlightenment, the mother’s comments resulting in an awareness of generations of womanhood and a paired weeping of mother and daughter; in a shoulder-to-shoulder sharing with bea medicine what it takes to be an ikwe (woman) warrior in “at the women’s studies conference (for bea medicine)” in a setting where native women were being treated less than respectfully by non-native women; in rising to correct, medicine strengthens and empowers sweet and all native women. this circularity, evident in so many of sweet’s poems, is particularly biting in “indian war,” a bitter touching on the wounds and sores of history as she watches sports on television, mascots in “turkey feathers and greasepaint grins” ignorantly mimicking “indians, the ones you honor at half-time.” in two other pieces sweet places herself into the personae of osama bin laden, injun’ joe, villains who would but cannot find salvation and redemption in the love of their wives. many poems address earthly climate and terrain, tribal connection and spiritual disconnect, and the role of the poet-observer, which is to mold language into a link between beings and earth; to love and protect; and, as it is in traditional ojibwe pedagogy, to witness and teach with the power of words. there is at times an atmosphere of sorrow and helplessness at the plight of the earth and the possibilities of destruction, but never hopelessness. as the words of traditional ojibwe elders / storytellers / educators provide wise direction for what is currently in our hands and will pass to the future, so does sweet’s poetry in palominos near tuba city. linda legarde grover. university of minnesota duluth works cited sweet, denise. songs for discharming. greenfield review, 1997. microsoft word jbm, andrews, final.docx jennifer andrews review of the political arrays of american indian literary history 272 james h. cox. the political arrays of american indian literary history. university of minnesota press, 2019. 282 pp. isbn: 9781517906023. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-political-arrays-of-americanindian-literary james cox’s latest book with the university of minnesota press takes an approach that may be—at first glance—all too obvious. as he explains in the introduction to the political arrays of american indian literary history, his monograph “takes as its central focus what native texts say and do politically and proposes that literary scholars approach single texts, collections of texts by the same author and by multiple native authors,” along with the “conversations among native and non-native authors about their works as” what cox describes as “political arrays” (1). by drawing on a range of historical and contemporary texts, outside of the early native american renaissance period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, cox’s study offers a series of “confounding but also generative collisions of conservative, moderate, and progressive ideas that together constitute the rich political landscape of american indian literary history” (1). as someone who has paid close attention to the ways in which recent indigenous women poets living in canada and the us speak to and are influenced by each other, such a conversation seems not only useful but indeed critical to think through the complexities of what cox describes as “american indian literary history” (1), to expose and unpack the differences and similarities as well as points of confluence between and among indigenous writers. the choice of comparisons and the range of periods explored are what make this monograph both exciting and unique. moreover, by referencing the important contributions of a wide range of indigenous scholars working in the field in thoughtful ways, cox establishes the conversational nature of this project and the need for more work to be done on the relationships he outlines in the political arrays. most compellingly, cox insists upon the breadth of texts that he includes in this monograph, arguing that “all forms of writing under my consideration” are “literature” and deserve to be valued “as significant contributions to american indian literary history” for their “cultural, historical, and political” perspectives (2). by decisively refusing to favor white western canonical ideas of what constitutes literature, cox makes space for a fascinating set of case studies, beginning with the complex web of nodes created by responses to louise erdrich’s mid-1980s novels, from indigenous (leslie marmon silko) and non-indigenous critics and writers (peter matthiessen and wendy lesser), which he connects through matthiessen to simon ortiz, elizabeth cook-lynn, and paula gunn allen. by referencing “letters, novels, reviews, articles, and transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 273 paratexts,” cox conveys the range of “political positions on and investments in the field of american indian literary expression” and the challenges that arise when indigenous authors write (8). and by selecting a relatively recent and highly charged set of contexts, cox demonstrates the need to think about relationality when analyzing american indian literary history. he attends to a wide range of perspectives and makes important connections to the politics of the day, whether personal, tribal, state, federal, or transnational. in doing so, cox refuses to see american indian literary history as anything less than complex and messy, yet clearly worthy of further investigation. in the chapters that follow, cox explores the role of “indigenous editing” by examining the decisions of those who edited the american indian magazine (1913-1920) and american indian (1926-1931); the “transnational political arrays” expressed in the periodical publications of cherokee writers, will rogers and john milton oskison (19); the “anticolonial politics” of the lynn riggs and james hughes film, a day in santa fe (1931) and its resonances with contemporary indigenous filmmakers (19); the significance of mid-century correspondence between native men (john joseph mathews and lyn riggs) and anglo-male literary scholars (primarily walter s. campbell and j. frank dobie), who promoted the work of “individual native writers, if not native american literature as a field” (144); and the “diachronic political arrays” that emerge from detective novels produced by indigenous authors in the 1930s, whose influence on “post-civil-rights-era detective novels” demonstrates the continued linkages between and differences among political positions put forth by these contemporary indigenous writers (22). the last chapter probes louis owens’ controversial claim that gerald vizenor and sherman alexie are located at opposite ends of the political spectrum, an assertion that cox subverts using owens’ own “contemporary indian spectrum” (23). as part of this conclusion, cox uses this comparison as a springboard to probe how allegations of alexie’s sexual misconduct and his responses to them intersect with critical political arrays, especially those focused on gender and sexuality. cox turns to the work of carole lafavor, winona laduke, and marcie rendon, albeit briefly, to reframe the conversation, ultimately reminding readers of the need to consider “the full range of native politics in american indian literature” (212)—the good, the bad, and the ugly. while i am torn by cox’s decision to highlight alexie in his conclusion, a decision that could be read as replicating a kind of canonization that is potentially deeply sexist and harmful, the political arrays does not shy away from initiating some of the difficult but necessary conversations that are essential to understanding american indian literary history. as cox reminds readers, “native people hold political views of all kinds: liberal jennifer andrews review of the political arrays of american indian literary history 274 and conservative, moderate and extreme, unpredictable and contradictory. american literary history contains equally diverse political perspectives” (212). ideally, cox’s monograph will prompt a variety of scholars to continue to add to and complicate what is an important and necessary endeavor—to understand the complexities and contradictions that shape and are shaped by indigenous literary history in the united states. jennifer andrews, university of new brunswick microsoft word sear-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 190 jenny l. davis. talking indian: identity and language revitalization in the chickasaw renaissance. the university of arizona press, 2019. 170 pp. isbn: 9780816540969. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/talking-indian in talking indian: identity and language revitalization in the chickasaw renaissance, jenny l. davis discusses and reflects upon the dissertation fieldwork she undertook with and in the chickasaw nation in south-central oklahoma. members of the chickasaw nation often colloquially refer to speaking their language, chikashshanompa’, as “talking indian.” in this 170-page adaptation of her dissertation, davis explores the “the intersections of indigenous community, identity, and language” by asking the principal question “what identities are being negotiated within the chickasaw nation in the context of language revitalization?” (4; 27). on both a practical level and a scholarly level, davis’s talking indian makes important and timely contributions to several fields, such as language revitalization and reclamation. people working at a community level to support indigenous languages may find davis’s insights useful and relevant when reflecting upon the language revitalization projects and initiatives in which they are involved. likewise, scholars in related fields may enjoy the ways in which davis advances discussions not only about the relationship between identity and language, but also how language revitalization can be a lens through which to view and understand indigenous cultural renaissances. davis argues that within the chickasaw nation there has been a “shift in the conceptualization of speaking a heritage language from something that someone does or a desirable skillset that someone has, to something that someone is” (28,). in this understanding, for someone who is chickasaw, speaking their heritage language is not simply a practice they engage in; rather, speaking their language is now recognized as a core part of their identity. throughout the book, davis deftly interweaves her practical and theoretical discussions of, and arguments for, the importance and implications of orienting this ideological shift within the entire historical, present, social, political, geographic, and linguistic context of the chickasaw nation. for this reason, i urge people to read talking indian as an integrated whole. likewise, i feel any attempt on my part to summarize davis’s claims in a short book review runs the risk of decontextualizing them as well as inadvertently rending their dynamism. for this reason, i choose to briefly highlight several elements of davis’s argument that may be of particular interest or utility to people participating in community language revitalization work or undertaking related research. victoria sear review of talking indian 191 early in her discussion, davis positions herself as a chickasaw nation citizen who grew up several hours’ drive from the nation and proposes that both historical and present diaspora and de-diasporization of chickasaw citizens contributes, in part, to the formation of chickasaw identity as it relates to an ongoing chickasaw renaissance (13). davis reflects on how, during her research, her own identity as a person of chickasaw descent and a chickasaw nation citizen, coupled with her roles as linguist researcher and non-fluent speaker of chikashshanompa’, mitigated several challenges she may have otherwise faced, or threats she may have been perceived by fellow community members as posing. ultimately, she explains that these intersecting identities helped situate her as a type of “language affiliate” and someone connected to the language who did not have any recognized expertise as a speaker within the community (50). in this vein, davis addresses the importance of delineating the differences between speakers and speakers of chickasaw, explaining that the former (capitalized) refers to a person who speaks the language fluently as their first language, and the latter (lowercase) refers to anyone who produces language in a given context (5). it is important to note that davis’s arguments in support of capitalizing speaker align with existing movements in related fields to capitalize the first letter in elders as both a sign of respect and as a way to designate elders as a category of recognized knowledge holders within their communities. davis argues that making the distinction between speakers and speakers is not only important with regards to marking linguistic ability, but also because it represents specific social, political, and economic implications in terms of how language ability is valued in and by the chickasaw community (5). as such, the process of “identifying and evaluating speakers of chickasaw” is performed, and thus validated, by chickasaw speakers themselves instead of by outside academic “experts” (41). it is useful to note how this process subverts the “paradox of expertise” in that members of the language community themselves decide what criteria determine expertise (fluency) in their language and who has sufficient expertise to be viewed as a speaker (41). the reasoning for making this distinction also reflects an underlying argument that davis makes throughout the book, which is that (ethnolinguistic) identity is—and perhaps should be—determined by and within the chickasaw community and not by, or in response to, outsiders or their own expectations or evaluations. although davis regularly acknowledges the complex relationship between native identity and language and cultural revitalization, she also highlights that language is only one possible contributing element to chickasaw identity (19). likewise, davis transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 192 confronts wider discussions and (negative) perceptions that indigenous individuals who can speak their heritage language are more authentically or legitimately indigenous than those who can’t: “speaking or not speaking the chickasaw language, on its own, neither grants nor negates being chickasaw, but it can, for some, serve as a point of solidifying it” (22). however, involvement with chickasaw language (whether as a speaker or someone allied with language revitalization activities) often establishes a certain level of perceived cultural capital and prestige for those involved (26). this perceived capital has also led to increased economic capital within the community, since “if access to economic capital was a primary factor in the shift of chickasaw to english, then economic capital must also be present to motivate a shift back towards using chickasaw” (59). for this reason, the chickasaw nation has hired speakers to work as language specialists within different organizations and departments in the community (59). in her conclusion, davis explains that, as a whole, her discussion illustrates how the chickasaw nation is actively disrupting the “linguistic double-bind” that many native american communities come up against (144). this “double-bind” has been created through the coupling of: (a) assimilationist language policies that drastically halted the transmission of indigenous languages with; (b) the development of ethnolinguistic ideologies that equate indigenous language fluency with authenticity (and thereby deauthenticate people who are not speakers) (144). davis uses language revitalization as a lens through which to better understand chickasaw identity as well as how chickasaw people are leading a chickasaw language and cultural renaissance—which necessarily entails working to profoundly disrupt this “double-bind”—on their own terms. i find relatively little to critique about this book, but i anticipate individual readers may identify sections where they would welcome a more detailed discussion and reflection from davis. i write this not as a critique of the depth of davis’s discussion or the length of the book, but rather to underscore how this book is relevant to a diverse pool of people (both academic and non) who may welcome further discussions of certain topics that specifically relate to their own work, research, and lived experiences. to end, talking indian: identity and language revitalization in the chickasaw renaissance offers readers an opportunity for both scholarly and practical reflection. victoria sear, the university of british columbia microsoft word madsen-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 182 james j. donahue. contemporary native fiction: toward a narrative poetics of survivance. routledge, 2019. 186 pp. isbn: 9780367185954. https://www.routledge.com/contemporary-native-fiction-toward-a-narrative-poeticsof-survivance/donahue/p/book/9780367185954 while james donahue's book contributes a much-needed acknowledgement of indigenous literatures to the field of narratology, this book will be of less interest to scholars working in the discipline of native and indigenous studies for the simple reason that his is not an indigenous studies project, though in this respect my interpretation is diametrically opposed to donahue's own description of his “attempt [to develop] a native-based literary theory” (22). it seems to me that his orientation emerges quite clearly and very fundamentally from the scholars whose work do not enter into conversation with his. for instance, to my mind, this recent addition to the routledge series “narrative theory and culture” can be, and really should be, interestingly compared with helen may dennis's narratological study, native american literature: towards a spatialized reading (2007)—also published by routledge, though in their “transnational perspectives” series. however, donahue does not cite this significant methodological forerunner. dennis broke relatively new ground by setting aside the literary nationalist debates that dominated indigenous studies in the early 2000s in order to privilege the narratological analysis of textual form over political and cultural content, a move perhaps most familiar to readers of transmotion through the call made by david treuer, in native american fiction: a user's manual (2006), to reorient the literary analysis of indigenous texts away from ethnography and towards a greater emphasis on aesthetics. the network of scholarly texts within which donahue situates his work is characterized by other odd omissions. what he calls “cultural focalization” and “cosmopolitan ethics,” for instance, resonate loudly with james ruppert’s mediation in contemporary native american fiction (1995), which is not cited (though ruppert’s less immediately relevant 2015 essay on james welch’s novel the heartsong of charging elk is referenced). and while donahue’s modelling of indigenous fiction through a non-indigenous methodology bears some similarity to catherine rainwater’s semiotic approach in dreams of fiery stars: the transformations of native american fiction (1999), he distinguishes his project from hers by (mis)identifying a focus in rainwater’s work on “storytelling as opposed to the narrative form itself” that, he claims, leads into issues of orality rather than written literature (22). juxtaposed with this (to my ears) dissonant claim is the equally misguided account of elvira pulitano’s toward a native american critical theory (2003) from which donahue differentiates his work by describing pulitano’s critical model as one that excludes the work of non-native critics, concluding from her book that “to ignore advances in critical deborah l. madsen review of contemporary native fiction 183 theory by western critics would force some critics (myself included) to reinvent the wheel” (22-23). this claim must appear strikingly odd to anyone who is familiar with the attacks on pulitano's book made by robert warrior, jace weaver, and craig womack in american indian literary nationalism (2006). complementing these interpretations of rainwater and pulitano is donahue’s proposed alignment of his non-indigenous project with that of american indian literary separatism, exemplified by what donahue claims is craig womack’s endorsement of multiple “legitimate approaches to analyzing native literary production” in red on red (1999)—a claim that radically minimizes the implications of womack's sub-title, native american literary separatism (womack qtd. in donahue, 15). for readers of transmotion, what will be most surprising and disappointing, given the explicit evocation of gerald vizenor's work in the title of this book, is donahue’s selection of the primary texts around which his chapters are organized. there is a complete absence of any extended treatment of vizenor’s narratives. vizenor’s concept of “survivance” features prominently in the formulation of this project and donahue devotes a significant part of his introduction, “notes toward a narrative poetics of survivance,” to an explanation of how survivance intersects with his focus on the narratological analysis of narrative perspective, voice, and narrators. if there is any contemporary indigenous author who experiments with perspective, voice, and literary narrators in provocative and truly innovative ways, it is gerald vizenor. instead, donahue devotes the main text of his book to chapters on each of: james welch’s fool’s crow (1986) in the opening chapter, “focalizing survivance, racializing narratology” (and donahue explains that his 2014 essay, published in jnt: journal of narrative theory, on which this chapter is based, inspired the book project); leslie marmon silko’s gardens in the dunes (1999) in the second chapter, “gendered survivance and intersectional narratology”; and joseph boyden’s the orenda (2013) in the following chapter, “rhetorical narrative and racially charged disclosure.” the concluding and, to my mind, the most engaging chapter, “naturalizing unnatural native narrative” surveys the emerging domain of “unnatural” narratological theory and uses thomas king’s green grass, running water (1993) to illustrate his main points of critique concerning the non-indigenous bias in current narratological deployments of the concept of the “un/natural.” all of these novels donahue terms “paradigmatic,” though what paradigm they represent is not entirely clear. unifying the book is a central concern with the political and aesthetic implications of the act of narrating, linked to what donahue calls the “narrative transmission of cultural knowledge” (3). but each chapter explores the applicability of a specific branch of contemporary narratology to his chosen text. here is the strength and equally the weakness of transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 184 donahue’s project: despite his stated intention not to use literary texts illustratively, that is precisely where his selections lead. indeed, he has set himself a rather easy challenge by pairing a theoretical narrative approach with a text that exemplifies that theory in rather superficial ways. consequently, rather than demonstrating analytically how each text works, he describes the way that the texts model in their content particular theoretical features and ideas. with admirable honesty, the book blurb promises exactly what is delivered: each chapter is read through the lens of a narrative theory – structuralist narratology, feminist narratology, rhetorical narratology, and unnatural narratology – in order to demonstrate how the formal structure of these narratives engage the political issues raised in the text. additionally, each chapter shows how the inclusion of native american/first nations-authored narratives productively advance the theoretical work project of those narrative theories. the ultimate objective is to show that an indigenous textual corpus has significant benefits for the field of narrative theory. so, as i claimed at the outset, this is not an indigenous studies book. the project is definitively located in the field of narrative theory, as donahue makes clear. for example, the feminist narratology used in connection with silko follows from susan lanser’s 1986 essay, “toward a feminist narratology,” and not from the insights offered by the vast body of work that constitutes the field of native feminisms. donahue opens the book with an invitation to start a conversation about relations between narratology and critical race theory, an invitation that is welcome—though not so much if what this exchange involves is, in fact, a debate over what indigenous literatures can give to non-indigenous narrative theory. so, when the book blurb claims that “each chapter shows how the inclusion of native american/first nations-authored narratives productively advance the theoretical work project of those narrative theories,” a much more productive question for the present reviewer and, i imagine, for those working in the discipline of indigenous studies and on the achievements of vizenor more specifically, is: how can narratology itself be “indigenized?” or, in other words, what might an indigenous narratology look like? donahue’s book could be one place to start formulating an answer to this question. deborah l. madsen, university of geneva microsoft word 985-article text-5784-1-11-20211013.docx transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 105 this planet knows my name: cosmologies of emancipation against ecologic collapse fernando perez-garcia in the times of reconciliation, more and more voices are challenging the myth of canada as a benevolent nation towards racialised and indigenous communities, despite its celebrations of cultural diversity. controversies like those surrounding the transmountain pipeline expansion or the taseko mines trial reveal the contradictions of the settler nation-state in its relations with indigenous peoples. especially since the approval of bill c-45 and its changes to canada's navigable water act, the indian act, and the environmental assessment act, the mobilization of indigenous peoples galvanized on platforms such as idle no more has increased exponentially to confront an extractivist worldview of the colonial canadian government which is antithetical to an indigenous way of knowing and relating to the land. the resurgence of the extractivist model and the economic dependence of the colonial governments on these activities that degrade the environment and perpetuate the dispossession of natural territory have shown their consequences via the increase in pandemics, climate change, or the 2020 wildfires in australia. faced with the neglect of colonial governments and the narrow-mindedness of progressive movements, it would be advisable to recognize indigenous forms of intelligence and patterns of life in order to adopt sustainable economic models and avoid ecological collapse. these communities have been at the forefront of ecological collapse, territorial dispossession, and the cultural, economic, and spiritual consequences of land degradation for centuries due to settler colonialism. these concerns are also reflected in the growing presence of indigenous writers of fantasy, science fiction, and what anishinaabe scholar grace dillon calls fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 106 indigenous futurism. these genres explore the capacities of science fiction to envision possible native futures, hopes, and to make sense of the present moment, expanding the expectations of indigenous writing beyond “reservation realisms” and surpassing the tropes of science fiction. speculative fiction has often been regarded as a genre disconnected from the material reality we know in everyday life. this take ignores the genre's orientation towards the present rather than the future and its potential to express concerns, fears, raise questions, and reflect on the world from different perspectives informed by race, sex, or nationality. the genre's potential for conceptual disruption allows it to pose more open questions that are apparently detached from reality. in turn, this allows one to imagine the future that the material conditions of the present will bring us if taken to their final consequences. this potential can be seen in the growth of critical scholarship addressing cultural and political phenomena through the analysis of afrofuturism, indigenous futurism, and post-colonial speculative fiction and fantasy (see: dillon; eguibar-holgado; hopkinson and mehan; lavender iii; mcleod; perez-garcia; rifkin). in this article, i explore the potential of such indigenous futurism stories as representing a domain for the expression of collective self-recognition through relationships established based on the reciprocity between human and non-human forms of life and also to give meaning to new futures. this article addresses cherokee and scots-irish author celu amberstone's indigenous futuristic novella “refugees” to explore the possibility of articulating decolonial politics, exploring new forms of sovereignty in decolonization, and interconnection with the land versus the impending ecological collapse and fiduciary gridlock exercised by the canadian neoliberal and settler-colonial state. to carry out this analysis i will deploy a conceptual framework based on indigenous modes of knowledge and resurgence from indigenous authors such as zainab amadahy, michi saagiig nishnaabeg scholar leanne betasamosake transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 107 simpson, and yellowknives dene scholar glen sean coulthard. i will also include input from geographer doreen massey's sociology of space. from the positions raised by these scholars—especially by coulthard—the fight against climate change, ecological collapse, and the extractivist cosmology that generates these patterns in settler nations must be approached from an anti-colonial perspective, not just an anti-capitalist one. coulthard’s approach stems from the marxist theses of the historical processes of primitive accumulation to propose colonialism as a form of structured dispossession. according to these theses, the birth of capitalism is linked to colonial practices that sought to dispossess non-capitalist societies and communities of their means of production and subsistence through whatever means were necessary— conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder. this dispossession would be a condition of possibility for capitalist accumulation and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production. in the process, it would obliterate indigenous and non-capitalist societies by stripping them of their land and life. from the colonial point of view, sectors of the territory that were collectively held by indigenous societies were divided up and privatized, and natural resources were also privatized. in the long run, this would contribute to including these societies in the labour market under the auspices of their survival in the new regime. coulthard, however, makes some adjustments to marxist theses to adapt them to the indigenous reality of continuing colonialism and land dispossession. mainly, he rejects marx’s idea that primitive accumulation is only a historical phenomenon confined to a particular period—a preliminary, transitional stage to the next stages of capitalist development. according to marx, economic relations mark the dominance of the capitalist over the worker. coulthard switches the marxist emphasis on the capital relation to the colonial relation, showing that the oppression of the worker takes a temporal dimension (the theft of time) while indigenous peoples experience oppression on a fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 108 spatial dimension (the dispossession of land), and this is a continuing process that structures indigenous-settler state relations. the response to inequality in social relations of production or the response to combat climate change and environmental deterioration, divorced from the framework of colonial relations, could be formulated based on a progressive political agenda that would leave the colonial structure unaltered. this answer could propose an economic and territorial redistribution and return the commons. however, it would simultaneously ignore the close relationship of indigenous first peoples with their land that has been taken. apart from economic subsistence, the commons (or land in indigenous gnoseology), plays a fundamental role in indigenous modes of knowledge and in maintaining reciprocal and interdependent relationships with the natural world, human, and non-human forms of life. without paying attention to these particularities and the central role of territorial dispossession, we run the risk of trying to mitigate the environmental problems derived from extractivism by maintaining the same colonial structures exerted on indigenous peoples. or, in the worst case, trying to negotiate the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the extractivist system as intermediaries or lucrative participants in the extraction of resources from their lands. on her part, simpson affirms the direct experience of what capitalism and extractivism can do. after millennia of living in sustainable societies outside the framework of capitalism, the few centuries of direct experience of extractivist capitalism and territorial dispossession have shown indigenous people an apocalyptic devastation of land, animals, and plant life-forms. faced with an extractivist model that is non-reciprocal and based on relations of domination and exploitation of the land—in addition to the displacement of former inhabitants— simpson advocates recovering a stewardship relationship that recognizes the relationship of interdependence between human beings, the natural space and nonhuman forms of life, caring for regeneration so that life can continue. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 109 according to nishnaabeg intelligence knowledge is relational and comes from the spirits channeled through the land (simpson, as we have always done). knowledge originates in the spirit world and is received through dreams, visions, and ceremonies. it is given by the spirits and ancestors that inhabit the earth, land, and where the spirits of humans, plants, and animals interact. therefore, to achieve knowledge it is necessary to be aligned with these forces through ceremony and the embodiment of the teachings that a person already has and to be able to generate supportive relationships. this is why environmental collapse and pollution have such devastating impacts on indigenous peoples. simpson calls for a change in the cycle through resurgence to create new forms of sustainable life and economy. she advocates turning to indigenous knowledge and escaping from the cycles of indigenous victimhood that reinforce the structures of settler colonialism and its terms of exploitation. for example, in her acclaimed essay “aambe! maajaadaa! (what #idlenomore means to me),” simpson proclaims: i support #idlenomore because i believe that we have to stand up anytime our nation’s land base is threatened—whether it is legislation, deforestation, mining prospecting, condo development, pipelines, tar sands or golf courses. i stand up anytime our nation’s land base in threatened because everything we have of meaning comes from the land—our political systems, our intellectual systems, our health care, food security, language and our spiritual sustenance and our moral fortitude. amadahy and mi’kmaq scholar bonita lawrence also insist on the idea of interdependence and reciprocity in the indigenous understanding of the land. they highlight that probably the most fundamental principle of many indigenous cultures is human interdependence with other life-forms in non-hierarchical ways. creation stories, for example, emphasize the interdependence of twofernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 110 leggeds (human beings) with the plants, animals, sun, moon, and the land itself (116). the ramifications of these cosmologies have implications for all human beings at the levels of governance, economy, education, land tenure, and ecological sustainability. embracing these teachings of indigenous resurgence would imply valuing ecosystems for their intrinsic existence, reciprocity, and interdependence rather than valuing them for the resources we can extract from them (amadahy, “interview”). stemming from the framework of colonial and indigenous relations with the land, we can attend to the role played by territorial dispossession—extractivism and ecological collapse—in the economic perpetuation of the colonial structure. we can analyze the consequences this force has for indigenous ways of life and knowledge, and finally approach from positions such as indigenous resurgence and grounded normativity. that is, the ethical principles generated by the relationship with a particular place, with space, with the land through indigenous knowledge and gnoseology—a series of ethical potentialities capable of reversing the colonial structure in favour of a more sustainable and humane socio-political and economic order. celu amberstone’s “refugees” tells the story of qwalshina and her indigenous community. in the story, qwalshina recounts how a race of lizard-like aliens called benefactors have been populating the planet tallav’wahir with indigenous fosterlings to save them from the ecological collapse and destruction of the earth. the qwalshina community—rooted natives who follow an indigenous, community-centric, and land-based pattern of life—have inhabited tallav'wahir for more than seven generations and revere the benefactors as their saviours. the second generation of humans (known as fosterlings), however, were rescued before the supposed collapse of earth. they are mainly urban indigenous peoples from transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 111 vancouver, bc, disconnected from indigenous forms of knowledge, and they manifest problems with adapting and express distrust towards the benefactors. amberstone's narrative shows how qwalshina's initial trust in the benefactors begins to crumble as she questions ideas of belonging on this foster planet and the problems of fully connecting with it. from the beginning of her story, qwalshina shows the difficulties to connect with this foster planet, which she does not come to consider as her true home. at the beginning of the novella, qwalshina performs a ceremony at the mother stone, above the knoll of her village. this ritual involves shedding her blood on the mother stone as a seasonal offering to tallav’wahir, so the planet will know her. however, her blood is red, “an alien color on this world and “tallav’wahir is kind, but there is something in this adoptive environment that is hard on us too. we aren’t a perfect match for our new home, but the benefactors have great hopes for us” (161;163). nevertheless, qwalshina and the rooted natives make efforts to evince an ethic of grounded normativity on this planet. they are attuned to the life patterns and tallav’wahir cycles of life, seasons, food, and nonhuman forms of life. at the beginning of the story, the benefactors convey the destruction of the land to qwalshina's group, explaining that they have to quickly relocate the fosterlings within the collective: today our benefactors confirmed our worst fears. earth is now a fiery cloud of poisons, a blackened cinder. when it happened, our ancient soul-link with earth mother enabled us to sense the disaster even from this far world across the void. tallav’wahir felt it too. but we told our foster planet mother that our life patterns were sound. our benefactors would help us. such a tragedy would never happen here. there was a great outpouring of blood and grief at the mother stones all over the world. the land ceased to tremble by the time the ceremonies ended. (162) fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 112 qwalshina’s words infer—and later explore more thoroughly—that this collapse is due to greed and poor human decisions, supported by a cosmology of extractivism and sustained development that led to the environmental collapse of earth: “our benefactors teach us that technology must never interfere with our communion with the mother, lest we forget the covenant, grow too greedy, and destroy our new home” (165). relying on the notion of indigenous intelligence conveyed by amadahy and simpson, the collapse is due to the lack of what coulthard calls grounded normativity and indigenous sense of place-based on reciprocity with nature (13). grounded normativity in this case pertain to the ethical principles generated by the relationship with a particular place, with space, with the land through indigenous knowledge and gnoseology (coulthard 13; simpson as we have always done; simpson & coulthard 22). these indigenous forms of knowledge and practices inform the construction of indigenous reality and the forms of interrelation and interdependence experienced alongside other non-human life forms, people(s), nations, and natural spaces. grounded normativity abounds in the idea of complex networks of interrelation between human and non-human beings, so the balance of these relationships influences the proper functioning of indigenous societies. this system of balance requires a spiritual, emotional, and social connection that fosters and, in turn, depends on the interdependence, communion, and self-determination of the individuals who act in the community. for this reason, the well-being of individuals affects that of families and communities. when an individual is going through a difficult time or a traumatic process, the impact is felt throughout the system, and it is necessary to respond to it to safeguard one’s own well-being and that of the larger community. indigenous education and relationships with the physical and spiritual world are a lifelong process and, although each member of the community acquires the skills and wisdom to ensure their own survival, their existence depends on the interrelationships of reciprocity, humility, and respect for transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 113 the rest of the elements of creation and non-human forms of life (simpson, as we have always done). for this reason, pollution and deterioration of the environment are deeply negative for indigenous peoples, their knowledge structures, and their physical and spiritual survival beyond the economy. the implication, in the case of “refugees” and qwalshina, is that humans must live in harmony with the land, human, and non-human forms of life on the foster planet, or else they will condemn this planet to the same fate. on the other hand, embracing grounded normativity and indigenous senses of place has allowed the rooted natives to adapt with relative ease to the cycles and environment of tallav'wahir. this could be due to the perspective of indigenous resilience described by laurence kirmayer et al: aboriginal notions of personhood root identity in a person’s connections to the land and environment. […] thinking about the person as fundamentally connected to the environment dissolves the opposition between nature and culture. the human predicament then becomes one of working with powerful forces both within and outside the individual. approached with respect, the natural environment provides not only sustenance but also sources of soothing, emotion regulation, guidance, and healing. (88-89) however, a fundamental issue in the story is the role of the benefactors and amberstone's veiled analyses of colonial power relations. although the rooted natives of qwalshina and the urban fosterlings try to settle and develop ties in tallav’wahir under an ethic of grounded normativity, we cannot ignore that they have been rescued—or brought in by force—by the alien benefactors. ultimately, they are confined to a planet by a race of aliens who control transportation in and out, and who further establish the terms of existence on that planet. some of the fosterlings want to leave the planet and check if the earth has truly been destroyed by ecological collapse. after trying to take the benefactors' ship by force, they are annihilated. ultimately, tallav’wahir becomes a metaphor for an indian reservation, fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 114 or a representation of the fiduciary gridlock exercised by the canadian government as a ward of indigenous peoples in canada. the benefactors claim to have the best intentions for the humans. nonetheless, they keep them held in a space other than their own, enclosed. the benefactors also control the means and mechanisms of transportation and tallav’wahir’s economy, and they will ultimately decide if the qwalshina’s people deserve to die as penance for the rebellion sparked by the fosterlings and some rooted-natives. in addition, the language used to refer to humans is similar to that of eugenics or agriculture; they speak in terms of seeding, bringing new humans to reseed the population of tallav'wahir or even implying the need to cross-breed them with new, compatible life-forms (amberstone 170;181). the biopolitical and extractive turn of the benefactors reaches the heights of implanting alien technology in the rooted natives and fosterlings to be able to communicate with them in the language of the benefactors. this serves to echo the imposition of western languages in the colonization of turtle island and the processes of eliminating worldviews and indigenous cultures contrary to those of the settler. in canada, federal policies aimed to “assimilate” the indigenous, to eliminate the “indian” part of the peoples and their cultures, to turn them into “people” in the eyes of the colonizing government. the main tool for accomplishing that task was the indian act of 1876, a law that applied to all indians who, under section 91 (24) of the canadian constitution, were the responsibility of the federal government. instead of being considered citizens or members of a nation, band or tribe, the indian act made all “indians” wards of the state under the supervision and administration of the government: as indian act indians, we were considered legally incompetent until such time as we enfranchised and became full citizens of canada, at which point we were no longer recognised as indigenous and, consequently, lost our transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 115 political voice within our nations, lost access to, or ownership of, any lands we shared an interest in on reserve, and so on. (raybould-wilson 32) although life in a kind of community isolation in tallav’wahir has allowed the maintenance of indigenous culture and traditions, there is a degree of dependance upon the tutelage of a benefactor, assigned as an agent to maintain control of the community and ensure that they adapt to the planet. also, the isolation affects the economy of qwalshina’s group. they produce crafts like weaved blankets and ceremonial capes that are highly prized by the benefactors, some of whom “pay high prices for our artwork on their homeland” (amberstone 168). this, on the one hand, could place qwalshina in a captive reservation economy in which her group has no power to set prices since the benefactors are the only buyers. on the other, it could be a form of economic subsidy outside the subsistence economy of the rooted natives, in a similar mode to that proposed by coulthard as a possible alternative to the indigenous resurgence economy. alternatives deriving from anticapitalist indigenous political economies based on the sustainability of specific territories can include the reinforcement of traditional subsistence practices and local manufacturing, renewable resources through activities such as hunting and fishing, and combining these with other contemporary economic activities, or cooperative structures led by indigenous people. in the case of coulthard’s own dene nation, this would revitalize the traditional mode of production, emphasizing the harvesting and gathering of local and renewable resources, and partially subsidizing these activities by other economic activities on lands communally held and managed by the dene nation. this adaptability to the environment, despite its reservation-like character, underscores practices rooted in respect for land in the foster planet of “refugees,” embracing land-based relationality and a survival based on sustainability and reciprocity rather than extractivism or economic gain. survival and habitability come from respect for the planet and the lands they inhabit. in a confrontation between fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 116 sleek—a young female fosterling who reminds qwalshina of her daughter—and qwalshina, the latter tells sleek that they do not live following traditional customs out of obligation, but because it is the best for them and the planet: we know about the high technologies,”i told her quietly. “we use what you would call computers, air cars, and other technical things too. but to help you make the repatterning, we decided that a simple lifestyle would be best for all of us for a time. there is no shame in living close to the land in a simple way, daughter. (165) it is also important to consider the perspective of the story’s fosterlings, urban indigenous peoples who grew up separated from indigenous forms of knowledge, grounded normativity, and relationship to the land. qwalshina and the rooted natives were relocated to the reservation-planet of tallav’wahir seven generations ago, allowing them to develop and preserve indigenous epistemologies and a sense of cultural identity. however, the fosterlings only know urban, western culture and epistemologies and what they have received from the settler culture in vancouver. the change is traumatic for them and forces them to abandon all the memories and belongings they had from their previous life on earth. this connection with their previous home prevents them from adapting to qwalshina's group, producing a profound imbalance throughout the broader collective. this point reflects the efforts made by the settler state to assimilate those indigenous worldviews that contradict or question settler primacy. by eliminating indigenous worldviews through its absorption in western gnoseology, territorial dispossession, and the exploitation of resources in indigenous lands can be perpetuated. both simpson (as we have always done) and lawrence (real’ indians and others) agree on the importance of establishing links between urban indigenous peoples without access to land-based knowledge and rural indigenous peoples to keep indigenous knowledge and intelligence alive. the effectiveness of any indigenous resurgence model will be largely conditioned by the success in transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 117 addressing indigenous dispossession from the reserve and land-based perspective, but also from the urban perspective of those indigenous peoples who do not have access to land-based knowledge. it is necessary to organize around the conditions of poverty and social inequality in urban and reserve communities as different manifestations with an aligned political cause. lawrence advocates for a reconceptualization of indigenous identity and nationality that takes into account urban in addition to reserve-based realities. this drive includes overcoming colonial divisions that contributed to the separation and reactive essentialization of identities through policies such as enfranchisement. although it is possible to establish or reproduce indigenous traditions in an urban context, lawrence draws on her work and her own life experience to argue for access to land as an essential condition that must be agreed upon (232) both communities are indigenous on indigenous land, so trying to strengthen relations between urban and reserve-based indigenous peoples is a necessary step to build a movement capable of taking effective strides towards decolonization. as the levels of tension and distrust expressed by the fosterlings and some rooted natives towards the benefactors increase, qwalshina’s group begin to believe that the land has not been destroyed and that they are part of a cruel alien experiment. this theory is never evidenced one way or the other, and we might well wonder if there really has been an ecological collapse or rather if the benefactors keep the humans in this reserve as an experiment while they exploit the remaining resources on earth. in any case, when the authority of the benefactors is questioned, the answer is swift and violent; the human rebels die. once the revolt is quelled, the benefactors meet to decide the future of the rooted natives peoples: some claim they are genetically flawed and should be destroyed whilst others believe they should be interbred with other species. although humans are not allowed to participate in the deliberation over their own destiny, faced with the possibility of annihilation qwalshina returns to the mother stone of the planet to fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 118 continue with the blood offering, in order for the planet to recognize her. however bleak the chances, she still carries out the ritual and keeps the native traditions alive in any way she can: “blood. the old people say it is the carrier of ancestral memory and our future’s promise […] my blood is red, an alien color on this world.” (amberstone 182) if we understand the existence of qwalshina and the rooted natives as indigenous peoples in a system of reservation or cultural recognition for as long as they do not gainsay the benefactors, their vigilantes, and those who hold power, we can extrapolate this to gesture toward the current colonial reality of settler states like canada. in both cases, tolerance or recognition is negotiated in terms established by the side who has power—that is, benefactors or settler government—and is predicated on following colonial prerogatives of capitalist overexploitation and extractivism, with the condition that indigenous worldviews do not threaten those interests. in a foucauldian sense, settler-colonial rule, as structure, functions as a relatively diffuse set of governing relations that operate through a circumscribed mode of recognition that structurally ensures continued access to indigenous peoples’ lands and resources by producing neocolonial subjectivities that coopt indigenous people into becoming instruments of their own dispossession. (coulthard 156) contemporary colonialism, then, does not operate through coercive methods that limit freedoms, but through the very appearance of freedom, changing the cage of domination for a chain. despite granting more movement and management capacity, freedom continues to be held, offered, and withdrawn by the hand of the settler state. the liberal "politics of recognition" as an approach to reconcile of indigenous peoples’ sovereignties with the sovereignty of the canadian settler state focus on accommodating identity-related claims by indigenous people in the negotiation of agreements on land, self-government, and economic development. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 119 however, scholars like taiaiake alfred (kahnawake mohawk), coulthard, and patrick wolfe maintain that this approach does not entail a substantial change for the lot of indigenous peoples. their relationships with the settler state only change superficially since structures and practices of land dispossession continue to function unabated, and the self-determination of indigenous peoples is denied. and yet, when the legitimacy of colonial authority is materially questioned or subject to direct action—such as the riot of the novella’s fosterlings, or roadblocks to impede access to indigenous lands and prevent resource extraction—we see the emergence of explicitly violent countermeasures, with the deployment of snipers, dogs, and rcmp commandos to expel activists and resume the extraction of resources that maintains the settler state’s economy. the extractivist production model requires the settler state to maintain stability and its authority over territory if it is to attract capital and investments that perpetuate the expansion of capitalist accumulation. in this sense, land-based protests such as blockades and other indigenous practices to reaffirm sovereignty weaken the image of the settler state, its control of the population, and sharpen the acrimonious state of its relationship with indigenous peoples. the chances of attracting investment in a climate of protest are limited. the blockades, then, represent a spatial practice to ligate the power of the settler state, preventing it from accessing indigenous territories over which it does not have sovereignty, dealing a double blow—both material and symbolic—to the state. without the backing of grassroot activists and members of indigenous communities and their allies risking their safety through mobilization and direct action, negotiations with the state would lack an element of critical mass to support compelling words and arguments. without activists and land-based actions, there would hardly be any negotiations over aboriginal rights and title in b.c. through the land claim process. nor would there be any meaningful royal commission on fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 120 aboriginal peoples without the massive mobilizations of indigenous communities across canada, including the haida of haida gwaii. these mobilizations impose a blockade of the circulation and extraction of resources and merchandise that seeks to affect the bases of the capitalist economy in settler states. the roadblocks of access to indigenous lands are anti-capitalist attacks and signs of resurgence for simpson since: while the mainstream media might focus on the blockade aspects of these actions, which are important in their own right, there is also a taking back of space in that the communities that maintain the blockades are often reinvigorating indigenous governance, ceremony, economic systems, education, and systems of caring. these are bubbles of resurgent life. (as we have always done 242) one recent and high-profile incarnation of discontent with the state’s denial of indigenous territorial sovereignty occurred with the establishment of unist'ot'en checkpoint. raised on the unceded territory of the unist'ot'en clan of the wet'suwet'en first nation peoples in northern b.c., this checkpoint was created to block the construction of pipelines and industrial infrastructures. the forced entry of the rcmp in january 2019 and again in 2020 to enable the construction of infrastructure resulted in several people being arrested and visible protests in b.c. and canada, questioning the genuineness of the canadian government’s overtures toward the implementation of reconciliation policies. indigenous sovereignty and antithetical worldviews to that of colonial capitalist extractivism, as we have seen, are sources of knowledge and life patterns to avoid ecological collapse. yet they encounter strong opposition at the same time, due to the same character that questions the legitimacy of the economic model which depends on the settler state. any sincere and committed negotiation would demand the settler state renounce the pillars of its sovereignty as understood in the westphalian sense. that is, renounce the absolute and uncontested authority transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 121 of the state throughout its demarcated and internationally recognised borders and the construction of homogeneous national identities coterminous with the state’s territories. indigenous claims to sovereignty and land that challenge the extractivist economy also challenge the prerogative that the settler state is the sole source of authority. the western liberal-capitalist worldview—in which the earth is a commodity owned and exploited by man—clashes with indigenous worldviews whereby peoples belong to the earth and are connected by relationships of reciprocity and interdependence, and mutual sustainment. from this clash, it could be possible to offer an approximate definition of indigenous sovereignty and how to mobilize it to short-circuit ecological collapse using alternatives embedded in an ethic of grounded normativity. the notion of indigenous sovereignty is not state-centric, nor is it considered a conferral from an absolute sovereign power (alfred). indeed, it is often not deployed with the western connotation of original and supreme power over people and territory, rejecting its hierarchical character and maintenance by force (corntassel 105-112). indigenous sovereignty has a decolonizing dimension since it seeks to recover and restore the legitimacy of indigenous models of organization and governance in the face of colonial political structures and forms (clavé-mercier 99-119). all this means that indigenous sovereignty does not necessarily focus on the state form as an ideal and seeks to detach itself from the domestic colonial state that tries to define its scope, its content, and the rights and identities linked to it. lastly, indigenous sovereignty is based on deep relationships with the land, which is considered —alongside the community—to be the source of its power. for this reason, the relationship of the people with the land is central in the exercise of sovereignty, and this explains why indigenous sovereignty is often considered on a reduced scale, closely bound with a sense of locality. in the western imagination, sovereignty is the concept that is closest to expressing this type of relationship with the land that goes beyond a simple property right, thus explaining fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 122 its mobilization by indigenous peoples to fight for political self-determination. indigenous sovereignty, then, clearly emphasizes interdependence between the human world, the natural world, and even the spiritual world. similar visions can be seen in qwalshina’s praxis in tallav’wahir, guaranteeing the sustainability of relations with the land with human and nonhuman forms of life. specifically, qwalshina’s final gesture, making a blood offering of communion with the foster planet primes the preservation of indigenous traditions despite the uncertainty of their fate. this reflects the indigenous resurgence approach that indigenous scholars like simpson, coulthard, and alfred aver, based on self-recognition and the generative refusal of colonial systems of recognition. both alfred and simpson encourage indigenous communities to abandon the prospects of liberal reformism of recognition policies and seek to revitalize indigenous political values and traditional practices to build a national liberation movement. they call for the people to seek indigenous decolonization on their own terms, ”without the sanction, permission or engagement of the state, western theory or the opinions of canadians” (simpson dancing on our turtle’s back, 17-18). decolonial approaches from the perspective of indigenous resurgence, rebuke the idea that more ethical and egalitarian relationships can be established with non-indigenous peoples and with the land through indigenous participation in the capitalist economic system. this system is based on the accumulation of capital and sustained development through ecological exploitation and racial-, sexual-, and class-based models of inequality. the inclusion of indigenous people in this system would only benefit the system itself and the owners of the means of production. simpson points towards a deployment of indigenous political thought and landbased epistemologies to revitalize sustainable local economies: people within the idle no more movement who are talking about indigenous nation-hood are talking about a massive transformation, a massive transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 123 decolonization”; they are calling for a “resurgence of indigenous political thought” that is “land-based and very much tied to that intimate and close relationship to the land, which to me means a revitalization of sustainable local indigenous economies. (“aambe!”) the transformation of the political economy is a key element in the reconstruction of indigenous communities beyond the parasitism of capitalism. even profit redistribution policies that do not dismantle the capitalist structure will continue to hinge on the ongoing dispossession and exploitation of natural resources and people. on the other hand, coulthard dedicates several chapters to developing anti-capitalist and anti-colonial indigenous alternatives, based on the experiences of the dene peoples to seek a sustainable indigenous political economy that guarantees indigenous sovereignty. such an approach to resurgence would see indigenous people reconnect with their lands and land-based practices on either an individual or small-scale collective basis. this includes refamiliarization with landscapes and places that give indigenous peoples’ histories, languages, and cultures their shape and content. it involves engaging in sustainable land-based harvesting practices like hunting or fishing and/or cultural production activities like hide-tanning and carving, all of which also assert indigenous sovereign presence on their territories in ways that can be profoundly educational, empowering, and not contingent from settler state recognition. these sustainable alternatives would pose a threat to capitalist accumulation and would promise ecological sustainability for several reasons. in the first place, these activities reconnect indigenous people with land-based cultural and economic practices and forms of knowledge based on relationality and sustainability, values which are antithetical to global capitalism and the extractivist cosmology. second, they offer means of subsistence and self-sufficiency through the local and sustainable production of material resources and food, eliminating dependence on the capitalist market. finally, an indigenous approach to contemporary economic fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 124 activities could improve decision-making regarding economic sustainability, equitable redistribution of resources and benefits in indigenous communities, and political and economic empowerment for those indigenous peoples who want to pursue livelihoods in the economy outside of the canadian bush. however, coulthard warns firmly against placing all hopes on approaching negotiations with the settler state apparatus. furthermore, he calls for overcoming rights-based/recognition-oriented mobilization of indigenous movements in favour of ”resurgent politics of recognition that seeks to practice decolonial, genderemancipatory, and economically nonexploitative alternative structures of law and sovereign authority grounded on a critical refashioning of the best of indigenous legal and political traditions” (coulthard 179). to weave the alliances necessary to press for indigenous sovereignty requires the efforts of resurgent indigeneity and political activism. in an interview, amadahy invites us to embrace decolonization as a learning process of indigenous relationships to land. it is land, rather than bloodlines, ethnicity, or cultural heritage which becomes central to indigenization, to be indigenous to a place: to be indigenous is to take direction on how to live from a specific place (a bio-region) where all of life-forms model sustainability, interdependence, and “good mind” in relation to how to live well in that area […] fundamentally, it would involve a huge shift of mindset because if you can’t understand and imagine an alternative to the current dysfunctionality of colonial society, then you can’t transform it. […] this doesn’t mean, by the way, that everyone has to “become indian.” you keep your stories and identities but everyone’s culture is modified to fit what is sustainable on this land. i think that is healthier and more desirable—in fact, it’s more survivable than modifying culture to fit the colonial canadian or u.s. mythologies. (feral feminisms) from this perspective, we can incorporate massey's relational idea of the sense of place to advance a sense of indigenous space in the way advanced by amadahy transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 125 and theories of indigenous resurgence. according to massey’s body of work on a sense of place, places are contingent on the relational processes that create, sustain, and dissolve them. the coexistence of multiple spatialities and worldviews in places undermines a unitary, and simplistic sense of place. this does not mean that there is no hegemonic conception or configuration of relationships and structures that contingently give meaning to a place. against this hegemonic sense, social agents such as indigenous peoples are mobilized through direct anti-colonial and anti-capitalist actions, whether via are blockages to capitalist extraction flows or through the preservation and active practice of indigenous traditions and ways of life. if we start from this understanding of a sense of place and geographical thinking and apply it to the formation of the state, we cannot consider it as an immutable essence. the formation of the state must be seen as the fluid result of the processes of construction of places, in which the different moments of the relationship with nature, production processes, social relations, technologies, mental conceptions of the world, and structures of daily life intersect in a world full of borders to turn a fluid entity into a solid “permanence” of social power. this relational construction of the state helps to free political imaginations and energies to re-examine what is the optimal form of political-territorial organization of human societies, such as indigenous ones, in order to achieve specific socio-ecological objectives (harvey 310-311). in this article, i have tried to provide an approach to indigenous knowledge and epistemology that can contribute alternatives and forms of intelligence to face the climate challenge. given that the economies of settler colonies like canada rely heavily on the exploitation of natural resources and the territorial dispossession of indigenous peoples to perpetuate themselves as a colonial authority, i have drawn from the indigenous resurgence methodologies of glen coulthard and leanne betasamosake simpson. in their approaches to the resurgence of worldviews fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 126 antithetical to capitalist extractivism, and the rejection of recognition as a tool that perpetuates primitive accumulation through dispossession, we can learn and adopt alternatives to environmental collapse that imply a difficult change in the sovereign model. the role of literature, especially indigenous futurism, is essential in providing, on the one hand, indigenous meaning to past and ongoing colonial experiences, and on the other, projecting an indigenous presence and epistemology into the future on its own terms. in such texts we can find tools to critique the present and project the future, rewriting prevailing power dynamics and finding liberation in terms of indigenous modernity. to imagine an alternative future to the present of settler colonial society and ecological collapse is the first step to transform it. indigenous resurgence, indigenous sovereignty, and indigenous futurism aim to reverse the appropriation of colonial sovereignty by rewriting the content of the concept from the perspectives of distinct worldviews, the possibilities of their contexts, and their ultimate objectives. the future will tell us if indigenous struggles will lead to true sovereign reformulations and if, indeed, we are in time to achieve a paradigm shift that can avoid collapse. works cited alfred, taiaiake. peace, power, righteousness: an indigenous manifesto. oxford university press, 2009. amadahy, zainab. “interview with zainab amadahy.” feral feminisms, 2015. feralfeminisms.com/zainab-amadahy/. amadahy, zainab, and bonita lawrence. “indigenous peoples and black people in canada: settlers or allies?” breaching the colonial contract: anti-colonialism in the us and canada, edited by arlo kempf. springer, 2010, 105–137. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 127 amberstone, celu. “refugees.” so long been dreaming: postcolonial science fiction & fantasy, edited by nalo hopkinson and uppinder mehan. arsenal pulp press, 2004, 161–182. clavé-mercier, valentín. “revisitar la soberanía indígena: los desafíos de una reivindicación excluida.” relaciones internacionales uam, 38, 2018, 99–119. corntassel, jeff. “toward sustainable self-determination: rethinking the contemporary indigenous-rights discourse.” alternatives, 33, 2008, 105-132. coulthard, glen sean. red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. university of minnesota press, 2015. coulthard, glen, and leanne betasamosake simpson. “grounded normativity / place-based solidarity.” american quarterly, 68:2, 2016, 249–255. dillon, grace l., editor. walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction. the university of arizona press, 2012. eguibar holgado, miasol. “transforming the body, transculturing the city: nalo hopkinson’s fantastic afropolitans.” european journal of english studies, 21:2, 2017, 174-188. harvey, david. el cosmopolitismo y las geografías de la libertad. ediciones akal, 2017. hopkinson, nalo, and uppinder mehan, editors. so long been dreaming: postcolonial science fiction & fantasy. arsenal pulp press, 2004. kirmayer, laurence j, et al. “rethinking resilience from indigenous perspectives.” the canadian journal of psychiatry, 56:2, 2011, 84-91. lavender iii, isiah, editor. black and brown planets: the politics of race in science fiction. the university press of mississippi, 2014. lawrence, bonita. ‘real’ indians and others: mixed-blood urban native peoples and indigenous nationhood. university of nebraska press, 2004. massey, doreen. space, place, and gender. university of minnesota press, 1994. fernando perez-garcia “the planet knows my name” 128 massey, doreen. “lugar, identidad y geografías de la responsabilidad en un mundo en proceso de globalización.” treballs de la societat catalana de geografia, feb. 2004, 77–84, http://www.raco.cat/index.php/treballsscgeografia/article/view/247695. ---. for space. sage publications ltd, 2008. mcleod, neal, editor. mitêwâcimowina: indigenous science fiction and speculative storytelling. theytus books, 2016. perez-garcia, fernando. “flickering bodies: mapping multiculturalism and insurgent citizenship in wayde compton’s black vancouver.” chakiñan, revista de ciencias sociales y humanidades:9, 2019, 109-123. raybould-wilson, jody. from where i stand: rebuilding indigenous nations for a stronger canada. purich books, 2019. rifkin, mark. fictions of land and flesh: blackness, indigeneity, speculation. duke university press, 2019. simpson, leanne betasamosake. “aambe! maajaadaa! (what #idlenomore means to me).” decolonization, jun. 19, 2014, decolonization.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/aambe-maajaadaa-whatidlenomore-means-to-me/. ---. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. university of minnesota press, 2017. ---. dancing on our turtle's back: stories of nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence. arbeiter ring press, 2011. ---. “indigenous resurgence and co-resistance.” critical ethnic studies, 2:2, 2016, 19–34. wiessner, siegfried. “indigenous self-determination, culture, and land: a reassessment in light of the 2007 un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples.” indigenous rights in the age of the un declaration, edited by elvira pulitano. cambridge university press, 2012, 31–63. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 129 wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research, 8:4, 2006, 387-409. microsoft word 825-other-4805-1-18-20200310.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 69 making the leap: césar vallejo and the early poetry of ralph salisbury crystal k. alberts ralph j. salisbury (1926-2017), a cherokee-shawnee-english-irish-american poet publishing since the 1950s, has all but been ignored by most literary critics.1 born in the middle of the residential boarding school push for assimilation in what is now the united states of america (us), salisbury grew up on a depression-era iowa farm and yet still managed to complete an mfa at the university of iowa working with robert lowell.2 while one might assume that salisbury would follow in the formal footsteps of his mentor, he did not or, at least, not exactly. by the early 1960s, salisbury began writing about his background, not just his "personal story and memories," as lowell would do in life studies (axelrod 107, quoting lowell), but also his cherokee heritage, including using transliterated ꮳꮃꭹ ꭶꮼꮒꭿꮝꮧ3 in his poetry, thereby making an early break from monolingualism in native american publishing. yet, neither his name nor work appears in kenneth lincoln's influential native american renaissance (1983) alongside n. scott momaday, james welch, simon ortiz, joseph bruchac, leslie silko, and others younger than him. this oversight is highly problematic, as salisbury represents an essential part of the history of indigenous literatures, especially in regards to poetry among native nations in the us. specifically, salisbury did not find inspiration solely in ethnographies, but rather turned to his own life, as well as other subjects and literary traditions like that of césar vallejo (galician / chimú). robert bly— fellow poet and sometime translator of vallejo—associates this peruvian's work almost exclusively with the spanish surrealists, but salisbury also read vallejo in the original (as vallejo intended). as a result, while salisbury's poetry does incorporate "leaping" and some of the other traits ascribed to vallejo's work by bly, i argue that salisbury draws crystal alberts "making the leap" 70 additional inspiration from vallejo, who was interested early on in what he called "'indigenist will' and 'indigenous sensibility'" (mulligan xxvii, quoting vallejo). as such, like vallejo before him, salisbury goes beyond the "parlor games" of the surrealists to answer the call made by vallejo for "revolutionary writers," whose "job [is] to move the world with our weapon:" their pens (vallejo, ed. mulligan 202, 498). in her introduction, mary hunter austin declares the path on the rainbow: an anthology of songs and chants from the indians of north america (1918) edited by george w. cronyn, "the first authoritative volume of aboriginal american verse" (xv). she claims that one "will be struck at once with the extraordinary likeness between much of this native product and the recent work of the imagists, vers librists,4 and other literary fashionables" (xvi). however, if imagists believe that their work is "the first free movement of poetic originality in america," austin suggests they think again, as the anthology demonstrates that imagism "finds us just about where the last medicine man left off" (xvi). her findings, of course, should be taken with more than a few grains of salt: the poems in the collection were "translated" by well-known salvage ethnographers, such as frank boas, who were probably merely mimicking the artists of the time. one example is pulitzer prize recipient carl sandburg, whose own poetry tended toward free verse, included the occasional imagist work, and who also contributed a "translation" to cronyn's project. yet, as much as one might wish to dismiss the collection outright, the path on the rainbow sheds light on the literary history of indigenous poetry and continues to exert influence.5 appearing in the midst of us literary modernism just as the country was about to enter another period of political isolation in the aftermath of world war i, cronyn's collection serves a particular and peculiar xenophobic agenda, as austin's introduction – seeming disdain for the imagists aside – makes clear. according to austin, since "[t]he poetic faculty is, of all man's modes, the most responsive to natural transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 71 environments," [i]t is the first to register the rise of his spirits to the stimulus of new national ideals. if this were not so there would be no such thing as nationality in art, and it is only by establishing some continuity with the earliest instances of such reaction that we can be at all sure that american poetic genius has struck its native note. (xvi-xvii) cronyn's collection, on one hand, suggested that the us did not need to look to europe or elsewhere for artistic inspiration, as there was plenty "american poetic genius" to be found on native ground. on the other, the anthology was compiled during a time when many in the us supported the growing eugenics movement, and the government was systemically removing tens of thousands of indigenous children from their communities by force.6 these children were then held in residential boarding schools guided by the ideology of "[k]ill the indian in him, and save the man," which frequently resulted in literal death (king 110-111). consequently, the works found within the path on the rainbow provide a "natural," romanticized (and cleansed) useable past free from the "last medicine man" that the settler colonialists of the us could take and make their own.7 the fact that these oral histories and songs were committed to the page in english, creating a fixed version that further helped erase indigenous languages, only adds credence to this assertion. but, if one were to set aside the historical context of the anthology and adopt austin's literary analysis, considering the purported importance of the path on the rainbow, one might be tempted to read salisbury's work in light of ezra pound, among the most recognizable practitioners of the short-lived imagist movement. however, salisbury's free verse is not primarily influenced by imagism's objectivism, which aims, as charles olson explains in "projective verse," to get "rid of the lyrical interference of the individual as ego, of the 'subject' and his soul, that peculiar presumption by which crystal alberts "making the leap" 72 western man has interposed himself between what he is as a creature of nature […] and those other creations of nature which we may, with no derogation, call objects" (24). as i will show, salisbury's early verse does not distance itself from the subjective or other characteristics often associated with the lyric. as it so happens, doing away with the "i"—the subject, the soul, the lyrical interference—is just one of many issues that robert bly takes with early twentieth century poetry, which he declares to be "without spiritual life" ("a wrong turning" 22). but, bly does not stop with "imagism" or, as he calls it, "picturism" ("a wrong turning" 26). he argues that later poets, even those who use "i," have created an impersonal speaker where the "poem is conceived as a clock which one sets going," resulting in poets who "construct automated and flawless machines" (bly, "a wrong turning" 23). one of the leading offenders, for bly, is none other than robert lowell ("a wrong turning" 24). pulitzer prize or not, unlike the verses found in lowell's lord weary's castle (1946), according to bly, the greatest poetry must turn inward not just outward, but not too inward, otherwise it becomes what he calls "hysterical," as seen in lowell's life studies (bly, "a wrong turning" 29). it must contain images that engage the physical senses, explore both the conscious or unconscious mind, and not be afraid to embrace revolutionary feeling, whether in "language or politics" (bly, "a wrong turning" 24-33). among the poets capable of this true poetry: césar vallejo. born in santiago de chuco, césar vallejo's mother and father were the result of sexual interactions between galician priests and their chimú "concubine[s]," "placing [him] in a typical context of mestizaje in the andes" (mulligan xviii). however, "typical" doesn't quite capture all of the connotations that "mestizaje" carried during vallejo's lifetime (1892-1938). while indigenous peoples of the us were being subjected to brigadier general richard pratt's solution to "the indian problem" and worse, indigenous peoples in central and south america also faced familiar stereotypes, transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 73 oppression, slavery, the remnants of an elaborate sistema de castas, and attempts at systemic assimilation as various ideologies of indigenismo took shape.8 despite his poor background—both in terms of his social and economic status—vallejo eventually earned a "licenciatura9 in philosophy and letters at la universidad de la libertad with his thesis 'romanticism in castilian poetry'" (mulligan xx, italics in the original), which is significant not only in terms of his own verse, but also because formal education was one of the few ways to raise one's status regardless of one's lineage. 10 shortly thereafter, vallejo published his first collection of poetry, los heraldos negros (1919), quickly followed by his second, trilce (1922).11 bly would translate excerpts from these and other works by vallejo by the early 1960s and hold the peruvian up as exemplary of the poetry he hoped to see in the us. according to bly, "vallejo is not a poet of the partially authentic feeling, as most poets in the english tradition are, but a poet of the absolutely authentic" (neruda & vallejo 169). vallejo was filled with "tremendous feeling," yet "[h]is wildness and savagery exist side by side with [a tenderness] [….] and a clear intuition into his own inward directions. he sees roads inside himself" (bly, neruda & vallejo 169). even though, by twenty-first century standards, bly merely reinforces of the stereotypes of latin americans as deeply passionate and the romantic vision of indigenous peoples as "noble savages," bly would emphasize this reading of vallejo time and again. bly continued to construct his vision of vallejo by asserting that vallejo's work was "an extension of the substance of the man, no different from his skin or his hands" (bly, "a wrong turning" 24); as such, there wasn't a speaker or persona, just the poet. bly further declared that vallejo's work embraced spanish surrealism based on what he described as "leaping," a term to explain the juxtaposition of images—usually between the conscious and unconscious. for bly, "[p]owerful feeling makes the mind associate faster, and evidently the presence of swift association makes the emotions still more crystal alberts "making the leap" 74 alive" (bly, leaping 28). moreover, unlike the french, spanish surrealists believed that the unconscious did have emotions. consequently, "[t]he poet enters the poem excited, with the emotions alive; he is angry or ecstatic, or disgusted. there are a lot of exclamation marks, visible or invisible" (bly, leaping 28). in bly's eyes, vallejo exemplified these highly desirable characteristics: he embraced a subjective "i," had mastered the skill of making rapid and wild associations between disparate images and ideas, as well as tied them to intense feeling. to emphasize this point further, bly selected poems by vallejo to translate that seemingly support these exact claims right down to an excessive number of exclamation marks.12 as it so happened, in december 1915, more or less contemporaneous with his university thesis el romanticismo en la poesía castellana (c. 1915), vallejo published "aldeana" in la reforma,13 which has been identified not only as the earliest poem contained in los heraldes negros, but also, according to alcides spelucín, as the first poem in which vallejo's own style and voice emerge (ferrari, quoting spelucín, 118 n. 32). although overlooked by both bly and mulligan in their selected writings, clayton eshleman includes "aldeana" in his the complete poetry: a bilingual edition. eshleman translates the "village scene," beginning: "the distant vibration of melancholy cowbells / pours the rural / fragrance of their anguish into the air" (vallejo, the complete poetry: a bilingual edition lines 1-3).14 immediately, one is struck by an image that invokes the senses, while also juxtaposing the concrete with the abstract, as literal "cowbells" may produce sound, but they are unlikely to spread the smell of an agrarian landscape. even if one were to read this figuratively with a "cowbell" serving as a synecdoche for an animal, "anguish" is not generally associated with a single recognizable scent. these images, to use bly's word, continue to leap from the air to the sun to a house, barn, and garden, settling on the penultimate image: languidly through transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 75 the decrepit village rends a guitar's sweet yaraví in whose eternity of deep affliction the sad voice of an indian dronedongs like a big, old cemetery bell. (vallejo, "village scene" lines 22-27)15 in english, the stanza reads as a lament for an indigenous village that no longer exists. however, some things seem discordant. one word isn't translated: "yaraví," which eshleman explains is "[a] song in which indigenous and spanish melodic elements have been fused. the word is a hybrid in tonality as well as spirit and appears to derive from the incan harawi, which was adapted for religious hymns from the time of the conquest until the eighteenth century" (622, italics in original). in other words, it cannot be translated, as there isn't an equivalent in english (or any other language for that matter). but vallejo's work doesn't stop with a single quechuan (or quechuan-derived) word. "aldeana" also includes the word "dondonea" translated as "dronedongs," which certainly strikes an odd note. eshelman appears to have meant the neologism as an onomatopoeic word to continue the motif of bells that appears throughout the translation that is fused with "the sound of the indian's voice" (622-623).16 however, one might also see it as a play on dodonea viscosa, a medicinal plant in quechuaspeaking communities often used to create a poultice or as a covering to treat traumas and other ailments (gonzales de la cruz, m., et al. 9). whatever it signifies, it appears immediately after "un indio." as such, the poem invokes indigenous peoples, mestizajes / mestizos, and their cultures, which are at the heart of the racial tension in perú. the actual speaker of the lyric doesn't appear until the final stanza in which they look out over the scene: my elbows on the wall, crystal alberts "making the leap" 76 while a dark stain triumphs in the soul and the wind sheds in motionless branches tears of timid, uncertain quenas, i sigh a torment, on seeing how in the golden red penumbra a tragic blue of dead idylls weeps! (lines 28-34)17 as suggested by the tone from the beginning, the speaker finds no joy in the apparent loss of this ancient village. 18 the speaker describes "angustias" ("agonies"), "gris doliente" ("aching gray"), "pena" ("pain"), and other words connoting similar emotions in nearly every stanza. moreover, the speaker sighs "una congoja," translated as "torment," but "congoja" can also mean "grief" or "anguish," as the still boughs carry sounds of "timid, uncertain quenas" (eshleman 31). "quenas" are quechuan flutes,19 which, in the poem, are described as careful and hesitant about whether they should sound loudly so as to be heard. while the metaphorical quenas play throughout the (at least partially eclipsed) village, the "i" also seems to find their voice, as they exhale, then speak. translated, "i" seems to be grieving the lost village. however, far from being the "last" of something,20 through this depiction of what is likely an andean village, the use of languages other than castilian spanish, and the inclusion of pervasive spiritual discomfort throughout, the poem attempts to move the reader to see this highland world differently, because the place and indigenous peoples are still there. as such, "aldeana" might also be read as playing with the death of "idilios," romantic, idealized, pastoral poems.21 similar topics, tones, and terms are found elsewhere in los heraldes negros, such as "terceto autóctono"—a series of three spanish sonnets consisting of two quatrains and two terza rima tercets, a variant of the more common forms—initially titled "[de 'fiestas aldeanas']"22 when it, too, was published in la reforma, this time transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 77 appearing in 1916 (ferrari 63). as in "aldeana," the poems are focused on laborers, shepherdesses, and others who are described as "el indio" or "indígenas"23 individuals perceived by nearly all in perú—at the time of publication—as being of a lower station, which is signaled by the work that the individuals are undertaking in this poem. moreover, as in the aforementioned lyric, vallejo includes more yaraví, quenas,24 as well as "una caja de tayanga, / como iniciando un huaino azul," while "el río anda borracho y canta y llora / prehistorias de agua, tiempos viejos."25 whether it is the river remembering old times or the indigenous peoples of the highlands celebrating with quechuan instruments and dance, even if his poetry does jump from image to image, vallejo found his own version of native ground through his "indigenist will" and "indigenous sensibility," which he explicitly declares with the title change, even though as vallejo explains "[a]utochothony does not consist in saying that one is autochthonous but precisely in being so, even when not saying so" (mulligan xxvii, quoting vallejo). "autochthonous" is a word that also doesn't have an exact translation, but "indigenous" is arguably the closest. 26 as such, he creates a new literature with depth rather than superficial mimicry, which he saw as dominating the spanish-american literature of the time.27 in fact, los heraldos negros is considered a "forerunner of literary indigenism," and "received a warm reception for its originality of style and thematic treatments of rural peruvian life" (mulligan xxii). later works, including his various articles on the inca, as well as hacia el reino de los sciris (1924-1928), demonstrate similar thematic concerns.28 while still a matter of debate among some critics, as josé miguel oviedo asserts in his introduction to los heraldos negros, "[e]l mayor mérito del trabajo es el de ser el único que por entonces hizo referencia al asunto del 'indigenismo' o 'nativismo' de algunos versos del poeta, cuestión que estaba de actualidad en el perú" (15).29 however, for those not fluent in spanish, much is lost either because it isn't crystal alberts "making the leap" 78 translated or because it is, thereby erasing the nuance of the language and its various connotations, making a fuller understanding of vallejo difficult.30 vallejo actually anticipated this issue, declaring: "pero si a un poema se le amputa un verso, una palabra, una letra, una signo ortográfico, muere. como el poema, al ser traducido, no pueda conservar su absoluta y viviente integridad, él debe ser leído en su lengua de origen, y esto, naturalmente, limita, por ahora, la universalidad de su emoción" (vallejo, el arte y la revolución 62). ironically, mulligan, one of many who completely ignored the sonnet forms of "terceto autóctono," translates this passage: "but if from a poem one amputates a verse, a word, a letter, a punctuation mark, it dies. since the poem, when translated, cannot preserve its absolute vital integrity, it should be read in its original language, and naturally this limits, for now, the universality of its emotion" (mulligan 200, emphasis added). however, in his autobiography so far so good (2013), ralph salisbury notes that he "studied spanish in college and ha[d] memorized poems by federico garc[í]a lorca, c[é]sar vallejo, and octavio paz" (215). bly and others have repeatedly ignored vallejo's words. salisbury did not; he read vallejo in the original and what salisbury found there would go on to influence his own writing (salisbury, so far so good 230). although not published in a collection until going to the water: poems of a cherokee heritage (1983), ralph salisbury began writing about his indigenous background at least twenty years earlier in "in the children's museum in nashville," which first appeared in the new yorker on 22 april 1961.31 the speaker of the poem takes his sons to the place named in the title, providing a tour from a different perspective. the poem opens with "rattlesnakes coil, / protected by glass and by placards warning that if teased / they might just dash their brains against apparent air (salisbury lights from a bullet hole lines 1-3). as with all museums, they are filled with curated exhibits and, in the case of those of the "natural history" variety, the objects— transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 79 even if dangerous, terrifying, or rarely seen in actual life—are preserved, tagged, boxed and put safely on display, as they are dead specimens like these rattlesnakes. however, the suggestion of a threat—a rattlesnake striking—though imaginary sets the tone and carries throughout the work, particularly as the next lines declares: "negros are advised that, if notified in advance, / the children's museum in nashville will take care of them / on certain days" (lines 4-6). although the black civil rights movement had been underway since at least 1955, jim crow was alive and well in many if not most places in the us, including tennessee. consequently, these lines are a statement letting black families know that accommodations can be made to allow them to visit as patrons, even under jim crow. but, for white visitors, the image of the rattlesnake is juxtaposed with that of "negroes," drawing attention to the racist notion that there is some inherent, lurking danger if the constructed barriers separating the people should fail. however, the lines also carry an ominous message for anyone of african descent, as the museum "will take care of them / on certain days," the implications of which only become clearer as the lyrical tour continues. as it happens, "heads of bison," a staple of the indigenous peoples of the plains, which were nearly eradicated as a result of settlers and "manifest destiny," along with an "eland / (from africa)" are also on display (lines 10-11). however, the parade of the dead doesn't stop with animals, it also includes "shrunken jivaro noggins" (line 16). the shuar ("jivaro" was the name given to them by spanish conquistadores), coincidentally or not, are indigenous peoples, some of whom live in the andes in what is now ecuador and perú. each new exhibit documents the results of colonialism. turning away from the human heads, the poem notes animal skeletons and that "[o]n sundays, children are allowed to look / at electric stars" (lines 19-20). however, one child is always there: seen every day is an indian crystal alberts "making the leap" 80 child—cured by chance, the signs say in a dry, airless place—still possessed of parchment skin, thought eyeless, and still dressed in ceremonial regalia that celebrates his remove to a better world. (lines 20-25) while grotesque to say the least, dioramas of indigenous peoples were (are) not uncommon in the us. anthropologist alfred kroeber captured "ishi," a yahi man, and put him on display at university of california berkeley until "ishi's" death in 1916; the phoebe a. hearst museum of anthropology "still cares for the objects he made during his residency," refusing to acknowledge that he wasn't living there by choice. 32 meanwhile, as robert lowell's "at the indian killer's grave" found in lord weary's castle makes clear, putting indigenous peoples' heads on display has a long history in the us, as he memorializes king philip's war (c. 1675-1676), describing how "philip's head / grins on the platter" (lines 38-39). as such, salisbury's poem not only draws attention to this horrific practice, but also permits the reader to view this tableau through the eyes of individuals of cherokee descent—actual, living indigenous people. moreover, his play with words and images jabs at us policies, such as boarding schools, to "solve the indian problem." here is a child who was "cured by chance:" "cured" as in "preserved," as well as "cured" of his indigenous ways, although this was only accomplished through death. yet, in death, the child is doing what would not have been allowed in life: he is dressed "in ceremonial regalia," albeit for the entertainment of a predominantly white audience (the museum is segregated after all). but, the speaker describes the donning of regalia as celebratory, as the child has moved on "to a better world," free from the actual dangers that he faced from places like the museum (salisbury, light from a bullet hole line 25). transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 81 although it appears in a collection more than twenty years after its initial publication, "in the children's museum in nashville" suggests that salisbury, like vallejo, began exploring what it mean to be indigenous in his contemporary society early on and was not afraid to make politically conscious art in an attempt to disrupt the status quo. salisbury's first book-length work, ghost grapefruit and other poems (1972), however, does not appear at first glance to have the same "indigenous sensibility" to use mulligan's phrase for vallejo. the influences of "canonical" poems presumably encountered at some point in salisbury's education and vallejo do leave their mark though. salisbury includes "after whitman's: 'there was a child went forth'" (obviously referring to walt) and "beyond the road taken" (a more indirect allusion to robert frost's "the road not taken"). with each of these poems, salisbury invokes the original and then challenges it in various ways in terms of style, form, and content. in a letter to mona van duyn dated 4 september 1964 referring to another poem, this time drawing on percy bysshe shelley's "hymn to intellectual beauty," salisbury asserts: "though i imitate and relate, i do not echo."33 he considered that poem a "disputation" with shelley. his debates with the major (white) figures of poetry continue, in ghost grapefruit, as seen in "boyhood incident recollected in tranquility."34 in what is often considered a turning point in western literary history, in preface to lyrical ballads (1800), wordsworth envisions a new "i" for lyric poetry. rather than "the frank, uncovered, tumultuously melodious canto whipped out, the image of emotion" that vallejo suggests josé de espronceda and his "hermano" byron embraced (vallejo, selected writings 7), wordsworth contends that while "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility [….] in this mood successful composition generally begins" (266). he famously calls for an embrace of the "[l]ow and rustic life," and the use of "plainer and crystal alberts "making the leap" 82 more emphatic language," as it will purportedly make poetry easier to understand and enable it to become more democratic (245). 35 salisbury's "boyhood incident recollected in tranquility" clearly alludes to the preface and views nature—that of the world and himself—in his own way. for the boy in salisbury's poem, nature is neither tranquil nor safe. similar to vallejo, salisbury ostensibly draws upon visions from the rural areas where he grew up, then proceeds to take these images through a series of quick and twisting associations that transforms their meaning into something larger. salisbury begins this work by switching the image of "[a] snake with the head and foreflippers of / a frog" to "a frog with enormous snake-stern" (lines 1-3); while neither is "incorrect," the view changes depending upon whether one is looking at it in terms of the head or the tail. the boy is then introduced, "at the brink of eden," suggesting that he is metaphorically at the tree of knowledge about to learn the secrets of good and evil, which presumably comes to pass: stoned— stephen-saint—snake-frog—god in that moment, saw: a halo of red rim stretched jaws, sash black-spreckled-green and whitish middle— human-scientist in that instant verified: murder of fellow fauna two-fold… (lines 4-10) very rapidly, the poem moves from "a boy at the brink of eden stoned—" to "stephen-saint," considered the first catholic martyr who, just before being stoned to death, looked up to see "the glory of god" (acts 7), and then leaps to "snake-frog— god / in that moment," suggesting that the boy learned of the power to take life and killed the serpent-amphibian in the manner that befell stephen, since the "halo" that transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 83 he sees does not invoke heaven, but the mouth of a serpent. this assertion is "that instant verified" by the boy, now "human-scientist" who investigates what he realizes were just "fellow fauna two-fold," a "murder" that will not yield food for his "empty belly" (lines 10, 12). however, the boy with his newly gained knowledge comprehends that the killing occurred as a result of "ignorance / and monstrous fear of what seemed monstrous" (lines 14-15). because it isn't simply that he killed the snake-frog, but through language and association, it implies the fear of a beast with two backs, as what he saw was "against / nature, boy-man, man-woman in dread of the / hand's doing," an appetite not driven by the hunger, but generally the insatiable want for more, as the boy cring[es] from knowing, simply: the size of a snake's mouth, the size of a frog's waist, the appetite of the world's meat so much more than the mouth can ever encompass although compelled by emptiness to try. (lines 17-25) the boy understands that there are times when basic necessities may not be met and that the pure desire to consume more and more cannot fully satisfy, but may destroy. while this piece invokes wordsworth, it avoids the lyric "i" and plain syntax, opting instead for free-form associations and jumping from image to image that bly suggests is so characteristic of vallejo. salisbury himself acknowledges that, in his midtwenties, he "follow[ed] the example of […] surrealists" and, like vallejo, explored "the land between sleep and waking" (so far so good 230). i would argue that this poem embraces this mode, deliberately countering wordsworth's democratic lyric with spanish surrealism. however, in an oblique way, salisbury also ties "boyhood incident crystal alberts "making the leap" 84 recollected in tranquility" to cherokee culture, which, according to james mooney, regards all snakes as "'supernaturals.'" they are to be feared, revered, and "every precaution is taken to avoid killing or offending one, especially the rattlesnake. he who kills a snake will soon see others" (mooney 294). the boy plainly states his "monstrous fear" of this snake being, and, of course, rattlesnakes were the first items on display in "in the children's museum in nashville."36 although only his second collection of poetry, by pointing at the rainbow: poems from a cherokee heritage (1980), salisbury had been publishing give or take for twenty years. consequently, his aesthetic and thematic concerns remain relatively consistent thereafter. more often than not, the poems will be a lyric, open form, and filled with leaping images. similar to lowell, it will incorporate autobiographical experiences and family, but like vallejo it will also include political commentary and, as suggested by the subtitle of this chapbook, most will include references to cherokee life, culture, or history. along those lines, as it so happens, according to mooney, if one kills a second snake, "so many will come around him whichever way he may turn that he will become dazed at the sight of their glistening eyes and darting tongues and will go wandering about like a crazy man, unable to find his way out of the woods" (294): another snake appears in this collection. however, in "these sacred names," the speaker explicitly identifies the being, beginning: a monstrous uktena, writhing from georgia to oklahoma, this super-highway's bright scales hurl new bones over those white soldiers saw as trail-markers for return… (1-5) transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 85 there are multiple stories concerning the "monstrous" uktena (echoing the word used in "a boyhood incident"); however, many characteristics (at least as documented by mooney) remain the same. uktena "is a great snake, as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright, blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead, and scales glittering like sparks of fire" more than that "it is certain death to meet the uktena" and even "to see the uktena asleep is death, not to the hunter himself, but to his family" (mooney 297, 299, 298). in the case of this poem, the speaker isn't referring to a literal snake, but rather to the interstate that winds its way across georgia to oklahoma, causing a type of death to the land. it is here that the stories of uktena are merged not only with the highway system of the us, but also to history. the speaker references "new bones," lives lost in car accidents, that are added to bones of individuals who perished during "the cherokee death march," as the us military forcibly removed the cherokee from "the carolinas, kentucky, tennessee and georgia" (salisbury, pointing at the rainbow lines 7, 37). although the cause for the speaker's trip is the demise of a relationship, the images jump from uktena to the trail of tears to racial tensions to vietnam war protests to generalized cold war fears, as the speaker discovers that there is "nothing / to fight / beyond drowsiness at the wheel" (lines 19-21). the speaker, ostensibly close to that liminal state between sleeping and waking fights to stay alert, reflects on history, the various troubles facing the country, and presumably night, suggesting that uktena, who kills on sight, is exerting its power by threatening the life of the speaker should he drift off behind the wheel. this darkness continues as the speaker drives, when he realizes that he is tracing his "ancestors' 'trail of tears'" until the poem jumps, revealing that this same road is leading to a "reunion with wife and child." at this moment dawn breaks and: lake texoma blazes like uktena's mountainous head's gem. crystal alberts "making the leap" 86 its medicine springs up in the veins of green corn and in my veins… (lines 25-28) as the speaker approaches the reservoir that shines like the ulûñsû'tî in uktena's head, the gem is said to bring "success in hunting, love, rain-making, and every other business" to anyone who possesses it (mooney 298). although initially seen as a glimmer of hope, the connection to uktena also brings the specter of death, in this case, in the form of lake texoma, the result of the denison dam, which, like many such projects in the us was built under the policy of eminent domain often taking more indigenous lands, flooding existing towns, hunting areas, and agricultural land in the process.37 but, the speaker also invokes the medicine of the green corn, which was a main festival prior to forced removal that included a ceremony for cleansing away impurities or bad deeds and permitted the start of a new life.38 the speaker begins to "chant against sleep, / against death" (lines 29-30). "these sacred names" include: chief guwisguwi (john ross) tsali (charlie) sequioa (george guest, guess, or gist) tagwadahi (catawba-killer) itagunahi (john ax) and ayunini (swimmer). (lines 30-33) each of these figures—named in transliterated cherokee, as well as english—played a key role in cherokee history, its culture, or the preservation of it, as, among other things, they were principal chiefs, an individual who resisted removal, one who created the cherokee syllabary, or were sources for mooney, who left his ethnographic works behind. while the speaker chants as a way to remember and honor his cherokee heritage, by including it in this poem, salisbury uses his pen as the revolutionary weapon that vallejo mentions: "in these people (the aniyunwiya) come / back against bayonets, against extinction" (lines 34-35). the speaker suggests that as long as there transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 87 are those to carry on the stories and the language, the cherokee nation will survive. but, the poem ends with a caution, as there will be a reunification if the aniyunwiya come back "to join / in a sacred dance in echota, the holy city, the maiden / whose death dooms us all, / the beautiful daughter of the sun" (lines 37-40). however, in 1980, new echota was in the middle of being turned into a museum as part of a georgia state park;39 meanwhile, according to mooney, the daughter of the sun was killed by none other than a rattlesnake (254). in his autobiography, salisbury declares "[f]ree association, spontaneity, a wholeness of the moment, a union of past and present, of childhood and after—these are what i seek…" (so far so good 4). during the course of his prolific career, spanning over six decades, salisbury succeeded in finding a poetic form that generally enabled him to do just these things. he all but ignores the assertions of mary hunter austin, whose work he may or may not have known, although one cannot help but read some of his titles—pointing at the rainbow (1980), a white rainbow (1985), rainbows of stone (2000)—as a "disputation" of cronyn's the path on the rainbow. and while there is always the chance that one might find a poem that fits the imagist mode—as i have tried to imply—if one does, it has far less to do with anything asserted by austin than salisbury's education at the university of iowa, career as a professor, and life as an artist / scholar / reader. robert lowell—salisbury's mentor at iowa—and his shift to a confessional mode, which was more emotive and personal, can certainly be seen in the content of salisbury's work, as can "spontaneity," which salisbury mentions himself. but rather than follow a us poetic tradition that some, like bly, felt didn't embrace a spiritual life, the use of a feeling unconscious, or that remained politically aloof, salisbury found the spanish-speaking authors that he read in his twenties could show him a different way (so far so good 230). consequently, salisbury's poetry fully embraces the subjective, returns time and time again to events that shaped who he crystal alberts "making the leap" 88 was—his hand-to-mouth existence on the family farm in depression-era iowa, his experiences surrounding world war ii, and his views on war generally. although he recollects these memories at a distance, they neither lack emotion nor substance, as the images engage the senses. moreover, because he did embrace what bly describes as the "leaping" methods of césar vallejo, not to mention a desire to produce if not "revolutionary" then at least "socially responsible" art, vallejo becomes central to understanding salisbury's work both in terms of form and content. seeing few, if any, contemporary indigenous poets using their own voices and backgrounds in the us, he turned to those that did, like vallejo. as a result, salisbury also began to show an "'indigenist will' and 'indigenous sensibility'" in his work by connecting to his cherokee heritage before many authors who are credited with starting the so-called "native american renaissance." as a result, to overlook the contributions of ralph salisbury to indigenous literatures (and just literature) in what is now the united states is to omit an author who began to challenge the monolingual narrative and settler colonialism earlier than most. notes 1 work by ralph salisbury used by permission of the literary estate of ralph salisbury. copyright © 2020 by the literary estate of ralph salisbury. all rights reserved. no reproduction without permission of the estate. 2 see "obituary: ralph j. salisbury, january 24, 1926october 9, 2017" available at https://crwr.uoregon.edu/2017/10/30/obit-salisbury/ accessed 23 february 2019. while he was drafted and trained, he did not see active combat in wwii, but did receive educational funds for his service in the air force. although a specific date isn't given, his time at the university of iowa is likely sometime in 1950 or 1953 when lowell was teaching at the iowa workshop. see axelrod, p. 242. 3 "cherokee language" as written using the syllabary invented by sequoyah; transliterated, it would appear as tsalagi gawonihisdi. for more information see the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 89 cherokee nation of oklahoma's language resource page, https://cherokee.org/aboutthe-nation/cherokee-language. 4 french for "a writer of free verse." 5 in the introduction to new poets of native nations (graywolf 2018), editor heid e. erdrich notes that "internet searches for best-selling anthologies under the category of 'native american' or 'american indian' poetry return books published in 1918, 1996, 1988, and 1984, in that order" (xiii). presumably, the work referred to by 1918 is none other than the path on the rainbow. moreover, "rainbow" continues to appear in the title of anthologies of indigenous poetry, for example, voices of the rainbow: contemporary poetry by native americans (arcade, 2012) edited by kenneth rosen. although not mentioned by erdrich, salisbury also edited an anthology, a nation within (hamilton, nz: outrigger, 1983). 6 as the harvard law review notes in "regulating eugenics:" negative eugenics commonly took the form of compulsory sterilization laws in the united states. starting with indiana in 1907, twenty-nine states enacted compulsory sterilization laws, and a majority of states still had such laws as of 1956. eugenicists even wrote a model eugenic sterilization statute. all told, states sterilized over 60,000 "unfit" americans up through the 1970s. though some courts invalidated these sterilization statutes, the supreme court upheld their constitutionality in the infamous case of buck v. bell (1580). buck v. bell is, of course, the us supreme court decision from 1927 in which justice oliver wendell holmes infamously stated that "three generations of imbeciles are enough," making forced sterilization constitutional (1581). the case has never been overturned and remains legal precedent in the us. after buck v. bell, according to "eugenical sterilization map of the united states, 1935" found in the harry h. laughlin papers, similar laws were passed in much of the us. 7 see thomas king, especially pp. 110-120, for a more in-depth discussion. 8 perú, roughly around the same time as the path on the rainbow appeared (19211926), became embroiled in a complicated and contradictory struggle for indigenous rights that pitted cuzqueños against limeños in a debate between "regionalismo," defined as the andean highlands (especially those around cuzco the pre-colonial center of the inca) versus "centralismo" (epitomized by the coastal area of lima founded by spanish conquistadores) with mestizos / mestizajes almost always in the conflicted middle (de la cadena 45, italics in original). the details of this period are beyond the scope of the present argument; however, please see marisol de la cadena, indigenous mestizos: the politics of race and culture in cuzco, peru, 1919-1991 (duke up, 2000). crystal alberts "making the leap" 90 in english, sistema de castas translates to "caste system." for more on the caste system in latin america, see "transatlantic quechuañol: reading race through colonial translations," by allison margaret bigelow (pmla 134.2 [2019], pp. 242-259) or bound lives: africans, indians, and the making of race in colonial peru by rachel sarah o'toole (u of pittsburgh p, 2012). 9 spanish for "bachelor's degree." 10 see de la cadena, pp. 44-85. 11 los heraldes negros is translated from the spanish by robert bly as the black riders and by joseph mulligan as the black heralds with mulligan's being the most direct. trilce appears to be a word coined by vallejo, which is untranslatable. 12 vallejo thus heavily influences bly's own work and vision of what would become known as "deep image" in the 1960s and beyond, which focused on making subjective connections between the physical and spiritual realm, thereby creating an american poetry with spiritual life, revolutionary feeling, and images ("a wrong turning" 22-27). jerome rothenberg, coined the phrase "deep image." rothenberg would begin "translating" indigenous poetry by the late 1960s in what he would call "total translation" and also "ethnopoetics." see pre-faces and other writings, especially pages 76-92. 13 "reform" in spanish. 14 in spanish, the poem appears: lejana vibración de esquilas mustias en el aire derrama la fragancia rural de sus angustias. (lines 1-3) 15 in the original this stanza appears: lánguido se desgarra en la vetusta aldea el dulce yaraví de una guitarra, en cuya eternidad de hondo quebranto la triste voz de un indio dondonea, como un viejo esquilón de camposanto. (lines 22-27) 16 according to eshleman, dondonea appears twice in the body of vallejo's poetry, the second time as "dondoneo" in "[la punta del hombre]." eshleman and ferrari opt for different translations. in césar vallejo: the complete posthumous poetry, eshleman and josé rubia barcia coin "zazhay," asserting that "'dondoneo' appears to be a neologism, based on 'contoneo' (strut). to match vallejo's sound distortion, we take the word 'sashay' and replace the two s / s with two z / s" (310). later, eshleman changes the translation to "stirrut" continuing to play with "contoneo (strut)," but this time "adding 'ir' to strut, (drawing forth stir and rut), [he] hope[d] to match the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 91 strangeness of the original" (the complete poetry, 652). mulligan follows eshelman's "stirrut." eshleman notes earlier that gonzález vigil "does not comment" on dondoneo (622). 17 in spanish, the poem ends: de codos yo en el muro, cuando triunfa en el alma el tinte oscuro y el viento reza en los ramajes yertos llantos de quenas, tímidos, inciertos, suspiro una congoja, al ver que en la penumbra gualda y roja llora un trágico azul de idilios muertos! 18 "ancient" arguably being a more accurate translation of "vetusta" than "decrepit," as it appears to be derived from the latin "vetustus" ("vetust," adj.). 19 eshleman defines "quena" as "a one-hole indian flute that accompanies the yaraví songs in some parts of south america. legend has it that it is carved out of the shinbone of a dead beloved" (the complete posthumous poetry, 307). according to diccionario quechua-español-quechua / qheswa-español-qheswa simi taqe, quena is a hispanicized version of "qena" defined as "instrumento musical aerófono, oriundo de la cultura andina hecha de caña hueca, hueso o metal. tiene varias aberturas o huecos para pulsar y una boquilla, bisel o abertura en la boca para soplar. carece de lengüeta. tiene un timbre muy expresivo y peculiar" (457). in english, roughly translated, it is a flute-like instrument of the andean culture made of hollow cane, bone, or metal that has a very expressive and peculiar sound. 20 a discussion of the "lasting" of a group of people is beyond the scope of this paper; however, for more see firsting and lasting: writing indians out of existence in new england, jean m. o'brien, minneapolis: u of minnesota p, 2010, especially pp. 105143. 21 defined by the diccionario de la lengua española as "[c]omposición poética que recreaba de manera idealizada la vida del campo y los amores pastoriles." 22 "terceto autóctono" is translated by mulligan as "autochthonous tercet." "de 'fiestas aldeanas'" translates roughly to "parties of the village," specifically a sparsely populated village that may not have the authority to govern itself. this assertion is based on the definition of "aldea," a "[p]ueblo de escaso vecindario y, por lo común, sin jurisdicción propia," found in diccionario de lengua española, real academia española; however, admittedly, this does not account for the passage of time and the aldean spanish dialect. 23 ferrari, "terceto autóctono (i) " 6; "terceto autóctono (ii) " 1. crystal alberts "making the leap" 92 24 ferrari, "terceto autóctono (i)" lines 7, 9. in "terceto autóctono (i)," line 9, "aquenando hondos" is translated by mulligan following eshleman as "quenaing," another neologism (22, 571 n. 17). 25 ferrari, "terceto autóctono (iii)" lines 12-13 and 10-11, respectively, translated by mulligan as "a caja from tayanga sounds, / as if initiating blue huaino" and "the river flows along drunkenly, singing and weeping / prehistories of water, olden times" ("terceto autóctono (iii)" lines 12-13 and 10-11, italics in original). mulligan directly quotes eshleman's translations of the quechuan words: "'the caja is a musical instrument combining a kind of drum with a ditch reed (from which quenas can be made). tayanga is a northern peruvian town specializing in the fabrication of cajas'" (mulligan 571, n. 19m italics in original). mulligan does the same for huaino: "'the most well-known representative indigenous dance of peru, with happy, flirtatious movements (and sometimes words)'" (mulligan, n. 20, quoting eshleman). 26 "dicho una persona o del pueblo al que pertenece: originarios del propio país en el que viven" ("autóctono," 1. adj). 27 his contemporaries attempted to "keep to the naturalist novel, in purebred style, in rubendarionian [referring to ruben darío, considered the father of spanish-american modernism] verse and realist theater," but they were not able to pen anything of substance, leading vallejo to declare in 1926: "[a]mid this dearth of spiritual command, new writers in the castilian language don't show their outrage over an empty past, toward which in vain they turn for direction [. . . .] if our generation manages to break its own trail, its work will crush the previous. then, the history of spanish literature will leap over the past thirty years as over an abyss" (vallejo, ed. mulligan, 151). vallejo jumps over the perceived void created by the result of ventriloquizing previous spanish and south american literary movements and cuts to more contemporary issues. for the spanish version of this work, see "estado de la literatura española" ("the state of spanish literature"). in an essay solely on vallejo, one could trace the impact of one of vallejo's stated aesthetic inspirations: soviet film director sergei eisenstein. however, that is beyond the scope of this currently project. unsurprisingly, eisenstein and vallejo's soviet connections remain unacknowledged by bly, as his translations were published in the midst of the cold war, and reprinted during the height of the vietnam / american war. 28 translated by mulligan from spanish to english as toward the reign of the sciris. this work has been called a novella of american folklore (vallejo, narrativa completa, 47 n107) and focuses on the quechua. 29 loosely translated from spanish, this passage states: "the greatest merit of vallejo's poetry is that he was the only one at the time who made reference to 'indigenismo' or transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 93 'nativism,' which were contemporary issues in peru." the same can be said of some of his prose, like hacia el reino de los sciris and others. 30 reading vallejo only through the eyes and translations of robert bly or others also limits vallejo's work, according to the national observer's review of bly's 1962 translations, the work of vallejo (and neruda) exemplifies "poetry of masculinity and strength," which was perfectly suited for bly's "deep image" movement (galvin 361, quoting the national observer). however, as rachel j. galvin explains in "poetic innovation and appropriative translation in the americas" (2014), this aesthetic was achieved by disregarding accepted ways of transforming spanish to english, as well as adding language to poems that doesn't appear in the original (361). 31 the image of museums reoccurs with relative frequency in indigenous poetry, for one contemporary example, see nature poem, tommy pico, new york: tin house, 2017. 32 see the hearst museum of anthropology website on the history of ishi, available at https://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/ishi/ accessed 10 march 2020. 33 salisbury, letter to mona van duyn, 4 september 1964. mona van duyn and jarvis thurston were the co-founders of perspective: a quarterly of literature and the arts, which was among the little magazines to publish salisbury's work. the archive contains correspondence dating back to the mid-1950s. 34 this poem also appears in light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected 19502008. the line breaks used here reflect those in ghost grapefruit, which vary from those in light from a bullet hole. also, "spreckled" in line 7 in the ghost grapefruit version appears as "speckled" in revision found in light from a bullet hole. 35 byron, of course, had a contrary view, often preferring a more formalist approach. 36 from "the snake tribe:" "the generic name for snakes is indädû′. they are all regarded as anida′wehï […] having an intimate connection with the rain and thunder gods, and possessing a certain influence over the other animal and plant tribes" (mooney 294). whether the cherokee stories incorporated into these poems were those told to salisbury by his father's family or are from sources such as james mooney's history, myths, and sacred formulas of the cherokees, or some combination is unknown; however, mooney will be used here. 37 see, for example, "the history of the denison dam," from the us army corps of engineers, tulsa district, available at https://www.swt.usace.army.mil/locations/tulsadistrict-lakes/oklahoma/lake-texoma/history/ accessed 4 march 2019. 38 see mooney, pp. 420-423. cherokee nation of oklahoma no longer posts information about the green corn dance on their website, the nation's statement is available at https://www.cherokee.org/about-the-nation/culture/ accessed 29 february 2020. crystal alberts "making the leap" 94 39 see the new echota georgia state park website: https://gastateparks.org/ newechota works cited "aldea," diccionario de lengua española, real academia española https://dle.rae.es/aldea?m=form. accessed 23 february 2020. "autóctono," diccionario de lengua española, real academia española https://dle.rae.es/?w=aut%c3%b3ctono. accessed 23 february 2020. austin, mary. "introduction." the path on the rainbow. ed. george w. cronyn. new york: boni and liveright, 1918. xv-xxxii. axelrod, steven gould, robert lowell: life and art, princeton, nj: princeton up, 1978. bly, robert, ed. and trans., leaping poetry: an idea with poems and translations chosen, boston, ma: beacon, 1975. ---, ed. neruda & vallejo: selected poems, translated by robert bly, john knoepfle, and james wright, beacon, 1993. ---. "a wrong turning in american poetry." claims for poetry. ed. donald hall. ann arbor: u of michigan p, 1983. 17-37. de la cadena, marisol, indigenous mestizos: the politics of race and culture in cuzco, peru, 1919-1991, raleigh, nc: duke up, 2000. erdrich, heid e., ed., new poets of native nations, minneapolis: graywolf, 2018. "eugenical sterilization map of the united states, 1935," the harry h. laughlin papers, truman state university available at http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenicsprograms-in-the-united-states/. accessed 23 feb. 2020. galvin, rachel j., "poetic innovation and appropriative translation in the americas," transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 95 the companion to translation studies, edited by sandra bermann and catherine porter, john wiley & sons, 2014, pp. 361-367. gonzales de la cruz, mercedes, et al., "hot and cold: medicinal plant uses in quechua speaking communities in the high andes (callejón de huaylas, ancash, perú)," journal of ethnopharmacology (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2014.06.042i "idilios, 2. m. t. lit." diccionario de la lengua española, real academia española, edición tricentenario, 2019. https://dle.rae.es/idilio. accessed 23 february 2020. king, thomas, the inconvenient indian, minneapolis: u of minnesota p, 2012. lincoln, kenneth, native american renaissance, berkeley, ca: u of california p, 1983. mooney, james, history, myths, and sacred formulas of the cherokees, fairview, nc: historical images, 1992. lowell, robert, life studies, farrar, straus, and cudahy, 1959. ---. lord weary's castle, harcourt brace, 1946. olson, charles, "projective verse," selected writings of charles olson, edited by robert creeley, new directions, 1966, pp. 15-26. oviedo, josé miguel. "introducción: los heraldos negros." obra poetica: césar vallejo, edited by américo ferrari, allca xx, 1988, pp. 5-17. "qena," diccionario quechua-español-quechua / qheswa-español-qheswa simi taqe, segunda edición cuzco, perú: gobierno regional, 2005. "regulating eugenics." harvard law review, vol. 121, no. 6, 2008, pp. 1578– 1599. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/40042704. accessed 23 feb. 2020. rothenberg, jerome, pre-faces & other writings, new directions, 1981. salisbury, ralph, ghost grapefruit and other poems, ithaca, ny, ithaca house, 1972. --"letter to mona van duyn," perspective magazine archive, department of special crystal alberts "making the leap" 96 collections, olin university libraries, washington university in st. louis, st. louis, mo, 4 september 1964. ---. light from a bullet hole: poems new and selected 1950-2008, eugene, or: silverfish review p, 2009. ---. pointing at the rainbow: poems from a cherokee heritage, marvin, sd: blue cloud, 1980. ---. so far, so good. lincoln, ne: u of nebraska p, 2013. vallejo, césar, el arte y la revolución, lima: mosca azul editores, 1973. ---. the complete poetry: a bilingual edition, edited and translated by clayton eshleman, berkeley: u of california p, 2007. ---. the complete posthumous poetry. 1978, translated by clayton eshleman and josé rubia barcia, berkeley: u of california p, 1980. ---. narrativa completa, edited by antonio merino, akal, 2007. ---. obra poetica: edición crítica, edited by américo ferrari, allca xx, 1988. ---. selected works of césar vallejo, edited by joseph mulligan, translated by clayton eshleman, pierre joris, suzanne jill levine et al, wesleyan, ct: wesleyan up, 2015. "vetust, adj." oxford english dictionary, 3rd, 2017. wordsworth, william, "preface" (1800), lyrical ballads, 2nd ed. edited by r.l. brett and a.r. jones, routledge, 1991, pp. 241-272. microsoft word j&j_final.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 176 educating for indigenous futurities: applying collective continuance theory in teacher preparation education stephany runninghawk johnson & michelle m. jacob introduction in the united states, as well as elsewhere around the globe, k-12 classrooms are important sites for anti-colonial and indigenous critiques of the settler nation, neoliberalism, and globalization. all of these lived realities undermine indigenous futurities while simultaneously fueling climate change and perpetuating settler-colonial violence. because indigenous children predominantly attend public schools, we have chosen western education systems as places to contribute to the ongoing work of indigenous survivance (sabzalian; vizenor). we have also chosen to use the term ‘indigenous’ as we feel that it directly connects people with their homelands, with their more-than-human relatives, and with the responsibilities that we have to each other and our places—and that these connections and responsibilities are an important part of the work we are doing. as indigenous peoples, and in our work as indigenous teacher educators, we seek to be good ancestors, to teach in ways that provide connection to land and our more-than-human relatives, and to promote the collective continuance of indigenous peoples as a method of broadening and supporting indigenous futurities for our future generations. we—indigenous peoples and indigenous teachers—are contemporary and hopeful; we persevere, and we change and adapt using our cultural knowledges. an integral part of the knowledge that is currently needed in our schools is the concept of connection. connection between people in communities as well as peoples across the globe, but also connection with our more-than-human relatives, the land, our places, runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 177 the air and water. this is important because as indigenous people, we understand our land differently than mainstream understandings of land within settler colonial institutions. as robin wall kimmerer writes, “in the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. but to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us” (braiding sweetgrass 17). tuck and gaztambide-fernández agree with kimmerer, and strengthen her argument when they write that for “settlers to live on and profit from land, they must eliminate indigenous peoples and extinguish their historical, epistemological, philosophical, moral and political claims to land. land, in being settled, becomes property” (“curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity” 74). indigenous teachers can challenge misguided conceptions of, and relations with, land by supporting their students’ knowledge of the land as a sacred relation, and this can open possibilities of multi-level changes throughout society that make it possible to mitigate climate change. as we teach, live, work, and learn within and against the backdrop of settler colonialism, it is important to remember that it is “the specific formation of colonialism in which the colonizer comes to stay, making himself the sovereign, and the arbiter of citizenship, civility, and knowing” (tuck and gaztambide-fernández 73). this means that as indigenous teachers, both at the university and k-12 levels, we must continue to recognize and resist multiple forms of the violence brought about by settler colonialism. this includes the way we consider our connections and responsibilities to one another as well as how we think about land as our relative to whom we have responsibilities. the loss of this connection with land is a major contributor to the global climate crisis we currently face. with settler colonialism we must also keep in mind that the “violence of invasion is not contained to first contact or the unfortunate transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 178 birthpangs of a new nation, but is reasserted each day of occupation” (tuck and gaztambide-fernández 73). in working with future teachers, indigenous teachers, we believe that we can broaden and strengthen the work of decolonization and indigenization and by doing so, have a positive effect on our future generations of indigenous youth and our/their relationship with land and climate. in the process of recognizing and resisting settler colonialism at work within our schools and our classrooms, “critical examinations of colonialism will help educators consider alternatives to colonizing ways focusing on strategies of resistance and survivance through writing and cultural production” (pewewardy, lees, and clark-shim 49); indigenous teachers are in a position to do this work most effectively with their indigenous students. we, as university educators, must be critical of the colonial institutions within which we work, and we must provide future indigenous teachers with an example of what this can look like. violence in the form of “forced assimilation of indigenous peoples through public schooling began a clear pattern of government efforts to enact school policies that advanced efforts of settler colonialism” (lees et al. 5), which continues in the present. public schools are still in the process of advancing the ideologies and the violence of settler colonialism. by teaching in indigenous ways and with indigenous knowledges, “we bring settler colonialism to the center of neoliberal critiques to contend with its aftermath, which permeates all we do in school”(lees et al. 5). practicing resistance and survivance through centering indigenous teachers and indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies “is situated within broader intergenerational processes of indigenous persistence, resilience, and community agency committed to strengthening the next generation of nation builders” (anthony-stevens et al. 3). we must also remember and honor that indigenous ways of knowing are interdisciplinary. humans are not separate from the natural world, so why would we runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 179 make distinctions between school subjects? “we are collectively looking for the right and responsible ways to weave tek (traditional ecological knowledge) into our education, research, and practice, trying to find a path through a profoundly new educational landscape for mainstream universities” (kimmerer, “searching for synergy” 318). this path includes both the humanities and the sciences connecting and intertwining through culture and stories, and indigenous teachers can further this work with their students and communities. “indigenous thinkers for their millenia of engagement with sentient environments, with cosmologies that enmesh people into complex relationships between themselves and all relations, and with climates and atmospheres as important points of organization and action” (todd 6-7) show us what this path can look like. this way of thinking, of knowing and being in the world, is crucial for our indigenous students, and it is also important for all students and peoples. we can use this knowledge to teach and to combat climate change—for collective continuance. we, as indigenous professors, use critical indigenous pedagogical frameworks with our students because they are “central to the organization of curriculum and instruction methods classes, student teaching practica, and other coursework or programmatic experiences” (kulago 240). we do this because within “these frameworks, there are similar components that include the disruption of curricular materials/resources so that truthful histories and multiple perspectives are included: the centering and valuing of indigenous knowledge systems and languages, and the goals of nation building and strengthening of indigenous communities and families” (kulago 240). we also do this to show our future teachers a way forward in their work that supports their, and their students, indigenous futures. this critical indigenous consciousness allows these future teachers to “acknowledge, respect, and embrace the role they would hold as advocates, nation builders, and leaders in their communities transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 180 with their continued service to indigenous communities and people” (kulago 242). we hope to provide examples of, and support for, our future teachers to “critically examine curriculum, instructional methods and other educational practices, call out assimilative/colonizing aspects, and forefront indigenous perspectives and knowledge systems” (kulago 242). indigenous pedagogical frameworks allow us as teachers to decolonize and indigenize our educational practices, to support indigenous knowledges and worldviews, to practice collective continuance as well as being good ancestors. as hollie kulago points out, “in indigenous teacher education, we are committed to indigenous futurity but must work through educational programs committed to settler futurity.” (“in the business of futurity” 243). to be clear, settler futurities are not the same as indigenous futurities. but what do we mean by ‘futurities’? they are not just a set of ideas or concepts about what the future may hold, but instead refer to “styles of thinking about the future, the types of practices that give content to a certain future, and the logics behind how present actions are legitimized or guided by specific futures” (kulago 243). indigenous futurities are a way for indigenous peoples to imagine and then implement a future that is meant for them and their children, that honors their ancestors and their ways of knowing and being, and that respects the connections to and responsibilities for the land and more-thanhuman relatives with whom indigenous peoples have been in relation with since time immemorial. as megan bang writes “a fundamental aspect of seeing anew is in cultivating our abilities to see remembered places and newly made places while we learn to move and be differently in the world, collectively” (441). indigenous teachers working with indigenous students can and do make possible the inclusion of indigenous futurities within public schooling institutions, in fact, having “communitybased indigenous educators to serve indigenous youth is paramount for helping tribal runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 181 nations and their citizens to build both a strong and present future” (anthony-stevens et el. 19). as kulago writes “having a critical indigenous consciousness can challenge the structure of settler colonialism and promote resistance and survival…education through and with the goals of cultivating critical indigenous consciousness can become a weapon against settler colonialism” (248). by providing future teachers with the skills and the support to be critical indigneous scholars and teachers, we are helping them to resist settler colonialism and promote indigenous futurities. we draw from our experiences as indigenous university educators, and from the experiences of our students who are training to become elementary and secondary classroom teachers in the us. we do this work in order to show how education can be one way to better understand our ancestral indigenous teachings. these teachings “can create a synergy between teacher education and the field of practice and support educators developing consciousness… as they commit to decolonization and indigenous futurities” (lees et al. 15). by better understanding these teachings, we aim to deepen our, our students’, and their students’ connection to our/their indigenous identities and knowledges. by connecting deeply with our indigenous identities and knowledges, we become better ancestors, better teachers, and better learners, more connected to our places and land, more cognizant of our relationships and responsibilities, stronger in our efforts to promote collective continuance, and champions of indigenous futurities. climate change, the anthropocene, and settler-colonial violence our world is currently experiencing a crisis: climate change caused by humans; caused by humans’ lack of connection with place and their more-than-human relatives; caused by humans’ loss of recognition of their responsibility to be good ancestors and good relatives; caused by heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and settler-colonialism. our transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 182 indigenous communities are experiencing climate crises at disproportionately higher rates than whites living in the us, and this is not accidental. indigenous peoples are experiencing poverty, loss of traditional homelands, rising sea waters caused by warmer temperatures, lack of clean drinking water, and loss of access to traditional foods. these issues are all linked and many are the result of climate change and warmed global temperatures: “as an environmental injustice, settler colonialism is a social process by which at least one society seeks to establish its own collective continuance at the expense of the collective continuance of one or more other societies” (whyte, “settler colonialism” 136). this is happening across the globe today, and we see and feel its presence in our classrooms and communities. in order to truly address our climate issues, we must name the problems and their origination. davis and todd “argue that placing the golden spike at 1610, or from the beginning of the colonial period, names the problem of colonialism as responsible for contemporary environmental crisis” (763). the connections between colonialism, particularly settler-colonialism, and the anthropocene need to be explicit in order to expose the violence of colonization: “by making the relations between the anthropocene and colonialism explicit, we are then in a position to understand our current ecological crisis and to take the steps needed to move away from the ecocidal path” (davis and todd 763). this then allows for a recognition of indigenous ways of knowing and being, of the necessity for indigenous input and governance. this shows a way forward that is hopeful. kyle powys whyte tells us that “settler colonialism works strategically to undermine indigenous peoples’ social resilience as self-determining collectives” (“settler colonialism” 125). however, if we connect the anthropocene with colonization, runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 183 it draws attention to the violence at its core and calls for the consideration of indigenous philosophies and processes of indigenous self-governance as a necessary political corrective, alongside the self-determination of other communities and societies violently impacted by the white supremacist, colonial, and capitalist logics instantiated in the origins of the anthropocene. (davis and todd 763) in order to address social issues and the current climate crisis, we must acknowledge the violence caused by settler colonialism, and recognize that indigenous peoples across the globe can be, should be, and are sovereign nations and have continued their relationship with land and more-than-human relatives through the violence. we know that indigenous “people have endured the pain of being bystanders to the degradation of their lands, but they never surrendered their caregiving responsibilities. they have continued the ceremonies that honor the land and their connection to it” (kimmerer, “searching for synergy” 319). we can teach these concepts in our schools, and in doing so become better ancestors as well as better caretakers of our lands. by recognizing the climate crisis that is currently raging, naming and acknowledging the colonialist causes, and by affirming the inequitable effects of this crisis, we potentially build a foundation for change. with this groundwork laid, it may be possible to begin to move toward a restorative pathway forward. we believe that our future teachers see this possibility and the hope that the students in their classrooms bring to indigenous communities across the globe and can support collective continuance in their communities by holding and passing on indigenous knowledges and values to their students. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 184 collective continuance and the importance of interdisciplinarity to address climate change as indigenous university educators, we assert and affirm the importance of indigenous educators who are learning to become good ancestors for future generations. we work with future teachers, and part of the work we do with them is to better understand their/our ancestral indigenous teachings for the purpose of deepening our indigenous identities and knowledges, which allows these teachers to do the same for the students in their classrooms. this type of work is a vital part of what whyte calls collective continuance. collective continuance is “an indigenous conception of social resilience and self-determination” (“settler colonialism" 125) and “refers to a society’s capacity to self-determine how to adapt to change in ways that avoid reasonably preventable harms” (131). teachers, particularly indigenous teachers, can be part of this process by supporting and broadening students’ confidence with their indigenous knowledges and identities. indigenous peoples reclaiming our/their sacred relationships and responsibilities for caretaking of the land is an important first step in environmental justice and addressing climate change. collective continuance connects the three concepts of: interdependent relationships, systems of responsibilities, and migration (whyte, “settler colonialism” 126). all three of these concepts are foundational in our indigenous students’ journeys to become teachers in their communities. these concepts are needed more broadly in today’s schools and education, particularly for indigenous students, and more generally for all students, in that they provide students with a sense of their own identities, the value of their relationships, the need for them to be connected to and responsible for their human relatives, their more-than-human relatives, and their air, waters, land and place. these connections and relations are more important than ever to understand runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 185 and to honor in the current climate crisis we all face and that these students will have a large part in addressing. interdependent relationships are important in thinking about our interactions with, and considering our impact on, not just other humans but also our more-thanhuman relatives and the land, air, and water. whyte explains that the concept of interdependent relationship “includes a sense of identity associated with the environment and a sense of responsibility to care for the environment. there is also no privileging of humans as unique in having agency or intelligence” (“settler colonialism” 127). he goes on to state that interdependence “highlights reciprocity or mutuality between humans and the environment as a central feature of existence” (128). we understand, recognize and honor this concept, as do our future teachers. these future teachers take this concept to their students and affirm as well as promote these students sense of responsibility to their relatives and their land. current and future indigenous teachers have a responsibility, in our cultural teachings, to prioritize relationships and systems of accountability / answerability / responsibilities that differ from settler sensibilities. terry cross has led the way in articulating how systems can be structured and led in order to fulfill an indigenous understanding of respectful relationship building, noting this work should take place “at all levels—the importance of culture, the assessment of cross-cultural relations, vigilance towards the dynamics that result from cultural differences, the expansion of cultural knowledge, and the adaptation of services to meet culturally unique needs” (83). likewise, whyte encourages focus to be placed “on the qualities of the responsibilities that have developed over time, which foster interdependence. these qualities include consent, diplomacy, trust, and redundancy” (“settler colonialism” 132). teaching with and for these concepts allows for a different way of learning and growing, and a different way of viewing the world compared to the dominant views in transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 186 settler-state educational systems. as leilani sabzalian recommends, teachers who wish to contest colonial discourses in education can “start with place” (130). daniel wildcat writes that indigenous knowledge systems are indeed an important form of ingenuity, as reflected in his term, indigenuity, which he defines as “earth-based local indigenous deep spatial knowledge” (48). a view that we foster and share with our students holds our more-than-human relatives and our land and place as just as, if not more important than, our human relatives. such relational views disrupt the commodification of land and natural resources that have fueled climate change and are a necessary starting point for mitigating the climate crisis we all currently face, as well as a more sustainable way of life in the future. by providing space for this kind of view and approach in western education systems, indigenous teachers can carry this forward with their students, opening up possibilities that have not existed, and in doing so indigenous teachers are reconnecting and reclaiming our cultural teachings that prioritize the importance of place and relationships. or as sabzalian eloquently states, “places are pedagogical” (199). as kimmerer writes, “each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. just as all beings have a duty to me, i have a duty to them… an integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and how to perform them” (braiding sweetgrass 115). as educators, it is our job to support indigenous students’ knowledges that they are in relationship with, and responsible for, all other beings. it is also our responsibility to teach others about these relationships, to promote with all our students their connection to land and the environment. additionally, as humans we have an obligation to “find ways to enter into reciprocity with the more-than-human world. we can do it through gratitude, through ceremony, through land stewardship, science, art, and in everyday acts of practical reverence” (kimmerer, braiding sweetgrass 190). kimmerer gives us ways to bring our responsibility into focus through runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 187 education—and we are in a position within schools to educate young people in ways that promote thinking of our land and places as our relatives that deserve our respect and our care. in thinking of how we, as educators and as indigenous people, can positively affect the current human induced climate crisis, we agree with kimmerer that “the transition to sustainability must be a cultural one, a shift in the fundamental relationship between people and land, from the dominant materialist mode of exploitation to the indigenous notion of returning the gift; of reciprocity” (“searching for synergy” 318). we as university educators, and our students as future k-12 educators, are in a good position to do this beneficial work. we can help our students either return to and/or strengthen their indigenous knowledges and sense of connection or help them begin to see these connections and to understand that they have a relationship with and responsibility to the land. this is true of both our indigenous students as well as our non-indigenous students. as teachers we can talk about different types of energy, of the climate crisis, of why it exists, and about how to begin to change. we can talk about energy sources, but more importantly about how the land takes care of us and of how we need to also take care of the land. as kimmerer writes, the wind blows every day, every day the sun shines, every day the waves roll against the shore, and the earth is warm below us. we can understand these renewable sources of energy as given to us, since they are the sources that have powered life on the planet for a long as there has been a planet. we need not destroy the earth to make use of them. (braiding sweetgrass 187) another piece of collective continuance that connects to both our future teachers and the climate crisis is the idea of migration, and the fact that this is a natural transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 188 part of our ecosystems, of which humans are just one humble and dependent piece. whyte speaks to the idea that: migration suggests that relationships of interdependence and systems of responsibility are not grounded on stable or static relationships with the environment. rather, these relationships arise from contexts of constant change and transformation. a key idea is that relationships that are constantly shifting do not sacrifice the possibility of continuity. (whyte, “settler colonialism” 129) our identities as indigenous people and indigenous teachers are not static and are grounded in relationship to each other as well as place. that we are thinking of indigenous knowledges and ways of being in connection with climate crisis and education in a colonialist setting should not be viewed as incongruent, but rather part of this constantly shifting idea of migration which, while changing, are still continuous and connected to our ancestors. whyte tells us that our identities can and should vary, that our ancestors teach “that was just that person’s identity at that place and that time of year. identity was always shifting” (“settler colonialism” 129). as indigenous educators we, as well as our future teachers, can and should change while at the same time maintaining continuity with our ancestral teachings. as indigenous educators, we center collective continuance for indigenous communities by supporting our future teachers to do good work in us public school systems. we must adapt to our current reality while at the same time maintaining, honoring, and valuing our ancestors, their values and knowledges, and the next generation of teachers whom we have the honor and responsibility of guiding. runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 189 reclaiming indigenous ways we are not arguing here that the answer is for indigenous people to simply be included in the western conversations and western solutions. while such approaches do contain some benefits regarding raising awareness, which often can lead to heightened visibility of indigenous struggles and voices, the downside is that the mainstream perspectives continue to stay intact. we are hopeful for a deeper solution: we are arguing for indigenous self-governance, collective continuance for indigenous peoples and ways of life, and for indigenous communities to live in conditions in which we are fully empowered to enact our own solutions to climate change. we agree with dhillon that “meaningful inclusion within dominant climate science is not merely a matter of increasing indigenous presence but of reclaiming inclusive indigenous governance.” we are not asking for simple inclusion which does not create substantial change in the current system. inclusion of indigenous knowledges and self-governance is crucial as this “decolonizes how climate science is done so that indigenous peoples can conduct science in ways that further empower their communities” (dhillon 1-2). we believe that indigenous teachers, as well as non-indigenous allies—if they support a centering of indigenous collective continuance—are critical to this work. our future teachers are beginning to do this work, and in so doing, providing opportunities for further change in their work with the next generation of students. indigenous peoples, including students training to become teachers, have real input in solving the climate crisis we are currently experiencing. by focusing on indigenous futurities, we are reminded that “we must learn to remember, dream and story anew nature-culture relations—and importantly this issue reminds me to emphasize how those relations are always on the move and always layered and shaping the present” (bang 440). indigenous contributions are based in knowledges that have been built upon since time immemorial and are just as valid as western science and transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 190 colonial law. indigenous epistemologies and ontologies offer a way to imagine a future that is sustainable for all as they “represent legal orders, legal orders through which indigenous peoples throughout the world are fighting for self-determination, sovereignty” (todd 18). having indigenous teachers in classrooms supports our teachers, students, and communities in deepening our indigenous identities and knowledges, which in turn reinforces our sovereignty and sense of collective continuance. as indigenous feminist scholars, we know the power of hope and the ability of our knowledges and ways of being to create alternatives and support transformation. we believe this applies to education, particularly science education, as well as the broader field of science. the use of indigenous feminisms “provide analytic concepts often left out of environmental science efforts that intend to empower. at stake are how the reclaiming of traditions can give rise to entrenched forms of power wrought through colonialism, including heteropatriarchy and racism” (dhillon 2). by reclaiming indigenous knowledges through our educational systems, we empower our students, and their students, to embrace their ways of knowing and being, to celebrate our/their relationship with land rather than domination over it, and to create better relationships with land that have the ability to ameliorate the climate crisis. the damage being done to our earth right now is a result of disrespecting the land, of not understanding properly our relationship with land—a very similar concept as to how settler colonialism deals with indigenous peoples. however, indigenous feminisms bring us hope because “indigenous feminisms refuse patriarchal notions of tradition and counteract pervasive attempts to dominate indigenous bodies, places, and sovereignties” (dhillon 3). by turning to indigenous traditions, which are also contemporary knowledges, we can support our students to honor themselves and their lands. as kimmerer tells us, runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 191 traditional ways of knowing builds capacity for students in regaining a relationship with ecological systems which is based on indigenous principles of respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. it also builds an appreciation for intellectual pluralism, respectful consideration of other ways of framing, and addressing a question which is an essential skill in an increasingly globalized economy. (“searching for synergy” 319) tuck and recollet help us to understand that “native feminist theories bring together critiques of settler colonialism with critiques of heteropatriarchy” and that “native feminist scholarship has attended to the ways that settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy are mutually informing structures” (17). the critique of both settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy found within indigenous feminisms are important to imagining a future that is different, that honors and respects indigenous epistemologies, that recognizes humans’ responsibility to the land and more-thanhuman relatives, and that begins to decolonize and indigenize classrooms. this work must include “our lived experience, rich with emotional knowledges, of what pain and grief and hope meant or mean now in our pasts and futures” (million 54). in doing this work, in honoring of the lived experiences of indigenous peoples, in using indigenous feminist ways of thinking, we “strive to recover our former selves and push toward creating better future selves by reclaiming native values” (goeman and denetdale 910). reclaiming indigenous knowledges is also a decolonizing and indigenizing move, one that can be based in indigenous feminist perspectives and worldviews. if we consider that “to ‘decolonize’ means to understand as fully as possible the forms colonialism takes in our own times” (million 55), then by working with future teachers we can work to decolonize the lives of the students they work with, as well as our own, within the education system that is, in itself, a settler-colonial institution. in this work, transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 192 “we affirm the usefulness of a native feminism’s analysis and, indeed, declare that native feminist analysis is crucial if we are determined to decolonize as native peoples…for native women there is no one definition of native feminism; rather, there are multiple definitions and layers” (goeman and denetdale 10). teaching in decolonizing ways, using indigenous feminist thought to guide that teaching, allows us to change the way we view our relationship with land and our more-than-human relatives, to return to and reimagine indigenous futures, and begin to work toward mitigating climate change. as we face this climate crisis, we hold on to the power of hope and believe that, in this case, hope is intimately connected with restoration. resoration is critical because it is “a powerful antidote to despair. restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-thanhuman world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual” (kimmerer, braiding sweetgrass, 328). teachers have the ability to explain and demonstrate what good relationship with our more-than-human world looks like and to support students in their journeys to becoming good ancestors as well. teachers also can influence how their students understand land and relatives, both indigenous students and non-indigenous students alike. we know this is important, because as kimmerer explains, “how we approach restoration of land depends, of course, on what we believe ‘land’ means… restoring land for production of natural resources is not the same as renewal of land as cultural identity. we have to think about what land means” (328). teachers have the position, and indigenous teachers the ability as future ancestors, to teach what land is and what it means, and how we should think about caring for our land. runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 193 working with university students: what collective continuance looks like on the ground we now turn to an analysis of student journals in which future teachers documented what they were learning, reflected on how a university course on decolonization was shaping their understanding of their own k-12 educational experiences, and articulated aspirations for their own future teaching practice. as a way for us to show respect to the participants in this study, as well as to center indigenous voices, we gave them the option of remaining anonymous or having their names used. the names that you will see in the following sections are the real names of the participants, used in conjunction with their words, at their request. in working with indigenous students who are training to be classroom teachers, we frame education as part of the larger project in which we/they can better understand our/their ancestral indigenous teachings for the purpose of deepening our/their indigenous identities and knowledges. inherent in these teachings is a responsibility to our human and more-than-human relations, to the waters, air, land, and place. we assert the importance of recognizing and honoring that “indigenous peoples possess many, many years of living methodologies learned and passed on from generation to generation with the full belief that they were given to us by the creator to help take care of our people, families, communities, and the generations to come” (runninghawk johnson et al. xiii). our future teachers understand this concept, can and do pass this knowledge and way of being on to their own students, and, by doing so, honor their ancestors. this is an act of collective continuance and can be the beginning of healing ourselves, our communities, and our lands. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 194 teaching in indigenous ways for connection the work we engage with in educating future teachers emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinarity. this is something indigenous peoples have always known and that has been part of their knowledge systems since time immemorial. connecting math and science to culture and art and humanities will be critical for addressing climate change, and these future teachers are uniquely positioned to provide this interdisciplinary way of learning and thinking to their students. within indigenous cultural teachings, it makes no sense to separate the so-called hard or natural sciences from the humanities. why would humans see themselves as separate from the natural world? why would our/their histories not be interwoven in teaching and understanding sciences? using an interdisciplinary lens to work with future teachers and their students, to show them the connections that exist between all persons in this world, is one way to address the climate crisis. this framework of how to be a good ancestor reinforces that we are all in relationship with one another as well as with our land. “the sustainability crises we face are less about resource degradation and species extinction than of degradation of our relationship with the living world and the extinction of an ethical responsibility for the land which sustains us” (kimmerer, “searching for synergy” 317), and by recognizing and teaching about our responsibilities, we may begin to address and redress the damages caused by settler colonial values and actions. as indigenous educators, we know that “using indigenous teaching and learning methods in our classrooms can help us counter the settler colonial violence that is an integral structure in western society. this work is necessary to imagine the possibilities of decolonizing our institutions and our lives” (jacob et al. 2). by both doing teaching work that is focused on decolonizing and indigenizing as well as teaching students in interdisciplinary ways that they are connected to the world around them, we can runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 195 strengthen indigenous students’ identities, practice being good ancestors by reminding students of their relations and responsibilities, and begin to mitigate the climate crisis. we know that “decolonization is a long-term project and process. it is only sustainable if done with a spirit of hope and in ways that build community” (jacob et al. 4). the future teachers we work with know this too, and they plan to address it within their teaching and interactions with students. one of these future teachers explained how she plans to incorporate this type of teaching and learning in her classroom. cecelia states, i will also work to combat the euro-centric discipline divides. i will use my position as a native teacher to look at how we can overlap disciplines of natural sciences and social sciences. i will look to implement math lessons that include culture and history. i think that this is how indigenous children have been learning since the beginning. this is one way i want to decolonize my math and science classrooms. cecelia’s quote demonstrates that indigenous identity is critical to her liberatory plans as an educator. note that cecelia does not just refer to herself as a “teacher” but rather she claims her role as a “native teacher” and intertwines this identity with the history and legacy of indigenous ways of knowing and being—in this example, interdisciplinary teaching and learning––and cecelia notes that indigenous children have been learning that way “since the beginning.” another future teacher, breezy, told us that she wants her students to feel not like a member, not like just an individual, but a crucial piece to the world that they’re in, the community that they’re in. it’s one thing where we have individualism in western society, so people very early on learned that they alone have some sort of value, but i want my students transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 196 to know that they matter to me and they make my life better and help me, and i hope to help them as they help their peers and their parents and make that interdependence and that web of just relations. in this quote, breezy is articulating the importance of education in reclaiming relationality and collectivism. western education systems are built upon individualized notions of progress, with individual report cards, test scores, etc. such systems perpetuate an individualistic mindset that feeds capitalist modes of destroying the environment. from an indigenous perspective, such assumptions destroy not only communal identities generally, but indigenous identities tied to land/place. within indigenous kinship systems, individuals understand themselves as in a web of relations with responsibilities to one another (jacob huckleberries; beavert the way it was; beavert the gift of knowledge). breezy also commented on her responsibility as a teacher to lead forms of education in her classroom that purposefully affirm students’ identities as individuals who are in a web of relationality and responsibility with those around them. such teachings are aligned with indigenous elders’ instructions that education be valuesbased, upholding indigenous cultural teachings around “respect, inclusivity, responsibility, self-awareness, listening, healing, and unity” serving as the basis for youth learning “how to be” (jacob yakama rising 45). in her own words, breezy writes: “i think that’s what my students can gain from me, is that this understanding of that… i will always do my best to uplift and maintain their sense of self but also their relationship with others.” these university students can see, understand, and support their students as connected beings within a related ecosystem, both locally and globally. they recognize a need to work with indigenous populations on solutions to climate change and other runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 197 local and global issues. this cannot be done through a disciplinary lens but needs to happen through connections and relations. contemporary indigenous teachers and knowledges the future teachers we work with understand that they can be agents of change; they can see and feel the enactment of their work on and with their students. part of the reason that they are effective with their students, as well as why they can be powerful as agents of transformation in combating climate change, is that they can and do integrate different disciplines in the way that their ancestors did. these students draw on their traditional knowledges for teaching and learning, for ways of being in and with the world, and do so in contemporary times. they are practicing whyte’s collective continuance in their classrooms and teachings. while whyte may not write about perseverance specifically, we believe that it is an integral part of practicing collective continuance. indigenous peoples have been applying their skills of perseverance since time immemorial and continue to do so today. de mars and longie write that “without perseverance, the dakota would not have survived the world they lived in. their perseverance is one of the main reasons why their descendants are here today” (114). we believe this to be true of most, if not all, indigenous peoples. education is part of perseverance and “is important to indigenous peoples, has always been part of our lifeways” (runninghawk johnson et al. xii). in thinking of education within us public schools, indigenous educators often still must work within the context of ‘subjects’ even though their teaching is interdisciplinary in nature. specifically addressing science classes, part of the work to be done is in “changing our science curriculum so that it is based in native philosophies and rooted in tek and place” (runninghawk johnson 87) because this transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 198 can “be an effective way to actively engage native students in science classrooms while affirming their identities and making connections to their learning at home and in their communities” (runninghawk johnson 87). this type of teaching and curriculum honors indigenous students, their communities, and the knowledges they bring to school with them. the progression of indigenizing our ‘science’ curriculums “must start with the process being non-linear and focused on the connections between, and the relatedness of, all beings” (runninghawk johnson 91). by centering these connections and relations, teachers empower indigenous students, and all students, to treat the land differently and to change their relationship with it, potentially resulting in a change to viewing the climate crisis and hopefully action towards a more sustainable way of life. education continues to be important for indigenous peoples, and as we adapt and attempt to address our current climate crisis, we “use the current educational system as best we can, to promote a better life for our youth, to create better opportunities for our communities, and to grow our capacity for self-determination” (runninghawk johnson et al. xii). we know that it is important for our indigenous youth, and for all our young people, to have teachers who can help them learn to persevere. part of the way that we do this is by teaching indigenous values and teaching in indigenous ways. we know that “teaching traditional values, particularly perseverance, can impact native american student achievement through increased effort” (de mars and longie 129), and, as university faculty working with future teachers, we support and honor these traditions, and promote them in contemporary classrooms. despite centuries of colonization, oppression, degradation of our homelands and ways of being—the very roots of climate change—indigenous peoples remain resilient and hopeful. we continue to draw from the teachings of our elders to guide runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 199 our work in caring for each other and our precious homelands. kari chew and colleagues inspire us to remember the importance of hope and love as a basis for indigenous education; they instruct, “[e]nacting both hope and change is an intergenerational process” (132). indigenous peoples recognize that their relationships and responsibilities exist in change and within transformation. we are contemporary, we are agents of change in the here and now, and our indigenous teachers are on the leading edge of intergenerational learning and hope. we need to decolonize science and science education in order to empower indigenous communities and students, as well as to have a global impact. our students grasp the importance of acknowledging the wisdom that indigenous peoples have been stewarding since time immemorial, yet at the same time recognize that this is contemporary knowledge held by/with/for contemporary people. they also see how it can and should be used in a global context. holly talked about her experience in class as she became more aware of how essential it is to consider indigenous knowledges as contemporary. “essentially, yes we are learning how colonization affected the indigenous population as a result of manifest destiny, but after the zoom class i realized that it was also recognizing that the current population is still very active in our society. it is about being more involved in incorporating native education into my curriculum as a future educator and the importance of furthering it.” holly is talking about her role as a teacher, specifically an indigenous teacher, and how she takes up the position of teaching in indigenous ways as well as pushing that learning forward with her students. this requires a knowledge of the past, an awareness of settler colonialism, but at the same time seeing a way forward that supports interdisciplinary learning which can affect our world, can be a way to effectively deal with climate change. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 200 vanessa also talked about connecting ancestors and traditional knowledges with her current teaching practices. as she learned about a field course titled people of the big river (black and jacob), which takes high school students on a two-week experience across eastern washington and connects them with “tribal elders, scientists, and natural resource managers for a unique study that blends western science with tek” (152), she told us that she “was able to see the way the field experience connected history with the current lives of students now. those connections brought students closer to seeing the way of life for many of their ancestors and the impact their lives have on today’s teachings.” the ability to make these connections and to support them in our youth is needed now more than ever, and indigenous teachers are uniquely positioned to do this work. whyte tells us that collective continuance is “able to connect to more complex, intersectional, and globally integrated accounts of ecological domination within, before, and beyond us settler colonialism” (“settler colonialism” 126). we see the evidence that our students understand this to be true, and we can use this knowledge to bring about change within their classrooms at local, national, and global levels. nicole told us that i kind of thought of that, a while ago, in my classroom i would like to have pictures of the traditional, so like for traditional indigenous, some sort of picture and then have information on that, talk about the traditional life but then do like life now and show how we still connect to the traditional lifestyle but we are also more modernized in a way. nicole is demonstrating here that connections to traditional knowledges are important and need to be continued in classrooms while at the same time using those traditional knowledges in contemporary ways and to address contemporary local and global issues. runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 201 conclusion: indigenous teacher leaders as key for addressing climate change indigenous knowledges are important, and indigenous peoples need to lead this work. indigenous teachers are crucial for many reasons, not the least of which is because of the dominance and importance of western education systems on indigenous homelands. as indigenous teacher educators we seek to challenge and transform higher education to secure a reality of degreed community based educators through a commitment to honor and strengthen the knowledge and experiences indigenous teacher candidates bring with them to teacher education and a commitment to transformative educational leadership which affirms and legitimizes indigenous students’ desires to serve their communities, people and lands. (anthony-stevens et al. 2-3) indigenous teachers can lead the reclamation of our knowledges, and in doing so shift the institutional cultures in our lives. non-indigenous peoples need to respectfully learn from and support this work to be in good relations with our peoples and homelands. the larger goal of our work is to center indigenous knowledges within the k-12 public education system. to do so, we call upon indigenous peoples to be in front of the classroom and lead within our elementary and secondary schools, to teach about caring for lands and relations and connecting this learning to addressing climate change caused by colonial practices. we also call upon non-indigenous people to be our allies in this work, to support indigenous teachers and to be part of the process of collective continuance for indigenous peoples. whyte writes that “theories of collective continuance have moral implications for indigenous communities themselves… many of us have experienced oppressive forms of self-determination and revitalization, where our own people seek to bring back types transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 202 of relationships without attending to qualities of relationships… examples like these ignore the moral significance of qualities of relationships in the operation of emerging responsibilities or persisting responsibilities” (“settler colonialism” 141). as teacher educators we must pay attention to the quality of the relationships we have with our future teachers, so that they may have good relations with their students, their communities, and their land. this gives us the opportunity to re-create relationships and knowledges with our land and to address the ongoing climate crisis in ways that are responsible and sustainable. as teachers, as educators, as indigenous people, we have an ethical responsibility, one that is dismissed and pushed aside, erased, in a settler-colonial way of thinking and being in the world; a responsibility that christine nelson and natalie youngbull discuss in their concept of “warrior scholars” (“indigenous knowledge realized" 93). we must follow nelson and youngbull’s calling to fulfill a responsibility to students and their/our communities as a basic expression of respect for indigenous youth and for our land, both local and global. taking this type of relational approach “means that my reciprocal duties to others guide every aspect of how i position myself and my work, and this relationality informs the ethics that drive how i live up to my duties to humans, animals, land, water, climate and every other aspect of the world(s) i inhabit” (todd 19). by centering our relationships to each other, to our more-thanhuman relations, and especially to land and place, we can change the way people think about caring for our earth and make strides toward ameliorating the effects of climate change. we are responsible for doing this work, and we need these future teachers to carry out this work with future generations. doing so will address the great harm settler logics and systems have brought to indigenous peoples and lands, a violent process that beth rose middleton manning describes as “decision-making that runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 203 continues to reinforce inequalities and exclude both indigenous populations and the range of indigenous ways of being in relationship to the land” (upstream 15). our future teachers and our students are thinking about their own identities and how they too can do this work. marissa told us that the “readings this week made me dive critically into reflection on my positionality, and i think it requires further reflection. i am part of an underrepresented group in stem majors, and the readings made me curious about cultural influences behind this. at this point, i feel conflicted between an identity of being the colonizer and also being the colonized.” she exposes a sentiment that many of us who identify as indigenous peoples in stem feel, that pull between our indigenous identities and the unrelenting assault of settler colonialism on our being. we believe that our indigenous future teacher leaders can help to show their students that their identity, their traditional knowledges, their ways of knowing the world can be a valuable part of their science. this allows these future teachers to see science in a way that includes relationship and connections and therefore gives them the ability to address climate change in new and reclaimed ways. their identities are an important part of this process. connecting with their ancestors and teaching science in wholistic interdisciplinary ways are important parts of this process. this is part of the practice of collective continuance, taking care of our land and world and creating a future that focuses on indigenous futurities. the beautiful work being done by our future teachers and their students provide us with a hopefulness, and hope “helps us to name the persisting elephants in the room—settler colonial hegemony, white supremacy, and institutional racism—as threats that constrain and contort the wellbeing of hope. naming these unsettling threats holds collaborating non-indigenous scholar-educators accountable to the roles played in perpetuating, or interrupting, the erasure of complex indigenous narratives” (chew et al 144). as chew and colleagues suggest here, we also call upon nontransmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 204 indigenous educators to educate themselves about indigenous knowledges, and the histories of settler state violence that has traumatized and dispossessed indigenous peoples. in engaging these counternarratives, non-indigenous educators demonstrate a commitment to indigenous collective continuance and to an educational system— and broader society—that ensures indigenous futurities. we must all work together, and whyte helps us to begin this conversation by writing that tek “should be understood as a collaborative concept. it serves to invite diverse populations to continually learn from one another about how each approaches the very question of ‘knowledge’ in the first place, and how these different approaches can work together to better steward and manage the environment and natural resources” (“on the role” 2). this understanding of tek can be the basis of bringing indigenous and non-indigenous allies together, particularly in the field of education and around the topic of climate crisis, which affects us all, although not equally. and while this is not an easy process to embark upon, it is important and must be done with respect: “rather, it is an invitation to become part of a long term process whereby cross-cultural and cross-situation divides are better bridges through mutual respect and learning, and relationships among collaborators are given the opportunity to mature” (whyte, “on the role” 10). as indigenous knowledges have known since time immemorial, relationships must be recognized, built, honored, and considered essential. we know that “settler colonialism is damaging to everyone—it fractures and divides us; healing is needed so we can be whole people in our collective work to decolonize” (jacob et al. 4). this healing needs to be led by indigenous peoples and to include everyone. we agree that “indigenous and non-indigenous people benefit from processes the support narratives crossing geographic, disciplinary and membership borders. furthermore, these crossings enable us, as co-authors, to enact runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 205 relationships across difference as well as bring into relief distinct epistemologies and histories that define our differences” (chew et al 135). we believe that working with indigenous educators we can further this effort and continue to bring hope to indigenous people, to nurture indigenous futurities, to begin to mitigate the climate crisis by strengthening our relationships with land, and to strengthen our collective continuance. works cited anthony-stevens, vanessa, julia mahfouz, and yolanda bisbee. “indigenous teacher education is nation building: reflections of capacity building and capacity strengthening in idaho.” journal of school leadership, vol. 30, no. 6, november 2020, pp. 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1052684620951722. bang, megan. “learning on the move toward just, sustainable, and culturally thriving futures.” cognition and instruction, vol. 38, no. 3, 2020, pp. 434-444. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2020.1777999. black, jessica and jacob, michelle m. “indigenous environmental science on the columbia river plateau: traditional ecological knowledge and the people of the big river field class.” on indian ground: the northwest, edited by michelle m. jacob and stephany runninghawk johnson, information age publishing, 2020, 151-178. beavert, virginia r. the gift of knowledge ttnúwit átawish nch’inch’imamí: reflections on sahaptin ways. university of washington press, 2017. ---. the way it was: anakú iwachá: yakima legends. franklin press, consortium of johnson o’malley committees, region 4, 1974. chew, kari, vanessa anthony-stevens, amanda leclair-diaz, sheilah nicholas, angle sobotta, and philip stevens. “enacting hope through narratives of indigenous transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 206 language and culture reclamation.” transmotion, vol. 5, no. 1, 2019, pp. 132151. cross, terry l. “cultural competence continuum.” journal of child and youth care work, vol. 24, 2012, pp. 83-85. davis, heather and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international journal for critical geographies, vol. 16, no. 4, 2017, pp. 761-780. de mars, annmaria, and erich longie. “the value of perseverance: using dakota culture to teach mathematics.” transmotion, vol. 4, no. 2, 2018, pp. 113-131. dhillon, carla. “indigenous feminisms: disturbing colonialism in environmental science partnerships.” sociology of race and ethnicity, vol. 6, no. 4, october 2020, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649220908608. goeman, mishuana, and jennifer nez denetdale. “native feminisms: legacies, interventions, and indigenous sovereignties.” wicazo sa review, vol. 24, no. 2, fall 2009, 9-13. jacob, michelle m. huckleberries & coyotes: lessons from our more than human relations. anahuy mentoring, 2020. jacob, michelle m. yakama rising: indigenous cultural revitalization, activism, and healing. university of arizona press, 2013. jacob, michelle m., stephany runninghawk johnson, and deanna chappell. “do you know where you are? bringing indigenous teaching methods into the classroom.” sociology of race and ethnicity. 2021, pp. 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649220983378. kimmerer, robin wall. braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. milkweed editions, 2013. runninghawk johnson & jacob “educating for indigenous futurities” 207 ---. “searching for synergy: integrating traditional and scientific ecological knowledge in environmental science education.” journal of environmental studies and sciences, vol. 2, november 2012, pp. 317-323. kulago, hollie anderson. “in the business of futurity: indigenous teacher education & settler colonialism.” equity & excellence in education, vol. 52, no. 2-3, november 2019, pp. 239-254. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2019.1672592. lees, anna, verónica vélez, and tasha tropp laman. “recognition and resistance of settler colonialism in early childhood education: perspectives and implications for black, indigenous, and teachers of color.” international journal of qualitative studies in education, 2 march 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1891319. middleton manning, beth rose. upstream. university of arizona press, 2018. million, dian. “felt theory: an indigenous feminist approach to affect and history.” wicazo sa review, vol. 24, no. 2., fall 2009, pp. 53-76. nelson, christine a., and natalie r. youngbull. “indigenous knowledge realized: understanding the role of service learning at the intersection of being a mentor and a college-going american indian.” in education, vol. 21, no. 2, december 2015, pp.89-106. pewewardy, cornel, anna lees, and hyuny clark-shim. “the transformational indigenous praxis modael: stages for developing critical consciousness in indigenous education.” wicazo sa review, vol. 33, no. 1, spring 2018, pp. 3869. runninghawk johnson, stephany. “native philosophies as the basis for secondary science curriculum.” critical education, vol. 9, no. 16, 2018, pp. 84-96. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 208 runninghawk johnson, stephany, edward arlen washines, and michelle m. jacob. “introduction.” on indian ground: the northwest, edited by michelle m. jacob and stephany runninghawk johnson, information age publishing, 2020, xi-xxiv. sabzalian, leilani. indigenous children’s survivance in public schools. routledge, 2019. whyte, kyle powys. “settler colonialism, ecology, and environmental justice.” environment and society: advances in research, vol. 9, no. 1, 1 september 2018, pp. 125-144. https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2018.090109. ---. “on the role of traditional ecological knowledge as a collaborative concept: a philosophical study.” ecological processes, vol. 2, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1-12. todd, zoe. “an indigenous feminist’s take on the ontological turn: ‘ontology’ is just another word for colonialism. journal of historical sociology, vol. 29, no. 1, 24 march 2016, pp. 4-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124. tuck, eve and rubén gaztambide-fernández. “curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity.” journal of curriculum theorizing, vol. 29, no. 1, 2013, pp. 72-89. tuck, eve and karyn recollet. “intoduction to native feminist texts.” the english journal, vol. 106, no. 1, september 2016, pp. 16-22. vizenor, gerald. survivance: narrative of native presence. university of nebraska press, 2008. wildcat, daniel. red alert!: saving the planet with indigenous knowledge. fulcrum publishing, 2009. microsoft word deondre smiles.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 221 review essay: elizabeth weiss and james w. springer. repatriation and erasing the past. university of florida press, 2020. 278 pp. isbn: 9781683401575. https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9781683401575 in the american settler colonial state, much like any other settler colonial state, indigenous knowledges and ways of being in the world are under constant assault. since the very formation of the state that we now call the united states, indigenous lands, bodies, cultures, and histories have been placed at the whim of settler structures—what can be of use is seized and appropriated, what is not of use is placed at the mercy of settler colonial elimination. part of this unfortunate history and contemporaneous disregard of indigenous ontologies surrounds the fate of indigenous remains. on the one hand, indigenous nations have long argued that our deceased relatives and ancestors be treated with respect and dignity, and that they deserve to be left in peace and at rest, rather than be crassly used in the name of western science, whether it is anthropological science or medical science. the advent of laws such as the native american graves and repatriation act (nagpra), along with the development of robust structures of tribal research oversight, presents much promise and hope as to the dignity and ultimate fate of the indigenous dead. on the other hand, there is a marked reticence among some to respect this viewpoint. scholars such as beth rose middleton (2019) have written about the ways in which the positive process of indigenous repatriation has been met with delays and arguments from within academia. unfortunately, some of this opposition and reticence has taken on venues of a more prominent stature, such as the recent publication of the book repatriation and erasing the past by elizabeth weiss and james w. springer. in this book, the authors take aim at what they describe as the obstruction and unfair constraining of western anthropology and archaeology by federal laws and tribal regulations surrounding the treatment of indigenous remains. this review essay represents two things to me—a review and an engagement. i consider this a review because i am participating in the longstanding academic tradition of engaging with a new text and its arguments. however, as an anishinaabe scholar who has engaged heavily with literatures and field-based events surrounding the disturbance and mistreatment of indigenous remains in the course of my academic deondre smiles review essay: repatriation and erasing the past 222 career, the arguments presented in this book also warrant engagement. i feel that to be indigenous in academia is to be willing to defend our lifeways and our own unique forms of knowledge production in the face of settler colonial logics that dismiss them to the margins of the academy. this review/reaction will proceed thus: i will briefly outline the narrative arc of the book and the main arguments of the authors. i then will bring their arguments into conversation with a history of settler colonial usage of the indigenous dead (and living) as well as the gaps in the authors’ arguments. while available space precludes a comprehensive engagement with these gaps, i seek to make the argument that the viewpoints that springer and weiss present are precisely why there is a continued need for indigenous repatriation laws and for indigenous-led protocols surrounding research activities conducted with indigenous remains and surrounding community safety. weiss and springer begin the book by asserting that indigenous nations in north america have created a landscape where anthropological study of the indigenous dead is stymied by moves towards allowing indigenous nations and their ontologies to take the lead in determining access to indigenous remains. “this then led to the conclusion that secular and scientific scholarship should be replaced by, or should at least defer to, traditional american indian animistic religions in terms of who has authority to speak,” the authors assert (4), referring to the rise of native voices in questions of repatriation and research access. the authors continue: “yet it is our job as scientists to challenge these types of renditions of the past, which include unbelievable talks, such as talking ravens and native americans arising from holes in the ground in the black hills of north america” (5). the authors then proceed to cover a history of research on “paleoindians” in the united states, as well as controversies surrounding the repatriation of some of the individuals being studied, such as the “pelican rapids woman,” “browns valley man,” and perhaps most famously (or infamously), the “kennewick man.” the authors again argue that the repatriation of these individuals prevented and is preventing further study as well as the potential for new data/information that could come through continued analysis of these remains. the authors refer to preserved indigenous deceased individuals, or “mummies,” as vitally important to study, as they can unlock key facts and insights about the past (39). one area of research that the authors spend time discussing in detail is dna-based research, where dna samples are obtained from indigenous remains, providing information about ancestry, migration, and the historical geographies of indigenous peoples. this form of knowledge production is placed in conversation with the concept transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 223 of “affiliation” under the terms of nagpra, which is concerned with determining to which tribal nation remains and other cultural resources should be repatriated. the authors problematize this aspect of nagpra, arguing that in some cases, it may be impossible to determine if there are legitimate connections between ancient indigenous remains and modern indigenous nations. the narrative then proceeds to a problematization of indigenous creation stories, citing the well-travelled (no pun intended) bering strait theory of migration, referring back to dna-based research that suggests that native americans are originally from eastern and northern eurasia. one chapter of the book is devoted to “correcting fallacies,” challenging what the authors refer to as “the repatriationist agenda of native americans and precontact native american lives” (95). through anthropological and archaeological research, weiss and springer argue, aspects of indigenous history – such as the size of the indigenous population in the americas pre-colonization, social structures among indigenous nations, violence between indigenous nations, and disease among indigenous individuals – can be uncovered in what they view as an unbiased way. this runs counter to what they describe as a “political agenda to make precontact america seem like a paradise that was ruined upon the arrival of europeans” (95). the latter section of the book is devoted to challenging nagpra and tribal oversight of research. in regard to nagpra, the authors begin their critique by analyzing the history of the legal relationship between indigenous nations and the united states, especially surrounding the parameters of indigenous sovereignty. the authors subtly challenge (via a very convoluted argument) the notion of native americans in the united states as a distinct people and make the claim that federal protections of indigenous sacred sites and cultural resources represents implicit governmental support and backing of indigenous religions. this is, they argue, a violation of the first amendment, specifically the free exercise clause, as it forces non-indigenous individuals to conform their activities and behavior to suit indigenous concerns, citing several court cases that ruled in alignment with this view. the authors in multiple places make the argument that the combined unique position of native american tribes in federal legal structures, alongside laws such as nagpra, create a situation where tribes and their ontologies receive special treatment that goes above and beyond protections afforded to non-indigenous peoples in the united states. the authors spend some time discussing other forms of genetic research done with indigenous nations, such as the infamous study done with the havasupai nation and the legal actions that took place as a result of havasupai concerns with the use of their deondre smiles review essay: repatriation and erasing the past 224 genetic material. the authors cite this incident as one where important medical/genetic research was lost due to the return of the genetic samples, musing about the impacts that increased tribal control over genetic research has on academic freedom, and describing this movement as “repatriation ideology without reference to the repatriation statues” (161). the authors spend the last chapters of the book deepening their criticisms of nagpra, questioning the validity and objectivity of tribal oral histories and traditions in cases of repatriation and research access, and lamenting what they describe as the “the end of scientific freedom” via repatriation (194). in a section of one of the final chapters, they speak about the increasing rights of tribes to restrict research that is carried out on their territories, as well as the dissemination of products from research that has been done, describing it as “publication censorship” (206-10). they conclude by appealing to the objectivity of science, asserting that the freedom to carry out research takes precedence over sensitivities and religious-based objections. “…[t]he search for objective knowledge without interference from race, religion or politics encourages critical thinking, which is a skill needed to address all problems. objective knowledge is universal, not ‘european’, as repatriationists try to argue, and thus it benefits all humans,” the authors conclude (219). i now turn to a quote from devon mihesuah (an indigenous academic who is the subject of much criticism in weiss and springer’s book) from her edited volume natives and academics (1998): “…works of american indian history and culture should not give only one perspective; the analyses must include indians’ versions of events […] where are the indian voices? where are indian views of history?” (1). this passage, along with the book as a whole, has been deeply important to me as an indigenous scholar, as it speaks to the ways in which indigenous histories without indigenous perspectives is a one-sided narrative that can misrepresent and obscure indigenous viewpoints. i want to try to meet weiss and springer where i see them coming from, which appears to be the idea that it is important to try to understand all aspects of a given history. i feel that it is worth reiterating, first of all, that there is simply not enough space to outline the various problematic views that they espouse in this book. for example, there is much that could be said about the invoking of the beringia land bridge theory as a questioning of the geographic origins of indigenous peoples, a theory that, while a valid avenue of scientific inquiry, is also a common talking point among antiindigenous circles to question indigenous land tenure. additionally, i feel there is a fundamental misunderstanding about tribal sovereignty and the nation-to-nation transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 225 relationship between native tribes and the united states: native nations are not racial groups; we are political entities, our sovereignty extending before the formation of the united states, or even the colonization of the americas, for that matter. the multiple invocations of discovering proof of interand intra-tribal violence among indigenous nations by the authors is also problematic, as it trends close to broader anti-indigenous apologetics about settler colonial genocide. however, i feel that the historical narrative they provide surrounding tribal support for repatriation and research oversight is perhaps the most problematic of all. therefore, it is prudent to briefly outline the motivations behind why indigenous nations may be mistrustful of research and why they may be protective over things such as remains or even our own genetic material. i will start with a very brief outline of a few key, yet ghastly, moments of settler colonial usage of the indigenous dead in various contexts. one noted nineteenth-century physician, samuel morton, for example, amassed a large collection of skulls, many of which belonged to indigenous peoples, and used their measurements to make vaguely anthropological and extremely racist judgements about their intellectual capacity, compiling it in his 1839 book crania americana: “the skull is small, wide between the parietal protuberances, prominent at the vertex, and flat on the occiput. in their mental character, the americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge; restful, revengeful, and fond of war, and wholly destitute of maritime character,” one excerpt reads, regarding the measurements an indigenous north american skull (morton 6). in another example of settler usage of the indigenous dead, the remains of one of the 38 dakota hanged at the conclusion of the u.s.-dakota war was taken by william worrall mayo and used to teach his sons anatomy—those sons would go on to help mayo found the modern mayo clinic—it would take nearly 140 years for the remains of the dakota individual to be returned to his community, something that has been covered in several pieces of literature, including one written by myself (2018). the story of ishi is yet another story of the indigenous dead being made to be of use to the settler colonial state and settler colonial structures against indigenous consent. a story that has been covered in anthropological literature by scholars such as nancy rockafellar (n.pag.) and orin starn (2004), ishi was an indigenous man in california who was “found” by a group of anthropologists at the university of california. they took ishi in and turned him into a living museum exhibit; after he died, they autopsied his body against his wishes. similar to the dakota man and the mayo clinic, it wasn’t until deondre smiles review essay: repatriation and erasing the past 226 the 1990s and the advent of nagpra that many of ishi’s organs were repatriated to tribal nations in california to be buried. this legacy of harm to indigenous communities is not limited to the indigenous dead. anishinaabe scholar david beaulieu (1984) wrote about the ways in which supposed anthropological knowledge was used by academics to determine the so-called “blood quantum” of white earth tribal members in northern minnesota—their level of “blood quantum” would determine whether or not they were entitled to allotments of land in the wake of the dawes act of 1887 and related legislation. in the case of the havasupai nation, which weiss and springer cite as an example of researchers being constrained by a “repatriationist agenda,” a wide range of non-indigenous and indigenous scholars such as jenny reardon and kim tallbear (2012), joan lafrance and cheryl crazy bull (2013), and deana around him, et al. (2019) paint a different picture. they all argue that the blood samples that were taken from the havasupai nation were being used in ways that the havasupai did not consent to and were even being shared with individuals outside of the research project and even outside of arizona state university, the home institution for the project. what i am trying to convey here is that there is a much broader history of disrespect and harm done to indigenous individuals and indigenous communities in the name of academia, and in the name of what weiss and springer would consider to be “objective” knowledge production, a history that is barely mentioned in their book. they approach indigenous remains as objects to be studied and things that have value as long as they are being used for scientific knowledge production. there is no conversation about the deep trauma and harm that can be caused by remains being exhumed, let alone being kept from repatriation, or extracting material and data out of communities without their full consent or knowledge. in the cases where this harm is mentioned in the book, such as the havasupai controversy and lawsuit, it is simply cited as an example of researchers being stymied in their quest for knowledge by unreasonable and difficult indigenous nations. as someone who works closely with indigenous nations and has been subject to tribal processes of research oversight, i argue that the aforementioned legacy of disrespect and harm has created a landscape where indigenous nations must be vigilant about the safety of community members, both living and deceased. they understand quite well that science is not apolitical, and in fact, questions of power and politics can interface with science in ways that can be deeply harmful to them in all parts of the lifecycle. failing to be vigilant allows for situations where the stories being told about us as indigenous peoples do not take an accurate assessment of our histories, our cultures, and our viewpoints. it allows these transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 227 stories about us, living and dead, to be told by others, in what serves as a top-down and extractive form of research and knowledge production that is corrosive to indigenous communities and leads to situations where, to paraphrase nerida blair (2015), indigenous communities are being “researched to death,” quite literally (463). research oversight is not censorship; it is being in good relation with the people whom researchers profess to want to ostensibly help and serve. i think that one major implication of this book may be quite the opposite of what weiss and springer likely intend—on the back cover, the book promotes itself as useful for people who wish to understand both sides of the debate surrounding repatriation. however, i feel that without any meaningful attempts to engage in good faith with indigenous viewpoints related to repatriation, it cannot deliver what it promises. for example, a cursory search of the scholars listed in the acknowledgements failed to turn up any indigenous voices. any engagement with indigenous oral histories or epistemologies in the text is made with barely concealed derision, raising the specter of the trope that indigenous peoples are unsophisticated and that our viewpoints are incompatible with “modern science.” what does that mean about the multitudes of indigenous geneticists, anthropologists, and archaeologists, some of who i am proud to call my colleagues and friends, who have done successful work in these areas while being respectful of tribal beliefs and tribal ethics? if anything, their stories demonstrate that indigenous nations are not inherently anti-science, but instead aspire to a form of science and knowledge production that is objective, yet ethical and empathetic to peoples who have been affected by histories of structural inequality. therefore, i argue weiss and springer do succeed after all in a way—they are (although likely unintentionally) providing an opening for us in academia to be able to further discuss why repatriation is necessary and what it means for indigenous nations to have a voice in the stories that are told about them. a failure to have these conversations in an open and engaged way will mean we truly are “erasing the past.” ohio state university works cited around him, deana, et al. “tribal irbs: a framework for understanding research oversight in american indian and alaska native communities.” american indian and alaska native mental health research, vol. 26, no. 2, 2019, pp. 71-95. beaulieu, david. “curly hair and big feet: physical anthropology and the implementation of land allotment on the white earth chippewa deondre smiles review essay: repatriation and erasing the past 228 reservation.” american indian quarterly, vol. 8, no. 4, 1984, pp. 281-314, https://doi.org/10.2307/1183660. blair, nerida. “researched to death: indigenous peoples talkin’ up our experiences of research.” international review of qualitative research, vol. 8, no. 4, feb. 2015, pp. 463–478, https://doi.org/10.1525%2firqr.2015.8.4.463. lafrance, joan and cheryl crazy bull. “researching ourselves back to life: taking control of the research agenda in indian country.” the handbook of social research ethics, edited by donna m. mertens and pauline e. ginsberg, sage publications, inc., 2013, pp. 135-49. middleton manning, beth rose. “geographies of hope in cultural resources protection.” environment and planning e: nature and space, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1177%2f2514848619875920 mihesuah, devon abbott, ed. natives and academics: researching and writing about american indians. u of nebraska press, 1998. morton, m.d., samuel george. crania americana; or, a comparative view of various aboriginal nations of north and south america: to which is prefixed an essay on the varieties of human species. philadelphia, penn.: j. dobson, 1839. u.s. national library of medicine, https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-60411930r-bk. reardon, jenny and kim tallbear. “‘your dna is our history’: genomics, anthropology and the construction of whiteness as property.” current anthropology, vol. 53, 2012, pp. s233-45. rockafellar, nancy. “the story of ishi: a chronology.” university of california, san francisco, https://history.library.ucsf.edu/ishi.html. smiles, deondre. “‘… to the grave’—autopsy, settler structures, and indigenous counter-conduct.” geoforum, vol. 91, 2018, pp. 141-150. starn, orin. ishi's brain: in search of american's last “wild” indian. w.w. norton and company, 2004. microsoft word 918-article text-5037-1-2-20200914.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 117 sweatlodge in the apocalypse: an interview with smokii sumac james mackay *please view the html version of this piece in order to watch the recording of the original interview. james mackay: i wanted to start by asking about the images on the front cover of your book, you are enough. they’re very striking, and seem to say a lot about you and your relationship to the land. how did you come to the design and how did you come to choose those particular images? smokii sumac: i love this question! i don't get to talk about it a lot. i was really lucky to be working with an indigenous press, kegedonce (https://kegedonce.com), who gave me the freedom to choose. and when i started thinking about what i wanted to share, i was thinking about first of all, where i'm from. the lands there in those photos are my many different homes, places that i'm connected to. a lot of the book is about finding home. so there's peterborough, ontario, where i was living. one of them is just the moon. there are the mountains from home where i live in ktunaxa territory. and there's also blackfeet territory where i do ceremony. then i put myself out there. i think there's sort of this insecurity around selfies sometimes that can happen because there's sort of a stigma around them – at least, the kim kardashian kind of selfie mode. and yet it means something else for our indigenous women specifically. i think of an artist nancy king, who is known as chief lady bird (https://chiefladybirdart.tumblr.com), or of tenille campbell james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 118 (www.tenillecampbell.com) who is another poet and photographer and she's got a book, indian love poems (www.signatureeditions.com/index.php/books/single_title/indianlovepoems). you look at their instagrams and they have thousands, tens of thousands of followers. and they've talked about this idea of revolutionizing the selfie, which is important for me because of the transition. not just because i medically transitioned, but also because of being in transition in my life, deciding to change genders and moving between. what does that presentation look like? there was kind of a really neat time in my life, the two years of when these poems were written, where i was playing with different things, whether that was being feminine-presenting and using earrings and lipstick, or male-presenting and wearing my hats. i think when we say gender is performative, sometimes it is what you're wearing. so i did have quite a few photos that i sent and said “these are options,” and we went from there. it's revolutionary for indigenous people to represent ourselves. i think about tik tok (https://www.tiktok.com/tag/firstnations?lang=en), i think about instagram (https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/firstnations/), i think about our youth being able to just sort of make a movie in a way that's so much more accessible compared to the years of the only representation of ourselves being through lenses like western movies. it’s changing for now. when i talk to my students, i ask “do you know who john wayne is?” and they don't now, but they know pocahontas, so that's the next stereotypical imagery to overcome. it’s different when we get to represent ourselves. when it comes to my book, i also thought about the people who are the young people who are in transition and what it would mean to see that sort of spectrum on the cover. my four year old niece, when she was showing it to someone, was really proud. but she also went, “this is smokii's book, but he's not a lady!” she was very confused transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 119 on that front, although we’ve been talking to her about gender, because it’s only in the last two years that she's sort of adopted me. jm: i love what you're saying about the digital self-representation for first nations artists. isn’t it also true for most trans people that they haven't been self-represented? ss: definitely. when i started looking for trans representation, all i found was young white men young white boys even. there weren’t a lot of people that look like me or were my age even. and then it's often a before and after photo. it just becomes like weight loss photos: these sort of problematic things that show this instantaneous “before and after” this moment. i wanted to show the range. i wanted to show the movement. we're not all of this stuff. it's not a binary line. for my story, i can't say there was a before and after there were years of change and of understanding myself, and that movement continues. so i like the idea of thinking of it as a spectrum rather than the binary. jm: i don't think i see a single capital letter in the entire book outside the copyright pages. what does lowercase mean for you? ss: i've been taught that in our languages we don't use the same kind of grammar, although we have adopted some punctuation marks to make it user-friendly, for example the question mark. i'm not a fluent speaker, but i'm learning right now. we have a grammar app, and i'm learning from that. we've been debating whether to use question marks or not, or whether we use periods or not, because in our language it doesn't work that way. our grammar actually is added in through suffixes and prefixes and these kinds of things. so that was part of it. james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 120 another part is just aesthetic. at one point my editor said, “i don't know why you have a period in some places and why in some you don't.” and i said, “well, because they were all written on facebook!” i was not thinking of them as a collection at the time it was just basically an unconscious choice. but i think part of it was just the social media aesthetic. it also honors what, what joy harjo calls (https://poets.org/text/ancestors-mapping-indigenous-poetry-and-poets) our “poetry ancestors.” bell hooks (https://www.berea.edu/appalachian-center/appalachian-centerhome/faculty-and-staff/bell-hooks), for instance, has that idea of not capitalizing the “i.” it means not putting myself above anything, and that we're all on the same level. i also at the time was moving from using my previous name, which i usually used in lowercase. (now actually i do capitalize my name, i think because it means a lot to me.) jm: the other thing i'd ask about is poem titles. because a lot of the pieces are untitled and it’s really unclear in some places if it's one long poem or if it should be considered as lots of short poems. ss: most of these poems are curated from two years of work under the hashtag #haikuaday, which i was posting on facebook daily, or almost daily, for two years. the original working title for the collection was actually #haikuaday, though we scrapped that at some point, and when i was in the editing stages, i had a really long table of contents at one point, where i had titled each poem as the date they were written. as the work evolved, as it became the book, when i started organizing them by topic, it became a completely different thing. do they need titles? how do you title a haiku? it was quite funny because the academic in me was saying “people are going to write about this! it's going to be impossible! how are they going to cite?” and my editor transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 121 had to say, “you're the poet you're not the academic right now.” and so we scrapped the table of contents because it was confusing and just got in the way. now they feel like a longer poem, even though the breaks are where they were as when they were written as haiku, certainly for any of the ones that follow that the 57-5 syllable haiku pattern. the longer poems are a little bit different, of course, and those are signified in different ways. jm: as you say, these poems appeared on social media originally, which makes for a very particular audience, especially on facebook where the audience is closed off. is there a difference, either in what you're prepared to share or in what you do with form? how does the medium affect the poems? ss: when i started sharing on facebook, the nice thing about it was that it gets lost. like you read it and then it's gone. it's a moment in time. and because not only is there a closed audience, but also because of the algorithms, people don't necessarily see your posts all the time. so i was getting interactions of maybe 15-20 likes on a post, and in my mind people weren't really reading them. so when i started it as a practice, it was very casual. a writing coach told me to try to write a poem a day. i thought “haiku are short i can do 13 syllables a day!” though they ended up being longer. i did it for about two months then kind of stopped. but in peterborough i ran into someone on the street and they asked me “what have you been doing? i really missed your poems!” i didn't realize until then that there's a big audience on facebook that doesn't interact with posts. they read them, but they don't necessarily like, or react or comment. so i realised “oh, i have a bigger audience than i know,” and i thought, “ok, i'll just keep going with it.” james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 122 i was lucky enough to be approached by a publisher because the editor knew that i had this body of work and was interested in it. that was when i started to ask, how does audience change? how does this work with people not knowing me? even now there's still some really specific details that people are not going necessarily to know, but i caught a lot of that journaling stuff. originally there were many more what you could call inside moments, for instance if i was at a conference, if i was out with friends, or at a show, and i would write about this specific thing and name people all the time. i realized that that's not going to speak to people in a book form. or there was the time my cat had fleas for weeks and there was a whole series about that – that didn't end up making the book, even though people loved it at the time, because it didn't fit with the book. that was when themes started to come out, recognizing these sections that i have. on facebook, i wouldn’t do a land acknowledgment every day, but in putting together the book i saw most of these poems were written in nogojiwanong, which is the anishinaabe name for peterborough, so i start there to acknowledge that place. what’s surprising with social media is the reach. you get emails from everywhere from people who have read the book. some of my friends have been traveling and then there's pictures. so my book's been to iceland. i'm starting to grow my online presence now, though as you said it was very closed for a while. jm: you've got six sections in the collection #nogoseries, #courting, #theworld, #recovery, #ceremony, and #forandafter. did those sections come fairly naturally? ss: they actually came very naturally. i sat down with the collection and color-coded it, poem by poem. i think there might've been eight or nine sections originally, maybe even 10. and then it was easy to delete the most journal-y bits, or say “that isn't going transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 123 to fit with these themes.” i already had a good idea of what would be there. for example, i knew there was a lot on colonialism and grief i didn't want to call it “colonialism,” so i called it “the world.” or there was the land acknowledgement that i just mentioned. #forandafter came about because it was really, really important to me to honour some of those people that i'm inspired by – artists, people in my personal life, and some who have gone on. what surprises me was that #courting became the largest section. it comes partly from looking at the work that's happening from a lot of the young indigenous poets, queer indigenous poets, 2sq to sq poets, like billy ray belcourt (https://billyraybelcourt.com), tenille campbell, joshua whitehead (https://www.joshuawhitehead.ca/about), arielle twist (https://arielletwist.com). they are talking about our interpersonal relationships in really important ways. and also those poems were often the most popular the “consent series,” as an example, was one that took off on facebook so that was another way to gauge what was resonating with people the most. jm: how did you come to the order of the sections? ss: honestly, it was quite rushed. i submitted the manuscript in august and the book was out december 31st, so it was a whirlwind. i’ve already mentioned starting with the land acknowledgment, and i knew i wanted to finish with the poems about individuals. i wanted #courting to be in there early because those are the pieces that are going to resonate, that are funny, that are starting in that good place. a lot of native lit has been stuck in trauma narratives, and so “#theworld: a constant state of grief” was natural. the “#recovery: on depression and addiction and ‘not good enough’” section was there, with a lot of darker poems, harder poems, and i wanted #ceremony as james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 124 healing to come out of it. and so for me, it was sandwiching the hard bits with love and ceremony. because that's how we take care of each other. jm: i wanted to think a little about form, starting with haiku. do you read haiku as well, and if so, who do you read? ss: to be honest, i haven't read haiku much lately. i did go through a period. in the first reiteration of the book, when i was calling it #haikuaday, i had a note to readers to acknowledge the fact that not only is this a cultural appropriation, but also that what i do is not haiku – because haiku in its original cultural context is different and beautiful. i don’t mean my poems are not reflective – many of them could be haiku because of the nature element. when i learned more about haiku i was very excited to know that there was a history of collaboration, for instance haikai no renga (俳諧の連歌) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/renku), which were haiku parties. i like to think that those poets of japan from hundreds of years ago would be excited that i’m using it, but i always make that disclaimer. i really only use the 5-7-5 syllable structure, which is what you’re taught in canadian grade 6 classes as an easy way to introduce poetry. there was a time where i did a haiku radio show on trent radio with a friend of mine, sarah mcneely, where we only spoke in 5-7-5 syllables, and it was just a really fun creative time. i believe there's still some archives that get played. we used to bring in the old poets and read original haikus by bashō (https://www/poetryfoundation.org/poets/basho). jm: again on form, something that i noticed is that you often use a form where there's a poem that's torn in half, so the top part is left, aligned at the bottom is right aligned transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 125 and there's this sort of gap through the middle of the page. what do you like about that particular shape? ss: in reading, that form creates separation and movement. as much as i can lead the reader, i try to create that space for them. that goes back to the question of whether these are long poems or not, which is a very big change from facebook where they were just short pieces. but yeah, i really think it's about movement for me, giving the space to the reader to take the time with poetry. it's tough to take the time sometimes in our lives to reflect. jm: the first section of the book is dedicated to nogojiwanong. it’s a traditional anishinaabe territory, but you begin talking about it as “a place where / when i walk home / many friends appear.” what does home mean to you? ss: there has always been a space where i've been thinking, “where is home”? i’m finding there are many different versions of home. i'm an adoptee, fourth generation removed – each of those generations were raised away from our biological family. i'm actually the oldest of cousins, and all of my cousins are in my uncles’ and aunties’ homes, which is super exciting. that's restoring us into our biological family after four generations of that loss. i was actually born in anishinaabe territory, in toronto, even though i am from where i live now, ktunaxa territory, invermere in british columbia. i came out here when i was very young, which makes me one of the people privileged to have grown up in my nation. i spent a lot of years searching for home. and what i didn't realize until later in life, around the time these homes were coming, was that part of it is that i didn't feel at home in my own body. so that was part of my learning: learning about transitioning, james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 126 deciding to do it, and understanding more about what it means to feel at home in your body. but, going back, i am privileged to work with leanne betasamosake simpson who is michi saagiig anishinaabe. i talked to her about being born there, and she said, “what is your responsibility to us then?” what that means is, when i came to university, i was both returning to my home and also coming to someone else's homelands. i spent a lot of time considering that responsibility and building those relationships wherever i could: spending time getting to know the land, helping their elders. one of the elders there, doug williams, has a maple sugar bush, so i learned about making maple sugar by boiling down the sap. a funny thing is that i was eventually named this way. sumac is a tree that is mostly eastern. people in my home territory go, “what, what, like, what is it? oh, it's a tree. right.” and so that's kind of funny in itself. peterborough became home even at the level of minutiae: i know the grocery store when i walk around it, i know the people on the street. it’s a town of about 80,000, but in the downtown core there are some places where even now i think i could walk in and know everyone. there are so many layers to seeking out home. there is also a spiritual home. to me that is family. the last poem is for carol edelman warrior, who became a mom to me. she taught me how to find home in our relations through building and caring and love. jm: what are you writing about in your dissertation? ss: i'm looking at narratives by people who have come home, and thinking about twospiritedness and coming home in our bodies. i’m thinking about naming as a practice that allows us to understand who we are: as indigenous people, as ktunaxa people, as transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 127 adoptees, as two-spirit people, that kind of stuff. i’m talking about umbilical cord practices and birth practices as things that reconnect us. jm: you write, “for the love of all / that is queer and brown,” and then a little later “learning to love / ourselves our bodies / each of our naked / burning hearts our lipstick and / our binders our canes.” how does someone find a voice as a two-spirit writer? ss: by spending time with other two-spirit writers, just reading and spending time with them. one gift, even before finding my voice, was just the knowledge that i wasn't alone. i'm just now working with beth brant’s (https://www.poetryfoundation/.or/poets/beth-brant) books writing is witness and food and spirits. i was just amazed. the preface to food and spirits is this incredible poem about resistance that's talking about missing and murdered indigenous women she talks about being a writer, how to sit with all these feelings. how do you speak about it? how do you honor them? there are great writers around now – billy-ray belcourt, tenille campbell, joshua whitehead – and we are a family. even though we live in different cities, we’re able to spend time with each other and really think about what we're doing and talk. “have you read this?” “oh, have you read that?” that specific poem that you quoted was actually written about a night at the naked heart (https://nakedheart.ca) festival in toronto, which is i believe the largest and oldest queer writers’ festival in canada. the main site is glad day bookshop (https://www.gladdaybookshop.com), which is the oldest queer bookstore in canada. i grew up in a small town. there was one out gay man that i knew growing up, and he actually died of aids. that’s how that narrative was built for me. it's funny now, because of all of my best friends in high school, i'm not the only one on testosterone. james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 128 we're actually very queer. and we were then, but we didn't know how to talk about it because we didn't have any representation. it wasn't safe to be that person. and so for me to go into in toronto and be in this space where everyone has the hair and the colors and the glitter and all of that still makes me think “wow, this is exciting.” it feels good to witness other people stepping into their voices. one thing that really helped me and pushed me was tenille campbell’s book indian love poems. teaching some of her sexy poems, sometimes even i get uncomfortable, which is funny because now i'm somebody who has sexy poems out there. poems that are talking about all sorts of stuff that i never thought i would talk about! the “cadillac of dicks”! when i'm writing those songs, i ask, “does this need to go out in the world?” and then i think about what it felt like to hear somebody else read a poem like that. what it did for me, how it freed me. jm: there seems to be a surge of young two-spirit writers, particularly in canada. does that say good things about canada as a space for finding that voice? ss: i think so. the violence still exists, but i think our communities are strong. it’s down to population. the difference between america and canada is that in canada we're 56% of the population, whereas it's something like 0.2% in america. so that allows for more things to happen. much as i critique reconciliation as a concept, i think if you look right now at conversations, for instance around the wet’suwet’en (https://twitter.com/iy4wetsuweten?lang=en), you can find many more comments in support of indigenous people now than you ever could. the racism is still there and the hatred is still there, but i think in the community there has been a shift. and then on a spiritual level, i was taught two-spirits are here to challenge and to push back, to help create balance. and so, yes, canada’s a good place, but also the fact that we're all transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 129 here doing this means that there are major problems and there is a major balancing that needs to happen. that's one of my teachings as a two-spirit person, from one of my two-spirit elders. i know that there's hundreds of definitions and understandings of two-spirit – mine is not the only one – but the way that i've been taught is that we are here to challenge and speak up and do those things. reconciliation also, in native lit, allowed for publishing. people are reading, people are excited, and people want to know more. one of the best sellers for almost two years now is cherie dimaline (https://cheriedimaline.com). publishers now see that our literature sells. so it's a very good time to be a two spirit writer because people want to read us. when we look at maria campbell, at beth brant, at many of these poetry ancestors, many of them passed before they could make a living off writing. daniel justice talks about this a lot – that you have to be able to afford to be a writer. if you're working all the time to put food on the table, it's hard to do. jm: kegedonce has played a big part in it as well. ss: yes. they've been amazing. they just put out tunchai redvers’ book fireweed (https://kegedonce.com/bookstore/item/129-fireweed.html) and she's another twospirit writer, a really brilliant young person. native presses have been super important because they were publishing us before anybody else was as well, so i was very excited to support them and to have that connection, rather than try and go to a bigger press. jm: what did it mean to you to win the indigenous voices award? ss: i’ll get emotional again! that award is hosted by the indigenous literary studies association (http://www.indigenousliterarystudies.com), and at the time the board james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 130 members included deanna reder, who was my first indigenous literature professor and supported me in going into a master's degree. she introduced me to poetry! jeanette armstrong, too, one of my aunties of literature, was one of the judges in that category and she got up and read from my work too. we’ve become a family, and to be able to be there with them and celebrate my work, to honour those voices, to build on those voices, to make space for new voices to come, was really important. all literary awards are great, because they help writers do what they do. but that award, out of any awarded in canada, is the only one judged by indigenous people for indigenous people. it was crowdfunded through speaking back against cultural appropriation. it's about us having our own voices. it was just a huge celebration. in that award ceremony, i loved that every single person who was shortlisted got to read. it wasn't about the winner, it was about all of us sharing our work. there are some incredible people in the unpublished category that year that i cannot wait for their work to come out. so, yeah, for me, it was really beautiful – and then i would just look around and think “i'm sitting here with joshua whitehead!” as much as i'm like their family, i'm still always floored by their work. and tanya tagaq was on that list and these other big names, and it's becoming more and more real that i'm part of this community, when until then i'd been growing up in it. i'm becoming that next generation – the literary baby. jm: in another poem, you say “self love is a revolution for an indian.” why was it important to include intimate details about both sex and about transition in your poetry? did you have to push back against any inhibitions? transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 131 ss: writing poetry first comes pretty quickly to me: i’m not immediately thinking about audience. the hesitation comes later, before posting on facebook, and then very much so at the readings. i have in the past tried not to read some of the sexy poems, and then at the q&a people just ask for them anyway! i often make a link between indigeneity and being trans, as there’s a similarity in the phobias you're up against. in both cases so much of the representation is “victim being killed.” and that is real. we need to know that. you need to know that black trans women are dying at these incredibly disproportionate rates to everyone else. but i also think it's super important that we say – both for trans and indigenous people – that we aren't just victims. we aren't just trauma. we also are in love. and we also have sex. we have sexualities. in my own community reading was hard to do, but i also think that often our communities are really ravaged by sexual abuse and intergenerational trauma with residential schools, and so, for a long time, we haven't talked about sex. being able to talk about healthy sexualities and making people laugh is important in our languages. we have all sorts of dirty jokes and we have all sorts of those kinds of things. bringing laughter back in that different context of sexuality is really important. but like leanne simpson always says she writes for anishinaabe at first, so i really wrote for indigenous trans youth. i didn't know that there were trans men until i was 27. could you imagine if i had had access to this information when i was 17? maybe my life would have gone differently. and so i really want that space to be opened for them. what was surprising was a settler auntie of mine, an older white woman and a lovely person who i'm not going to name here, who came up to me after i read the “cadillac” poems. she said, “you know, there's some questions you just don't ask. thank you for teaching me things that i would never have known.” that’s part of it too, to educate people. i personally think that more cis-gender hetero james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 132 couples need to be talking about sex, because we have so many issues with sexuality and, and in those relationships, it's sort of treated as “this is what sex is.” and, no, i think everyone needs to talk about it. i really tapped into tenille campbell and i always when reading just think “she would be laughing at this,” and that makes me feel good. so if i think of tenille and the audience, i can sort of tap into like, you know, ok, i can do this. and i have had the odd difficult one. one time that poem was called “boorish”! but when i read that specific poem about the cadillac of dicks, i think that if that's all you get from it that, you aren't listening or reading, it's the transformation that is the important part. the audience recognizing that is important. i often hear, especially in indigenous communities, people saying that we don't cut off parts of our body, describing top surgery as i don't want to use this word, but it does get used as mutilations, or thinking about us as freaks. and so i want to really normalize it and be like, “this is my reality.” i share that feeling of being transformed when i've read that poem in front of my family members and all sorts of other people. i'm so nervous to read this in front of elders and they go, “what, do you think we've never had sex before? look, we have grandkids.” i feel that strength. you know, sometimes i still feel that fear of violence, but i'm pretty privileged to be able to step up and say, “ok, i feel strong enough to do this.” there's going to be someone in the audience who doesn't feel strong enough to do that. seeing me will help with that. that’s what people i saw and witnessed did for me. richard van camp talks about sex and hickeys all the time! i remember the first time i was there, bright red and laughing and horrified by the things that he was saying in front of audiences and now i get to tap in and make people feel that sort of discomfort, but also laugh and go home and maybe talk about something they wouldn't. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 133 jm: water imagery is really noticeable throughout the poems. i that the truck, the poems in all sections of the books, whereas i think imagery shifts for a lot of other things. what does water signify for you do you think? ss: to rip off standing rock no, i'm just kidding! but i mean, water is life, right? that’s the deal. water is life. we hear it all the time. it's funny how in western culture the idea of a cliché is so apparent, and that you hear something enough that it becomes meaningless. but for us, repetition is deeply important. so i am going to own that. water is life to me. i've been taught that we need to honor water as much as we can. i actually do this exercise with students where i'd get them to go and sit by a body of water, and then reflect on it and write about that. and so many of them never do that. they don't find time to do it. they don't do it. i live in the most beautiful blue mountains and lakes and rivers, and it's incredible. when they do it, many of them go, “i haven't done this in a long time. i need to make more time to do this. i don't know what it is. it just makes me feel better.” yes, it does. and this is why. first of all, it's part of us i mean, not just our bodies. one of the teachings i love says that “water comes before every one of us is born.” that's how we come into the world. that's what we live in. that's what we are part of. for me, it's sacred everything is sacred, of course, but without water where would we be? i've been in communities where they have “boil water” advisories. i've been in communities where our old people say the water wars are coming. to honor that and to try and give people that different thought, if they've never thought about it in that way before, is important to me. james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 134 also, it's just so deeply part of my life. wherever and whenever i travel, i find the water. i try to go there. there's one poem where i talk about traveling to standing rock – when we did that, we stopped at flint to pray for the waters, because of what's happening there. in anishinaabe territory, women are water carriers or water keepers. i think of grandmother josephine mandamin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/josephine_mandamin), who’s one of the water walkers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mother_earth_water_walk), one of the people who walked around the great lakes to pray for the waters. these are pieces of honoring the women that taught me this in the lands that i came from. jm: “#theworld” begins with grief, and then it shades into resistance. do you feel hopeful for the outcome of resistance to canadian/american governments, oil companies, ecocide, online bigots, mass shooters and everything else that you take on there? that's the weight of the world on your shoulders. ss: it's all in there! jesse wente had a piece recently where he said “it will all come back.” if, big picture, i think about the fact that we've been here 14,000 years, i can be hopeful. i can remember that it will all come back, that those songs are coming back. i look at the indigenous youth who are shouting things like “reconciliation is dead” right now, if i think of those who as the police are arresting them are yelling “your spirits will never recover from this,” and they've got these ancient teachings in them that are coming back. i can be hopeful. the war's coming, and it's going to get worse. i have to remember that. and it has been worse before, in different ways. i have to remember that as well. “a love poem to your great great grandmother” in the collection is about recognizing that transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 135 there were times that people saw the genocide up close, times where we were starving. and so, generationally, i can see that big picture as hopeful. but i also get really worried when i see liberal hope. liberals say “things are changing and reconciliation is good and we just need education.” those people have blinders on and they're not seeing the things that we are consistently facing, or the fact that, as we get stronger, the resistance, the attacks, the violence against us gets stronger as well. we are putting our lives on the line. how many of us are going have to actually lose our lives? we are warriors, we will stand, we will do that to the end, and then beyond the end. i do believe it will all fall. i don't think in my lifetime, but i'm trying to do whatever i can to prepare as many young people as i can to be ready for those things. and that sounds pretty heavy and dark, but sometimes just a case of going to the gym now and thinking, “ok, you're getting ready for the apocalypse.” it helps me. it's a silly thing, and i'm not a doomsday prepper, but i do ask, “when it comes down to it, what what do you need to be doing? and what is the most important thing to help young people?” i often just say to people when i have audiences, “what are you doing to get us our land back? and what are you doing to help our youth survive?” because those are the really big questions. i am hopeful because we have grief practices, and we know how to help people. those things are coming back as well. we know how to take care of each other. as long as those things are happening and renewing themselves and continuing, then i think we'll be ok. jm: would you talk a little bit about ceremony, and your relationship to ceremony? james mackay an interview with smokii sumac 136 ss: ceremony saved my life. i often tell the story of how i spent a lot of years looking for things as a young person. a friend of mine was very christian, so i went to bible camp. i really liked that, and i tried to find meaning there. i think i was trying to make meaning for a long time. for a long time, the medicine, the spirit that helped me was “alcohol and drugs.” they helped me get through the very hardest parts, and then it stopped helping because, as i've been taught, that spirit only knows how to take. i was taught, “if you don't like your job and you drink about your job, it'll take your job. it'll take your family if you're drinking about your family.” these kind of things, it continuously was taking. for a long time, i was trying to find my way out of the addiction. what was going to help me through that? i did spend a lot of time in alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous and these kind of programs, which also have a spiritual element to them. i was always searching, asking “what is that higher power? what is that?” and then i started to get invited to ceremony. when i say ceremony, my teachers say that it's part of life. it's how we walk in the world in general. it's not always just an event, but at first it's going to a sweat lodge, or it's going to a sunrise ceremony, or at one point i was invited to a sundance. i don't lead, i am very much a baby in this. but reconnecting with those things became something that i could hold onto in a way that i hadn't been able to find before. there are all sorts of pieces to this. i know that yoga is helpful for me. it's not my culture, it's not my spiritual or cultural practice, but stretching is helpful. one of my teachers says we can take a bite out of that stuff. that prayer is real. and i have seen things. i have seen people be cured of illnesses, things that people would call miracles or would maybe question. i don't. i don't question, i don't care what anybody else believes. i know what i've seen and witnessed and done. i know what it feels like now to be able to do something and to care, and that the ways transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 137 that we learn how to be together in ceremony are really important. because we all have to work together and learn how to listen in a different way. i want to mention that not all indigenous people do this. my path is very unique. not all of them believe, and that's ok, too. i had a very close friend who is indigenous say to me, “i just don't understand why they're trying to do sweat lodges in the apocalypse.” and i was like, “what do you mean? that's exactly what we would be doing!” i should say she comes from people that are not sweat lodge people, so her ceremonies would be different, and so i also understand that too. what i'm seeing, you know, is our youth picking up those teachings. i think about the marrow thieves, a book that came to me at the right time, a lot. that book tells it all – what we’re trying to save, why we grieve – and also reminds us we have very specific instructions. i can talk about it as “out there,” because i know sometimes it sounds like we romanticize this spiritual thing that we have, but the lessons are specific. one was “don't cry at night.” some people will think, “ok, so there's probably some spiritual reason,” but we just figured out that that at night you're alone. that's a really hard space to be in, you could cry all night and not sleep. so if you've got that rule, you try and make space for it in the daytime when it's easier. somebody asked, “why do we use a match to light the smudge?” i said, “because you need to hold a lighter a long time and it burns my thumb!” there are typically practical reasons for the things that we say, and those practical reasons aren't always told. because of that “mystical indian” myth out there, some of these stories get going and those practical reasons get taken out. jm: thank you very much for giving your time to this. it's been very much appreciated. ss: thank you for the questions and for honoring my work, that means a lot to me. microsoft word introduction.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) i introduction: cherokee modern james mackay for the first time, transmotion is dedicating its pages to the work of a single writer. such dedicated issues used to be commonplace among academic journals with a cultural focus, but are now discouraged: indeed, some literary journals now state outright that they do not accept proposals for such a specific purpose. undoubtedly there are some good reasons for such a policy. for instance, editors may feel that readers will be put off if they are not aware of or invested in the specific writer’s work. editors and publishers might also reasonably argue that special issues focussed on a philosophical question, an historical moment, or a branch of criticism serve to drive the field as a whole forward. author-specific issues, in this telling, are at worst irrelevant and at best serve only the sort of canonisation that has proved toxic in native american literary studies when it results in the same handful of writers being taught on every freshman course, and a small coterie of writers becoming seen as representative. yet, at their best, author-specific issues and collections also serve in their own way to drive debates. by allowing for a broad range of approaches to the subject at hand, they bring those approaches into conversation and serve as proof of concept for critical approaches to literatures. they also serve to deepen the general understanding of a writer by pushing readers into thinking through multiple approaches to their work. (i remember, for instance, a special issue on the work of gerald vizenor edited by rodney simard, now nearly three decades old, and the impact that reading an article on vizenor’s relationship with legal discourse had on my understanding of that writer). and while it is true that an overly narrow focus on a few writers might obscure the wealth of writing that is out there, a focus on a less well-known writer can have entirely james mackay “introduction: cherokee modern” ii the opposite result. all of which is to say that my co-editor a. robert lee and myself hope that this issue will inspire others to approach this journal with other ideas for single author issues focussed on neglected writers. and the writer that is the focus of this entire issue, ralph salisbury, has undoubtedly not received his critical due. i wished my words were bullets when students intent in keeping “colored” out of public toilets and employment and from between white thighs made threatening to drive “one niggerloving cherokee damyankee” out of town their ultimate argument in beginning logic. ralph salisbury, “feeling out of it” (light 50) since some readers may not be fully familiar with ralph salisbury’s work, some introduction is in order. the career begins with the poem “in the children’s museum in nashville,” published in the new yorker in 1961. this was a significant breakthrough for a writer placing indigenous concerns squarely at the heart of his writing, and places him alongside pauline johnson, lynn riggs or zitkála-šá as writers who reached beyond an audience primarily interested in native themes, well before various media events of the late ‘60’s served to boost an entire generation. ever since that time and until his death in 2017, salisbury’s voice was raised against racism, injustice, environmental destruction, the nuclear arms race and wars of all stripes. this mission is visible across his eleven collections of poetry, three of short stories, a memoir and, less transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) iii directly, in translations of sámi poet nils-aslak valkeapää, as well as in his service as a long-term editor of the northwest review and a mentor to many younger writers at the university of oregon. in his poetry, salisbury has a genius at interleaving images in his poems, such as in the poem “castration of the herd-boar recollected without tranquillity, after nagasaki,” where the speaker’s thoughts flicker between the memory of a morning on the farm, and the horrors committed by the us army in asia: “our herd-board struck earth, a three hundred pound bomb’s / explosions of dust becoming mud on my tongue” (light 130). indeed, much of his writing has the quality of a palimpsest, in which memories and reflections constantly change perceptions of the quotidian and everyday, haunted by the poet’s knowledge of violence. in “american suburb, war in iraq”, the handlebars of hastily discarded boys’ bicycles become the horns of stags locked in conflict, reminding the speaker of the deaths that are occurring in the us invasion of iraq, half way around the planet. though the writing always has a clearly left-liberal bent, there is a complexity of interwoven consciousness and conscience that allows it to escape from any sort of programmatic quality, even when the poems deal directly with war, suffering and capitalism. and there is also the fact that salisbury’s liberalism and rejection of violence is very far from being elitist or class-based. his hardscrabble rural childhood was, after all, spent in poverty in iowa, in a family dominated by an alcoholic father unafraid to mete out violence to those weaker than him. in his memoir, so far, so good (2013), salisbury sees himself and his eight-year-old brother in a photograph, where they “look like children in prevent world hunger posters, not near death from starvation but emaciated from hunger” (92). later on the same page, he recalls a time when “my drunken father shot at or near my defiant mother,” a time in which the nine or ten year james mackay “introduction: cherokee modern” iv old ralph had to talk his own father out of murdering his mother. this incident that recurs often in the poetry: bullets which splintered floor close to my toes when i was four and again as i cringed up to the gun to beg for my mother’s life when i was ten hit home after my father, grown old and gentle, grew too old. (“elegy for a father/friend,” light 168). as the final line here shows, the relationship softened over time, as the elder salisbury became a doting grandfather. much of salisbury’s work is inflected with this possibility of redemption, a lesson learned from the contrast between the happiness he felt as a child and his later comprehension of the violence and desperation in the adult world around him at that time. equally, his belief in the potential of the state to effect goodness grew from his family’s benefitting from the new deal, while his frequent imagery of bullets, bombs and shrapnel is rooted in a military service during which he only barely avoided active combat between the end of world war ii and the draft for korea. much of his writing is also taken up with his consciousness of himself as cherokee, the descendant of survivors of genocide, and the concomitant need to resist the euro-american imperium in all its guises. this self-identification as cherokee may not sit well with everyone who works in indigenous studies, since salisbury did not take up citizenship in either the cherokee nor the shawnee nations, was not close to a specific native community, and was not aware of his ancestry until already into adulthood. like n. scott momaday’s mother natachee, who had to “[begin] to see herself as indian” (25), salisbury identified much more strongly with his cherokee transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) v ancestry than was common among many people who have a family story of indian ancestors. in his memoir, he records how this identification underpinned both his antiracism and his nascent ecological consciousness, while in his poetry one finds frequent reference to cherokee religious insight and knowledge. most if not all of this must have come from books – james mooney makes several appearances – and it is true that one would not study salisbury for an authentic insider account of cherokee community. rather, the power of the poetry comes from hard work at craft, fuelled by a sense of responsibility to his cherokee ancestors and to a cosmopolitan sense of being an indigenous citizen of the world. a robert lee begins this issue with a detailed overview of what he terms ralph salisbury’s “writing-in,” that ever inward circling into selfhood that concerns so much of the poet’s memoristic work. he is followed up by eleanor berry, who in an act of close reading takes on salisbury’s experiments with syntax, demonstrating how the games these allow him to play with time and conscience allow him to create a complex, deeply ethical core to his vision. next, miriam brown spiers does due justice to the war experiences that so deeply shaped the writer, and the ways that salisbury’s war stories reveal a deep communitism in the work. crystal alberts, in a consideration of the earlier poetry, explores multiple resonances with and possible influences from the work of césar vallejo, including the “leaping” of images. finally, but certainly not least among the peer-reviewed articles, cathy covell waegner brings a transnational focus to the study of this “indigenous humanist,” examining the relationship salisbury forged from his connections with germany, the country he had been trained to bomb. it has always been our intention in putting together such a collection that it would inspire others to further study of ralph salisbury. to that end, we are particularly happy to have been able to work with his life partner, ingrid wendt, no mean poet herself, to produce a brace of contributions that will prove significant resources for james mackay “introduction: cherokee modern” vi further scholarship. the first, appearing in our “reflections” series, is entitled “the vetruvian man and beyond,” and it provides an intimate, learned discussion of poetry and spirituality. the second, an interview with a. robert lee, is an informative and fascinating inside look at a life well lived. finally, the issue finishes with a sampler of ralph salisbury’s poems for readers who have not yet had the pleasure of reading his work. *** this issue also brings some changes in transmotion. we are delighted to welcome bryn skibo-birney onto the permanent team, where she will be taking over from james mackay as the main book reviews editor. bryn has been working with us for two years already on academic book reviews, and we’re really delighted that she agreed to take on this further challenge. another new arrival is matt kliewer of the university of georgia, who will be working to improve our coverage of new indigenous poetry in the book reviews section. as regular readers may have noticed, we have also changed the font in which the journal is produced. the new font, avenir book, is a sans serif typeface that will hopefully improve your reading experience. transmotion is open access, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the university of kent: all content is fully available on the open internet with no paywall or institutional access required, and it always will be. we are published under a creative commons 4.0 license, meaning in essence that any articles or reviews may be copied and re-used provided that the source and author is acknowledged. we strongly believe in this model, which makes research and academic insight available and useable for the widest possible community. we also believe in keeping to the highest academic transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) vii standards: thus all articles are double-blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers, and each issue approved by an editorial board of senior academics in the field (listed in the front matter of the full pdf and in the online ‘about’ section). microsoft word 807-article text-5211-1-11-20201119 (1).docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 1 spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty: idle no more and the marrow thieves laura maria de vos in the winter we danced: voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement (2014), tanya kappo (sturgeon lake cree) details a round dance flash mob at west edmonton mall, describing how the “people were glowing” and how, even if the dancing itself was only a moment, “it was powerful enough to awaken in them what needed to be woken up—a remembering of who we were, who we are” (kappo and king 70). cree elder john cuthand tells the story of how the round dance was a gift from an ancestor who was unable to find rest because her daughter would not stop grieving her death. the mother brought “something from the other world to help the people grieve in a good way” and taught her daughter the round dance ceremony; the round dance ceremony creates a space where the ancestors can join the dancers and all are “as one” (the kino-nda-niimi collective 24, italics in original). idle no more’s round dancing in malls, public squares, and legislative buildings as such thus directly calls up support from and involvement of the ancestors; round dancing is powerful in part thanks to its expression of cultural continuity and relations across many generations. through the round dance, the ancestors were brought in to connect with the people, and the dancers imagined themselves as future ancestors, creating a space for those not yet born. as a result, the “people were glowing.” this physical, circular movement, which connects the future ancestors dancing in the present with their ancestors invited into the space, is adaptable to different settings, laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 2 and will never be exactly the same twice. the power in the round dance ceremony can be better understood if we see how it is informed by a worldview organized according to an experience of time we can describe as spiralic: cyclical, but transforming for the moment rather than merely repeating. idle no more’s focus on the spiralic resurgence of cultural traditions and ancestral knowledges are exemplary of a new generation’s experience of spiralic time. this is an experience of time that is better able to intervene in canada’s national temporality of reconciliation. “spiralic temporality” refers to an indigenous experience of time that is informed by a people’s particular relationships to the seasonal cycles on their lands, and which acknowledges the present generations’ responsibilities to the ancestors and those not yet born. this complex of relations to the land, lived in an embodied manner on that land or in diaspora, together make up the indigenous concept of place as explained by glen coulthard (yellowknives dene). by his formulation “land” and “place” in this way do not just refer to territory, but are expressions of an “ontological framework for understanding relationships,” i.e. the terms land and place are used to refer more broadly to all the relations in that place, which includes rivers, rocks, and mountains, animal and plant nations, who all have agency (coulthard 79-80). in such a worldview, when things happened in time becomes less important than where they happen(ed) and to which relations; the past and the future are all relevant in the now, what matters is how the events or actors are related to a particular place. the canadian nation sees historical redress through the process of reconciliation as an end in itself, rather than a continuing spiral. in the same way young people in this movement are experiencing time through round dancing, we can come to understand how they are able to counteract or respond to the underlying assumptions of a canadian national temporality of reconciliation that is linear and progress-oriented. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 3 writing about idle no more in the conclusion to his 2014 book red skins, white masks, coulthard describes the movement as “what a resurgent indigenous politics might look like on the ground” (160). in an interview with leah gazan, grand chief of the assembly of manitoba chiefs derek nepinak (minegoziibe anishinabe) explains the essential role younger generations play in idle no more and indigenous resurgence more broadly. new generations of leaders did not personally experience the residential schools, nepinak claims, so they do not suffer as much from the negative connotations settler colonizer violence attaches to indigenous cultures (nepinak 84). residential schools taught indigenous students, at the risk of severe punishment, not to speak their languages, not to practice their spiritualities. in short, they were told to assimilate the best they could, or else. this new generation is freer to look back, says nepinak, and to discern what indigenous knowledges are helpful and essential to build the thriving future older generations have been working for. in this article, i argue that a heuristic of spiralic temporality helps us see how métis author cherie dimaline’s (post-) apocalyptic young adult novel the marrow thieves (2017) does similar consciousness-raising work on resurgence and indigenous youth’s power to build their futures in the now as the idle no more movement. like other indigenous futurist texts, the marrow thieves employs a temporality which refuses the common dismissal of tradition as outdated, by imagining futures that are “intimately connected to the past” (cornum). grace l. dillon (anishnaabe) coined the term “indigenous futurisms” based on the existing “afrofuturism,” which dillon describes as “weav[ing] in traditional knowledge and culture with futuristic ideas and settings” (muzyka). indigenous futurism is centrally about bringing traditional knowledges into faraway futures, privileging traditional values like sustainable, balanced relationality over so-called progress (cornum). lou cornum further explains laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 4 the project of indigenous futurisms as the “profound deconstruction of how we imagine time, progress, and who is worthy of the future” (cornum). in this way, the genre pushes back on the limited vision offered by linear settler temporality—where indigenous people can only ever be “authentic” in some faraway past—and instead evidences the possibilities for indigenous futures informed and embraced by their relations across time. through the marrow thieves’ organizing principle of spiralic time, which puts indigenous youth at the center, the novel reveals a temporal aspect to the idle no more movement that otherwise might go unnoticed. round dancing is also about bringing a future into the present, one that pushes back against the temporality of a progressive narrative where the canadian state seeks to remake the indigenous. the novel offers a counter reality to that of canadian settler “progress” and “reconciliation” and emphasizes indigenous youth’s critical role in resurgence, within and beyond idle no more. writing directly to indigenous youth, dimaline invites them to see themselves as part of a continuing spiral of indigenous presence going back to when time began and continuing into a time when they themselves will be ancestors. the marrow thieves responds to the native youth suicide epidemic by inviting youth to see the central role they play in the spiralic history of their nations and how thriving futures can be lived in the present. the novel models indigenous alternative ways of being in relation despite of or against settler colonizer oppressions, emphasizing the importance of conceiving of a different world, and living in it in whatever ways that one can (even though limited by settler colonizer violence). the novel’s spiralic temporal structure invites a heuristic of spiralic temporality to see the communities in the marrow thieves in relation with historic and contemporary turtle island indigenous communities and the issues and values they have been and are transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 5 currently experiencing, defending, and living. the novel illustrates how the spiral of indigenous life is still moving into the future, settler violence and oppression be damned. i first detail how we might theorize and experience spiralic temporality; this discussion considers spiralic temporality not just as a heuristic, but also as an organizing structure. then, i discuss how seeing spiralic relations across time helps us better understand idle no more’s focus on indigenous resurgence not as a “moving backwards” to “archaic” tradition, but as participating in a continuing history of cyclical return, with essential transformations, rather than repetitions. from there, i address how cherie dimaline’s the marrow thieves takes up the themes from idle no more to illustrate how spiralic temporality informs indigenous resurgence and resistance. in this sense, what the novel in relation to the movement reveals, is how using a heuristic of spiralic temporality can support thriving indigenous futures through making visible the larger spirals of indigenous cultural continuity, as well as indigenous youths’ central role in them. indigenous resurgence & spiralic time the kino-nda-niimi collective’s edited collection of writings on idle no more, the winter we danced, begins with an emphasis on this spiralic continuity, making clear that “most indigenous peoples have never been idle in their efforts to protect what is meaningful to our communities—nor will we ever be” (21, my emphasis). this relationship to what came before is not merely one of repeating a sterile past, but one of an unstoppable continuation of peoplehoods, transformed in and for each moment, always with an eye on creating a thriving future for indigenous peoples. spiralic time emphasizes the relationships across time between related, transformed experiences laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 6 and allows for a dynamic return and rebirth of the past into the future. in order to think spiralically, one might need to start with undoing the lock western teleological temporality has on the structure of their thinking. the settler colonial project limits indigenous nationhood to either something from a long ago past that is no longer relevant—as such their treaties become “archaic premises and promises, from another time, which are not applicable in modern american time,” or something that is always limited to traditional practices: any participation in so-called “modern american time” is considered evidence of the fact that the nations are no longer authentically indigenous, and as such they also should not/do not have sovereignty (bruyneel 172; 203). both options evidence a settler obsession with “progress,” which makes indigenous sovereignty unthinkable in the present, let alone the future (see also o’brien, rifkin). settler time limits indigenous peoples to either a noble past or an inauthentic present: there is no indigenous future in a settler temporality. syilx scholar and author jeanette armstrong explains how in her syilx worldview, “physical-earth time is conceived of as cyclic, as in a spiral. day becomes night and returns to day but never to the same day” (167, my emphasis). she is clear that cyclic or spiralic do not mean repetition or routine, but instead point to cycles of transformation, cycles where new iterations return transformed. she explains that “[w]ithin that stable spiraling from one year to the next,” physical beings on this earth change, “are born, grow, reproduce and die,” while the cycles themselves, of the seasons, of the moon, of the days, do not change (167). the only thing for sure in her worldview is the spiral: the endless cycles of transformations, or of “continuous physical changes” (167).1 abenaki scholar lisa brooks has theorized the spiral as “embedded in place(s)”, allowing both for a deep grounding in a particular land or water, while also allowing for movement transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 7 (309). thus, indigenous peoples are not prisoners of their traditional lands —many peoples have always moved around seasonally, traded across large territories, and fought or built kinship relations with other tribes (vizenor manifest manners ix). vanessa watts (mohawk and anishnaabe) thinks through indigenous relationships to the land (and the central role of the feminine), in an ontoepistemological model of “place-thought” which assumes a non-linear temporality that allows the past to always also be the future. starting from the indigenous worldviews of the anishnaabe and haudenosaunee (of which the mohawk are part), and moving through the story of sky woman’s body becoming the land, watts explains how going back to traditional knowledge is also listening to what is currently being said as well as leading us to imagining a transformed future, and a path to starting to live that future in the present. she emphasizes this is “not a question of ‘going backwards,’ for this implies there is a static place to return to” when, instead, traditional knowledges have always adapted and changed through time (watts 32). since anishnaabe and haudenosaunee never understood time as linear, they can connect with their traditional teachings also through dreaming, shapeshifting, and premonition.2 thus, resurgence is not an attempt to access something otherwise confined to the past, but rather “simply to listen. to act” (watts 32). through remembering traditional practices, relations across time are strengthened and perhaps rebuilt. these renewed relations then bring also renewed responsibilities with them, responsibilities to maintain continuity. in the sacred hoop, paula gunn allen (laguna pueblo) describes that this is the reason traditionals say we must remember our origins, our cultures, our histories, our mothers and grandmothers, for without that memory, which implies continuance rather than nostalgia, we are doomed to engulfment by a laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 8 paradigm that is fundamentally inimical to the vitality, autonomy, and selfempowerment essential for satisfying, high-quality life. (214, my emphasis) resurgence is not about reminiscing about an “authentic” past, but rather about the ways that, despite the interruptions by settler violences of land theft; residential schools; violence against indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people; commodification of the environment, of indigenous cultures, and of indigenous people; indigenous cultures persist. this cultural persistence is key to maintaining thriving lives and resisting the settler colonizer attempts to swallow indigenous peoples whole. culture can still be traditional, even when it must resurge transformed in the present, for example through expression in a colonizer language. we learn this from joy harjo (mvskoke) and others in the edited collection of native women’s writing reinventing the enemy’s language (1997). in the introduction, gloria bird (spokane) explains how indigenous peoplehood lasts despite of all of the attacks by colonization. despite the loss of language, indigenous worldviews continue (bird and harjo 24). bird describes an example: my aunt once, when we were looking at what was left of mt. st. helen's, commented in english, "poor thing." later, i realized that she spoke of the mountain as a person. in our stories about the mountain range that runs from the olympic peninsula to the border between southern oregon and northern california our relationship to the mountains as characters in the stories is one of human-to-human. (24) despite the take-over by english—the enemy language—the worldview where nonhuman peoples have agency as much as human peoples do persists. joy harjo reminds us that the war on indigenous peoples has not ended, but that to use “the enemy transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 9 language” in a way that expresses indigenous worldviews, be it in a necessarily limited way because of the use of english rather than the appropriate tribal language, is a practice of “decolonization” (bird and harjo 25, emphasis in original). according to her tribal worldview, language is a tool for healing, to express yourself through words, through song, is “to remember ourselves during these troubled times.” she writes that “to speak, at whatever cost, is to become empowered rather than victimized by destruction” (bird and harjo 21). the power of language to help indigenous people “remember themselves,” to be a tool for healing from colonizer violence, to be a path to cultural continuance, explains why story, poetry, and even long-form writing such as novels are so important to indigenous resurgence. the marrow thieves is a clear part of this work. the spiralic syilx temporality that armstrong describes resonates with aymara scholar silvia rivera cusicanqui’s description of aymara indigenous time as moving in circles and spirals, not stretching taut in a linear sense of history. in her critique of how the north american academy has taken up postcolonial studies and the decolonial, rivera cusicanqui emphasizes the need to be responsible to the indigenous worldview those ideas developed in, and to remain responsible to the indigenous social movements on the ground. this spiralic conception of time and responsibility to place—and the relations it requires—demands a fundamental change in colonizer worldviews, one necessitated if there will be “a ‘radical and profound decolonization’ in its political, economic, and, above all, mental structures” (rivera cusicanqui 97). rivera cusicanqui explains, within her bolivian context, how colonizer attempts to reconcile and include indigenous peoples through “the rhetoric of equality and citizenship” eventually just “allow for the reproduction of the colonial structures of oppression,” where everyone in power remains firmly entrenched (97). these words might as well laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 10 describe the canadian linear epistemology of “reconciliation,” which idle no more organizers understood as limited in this way. they call for a shift in worldview (informed by spiralic temporality) which is needed to understand indigenous resurgence and resistance against colonizer oppression. spiralic temporality is made not just invisible but also unthinkable by a hegemonic settler temporality which is palimpsestic: settler time aims to obscure the past and replace it with its own settler ideals. yet, this process can never be completed, and as such, the settler colonial is always in tension with the indigenous presence it aims to replace. settler time is a fiction that is always in the process of being uncovered for its deceit. instead, a heuristic of spiralic temporality helps us see how the settler temporal structure obscures the genocidal processes of settler colonialism, and it foregrounds the indigenous ways of knowing and being that inform indigenous social movements and literatures. i want to emphasize that i am not suggesting an analytic of the spiral that is always one-hundred percent perfectly applicable across the board. i rather suggest that it is a useful heuristic to understand some of the values, relations, and transformations in one place across time, to make visible the complexity of indigenous worldviews, the absence of absolutes and universalisms, and to make legible just one way of relating, theorizing, and practicing at work in indigenous social movements and literatures which a eurocentric analytic does not allow for. “when the circle is made, we the ancestors will be dancing with you and we will be as one.” the idle no more movement started out of a one-day workshop organized by four women in saskatchewan: sylvia mcadam (nehiyaw), jessica gordon (pasqua), nina transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 11 wilson (nakota and plains cree), and sheelah mclean (non-native). their aim was to educate both native and non-native communities on how the 457-page bill c-45, a proposed measure to modify a number of laws, would directly affect first nations in canada (the kino-nda-niimi collective 21).3 the “teach-in” was in direct response to this newly proposed canadian governmental policy that would endanger indigenous peoples and non-human relations and the land and water. it focused on the legislation’s clearing space for further commodification of all relations, through scaling back consultation requirements with indigenous communities, undoing prior protections to lands and waters, and allowing access to first nations territories without proper consent (the kino-nda-niimi collective 21). building on existing community struggles for cultural continuity and against settler colonizer encroachment, the oneday event sparked into a large-scale, eventually global movement collectively named “idle no more,” which brought people together through a focus on “three broad motivations or objectives” (the kino-nda-niimi collective 22). the first of the three demands was the repeal of many sections in the new “omnibus legislation (bills c-38 and c-45)” pertaining to “the exploitation of the environment, water, and first nations territories” (the kino-nda-niimi collective 22). the second addressed the need to alleviate the emergency conditions in many first nations—related to “self-sustainability, land, education, housing, healthcare, and others”—most notoriously attawapiskat (known for its high youth suicide rate), in respectful collaboration with first nations communities (the kino-nda-niimi collective 22). the third objective was for the canadian government to commit to a reciprocal nation-to-nation relationship between canada and indigenous communities. these “mutually beneficial” relationships should be informed by the “spirit and intent of treaties” and the related “recognition of inherent and shared rights and responsibilities laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 12 as equal and unique partners,” instead of unilaterally making decisions harmful to indigenous (first nations (status and non-status), inuit, and métis) nations such as the proposed omnibus bill (the kino-nda-niimi collective 22). at the core of all the demands is a demand for respect for indigenous sovereignty and an end to canadian legislative violence against indigenous peoples. the focus of idle no more was shared and purposely without central leadership. instead, myriad local groups addressed their own issues in ways that were suitable for their place and time. in his book #idlenomore: and the remaking of canada (2015), ken coates (non-native) describes the movement as one “of mothers and children more than warriors and activists,” naming idle no more’s purpose as being more about culture than about politics (xi). a closer look at the movements’ concerns and actions makes clear that on the ground, it was a movement of mothers and children who also were warriors and activists, with concerns that were cultural as much as political. idle no more was indigenous families fighting for indigenous families, i.e. for continuity of their peoples as peoples. in order to secure cultural continuity and indigenous sovereignty, matters of governmental policy needed to be addressed head on. modeling the world they were fighting for in the process of the struggle, actions took the shape of “flash mobs” of round dancing. this embodied practice and ceremony that connects generations across time, reclaimed space for indigenous continuity often in spaces usually controlled by settler colonizers, such as malls, city centers, and canadian legislative buildings (the kino-nda-niimi collective 24). describing the origin of idle no more’s 2012-2013 winter of actions, the kinonda-niimi collective emphasizes the relation of idle no more to indigenous history and future, describing it as “an emergence of past efforts that reverberated into the future” (21). in sylvia mcadam (saysewahum)’s words, “idle no more resistance began long transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 13 before in different names, different locations through the generations since the arrival of europeans” (65). naming the relations of idle no more’s actions with “the maelstrom of treaty-making, political waves like the red power movement and the 1969-1970 mobilization against the white paper, and resistance movements at oka, gustafson lake, ipperwash, burnt church, goose bay, kanostaton, and so on,” the kino-nda-niimi collective suggests a vision of idle no more as one flashpoint that received a lot of attention in an expansive spiralic history of continued indigenous resistance to canadian encroachment on indigenous lands, languages, and lifeways which often goes unnoticed (21). kahnawake mohawk activist russ diabo’s 2012 article “harper launches major first termination plan: as negotiating tables legitimize canada’s colonialism,” reprinted in the winter we danced, makes clear how canadian “reconciliation” efforts continue to happen on settler colonizer canadian terms. diabo’s dissection of harper’s 2012 termination strategies shows how the current “reconciliation” is built on efforts to “negotiate” with tribal leadership in order to diminish indigenous sovereignty, turn indigenous nations into canadian municipalities, and always work toward the goal of legitimizing the settler state through this disappearance and assimilation of indigenous nations (55).4 both example of and metaphor for canada’s vision for indigenous peoples, canada originally rejected the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (undrip) in 2007 because of its incommensurability with “canada’s domestic policies, especially the articles dealing with indigenous peoples’ self-determination, land rights, and free, prior informed consent” (diabo 57). canada eventually signed the undrip in 2010, but treats it as subordinate to its own federal domestic policy (despite it being an act of international law) and continues to make unilateral policy decisions concerning first nations. sylvia mcadam describes laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 14 how despite idle no more’s global traction and the many “resounding ‘no consent’ protests, rallies, and teach-ins” it provoked, most of the proposed measures “aimed at privatizing treaty land, extinguishing treaty terms and promises as well as indigenous sovereignty” were accepted and turned into legislation (66). notwithstanding a supposed commitment to reconciliation, canada continues to make unilateral decisions that negatively affect the indigenous peoples whose territories it occupies in an apparent attempt to fold indigenous peoples into its progress narrative. idle no more defied this attempted erasure by centering and practicing indigenous resurgence and continuity. the movement and its legacy refuse(d) to “reconcile” away indigenous sovereignty. in red skin, white masks, coulthard summarizes resurgence as theorized by leanne betasamosake simpson (michi saagiig) and taiaiake alfred (kanien'kehá:ka) as “draw[ing] critically on the past with an eye to radically transform the colonial power relations that have come to dominate our present” (157). correspondingly, considering resurgence through spiralic temporality renders legible the ways that reclaiming the past does not mean being limited to an infinite repetition of the same cycle of traditional knowledge, but rather signifies the fluidity of the continued relevance of the core values of indigenous ways of knowing (156). speaking from a nishnaabeg context in her 2017 book, as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance, simpson conveys the “real urgency of resurgence” as continued settler encroachment on treaty lands and treaty rights makes it increasingly important for indigenous peoples to exercise their treaty rights and to continue to embody the systemic alternatives to the settler colonial structures, as nishnaabe people “have always done” (5-6). the urgency is real, as simpson argues, because the violent erasure of indigenous peoples by settler societies is real and ongoing. in its hunger for land, transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 15 settler colonization disrupted simpson’s relationship to her lands, her history and thus what her life could have been, and is also the cause for the ongoing murdered and missing indigenous women, girls, and two spirit people epidemic (7). describing her first experience learning from nishnaabe elders, simpson explains how her reconnecting to nishnaabewin through the elders’ practice “was a returning, in the present, to [her]self. it was an unfolding of a different present” (18).5 spiralic temporality allows us to see how embodied experiences of indigenous cultural continuity are related across moments in time, and how these relations (embodied in practices) can structure the present and inform the future to ensure indigenous thriving. sylvia mcadam explains in the winter we danced how the cree elders she consulted were on board with idle no more’s efforts and offered their prayers, and underscored the need to use their own laws, particularly “nahtamawasewin” which, “invoked in times of crisis and great threat… means to defend for the children,” including the non-human children of the plant, animal, and other nations (mcadam 66). through invoking place-based traditional knowledges to inform indigenous resistance, indigenous organizers and activists are revealing how their actions in their time are in relation with those that came before and those that are still to come. idle no more is just one contemporary iteration of a spiral of indigenous resistance rooted in cultural continuity. “to set the memory in perpetuity”: spiralic temporality in the marrow thieves full of metaphors and different tools to help interpret the present day colonial context in what is currently the u.s. and canada, cherie dimaline’s the marrow thieves explicitly models how indigenous resurgence is continuity, and that traditional indigenous ways of knowing are—quite literally in the novel’s case—the key to laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 16 indigenous thriving. in the marrow thieves, dimaline shows how the colonial, capitalist progress narrative is embodied through environmental destruction and imagines a further development where the issues with “progress” are reflected in colonizers’ loss of their ability to dream, or their ability to imagine a thriving future for themselves. rather than addressing the settler colonizer anti-indigenous policies and treatybreaking habits directly, the marrow thieves is set in a future which echoes contemporary concerns by indigenous people regarding reconciliation discussed above. this future contains a (post-) apocalyptic world where all of the canadian government’s termination and so-called “reconciliation” efforts have paid off in favor of the settler colonizer state. there appear to be no strong indigenous nations anymore, tribal leadership has very limited power, and native people have been forcibly assimilated into canadian society in a way that detached many from their languages and cultures. the novel uses the familiar images of “blood memory” and bone marrow to embody indigenous ways of knowing and being in ways they can be passed on. the marrow thieves itself appears to take the shape of a spiralic transformation of an earlier iteration of this blood narrative in native literature: white earth ojibwe author gerald vizenor’s the heirs of columbus (1991). chadwick allen, in his 2002 book blood narrative, describes how vizenor’s humorous story takes the concept of “blood memory” coined by n. scott momaday (kiowa), and turns it into a tangible substance that can be extracted from indigenous people’s dna in order to literally, physically heal indigenous children (allen 192). transforming vizenor’s satirical take on “blood quantum politics” through the empowering qualities of indigenous memory physically present in the blood, dimaline starts from the other side of the same idea. that is, she imagines the ways settler colonizers, perhaps through the process of reconciliation, could learn how to turn that into a tool to help themselves (and) further transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 17 destroy indigenous people and peoples. the marrow thieves addresses the histories and present of anti-indigenous capitalist violence, which is also violence against the non-human world, and centers indigenous radical relationality and cultural continuity as the guides to building thriving futures in spite of and against this violence. in the marrow thieves, non-natives lose their ability to dream, and thus their vision for living. dimaline describes how the changing earth gave all the signs that the human peoples neglected their obligations towards it and cried out in devastation (“she went out like a wild horse, bucking off as much as she could before lying down” (dimaline 87)). nevertheless, settler governments would not and did not change their linear “progression” towards total destruction; millions of people died; melting polar ice changed climates and caused violent weather, tsunamis, tornados, and earthquakes; oil and gas pipelines “snapped like icicles and spewed bile over forests, into lakes, drowning whole reserves and towns” (dimaline 88). despite all this tumult, settlers would not change their ways. dimaline writes, but the powers that be still refused to change and bent the already stooped under the whips of a schedule made for a population twice its size and inflated by the need to rebuild. those that were left worked longer, worked harder. and now the sun was gone for weeks at a time. the suburban structure of their lives had been upended. and so they got sicker, this time in the head. they stopped dreaming. and a man without dreams is just a meaty machine with a broken gauge. (dimaline 88) the progress-oriented settler temporality and worldview preclude futurity through their “miscalculation of infallibility” (dimaline 87). because settlers use up every resource until they are all gone and do not honor reciprocal relations, they have little to guide them, and thriving futures are hard to imagine (or “dream”). thus, they reach for laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 18 indigenous people to ensure their own futurity. however, much like their extractive relationship to the land, settlers did not attempt to enter in reciprocal relationships with indigenous peoples; rather, they treat them like another resource to exploit. the novel takes up the issue of settlers finding themselves through the foil of the native in the most literal way;6 it connects the driving plot point of colonizers taking native people’s dream-holding bone marrow for themselves with earlier iterations of appropriation and extraction. dimaline writes how, at first, non-native people looked to native peoples for teachings and guidance, in a way native people had experienced before: “the way the new agers had, all reverence and curiosity” (88). however, also “like the new agers,” they swiftly changed course and started trying to appropriate traditional knowledges to better serve themselves, without taking on the according obligations. the settlers asked themselves, “[h]ow could they best appropriate the uncanny ability we kept to dream? how could they make ceremony better, more efficient, more economical?” (88). this commodification of traditional ways led directly to the commodification of indigenous peoples, and as a result of these developments, indigenous bodies are turned into resources to serve settler “progress.” in the novel, colonizers lost their ability to dream, but their church and their scientists figure out that native people still can dream and that they hold their dreams in their bone marrow (89). in the new residential schools, non-native people leech the bone marrow out of the native people they have been able to catch, in order for those stolen dreams to sustain non-native life. the new iteration of these “schools” takes up the original project of disrupting traditional kinship relations and forbidding indigenous languages in order to disappear the indigenous in a new way, while continuing “the theft of memory, growth, and dreams” (zanella 8). using the same term is a powerful way to make that connection clear and comment both on the past of residential school transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 19 violence and the present of superficial canadian reconciliation attempts that are a violence in their wish for easy “progress” and erasure of past harms, despite their current reverberations. the colonial violence and racism dimaline describes in the hellscape of a future in which the story is set is not hard to believe, because this future society she imagines builds on what we have already seen happen in the past and which we continue to see happening in the present. in why indigenous literatures matter, daniel heath justice (cherokee nation) emphasizes that “[w]hen apocalypse appears as an overt theme in indigenous writing, it’s more than speculation – it’s experiential, even in its most fantastical, because in a very real way it hasn’t ended” (168). through a depiction of what the world might look like if the current threads of colonial power imbalances and violences are allowed to develop further, the novel shows it all has come to pass in different iterations before: through the residential schools, through different waves of genocide, through the murdered and missing indigenous women, girls, and twospirit people epidemic. the violence native people are subjected to in the text builds on what we have seen in the past and continue to see; it appears as a vision of a spiralic transformation of settler colonizer anti-indigenous violence.7 yet, the alternatives dimaline posits, the new world building possibilities as well as the way people survive through the hardships, are also not new; they are rooted in long histories of survivance and relations across time and space, cultural resurgence, and traditional knowledges. indigenous strength lies in their spiralic relations across time. in the marrow thieves, we follow a teen boy, francis, or french(ie), a nickname inspired by his métis identity. we first meet him when he loses his family to the marrow thieving colonizers (specifically to their police-like force called “recruiters”). he soon laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 20 encounters a new, complex family, created out of different people who were on the run separately and came together for safety and for community, and starts to build relations with them (15). we learn about frenchie’s experiences in his voice, but it is miigwans, the father figure in the new family frenchie becomes a part of, who tells “story,” the complex of narratives which holds indigenous knowledges and experiences all should know to be able to live and thrive in the post-apocalyptic world of the marrow thieves. the novel itself uses a thematic spiralic structure, which allows transformation to come to pass. we learn that frenchie’s new composite family is attempting to run away to safety, on foot through the snow and the woods, with only what they can carry on their backs. they are headed north, away from a new wave of residential schools. stories from survivors who ran away, like miigwans himself, taught them that colonizers are locking up and killing native people. in the beginning of the text, we are told that frenchie’s father, when they were still together, had already told him to walk north: “north is where the others will head. we’ll spend a season up by the bay zone. we’ll hole up in one of those cabins up there and i’ll try to find others. we’ll find a way, frenchie. and up north is where we’ll find home.” “for sure?” [frenchie asks, and his dad responds,] “hells yes, for sure. i know so because we’re going to make a home there. if you make something happen you can count on it being for sure.” (dimaline 6) in an experience of time as spiralic, the knowledge of the victories against oppression gained by earlier generations helps lend confidence in their own generation’s ability to endure and succeed in turn. eventually, frenchie does find a thriving indigenous community up north, and he is reunited with his father who turns out to be a part of it. through the central role transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 21 of cultural continuity and relations across time, both to the ancestors and to those not yet born, spiralic time is evidenced to be a central trope in the text, essential in the struggle against settler colonizer violence. frenchie’s father’s confidence in the future underscores both the importance of this image of a thriving future to motivate the struggle that is happening in the current moment, and the knowledge that this future can and will exist, no matter how hard settler colonizers work to keep indigenous people(s) confined to the past and outside of the contemporary experience. the marrow thieves places indigenous youths’ ability to thrive not in a future of indigenous liberation but in one of a renewed iteration of the constant state of emergency of indigenous apocalypse (canadian “reconciliation” claims notwithstanding). in this way, the novel models resurgence, existing, resisting, loving, surviving, and thriving in a way which can be related directly to our current moment, which is one of an apocalypse in progress since 1492. the novel emphasizes the importance of intergenerational relationality, of cultural continuity, of building relations (blood and otherwise), and both to live fully as indigenous youth and also to resist the violences and the pressures of the settler colonizer structures. the text is not one where indigenous youth live happily ever after in a world that appreciates them; rather, it is a story about indigenous youth figuring out how to still live happily while the apocalypse is everywhere around them. the aim is to show indigenous youth that there is a future in which they can thrive, and that they already have the power to create it. the marrow thieves engages with an indigenous temporality and imagines an indigenous future which is not quite like the next step in the settler colonizer teleological “progress” narrative. it is a future which is, instead, still deeply grounded in the relations to the lands and the stories and histories of the pasts and present times. in a 2017 interview with the star, dimaline explains that she sees her young laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 22 adult novel functioning as making visible the spiralic relations between the ancestors, the youth today, and those not yet born: we have a suicide epidemic in our communities. i’ve done a lot of work in the past with indigenous youth and one of the things i realized is that they didn’t look forward, they didn’t see themselves in any kind of a viable future. and i thought, what if they read this book where they literally see themselves in the future, and not just surviving but being the heroes and being the answer, then that’s it. (dundas) the novel traces a route to cultural continuity despite of and in spite of the contemporary experience where “[t]he end of the world is every day right now” (dundas). while imagining this future of struggle, dimaline’s characters all still get to enjoy life, too. the story is about more than survival in the face of violence. there is also much room for reconnecting to traditional knowledges as they exist transformed in the novel’s future present, as well as for teen angst and joy about love and sex and family. despite the violence of commodification of their literal beings, the characters remain strongly connected to their relations, old and new, and to their own humanity. surviving is more than just physically making it to the next day: it is also about building “a life worth living,” a life where indigenous people can thrive (dimaline 152). the epigraph of the novel reads, “for the grandmothers who gave me strength. / to the children who give me hope,” firmly placing the marrow thieves into relation with both those who came before and those who are yet to grow or even to be born. this relationship across generations is evidence of the spiralic relations going from when time began into the future, as well as a call to attention and action of the need to strengthen these intergenerational relations, for the well-being of indigenous children (both alive today and those not yet born) and, by extension, of indigenous nations and transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 23 their sovereignty. michael chandler and travis proulx (both non-native)’s 2006 research on first nations youth suicide suggests that “cultural continuity” is a core factor in youth suicide. chandler and proulx refer to the discussion of time in western philosophy, from heidegger and kierkegaard to ricoeur to gallagher, to establish that a human’s daily choice to keep living despite hardship is decided by the person’s ability to imagine themselves in a future (127). for humans, our lives only make sense when we can understand ourselves as part of larger story, when we can see our pasts and our presents in a way that helps us anticipate our futures (chandler and proulx 127). a second important aspect of this continuity in time is that, for indigenous youth specifically, this self-continuity is keyed in to cultural continuity. chandler and proulx demonstrate that “persistent peoples require access to shared procedures and practices (cultural tools, if you will) that allow them to imagine and sustain a shared history and a common future” (136, emphasis mine, brackets in the original). their research with first nations in what is currently british columbia, canada indicates that those communities with strong cultural continuity have low or zero rates of youth suicide, while youth suicide rates are “many hundreds of times higher than the national average” for nations that so far have been less successful in maintaining cultural continuity and political sovereignty (138). chandler and proulx conclude that projects that support the continuation or redeveloping of ties to their past and future “work as protective factors that shield [native youth] from the threat of self-harm” (140). lisa wexler (non-native) similarly posits “that a historical understanding of and affiliation with one’s culture can provide indigenous youth with a perspective that transcends the self,” which can help them see themselves as part of their nation’s story and “offers young people a collective pathway forward” (272). her research shows that native american children who know more about their cultural identities and about their laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 24 communities’ histories have a stronger sense of belonging and identity. this supports their self-continuity: when the youth know more about their past and their connections with their ancestors and their place in the community, these are “cultural tools” that they can use so that they can more easily imagine a successful future for themselves in this community (wexler 272). the focus on the relational aspect of this experience is essential here. for indigenous people, self-continuity requires cultural continuity, the belonging in the larger story of the nation and larger sets of relations with traditional lands. dimaline reflects this drive for self-continuity through cultural continuity in the younger generations’ wish to re-learn and live the traditional ways of knowing, embodied in cultural practices they only sort of know. frenchie relays how during their family’s travel north, us kids, we longed for the old-timey. we wore our hair in braids to show it. we made sweat lodges out of broken branches dug back into the earth, covered over with our shirts tied together at the buttonholes. those lodges weren’t very hot, but we sat in them for hours and willed the sweat to pop over our willowy arms and hairless cheeks. (dimaline 21-22) even though they are on the run for the marrow-thieving recruiters forever on their heels, the youth desire to make space and time to re-learn and practice as well as they could those traditional knowledges that teach them who they are, how to relate, and how to be. healing and meaning are found through these resurgence practices, by creating connections between the present generation and all those who have come before. through these practices, the youth actively work to participate in the spiral of indigenous sovereignty of which they are a part. thinking of the past as always present, and of the current self as that of a future transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 25 ancestor—and thus of the present as also a future past—informs the living of the future in the now. there is a present potential to actively choose to make the future that we strive for real in our present. not only does one need to be able to imagine a future to see purpose in living in the now, we need to work on making that future our current reality. through making the spiralic movements and relations visible, the marrow thieves models the many small ways in which we can do that now and speaks directly to indigenous youth to invite them into these spiralic relations. re-centering indigenous ways of knowing is one of the key ways to strengthen selfand cultural continuity. in a 2017 interview with trevor corkum (non-native) for 49th shelf, cherie dimaline herself explains how the marrow thieves grapples with settler colonizers violences such as “residential schools and the danger of shallow reconciliation efforts, commodification of culture,” and she emphasizes that “[i]t's crucial at this time that we accept that the western way of thinking about our world is a broken theory, that indigenous traditional knowledge is vital to any forward movement” (corkum). one moment in the marrow thieves that illustrates this lesson is when it describes a council, led by frenchie’s father, setting off to the capital to try and convince the people in power that a whole new world grounded in indigenous ways of knowing was necessary for a future where everyone could thrive to be possible (dimaline 141). the council recognize that the key to ensuring a futurity on the dying earth is to unlearn eurowestern settler logics and to start from the land. it is crucial to reconceive of the world in a way that will not inevitability lead to another repeat of violence like the coming of early explorers and settlers, like the residential schools, like the destruction of the environment. miigwans, who takes on the role of the family’s mentor and guide, was the guide laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 26 on frenchie’s father and his council’s journey to the seat of the settler government, and describes the reasoning for the attempt: they had this crazy notion that there was goodness left, that someone, somewhere, would see just how insane this whole school thing was. that they could dialogue. that they could explain the system had to die and a new one be built in its place. like that wasn’t scarier to those still in the system than all the dreamlessness and desert wastelands in the world. (dimaline 141) david gaertner (non-native), in a blog post titled “welcome to the desert of reconciliation,” concurs that this moment is one of the most essential in the marrow thieves. gaertner, referring to the same 2017 interview with dimaline by corkum, understands miigwans’ analysis of the moment as dimaline’s refusal of “shallow reconciliation efforts.” the call to take indigenous ways of knowing seriously, and to acknowledge their incommensurability with capitalist settler colonizer societal structures, sets up an understanding of canadian reconciliation as always limited by the state’s own settler colonizer worldview, a worldview which leads canada directly to its own as well as larger planetary destruction. instead, in order to break out of the system non-native people are committed to because of how it solidifies their own position of power, the settler colonizer political economy needs to be thoroughly transformed, starting from indigenous worldviews (gaertner, via coulthard, aug. 2018). the marrow thieves models what centering indigenous ways of knowing during a state of constant, settler colonizer imposed emergency looks like, and, importantly, shows them to be the key to liberation. the novel itself is a story about how things came to be how they are at the end of the narrative, offering teachings on how to understand the world we live in today, and modeling ways to use indigenous ways of knowing to transform the future. we transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 27 begin with frenchie, who never learned his language, and who loses all of his remaining family members at the beginning of the novel. we follow him as he makes a new set of relations, learns some of the language, works to reconnect with ancestral knowledges (with some stumbling, like when he at first does not recognize the importance of the elder minerva’s teachings (38)), and then chooses a path which catalyzes a renewed empowerment of both his new family and larger indigenous communities. he does this so successfully that he even reconnects with his father. this does not, however, mean frenchie is confronted with a choice between the two sets of relations: the story models how he can hold all of his complex relations at once, and remain in reciprocal relations of responsibility with both his blood and chosen relations (zanella 13). the fact that the narrative is told in the past tense by someone who participated in the events suggests that they survived, that they made it, that they are in a situation where they have the time to tell this story which makes up the novel. the story of the novel is a continuation of the “story" that is being told in the novel, the “story" of how the world of the novel came to be how it is. “story” in the novel serves as teachings and guidance for frenchie’s complex new family while they try to find a way to escape the mortal danger of the recruiters. miigwans explains that they all need to know “story,” because it was imperative that we know. he said it was the only way to make the kinds of changes that were necessary to really survive. “a general has to see the whole field to make good strategy,” he’d explain. “when you’re down there fighting, you can’t see much past the threat directly in front of you.” (dimaline 25, my emphasis) “story” are teachings from past iterations of both anti-indigenous violence and indigenous cultural practices. this knowledge is shared so as to allow the listeners of laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 28 “story,” the members of the new family, to make the necessary transformations rather than have repeat experiences. it is through the knowledge of “story” and the earlier iterations of settler violence and indigenous resistance and resurgence that frenchie and his new family know that, if they work to continue their traditional practices, they too can survive this violence. and not only can they survive, but perhaps lessons can be learned from the previous generations’ experiences to ensure indigenous futurity for good. miigwans starts “story” by explaining “anishnaabe people, us, lived on these land for a thousand years,” and when the newcomers “who renamed the land canada” came, the anishnaabe people welcomed them. he goes on the explain how war and disease brought the indigenous peoples to their knees, despite the fact that they were supported by their traditional knowledges. miigwans tells the family, “we were great fighters — warriors, we called ourselves and each other — and we knew these lands, so we kicked a lot of ass.” … “but we lost a lot. mostly because we got sick with new germs” (dimaline 23). because they did not yet have the knowledge needed to defend themselves against these “new germs,” indigenous peoples suffered immense loss. miigwans explains how settler colonizers doubled down on these losses and opened the first residential schools, striving to eradicate indigenous ways of knowing, languages, and even lives. he describes the painful experiences of the earlier generations with a previous iteration of residential schools. these schools might not have been bone marrow factories, but they too were destructive: “we suffered there. we almost lost our languages. many lost their innocence, their laughter, their lives” (dimaline 23). however, the insight miigwans wants the youth to take away is that despite all of the violence and the great losses, as a people, anishnaabe not only survived, but got the schools to close. he explains, “we got through it, and the schools transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 29 were shut down. we returned to our home places and rebuilt, relearned, regrouped. we picked up and carried on” (23). miigwans family, too, can rebuild, relearn, regroup, and carry on. this is what “story” teaches them. while struggles continued and many years were lost to the deep hurt caused by all the losses (“too much pain drowned in forgetting that came in convenient packages: bottles, pills, cubicles where we settled to move around papers” (dimaline 23)), the resurgence of traditional practices, of education within the appropriate cultural contexts (“classrooms we built on our own lands and filled with our own words and books” (24)) is what made the people, the people again. they regained their strength and their inherent sovereignty through remembering their spiralic relations across the generations which informed their identities. miigwans emphasizes that “once we remembered that we were warriors, once we honored the pain and left it on the side of the road, we moved ahead. we were back" (24). the “we” here is the people, his people, yet of many generations ago. it was by reestablishing relations with the earlier generations and the resurgence of traditional knowledges embodied in practices that the earlier generations’ eventual victory was brought into the present, indigenous self and cultural continuity was strengthened, and sovereignty was rebuilt. an attentive listener to “story” can learn from their ancestors, reach for their traditions, and let them be guides in their own struggle for survival. through a reflection of time as spiralic, “story” explains how the thieving of the marrow began: “it was like the second coming of the boats, so many sick people and not enough time to organize peacefully,”, and it describes how native people “were moved off the lands that were deemed ’necessary’ to that government, same way they took reserve land during wartime” (dimaline 87-88). so that the violence of earlier iterations might not return to finish the job, it is important to remember its “story” and laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 30 “set the memory in perpetuity” (25). importantly, traditional knowledges can and should be transformed to fit the new conditions, as a full understanding of history and culture is needed “to make the kinds of changes that were necessary to really survive” and build thriving futures (25). crucially to the novel’s plot and concerns, “story” shows how not just antiindigenous violence reiterates through spiralic movements in time; the key to ending all the violence does too. dimaline locates this key in indigenous cultural continuity, personified by the character of an elder named minerva who speaks the language, practices the culture, and knows how to use herbs for healing (38; 152; 93). when the core family we follow loses minerva, they find her collection of jagged-edged jingles, made from lids taken off with the “camp can opener and stamped with expiry dates and some with company names: campbell’s, heinz” (152). one of the younger ones is confused because jingles are meant to produce noise, which they are told not to do in this current world in which they are being hunted. when he voices this confusion the response is powerful, even though at that point it is still unknown that the jingles are exactly what holds the key to their liberation. one of the older family members explains how “[s]ometimes you risk everything for a life worth living, even if you’re not the one that’ll be alive to live it” (152). this is one of the many moments where the relations across time, across generations, are shown to be central to the characters’ way of conceiving of the world and of their place in it. they are led by their awareness of their roles as future ancestors. not only are their traditional cultural practices essential to their survival as a people, they can be transformed in the moment without losing value (using campbell’s & heinz lids, for example). the jingles connect the people we are following in the story with their ancestors through the continuation of the healing cultural practice of the transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 31 jingle dress dance, born during a previous apocalyptic time, the spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919, transformed for their present (child 126). at the same time, the jingles also connect them to a future where their descendants are thriving, as they are cause for the people to imagine themselves as future ancestors continuing the culture transformed. frenchie’s new community consider themselves not just in relation with their ancestors, but also conceive of themselves as future ancestors to those who are not yet born. in this way, the jingles represent spiralic time through their cultural meaning and the connection across time they represent. when minerva is taken, and the jingles she secretly had been collecting are found, frenchie’s new family decides to stop running. at that point, the new family had lost both their youngest member (riri) to native people collaborating with the recruiters, and their elder (minerva) to the recruiters themselves. having lost their most direct links to the future and the ancestors respectively (zanella 16), and struggling with what it means that he killed a man involved in riri’s murder, frenchie comes to the painful realization that the only way to ensure their continuity is by standing up to their oppressors. he urges his family to stop running away from the danger and instead to charge towards it: the rest of my little family looked at me with curiosity. something had changed. whether it was this second huge loss or the life i’d taken with all the speed of vengeance back at the cliff, i wasn’t sure. but there was no more north in my heart. and i wasn’t sure what i meant to do until i said it out loud. “i’m going after minerva.” (dimaline 153) minerva might have been stolen from them, but the jingles she left them are a strong reminder of the power the family has in their shared knowledges and spiralic relations across time, as well as of the central importance of minerva herself as holder of so laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 32 much knowledge. even without having been sewn onto a dress to perform the healing jingle dress dance, the jingles already carry cultural power to remind the family of their inherent sovereignty and the strength in their relations. once they change direction, the family find another, bigger community made up out of native people from all over. this bigger community is leading a fight against the marrow thieves, and in the process, or as a basis, created a safe-haven for native refugees north of the existing residential schools. hidden behind a cave, their camp, smells of “[t]obacco. cedar. and the thick curl of something more, something i thought i’d only ever smelled with the memory of smell” (dimaline 168). this memory of a smell suggests that the knowledge of it was passed on through the generations, without frenchie ever having been able to experience it himself until he gets to this camp. this memory could be interpreted as a “blood memory.” this recurring trope suggests a kind of memory of a knowledge that is passed on through the generations, without actually ever having been taught. we see it, for example, when frenchie tries to hunt by himself in the very beginning without ever having hunted before. he describes he hopes it will somehow come to him, as some kind of “blood memory” (dimaline 10). the use of “blood memory” here emphasizes the connections across time, even when people were forced to skip the practice of cultural continuity for one or more generations. we learn that the smell of the camp which is known without ever having been smelled before is the smell of sweetgrass, a traditional herb (168). other traditions guide the indigenous community as well: right when frenchie’s family first enters the camp, the council of that camp just ended a sweat to welcome a new council member (dimaline 168). we learn that it is the same council that frenchie’s father traveled with to try and change the world’s leaders’ minds, but with some new members as well. the council members are described to be seven people transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 33 all from different nations, frenchie’s father still with them (169). frenchie finding his father, and the smaller complex family finding this culturally strong and resilient community, is interpreted as proof that the decision to stop running and to take matters in their own hands was a good one (177). from this community, frenchie and his family learn what happened with minerva. the moment recruiters try to take minerva’s bone marrow in the so-called “school,” her singing in the language explodes the whole system. this resurgence of traditional knowledge relies on her “blood memory:” the recruiters would later be identified through dental records… minerva hummed and drummed out an old song on her flannel thighs throughout it all. but when the wires were fastened to her own neural connectors, and the probes reached into her heartbeat and instinct, that’s when she opened her mouth. that’s when she called on her blood memory, her teachings, her ancestors. that’s when she brought the whole thing down. she sang. she sang with volume and pitch and a heartbreaking wail that echoed through her relatives’ bones, rattling them in the ground under the school itself. (dimaline 172) as a result, the whole building is blown up, ending the operations there. the comment on dental records suggest all workers present were killed in the explosion, but minerva survives. through her singing in the language, she connects with the ancestors who are buried underneath the building. this connection through land, through language, through ceremony, and through kinship across time, is what transforms the cultural teachings into the power to bring down the destructive so-called school, and into an opening for a future where indigenous people’s fates are transformed. other native refugees camped in the woods in the area use the smoke of the burning building to smudge. the “campers made their hands into shallow cups and pulled the air over laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 34 their heads and faces, making prayers out of ashes and smoke. real old-timey,” and so they make ceremony out of the end of the violence there (dimaline 174). the power of cultural continuity is in indigenous self-determination and transformation. minerva’s cultural knowledge, some of it passed on through blood memory and thus despite the oppression by settler colonizers, is shown to be the key to the possibility for a thriving indigenous future. another essential aspect of the work for thriving indigenous futures is the relationship with place, with the land and all its relations as the people and the land share their experiences with violence as well as their healing capacities. the newly created diasporic community in the north exists out of indigenous people from all over turtle island. nonetheless, while they come together in their new configurations and in new locations in order to protect their families from the marrow thieves’ settler colonizer violence, this does not mean they have given up their relationships of responsibility with their original homelands. much of what was the united states has been completely destroyed, either flooded by the rising sea level, or turned toxic from environmental degradation. clarence, a leader frenchie meets at the camp up north, explains to him: “closer you get to the coasts,” … “the more water’s left that can be drunk. the middle grounds?” … “nothing. it’s like where the bomb landed and the poison leached into the banks, everything’s gone in all directions till you get further out” (dimaline 193). the water and the land were made unlivable. the suffering of indigenous peoples in this apocalypse caused by a linear settler temporality’s obsession with so-called progress and development is directly related to the suffering of the land and its other relations. for the people who belong to those lands, true healing on turtle island requires the healing of the land. clarence explains this to frenchie: transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 35 “all we need is the safety to return to our homelands. then we can start the process of healing.” i was confused. “how can you return home when it’s gone? can’t you just heal out here?” miig and general gave each other knowing looks, and clarence was patient with his answer. “i mean we can start healing the land. we have the knowledge, kept through the first round of these blasted schools, from before that, when these visitors first made their way over here like angry children throwing tantrums. when we heal our land, we are healed also.” then he added, “we’ll get there. maybe not soon, but eventually.” (dimaline 193, my emphasis) the traditional knowledges, passed on through the generations, guide clarence to knowing that the lands are as important as the cultures. clarence explains that essential knowledge about the land and how to care for it was passed on across the previous iterations of settler violences. it is that knowledge that informs indigenous ways of knowing and being even in their apocalyptic future present. they know that “[m]aybe not soon, but eventually,” the land to whom they belong will be healed and future generations of indigenous peoples will live healed and thriving lives. trusting on the futurity promised in a temporality that is spiralic, their actions are motivated by the idea (discussed above) that “[s]ometimes you risk everything for a life worth living, even if you’re not the one that’ll be alive to live it” (dimaline 152). “our history is still unfolding” while not literally in the grip of a bone marrow extricating machine, indigenous people in canada are in the grip of canadian genocidal violence, the commodification of indigenous cultures, and the disruption of their relationships with their lands and laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 36 waters. in response to the death grip of the settler colonizer nation on their lands, idle no more emphasized the central role of culture and continuity for indigenous sovereignty. round dance flash mobs were an essential part of idle no more’s actions; centering culture and indigenous people being indigenous people (rather than centering the interaction with settler colonizers and/or the settler colonizer state), the round dances were a powerful experience for the drummers, singers, and dancers who participated. evidenced by idle no more, and illustrated by the marrow thieves, the power of relations, language, culture is in their not being static but living, even as the situations in different moments in time vary. the marrow thieves offers possibilities of healing in the future. it presents a spiral of relations through writing and telling story that center resurgence, relationality, and a plurality of futures where native people do more than merely struggle to survive: they find ways to build community, create new relations, and fight for what matters, while still being honest to the experience of violence and other trauma that native people exponentially have to live through. recognizing the working of spiralic time as a non-linear temporality that allows the past to also always be the future emphasizes continuity and intergenerational relations. “story” within the story of the marrow thieves models the cyclical churning of time that loops around itself in this imagined future of the novel that is also the present. it models living in good relation and offers cultural resurgence as a key to ending the violence. this resurgence is always also cultural continuity, even if the continuity is one only accessible through “blood memory,” rather than being purposely passed on through living relations. the marrow thieves provides that key through transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 37 making its critique on superficial reconciliation and through its embodiment of continuity of culture transformed. this approach to modeling a possible indigenous future and to giving space to teen angst, love, and joy in the midst of struggle, as the marrow thieves does, is essential, because as aman sium (tigrinya and eritrean) and eric ritskes (non-native) write, “[i]f we are waiting for the dismantling of colonial structures before we focus on rebuilding indigenous and decolonial alternatives, we will always be too late” (viii). instead, through the resurgence of embodied practices that rebuild the relationship with the land, both the peoples and the lands to which they belong can be healed. in sylvia mcadam’s words (speaking about idle no more’s purpose): it is in the lands and waters that indigenous people’s history is written. our history is still unfolding; it’s led by our song and drums. (67) notes 1 armstrong gives an example of how the cycles of change inform how syilx tell time as “change relative to other things” (167). she cites her father’s reference to the 18181819 spanish flu pandemic as “the-winter-people-died.” she relays that the “great flu epidemic killed over two-thirds of our population, when my father was in his puberty. that change was what happened, not the number of years counted from some point one thousand nine hundred and nineteen years past. the count of years is irrelevant” (167). 2 these and other experiences of and perspectives on time are also reflected in the different texts that make up the 2012 anthology of indigenous science fiction walking the clouds, edited by grace l. dillon. 3 these are listed as “the indian act, the fisheries act, the canadian environmental assessment act, and the navigable water act (amongst many others)” (the kino-ndaniimi collective 21). 4 diabo reveals how the 2012 termination policy was a direct extension from earlier legislation such as the indian act and the 1969 “white paper on indian policy which set out a plan to terminate indian rights,” of which the original 5-year timeline to achieve the goal of termination was extended to a slow, “long-term implementation” (55). laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 38 5 simpson admits it took her many years to realize that the stories the elders she was learning from told her were of a practice that also embodied a theory, and that she was only able to get to this transformed understanding “through deep engagement with the nishnaabeg systems inherent in nishnaabewin… including story or theory, language learning, ceremony, hunting, fishing, ricing, sugar making, medicine making, politics, and governance” (19). nishnaabeg knowledge is embodied knowledge, which enables a transformation of worldview and of being in the world that strengthens nishnaabeg nationhood despite, or regardless of, settler colonial structural violence (7). 6 for more on this common settler trope, see philip j. deloria (yankton dakota), playing indian, yale university press, 1998. 7 where a heuristic of spiralic temporality keeps us focused on the ways indigenous peoples and their ways of knowing and being are always in relation to those who have come before and those who are yet to come, we notice how settler colonial time is a temporality weaponized to obscure the spiralic reality of intergenerational relationality and cyclical returns with transformations. despite its own attempts to hide the continuous recurrence in different forms of its genocidal project, settler colonial violence, too, participates in indigenous spiralic temporality, because it is part of indigenous lived experiences. works cited allen, chadwick. blood narrative: indigenous identity in american indian and maori literary and activist texts. duke up, 2002. allen, paula gunn. the sacred hoop: recovering the feminine in american indian traditions: with a new preface. beacon press, 1992. armstrong, jeanette christine. constructing indigeneity: syilx okanagan oraliture and tmixw centrism. dissertation. ernst-moritz-arndt-universität greifswald, greifswald. institut für botanik und landschaftsökologie, 2009. brooks, lisa. “the primacy of the present, the primacy of place: navigating the spiral of history in the digital world.” pmla, vol. 127, no. 2, 2012, pp. 308-316. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 39 bruyneel, kevin. the third space of sovereignty: the postcolonial politics of usindigenous relations. u of minnesota p, 2007. chandler, michael, and travis proulx. "changing selves in changing worlds: youth suicide on the fault-lines of colliding cultures." archives of suicide research, vol. 10, no. 2, 2006, pp. 125-140. child, brenda j. my grandfather’s knocking sticks: ojibwe family life and labor on the reservation. minnesota historical society, 2014. coates, kenneth. # idlenomore: and the remaking of canada. u of regina p, 2015. corkum, trevor. “the chat with 2017 governor general's award winner cherie dimaline,” 49th shelf, nov. 27, 2017. https://49thshelf.com/blog/2017/11/282/the-chat-with-2017-governorgeneral-s-award-winner-cherie-dimaline cornum, lou. "the space ndn’s star map." the new inquiry, jan. 26, 2015. https://thenewinquiry.com/the-space-ndns-star-map/ coulthard, glen. "place against empire: understanding indigenous anti-colonialism." affinities: a journal of radical theory, culture, and action (2010): 79-83. ---. red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. u of minnesota p, 2014. diabo, russ. “harper launches major first termination plan: as negotiating tables legitimize canada’s colonialism,” first nation strategic bulletin (2012), reprinted in the winter we danced: voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement, 2014, pp. 51-64. dimaline, cherie. the marrow thieves. cormorant books, 2017. laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 40 dundas, deborah with cherie dimaline. “cherie dimaline: hopes and dreams in the apocalypse” toronto star, nov. 6, 2017: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2017/11/06/cherie-dimalinehopes-and-dreams-in-the-apocalypse.html gaertner, dave. “welcome to the desert of reconciliation.” novel alliances: allied perspectives on literature, art, and new media, 31 aug. 2018. novelalliances.com/2018/08/31/welcome-to-the-desert-of-reconciliation/ ---. “reconciliation: like an echo turned inside out.” novel alliances: allied perspectives on literature, art, and new media, oct. 25, 2018. novelalliances.com/2018/10/25/reconciliation-like-an-echo-turned-inside-out/ harjo, joy, and gloria bird, eds. reinventing the enemy's language: contemporary native women's writing of north america. ww norton & company, 1997. justice, daniel heath. why indigenous literatures matter. wilfried laurier up, 2018. kappo, tanya with hayden king. “‘our people were glowing’: an interview with tanya kappo.” the winter we danced: voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement, 2014, pp. 67-71. kino-nda-niimi collective. “idle no more: the winter we danced.” the winter we danced: voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement, 2014, pp. 21-26. mcadam, sylvia (saysewahum). “armed with nothing more than a song and a drum: idle no more.” the winter we danced: voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement, 2014, pp. 65-67. muzyka, kyle. “from growing medicine to space rockets: what is indigenous futurism?” cbc unreserved, mar. 08, 2019. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/looking-towards-the-future-indigenoustransmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 41 futurism-in-literature-music-film-and-fashion-1.5036479/from-growing-medicineto-space-rockets-what-is-indigenous-futurism-1.5036480. nepinak, derek. “transforming unity: an interview with assembly of manitoba chiefs grand chief derek nepinak.” interviewed by leah gazan. the winter we danced: voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement, 2014, pp. 83-92. o’brien, jean m. firsting and lasting: writing indians out of existence in new england. u of minnesota p, 2010. rifkin, mark. beyond settler time: temporal sovereignty and indigenous selfdetermination. duke up, 2017. rivera cusicanqui, silvia. “ch'ixinakax utxiwa. a reflection on the practices and discourses of decolonization.” the south atlantic quarterly, vol 111, no. 1, winter 2012. english translation © 2012 duke up. from ch’ixinakax utxiwa. una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores (buenos aires: tinta limón ediciones, 2010). simpson, leanne betasamosake. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. u of minnesota p, 2017. sium, aman, and eric ritskes. "speaking truth to power: indigenous storytelling as an act of living resistance." decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, vol. 2, no. 1, 2013, pp. i-x. vizenor, gerald robert. manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. u of nebraska press, 1999. ---. the heirs of columbus. wesleyan u p, 1991. laura maria de vos “spiralic temporality and cultural continuity for indigenous sovereignty” 42 watts, vanessa. "indigenous place-thought and agency amongst humans and nonhumans (first woman and sky woman go on a european world tour!)" decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, vol. 2, no. 1, 2013, pp. 20-34. wexler, lisa. "the importance of identity, history, and culture in the wellbeing of indigenous youth." the journal of the history of childhood and youth, vol. 2, no. 2, 2009, pp. 267-276. zanella, patrizia. “witnessing story and creating kinship in a new era of residential schools: cherie dimaline’s the marrow thieves.” sovereign histories, gathering bones, embodying land, special issue of studies in american indian literature (forthcoming 2021). microsoft word radocay-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 185 santee frazier. aurum: poems. university of arizona press, 2019. 61 pp. isbn: 9780816539628. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/aurum the epigraph of aurum, taken from uruguayan political journalist and writer eduardo galeano’s poem, “los nadies” (“the nobodies”), introduces the lyrical subjects of santee frazier’s (cherokee nation) latest poetry collection. these subaltern “nobodies” are “owners of nothing,” who have no kin and are “nobody’s children.” they have even been rendered “nobodied” and “dying through life, screwed every which way” (galeano 1991 73). according to galeano, the interrelated forces of colonialism, genocide, and capitalist exploitation produce these othered, criminalized subjects: “who are not but could be. /… who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper” (73). in his 1971 work, las venas abiertas de américa latina (open veins of latin america), galeano situates these nobodies in the long 600-year history of the colonization of the americas. he shows how the “open veins” of latin america—both in terms of flesh and of mineral ore— have been “transmuted” into euro-american capital. he explains that colonial capitalism’s transmutations work by brutally yoking both human and non-human systems to the “universal gearbox” of capital—“everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources” (1997, 2). in aurum, latin for gold and from which the chemical symbol au is drawn, frazier lyricizes a colonial capitalist present that forcibly puts together ore and human bodies into the same totalizing system of capital accumulation. he populates this “afterworld” with nobodies who have transcorporeal ore bodies engaged in the “ritual of sunrise, of shovel, and the gearing mechanisms of progress,” such as the man in the poem, “ore body,” who smears “gold into brick” and “suck[s] the gold from a paper bag” (56; 4). if the book lacks any identifiable indigenous cultural signifiers, it is because frazier begins with the premise that genocide, removal, and erasure have nobodied so many indigenous people. frazier’s collection of poetry attempts to respond to an almost hopeless situation: what are we left with when native language, culture, and identity are stripped away? to frazier, this question is not simply about accounting for the horrors of colonialism or capitalism. it is a representational problem: how do we represent nobodies as indigenous subjects or paved city streets as indigenous land without substituting stripped away cultural signifiers with racial tropes? taking up a concept developed by frantz fanon in black skin white masks (1952), the opening poem, “lactification,” explores the role that euro-american colonial language jonathan radocay review of aurum 186 plays in transmuting the “open veins” of north america, in colonizing minds as well as bodies. the poem presents a lyrical image of a beaten body that has been taught “to take a switch across the arches.” as though giving advice to a colonial administrator or to a captain of a frontier fort, the poem instructs, “[s]trike behind his ear,” and uses the musical language of a whipping to describe the beaten body’s “forearms lashed and etched.” at the same time, the poem stages the body as an object of scientific study (or perhaps as a corpse in an autopsy), detailing a “[n]ose, misshapen, / fungal curds over a frown ribbed and chapped.” the language of scientific description cannot help but bleed into the language of colonial violence, where a “[n]ubbin” of wounded flesh only “sounds like a clavicle” and no longer resembles an anatomical body part—the body transformed into flesh. like fanon, frazier is not just interested in representing the physical violence of racism and colonialism. frazier’s nobodies are not helpless, tragic figures. rather, he is more interested in how the “culling of melanin,” as a colonial and racial project, extends even into the psychological realm, to the level of perception and self-identity, by making available only a racialized “tale of wiry locks, hank of charred skin” (2). in aurum, frazier departs from his more narrative-driven debut collection, dark thirty (2009), and more fully leverages the power of his language’s precise rhythm and sound to disrupt the violent logics of colonial language and to evoke the indigenous places of his life not only in oklahoma city (frazier 2018, 42-43), but also in albuquerque, nm, muscogee, ok, and syracuse, ny (2020, n.pag). he draws upon his experiences in these places to create the lyrical afterworlds of dark thirty and aurum. however, where dark thirty takes us on a primarily narrative-focused tour of indian country, his latest collection progressively strips away story in favor of a soundscape of lyrical images. aurum moves from the narrative impulse found in poems such as “lactification,” “ore body,” and “sun perch” to the bare, sonic image fragments that constellate the last and longest poem, “half-life.” accompanying the poems in the collection are illustrations by jameson chas banks (seneca-cayuga nation, cherokee nation), micah wesley (muscogee [creek] nation, kiowa tribe), and monty little (diné) that offer multiple portraits of the book’s nobodies and mirror the fragmentated and strippeddown quality of frazier’s images. these portraits are striking; haunting and taunting alongside frazier’s verse, they accentuate his lyrical style. frazier’s tight control of image and sound to render landscape places him in a poetic genealogy that includes arthur sze and jon davis, whom he worked with at the institute of american indian arts (iaia) in santa fe, but also, and perhaps especially, richard hugo. both craft exquisitely detailed images of bleak landscapes to explore transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 187 how the accumulated detritus of these places shapes individual subjects. although frazier’s poems predominantly feature lonely and isolated voices, these voices belong to subjects who have adapted to these landscapes and who enjoy how “the hazy night air stank of burnt tar, / hamburger patties, and dumpsters” (22). frazier’s allegorical persona, mangled, first introduced in dark thirty, returns in frazier’s second collection and echoes fellow iaia alumna esther belin’s (diné) persona, ruby, in from the belly of my beauty (1999). mangled is perhaps the loudest of aurum’s choir of nobodies and “embodies the struggle of indigenous people who were left without a sense of identity, or a sense of culture and a sense of belonging to american society and culture” (frazier 2018, 38). mangled is no victim, however. he is one-part postindian trickster (who could belong in a gerald vizenor novel) and onepart vaudeville, a nobody straight out of the early twentieth century whose “oily iron” face has a “skillet shine” and who has “[n]o kin to call his own” (24). he sings racist hank williams songs and pantomimes “playing his ribs” like an accordion “thumb to pinkie, pressing the flesh between bone, foot tamping pavement” (14). for frazier, mangled equally embodies aurum’s distinctive lyrical qualities and imagery and is defined by an excess of trickster performativity. but what frazier wants to emphasize is not just mangled’s visual pantomiming but also his “tune, his humming of the knife, the slow slimming of his lips to song”—the musical qualities of mangled’s performance itself (25). in the associations of place that sound and image can provoke, frazier sees the possibility—however partial and limited—of rendering and recuperating nobodied indigenous subjects like mangled. the fragmented images of “half-life” explore these associations of sight, sound, and smell, mapping out a landscape of indigenous presence. the landscape that these images produce is nonetheless broken and disconnected by ongoing settler colonial violence, like a plat map that shows the checkerboarding of cherokee lands after their allotment at the beginning of the twentieth century. even still, frazier gives us optimistic “glimpses” of indigenous presence. we hear the sound of children “leap[ing] a puddle, / dome bellied— / sticky with pop— / plum-dark feet and ankles,” even as an image of bodies “crammed through the windshield” of a “t-bird bottomed-out / in a ditch” follows (30-31). the sound and smell of greasy food such as “[p]into beans, / salt meat melted into the juice” and “[c]an-shaped meat, / sliced, / fried in bacon grease” function as rez food signifiers of kin and community, even as they also function as signifiers of the “[b]eanscum face” of a railroad locomotive (47). industry and community in frazier’s landscape jonathan radocay review of aurum 188 are inseparable, and the industrial production of “grain makes everything smell fried.” industry “is a bowl of beans smashed with mustard” (53). the most striking feature of frazier’s images are not visual; his images proceed first from his language’s sonic and even olfactory qualities, from vibrations of gospel on the radio, “[s]immering corn,” the “guzzle” of a water well, and the “chucking” of “grain toward chickens” (49). to understand the sonic grammar of frazier’s images— especially the violent ones—you must listen to the “vowels echoing / off the carbon steel” of a head smashed into a desk (55). in fact, frazier’s images prioritize these sensory qualities to counter overwhelmingly visual colonial representations of native peoples. “half-life” concludes with a slide projection show of racist newspaper headlines and a scientific model of a human skeleton made possible through the genocide of native peoples. frazier uses the sound of his images to disrupt the visual colonial gaze of the slideshow. it is this colonial visuality that orders the textbook version of events, that says “your village was razed, grunts smothered, / children left to twirl legless in scorched maize” (61). aurum is not just an ambitious collection that confronts important political and aesthetic questions about giving voice to indigenous experience amid the ongoing violence of genocide, settler colonialism, erasure, and capitalist exploitation. it also renders in vivid detail the grounded reality of everyday indigenous struggle and survival. frazier’s poems are full of (painfully) exquisite language and searing imagery that offers a truly original poetics of place. the strength of his collection may be in its uncompromising dedication to the power of image and sound to convey the sensory complexity of indigenous landscapes, to move beyond the colonial dominance of the visual domain, and to weave together other modes of experiencing place. aurum is an enormous achievement and powerfully showcases frazier’s distinctive and profound lyrical approach. this is a collection full of possibility. jonathan radocay, university of california, davis works cited: belin, esther. from the belly of my beauty. u of arizona p, 1999. fanon, frantz. black skin white masks. translated by charles lam markmann. grove press, 1967. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 189 frazier, santee. dark thirty. u of arizona p, 2009. ---. “‘those people that are invisible’: an interview with santee frazier.” interview by james mackay. journal of working-class studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 2018, pp. 36-48. ---. “first person: talking with poet santee frazier.” interview by mitch teich. north country public radio, 21 feb. 2020, https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/40672/20200221/firstperson-talking-with-poet-santee-frazier. accessed 7 nov. 2020. galeano, eduardo. open veins of latin america. translated by cedric belfrage. monthly review press, 1997. ---. the book of embraces. translated by cedric belfrage. w.w. norton, 1991. microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 104 indigenous activism, community sustainability, and the constraints of canzus settler nationhood paul r. mckenzie-jones settler nationhood, by necessity, positions indigenous peoples as oppositional—to both settlement and nationhood. historically, this opposition was viewed, from the settler perspective of process, as something to be overcome, either through eradication or assimilation. contemporarily, settlerism is often framed as the process having been completed, under which the eradication and erasure of indigenous peoples is a foregone, or assumed, conclusion. indigenous sovereignties and communities are deemed obsolete, or temporary nuisance situations that will ultimately disappear through assimilation. this is true even in those settler states that declare allegiance to nation-to-nation relationships with the indigenous peoples within their borders. this essay explores ongoing and contemporary methods of indigenous opposition to settler nationhood and the settler-colonial processes of upholding that nationhood. through activism and community sustainability, indigenous peoples successfully, albeit painfully and often with great sacrifice, constrain the process of absolute settlement in the four canzus nations—canada, australia, new zealand, and the united states—that initially rejected the united nations’ declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (undrip). despite historic and continuing expressions of colonial violence from these states, each has since partially accepted undrip as an “aspirational document,” although they maintain that the document is irreconcilable with settler-national legal systems (canada, statement of support). what is often ignored, or unknown, about the united nations’ statement is that it was itself the result of processes of particular strands of indigenous resistance to settler-nationhood that began in the 1970s. in the decades preceding and including the 1960s, indigenous rights groups most commonly sought restitution to land within the boundaries of the settler-nation states that surrounded them and formal recognition of their cultural, political, and territorial sovereignty, fighting domestic assimilationist policies designed to absorb them completely into the dominant settler cultures. there were exceptions to the trajectory, however. in 1927, deskaheh brought haudenosaunee issues before the league of nations and formally requested membership status for the iroquois confederacy. his actions also inspired the us/canada paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 105 border-crossing protests led by tuscarora chief clinton rickard, which resulted in the united states formally agreeing to abide by article 3 of the 1974 jay treaty, which recognized indigenous rights to freedom of travel and trade across the imposed boundary. in the 1950s, the national congress of american indians sought collaborations of collective indigenous selfdetermination with central american indigenous communities and used international diplomatic rhetoric in their campaigns against us assimilation policies. it was in the 1970s, however, that these groups and others influenced by them, began reaching out in earnest across settler international boundaries, seeking collaboration among global indigenous communities, and asserting their rights before the united nations human rights councils. in 1974, the newly formed international indian treaty council (iitc) issued a declaration of continuing independence at a gathering of 97 indigenous nations at standing rock, north dakota. the iitc included amongst its members several veterans of the violent state siege a year earlier at wounded knee on the nearby pine ridge reservation. immediately after issuing the declaration, the iitc opened an office directly opposite the united nations headquarters in new york city. three years later, the group received consultative status from the un as a non-governmental organization (ngo) (international indian treaty council). during this three-year period, the national indian brotherhood of canada (nib) was awarded consultative status in 1975, before the un conferred the slightly less authoritative observer status to the world council of indigenous peoples (wcip). at this moment in time, both the nib and the wcip were under the leadership of george manuel (lightfoot 7). the december 2007 un declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples was the result of 40 years’ worth of campaigning and consultation with these and many other indigenous rights organizations. this is a movement that sheryl lightfoot (lake superior band of ojibwe) categorizes as a “subtle revolution” within global indigenous politics (lightfoot 12).1 the process was long, often fraught with delays, and progressed in small, incremental steps. in 1982, a working group on the rights of indigenous peoples was established, finally producing a draft for “internal consideration” a full decade later in 1993. the next step was the allocation of 19952004 as the international decade of the world’s indigenous people, before undrip was finally constituted in december 2007. the final vote among un members was 143 nations in favor, 11 abstentions, and the 4 refusals (engle 143). the un was not the sole avenue for the assertion of international indigenous rights transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 106 during this time period, however. in “international human rights and indigenous peoples: the move toward the multicultural state,” s. james anaya (apache and purépecha) discussed the need for indigenous peoples to continue to live within settler states with their cultures intact, including “rights to land and natural resources, [which] are embodied in indigenous customary law and institutions that regulate indigenous societies” (anaya 15). anaya showcased the ways that, prior to the un declaration, the organization of american states in 1988 and the international labor organization convention 169 (ilo 169) in 1989 proposed and ratified guidelines by which these rights should be embedded into settler and international law. within these frameworks, he argued, the participation and consultation mandated by ilo 169 and the later (then draft) undrip placed “a burden on a government to justify, in terms consistent with the full range of applicable norms concerning indigenous peoples, any decision that is contrary to the expressed preferences of the affected indigenous group” (anaya 56). this burden, while supportive of indigenous refusals to accept settlerism as absolute, is antithetical to settler refusals to acknowledge the full sovereignty of indigenous peoples within their constructed borders. this is the conflict at the heart of each of the four case studies that follow.2 each of the four refusing settler states argued that undrip threatened their national sovereignties, even though undrip ultimately protects these sovereignties by formally recognizing their status as the dominant societies and nation-states within which concessions should be made internally to domestic indigenous communities. it is a binary, oppositional relationship that is the dominant narrative of indigenous affairs within the settler nations, a narrative which frames the simple fact of indigenous existence as resistance, or as audra simpson (kahnawake) describes it in mohawk interruptus, as politics of refusal—refusal to be dominated, defined, assimilated, or eradicated (simpson 11). for simpson, the politics of refusal reject the politics of recognition, in which the settler states determine the extent and effectiveness of formal recognition of indigenous peoples. instead, refusal requires the acknowledgement and upholding of indigenous sovereignties on their terms. the settler nations in question are unwilling to admit that their assertions of national sovereignty are the very constructs that continue to attempt to dominate, define, assimilate, and eradicate indigenous sovereignties. they prefer, instead, to argue that these impulses of erasure are historical artefacts, and that they now practice nation-to-nation relationships of equality with indigenous communities. leanne betasamosake simpson (michi saagiig nishnaabeg) counters paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 107 this in as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance and argues that “colonialism as a structure is not changing. it is shifting to further consolidate its power, to neutralize our resistance, to ultimately fuel extractivism” (simpson l. 46). according to sheryl lightfoot, this process of shifting often takes the form of “over-compliance,” wherein a state will “go beyond its legal or normative commitments, [but] it still falls short of indigenous demands and the expectations of the broader indigenous rights consensus” (lightfoot 123). it is within this framework of shifting, over-compliant expressions of settler-colonialism—such as the canzus states practise—that the politics of refusal, as defined by audra simpson, is essential. it is a refusal to accept the assertion of absolute settlement and the contingent eradication of indigenous peoples, politically, legally, and culturally, that this assertion entails within the settler-national borders. oppositional indigenous resistance, or refusal, is thus often confusing to the settler communities simply because they see nationhood as complete, due to their mythic narratives of settlement and the rejection of their own self-styled subjugated status as colonial subjects of the british empire: in canada, with confederation in 1867, national citizenship in 1947, and then the constitution act of 1982; in australia through independence in 1901 and the australia acts of 1986; in new zealand, with the 1947 constitutional amendment and the 1987 constitution act; and in the us, with revolution in 1776. the completion of nationhood was often sealed with the rejection of colonial oversight in these settler narratives, except for the united states, where it occurred with the official closure of the frontier in 1890, a year that also arbitrarily marked the euphemistically argued “end of the indian wars.” as stated earlier, this is also a key indicator of settler nationhood—the removal of the indigenous obstacle. each of these processes of statehood, or nationhood, were positioned as assertions of independent sovereignty, either from direct british rule or, in later years, freedom from the softer administrative strictures of crown veto over national laws. the obvious exception is the united states, which chose the violent rupture of revolution to assert domestic national sovereignty. this settler confusion is often compounded by an equal lack of understanding of settlercolonialism from within. this confusion, or colonial unknowing, is deeply embedded within the anglosphere. having furnished the mythology of their origins as having been the innocent victims of, and ultimately successfully resistant to, colonial oversight themselves, these settler nations are loath to admit to their own colonial processes. they cannot, or will not, see that transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 108 rather than continue to maintain the separate legal and diplomatic relationships with distinct indigenous peoples, they internalized the colonial process and used it to administer and control indigenous people as a homogenized domestic minority population. or, that the very processes of their settlement were not innocent, but explicitly aimed at the eradication of the incumbent occupiers of the land they coveted. this is despite these same mythologies framing those indigenous peoples in historical opposition to western settlement and nationhood, and legal precedents in each settler nation directly connecting their legal relationships with indigenous peoples to their prior colonial-settler status.3 in the us, chief justice john marshall’s argument of inherited rights of discovery in the supreme court decision that rendered indigenous communities as “domestic dependent nations” still stands (cherokee nation v. georgia). in 2013, walter echo hawk (pawnee) argued that it is this “legacy of conquest” that makes undrip a necessity as an attempt to “repair the persistent denial of indigenous rights by entrenched forces implanted by the legacy of colonialism” (echo hawk 2013, 100).4 in canada, the royal proclamation of 1763 is the template for all federal relationships with indigenous nations. in australia, the english concept of terra nullius still defines the state relationship with indigenous peoples, while in new zealand, all roads lead back to the treaty of waitangi and the alleged willing cession of sovereignty to the crown. at each point of the settler processes of nationhood, indigenous peoples have become more explicitly “othered,” often equally romanticized, infantilized, demonized, and homogenized, in the minds of the settler communities at large. most of these processes have shifted, or at least attempted to shift, all blame for social injustice in indigenous communities to their own doors, rather than accept responsibility for creating systems that facilitated these injustices. as such, resistance is never seen as a form of community sustainability, but as an affront to progress, and is often met with excessively violent state suppression. meanwhile, cultural motifs, such as the plains warrior in the us and even indigenous nations’ names, have been appropriated and co-opted as settler “honoring”—through military terminology, a trope that is brilliant dissected by winona laduke in the militarization of indian country, sports mascots, and commercial brand names—in a manner which ultimately results in further social, economic, and cultural eradication of indigenous peoples and exacerbates systemic exclusion from the dominant settler society. paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 109 at the same time, settlers often attempt to deny, redefine, or even claim, indigeneity to sate their own needs for authentic heritage and belonging in a yearning for validation of identity as something other than settler. this issue can be seen in depressingly repetitive controversies across the canzus states. in 2017, the canadian governor general described the indigenous population as immigrants, while there was a deliberately placed “appropriation prize” in the may edition of write magazine, and indigenous rejections of bestselling-author joseph boyden’s ever-morphing claims to indigeneity were vehemently attacked within settler society. in the united states, such false claims as boyden’s are propagated by ward churchill, andrea smith, susan taffe reid, and rachel dolezal, who, in addition to her faked african american identity, claimed she was raised blackfoot in a tipi and was a skilled bow hunter by the age of two (last real indians). each one of these is a person who inhabited a position of responsibility and trust towards indigenous or other people of color. in australia, indigenous leaders have called for dna testing as one route to weed out fake claims of indigeneity, although this itself is a route fraught with complicated issues of asserting dna over culture as the precursor for identity acceptance. in aotearoa/new zealand, ani mikaere’s 2004 essay, “are we all new zealanders now? a māori response to the päkehä quest for indigeneity,” addresses issues of päkehä claims to indigeneity and discusses the extent that settler processes would need to be unraveled for these claims to be taken seriously.5 in her essay, mikaere argues that for the päkehä, or settlers, to even begin to claim indigeneity and truly reconcile themselves to the māori, then māori social justice must prevail across all of aotearoa. rather than expect māori to reconcile past differences under päkehä (or new zealand) law, the päkehä must submit to the tangata whenua, or māori law and knowledge, as the law of the land. here, the politics of māori sustainability is very clearly wrapped up in the dismantling of the settler state or, at the very least, a refusal to allow settler determination “to forget or disguise the past beyond recognition” (mikaerea 8). mikaerea’s essay could speak to indigenous peoples and settler relationships across the world, especially reflecting the same settler practices and indigenous concerns and resonating deeply with many of the themes and issues within many other indigenous intellectual frameworks across anglo-settler nations. as with new zealand’s reconciliation process with the indigenous peoples of aotearoa, we can also see trauma in the settler-colonial relationship with indigenous peoples in the other canzus states: in canada, as discussed by glen coulthard in transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 110 red skins, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition; in australia, as discussed by elizabeth povinelli in the cunning of recognition: indigenous alterities and the making of australian multiculturalism; and in the united states/canada “borderlands” in audra simpson’s mohawk interruptus: political life across the borders of settler states.6 a question then, is how, within this framework of misconception and opposition, can we see indigenous community sustainability and activism as constraining absolute settlement and nationhood in these states, as simpson so eloquently argues in mohawk interruptus? if we begin in canada, with recent issues and events at muskrat falls, which is just one flashpoint out of many, one can argue that the simple fact of forcing the government to engage and interact with indigenous objections is an admission that the project of settler nationhood, so dependent upon indigenous erasure, is thereby incomplete. muskrat falls is in a region that is home to inuit and innu communities whose water and homes are under threat from a hydroelectric dam in the mista-shipu, or the lower churchill river. in a somewhat tragic irony, the dam in the mistashipu—which threatens to unleash methylmercury levels into lake melville, a local source for food for many inuit people, at 200% of health canada safety levels—was part of the new dawn agreement meant to accommodate innu land claims that arose out of the creation of an earlier hydroelectric dam in the upper churchill in the early 1970s (office of public engagement). while the new dawn agreement was made after consultation with innu communities (and not all were in favor of the project), inuit communities pointed to the lack of prior informed consent on their behalf, as mandated by article 32.2 of undrip, before the project began. here, we see the unfortunate imbalance of settler-indigenous relations, as the accommodation of one group leads to the dispossession of another. thus, the cycle of settlerism that was used to divide and remove indigenous presences from favored land in the 18th and 19th centuries is being repeated in the 21st to continue advancing the economic and commercial wealth of the settler state. undercutting this revisited removal is the settler-state refusal to acknowledge or acquiesce to equal indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. but, we are also seeing, in this process of forced accommodation of indigenous resistance, a recognition that indigenous presences were not entirely successfully removed, and they therefore continue to hinder the completion of the process of absolute settlement. the dam project is under construction by nalcor, a crown corporation of the newfoundland and labrador government, partially funded by deferral loans, and is being paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 111 championed as a renewable energy project to provide electricity and to transition away from oil and gas dependence. according to local inuit leaders and other opponents, however, there is a serious danger of communities being flooded, that most of the energy will be exported out of the region, and that the dam will seriously damage inuit and innu health, cultures, and basic human rights in the process (mortillaro). each of these outcomes is in direct violation of undrip, especially in regard to article 1, which states that “indigenous peoples have the right to the full enjoyment, as a collective or as individuals, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms” (undrip article 1), as well as article 2, under which states are directed to provide mechanisms for the “prevention of…any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories, or resources” (undrip article 2 (c)). protests by indigenous residents and non-indigenous allies included the make muskrat right campaign and the labrador land protectors, both of whom sought to shut the project down in order to protect and preserve community sustainability in the region. in october 2016, there was a two-week hunger strike, started by local inuk artist billy gauthier and later joined by delilah saunders and jerry kohlmeister, until the provincial government agreed to indigenous communities reviewing the environmental impact reports. the hunger strikes, which can be read as literal and symbolic representations of the effects that the dam will have on local indigenous communities, raised awareness beyond the local level, as news outlets across canada gradually began to take notice of the environmental and logistical repercussions of completing the project. while the hunger strike ended, the protests did not, with blockades and encampments attempting to stop the project being completed. in may 2017, 50 residents of the mud lake village in labrador were evacuated after flooding put their community underwater. this flooding reignited fears about a section of the dam called the north spur, which residents argue will buckle and cause an even greater flood in the near future, especially after a landslide in the same region occurred in february 2018 (“power to mud lake cut off”; “landslide at north spur”). the most prominent lawsuit of the protest, that of inuk grandmother beatrice hunter, resulted in her being sent to a male-only prison, due to lack of space in the local female prison, simply because she refused to stay away from the land. after multiple protests by supporters and allies, and a ten-day internment, the newfoundland and labrador supreme court amended her injunction to recognize hunter’s right to be on the land as long as she did not blockade anybody else from entering the site. the federal and provincial governments were determined to continue transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 112 with the project, despite these objections. by spring 2019, the project was almost 90% complete. it was, however, behind schedule and over cost. an ongoing provincial inquiry into the rising costs, freedom from oversight, and associated risks of the muskrat falls project lists the innu nation, the nunatsiavut government, the nunatukavut community council, and the labrador land protectors as parties with “limited standing” in the inquiry. the results of the investigation are expected at the end of 2019 (“muskrat falls inquiry website”). this inquiry, partially launched due to the rising costs caused by indigenous objections, shows that the prior, informed consent from indigenous communities, as demanded by undrip, is not so much an aspiration as a moral and economic necessity for settler states and corporate entities. ethically practiced prior, informed consent creates a space for dialogue to occur and grievances to be aired before unilateral action creates more grievances that elicit protest and obstruction. the enforcement of settler laws to protect corporate projects, in defiance of indigenous sovereignties and disruptive to indigenous communities, creates financial burdens upon the state and heightens the rift of distrust and refusal within indigenous communities, the cost of which is more than merely financial. the newfoundland and labrador supreme court’s acquiescence to hunter’s right to be on the land, while it does not repair the damage done by her incarceration, is an implicit admission that the territorial rights of indigenous peoples to exist as distinct cultural communities are still a viable weapon in the fight against settler intrusion and absolute settlement. it also exposes a fundamental flaw in settler-nation charges of trespass against indigenous peoples within their own territories. at the same time, however, the constraints placed upon hunter by the supreme court exemplify settler-nation refusal to acknowledge inherent indigenous sovereignty to the land. settler intrusion manifests itself in several ways here. besides the actual creation of the dam and the ecological and economic impact it will have upon indigenous communities, a cbc news story from 1 february 2018 exposed the presence of canadian military support for police officers involved in shutting down the protests camps the previous year. according to the report, documents from the $10million operation, titled “project beltway,” showed that “the canadian armed forces provided lodging and food at 5 wing goose bay but stopped well short of giving operational support” (roberts). perhaps mindful of the still-reverberating repercussions of military force used at kanesatake in 1990, rear admiral john newton sent a letter on march 31st, 2017 to newfoundland and labrador justice and public safety minister andrew parsons paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 113 stating that the lack of operational support “includes any manner of forcible control of the civilian population by caf personnel, use of caf facilities or equipment to detain any individual placed under arrest, and providing transportation to and from operational policing activities” (roberts). while surreptitious in nature, the shelter and housing signify the tacit support and approval of federal agencies and the armed forces towards the measures taken by the rcmp in labrador to shut down the protests. it highlights the extent to which the canadian settler state will pursue the interests of contemporary neo-liberal capitalist ventures at the expense of indigenous communities, despite promises to negotiate and inform. it is also a clear violation of article 30 of undrip which states that “military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples, unless justified by a relevant public interest or otherwise freely agreed with or requested by the indigenous peoples concerned” (undrip article 30.1). while the phrasing of “relevant public interest” and “military activity” are open to semantic interpretation by the settler state, this issue has clearly not yet been settled because of the perceived necessity to hold the aforementioned public inquiry. the fight, though, does not end for the indigenous communities of the region, who are proving to provincial and federal settler governments that engagement and acknowledgement of indigenous peoples and concerns is not a one-sided, top-down conversation and cannot be controlled or dismissed by either overt or covert actions from the settler state (roberts). the politics of indigenous refusal are ensuring that community sustainability in the region will continue beyond the dam’s completion. in australia, the effects and repercussions of indigenous politics of refusal are also slowly dawning on state and federal governments. as with indigenous peoples in the other canzus states, aborigines and torres strait islanders represent a fraction of the national population, registering 2.8% in the 2016 census, and are viewed as a political afterthought while being over-represented in national poverty, health, and incarceration statistics (australia, “2016 census”). in recent years, however, indigenous protests against australia day celebrations have led to serious conversations within the dominant society over possibly changing the date or cancelling the holiday altogether. currently though, this idea has been dismissed by prominent government members, such as then-deputy prime minister barnaby joyce who, in january 2017, described indigenous protesters of australia day as “just miserable. i wish they’d crawl under a rock and hide for a little bit” (kelly). in a direct rejection of australia’s celebration of settlement, a celebration that dates back transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 114 at least to 1818 when governor lachlan macquarie marked sydney’s thirty-year colonial anniversary with a 30-gun salute and which was formally introduced as a holiday in 1940, indigenous peoples have long labelled the anniversary invasion day. the label is a clear indication of the infringement of indigenous sovereignty that settlement represents. this expression of regular formal protest began in sydney in 1938 when “over 100 aborigines gathered at the australia hall for an aborigines conference to mark the ‘day of mourning and protest’” (darian-smith). rather than a national celebration of the “first fleet” bringing its cargo of criminals, the day was marked as a testament to the subjugation and genocide of the indigenous nations of the island. as john maynard noted in fight for liberty and freedom: the origins of australian aboriginal activism, this protest—led by william cooper, bill ferguson, pearl gibbs, and jack patten—“was the only option by which they could ensure the survival of aboriginal peoples and histories, all of which were under attack from government assimilation policies” (maynard 4).7 in contemporary times, the aboriginal flag—in which the red represents the earth, the black represents the indigenous peoples, and the yellow represents the sun—flies in protests across the country (“the australian aboriginal flag”). this flag was itself borne of an earlier, but related, indigenous protest movement. created by harold thomas in 1971 and adopted as a national aboriginal and torres islander symbol of protest, the flag was adopted as a symbol of indigenous unity after being flown at the 1972 tent embassy encampment outside australia’s parliament building. the aboriginal tent embassy was created outside parliament house in canberra by michael anderson, billie craigie, bert williams, and tony coorey. staged as a protest against then-prime minister william mcmahon’s stated commitment to assimilation of the indigenous peoples within the nation, and subsequent rejection of aboriginal land claims, the tent embassy sprang from civil rights action that began with activists such as gary foley in sydney’s redfern district. originally a makeshift structure consisting of a tent canvas and a beach umbrella, the embassy was formally and permanently established in 1992 as part of the continued/ing struggle for indigenous rights and sovereignty (foley, schaap, and howell 34). the politics of indigenous refusal were articulated through the insistence that formal recognition of land rights and selfdetermination was needed, rather than accepting the continued assault of assimilation. claiming the land opposite the seat of parliament was never meant to just be a symbolic moment but was intended as a catalyst for change. paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 115 here, indigenous voices were expected to have long fallen silent through the assimilation policies so entrenched in australian political and social structures. both the celebration of settler nationhood through a national holiday as well as the perpetuation of settler-nationhood by refusing to sign treaties with the original occupants of the land are being disputed by those indigenous voices. the australia day action is reflected in similar protests and conversations over the treaty of waitangi day in new zealand. protests against settler-nation “birthdays” also have a long history in canada, where canada 150 saw a large tepee erected opposite the house of commons, among other protests; and in the us, where indigenous activists take over plymouth rock every fourth of july. what may seem like a minor dispute over a federal holiday is directly tied to continued expressions of state violence and cultural suppression in everyday federal policies designed to eradicate indigenous communities. such policies include poor health and education funding, entrenched institutional racism, and the deliberate closure of communities through policies of managed decline in order to force removal from land sitting on top of huge oil and gas reserves.8 as with muskrat falls, the policies of managed decline are a clear violation of article 2(b) in undrip which urges settler states to protect indigenous peoples from any acts which have “the aim of effect of dispossessing them of their lands” (undrip article 2(b)). the settler-colonial government has been forced to react to and acknowledge, at least rhetorically, indigenous politics of refusal. now, the australian government is considering whether, or how, to revise or rethink its celebration of settler-nationhood. that this is happening in australia, the only one of the four canzus states not to recognize formal treaty relationships with the land’s original occupants, makes it all the more remarkable. australia’s non-treaty status is now under consideration for change. in a country that was formed on the basis of terra nullius as an immediately “settled colony,” with a de facto rule of administrative flexibility regarding indigenous peoples, the subject of treaties is receiving serious consideration. the national and state governments have offered for several years to create constitutional amendments whereby aborigines will receive constitutional recognition. elders and leaders across the country have rejected these offers in the push for formal treaty processes to be entered into instead. at the beginning of 2018, several states were in serious negotiations to sign treaties with indigenous collective groups inside their borders, rather than with individual nations, and by mid-june, the first treaty legislation was passed into law. on june 21st, 2018, the transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 116 victorian upper house passed the advancing the treaty process with aboriginal victorians bill 2018 (hereafter the atpva act 2018) (australia, atpav act 2018). here too, though, it can be argued that the state government is shifting settler-colonial dominance rather than fully reconciling the settler-indigenous relationship. while the bill includes a state acknowledgement of “victorian traditional owners as the first peoples” and claims that “aboriginal victorians are an intrinsic and valued part of victoria’s past, present, and future,” there is language coded within the bill that ensures that the state remains the dominant partner in any treaty negotiation. rather than treaties being signed with each individual nation within the boundaries of victoria, the proposal is to negotiate with “a future aboriginal representative body, as the voice chosen by aboriginal victorians” (atpav act 2018). first though, this body must be declared valid by the minister negotiating on behalf of the state, while the act contains warnings of repercussions of any misconduct within treaty negotiations. the misconduct language is aimed exclusively at the “conduct at a systemic level that brings the aboriginal representative body into disrepute” and contains no such warning for any similar misconduct on behalf of the state (atpav act 2018). any “concessions” that can be seen in the desire to make a treaty must be viewed within the context of understanding that the treaty is a continuation of indigenous homogenization from the settler state and will be conducted within parameters set and defined by the settler-state government. even with those caveats, though, the hope is that the indigenous individuals of victoria will gain legally enshrined rights, even if their nations do not. the national government, meanwhile, is mulling over the idea of taking the decision on treaty-making to the public, much as it did in 1967 when it pushed the decision to recognize the indigenous communities as people, rather than flora and fauna, to a national referendum. given that australia is the perfect case study for settler-colonial completion, having never formally acknowledged the existence or rights of the indigenous peoples until the 1967 referendum, this is an unprecedented move. in the near future, aboriginal sovereignty and self-determination could be free, at least partially, from colonial oversight for the first time since the arrival of the “first fleet,” although there is still a long journey ahead to ensure that negotiations are entered into fairly and with indigenous territorial sovereignty being recognized as a legal right (wahlquist). if the model is to sign treaties with indigenous populations, rather than peoples, however, the process will fall well short of undrip’s recommendations, not least that “indigenous peoples, paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 117 in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their international and local affairs” (undrip article 4). in aotearoa, while many of the same tensions exist between the māori and the settler government, there are also signs of indigenous land relationships receiving some of the respect they are long overdue. after intense pressure on the federal government from māori communities, and the tühoe in particular, in 2014, in a gesture of reconciliation to the iwi, the aoteraroa/new zealand government partially submitted to māori law. the aotearoa/new zealand government passed the te urewera act granting personhood to the national park of the same name, in recognition of the relationship that the māori have with water: “ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au,” or “i am the river and the river is me” (kennedy). this process of personhood required the government to formally relinquish assumed/asserted ownership of the land and water and, instead, to formally and legally recognize shared stewardship with the māori. ultimately though, this also raises questions of over-compliance of undrip as shared stewardship still enables new zealand to retain an interest and power dynamic in the relationship. these actions show that success for indigenous community sustainability and activism is often the result of a long, slow process. just as the treaty conversations in australia can be traced back to the australian aboriginal progressive association of the 1920s and the beginning of the invasion day protests, so too can the aotearoa/new zealand stewardship issue be traced back several decades. arguably, these issues can be tracked back even further, to the original draft of the treaty of waitangi in 1840. the māori land marches and protests of the 1960s and ‘70s resulted in the treaty of waitangi act of 1975, creating the waitangi tribunal. the tribunal is a permanent commission that investigates māori claims against crown actions that betray the principles of the treaty of waitangi. the treaty issue here is uniquely different than those in the us and canada, in that it is the single binding treaty between the settler nation-state and the collected indigenous communities rather than one of a collection of similar agreements (“the treaty in practice: obtaining land”). the treaty of waitangi is new zealand’s founding document, originally written in english and māori. in the māori version, te tiriti o waitangi, the crown recognized the rights of the chiefs to rangatiratanga—full control of their lands and waters for as long as they “wished to retain it”—while the māori gave the crown the right of governance to assure the continuation transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 118 of rangatiratanga. in the english language version of the treaty, this agreement to settler governance was translated as ceding “all the rights and powers of sovereignty” to the crown (“read the treaty”). while the māori version reflects the ideals set by undrip almost two hundred years later, we can see in the english version the duplicity of settler-colonial treatymaking that has been a hallmark of negotiations and agreements since the first settlers arrived. the māori agreement and expectation of shared governance through partnership, rather than subjugation, is embedded in their understanding of the intent of the treaty of waitangi. this is especially clear when one considers that, even in the english version of the treaty, the māori were guaranteed “exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties” (“read the treaty”). history has long borne witness to the abrogation of this promise, as by 1865, on the south island alone, māori land holding had been reduced to 1% (“māori land loss, 1860-2000”). the recent agreements represent a settler nation being held to account for the promises it made at the very moment of foundation and acquiescing, at least in some small part, to indigenous social justice. land is no longer a resource to be owned, acquired, or bartered, or perhaps most pertinently, no longer to be settled, but is recognized as a living, breathing entity with the legal right to exist, persist, and regenerate, even if the settler state insists on retaining an interest. and yet, section 64(1) of the act clearly asserts that the crown retains ultimate control over the land, stating that “despite anything in this act, te urewera land is to be treated as if it were crown land described in schedule 4 of the crown minerals act 1991” (see also s 56(b) where a mining activity authorised by the crown minerals act “can be undertaken without authorization from the board”) (te urewera act). the crown’s commitment to shared stewardship clearly has boundaries, which the crown alone has authority to determine. in other parts of the islands, water is being extracted in extraordinarily high volumes to feed the food conglomerates’ greed for profit at the same time as aotearoa/new zealand signed on to the trans-pacific partnership (tpp). while most of aotearoa’s water extraction has been drawn by coca cola from the blue spring in putaruru, additional companies are now entering agreements as water supplies elsewhere become scarce from over-extraction or restricted through legislation. the purported acknowledgement of indigenous relationality to water through recent legislations is clearly missing from the commercial resource extraction agreements with multinational corporations. displaying a clear disregard for the reciprocal relationships between paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 119 māori, land, and water, bruce nesbit, managing director of alpine pure, argued in 2017 that concerns about removing water from the unesco world heritage sites of lake greaney and lake minim mere were over-exaggerated, stating that “pristine water has been falling on the southern alps for a million years, and it would usually be wasted by flowing directly out to sea. the amount we want to take is very small” (roy). māori protests regarding the water extraction are supported by environmentalists and the green party, although their concerns are focused more closely on water degradation and the depletion of a finite resource. with the final decision-making power over the extraction agreement currently residing in local councils rather than the national government, the avowed determination to recognize māori relationality to the water is not filtering down to local governments, although the federal government still bears ultimate responsibility for this, with a spokesman for the ministry of the environment admitting that, as of may 2016, “71 consents have been granted in new zealand for ‘the taking of water for bottling’” (roy). consistency in affirming indigenous territorial and environmental sovereignty is something yet to be achieved, despite the progress made in the te urewera act. the fight over water is one that indigenous communities face across the globe, with settler states accepting extremely low leasing fees from conglomerates without consideration of the harm it causes the affected communities. created in 2016, the tpp is now an eleven-nation, free-trade partnership. it originally included all four of the canzus settler-nation states, until president trump withdrew the us from the process in 2018. the agreement is seen as a further threat to māori rights as recognized and protected under the treaty of waitangi. māori party leaders argue that the tpp has created a system of administrative flexibility that will allow whichever new zealand government is in power to interpret māori treaty rights any way they see fit. ironically, this is a legal framework that australia is slowly moving away from in its domestic relationship with aboriginal communities, although the same indigenous concerns apply there as in the other signatory settler nation-states. amid calls for a national māori government to take the country back, the settlernational government negotiated clause 29.6 in the tpp that allows it to adopt measures giving “more favorable treatment to māori” (patterson). the process, however, of inserting the clause to “placate” the māori still does not adhere to the treaty of waitangi itself, or the un’s stipulation for prior, informed consent. māori party co-leader te ururoa flavell argued in a māori party media release that “it is for māori to define transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 120 their interests and tell the crown how they might be best protected. māori are not just another interest group” (māori party). while the objections range from the prospect of greater social and economic inequality among māori and päkehä, two main points of contention stand out. the first is the lack of māori consultation or representation in the domestic or international stages of tpp negotiations. a media release from january 7th, 2016 argued that “this complete lack of consultation also contravenes the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples and this government has no right to sign this trade deal without our free, prior and informed consent.” (te wharepora hou). the second is that the tpp contains a provision for investor-state dispute resolution which has the potential to over-ride māori sovereignty and hand power over resource management to corporations rather than affected indigenous communities. given that te urewera is also still open to mining if the crown so decides, this resolution clause has clear implications for the future safety of tühoe shared governance being honored. in this case, rather than submitting to tangata whenua, the new zealand government is being rather disingenuous by paying lip service to the spirit and principles of the treaty of waitangi in order create more wealth for the settler nation without redressing the imbalance that sees māori “extensively over-represented in all negative indices” of economic and social measurement with aotearoa/new zealand (te wharepora hou). ironically, while refusing to engage publicly with opponents of tpp, then-prime minister john key argued that it was opponents of the deal, and those who argued that it violates the treaty of waitangi, who were being disingenuous, claiming adequate consultation with the māori during the negotiations process. contradicting his version was a collective statement of several māori nations and activist groups arguing that “the new zealand government has bypassed indigenous involvement at every level. this complete lack of consultation also contravenes undrip and the government has no right to sign this trade deal without our free, prior and informed consent” (patterson). state violence here is not explicitly physical but exercised unilaterally via transnational collaboration and settler globalization. as with the long fight which resulted in the te urewera victory, this in turn has facilitated trans-national indigenous collaborative resistance, or a refusal to acquiesce to this attempted expansion of settler state nationhood via the lack of consultation or consent. settler-state claims of adequate consultation are also a common occurrence in the united states, usually used as deflections from clear evidence of treaty abrogation. the reaction of the paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 121 united states to indigenous activism and community sustainability is also the most blatantly violent of those settler nation-states under discussion. here, we also have the biggest paradox of the four settler nations. since the indian self-determination and education assistance act of 1975, indigenous nations have accepted a formal recognition of the nation-to-nation relationship with the united states, based upon the principle of indigenous self-determination and national sovereignty. and yet, settler-state reactions to indigenous resistance is more overtly violent than in any of the other nations, aside from the sporadic similarities of canadian pushback in places such as kanesatake in 1990 and unist’ot’en in 2018/19.9 looking to recent events at standing rock, where peaceful protests were met with domestic paramilitary force, legitimized state violence was deployed so extremely that it dramatically overshadowed commonplace, often normalized, state violence such as police harassment, judicial thirst for indigenous prisoners, and the intellectual and cultural violence of everyday racist interactions that is commonplace in all four of these settler nation-states. as with the previous instances discussed, there is a long history of settler-state violence in the united states that cannot be ignored if the conflict is placed in its proper historical context. the land through which the dakota access pipeline (dapl) now runs is oceti sakowin territory which was not ceded in either the 1851 or 1868 treaties of fort laramie. therefore, it still legally stands as unceded indigenous territory, as argued by numerous indigenous lawyers and activists, both before and after the pipeline was diverted from its original path north of bismarck, north dakota to just outside the standing rock reservation (estes). in the 1940s, the army corps of engineers unilaterally appropriated 700 miles of tribal lands and created a series of dams along the missouri river. the pick-sloan dam project forcibly displaced 1,000 sioux families and created lake oahe, the reservoir under which the pipeline now carries oil. permission for the dam and the removal of the families was granted by the army corps of engineers, in a clear over-reach of its legal authority. in the process of creating the reservoir in 1948, the dam “destroyed more indian land than any other public works project in america” (lawson 50). the settler nation’s reaction to the peaceful protests were stunning, with the inaction of the obama administration’s “watching brief” a stark contrast to the paramilitary violence meted out by state law enforcement. while the president promised to closely monitor the unfolding events, he essentially saw out the last days of his administration as a silent witness to human transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 122 rights abuses carried out by state law enforcement, including “borrowed” personnel from other states. these abuses included water cannons being fired at water protectors in below-freezing temperatures, sound cannons used to cause internal damage to water protectors, strip searches, protectors being locked in animal cages, social media blackouts and signal outages, and, in scenes reminiscent of the wounded knee siege of 1973, armed agitators infiltrated the protestors as a ruse for the justification of violent suppression of the blockades. the tragic paradox of the “rule of law” mantra the state used to justify its actions is that treaties between indigenous nations and the us are constitutionally enshrined as the “supreme law of the land,” which is what should have been enforced by the police who took so much violent delight in suppressing the standing rock sioux’s treaty rights (u.s. constitution). while obama exercised his “watching brief,” the state of north dakota, with the complicit support of the united states, systemically violated articles 7, 11, 18, 26, 29, 32, and 37 of undrip, which collectively proclaim indigenous rights to protection from violence, protection of historical sites, participation in “decision-making in matters affecting their rights,” protection of lands and territories, conservation and protection of the environment, “free and informed consent, and the observance of treaty rights” (undrip). the campaign rhetoric of both mainstream political party candidates to succeed obama as president amounted to the same thing: further erasure of indigenous peoples and partial lip service to recognition of indigenous sovereignty or self-determination. hillary clinton’s claim that she would act in a way “that serves the broadest public interest” was framed by further language which made it clear that the public interest she was referring to was the settler-national community and corporate interests. she offered no concessions to the indigenous residents of standing rock, who were simply fighting to protect their water supply and original territorial sovereignty (nieves). donald trump was more blatant in his disdain for indigenous sovereignty and expressed support for the oil company he owned stock in and simply promised to sign the pipeline into law. this was a promise he kept very quickly after entering office in january 2017, just days after 200,000 liters of oil spilled from a similar pipeline in saskatchewan, canada (benwell). the cross-border pipelines are yet another focus of transnational indigenous collaboration to sustain communities through politics of refusal, through collaborations such as the treaty alliance against tar sands expansion, launched on september 22nd, 2016 (“treaty alliance”). paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 123 as with the protests and blockades at muskrat falls, multiple criminal prosecutions of protesters followed and worked their way through the settler court system. several jail sentences followed for some individual water protectors, such as red fawn fallis, while others saw charges of trespass or inciting a riot dropped. it is also a great irony that it is in these “courts of the conqueror,” as walter echo hawk labelled them, that the permissions granted to dapl by the trump administration in 2017 have been declared illegal (echo hawk 2012). while this has not yet resulted in the pipeline being shut down, closure is a potential outcome if proper environmental analysis is not now carried out by the army corps of engineers. the same courts also found that treaty rights had been violated. the ruling judge declared that “to remedy those violations, the corps will have to reconsider those sections of its environmental analysis upon remand by the court” (volcovici). the ruling sits as an example of the actual rule of law being applied in a way that “law enforcement” agencies suppressing the blockades failed to enact during the conflicts they instigated. in november 2018, the standing rock sioux tribe and cheyenne river sioux tribe launched a fresh challenge against the army corps of engineers and dapl in regard to the process by which the army corps issued construction permits to dapl. this case was opened in response to the army corps’ lack of compliance with a december 4th, 2017 court decision in which the corps and dapl were ordered to work with the standing rock sioux on several key pipeline safety measures. at the time of writing, no decision has yet been rendered regarding the november 2018 lawsuit (“updates”) in each of the canzus states, indigenous community sustainability requires activism to stop the onslaught of settler-colonial nationhood. the settler-colonial fictive kinship connections between the pre-nascent nations bound to the british empire has evolved and matured into settler-colonial national networks bound by cooperative protection, trade, and mutual neo-liberal interests. while each of the four settler nations share collective cultural and socio-legal roots with the british isles and comparative histories of rejecting crown control, they still maintain close contemporary cultural, military, and political agreements with the united kingdom. this is despite eschewing crown control over their settler nation-states. partnerships such as the five eyes intelligence alliance, the technical cooperation program, and the air and space interoperability council all began after world war two and maintain that link between the uk and the canzus states. historically, the respective “domestic” national policies concerning indigenous erasure transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 124 was either dictated by london or, as in the us, mirrored uk legal strictures. this was especially so in the 19th and 20th centuries, where federal policies regarding land settlement, legalized settler sovereignty, and forced removal, schooling, and abuse of children were almost identical across the four nation-states. in australia, the aborigines protection board, which forced indigenous children into boarding schools and allowed whites to take children from indigenous homes and adopt them without permission, ran from 1883-1969. this policy, which created the stolen generations, mirrored that in the us of federal boarding schools which, championed by col. richard henry pratt, ran from 1879 to 1969. his mantra, to “kill the indian and save the man,” was copied in canada, where residential schools modelled on us boarding schools ran from the early 1880s until 1996 (adams 6). in aotearoa/new zealand, native schools dedicated to assimilating māori children ran from 1867 until 1968. in all but the united states, the policies were initiated with crown approval from london. in each case, it was resistance by indigenous peoples themselves that forced the governments to shut the schools, rather than any moral shift from the settler states themselves. in almost all instances of settler-nation development, indigenous communities were initially deemed to be irrelevant and insignificant obstacles. from then until now, each action of settler aggression, whether corporate, economic, or cultural, has necessitated a reaction of resistance and refusal from indigenous communities, including internationally insisting that the settler-nation states sign on to undrip. for example, the united states was the last of the four to reverse its veto, with president obama agreeing to the declaration only after pressure from indigenous leaders across the country (pulitano 258). the irony, as argued earlier, is that undrip inadvertently upholds settler-colonial nationhood, even as it argues the case for wider decolonization because, as cheyfitz argues, “it recognizes, without commenting on the fact, that the indigenous peoples for whom it speaks are located within the power of the nation-states from which they are seeking redress” (cheyfitz 193). as monolithic as this settler-nationhood appears, however, it is not yet absolute, and the indigenous nations within these settler-nation boundaries are the constant reminder that the processes of settlement have not yet fully succeeded. despite the necessity of the politics of refusal in the face of settler-colonial shifting and over-compliance with undrip, indigenous community sustainability itself is not reactive. it is a proactive form of cultural maintenance that requires multiple strategies and tools to selfperpetuate. indigenous cultures, languages, environments, and identities all require legal paul r. mckenzie-jones “indigenous activism” 125 autonomy and territorial sovereignty to grow and evolve in a manner chosen by the communities rather than dictated by outsiders. as such, there is great strength in the politics of refusal, even if these politics require inordinate, and seemingly endless, sacrifice at the same time. whether there is enough strength in numbers and resources for indigenous nations to ultimately halt and even subvert settler-nationhood to levels where indigenous peoples are recognized as equals rather than inconvenient barriers is a question with no present answer. what is certain is that water, land, language, and culture protectors will keep fighting for such an eventuality. that future, however, is currently being written by indigenous youth across the canzus states who, supported by elders, are increasingly joining and even leading the choruses of refusal that are forcing the settler nation-states to hear their voices. it was the youth in standing rock who began the water protection movement there, which drew support from indigenous communities around the world. it was youth and elders from multiple indigenous nations who were involved in the paris climate accord protests in 2016 and are driving much of the antipipeline movement in canada. the idle no more movement (inm) originated in canada and grew across the united states. inm flags were also flown at australia day protests and māori attempts to shut down the tpp talks. international indigenous solidarity is growing, and social media has created an accessible forum for sharing knowledge faster than ever before. we can see in each of what are currently canada, australia, aotearoa/new zealand, and the united states that there can be partial indigenous successes while playing the long game of refusal. there is evidence that settler-colonial shifting can be negotiated successfully to ensure that settlement is not absolute. we are also increasingly witnessing indigenous activists and community organizers connecting and collaborating. they are refusing to allow settler nation-states to play the settlercolonial long-game that consolidates the imbalance of power and authority and presumes the absolutism of settlement. in these inter-connected indigenous refusals, the ambitions are that partial successes will continue to build increasingly sustainable coalitions across the canzus states. it is these coalitions through which indigenous communities will continue to constrain the processes of settler-colonial nationhood within the anglosphere, until such processes can be successfully dismantled. notes transmotion vol 5, no 1 (2019) 126 1 sheryl lightfoot is canada research chair of global indigenous rights and politics at the university of british columbia. she is also a member of the coalition for the human rights of indigenous peoples, has testified before the canadian house of commons as an expert witness, and was appointed in 2017 as the north american expert at the expert group meeting on implementation of the un declaration hosted by the permanent forum. 2 anaya’s expertise on indigenous peoples and international law saw him appointed by the un human rights council to the role of united nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples from may 2008 to june 2014. 3 the difference between indigenous populations and peoples is a distinct one that warrants further clarification. “peoples” recognizes that there was more than one single indigenous group within the borders of the settler nation, while the signifier “populations” suggests a single racial connotation rather than acknowledging the separate distinct national identities of indigenous peoplehood. the settler preference for populations rather than peoples is an example of the subtle ways indigenous sovereignty is refused and erasure is codified within settler nations. crucially, it is peoples, rather than people or populations, that are recognized as having the right to self-determination under international law. 4 walter echo hawk is widely acclaimed as a pawnee lawyer, activist, educator, tribal judge, and author, who has worked within the us federal indian law system as an advocate for native american rights since 1973. 5 in north america, people often use minute traces of dna markers to claim indigeneity and insert themselves in spaces better suited to those who do need to rely on such obscure claims to identity. kim tallbear offers a thorough examination of this trend and its problematic repercussion in her 2013 text, native american dna: tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. 6 it is acknowledged here that new zealand and aotearoa are technically the same space, but conflicting understandings of belonging and space also render them entirely different spaces depending upon whether one looks through an indigenous or a settler lens. 7 maynard’s text traces the roots of contemporary aboriginal activism in australia to the australian aboriginal progressive association in the 1920s. their politics was a mixed blend of indigenous self-determination and black liberation, the latter of which was inspired by marcus garvey’s us-based universal negro improvement association. 8 managed decline is an economic strategy where the state will attempt to slowly manage the end of an industry, such as coal or the postal service, while mitigating costs and losses. when applied to communities, however, the human cost of these losses of the end of the community is scarcely factored into policies, which simply urge mass individualized relocations from one area to another. in indigenous communities, the culturally debilitating effects of this forced diaspora are considered a bonus by the state. 9 in both instances, armed forces were deployed by the canadian government to suppress indigenous blockades on their own territory: in 1990, to advance a golf course that 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naidoc secretariat, government of australia, https://www.naidoc.org.au/about/indigenous-australian-flags. accessed 29 march 2018. “the treaty in practice: obtaining land.” new zealand history, ministry for culture and heritage, 13 june 2016, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/the-treaty-inpractice/obtaining-land. accessed 26 march 2019. “treaty alliance against tar sands expansion.” treaty alliance, www.treatyalliance.org, accessed 5 may 2018. united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, 2011, www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-ofindigenous-peoples.html. accessed 1 march 2018. “updates and frequently asked questions: the standing rock sioux’s litigation on the dakota access pipeline.” earthjustice, 1 november 2018, earthjustice.org/features/faq-standing-rock-litigation. u.s. constitution, article ii, section ii, clause ii, “constitutions limitations on the treaty power.” justia us law, law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-2/17-constitutionallimitations-on-the-treaty-power.html. volcovici, valerie. “federal judge orders more environmental analysis of dakota pipeline.” reuters, 14 june 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northdakota-pipelinedapl/federal-judge-orders-more-environmental-analysis-of-dakota-pipelineiduskbn19538i. accessed 5 march 2019. wahlquist, calla. “nsw labor plans to sign treaty recognising indigenous ownership.” the guardian, 25 january 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/australianews/2018/jan/25/nsw-labor-plans-to-sign-treaty-recognising-indigenous-ownership. accessed 24 june 2018. microsoft word bordeauxfinal_jm.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 82 hunger for culture: navigating indigenous theater clementine bordeaux, kenneth r. ramos and arianna taylor introduction two young indigenous performers stand on a small, raised stage, under a bridge near a concrete-encased river in downtown los angeles (dtla). the dtla skyline in the south and the los angeles gold line metro train on the overhead bridge, connecting chinatown and lincoln heights to the north. the young man is a slim, handsome, and energetic performer. the young woman is slightly older, but not by much, and she has a short build with straight dark hair and a determined face. they turn to each other, take a deep breath, turn to face the crowd, and shout, “hunger for culture!” the two performers were kenneth ramos and jennifer marlowe, two professional actors cast in the 2016 world premiere of urban rez, written by larissa fasthorse, directed by michael john garcés, and produced by cornerstone theatre company (ctc). at the time, the circumstances of an indigenous-led production, like urban rez, were somewhat a rarity. urban rez represented a keen moment in american theater where a predominantly indigenous cast performed a play written by an indigenous playwright. urban rez was distinctive from other american theater shows in production style, narrative form, and community engagement methodologies, especially for los angeles. in the seventh installment of ctc’s “hunger cycle,” the urban rez production undertook the task of crafting a response to the yearning for culture in los angeles county. the metropolitan area of los angeles often boasts a culturally diverse and lgbtq+ inclusive landscape but regularly erases indigenous populations. los angeles bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 83 also holds the highest percentage of urban-based american indians in the united states but has frequently forgotten to include non-federally recognized tribes in the region, including tongva, tataviam, acjachemen, and chumash communities. urban rez draws attention to the multifaceted ways indigenous populations might hunger for culture, while it also utilizes theater-based practices. our essay looks at the urban rez show as a theater production that demonstrates how an indigenous play offers a queering of us-based performance. urban rez utilizes sovereignty to discuss belonging, relationship to place, and representation. first and foremost, urban rez operates within the limitations of a white heteropatriarchal theater landscape that often erases indigenous narratives. we demonstrate that the 2016 urban rez production established a queer indigenous presence within a colonial theater space. the urban rez production disrupts the linear models defined by american theater, which do not allow for the complexities of an indigenous experience, let alone a queer indigenous experience. overall, the experience of urban rez not only challenges narrative expectation but disrupts the audience, cast, and crew production experience beyond heteropatriarchal structures. our analysis of urban rez weaves together an opportunity to understand a theater experience not grounded in the confines of settler logics, with one of understanding indigenous theater as a space for inclusive and relational representation. like the groundbreaking works produced by indigenous performance artists and indigenous-led theaters such as spiderwoman theater in the 1970s, the urban rez experience brings attention to assimilation, political oppression, and settler confinements while also including significant lgbtq+ and two-spirit narratives. the production experience explores ideas of relationality as defined by being a kuuyam, meaning “guest” in tongva, as theorized by charles sepulveda. overall, the play’s transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 84 premise challenges audiences to think about the impact of the myriad of settler colonial projects of north america. this essay is a collaboration between three performers from the show. the authors have all grown up on our home reservations outside of los angeles city limits, and we all identify as queer, two-spirit, or trans. two co-authors joined the urban rez processes in the early moments of the production timeline through their involvement with the american indian community council and a local university. the other coauthor joined later in the production through their involvement with the red circle project (a defunct two-spirit health organization in los angeles). through our friendship, artistry, and collaboration, we address the ways urban rez offered a shift in our discussion of performance, theater, community work, queer, and selfrepresentation. hunger for analysis a young apache woman enters the audience space. she is wearing a beautifully crafted rainbow headpiece; she begins to dance. she is deliberate in her movement. each drum beat—a recording played over the main speakers—guides her in gentle, rhythmic dancing. she slowly ends the dance, and the play resumes as she exits the staging area. the audience just witnessed the first time a trans-woman and apache performer had performed the rainbow dance in public. before the performance, the trans-actor never had the courage or the support required for this endeavor. as an apache trans-woman, she struggles with settler colonialism’s lasting impact and legacy on her cultural dances. as a trans-woman, she had never found a safer space to perform such a dance, and without the support of the cast, crew, writer, and director, she would not have ever attempted the dance. bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 85 through the work of indigenous creatives and allies, urban rez mobilized narrative and performance styles that demonstrated and asserted self-representation in the face of aggressive settler colonial frameworks. when we reference settler colonialism, we utilize indigenous studies scholars like j. kēhaulani kauanui, scott l. morgenson, mark rifkin, shannon speed, and patrick wolfe. settler colonialism within a theater context reflects the hindrance of heteropatriarchy, the erasure of other-thanhuman kinship, and the uplifting of stereotypical indigenous characters. urban rez continues to grow in our imagination. every time we re-evaluate the experience, we remember the show’s profound impact on shifting and expanding our understanding of settler logics. the indigenous community experience in los angeles differs depending on our positionality. as indigenous settlers in tongva territory, our approach to land and story varies from the la native communities with ancestral ties to specific geographic places. urban rez continued to mold and craft conversations of indigeneity as a “counterpart analytic to settler colonialism” (kauanui xiv). however, not a main character, the presentation of a trans-apache woman as a part of everyday urban rez life is a prime example of how community experience in the production reflects our queer lives. as the tactics of settler colonialism are one of erasure, the narratives created and recreated for the show included queer conversations and conversations with land and place. we also utilize terms like two-spirit and queer because our journeys through self-identification continue to shift and grow. as a result of the politicization of indigenous identities and communities, co-authors have experienced the forced removal and isolation from settler lgbtq+ spaces. we come to two-spirit identities from the activism of indigenous communities in the 1990s. we use the term similarly to how qwo-li driskill outlines it in their scholarly work (84). we utilize the term queer, transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 86 especially articulating the interventions of indigenous feminist scholarship and queer affect as they have appeared in the work of joanne barker, sarah deer, jennifer denetdale, dian million, and melanie yazzie, et al. our queerness and two-spirit identities came out of necessity. we first and foremost identify as apache, kumeyaay (iipay), and lakota. we would further posit that the urban rez production is a queering american theater space because the production employs community-based, interactive, and reciprocal work through the writing, rehearsal, production, and outreach process. queer affect from indigenous feminist scholarship offers a critique of non-settler normativity (barker 6). by indigenous, we mean culturally grounded, culturally relevant, and culturally conscious protocols and perimeters defined through tribal accountability. and by feminist, we mean encompassing a gendered understanding of the world that opposes heteropatriarchy. as we consider what the play itself produced for and with the community, the research was produced for and with the community. the nuances of sovereignty on stage create a way to contend with western art spaces that force indigenous artists into an identity-driven practice. within the context of our analysis, sovereignty addresses both the complications of artistic representation and the issues faced by the urban rez characters, cast, and playwright. in her 2011 article, jolene rickard unpacks visual sovereignty, shifting the focus of a colonial interpretation of indigenous art into transforming the growing space of sovereignty to include an intellectual scope for aesthetic theorization (478). rickard uses visual examples to demonstrate that sovereignty is bound to concepts of power. the power structures within spaces like theater indicate that federal policy regulates indigenous visibility, complicating a lack of relationality or reciprocity. in our view, urban rez counters possessive logic and disrupts the nation-state. the production occurred in two different places in the city of los angeles: one in stark bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 87 contrast with the downtown area and the other nestled by a practically hidden freshwater spring on the west side of the city. the balance of the two performance sites reflects a resistance to the conceptual idea that settler colonialism—as a structure— actively destroys tribal ideology, place, language, culture, etc., to replace it with the dominating society (wolfe 388). by reimagining relationships with these places, urban rez actively resists colonization while also rejecting the logics of possession, as aileen moreton-robinson theorizes through the domination of an oppressed nation (xii). not only were voices of queer indigenous people uplifted and put in the center of a performance, but the physical land was reimagined again as indigenous space. hunger for native theater the theater production was not ordinary. during the rehearsal, we shared tears during the rehearsals, mostly when we connected with historical and intergenerational narratives of trauma and pain. but we also shared more laughter than not. urban rez’s narrative form challenges american theater to consider what constitutes “good” theater by centering (los angeles) and continuously refocusing on local communities. we hungered for new ways to connect beyond the stage. the multivocal production experience often left the crew and production company unsure about the final result. the disruption of settler logics, done by infusing gendered, queer, indigenous, and community-focused material, was often hazy theoretically discussed. but the moment the play started, the simultaneity of the story and performance experience opened new opportunities for expression for the audience, cast, and crew. indigenous theater, or native american theater, or american indian theater— the terminology depends on the decade—covers a broad intervention of storytellers that approach the medium of american theater to tell stories of indigenous content. indigenous theater can range from ancient modes of oral storytelling to cultural modes transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 88 of expression through song and dance or professionally staged productions. indigenous performances can include current spaces—such as intertribal pow wows, the recent wave of social media platforms—and highlight the diversity of cultural performances. indigenous theater has permeated american theater in various forms that have ebbed and flowed with changing dynamics of the theater landscape in the past fifty years. indigenous-centered ensembles, production companies, and a wide range of indigenous playwrights have made their way into mainstream circles. the attempt to operate within the mainstream theater landscape can often mean neglecting essential narratives or characters for the sake of mainstream non-native audiences. for example, a trans character on stage is a plot point or oddity, but we were simply auntie and cousins in the urban rez landscape. the push to make an indigenous character legible to a non-native audience continues to be an issue with mainstream theater that does not include indigenous trans-characters. we, as indigenous performers, have all, at one time, played into a trope on stage. the reasons are numerous and would warrant an entirely different essay. theater roles continue to be limited and opportunities scarce. the only equity indigenous theater company in the united states is native voices at the autry (“about native voices”).1 native voices was established in 2014 “to more fully support the extraordinary talents of its native actors, writers, musicians, directors, designers, and producers” (“about native voices”). with indigenous production at the core, native voices caters to a predominately white audience as frequented by the autry museum of the american west. like native voices, other indigenous theater spaces continue to function as a medium motivated by members of or descendants of tribal communities in north america. however, two-spirit representation still operates at the fringes of dominant theater spaces and rarely within mainstream indigenous narrative making. a bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 89 queer character is rarely a main character; so, even if our main character max presented as a cis-heteronormative body, his queerness was important to us. that is not to say two-spirit performers are omitted but often play straight characters or present a straight persona in public. the native voices theater company, as the premiere indigenous theater in the united states, is often used as the go-to company to engage with indigenous performance and content. however, they rarely produce two-spirit narratives, showcase queer characters, hire openly gay actors, or create collaborative productions with the community. they host an annual short play festival that solicits new plays from the larger north american indigenous playwriting community, but the call for scripts often frames similar themes of indigeneity. we do not mean to dismiss the extensive work native voices has done for theater on the american landscape. still, we continue to see limited two-spirit representations on mainstream theater stages. urban rez firmly demonstrated a positionality grounded in relationality in two ways that also differs from a typical mainstream theater playwriting process. first, the approach to gathering communal narratives required a deep reflection of place and positionality. the story circle method employed by cornerstone theater company calls for community members to join in a group gathering to share personal narratives where each participant answers a general question or responds to a specific theme. for example, the playwright asked urban rez participants to describe their individual and collective experiences as indigenous people in los angeles. from these stories, we were able to see our trans auntie embodied in “tasha” as a character on stage. the story circles—conducted by the playwright, larissa fasthorse, and ctc staff— happened with various groups, including local tribal communities and urban relocated communities. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 90 each line of the play eventually reflected a story fasthorse utilized from the story circle method, unlike the classic narrative form of american theater, which includes three linear acts in episodic and climactic form. our stage was not stagnant. the urban rez often presented stories simultaneously, across and around audience members (arcos). again, the interweaving of stories throughout the production demonstrated the simultaneity of our queerness interwoven into the plot without making our queerness an oddity. our characters were seen not as queer characters but as complex relatives. performers weaved in and out of a predominantly standing audience. the playwright was strategic in highlighting moments of sovereignty, uplifting diverse representation, and demonstrating through the collaborative writing process that addressing issues like federal policy and oppression can result in a different type of autonomy on stage. the simplicity of having queer actors, trans-actors, and characters on stage was not always a possibility. the founding of indigenous theater ensembles and theater companies have continued to focus on the infusion of native characters that frequently rely on stereotypical characterization. furthermore, american playwrights include native characters that continue to perpetuate these stereotypes to be seen by a mainstream audience. critiques of the “american indian” image emerged across academic fields but rarely within popular culture. in the 1970s, robert berkhofer, jr. demonstrated a connection between federal indian policy and the impact on the idea of the american indian in the american psyche. more recently, within psychology studies, fryberg et al. document that racial mascots impact the self-esteem of american indian youth. many other scholars emphasize the negative impact of “playing indian,” as theorized by phil deloria (2007). yet again, two-spirit critiques are not at the forefront of media or theater discussions. bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 91 hunger for representation at the end of an urban rez performance, where we had a high concentration of local tribal community members, a tongva auntie approached us.2 the auntie thanked us for the performance and said, “i’m so glad this wasn’t indian romeo and juliet”3 we all laughed in response. when we asked her to explain further, she clarified that most theater performances in los angeles with an indigenous narrative continue to position indigeneity as a deficit. she explained that the shows she recently watched centered life or death relationships, presented a coming-of-age story or coming-of-identity narrative, or presented a historical account of native characters. her comment was a high compliment. we thanked her for supporting our show and felt confident in urban rez not reproducing an “indian romeo and juliet” trope. playwrights, like fasthorse, continue to craft stories that challenge stereotype characterizations. when thinking of indigenous stereotype characters within dominant society popular culture, phrases like “noble savage” or “indian princess” might come to mind and have also been perpetuated in the theater. in her book celluloid indians, jacqueline kilpatrick explains three ways of understanding indigenous stereotypes in films. kilpatrick highlights mental, sexual, and spiritual representations and issues that continue to reside in new media. audiences can view the mental stereotype as the encompassing of the other two tropes since words like “stupid” or “dumb” are replaced by “filthy” or “noble.” in american theater, we see this in stereotypical characters like “tiger lily'' in j.m. barrie’s peter pan (1911), or the nameless american indian characters in irving berlin’s annie get your gun (1946; both shows are still produced on broadway, nationally). stereotypical characters place the indigenous individual inferior to the settler, enabling the over-sexualization or damaging view of the “primitive heathen.” transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 92 unfortunately, stereotypical characters specify the lack of american comprehension and creation of “otherness” on stage, even in indigenous-focused performances. we hunger to break free from indigenous stereotypes. frequently there is a drive within mainstream theater landscapes to create legible characters by including narratives that contain some version of an indigenous stereotype (brandes). urban rez did not utilize tropes and created many characters that counter these ahistorical stereotypes. the characters and performers ranged in tribal affiliation, age, sexual orientation, gender, and experience. fasthorse demanded predominantly indigenous performers and characters, which resulted in a 15-person cast representing 14 different tribal nations. the play did not have an indian princess, a noble savage, or any characters still seen in mainstream media or theater. our ancestral identities were at the forefront of how we experienced and continued seeing the world. we want to exist outside the gaze and performance of stereotypes simply. as queer and two-spirit community members, we recognize our own “ongoing radical resistance against colonialism that includes struggles for land redress, self-determination, healing historical trauma, cultural continuance, and reconciliation” (driskill 69). our queerness—tied to our ancestral identity—became secondary rather than being dissected and looked at through a colonial or a eurocentric lens of gender and sexuality. as a theater production, urban rez provided intellectual and emotional space for radical imagination that engaged with the decolonization process, not as a fixed finality of the process (driskill 70). max and the other queer character were central to carrying the storyline forward, and both were continuously rooted in an ancestral identity that connects to self, place, and community. we do not want to romanticize indigenous communities but continue to produce research that serves the community differently. the work of urban rez was at bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 93 times uncomfortable but ultimately actively working to meet the community where they needed stories told. we observe that the process of crafting urban rez provided a safe and open space to create beyond the confines of the typical american theater. max, the main character, reflected a similar experience to those our urban and local communities face with the settler logics of erasure. urban rez was a shift because it was the first experience where we did not adjust gender presentation or physical identities to conform to the american theater standard. as demonstrated by auntie’s relief in our production, the community wanted fewer stereotypes and a more well-rounded representation. we did not have an “indian romeo or juliet.” the opportunity to perform fully realized characters quickly taught us and reminded us of who we are, where we come from, and the ancestors that connect us to the land. to perform in urban rez meant that our identities were simply understood instead of being dissected to fit the confines of current american theater stereotypes. the character formation was tied to a demonstration of relationships, not just showing the failure of those relationships. the three co-authors were bemused when we first discussed urban rez’s idea as a queer theater production. we have all had to justify or defend our queerness in other performance spaces, including drag, student leadership, or community organizing. although we live as queer, two-spirit, and trans people, those parts of our lives are sometimes under a microscope. but in the urban rez landscape, we did not have to perform ourselves on stage. the ability to engage as a whole character, operating outside the confines of stereotypes, allowed for nuanced representations of our experience in the show. we were seen as relative and self-determining, occupying indigenous space wholly. hunger for sovereignty transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 94 a man dressed as uncle sam yells from the back of the crowd, “…only the federal government is empowered to recognize tribes as legitimate or not.” the crowd responds. some people are surprised; other audience members nervously laugh. one man whispers loudly, “let’s tie him to the train tracks.” an auntie character asks, “who invited the federal government?” the uncle sam character responds, “the american government does not need to be invited. we’re old friends.” articulating visual sovereignty to a non-native company was difficult. however, ctc continued to support the work and challenge themselves as a non-native organization to show up, listen, and support. they hungered to support an indigenous process, supporting and uplifting particular types of sovereignty expression as theorized by scholars like vine deloria, jr, gerald r. alfred, audra simpson, and many others. the company continued to be patient and let indigenous voices be a driving force of the production. the narrative and characters of urban rez addressed sovereignty in two ways. the first way was to address the day-to-day dealing with the federal government regarding tribal citizenship. the plot centers on the experience of the main character max, a non-federally recognized california native artist dealing with garnering federal recognition from the united states government. max wants to sell his art, and yet, according to the indian arts and crafts act (iaca) of 1990, only individuals enrolled in federally recognized tribes can sell “authentic” american indian arts and crafts (“indian arts and crafts”). the second way was through an act of visual sovereignty, as introduced by jolene rickard. visual sovereignty provides an encompassing approach for understanding the intersecting gaze of empire, the disentanglement of representation, and indigenous narratives. within the play, max struggles to sell his work and negotiates with the “federal government” to accomplish the impossible task of gaining federal recognition for his bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 95 small tribe. max’s character brings up gaming, blood quantum, and sovereignty to comply with the government and convince his family members to join the cause. the harder max tries to comply, the more he struggles. the play utilizes the real-life experiences of community members to craft a narrative centering on federal indian policy and personal relationships with governmental laws. throughout the performance, different moments of discussion highlighted the impact of the marshall trilogy by addressing citizenship, land, and trust responsibility (fletcher 3). as the play progresses, policy and law issues come into stark contrast on stage. as max spirals further in his quest for federal recognition, he falls further and further away from tribal connections to land, community, and culture. although max does not directly state his struggles with a federal definition of sovereignty, the audience can see his conflict. max can never maintain or achieve the sovereignty that the federal government demands (maaka and anderson 325). by the end of the play, we see that relationships to indigeneity from a tribal-specific perspective are more critical for max than federal recognition. sovereignty can be a complicated concept and can mean many things for tribal nations. as a european term, sovereignty can be helpful when navigating colonial systems but has little use within an indigenous context (alfred 54). the federal government forces colonial relationships with the land, citizenship, and indigenous history to become complicated for many tribal nations. the process of creating urban rez addressed the limitations of attempting to work within a colonial structure while also undoing the visual limitations of colonial expression. fasthorse’s script and process led audiences to a new way of engaging with indigenous stories that include queer representation. in the introduction to critically sovereign, joanne barker states that “we do not know whether the stories are true, only that they tell us who we are” (1). the sovereignty we reflected in our urban rez transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 96 characters ensured that we did not compromise who we were or continue to be. the stories created a shift, not only for the characters but also for performers. it was the first experience where we did not have to compromise our indianness or queerness. we did not even have to talk about it to establish our queerness on stage. the 2016 production created a unique process of having each performer imbue their attributes into their characters on stage. we made our characters specifically queer, trans, or two-spirit, although the script did not call for it. in the play, the audience witnesses multiple queer, gay, two-spirit, and trans-actors and characters on stage. we did not have to wave pride flags on stage to represent ourselves as a part of multiple communities. the complexity of each individual was accepted and shared fully on stage. we recognized the nuances of our representation in fasthorse’s weaving of our words; as queer performers, we had not seen our everyday-ness demonstrated adequately in other theater work. as performers, we could embody so many parts of our indigenous selves openly without performing a settler version of queer. the play uplifted our intersecting voices and was the first time some of us felt like our stories and narratives took center without being a deficit relationship to other identities (clemenco). the narrative honored the queer, reservation-bred, and complicated story of ourselves by showing up and listening to our indigenous voice, our queer voice, and our gendered voice. hunger for relationality two women adorned with weaved basket hats, multi-stringed abalone necklaces, tanned deerskin tops, and tule weed woven skirts stand before a slender lakota woman named larissa. the women stand surrounded by the cast, crew, and audience of urban rez in the beautiful production setting of the kuruvungna springs in west los bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 97 angeles (gabrielino tongva springs foundation). they hand larissa a wooden instrument called a clapper stick used in tongva song making. acjacheman community member jacque nunez, one of the two women, posted a statement about the experience on facebook, “gifting her with a clapper. i loved the truth, humor, and accuracy of our journey as an unrecognized california tribe. it was painful but comforting to see our truth articulated so well.” the memory of the image still brings a heightened emotional response. the accountability we demonstrated through the production considers the engagement of reciprocity between the playwright, cast, crew, and audience. we hunger for relationality. framing a reciprocal relationship between the community and land requires acknowledging positionality through a lens of cultural norms that broadly engage with community-based knowledge. in his book research is ceremony, shawn wilson states, “an indigenous methodology must be a process that adheres to relational accountability” (77). we were accountable to each other. as insiders/outsiders to the urban indian community, the privilege of writing about the urban rez production establishes how our responsibility to the urban community informs our work and how we continue to serve the local tribal communities in los angeles. furthermore, the production demonstrated a sustained relationship as a guest and then relative to place. the urban rez experience unsettles the performance of the nation-state while also unsettling what it means to belong. the creative process of the urban rez production demonstrates ideas of kinship and being a guest, as theorized by acjachemen/tongva scholar charles sepulveda (52). we introduced the theoretical concept of being a “guest” to guide and focus our discussion on urban rez. sepulveda introduces “kuuyam [as] an indigenous theorization that disrupts the dialectic between native and settlers through a tongva understanding of non-natives as potential guests transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 98 of the tribal people, and more importantly—of the land itself” (41). kuuyam frames a broad indigenous methodology to center a specific geopolitical community. the play is for and about communities in the los angeles basin, and so too is the research. each performance was at a place of importance to tongva communities. the first half of the production occurred in downtown los angeles (dtla) near the la river and the tongva village of yaangna, one of many tongva village sites. during the initial occupation of yaangna (ancestral name of la), spanish settlers enslaved many tongva tribal members to work in agricultural fields near the river (bogany). as we began rehearsals at our first location, many tongva tribal members reminded us that these locations were places of violence (kudler). during the (re)occupation of these spaces, especially in dtla, indigenous voices created a moment of physical resistance. in the grand opening of our show, we asked a tongva community member to help us welcome the performance into the space and provide community care for the show. craig torres sang a coming home song for the land and stories shared throughout our performance. torres spoke of the healing we were bringing to the space. he told us that he was calling the ancestors to the place. urban rez demonstrated that “indigenous peoples exist, resist, and persist” (kauanui 1). although never explicit, our goal became to occupy the land in disruption of settler logics physically. the performances created new meaning and recreated relationality in places of erasure. in the second production location, we performed at the kuruvungna springs site in west los angeles. these natural springs are a historical and cultural site for tongva and other california native communities. the performance at kuruvungna brought an entirely different feel to the production. in one instance, the springs, located on the campus of university high school, are a point of pride for the primarily non-native institution. yet, the nearby apartment complex would continually call in noise bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 99 complaints to the local police department in the next moment. as scott l. morgensen posits in their text, “the processes of settler colonialism produce contradictions, as settlers try to contain or erase native differences so that they may inhabit native land as if it were their own” (123). another critical essay could be written about public land use for the performance, including class, income, and ethnic demographics for each space. performing at kuruvungna springs created beautiful moments of contradiction. as lakota, kumeyaay (iipay), and apache relatives, we have had to think about our positionality in the play and on tongva lands. we consider our essay a demonstration of inter-reflexivity as theorized by yazzie and risling baldy. interreflexivity between the co-authors, the playwright, cast, crew, and the community became making and remaking our understandings of representation, relationships, and reciprocity. we imagine our queer and two-spirit narratives as accountable to being a guest on tongva lands while also profoundly reflecting on how to relate to each other as indigenous kin, characters in the urban rez production, and guests living a particular los angeles experience. we were challenged and welcomed by the local tribal communities and the diverse indigenous urban community. we had multiple audience members come to both production sites. their perspectives and our perspectives were a challenge and a gift. the challenge is to understand the audience's positionality and how a performer might interpret the narrative. we had a wide variety of tribal communities visit, and many audience members attended multiple shows at each location. the co-authors never experienced questions about our queerness, nor was the production challenged about having two-spirit characters on stage. urban rez allowed the space to explore ideas of indigeneity because we were kuuyam (guest) first. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 100 hunger for our queer selves max stands confused and frustrated, opposite the government official. their application for federal recognition is denied; max is defeated. his community on stage rallied around him, all speaking words of encouragement and belonging, “you want to be a part of something. to know that you’re not alone, we’re our own tribe today; we are all a part of the circle…” max turns to his community and reiterates, “it gives all of us a place to belong.” the urban rez community turns to the audience and sings a round dance song, inviting everyone to join. at the end of the song, the crowd erupts with celebration and embraces. we continue to face challenges as we struggle to articulate the nuanced conversation of urban rez but are ultimately searching to express how we can exist as whole characters on a performance stage. on the one hand, we address theater history to communicate ideas about representation, narrative form, and audience engagement. yet, we have often only engaged with performance space as straight characters or in drag. on the other hand, we engage with broad indigenous studies concepts to understand the intersections of sovereignty, federal policy, and settler colonialism. but are reminded that issues of two-spirit representation historically have been pushed out of heteropatriarchal structures like the united states government. we turn to queer theory and queer representation to tease out and fill in the gaps. the urban rez narrative asserted self-representation in opposition to settler imaginaries to define and establish an alternative to heteronormative, sexist, and exclusivist frameworks. for example, indigenous writers exercise self-determining actions and reflect a queering of stories to radically reimagine indigenous futures that see indigenous and queer communities as central to existence. the stories of urban rez draw visibility to queer, two-spirit, and trans relatives that did not have to separate themselves or perform to be part of a narrative that reflects deep histories and tribal bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 101 consciousness (ramos). the affirmation of queer, trans, and two-spirit characters and actors on stage uplifts self-representations not defined by settler logics. we have not argued extensively why other theater companies do not employ queer practices of creating theater within an american context. partially because the narrow representation of characters on a theater stage often reduces a persona to a single type of character (i.e., queer or indigenous), reflecting stagnant american storytelling. we posit that urban rez “directly denaturalize[s] settler colonialism and disrupt its conditioning of queer projects by asserting native queer modernities” (morgensen 11). we focus on max because his queerness on stage was through the lens of a nephew, cousin, and leader of the urban rez landscape. in addition, the building of interrelationships on stage results in a perceptivity central to imagining the peoplehood of the region, harkening back to ideas of maintaining being a good guest and relative in los angeles (rifkin 35). the diverse urban rez characters result in nuanced relatives on stage rather than a narrowed reflection of a settler imagination. near the end of ctc data gathering, larissa asked what was missing from the play. now fully embedded in the early production stages, a co-author automatically suggested she needed more two-spirit representation. without a pause, larissa and ctc immediately began to organize a story circle with the red circle project (rcp), which resulted in two trans characters, “tasha” and “arianna.” at the time, rcp was the only hiv prevention and aids education program in los angeles county that specifically targeted the two-spirit community. the engagement with rcp reflects the legacy of how two-spirit communities continue to grow and change with “indigenous community formation” (driskill et al. 15). the inclusion of two-spirit narratives aided in the richness of the experience. before urban rez, themes of indigeneity in american theater have relied on stereotypical character and plot paradigms that echo stereotypical representations of transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 102 tribal communities. driven by community voice, the story of urban rez was a push to decentralize stereotypes to focus on narratives by and for indigenous people to provide alternatives to the limitations imposed by settler colonial subjectivity (morgensen 46). instead of recreating the same stagnant stories of the struggle of an lgbtq+ experience in the community, urban rez viewed our characters and ourselves as whole and integral. by utilizing queer community voice, urban rez captured the communities’ often complex issues within broad american indian metropolitan culture. we did not, and do not, want to see a fractionated version of ourselves on stage. we must reimagine our relationships to place, community, and narrative and address the emplacement of heteronormativity on articulations of indigenous peoplehood (rifkin 10). through our participation in the urban rez experience, we attempted to address the complicated ways indigenous narratives have been removed, shifted, adapted, or rendered invisible by settler colonial formations (rifkin 315). we want to be a part of the circle as the gay kumeyaay (iipay) cousin, the two-spirit apache sister, and the queer lakota auntie. conclusion: hunger for a future the urban rez experience was an interactive and multivocal theater process that we continue to validate and analyze as an indigenous and queer methodological and theoretical model to address the limitations of american theater. we used indigenous studies concepts to center our positionally as guests on tongva land and to challenge our work to be accountable to each other and the community. utilizing queer theories, we demonstrated that the urban rez production presented an opportunity to express ourselves as nuanced indigenous characters on stage. finally, our co-authorship reflects our relationship as guests and then relatives through the urban rez experience. bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 103 we consider our collaborative writing process a reflection of being a guest, especially queer indigenous guests. sepulveda’s theorization of kuuyam focuses on the relationship to rivers and land while also critiquing the deficits of western academic methodologies. we see our multilayered relationship as queer performers, queer academics, and queer guests to hold our writing accountable to the land and otherthan-human kin. the writing process provides a place for us to share and hold each other culpable to the indigenous narratives of urban rez beyond the confines of the performance space. through indigenous feminist and community-based methodologies, a reciprocal relationship establishes a framework of self-reflective positionality that we employ generously. the co-authors experienced moments of reclamation that stemmed from the production. we found a theater community that was not reacting to or upholding white supremacy. we found the support to come fully into our queerness and transness as indigenous people. the production continues to be a touchpoint for the safety of our identities. academic writing is often an isolating process, and historically, we would have told stories together. indigenous scholars like linda tuhiwai smith and shawn wilson provide models of navigating insider/outsider research issues. we attempt to model how to conduct research as a guest to tongva land together as insiders and outsiders to both the american theater stage and settler academia. indigenous education studies scholar bryan brayboy demonstrates that collecting the experiences of communities and honoring their beliefs provides an entree for educational anthropologists to rethink traditional fieldwork methods (22). similarly, we imagine our project has moved forward with a collective framework honoring kuuyam and reimagining queer kin beyond the stereotypes. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 104 in conclusion, indigenous queer narratives within the larger american theater context are challenging because of time, convenience, and reception. urban rez, fortunately, allowed for engagement with the indigenous community in a way that benefits the indigenous research narrative and presents a long-term commitment to queering american theater. we try to imagine how to better navigate art and performance within the larger framework of indigenous studies. urban rez continues to be an entry point in understanding the complexities of our identities as reservationraised yet urban living performers notes 1 the actor’s equity association is a union that represents more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers nationwide. 2 we use the term “auntie” as an honorific for a respected female older than us but not yet in their elder years. 3 we also use native, indigenous, and indian terms interchangeably to reflect the current dialogue within our communities. works cited alfred, gerald r. peace, power, righteousness: an indigenous manifesto. 2nd ed, oxford university press, 2009. arcos, betto. “‘urban 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unfurls tales of native american identity.” los angeles times, apr. 2016, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-urban-rez-reviewcornerstone-theatre-20160413-story.html. entertainment and arts. brayboy, bryan mckinley jones. “chapter two: the history of anthropology and future research: conducting’ fieldwork.’” counterpoints, vol. 218, peter lang ag, 2003, pp. 11–27. jstor. clemenco, sage alia. “urban rez: voices of native american actors.” linktv, 22 apr. 2016, https://www.linktv.org/shows/artbound/urban-rez-voices-of-native-americanactors. cornerstone theater company. https://cornerstonetheater.org/. deer, sarah. the beginning and end of rape: confronting sexual violence in native america. university of minnesota press, 2015. deloria, philip joseph. playing indian. nachdr., yale univ. press, 2007. deloria, vine. we talk, you listen: new tribes, new turf. dell, 1974. denetdale, jennifer. “chairmen, presidents, and princesses: the navajo nation, gender, and the politics of 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https://la.curbed.com/2015/4/27/9966570/finding-yaangna-the-ancestral-villageof-las-native-people. lanz, michelle, and elizabeth nonemake. “‘urban rez’ shines light on la’s indigenous people ‘declared extinct’ by government.” the frame®, 89.3 kpcc, 26 apr. 2016, https://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2016/04/22/48214/larissafasthorses-idigenous-play-urban-rez/. lee, lloyd l. “navajo transformative scholarship in the twenty-first century.” wicazo sa review, vol. 25, no. 1, university of minnesota press, 2010, pp. 33–45. jstor. maaka, roger, and chris andersen, editors. the indigenous experience: global perspectives. canadian scholars’ press, 2006. million, dian, et al. therapeutic nations. university of arizona press, 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183gz4d. jstor. moreton-robinson, aileen. “relationality: a key presupposition of an indigenous social research paradigm.” sources and methods in indigenous studies, edited by chris anderson and jean m. o’brien, 1st ed., routledge, 2016, p. 328. ---. talkin’ up to the white woman: indigenous women and white feminism. university of queensland press, 2000. morgensen, s. l. “settler homonationalism: theorizing settler colonialism within queer modernities.” glq: a journal of lesbian and gay studies, vol. 16, no. 1–2, jan. 2010, pp. 105–31, doi:10.1215/10642684-2009-015. morgensen, scott lauria. spaces between us: queer settler colonialism and indigenous decolonization. university of minnesota press, 2011. native voices at the autry. 1994, https://theautry.org/events/signatureprograms/native-voices/about-native-voices. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 108 nunez, jacque. comment on cecelia phoenix photo 2016 facebook, 24 may. 2016, 12:14 a.m. https://www.facebook.com/ accessed 9 nov, 2020. ramos, kenneth. “urban rez: native american actor kenneth ramos on representing indigenous communities.” artbound, 25 mar. 2016, https://www.linktv.org/shows/artbound/urban-rez-native-american-actor-kennethramos-on-representing-indigenous-communities. red circle project. 15 may 2020, http://redcircleproject.org/. rickard, j. “visualizing sovereignty in the time of biometric sensors.” south atlantic quarterly, vol. 110, no. 2, apr. 2011, pp. 465–86, doi:10.1215/00382876-1162543. rickard, jolene, et al. “sovereignty: a line in the sand.” aperture, no. 139summer 1995, pp. 50–59. jstor. rifkin, mark. the erotics of sovereignty: queer native writing in the era of selfdetermination. university of minnesota press, 2012. ---. when did indians become straight? kinship, the history of sexuality, and native sovereignty. oxford university press, 2011. sepulveda, charles. “our sacred waters: theorizing kuuyam as a decolonial possibility.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, vol. 7, no. 1, 2018, pp. 40–58. simpson, audra. “under the sign of sovereignty: certainty, ambivalence, and law in native north america and indigenous australia.” wicazo sa review, vol. 25, no. 2, 2010, pp. 107–24, doi:10.1353/wic.2010.0000. smith, l. t. (2012). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples (second edition). zed books. speed, shannon. “structures of settler capitalism in abya yala.” american quarterly, vol. 69, no. 4, 2017, pp. 783–90, doi:10.1353/aq.2017.0064. bordeaux et al “hunger for culture” 109 wilson, shawn. research is ceremony: indigenous research methods. 1st edition, fernwood publishing, 2008. wolfe, patrick. “settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” journal of genocide research, vol. 8, no. 4, dec. 2006, pp. 387–409, doi:10.1080/14623520601056240. yazzie, melanie k., and cutcha risling baldy, editors. “introduction: indigenous peoples and the politics of water.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, vol. 7, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1–18. microsoft word jbm, d higgins, final.docx david higgins review of spiral to the stars 307 laura harjo. spiral to the stars: mvskoke tools of futurity. the university of arizona press, 2019. 303 pp. isbn: 0816541108. https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/spiral-to-the-stars laura harjo’s spiral to the stars: mvskoke tools of futurity (2019) is a loving and insightful book that innovates pathways toward bright futures for indigenous communities without diminishing or downplaying the grim complexities of settlercolonial hegemony in the contemporary world. harjo is an associate professor of community and regional planning at the university of new mexico, and she was also appointed the muscogee (creek) nation’s ambassador to the united nations. in spiral to the stars, she proposes four concrete intersections of theory and practice that can guide mvskoke futurity: “este-cate sovereignty, community knowledge, collective power, and emergence geographies” (24-25). each of these tools draws upon traditional and contemporary mvskoke knowledges and life practices, as well as harjo’s own training in geography and community planning, to offer vectors of transformative praxis that are both theoretically sophisticated and also accessible for non-academic readers. (this accessibility is vital given that spiral to the stars emerges from specific conversations with mvskoke communities and aims to help people in these communities create realistic pathways toward better futures.) one of harjo’s central arguments is that mvskoke communities “already have what they need to live, shape, and imagine many modes of futurity” (46). mvskoke people, in other words, do not need to wait for or depend upon the recognition of the settlercolonial state in order to take meaningful steps toward what mvskoke poet laureate joy harjo calls the “lush promise” of a better world (50). spiral to the stars acknowledges the need, at times, for political action within existing settler-colonial legal systems, yet harjo echoes glen coulthard’s warning that the “politics of recognition” forced upon indigenous peoples frequently enforce colonial modes of governance that do not ultimately benefit indigenous groups (63). she therefore suggests that mvskoke people act boldly—without waiting for anyone’s permission—to create new social possibilities using tools that are already available. the first tool of futurity that harjo explores is “este-cate” or “radical” sovereignty, a transformative agency that emerges from the physical capabilities of both human and non-human entities. from one perspective, este-cate sovereignty might be thought of as the straightforward understanding that “everyone carries the power to act” (38). sovereignty, in other words, does not descend from authorities on high; “action, power, and agency,” harjo argues, are instead available at the scale of “the body, transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 308 household, and community” (77). such an embrace of embodied agency “resists the narrative of broken community, authored by outsiders, that becomes internalized and enacted by community members” (78). este-cate sovereignty, then, renounces what anishinaabe author gerald vizenor refers to as “victimry” and emphasizes instead the transformative agency that is always available to mvskoke communities (vizenor 15). harjo captures this rejection of victimry (and a survivance-oriented celebration of agency) within the future-oriented optimism of her project: “futurity means that despite the nation-state’s projects to eliminate us, here we are – living!” (198). although este-cate sovereignty might at first seem like a straightforward concept, harjo’s insistence that spiritual ancestors and non-human entities (such as plants and animals) embody powerful capacities for transformative action provocatively aligns her work with key critical currents in posthumanism, speculative realism, ecocriticism, and affect studies. at several points, for example, she argues that the work of creating better futures involves “the enactment of theories and practices that activate our ancestors’ unrealized possibilities” (5). when reading this, i couldn’t help but think of deleuze’s notion of the virtual, which brian massumi describes as a “mode of reality implicated in the emergence of new potentials” (16). harjo argues, in essence, that a better world is possible—all the material conditions for its emergence already exist— but this world remains virtual, unactivated, and unrealized. este-cate sovereignty involves taking action to awaken these immanent, already-available possibilities rather than allowing them to remain slumbering. furthermore, harjo theorizes each of her tools of futurity using what she refers to as “the mvskoke lens of energy transfers,” a paradigm that recognizes “the power and life in all things” and foregrounds ways in which “energy is transmitted from being to being, including plants and animals” (21; 53; 101). humans, in other words, are not the only beings with the capacity to affect and to be affected: our lives are shaped in powerful ways by plants, animals, and the legacies of our ancestors—and we touch and transform all of these things, in turn, through our actions. on a deeper level, then, este-cate sovereignty offers a transformative perspective regarding the emergence of the new: the best kinds of futurity blossom when we awaken to our already-existing power to act in concert with others (human and nonhuman, living and non-living). this central emphasis on relationality is my favorite aspect of spiral to the stars: in addition to the powerful community building tools she offers for mvskoke praxis, harjo also demonstrates what critical theory can look like when we reject the isolation and alienation endemic to late-capitalist settler-colonial epistemology and instead put relationships at the center of our critical concerns. in this david higgins review of spiral to the stars 309 regard, spiral to the stars offers a vital paradigm that is desperately needed within the context of the anthropocene, where the global drive to exploit people, animals, and natural resources too-often crowds out efforts to create ecological sustainability and social equity. harjo expresses the importance of relationality with the mvskoke term vnokeckv, which refers to a “love that cares for and tends to the needs of the people”—and, as noted above, her sense of who counts as “people” is radically more inclusive than settler society often allows (20). vnokeckv is foundational to the second tool of futurity that spiral to the stars explores: community knowledge. if este-cate sovereignty rejects the feeling that mvskoke people are powerless and encourages them to recognize their already-existing capacities, community knowledge overturns the idea that indigenous ways of knowing are valueless and emboldens mvskoke people to love and honor the truth of their individual and collective experiences. community knowledge, harjo suggests, is “embodied” and “felt,” and it is “realized in daydreams and interstices” (116). it is a knowledge found in smells and dreams, and it is gained from observing the natural world, watching for signs, and gazing at the stars. centrally, it is a knowledge that emerges within kinship networks; it rejects the epistemological poison of “settler knowledge production” and instead offers “a wayfinding tool back to the things we know and hold as valuable” (107; 117). when individuals within a community recognize their power and honor their own knowledge and wisdom, they have an extraordinary capacity to come together and express collective power: harjo’s third tool of futurity. collective power, she argues, is “community knowledge operationalized” (118). it is felt in the utopian space of stompdance, it is woven when mvskoke people craft community quilts, it is expressed in the “generative refusal” of settler regimes of oppressive power (124), and it can be discovered within “alternative” economies of sharing and exchange that reject practices of exploitation (such as predatory lending) (141). ultimately, collective power pushes back against the fragmentation and alienation imposed on indigenous communities by settler society, and it rekindles the idea “that the collective working together can accomplish more than one person” (145). finally, harjo proposes that collective power can be expressed within emergence geographies, or the “spaces and places that mvskoke people carve out, despite forced removal and land dispossession, to produce the social relations they need to thrive” (38). she offers the example of how one of her own communities—the sapulpa creek indian community—met at a “jiffy laundromat in town and at a now-defunct mall” transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 310 before it was formally recognized as a chartered community (151). although the formal recognition accorded to tribal towns and chartered communities offers access to important resources, harjo notes that “not all communities have the time or ambition to operate a chartered community,” and she also argues that the normative forms of governance required to gain recognition may prevent mvskoke people from “fully creating the kind of community they desire” (154). emergence geographies, then, are the informal (rather than formally-recognized) spaces where mvskoke people come together to form powerful and transformative kinship relations. in addition to laundromats and shopping malls, emergence geographies can also be “ephemeral” spaces that occur “seasonally or intermittently,” such as stompdance ceremonies, festivals, softball games, and wild onion dinners (155). they might also be “virtual” spaces—where mvskoke people connect using skype, facetime, or facebook—or they might include “metaphysical” spaces, such as the sacred burial sites of deceased ancestors, where people can “connect to a spiritual realm” (155). emergence geographies, harjo argues, “make space for mvskoke ways of being in the world” without the need to wait upon formal recognition or approval from the settler state. there are spaces available right now, she suggests, where community relations can blossom and where the possibilities for better futures can be forged. one odd organizational quirk of spiral to the stars is harjo’s inclusion of a detailed summary of the results of her creek community survey (a study conducted to “reveal what tribal members find important” at various scales) entirely within the pages of her chapter on emergence geographies (165). the survey is smart, methodologically sensitive, and vital to the book as a whole, but it’s not always entirely clear how the discussion of the survey results supports the chapter’s focus on alternative spaces, and it feels at times (to me) like harjo’s analysis of the survey may deserve a separate chapter of its own. the results of the survey, however, are thought-provoking: harjo shows that many mvskoke people feel that they have a sense of agency at the scale of their bodies, their households, and their local communities, but they often do not feel that they have agency within the tribal structure of the muskogee (creek) nation or at larger scales beyond this. harjo therefore concludes that “community-based methods” (182) offer the most powerful pathways toward futurity: mvskoke people can exercise este-cate sovereignty and honor community knowledge within emergent spaces in order to achieve “the collective power of self-determination, respect, love, and consent” (181). david higgins review of spiral to the stars 311 this is certainly true, and spiral to the stars offers an empowering vision and concrete tools that can help achieve meaningful change. one question that remains unexplored, however, is how such tools might scale up to enable change at larger levels. this is not a critique of harjo’s excellent study, but rather a concern that arises for me, personally, as i ponder the implications of her work. in essence, harjo argues that, rather than waiting for the settler colonial state to enable new possibilities or struggling to force it to transform through grievance processes, mvskoke people might instead step away from settler society—or work within it—in order to maximize the unactualized possibilities that are already available to create better futures at the local scale of the body, the household, and the community. while this may be one of the best options available (and it certainly beats a paralyzing sense of powerlessness and futility), the problem of settler hegemony remains. harjo provocatively mentions the possibility of “jumping scale,” or bypassing deadlocks that have occurred at certain scales by connecting with allies who can act at larger levels (44). she gives the example of students, unable to influence decision makers at their school, who might use social media to connect with state legislators (or other decision makers) who can enact change. this makes me curious: is it possible that the tools of futurity outlined in spiral to the stars might catalyze larger transformations if conjoined with strategies for jumping scale? harjo emphasizes starting from the body and scaling up to the level of the community; she touches upon the possibility of jumping scale in a larger sense only briefly. it would certainly be impossible for transformative efforts to jump scale without a strong foundation of individual and collective agency, and for this reason i think spiral to the stars offers a perfect wayfinding tool in its intended context. i also yearn for the day when harjo’s guiding vnokeckv, and her celebration of human and non-human relationality, can find a way to jump scale in the grandest possible way, guiding us all toward the loving possibilities for futurity she envisions. david higgins, inver hills college works cited massumi, brian. “seeing the virtual, building the insensible.” architectural design, vol. 68, no. 5/6, may-june 1998, pp. 16-24. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 312 vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. university of nebraska press, 1998. microsoft word jbm, bernardin, final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 278 joe lockard and a. robert lee, eds. louis owens: writing land and legacy. university of new mexico press, 2019. 328 pp. isbn: 9780826360984. https://unmpress.com/books/louis-owens/9780826360984 “time wounds all heels”: so reads the title of a poem in jim northup’s mixed-genre work, walking the rez road (1993). in northup’s signature humored way, the quip telegraphs the reverberating after-lives of the vietnam war. the poem’s closing line amplifies this trauma by invoking intergenerational indigenous survivance under settler occupation: “i’m a veteran of america’s longest war, maybe” (154). choctaw-cherokee writer-scholar louis owens, whose formative years—and fiction—were profoundly shaped by the vietnam war, likewise understood the challenges of surviving the “longest war.” in his critical work, he named the genocidal violence at the heart of us settler colonialism while characters in his novels alternately carry its scars and bestow them on others in acts of collateral and lateral violence. northup’s title came to mind amid my own pained and lengthy reflection on the publication of louis owens: writing land and legacy. more specifically, i thought of the disjunction between the far distances the field has traveled since owens’s time, and the seeming fact that owens himself, unlike vonnegut’s billy pilgrim, has become “stuck in time.” co-edited by joe lockard and a. robert lee, the collection announces its unease with owens’s current place in the field, a sense that, closing in on a generation past owens’s death by suicide in july 2002, “there has been a gathering if still not sufficient recognition of his varied and considerable achievement” (1). the editors make it personal, adding that “one motivation for this book project was the realization that we have personal knowledge of louis and his concerns that younger scholars do not, along with a consequent sense of responsibility for fostering discussions that he began” (7). i am struck by what seems implicit in this statement, and what i have observed more generally: in indigenous literary studies today, louis owens’s creative and critical work has little visible presence. yet in a remarkable decade that closed with his death, owens published a monograph, five novels, and two essay collections, contributions which david carlson in this volume rightly calls “foundational,” providing “key parameters for understanding the now-burgeoning field of california indian literature” (98). owens’s monograph, other destinies: understanding the american indian novel, published in the columbus quincentenary, was, as contributor billy j. stratton affirms, the “first native-authored book-length study of native american literature” (121). other destinies traces a genealogy of native novelists that spanned work by john rollin ridge, christine quintasket/mourning dove, d'arcy mcnickle, leslie silko, james welch, n. scott momaday, and gerald vizenor, many of whom he also invoked in the susan bernardin review of louis owens: writing land and legacy 279 exuberantly trans-indigenous orientations of his novels. this work pivoted the field at that time, making possible the kind of robust critical conversations that seeded the explosive growth of native american literary studies in the 1990s and onward into the present. mixedblood messages (1998) and i hear the train (2001) demonstrate the range of owens’s contributions to the field of indigenous studies: from his critique of post-colonial theory’s erasure of indigenous frameworks in “as if an indian were really an indian: native american voices and postcolonial theory,” to his succinct yet substantive interventions in settler colonial logics from the televisual to the theoretical, from the literary to the environmental. working with the tools and terms that were common in the 1990s, owens repeatedly made visible how us literature, art, and popular culture lent imaginative possibility to the engines of settler resource extraction, land theft, and dispossessive intergenerational trauma. owens never saw the blossoming of the native american literature symposium, nor that of the native american and indigenous studies association. yet he spoke frequently of an imagined future where there would be books written by members of every tribal nation. at its best, this collection places owens in meaningful relation to indigenous literary field formation while also directing us to his interventions in us literary history. birgit däwes, for example, frames a compelling reading of nightland (1996) with generative attention to trans-indigenous and transnational mappings. essays by cathy covell waegner and james mackay work to place owens in conversation with cormac mccarthy and ken kesey respectively; carlson and stratton provide key insights into owens’s notable career-long engagement with john steinbeck. others generate particularly rich new readings of owen’s novels. for example, in his luminous essay on bone game (1994), david moore delineates how owens “plays a literary bone game, pitting mystery against mystification to dramatize deadly colonial ironies” (179). moore also brings important attention to how owens’s always-intertextual novels directly address a cohort of native authors who were friends or mentors, including momaday, vizenor, silko, tapahonso, king, and welch. most successful in this collection is the suite of three essays comprising the “california” section which fulfills the co-editors’ aspiration to provide “a renewed center” for “diffuse owens scholarship” (7). together, these essays situate california as source, site, and struggle for owens, whom carlson aptly calls a “california-rooted indigenous writer” (98). in doing so, they brilliantly surface the confluences of owens’s biographical, environmental, creative, and scholarly lives. chris lalonde, a foundational owens scholar whose book, grave concerns, trickster turns (2002) remains vital, identifies the through-line of how owens turned his “sharpest sight” to transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 280 the still largely unmarked genocidal history at the heart of the so-called golden state. through his attention to owens’s short stories—including “your name is night,” his last published fiction—lalonde declares that “the genocidal history of california haunts him, haunts the state, should haunt us all” (86). carlson’s standout essay, “louis owens, california, and indigenous modernism,” uses the frequent metaphor of the river in owens’s novels to tell the “indigenous understory of california” (108): “there is a river of colonial trauma, so to speak, that flows under the surface of the lives of many in california” (109). there are many facets to appreciate in this essay which so deftly comprehends owens’s dual role as steinbeck and native literary studies scholar. foremost, though, is carlson’s articulation of owens’s “aesthetic of indigenous modernism” (98). through nimble analyses of the sharpest sight (1991) and bone game, carlson makes the case that: one of the underappreciated aspects of owens’s work is the way that he thought through the projects of various american modernists, including steinbeck, in order to move toward a more inclusive aesthetic and an alternative form of historical memory, responsive to his experiences as a diasporic, indigenous person of mixed heritage in california (99). ultimately, carlson details how, “in working through the problems of representing indigenous california, owens was propelled further into an interrogation of what american indian literature might become and how it might engage with other, more problematic stories embedded in the american canon, some of which he deeply loved” (98). stratton’s essay, “reading steinbeck, reading california,” similarly grounds his reading of owens in an attentiveness to the worlds and words that owens was raised and trained in, an important reminder of the distance covered from his first seeking out scott momaday at uc santa barbara only to be told that he did not teach a class in native literature.1 stratton’s essay provides a layered understanding of owens’s intellectual engagement with john steinbeck’s work, which, he reminds us, extended through his career. stratton articulates how “steinbeck’s work was instrumental in opening a window for owens to contextualize his unsettled experience in poverty, and to consider the empowering value of his own knowledge and experience” (128). yet too few essays in this collection make direct and relevant connections between the “here and now” and “then and there” of indigenous literary studies. the resulting effect is at times a puzzling decoupling from the introduction’s aspiration to generate new directions in owens scholarship. notably, i was puzzled why the co-editors did not confront more directly and definitively owens’s part in “a number of theory controversies” (3), for example the high-profile, often personal conflicts involving susan bernardin review of louis owens: writing land and legacy 281 elizabeth cook-lynn, sherman alexie, and gerald vizenor, among others. the wounds of this time, exacerbated by how owens was put in his posthumous place by some literary nationalism scholarship, have not healed and indeed underline owens’s lack of critical recognition today. individual contributors take it up with mixed results, as it were: some essays seem from a different time, such as when we read alan velie’s statement that “most of the great contemporary indian writers are mixedblood: momaday, welch, silko, vizenor, erdrich, and owens…” (170). or when joe lockard’s discussion of scholarly divisiveness around the analytic category of “mixedblood” derails from its lack of familiarity with indigenous studies touchpoints and frameworks. there is still work to be done to situate owens’s approach in his time without veering into defensive or celebratory gestures, which several essays do here. what might we say, for instance, beyond the biographical, for why owens, like others in his generation and before, focused on metaphors of blood? chad allen’s crucial work would be helpful here in thinking through what he terms the “blood/land/memory complex” to consider owens’s work in relation, for example with momaday’s “memories in the blood” and welch’s “winter in the blood.” elsewhere in the volume some contributors note an unfinished reckoning with the roots and reach of owens’s articulations of identity and ancestry. in a footnote, david carlson writes that owens’s “own critical reflections on ‘mixedblood’ writing are much more complex and nuanced than they are often caricatured” (118); billy j. stratton powerfully underscores how owens’s deeply personal and often poignant exploration of the complexities of his own family history, detailed in mixedblood messages and i hear the train, give voice to an enduring sense of duty to the active sense of presence and agency of all of his relations from oklahoma to mississippi. these are kin that he acknowledges and honors simply as “human beings who loved one other while crossing borders and erasing boundaries and, despite immeasurable odds, surviving…” (133). john gamber extends stratton’s attention to the complexity of these lived histories of diaspora and survivance by considering anew the critical debates over key analytics in indigenous literary studies at the turn of the twenty-first century. these debates, often framed between tribal nationalism and cosmopolitanism, hinged on conceptions of identity (especially the use of the term “mixedblood”), belonging, and home. gamber thoughtfully revisits an earlier essay, revising his understanding of how owens’s final novel, dark river (1999), provides a nuanced reading of belonging, community, and modes of tribal national “naturalization” (270). as his essay aptly details, owens’s protagonist, jake nashoba, is a “cautionary antihero who demonstrates potential transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 282 flexibilities in belonging and citizenship primarily by failing to recognize or partake of them” (270). gamber attends to how nashoba’s “confusion over the land, his desire to experience it alone in the broadest sense of the term, reflects a misconception that owens himself experienced” (284). in doing so, gamber opens the door to what i see as another missed opportunity in this collection: to place into conversation owens’s deep engagement with indigenous epistemologies of the environment with contemporary indigenous scholars such dina gilio-whitaker, kyle powys whyte, and robin kimmerer. as gamber points out, “owens contended with these ideas of the solitary male human out in the wilderness long before he published dark river” (285). indeed, owens turned to the “burning the shelter” story again and again, polishing its meanings like a stone. how might that story shape our readings of his novel wolfsong, first written in 1975, and finally published in 1991? james mackay views the ending of wolfsong as “validating an essentially selfish romantic and spiritual vision in which redemption will happen through individualized, context-less spiritual renewal” (156). but i wonder how that reading edges against owens’s critiques of his protagonists? more broadly, how might essays in this volume respond to owens’s concern with land dispossession, treaties, and the “lie” of the wilderness act? owens claimed that wolfsong was a response to depredations in the north cascades in the 1960s by the bear creek mining company, in violation of the wilderness act of 1964. owens once said to me that “it's just like every other treaty that’s been signed with the native american.” the infamous hamms’s beer sign that travels from wolfsong to sharpest sight to dark river (and which is insightfully discussed in gamber’s essay) was owens’s favored trope for the toxic brew of settler colonialism, masculinity, whiteness, and wilderness thinking. like “burning the shelter,” owens turned again and again to this sign to serve as an unsettling sign of settler colonial epistemologies. that “motionless sign” (dark river 48) of a lone white man forever paddling a canoe in a land emptied of indigenous peoples, served for owens as a powerful visual metaphor for the perils of being stuck in one place of thinking, in one way of being. let’s not consign owens’s creative and critical work to scholarship that does not move us. time wounds all heels. the book’s powerful two-part coda, poems by diane glancy and kim blaeser, attests both to the long wake of grief and to the intergenerational continuity of the words and worlds owens spun into being. may the dedication of other destinies—“for mixedbloods, the next generation”—serve as urgent invitation to revisit his work anew. his gracious and generous note to the future merits our wider susan bernardin review of louis owens: writing land and legacy 283 listening. in their introduction, lee and lockard acknowledge a still “wide-open field for owens studies” (7). i could not agree more. susan bernardin, oregon state university notes 1 louis owens shared this story of first meeting momaday at uc santa barbara many times. here is the version i was told: “i immediately went to see momaday, because i was so excited to find out there was an american indian teaching on campus, even though he was teaching american romanticism and emily dickinson. that was really my awakening. it was the first indian novel i had ever heard of, and i asked momaday what the other ones were, and he didn't know of any. so i started doing research on my own at that point. i started turning the library over, and i found other books by indian writers.” works cited allen, chadwick. blood narrative: indigenous identity in american indian and maori literary and activist texts. duke university press, 2002. northup, jim. walking the rez road. voyageur press, 1993. owens, louis. dark river. university of oklahoma press, 1999. microsoft word perry-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 150 natalie diaz. postcolonial love poem. graywolf press, 2020. 120 pp. isbn: 9781644450147. https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/postcolonial-love-poem in postcolonial love poem, the eagerly-anticipated follow up to her american book award-winning debut when my brother was an aztec (2012), natalie diaz offers readers intellectual complexity, formal diversity, and remarkably capacious lyrical attention. grounded by single poems at the beginning and end, this collection interweaves several thematic strands across three sections. these sections feature eminently readable mid-length poems about erotic desire and family dynamics, longer forays that leverage states of fracture to explore the violences of colonialism, and several prose paeans to the pleasures of basketball. diaz’s sense of the lyric snakes methodically toward and away from the presuppositions of prose, drawing from multiple wells of readerly delight. fans of diaz’s 2017 envelopes of air, written in collaboration with ada limón, will recognize and be happy to see some of the poems generated from that epistolary project, only slightly edited here. both wistful and searching, the poems from envelopes keep easy company with diaz’s other questing lyrics of erotic desire. in poems like “from the desire field,” originally published as a letter to limón, romantic and sexual longing invites transformation: the expansion of the self from a stable, merely human entity to a roving intelligence that scours the world for what it wants in a rapidly changing carousel of expedient, extrahuman form: my mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused, hot. and if not yoked to exhaustion beneath the hip and plow of my lover, then i am another night wandering the desire field— bewildered in its low green glow, belling the meadow between midnight and morning… i am struck in the witched hours of want— i want her green life. her inside me in a green hour i can’t stop. (12-13) emma catherine perry review of postcolonial love poem 151 diaz deploys this shapeshifting ability throughout her collection, as in “wolf or-7.” in this poem, the speaker watches the gps signal emitted by a tracking device on the first gray wolf to reenter california since the last one was killed for a government bounty in 1927. as the wolf makes its way back across the arbitrary borders on a colonialist map in search of a mate, diaz inhabits him, feels her desire through him: …a trembling blue line, south, west, south again, twelve hundred miles from oregon to califronia to find her: gray wolf, canis lupus, loba, beloved. in the tourmaline dusk i go a same wilding path, pulled by night’s map to the forests and dunes of your hips, divining from you rivers, then crossing them— proving the long thirst i’d wander to be sated by you. (32, italics in the original) though some of these shorter works address issues of coloniality in addition to erotic longing (poems like “manhattan is a lenape word” and “american arithmetic” come to mind), the longer poems in postcolonial love poem stretch out along the borderlands of the lyric to accommodate an even more discursive poetic mode. “the first water is the body,” for example, verges on the essay. this poem uses brief, prose-like stanzas to intersperse meditations on the inseparability of the body from water with explications of translation theory: ‘aha makav is the true name of our people, given to us by our creator who loosed the river from the earth and built it into our living bodies. translated into english, ‘aha makav means the river runs through the middle of our body, the same way it runs through the middle of our land. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 152 this is a poor translation, like all translations. (46, italics in the original) diaz posits, with considerable lyrical grace, that the futility of translation in this instance may not be the result simply of incompatible linguistic structures or vocabulary, but rather of centuries of genocidal environmental exploitation: jacques derrida says, every text remains in mourning until it is translated. when mojaves say the word for tears, we return to our word for river, as if our river were flowing from our eyes. a great weeping is how you might translate it. or a river of grief. but who is this translation for and will they come to my language’s four-night funeral to grieve what has been lost in my efforts at translation? when they have drunk dry my river will they join the mourning procession across our bleached desert? (47, italics in the original) “the first water is the body” achieves the considerable task of using carefully layered images and assertions to convey the crucial importance of its subject matter. in addition to the exercises in translation above, diaz also draws connections between the degradation of the colorado river and the lead poisoning of the drinking water in flint, michigan, and she points to potential remediation in the form of rivers in other countries that have been granted legal personhood. when diaz writes, “how can i translate—not in words but in belief—that a river is a body, as alive as you or i, that there can be no life without it?” she shakes her readers by the shoulders to impress upon them the utter urgency of the matter (48). another long poem, “exhibits from the american water museum,” likewise uses its extra length to sidewind along la frontera of the lyric, though it makes its moves through wry pastiche instead of a steady stream of discursive juxtapositions. “exhibits from the american water museum” is composed of numbered sections that appear to be jumbled, out of numeric order: the poem starts with a section titled “0.” which is followed by a section titled “17.” as pillaged objects are displayed in museums without respect for their contexts or for the people that created them, so to do these chaotically catalogued lyric fragments lay scattered across the imagination of the emma catherine perry review of postcolonial love poem 153 reader, slowly accruing their meaning in relation to each other despite their fractured state. though we have been reminded in “the first water is the body” that the body is inseparable from water, it is still shockingly moving to be told in this later poem that, 67. there are grief counselors on site for those who realize they have entered the american water museum not as patrons but rather as parts of the new exhibit. (67) the poem concludes with a statement of survivance in the face of the colonial violences of water contamination and theft and of erasure by exhibit: 11. art of fact: let me tell you a story about water: once upon a time there was us. america’s thirst tried to drink us away. and here we still are. (72) when diane glancy writes in her essay “the naked spot: a journey toward survivance” that “poetry is rebound,” she neatly prefigures the appearance of the three prose poems on basketball dotted strategically throughout postcolonial love poem (271). in “run’n’gun,” “the mustangs,” and “top ten reasons why indians are good at basketball,” diaz unveils yet another strategy in her poetic arsenal: while this collection is challenging, intricate, dense, and beautiful, it is also extremely funny. the first of the series, “run’n’gun,” opens with an anecdote about “a hualapai boy from peach springs” who “dunk[s] the ball in a pair of flip flops” to promptly slip and compound fracture his wrist. while the image deployed by diaz here evokes previous extrahuman affinities and overlaps when she writes “his radius fractured and ripped up through his skin like a tusk,” the story arcs ultimately through the hoop of humor: a little bone poking through does not stop the boy “from pumping his other stillbeautiful arm into the air and yelling, yeah, clyde the glide, motherfuckers! before some adult [speeds] him off to the emergency room” (23). though woefully injured, our man is nevertheless triumphant, nevertheless committed to his game and his joy. all three of these poems are celebrations of athletic catharsis—the delight that comes from playing big, fast, and fearless. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 154 postcolonial love poem is a rich collection with a wide and glittering array of poems on offer. whether readers comb through this book looking for lyrical lust, potent theorizing, or ready laughter, natalie diaz offers readers opportunities to yearn, to grieve, and to celebrate. she is a poet of remarkable abilities, and this is a book of remarkable pleasures. emma catherine perry, university of georgia work cited glancy, diane. “the naked spot: a journey toward survivance.” survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor. u of nebraska p, 2008, pp. 271284. microsoft word jbm, dawes, final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 263 review essay: developing indigenous visual arts transnationally and across genres denise k. cummings, ed. visualities 2: more perspectives on contemporary american indian film and art. michigan state university press, 2019. 284 pp. isbn: 9781611863192. https://msupress.org/9781611863192/visualities-2/ for over a century, the collocation of “native american” and “film” evoked a cultural imaginary begun in 1914 by edward curtis’s in the land of the head hunters: the representation of north america’s indigenous people through settler lenses of ethnography, exoticism, or colonization. since the 1990s, however, native filmmakers have been changing the game. in his 2012 history the inconvenient indian, thomas king noted that “the history of indians in hollywood is more a comedy than a tragedy,” and some of the best contemporary works, according to king, are native-authored short films and documentaries (50). indeed, in the first two decades of the new millennium, indigenous north american film has become a highly prominent genre, as productions and events around the world demonstrate: san francisco, los angeles, denver, augsburg university in minneapolis; edmonton, ottawa; chaco, argentina; inari, finland; and even stuttgart, germany all host annual indigenous film and/or media festivals. the imaginenative film and media arts festival in toronto, founded in 1998, has become the world’s largest of its kind. this development has also been reflected in academic scholarship. while the largest number of available studies still targets non-indigenous representations of “indians” as projections of difference, as robert berkhofer’s the white man’s indian began to do in 1978 (see also rollins and o’connor 1998; kilpatrick 1999; marubbio 2006; raheja 2010; howe, markowitz, and cummings 2013; hilger 2016; and berumen 2020), critics have increasingly addressed native-authored film: from kerstin knopf’s seminal study decolonizing the lens of power: indigenous films in north america (2008) to lee schweninger’s imagic moments (2013) and wendy gay pearson and susan knabe’s collection reverse shots (2013). a similar trend on a much larger scale may be noticed in the field of indigenous art history. originally framed by european and european-american anthropologists, native american and first nations visual arts had long been relegated to the discursive systems of “science” or “history” rather than aesthetics. but curators and art historians—such as gerald mcmaster (cree), paul chaat smith (comanche), ruth b. phillips, and allan j. ryan (to name but a few)—and institutions across the continent— such as the institute of american indian arts in santa fe, new mexico, the heard museum in phoenix, arizona, the gilcrease museum in tulsa, oklahoma, the museum birgit däwes review essay: developing indigenous visual arts 264 of anthropology in vancouver, british columbia, the art gallery of ontario in toronto, the canadian museum of civilization in québec, the george gustav heye center in new york city, and, of course, the smithsonian national museum of the american indian in washington, d.c.—lastingly changed the game (cf. berlo 1992, berlo and phillips 1998, ryan 1999, rushing iii 1999, phillips 2011). the two volumes on visualities, expertly edited by denise k. cummings, laudably continue this work in both fields of indigenous film and indigenous art history across north america, and expand it by dimensions of transnational (or trans-indigenous, to use chad allen’s successful term) connection, of genre-crossing, and of transmediality. dean rader argues in the oxford handbook of indigenous american literature that “native visual and verbal texts do more than problematize genre, they alter epistemology” (316). acknowledging this impact and following the success of the first installment (visualities: perspectives on contemporary american indian film and art, 2011), visualities 2 highlights the importance of the visual dimension in contemporary indigenous cultures. in the first volume, ten contributors celebrated and helped to define indigenous visualities, including films such as chris eyre’s skins and smoke signals, sherman alexie’s the business of fancydancing, shelley niro’s it starts with a whisper, tracey deer’s documentary mohawk girls, hulleah tsinnahjinnie’s digital short aboriginal world view, as well as other works of visual art by hock e. aye vi edgar heap of birds, carl beam, jaune quick-to-see smith, fritz scholder, t.c. cannon, larry mcneil, tom jones, george longfish, teri greeves, eric gansworth, melanie printup hope, and jolene rickard. the sheer length of this list already indicates the pertinence of a sequel, and the second volume brings together ten u.s.based, native and non-native experts, four of whom had also contributed to the first volume, in an intriguing and rewarding interdisciplinary project. like the 2011 collection, visualities 2 is subdivided into two major sections, with the largest (of seven chapters) dedicated to film, a smaller section (of two chapters) exploring contemporary visual art, and an epilogue on social media and the digital realm. cummings summarizes the purpose and demarcation in her introduction by writing, “[b]esides new scholarship on american indian creative outputs—the primary focus of the first volume––this second volume contains illuminating global indigenous visualities including first nations, aboriginal australia, māori and sami” (xv). even if this expansion is exemplary rather than systematic, with one example each from new zealand and sweden/sápmi, the move is as praise-worthy as it is future-oriented, documenting the increasing scholarly interest in trans-indigenous solidarities and transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 265 criticism. ranging from māori filmmaker barry barclay’s feature film ngati (1987) to the collagraphs by inuit artist annie pootoogook, the works analyzed in this volume prominently testify to and celebrate a vibrant and dynamic artistic scene and confirm thomas king’s 2012 assessment that it is at the various sites of visual production that the most exciting interventions into colonial discourse are being created today. the volume also features two overarching themes which, i believe, tie in remarkably well with larger discussions in current indigenous studies scholarship: the question of genre boundaries, on the one hand, and the nexus between aesthetics and political activism, on the other. both of these themes reflect the volume’s topicality and relevance particularly well. the volume begins chronologically with taos pueblo scholar p. jane hafen’s analysis of kent mackenzie’s 1961 sixteen-millimeter semidocumentary the exiles. whereas the film—about los angeles-based native americans in the late 1950s—was written and directed by a non-indigenous director, it is prominent as one of the earliest realistic depictions of urban natives, and it was restored in 2008 to reach a broader audience. discussing the mixed reception of the film’s restored version and its problematic circumstances of production, hafen reads the exiles through its similarities to n. scott momaday’s novel house made of dawn. with a particular focus on two sections from the novel, “the priest of the sun” and “the night chanter,” she argues that momaday “anticipated the circumstances of post-world war ii dislocation of native peoples” and, in some passages of his text, even “sounds like he is writing a narration to the exiles” (16-17). whereas hafen reads the 2008 restoration of mackenzie’s non-native film through the lens of a kiowa perspective from the 1960s, another fictional text from the so-called native american renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s served as the basis of a 2013 feature film by non-native brothers alex and andrew smith: james welch’s winter in the blood (1974). in her contribution, joanna hearne combines a framing of the film (which borrows the novel’s title) within barry barclay’s concept of “fourth cinema” with an interview with the directors as well as blackfeet/nez perce actress lily gladstone, who plays the character of marlene. the term of “fourth cinema,” which is indigenousauthored and situated outside of a nation-state logic, also informs later chapters by lee schweninger and theodore c. van alst, jr. and is arguably a useful background from which to develop further methodologies for indigenous visualities. hearne’s conversation, then, focuses, among other topics, on the declared goal of the filmmakers to reach a mass audience for native american issues, and it reveals the challenges that arise in a production which the smith brothers designed as “an birgit däwes review essay: developing indigenous visual arts 266 inverted western” (48). the film’s position between aesthetic and political aspects, as emphasized by the participants, also highlights one of the central themes of the entire volume: the role of political activism in contemporary indigenous studies. this theme also plays a dominant role in channette romero’s discussion of catherine anne martin’s (mi’kmaq) documentary the spirit of annie mae (2002), which is the subject of the following chapter. the question of political activism does not merely occur in the obvious topic of the film, since annie mae aquash was one of the most prominent native women involved in the cause of the american indian movement, but, as romero argues, through the form of privileging “tribal storytelling techniques and optics to resist imperial images of indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women” (61). contextualizing the female activist’s biography within a long-standing history of colonial violence, and giving a voice to the women who knew her, martin successfully questions the gender politics within aim and highlights indigenous women’s activism without exploiting the sensationalism of annie mae aquash’s murder. romero reads the film in the context of other approaches, such as joy harjo’s poem “for annie mae pictou aquash” or paul chaat smith’s and robert warrior’s like a hurricane. however, for an even broader perspective on these cultural reflections, a consideration of yvette nolan’s play, annie mae’s movement, would have been a fruitful addition. romero’s argument—that the film’s reliance on “mainstream film genres” (such as true crime or biography) eventually “limits its effectiveness” (79) and fails to connect its subject to ongoing mi’kmaq activism—may be disputed, but it certainly adds to a differentiated view on the complex case of annie mae aquash’s legacy. also focusing on colonial history and activism in canada, penelope myrtle kelsey zooms in on cree director tasha hubbard’s animated short, buffalo calling (2013), and her documentary, birth of a family (2016), in a relatively brief discussion of “buffalo as a site of indigenous knowledge and renewal” (86). in both films, the migration of canadian plains bison is read in the context of colonial violence and connected to the sixties scoop, in which aboriginal canadian children were forcefully removed from their families. while kelsey notes that the conflation of the decimation of buffalo and of genocidal practices may be seen as problematic, she convincingly foregrounds hubbard’s emphasis on the shared experience, and on the foregrounding of indigenous cosmologies in both films. the traumatic historical complex of removal, forced adoption, and boarding schools is a shared experience among indigenous people around the world, and both diné filmmaker blackhorse lowe’s feature shimásání (2009) and swedish/sami filmmaker transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 267 amanda kernell’s sami blood (2016) effectively translate traumatic history into “texts of desire and agency” (99), as editor denise k. cummings argues in her chapter. cummings’s definition of “visuality” for this purpose, as “the interplay of visual images with lived personal identity” (98), further enriches and contextualizes the volume’s coherence and re-reading of contemporary indigenous visual art. her close reading of the films’ intergenerational conflicts as trans-indigenous examples of identity formation “as it relates to federally sponsored systems of forced assimilation and internalized oppression” (99) powerfully reverberates throughout the volume and sets a convincing leitmotif for the book’s transnational range—convincingly placed at the literal center of the volume. next to political activism, as noted above, the volume also aptly reflects on larger questions of genre, and jennifer l. gauthier elaborates on these questions with reference to aboriginal australian filmmaker rachel perkins. by renegotiating colonial history through a variety of genre traditions, including adaptations of plays, melodrama, musical drama, comedy, utopia, and political commentary, gauthier argues that perkins effectively indigenizes western formats in her films radiance (1998), one night the moon (2001), and bran nue dae (2009). her reading aptly differentiates conventional delimitations of genre and effectively complements, in its analysis, the transnational perspective of the overall volume. similarly picking up the question of genre by addressing, once more, barry barclay’s “fourth cinema,” lee schweninger develops an indigenous film aesthetic from the example of barclay’s first film, ngati (1987). he emphasizes the importance of geography and land, of borders and border crossings, and of community to argue that the dense connections between politics and aesthetics are characteristic of contemporary indigenous cinema—touching again upon the volume’s key theme of political activism. “the very fact of a māori-made film is already political, is already an instance of resistance, and already offers an opportunity for a reversal of the gaze,” schweninger claims (177). the political dimension of contemporary indigenous film, however, goes far beyond a mere reclaiming of presence, and it also transcends the binary construction of representation and reversal. this is also substantially underlined by the collection’s second (and unfortunately much shorter) section on contemporary indigenous art, which laura e. smith opens by discussing ehren “bear witness” thomas’s video, make your escape (2010). in the short video, the cayuga artist subverts and indigenizes practices of settler memorialization by putting vans sneakers—remodeled into moccasins—onto birgit däwes review essay: developing indigenous visual arts 268 monuments in downtown ottawa. demonstrating once more the political impact of first nations aesthetics, thomas—also a member of the collective a tribe called red—cleverly combines music, popular culture, and urban landscapes into a revisiting of memorial culture. the second article in this section, by anishinaabe scholar molly mcglennen, introduces readers to inuit artists annie pootoogook, jamasie pitseolak, and pitaloosie saila to argue that “we can look to the visual cultures of inuit expression as a way to more deeply understand the continuum of violences that colonial incursion instigates to this day” (224). works such as pitseolak’s glasses (pootoogook 2006), the day after (pitseolak 2010), or strange ladies (saila 2006) use the domestic, everyday sphere or the history of colonial violence to foreground inuit agency and liberate inuit culture from hegemonic representations “frozen in time” (235). concluding the rich offering of scholarly perspectives on contemporary indigenous visual art, sihasapa lakota critic theodore c. van alst, jr. circles back to the question of representation and genre. in the long history of hollywood-produced images, indigenous people remain affected by stereotypes and tenacious questions of “authenticity,” but increasingly dismantle these images by deconstructions, counterhistories, and indigenized discourse. van alst sees a particularly strong movement in the field of “digital territory” and social media, arguing that indigenous people have effectively made these “their home in ways unique to their communities” (246). combining strategies of humor, “an almost-constant activist component,” and “a sense of shared community,” van alst argues that indigenous people around the globe are effectively using these digital “new lands” for reflections of native “people and spaces as contemporary, evolving, and forward-looking/thinking” (247-248). in the growing interdisciplinary field of indigenous studies, such emphases on visual and digital media, presence and futurity are direly needed. as p. jane hafen reminds us in her chapter on the exiles, “what we do is not merely an intellectual enterprise,” but instead, “all of us must be careful to be precise, exact, and thorough. as scholars of american indian literatures, we bear a responsibility beyond other literary scholars” (20). this responsibility is born exceptionally well by the volume’s editor and contributors. in addition to the themes of political power, activism, and genre, the connective fabric that firmly holds together visualities 2 is formed by questions of agency, sovereignty, and artistic representation. whereas the previous volume had more of a quantitative balance between the sections of “indigenous film practices” and “contemporary american indian art,” the second installment is more clearly transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 269 focused on film, also showing the rapid developments that this genre has undergone since the release of chris eyre’s smoke signals over twenty years ago. indeed, as cummings writes elsewhere: the current climate for indigenous american cinema demands that efforts be undertaken to close the digital divide, to insist on full telecommunications access for native country, and to stay alert to the more than a decade of post-smoke signals indigenous creativity and transformations of film in the media landscape that have spurred all the small and varied screens to come alive with indigenous-created content (2014, 295-96). given the book’s successful application of cummings’s agenda, it is not easy to find room for improvement in this excellent collection. in terms of editorial elegance, one may wonder why some chapters use parenthetical citation and others work with endnotes, but besides such formal trifles, visualities 2 powerfully upholds the important aim of changing “the current climate” in scholarship—not only of indigenous american cinema, but of indigenous creativity at large. molly mcglennen writes toward the end of this volume that “it can be the incremental but persistent work of everyday action and language that can help open the minds of people. but, in the end, i still wonder if that will ever be enough” (mcglennen, 235-36). this collection makes a profound, diverse, and laudably transnational contribution to the persistent work mcglennen describes, and it will be a valuable addition to any indigenous studies scholar’s bookshelf. birgit däwes, university of flensburg works cited berkhofer, robert f. the white man's indian: images of the american indian from columbus to the present. alfred a. knopf, 1978. berlo, janet catherine, ed. the early years of native american art history. u of washington p, 1992. berlo, janet, and ruth b. phillips, eds. native north american art. oxford up, 1998. berumen, frank javier garcia. american indian image makers of hollywood. mcfarland, 2020. birgit däwes review essay: developing indigenous visual arts 270 cummings, denise k. “indigenous american cinema.” the oxford handbook of indigenous american literature, edited by james h. cox and daniel heath justice. oxford up, 2014, pp. 284-98. hilger, michael. native americans in the movies: portrayals from silent films to the present. rowman and littlefield, 2016. howe, leanne, harvey markowitz, and denise k. cummings, eds. seeing red: hollywood’s pixeled skins. michigan state up, 2013. kilpatrick, jacquelyn. celluloid indians: native americans and film. u of nebraska p, 1999. king, thomas. the inconvenient indian: a curious account of native people in north america. anchor canada, 2012. knopf, kerstin. decolonizing the lens of power: indigenous films in north america. rodopi, 2008. marubbio, m. elise. killing the indian maiden: images of native american women in film. up of kentucky, 2006. pearson, wendy gay, and susan knabe, eds. reverse shots: indigenous film and media in an international context. wilfrid laurier up, 2015. phillips, ruth b. museum pieces: toward the indigenization of canadian museums. mcgill-queen’s up, 2011. rader, dean. “reading the visual, seeing the verbal: text and image in recent american indian literature and art.” the oxford handbook of indigenous american literature, edited by james h. cox and daniel heath justice. oxford up, 2014 pp. 299-317. raheja, michelle h. reservation reelism: redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of native americans in film. u of nebraska p, 2010. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 271 rollins, peter c., and john e. o’connor, eds. hollywood’s indian: the portrayal of the native american in film. 1998. expanded edition. up of kentucky, 2003. rushing iii, w. jackson, ed. native american art in the twentieth century: makers, meanings, histories. routledge, 1999. ryan, allan j. the trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art. ubc press, 1999. schweninger, lee. imagic moments: indigenous north american film. u of georgia p, 2013. microsoft word adam spry.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 241 margaret noodin. gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan / what the chickadee knows. wayne state university press, 2020. 96 pp. isbn: 9780814347508. https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/what-chickadee-knows as a student in margaret noodin’s ojibwe language class a few years ago, my imagination was captured by one word in particular: “aanikoobijigan.” often glossed as “relative” or “ancestor,” professor noodin explained that aanikoobjigan actually refers to anyone more than two generations removed from the speaker—either a greatgreat-grandparent or a great-great grandchild. we learned that the stem of the word, “aanikaw-,” indicates the act of binding or joining things together. for example, aanikoogwaade refers to something sewn together and aanikoobidoon means to extend through the act of tying. therefore “aanikoobjiganag,” as prof. noodin explained, describes those who bind us to the present—the relations who tie us to both our past and our future. in the title poem of noodin’s latest collection, what the chickadee knows, such ties are of central concern. she writes, “aanikoobjiganag, aanikoobidoowaad / wiingashk wiindamawiyangidwa / gashkibijigeg gegashk-akiing” [“the ancestors tied and extended it / the sweetgrass, telling us / make bundles, the world is not yet ripe”] (4-5). by watching gijigijigaaneshiinh, the chickadee, we might learn how to make such connections ourselves and ultimately realize that doing so is, in noodin’s words, “manidookeyaang manidoowiyaang” [“it’s a ceremony, a way to be alive”] (4-5). this poem, like every other in the collection, was written in ojibwemowin first, before being translated by noodin into english. the resulting facing page translations offer a means of glimpsing the complexities and beauty of ojibwemowin even for those, like me, whose capacity in the language is limited. by including english versions of the poems for non-speakers of ojibwemowin, noodin enacts another word that shares the “aanikaw-” stem. as she explains in a recent essay: “the verb ‘translate’ in ojibwe is ‘aanikanootan’ which begins with the same stem as ‘aanikoobidoon,’ to be connected and ‘aanikoobijigan,’ the word for ancestor” (2021, 1). over the course of this short collection, noodin shows us the way in which such relations—whether it be to loved ones, to the world around us, or to those who will one day call us ancestors—are embedded in the very structure of ojibwemowin. what the chickadee knows is comprised of two sections, “e-maaminonendamang” [“what we notice”] and “gaa-ezhiwebag” [“history”], which operate on distinctly adam spry review of gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan 242 different scales. the short, evocative lyrics of “e-maaminonendamang” focus on relationships at the most intimate level and how they are sustained through acts of careful observation and reflection. in the poem “agoozimakakiig idiwag” [“what the peepers say”], for instance, interpersonal connection is imagined as a call-andresponse, like the chorus of spring frogs who “crawl into the swamp where / my calling becomes your calling” (9). in the ojibwemowin original, the intimacy of observation is even more pronounced: “mii noopimidoodeyang maskiigong / biibaagiyan ani biibaagiyaan” (8). the agglutinative verb “noopimidoodeyang” implies not just movement, but the particular “forest-crawling” of the spring peepers, as they leave their hibernation under fallen trees to spawn in newly thawed marshes. as the poem reminds us, “beshoganawaabmigag aawiyang” [“we are the details”]–– that is, our collective existence is made up of innumerable beings whom we might closely watch and who, in turn, watch us (8-9). throughout the section, noodin dedicates many of the poems to anishinaabe writers and artists, such as jim northrup, linda lagarde grover, and daphne odjig, presenting her own poetry as a part of the larger process of call-and-response—the close observation and patient teaching of generations of aanikoobijiganag, by which anishinaabe language and culture have been sustained. in the next section, “gaa-ezhiwebag” [“history”], the scope of noodin’s poems radically expands, in both time and space, to encompass relations on a global (even cosmic) scale. despite taking on such weighty topics as the protests at standing rock and the rise of authoritarianism in american politics, the poems retain the language of intimacy. for example, in “niizhosagoons gemaa nisosagoons daso-biboonagadoon” [“two or three thousand years”], the passage of millennia is treated with the same brief, off-handed familiarity one would use to describe a day at work: ishkwaa gaa-ningaabikide mikwaamiikaag ajina mii dash daashkikwading, bagonesigwaag ziibiins ani ziibi ziibiskaaj ziibing ziigwanindagwag [after the minerals melted ice reigned for a while and then cracks and holes appeared streams became a river casually pouring seasons onto the land.] (46) transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 243 with the practiced ear of a language teacher, noodin uses the repetition of sound to help us to see the underlying etymological connections in ojibwemowin between the particular and the abstract. the line “ziibins ani ziibi ziibiskaaj,” for instance, describes the transformation of a stream (“ziibins”) into a river (“ziibi”) through an adverb that metaphorizes a leisurely activity as the slow flow of a river (“ziibiskaaj”). similarly, the poems of “gaa-ezhiwebag” ask us to see a similar kind of repetition, for better or worse, as the basis of history itself—from the massacre of the cheyenne at sand creek in 1864 to the election of donald trump in 2016. it is only by close observation of such repetitions, noodin’s poems seem to suggest, that we might find a way of moving forward. as noodin writes in the haunting poem “ishkwaa biinjwebinige” [“after the vote”], “ganabaj gimookawaadamin / ezhi-anjidimaajimowaad / mii miinwaa gaamooka’amang / da-bagidenindamang” [“maybe we cry / as the stories change / and what we uncover / needs a proper burial”] (68-69). in the interests of transparency, i should note that i was asked by the editors at wayne state university press to blurb what the chicakdee knows in march of 2020. regarding the collection then, i wrote (somewhat blithely) that the poems were a celebration of “the vast web of relations that sustains us all.” returning to it now, after nearly a year of isolation, fear, and uncertainty brought on by the covid-19 epidemic, these poems have taken on a poignancy greater than i could have possibly imagined. every connection we manage to forge, these poems remind us, also creates the potential for loss. indeed, reading a poem like “izhise” (“time flight”), it can be hard to remember that it wasn’t written to describe the collective disorientation and grief wrought by the current pandemic: ogii-inendaan wanising giizhig dibikong azhigwa waabandang aazhogan aawang bi-aazhogeyang, ni-aazhogeyang mii agwaashimiyangidwa biidaabang megwaa waagoshag aazhikwewaad. mii goshkozi nandawaabamaad gaa-gikenimaad jibwaa aanjised, aanjisenid debibidood gaagiigido-biiwaabikoons inaakonang waa-ezhiwebag noongom. waa-wenda-ishkwaase adam spry review of gijigijigaaneshiinh gikendaan 244 ge-gezika-nisidotamang bangibiisaag, animibiisaag gaye aabitaa-dibikag dibishkoo naawakwe-giizhigag. [she used to think of night as a lost day now she sees it is a bridge for us to cross and recross as we are saving each dawn by the foxes screaming. and he wakes up looking for the one he knew before one of them changed grabbing a telephone to chart the course of the new day. all of this will end with sudden insight the way rain passes and midnight is like noon.] (38-39) the way in which noodin’s poetry speaks so perfectly to our present is no mere coincidence. over the past year, we have all been reminded—often painfully—of the truth spoken on every page of what the chickadee knows. it is a truth that margaret noodin, following a long tradition of anishinaabe thought, is at pains to show us in every word of both english and ojibwemowin: we are nothing more than that which ties us together. emerson college works cited noodin, margaret. “margaret noodin on ‘faoiseamh a gheobhadsa.’” poetry daily. accessed 25 jan. 2021. https://poems.com/features/what-sparks-poetry/. microsoft word clarkfinal.docx madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 132 “no one will touch your body unless you say so”: normativity and bodily autonomy in australian indigenous writing madeleine clark introduction in writing by indigenous trans people from the 1990s to the present, trans existence is frequently affirmed as a part of indigenous cultures which has persisted from precolonial times. trans and non-binary authored works are critical of the influence of the church and disparaging towards the western understandings of queerness and gender, including the medical model of understanding transgender identity, and emphasise agency, bodily autonomy, and collective negotiations to produce identities and navigate relationships against colonial norms. this article begins with an exploration of the research done into trans indigenous people in australia since the 1990s. i look at the development of a community discourse documented in sistergirl publications in the 1990s and 2000s which rejects what unangax ̂scholar eve tuck has called a “damage-centred” research framework, instead embracing a “desire-based framework” (416). drawing from these community texts, i look at three more recent works from warlpiri, arrente, and luritja sistergirl brie ngala curtis and the mununjali yugambeh writer ellen van neerven. looking at the works of these two writers, i argue that trans indigenous writing honours the roles of trans indigenous people within their communities and problematises western understandings of queer and trans identities. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 133 terminology ‘sistergirl’ and ‘brotherboy’ are collectively understood and adopted terms for indigenous gender diverse people (see kerry 2014). they are culturally specific to indigenous australian trans people and have been collectively negotiated and agreed on as terms which can be used widely by indigenous people from all nations. where appropriate, i use terms which the authors specifically identify for themselves. i use sistergirl and brotherboy to refer to self-identified individuals who use the terms, and i also use “trans” to refer generally to all first nations peoples with non-cisgender or non-binary identities. i do this to be inclusive of those trans and non-binary identifying people who do not feel that sistergirl or brotherboy describes them. while i want to provide some background to those outside our community on the histories of these terms, my language will not be streamlined or standardised, and this might seem inconsistent, imperfect, or confusing at times. it is intended to be. it is vital to understand the terminologies of trans and queer from within the context of colonial history, and to displace and unsettle their use as catchalls. damien riggs has linked the development of terminologies of western lgbt identity with the “possessive investments” of whiteness in australia (2007, 112). the term ‘trans’ sits uncomfortably with me, because, as riggs writes, such terms fail to acknowledge the cultural contexts that shape the category “sistergirl”…it is important to acknowledge the sovereign relationship to country that sistergirls hold, and how the ontological implications of this relationship differentiate them from other groups who may be located under the umbrella of ’trans and gender diverse.’”(112) following on from riggs’ observation, i use the terms queer and trans through this article with some necessary nuance attached. the non-binary wiradjuri author sandy o'sullivan has written that “i know my responsibility is to be multifarious, complex and madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 134 inextricable in my identity representation…this is the experience of an aboriginal lesbian. and it is not” (222). indigenous queer, non-binary and trans people use a multitude of terms to describe our behaviours, social roles, and identities, with the critical understanding that they are all imperfect and we have to invest in disturbing them. jawoyn writer troy-anthony baylis comments that this multiplicity and flexibility is a valuable part of indigenous trans writing which destabilises the reader’s desire for a “more digestible” story (17). i use the term ‘settler’ to refer to australian non-indigenous people and culture. indigenous australian people use a range of accepted terms to refer to ourselves, including nation and clan or language group names, as well as collective terms like ‘indigenous’, ‘first nations’, and ‘aboriginal and torres strait islander’, as well as ‘blak’, the political term coined by erub mer artist destiny deacon1 which is referenced by van neerven in throat. a desire-based literature review: understanding discourses of indigenous (trans) gender in australia settler researchers frequently reinforce what tuck calls a damage-centred framework in relation to trans indigenous people. in her work “suspending damage”, tuck identifies damage-centred research as work which operates “even benevolently, from a theory of change that establishes harm or injury in order to achieve reparation” and outlines the need to move from this model to what she calls ‘desire-based’ research (413). damagecentred research work aims to document pain or loss in an individual, community, or tribe…it looks to historical exploitation, domination, and colonization to explain contemporary brokenness, such as poverty, poor health, and low literacy. common sense tells us this is a good thing, but the danger in damagetransmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 135 centered research is that it is a pathologizing approach in which the oppression singularly defines a community. (413) tuck makes note of both the uses of this practice, given the historical “need for research that exposed the uninhabitable, inhumane conditions in which people lived and continue to live,”, while making note of the harms of those research frameworks which consequently carry the “possible hidden costs of a research strategy that frames entire communities as depleted” (415; 409). she urges alternative ways of doing research outside of the framework of showing injury as a way of advocating for change. her proposed model of instead applying “desire” based research is focused on understanding and celebrating “complexity, contradiction, and the self-determination of lived lives” (416). the dichotomy between damage and desire is relevant to the development of research on trans indigenous people. research interest on trans indigenous people has increased since the 1990s, with a strong emphasis on health and social vulnerability. given the research funding imperatives around sexual health and hiv/aids prevention in the 1990s and 2000s, attempts to better understand indigenous trans lives from within the fields of medical and academic research have typically emerged from local gay and lesbian history projects and from government-funded research into the health and well-being of lgbt communities in the 1990s. this has meant, as stephen craig kerry has documented, specific “attention being paid to the impact of hiv/aids” and “the lived experiences of transgender australians,” and more recently, focus on areas like suicide prevention (173–74). that wave of funding, research, and organising around hiv/aids and sexual health contributed to enabling the establishment of discussion of sistergirl and brotherboy life on a national level, while also closely tying it to research on the experiences of gay cisgender indigenous men. madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 136 to use tuck’s words, the development of emerging bodies of research on such previously ‘invisible’ populations can be considered ”a mixed signal of progress” (410). on the one hand, that research can be considered useful in leveraging for the community’s needs and gains, and this is particularly evident in research related to health and hiv/aids prevention strategies and resourcing. on the other, those research interests and imperatives have the potential effect of “usher[ing]” in outsider researchers to our communities with little knowledge of the proper way to write and think about our lives (410). settler researchers in this field consequently position indigenous trans people as doubly marginalised, subject to experiences of racism within the australian society, and subject to transphobia and violence in their own communities. much of the earlier research on trans first nations people centres around identifying the specifics of risk and vulnerability among our lbgtiq community members. in the literature, sistergirls and brotherboys (if brotherboys are mentioned) are defined by our levels of economic instability, social exclusion, illness, vulnerability, and finally, invisibility. kerry, for example, summarises how “indigenous transgender australians face issues pertaining to hiv/aids, identity, alcohol and substance abuse, physical and sexual abuse, and community engagement”, and they explain how additional burdens of racism within the wider community contribute to “complex matrices of discrimination” which “intersect cultural traditions, personal and social identity, and colonization” (174). they frequently refer to social invisibility and the need to address the ‘dearth of data’ on trans indigenous life. research from within the community explicitly problematises the simplicity of this view, revealing a more complex situation. trans indigenous writers identify violence and transphobia, but alongside this, they identify strong family and community supports, respected positions of sistergirls within family, recognition of transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 137 belonging and social roles within culture both pre-colonisation and since. they problematise the western definitions of transgender and speak to the role of the church and the medical profession in creating marginalisation and violence against trans and first nations people. the complex understanding held within tuck’s desire-based frameworks are evident in the work of indigenous trans and sistergirl/brotherboy writers and researchers, and it is from within the same spirit, the same investment in desire, that i proceed. community self-definition despite the pervasiveness of the damage-centred framework, the first nations trans and sistergirl/brotherboy community has been active in producing its own discourses. the first national aboriginal and torres strait islander gay men and transgender sexual health conference, anwernekenhe, took place in 1994 on arrente country. following the establishment of its national working party, three further anwernekenhe events were held across the next 15 years. the government funding for this was auspiced by the australian federation of aids organisations (afao). the funding and leadership of the afao and anwernekenhe organisations enabled the first national gathering of sistergirls on magnetic island in queensland in 1999, and that event along with its report back and recommendations to the afao, shaped by the contributions of those gathered, has been foundational in shaping the way trans, sistergirl and brotherboy first nations peoples understand ourselves in so-called australia. while these events took place under the auspices and frameworks of hiv/aids prevention, they took on much greater meaning for the delegates. it is clear from reading the forum’s report that the discussion that took place there responded to the application of sexual health and aids prevention discourse with one that, as tuck writes, “seeks to construct a fuller representation” (418). michael costello and rusty madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 138 nannup, authors of the report back, note that “the forum had a focus on sexual health, however it became apparent that this is but one aspect of a much broader predicament” (4). the conference addressed issues of health, violence, racism and exclusion, but alongside this, it was concerned with the development of a community identity and with acknowledging and examining the history and role of sistergirls and people “with transgender qualities” in indigenous communities (costello and nannup6). the magnetic island forum of 1999 is where the term sistergirl was formally adopted as a shared community identity, and this was achieved through collective agreement. the report back explains: anwernekenhe ii saw a change in terminology from “indigenous transgender person” to “sistergirl”. sistergirl delegates felt that “transgender” terminology should only be used for bureaucratic reasons, as it was not representative of the diversity within the community…the usage of sistergirl terminology is clearly influenced by the diversity of communities, and will often be defined within a community depending on geographical location. (costello and nannup 1999, 6) the report outlines a careful consideration of how the term sistergirl, which is understood as both culturally specific to particular nations in the central desert, but used widely, was agreed by “all delegates” to signify a range of individuals, including both urban living and rural women. to the idea of transgender as “bureaucratic”, sistergirl advocate kooncha brown added that, the relationships within aboriginal and torres strait islander communities have their own unique make-up and are often entwined with other cultural and spiritual structures. the western identity construct of transgenderism does not easily fit within these structures. (2004, 6) transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 139 nannup and costello’s report back from the 1999 gathering notes that “sistergirl” is understood differently across diverse experiences of indigenous groups but was intentionally embraced as an inclusive word after a long process of negotiation that was “sometimes volatile but ultimately constructive” (6). further, the term was intended as a placeholder to be revisited at a later time “to determine an appropriate indigenous name to replace [it]” which would reflect the whole community (nannup and costello 2004, 6). the term brotherboy has seen a similar (and more recent) emergence, being adopted as a collectively agreed upon word within community which refers inclusively to trans masculine indigenous people from across australia. nicole anae notes that there was a significant presentation on brotherboy identity at the 2016 national lgbti health alliance's mind out mental health conference which signalled a greater recognition of brotherboy as a distinct term, though it had already been in use for some time: this presence marked an historic step in forging a stronger brotherboy visibility and included speakers such as dean gilbert, the brotherboys support group, and brotherboy presenters jay delany and kai clancy (2020, 77). representations of belonging, negotiation and agency as part of our experiences differentiate trans indigenous texts from those written about us and express a desirebased framework that acknowledges complexity and agency. while the work of writers like costello and nannup and kooncha brown on trans first nations people acknowledges harm, adversity, and social difficulty, it is important to note that they also acknowledge pleasure, belonging, and agency. the final words of the report back on the magnetic island conference state that the forum ended with a party: the final night, after conference proceedings, provided an opportunity for all conference delegates to come together to celebrate this historic madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 140 forum and its achievements. the theme for the night became island night, an opportunity for all to let their hair down or, in some cases, to put it on. with many newfound talents and old alike, show time proved to be possibly the largest showgirl event ever staged. (costello and nannup, 5) this celebration is just as important to the report as the identification of social problems and forms of violence the sistergirls face and highlights the complex dichotomy of trans indigenous writing which is in direct critique of damage-centred research. peer-authored literature on trans first nations people is critical of the influence of institutional power in shaping the western understanding of trans life. heightened experiences of violence and ostracism are, as kooncha brown importantly points out, heavily influenced by the christian church’s impact, which she notes is “a powerful force in fostering discrimination” (25). she also notes the influence of the medical profession, which has long held a pathologising and diagnostic view of trans embodiment rejected by many first nations people (brown, 25). western identity discourse is taxonomical and categorical and neglects the understanding indigenous people hold of our relationality. as brown illustrates: “i am kooncha. i’m seen as a woman, a daughter, a sister, an aunty, and a mother a valuable part of the family, a carer and a supporter…however in western culture, i am seen as ‘black’ and ‘transgender’” (25). kuku yalanji brotherboy madi day, in collaboration with wiradjuri queer researcher corrinne sullivan, also takes great care to write back to a damagecentred framework in their examination of trans masculine indigenous sex workers. they explicitly acknowledge the common notions of their research participants as “victims” and actively shift their language to recognise them as “people working from a position of autonomy and agency” (sullivan and day, 1). the indigenous trans people transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 141 described insullivan and day’s research “negotiate and construct their identities” and “navigate” their financial and social needs. they have “tactics for managing their sexuality, gender and emotion”, and “resist as well as rework” the discriminations the participants face in work and social life (2). this language is deployed intentionally and is seen by the authors as necessary within the broader context of damage-centred research which has come before. in this way, sullivan and day’s research embodies a trans indigenous standpoint. genre and gender as colonial binarisms just as sullivan and day made the note that the lives of their trans indigenous research participants “exceed” the discourses of heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and homonormativity, the work of trans indigenous writers exceeds colonial discourses of genre as well as gender, making active critiques of both (6). wiradjuri scholar jeanine leane’s identification of genre as a form of colonial binarism alongside gender underlines the limits of western discourses when looking at the texts of indigenous trans people. brie ngala curtis’ oral history, kungakunga: staying close to family and country is recorded in the collection colouring the rainbow (2015). colouring the rainbow is a collection of first nations queer and trans writing which is separated into three distinct sections or ‘genres’. these sections divide the contributions in the anthology into "life stories," a series of memoir pieces and recorded oral testimonies; "an emergent public face," which includes pieces that document activist organising and interactions with the mainstream lgbt movement in australia; and the third section, "essays," which more embody the style of an academic critique. however, essays within the third section frequently display the tone of memoir and life testimony, and works across the collection often engage with the theoretical languages of critical race theory and queer theory. the introduction by troy-anthony baylis notes the madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 142 deliberate choice of the editor not to impose a consistent terminology or a neat classification of writers into identity categories consistently across the collection as a means of preserving the nuance of how each contributor relates to the “slipperiness of our identifications” (17). the division of the works into these three styles of narration and areas of concern, however, may habituate the reader into seeing each segment as discreet, when there are themes and modes of address which appear across the collection. van neerven’s heat and light is also divided into three sections, “heat,” “water,” and “light.” the first section, “heat,” is a five-part family saga which shifts temporally between past and present and details the story of the kresinger family in southeast queensland. “light,” the third section, brings the reader back to contemporary australia. it is a collection of ten short stories which travel across queensland, western australia, and sydney. the protagonists are most often young women at formative stages, exploring sexuality, relationships, identity, and mental illness. the middle section, “water,” is a longer indigenous futurist novella. the disjuncture between these three stylistically distinct, but interrelated, segments of the book unsettles reader expectations. there is a compulsive habit in the settler literary critic world to try to categorise aboriginal work within conventions of western genre distinctions, and this continues in reader responses to heat and light. while helena kadmos identifies these three sections in western generic terms as “part short story cycle, part long story, part short story collection” (2018, np), she also acknowledges the limits of western genre discourses which might compel readers to seek these definitional terms at all to anchor their understandings, noting, the generic boundaries between texts by aboriginal writers (such as life story and fiction) were often blurred, a sentiment echoed by speculative fiction writer ambelin kwaymullina, who claims that ‘indigenous narratives rarely fit neatly into transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 143 western genre divisions’ (26), and scholar and poet jeanine leane, who dismisses western generic boundaries as too reductive for some indigenous texts (leane and kwaymullina qtd. in kadmos 2018, np) while reviewers and critics puzzle over the appropriate genre labels to attribute to text like van neerven’s, it should be recognised that aboriginal writers actively intervene with western genre forms with an intention to disrupt. leane has described this engagement as embodying an “eclecticism,” a playful and intentional interference which challenges what is known about writing in the west (2020, np). kadmos recognises the troubling effect that aboriginal women’s writing in particular has on the genre borders between fiction and non-fiction, acknowledging that “among contemporary aboriginal women writers, short stories, often drawing on personal and family histories filtered through contemporary narrative practices, feature strongly” (2018, np). the short story cycle, the label often applied to heat and light due to its multiple, stylistically and narratively discreet but connected threads, has been attributed to the writing of women and ‘ethnic minorities’, as kadmos has written. the episodic form of the cycle has been understood this way due to its ability to engage with complex and multilayered realities, representing a “myriad of truths” rather than a single truth (kadmos 2014, 32). throat (2020) is van neerven’s third book. reviews of the text by jeanine leane and yorta yorta man declan fry both note that the collection challenges western structures of both genre and gender, seeming to collapse one into the other and disorienting both. fry writes, for example, ”throat is a collection that crosses boundaries: of gender, genre, culture, history. throughout the work you catch yourself, half unconscious, half wondering, dazzled and spent and continually recovering” (2020, np). leane also identifies the active critique of genre present within the text and links it with the confusion of western gender languages, writing, “there is much in throat in madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 144 both form and content that exposes the limits of, defies, critiques and rejects colonial binaries of genre and gender” (2020, np). performativity and normativity in sistergirl narrative brie ngala curtis’ oral history kungakunga: staying close to family and country, as told to dino hodge, details her story of growing up in a small community, ackwerrnarrte, near alice springs in the northern territory. she documents for the reader her early years growing up with her family, ‘coming out’ as a sistergirl, and her continuing advocacy work for sistergirls both in the territory and at a national level. curtis’ identical twin sister, rosalina, is also a sistergirl, and ‘comes out’ as a teenager, while it takes curtis a little longer to begin a medical transition and identify openly as sistergirl. both sisters have connections to warlpiri, luritja, and arrente nations, and curtis is a founding member of the organisation sisters and brothers nt, an advocacy and support agency for trans people in the nt in alice springs. in the opening pages, curtis discloses a story of being discovered by her grandmother, a “strong, cultural woman”, while dressing in women’s clothes as a child: i was a really feminine little boy. i always used to play with the girls and dressing up and all that. my grandmother was the first person to catch me cross-dressing. she growled me only because of the fact that i was wearing her clothing. oh, she swore, and i got upset and started crying. but she said to me to not worry about what people would say about what i’d wear as long as i’m happy. yeah, we grew up really christian as well. my grandmother was very christian. even though she was really traditional and cultural, she had a really strong christian background and belief. (36) transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 145 despite how deeply christianity is rooted in curtis’ family life (she later describes becoming more committed to the church during a difficult period in her life and reflects positively on how finding god enabled her survival and affirmed her sistergirl identity as she transitioned), the presence of the church in the life of her community does not interrupt the recognised place that sistergirls hold in her community. her staunchly christian grandmother, when curtis has grown into a teenager, reflects with her on the accepted history of trans people in her community: one day when i was a bit older, in my teens, i sat down with my grandmother and said to her about why she didn’t mind me wearing girls’ clothes. she said that there were always sistergirls in aboriginal culture and there always were trans people long before european settlement in australia. and people like her tribal group being the last tribe to be discovered in australia i believe her for that because she didn’t come into contact with a white person until she was a teenager. (37) christianity has a complicated place in the life stories of queer and trans indigenous people. for curtis, while the presence of the church and the historical legacy of missionaries presents a potential threat to her being accepted, she narrates how the moral codes of the church have been incorporated and integrated into community life and the value system of ackwerrnarrte. while curtis acknowledges that she went through “lot of bullying” which forced her out of school, she comments that the church she went to “didn’t exclude aboriginal culture at all” and that religion could be practiced secondary to the community’s culture (38). this flexibility enables her to continue participating in family life and feel a sense of belonging. as she explores her identity, going through a “sort of evolving” process of trying to be “straight,” then living as a gay man “for a few years,” before eventually transitioning, curtis describes complex conversations and negotiations with family madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 146 members around her gender expression. at a difficult moment, when confronting puberty and contending with tumultuous emotions, she experiences the pressure of expectation to undertake initiation: “my feelings as a teenager were really intense. i’ve had family members saying, ‘oh you’re reaching puberty now. you’re almost ready to go through men’s ceremony’, and all that” (curtis, 38). however, curtis is given control over her self-identification as a sistergirl in a formative conversation with her father: my father being a tribal law man himself, he sat down because obviously he could see i was different and he said: ‘no, it’s your decision. you do it, whatever you want. if you want to go through it, you can go through it, but nobody’s going to touch your body unless you say so’. yeah, he’s very strong and he gave us that option. i’ve never been through men’s ceremony and i’m not intending to. (38) ceremony, as discussed between curtis and her father, is a way of marking her body culturally and socially as male, and this process is done as part of a collective group. however, in this passage, it is made clear that this social marking is to be done only with her explicit and full agreement. the process of becoming a man in this context is achieved collectively through ceremonial practices which would mark her body irreversibly and induct her into a gendered social role within community. this is a powerful moment. many of us, as indigenous trans people living in a colonial culture in australia, particularly those of us who are urban living, have had to continuously negotiate the social experiences of being gendered without our consent. curtis’s identity, in this passage, is the subject of an affirming and active negotiation of gendered social relationships in a collective and ongoing discussion. this negotiation is premised on bodily autonomy, consent, and belonging. markings made on her body are to be determined by her and won’t be forced, and thus gendering is, in this passage, negotiated in relation to others, but not coercive or disciplinary by any transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 147 means. curtis’s story provides us with both the opportunity to demonstrate some of the ways we make sense of gender as well as providing some complexity in how it reveals the limits of a disciplinary understanding of gender. disciplinary normativity is a central concept in the western queer theoretical lens. it is integral to the construction and understanding of queer and trans subjects and is characterised as coercive and inextricably linked to power relations. foucault’s history of sexuality, for example, provides an account of how disciplinary power produces sexual identity. exploring homonormativity, eliza garwood notes that queer theory’s central concern and method comes from an understanding of disciplinary biopower and normativity, citing the “routine erasure of marginalised non-normative sexual identities and practices” which normativity engenders, “while enhancing regulatory power relations within and between certain legible identity groups” (6). queer indigenous studies scholars, expanding on foucault’s understanding of sexuality as a conduit of power, have conceptualised sexuality as an “especially…dense transfer point for specifically imperial power” and have argued, as trans murri scholar oscar monaghan has done, that “the centrality of sexuality to colonial power relations help explain its importance to settlers” (monaghan. see, also morgensen and smith for further development of this idea). the primacy of normativity within queer and trans studies has also been problematised by indigenous scholars and other scholars of colour. sahiba allouche, in her exploration of “strategic nomadic marriage” between same sex desiring people in lebanon, notes that “it is the theory, rather than the queer element itself, that often is hegemonized in queer scholarship (9), and instructs readers that “to write wilfully from and about queerness from a non-western standpoint is to question western academics’ insistence on queering stuff’‘ (11). when looking at sistergirl life stories, the logic of normativity, bound up as it is in processes of coercion, discipline, and biopower, is madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 148 challenged. sistergirl identity is entwined with, as brown has stated, cultural and spiritual structures, not just disciplinary and institutional structures which act to regulate indigenous life. when curtis goes through important moments of ‘coming out’ and begins to articulate her identity as a sistergirl within her family structure, her belonging within culture and her bodily autonomy, and the broader belonging of sistergirls in the clan groups to which she belongs, are reaffirmed. curtis is able to negotiate her ability to mark herself culturally in gendered terms or withhold from a social categorisation as male. sistergirls, curtis is told by her family, lived among the community as women pre-colonisation: the trans women at that time would join the women to do traditional women duties like cooking, collecting bush fruit, growing up the children, and making bush medicine. they go through women’s ceremony and they’d be respected as women. they’d have relationships with men and be married. (37) queer and trans indigenous people have also related critically to the idea of performativity and agency in understanding how we navigate the complex and powerladen fields of gendered colonial power. the western idea of performativity in relation to gender has been criticised for the lack of attention it gives to how indigenous peoples relate to gender. riggs and toone have noted, when discussing sistergirls, how critical understandings of gender fail to acknowledge the cultural contexts that shape the category “sistergirl”… it is important to acknowledge the sovereign relationship to country that sistergirls hold, and how the ontological implications of this relationship differentiate them from other groups who may be located under the umbrella of “trans and gender diverse.” (229) transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 149 it is vital to consider how sovereign relationships to country shape how indigenous people experience and articulate gender. aileen moreton-robinson, for example, notes how indigenous women’s standpoint is constructed and exercised relationally, involving connections to land, ancestors, and the spirit world (see moreton-robinson 2014). the larrakia poet and activist laniyuk has written in colouring the rainbow about how she navigated racism and homophobia growing up in darwin and adelaide by purposefully “manipulating people’s perceptions of me” (garcon-mills, 76), has also made an important intervention into performativity discourse by explaining how indigenous people’s gender performativity is inherently tied to our engagements with our ancestral country (laniyuk 2018, np). gender identity, then, for indigenous peoples, is necessarily bound up with how we experience our cultural and collective belonging. these written life stories critically emphasise both the need to, as butler and williams write, “figur[e] out how to live with and against the constructions—or norms—that help to form us” and to, on occasion, “reject those vocabularies, or actively develop new ones” (butler and williams 2013, np). they also, vitally, expand on this analysis by showing how indigenous peoples experience our genders in collaborative and ongoing negotiation with community and country. ungendered ancestors in ellen van neerven’s water in the novella “water”, the dystopian indigenous futurist story which sits between two short story phases in heat and light, trans and non-binary author ellen van neerven writes a relationship between a young queer yugambeh cultural liaison worker and an yugambeh ancestral being (van neerven 2014). their relationship takes place on yugambeh country, on the islands of moreton bay, in the context of a destruction of country in the area under the new ‘progressive’ regime of president tanya sparkle. the fictional future president sparkle is intent on solving the problem of indigenous land madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 150 rights by islandising the waters of moreton bay to create ‘australia2’, a new country which dispossessed indigenous people can live on. kaden, van neerven’s protagonist, is seduced by larapinta, a member of the jangigir or ‘plantpeople’. the jangigir, a mysterious race of creatures, neither human, animal, nor plant, are ‘discovered’ during the islandising project by the staff of the science centre who are in charge of managing the area in preparation for australia2’s construction. kaden carries on a secret sexual relationship with larapinta for some time before it is revealed by an uncle that the jangigir are her ancestor beings, our old people. spirits. something happened when the dug brought the sea up. they rose with it…their knowledge goes back, big time, bub. they’ve helped us piece back our language. and they’re going to help us stop this. (van neerven 2014, 113) the sexual relationship with this ancestor being provokes kaden to reconnect to her country and community and take action against the science centre’s project. because of the ways that kaden and larapinta’s relationship is explored in water as a transgressive human/nonhuman queer sexual encounter, this story has been described by some critics as a queer ecofeminist text (see grassi 2017). however, the story actively resists queer language and presents an unresolved relationship to gender and sexuality. kaden and larapinta’s genders remain ambiguous. kaden reflects in conversation with larapinta, when asked about whether she feels like a woman, that “even though i have short hair…i tell her that hair is the least of it” (van neerven 2014, 95). the plantpeople express their gender through responsive social adaptation. among the jangigir, “both the males and females are identical. she has no breasts. i understand they are ungendered; see, their gender is not predetermined and is only communicated” (78). when larapinta asks kaden directly how she identifies, kaden responds, “‘queer, i guess.’ i say. ‘i know it’s an old-fashioned word…some words are transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 151 loaded, will always be loaded,’” to which larapita replies, “’that is fine. i do not know the common usage of words. they are bricks, aren’t they?’” (95). this designation of words like queer as ‘bricks’ recalls the description by rusty nannup of transgender as something which can only be described as “bureaucratic”; bricks are blunt, functional, and impersonal. they can also be used as a tool or a weapon. the subversion of damage and the celebration of blak non-binary experience in throat van neerven’s 2020 work throat is divided into five segments: they haunt-walk in, whiteness is always approaching, i can’t wait to meet my future genders, speaking outside, and take me to the back of my throat. it is their third collection of writing, following comfort food (2016). like “water,” it is a work that refuses easy definition in how it presents gender and sexuality. the early pages of the book, they haunt-walk in, address an episode of vicious online harassment of van neerven by high school students on twitter and facebook following the inclusion of one of the poems in comfort food in the hsc exam in 2017. on the opening page, they remember the harassment and their withdrawal: memories sometimes come backwards. they haunt-walk in. haunting, walking, and sugar and chocolates my friends give me after ‘the incident’. ‘we are in admiration of how you handled yourself. we thought you conducted yourself with such dignity and grace’. i did nothing but lie in my bed (2020, 3) i can’t wait to meet my future genders explores body dysphoria and discomfort, but maintains a sense of clarity and desire. the text critiques white queer culture. the limits of western queer language bend and break when confronted by the experiences of the blak non-binary body: madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 152 sometimes i want to create a dictionary together because this body is rejecting the common names and the common ways (2020, 76) the limits of queer language are again highlighted when sharing conversation with queers from south east asia while travelling. together, they touch on other possibilities to experience gender and sexuality outside of that same colonial dictionary: we speak about gender before colonisation we speak about love before colonisation remembering-forgetting-knowing-needing (2020, 83) the poem dysphoria describes a defamiliarised and suffocating experience of the body, the disjuncture between the internal experience of the body and its externality. they write of the desire to take clothes off to take them off but also take off another layer underneath peel away those expectations get closer to my truth (2020, 77) a dissociative experience of dysphoria is there in the writing, but it sits alongside complexity. the poet is “juggling shame, guilt, and alienation with the desire to feel free, connected, and powerful” (van neerven 2020, 76). disorientation and pain are a part of the experience of their body and how they connect to others, and they describe seeing someone “in an embrace with another part of me” (76). but with these experiences, there is also clarity, love, and a hopeful desire for another space in which to express the language of the body. the relation of van neerven’s work to pain and trauma is complex and open, allowing for possibilities and power. just as eve tuck transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 153 invited all of us as her peers to “consider the long-term repercussions of thinking of ourselves as broken”,van neerven openly plays with conceptions of themselves which fixate on trauma (tuck, 409). leane, in her review of the work, reflects how the work’s “stoicism and strength” subverts the gaze of any reader who define it in terms of trauma. the power to be still—immovable in the face of challenge and adversity— should not be underestimated, nor should it be misread as inertia…the poet refuses to be intimidated by it. nor will they be reduced by it. when they write “so i’m walkingdead-haunting-live and there seems nothing left to write about but my trauma” the sentiment is the opposite to the words on the page. it is a case of appearance versus reality and an example of the poet critiquing another pernicious stereotype of aboriginal people, that we are nothing but the sum total of ongoing colonial trauma. (leane 2020, np) leane takes care to recognise van neerven’s autonomy and strength. she makes note of the strength of their stoicism against both the acts of racism they suffered, as well as the presumption of their passivity in its face. yorta yorta man declan fry similarly notes the explicitness of desire in the work, which responds directly to the experience of harassment, refusing to let it be the centre of the writing. he asks whether, following comfort food, “perhaps the intervening years, and the moronic inferno of their bullying, revealed comfort to be a troubled and uneasy refuge for the poet” and recognises that “van neerven remains, however, implacably hungry” (fry, np). conclusion when examining western texts on performativity and normativity, indigenous trans writing provides frameworks for complicating settler colonialism’s influence on how sexuality and gender are understood. our texts negate damage, and in establishing madeleine clark “normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 154 desire-based frameworks across a diversity of forms, they do the work of honouring histories of trans life in our communities and questioning non-normativity and disciplinary power as the condition of queer and trans identity formation. in writing this analysis, i seek to open discussion, through these texts, of how normativity and performativity can be understood in settler colonial contexts and within the lived experiences of indigenous trans people. hunger, desire, and complex experiences of affirmation and belonging live in these works, along with active challenges to western queer norms. notes 1 see a brief history of deacon’s use of the word ‘blak’ here: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2020/05/07/why-blak-not-black-artist-destinydeacon-and-origins-word-1. works cited allouche, sabiha. “different normativity and strategic ‘nomadic’ marriages: area studies and queer theory.” middle east critique, vol. 29, no. 1, 2020, pp. 9–27. anae, nicole.”embracing 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“normativity… in australian indigenous writing” 156 ---. “re-imagining indigenous australia through the short story: heat and light by ellen van neerven.” australian literary studies, vol. 33, no. 3, november 2018. https://doi.org/10.20314/als.ef818cfc89. kerry, stephen craig. “sistergirls/brotherboys: the status of indigenous transgender australians.” international journal of transgenderism, vol. 15, no. 3–4, 2014, pp. 173–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2014.995262. laniyuk. “indigenising queer theory.” july first fridays seminar series. deakin university, 6 july 2018. leane, jeanine. the whiteman’s aborigine. 2010. university of technology sydney, phd dissertation. ---. “throat by ellen van neerven.” sydney review of books, 2020. https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/van-neerven-throat/. moodie, nikki. “learning about knowledge: threshold concepts for indigenous studies in education.” the australian educational researcher, vol. 46, no. 5, 2019, pp. 735–749. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-019-00309-3. moreton-robinson, aileen. “towards an australian indigenous women’s standpoint theory: a methodological tool. australian feminist studies, vol. 28, no. 78, 2014, pp. 331–347. morgensen, scott lauria. spaces between us. university of minnesota press, 2011. nakata, martin. 1993. “an islander’s story of a struggle for ‘better’ education.” ngoonjook: a journal of australian indigenous issues, no. 9 (november): 51–66. neerven, ellen van. heat and light. university of queensland press, 2014. ---. throat. university of queensland press, 2020.ngala curtis, brie. “kungakunga: staying close to family and community.” colouring the rainbow: blak queer transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 157 and trans perspectives, edited by dino hodge. south australia: wakefield press, 2015, pp. 35-48. o’sullivan, sandy. “stranger in a strange land: aspiration, uniform, and the fine edges of identity.” colouring the rainbow: blak queer and trans perspectives, edited by dino hodge. south australia: wakefield press, 2015, pp. 208-223. riggs, damien. “possessive investments at the intersection of gender, race and sexuality: lesbian and gay rights in a post-colonising nations.” intersections: gender, race and ethnicity in australasian studies, edited by margaret allen and r. k. dhawan. new dehli: prestige books, 2007, pp. 111-125. riggs, damien, and kate toone. “indigenous sistergirls’ experiences of family and community.” australian social work, vo. 70, no. 2, 2017, pp. 229–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407x.2016.1165267. smith, andrea. “queer theory and native studies: the heteronormativity of settler colonialism.” queer indigenous studies: critical interventinos in theory, politics, and literature, edited by qwo-li driskill, chris finley, brian joseph gilley, and scott lauria morgensen. u of arizona p, 2011. sullivan, corrinne tayce, and madi day. “indigenous transmasculine australians & sex work.” emotion, space and society, vol. 32, august 2019, 100591. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2019.100591. tuck, eve. “suspending damage: a letter to communities.” harvard educational review, vol. 79, no. 3, 2009, pp. 409–27. walter, maggie. “indigenous data sovereignty: toward an agenda.” indigenous data sovereignty: towards an agenda, edited by tahu kukutai and john taylor. anu press, 2016, pp. 79-99. microsoft word scudelerfinal.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 158 “you can’t be an ndn in today’s world:” tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems june scudeler from the viejas indian reservation of the kumeyaay nation, tommy pico, the author of nature poem (2017) won the 2018 whiting award, with the committee calling his book a “contemporary epic.” at first glance, calling pico’s poetry epic may seem like an odd choice. helena gonzález fernández explains the “classic definition of the epic poem in the west refers to an account of a hero or heroes’ past deeds recorded in a setting of both nation and city; in other words of community and public space—both distinctly patriarchal and heterosexual” (15). while the epic in prose form is being rewritten by authors like madeline miller, whose novels song of achilles (2011) and circe (2018) are queer and feminist reinterpretations of the greek stories, the epic poem is historically masculinist and heteropatriarchal. the literary epic has fallen largely out of fashion for these reasons, but also because tastes (and attention spans) have changed.1 but how do pico’s queer kumeyaay poems fit within the epic tradition? poets.org defines epic as “a long, often book-length, narrative in verse form that retells the heroic journey of a single person or a group of persons. elements that typically distinguish epics include superhuman deeds, fabulous adventures, highly stylized language, and a blending of lyrical and dramatic traditions.” pico’s book-length poems fit these descriptions (they definitely are fabulous adventures), blending internet speak june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 159 with the travels of a young, hip queer kumeyaay man through new york, book tours, relationships, and kumeyaay history. pico’s epic poems aren’t heterosexual or patriarchal, but queer.2 pico’s queerness is intersectional not only because he is kumeyaay but because he works with and supports other black, indigenous and people of colour writers, particularly queer folks. in 2008, pico established birdsong (a key kumeyaay concept i will explain shortly) collective and micropress in brooklyn ny to “foster sustained collaboration among artists, musicians and writers” through its own zine. the collective’s mandate was to “share commitments to social movements of feminism, anti-racism, queer positivity, class-consciousness, and diy cultural production” (“who we are”). he is also a member of the queer quartet who produce the podcast food for thot, hilariously described as stemming from a “discussion about how literary and intellectual spaces rarely allowed for conversations about things typically considered—well, not so intellectual. we loved talking about queer theory, identity politics, and ta-nehisi coates, but also . . .our absolutely filthiest hook-up stories” (“about”), an exhilarating mixture of pop culture and theory reflected in his poetry. pico’s poems seem to fit more into the queer american poetic tradition, moving from the queer epics of walt whitman’s (1819–1892) leaves of grass or allen ginsberg’s (1926–1977) howl. though benjamin meiners explains the “identification of the intertwining of the sexual and the political in whitman’s work has (rightly) become commonplace” (246), pico rejects placing himself in this tradition even as he is grudgingly influenced by it: “i didn’t read leaves of grass nor have i read howl for that matter nor have i really read frank o’hara. although, there are people who like to compare me to them all the time.” instead, he makes his own epic tradition rooted in kumeyaay song traditions and urban indigeneity and “less whitman” (fajardo-anstine). transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 160 pico also rejects slotting himself too easily into the epic tradition because epics are integral to the founding or originary literary land claims of countries to justify empire. for example, virgil’s the aeneid tells the story of the founding of rome whereas the “american epic differs from those of the european tradition by being about prospective nation-building, rather than retrospective celebration of the founding of an empire” (davies 60). settler scholar margery fee asks how has “the formation of a canadian literature been complicit in the colonial process of occupying and claiming land” (60), a question equally important for american literature. although “the literature needed to unify a people and form a national character did not have to be overtly patriotic, but it did have to capture the essence or spirit of the nation” (davies 4), for pico the national essence of america is the genocidal erasure of indigenous peoples. however, american epics are not always white and heteronormative. in “songs of ourselves: searching for america’s epic poem,” ed simon includes claudia rankine’s 2014 citizen: an american lyric “as a postmodern epic [that] explores the precise ways that this nation has never treated it citizens equally. . .racism not simply as a problem of policy, but also as a national spiritual malady.” although pico’s tone is lighter that rankine’s, he also deconstructs the founding myths of american exceptionalism, progress, and equality. kadji amin, amber jamilla musser and roy pé rez situate pico’s first book irl (2016) as “an epic that refuses to posture as high art. . .length allows irl to activate a queer, indigenous interpretation of empire by exhaustively sequencing sex, history, gossip, and critique into epic monumentalization” (238). pico refuses american discourses of empire, instead creating his own queer indigenous epics: america wants its ndns3 weary, slumped over the broken horse, spear sliding into the dry grass but i’m june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 161 givin u ndn joy ndn laughter ndn freedom my body was built for singing (junk 52) pico’s epics are indigenous and queer, meaning his poems don’t conveniently fit into the western epic tradition; he may make nods to the genre, but he insists that they are queer kumeyaay epics. warren cariou (métis) stresses the importance of indigenous poetry as a way to stay rooted in indigenous existence in a colonized world, giving us another way to understand pico: while poetry is undoubtedly a marginalized genre in mainstream western society today, i believe it retains the capacity to shake up the divisive mindset that is endemic in our class-inflected and still-colonized world. it can destabilize those edges that keep aboriginal peoples marginalized in contemporary north american culture, and it can do this by holding different realities side by side: by juxtaposing the received mainstream perception of colonial reality with a perception that is rooted in aboriginal experience (33) that is precisely what pico’s poetry is doing, walking the edges between not only settler colonialism and kumeyaay ways of knowing—encompassing epistemologies, histories, stories, languages, spirituality, legal systems, and artistic practices—but shaking up the epic genre. when asked how he would describe the main theme of his poetry, he stated emphatically “genocide!” (“tin house”). on the surface, pico’s life story makes him an unusual candidate for writing epics. from the kumeyaay nation east of san diego, california, pico lived in brooklyn, and is currently based in los angeles and new york city. he co-curated the reading series poets with attitude, co-hosts the podcasts food 4 thot and scream, queen, and is a contributing editor at literary hub (“about’). he attended sarah lawrence college, transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 162 intent on returning to his reservation after writing his pre-med thesis on diabetes. however, he felt overwhelmed because he believed that one doctor couldn’t make a difference, so he majored in creative writing. he moved to new york city after he graduated, making zines to publish his poetry in before turning to book form. pico was always creating stories,4 so it makes sense that he turned to poetry, although epic poetry doesn’t seem to be a natural choice. in irl, pico references epic poetry by wryly appreciating the queerness in greek poetry: “srsly / who didn’t love the greek / shit as a kid? / so witchy and swishy” (28). pico references thamyris from homer’s iliad, “singing prodigy, glory / of the cithara, lover of / hyacinth. can’t / you just see him sashay?” (irl 28).5 greek poetry has been important for queer men because of its homoeroticism, including pico. pico’s poetry quartet–irl, nature poem (2017), junk (2018), and feed (2019– redefines whose stories are worthy of such an “exalted” poetic form. the four books make up their own sequence because the reader can finish feed and go “right back into the beginning of irl so that they can be experienced as a cycle” (“83”). he explains “i write book-length poems, and it changes with each book. irl i wanted to compose as if it were the world’s longest text message. with nature poem i thought of each page like a transparency stacked atop each other, to create a sort of topography. junk was organized into ten couplets on a page, each couplet 4.5 inches long to resemble a junk drawer: something made of very distinct objects that creates one, indistinct mass. the idea was you could pick moments out of it, like in a junk drawer, but as you turn the pages if you’re not careful you’ll lose it. feed is organized at times like a news feed, but also approximates the manicured microclimates of the high line park in new york where all these differently textured plants are sown to live alongside each other” (cortez). his books are based on seasons and stages of a relationship: irl june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 163 is summer / crush, nature poem is fall / relationship, junk is winter / breakup, and feed is summer / reconciliation (brunton).6 the poems are written in a deceptively simple, breezy, and humorous style that belies the rigorous thought inspiring them, leaving the reader / listener unprepared for the truths about genocide, indigenous erasure, and homophobia. his poetry oscillates between the urban (new york, book tour stops) and his memories of the viejas reservation, carving a space in contemporary american society for a queer ndn.7 pico’s epics shifts expectations about indigenous poetry by “creating unsettling juxtapositions, which can have a comic or a dramatic effect—or, most often, some combination of the two.” he uses his poetry to destabilize his readers, “lulling them into a false sense of security with jokey lines about grindr and take-out food, getting them to laugh in recognition until suddenly he’s talking about diabetes or the killing of native americans and his audience is finding out who can stop laughing the fastest. ‘i call it trojan horsing’” (moskovitz). the trojan horse appears in homer’s odyssey and virgil’s aeneid and is an apt metaphor to explain pico’s unsettling poetry. kumeyaay people8 were forcibly moved from their original homelands to make way for lake cuyamaca, “taking most of the san diego river water used by the kumeyaay. this left them with only a small share from the city’s flume” (“how viejas”). pico loves to confront his non-indigenous readers and audiences with the implacable facts of genocide and forced displacement, pronouncing “absence, as if kumeyaay just didn’t show up, as if slept in, as if there / weren’t a government intent on extermination” (np 62). pico repeatedly returns to this theme; that the genocide of indigenous peoples is conveniently believed to be some accident, rather than the genocidal policies of boarding schools (residential schools in canada), allotment, and the imposition of christianity. he asserts his presence as a queer ndn, daring the transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 164 reader / audience / literary establishment to deny that the stories of a queer ndn are of great national importance. pico embraces a different kind of epic rooted in kumeyaay ways of knowing that pico grew up with.9 apache / chickasaw / cherokee scholar and writer erika wurth underscores that the popol vuh, the story of the creation of the maya people, is an epic that is equally important and complex as the iliad. pico similarly calls his poetry contemporary kumeyaay epics: “my precedent for writing book-length poems are these indigenous song cycles called ‘bird songs.’ some of my first memories are listening to my father and other people singing them. they’re just like epic poems that talk about how people made it into the valley, like travel logs. i feel that structured my thinking... my kumeyaay name translates to ‘bird songs.’” (“on not”). his epics centre the adventures and musings of a queer kumeyaay man that both honours his ancestors and his kumeyaay relatives and his experiences as a queer ndn in urban spaces. irl: musing about being a queer ndn irl chronicles pico grappling with being between two worlds, a seemingly wellworn path for indigenous writers. struggling to find meaning in settler-colonial united states is part of his journey: “kill / the indian, save the man–/ sow a shame so deep it arrives / when i do, it waits for me” (73). pico’s poetry is not only the outward journey of a queer kumeyaay man, but the inward journey to self-acceptance, one that pico knows will never really end. listening to a podcast by astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson inspires the understanding “that trauma could be passed down / like molecular scar tissue like dna cavorting with wars / and displacements and your bad dad’s bad dad and what / is being indigenous but understanding a plurality of time” (“i see”). pico’s poetry not only reflects his restless mind, but also non-linear shifts in time between his ancestors and living in new york as a queer ndn. he carries his june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 165 community on his body; he has the word kumeyaay tattooed in ornate letters on his hand and kumeyaay basketry designs on his arms. pico makes the epic queer and ndn, but like the greek epics, pico also uses a muse in irl. calliope is the muse of greek epic poetry, but in irl pico invites his own muse, a man on whom he has a crush: “crushing / on muse. . .muse crashes into the edges of my nights / isn’t crushing / doesn’t love me” (1). pico queers the muse, who is usually seen as feminine, by making them a queer man. muse doesn’t love pico because he’s “the side piece / art is muse’s / main squeeze” (29). how can pico compete with art and the cultural capital that comes with it, but by stealing all the cultural capital for himself? he berates himself for being sentimental: “don’t fall in love / with muse, duh! muse is / embodiment of abstract / concept: art, dance / astronomy, drama, heroic poetry, security, good/god, edible / underwear, pepperoni pizza, jim / beam” (29). pico demolishes the edifices of art by beginning his list with art, dance, heroic poetry, or what seems to be secure and acceptable of what art is, moving to an account of the urban attractions of jim beam, pepperoni pizza, and edible underwear. he writes his own heroic poetry, eliminating the conflation between good and god, revelling in both the abstraction of art and the corporeality of pizza. pico is well aware of ancient greece’s homoeroticism, which he updates as a twenty-first century queer urban ndn. he flirts with muse: i’m giving muse the look like i’m only pre tending i don’t want you to kiss me. i’m withholding, in general surely muse will want to kiss me bc i appear transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 166 disinterested in kissing. this is my technique lol, so far, so alone (36) pico expresses his yearning for muse with “surely muse will want” even as he is “withholding, in general.” he wants muse but is also unable to show the “emotional transparency” (36) needed to engage with muse. pico hides behind irony and pretence because “what kind of artless / simpleton says what they / truly feel?” (36). of course, we know that pico cares deeply about what muse thinks; after all, he is crushing on muse, even as he plays hard to get. pico is enthralled by muse: “if muse ever texted me / i would :-) :-) :-) if / muse ever texted ‘i / want to be with you’ / i would have a / minor coronary incident” (10). muse is a capricious taskmaster who can’t be controlled, but instead owns you and leaves you “in a shawl by the fire/ place, rocking alone / again” (30). but muse is hard to escape even as pico berates him: “don’t patron/ ize me, tradition / is a cage conflict constant,” a container pico wants to escape (31). in its place, pico creates his own poetic persona, teebs, a persona he uses to protect himself from settler colonial society and white queer culture. teebs is “a fuckin’ scrappy bitch” (“epic poet”): “i feel like teebs was the original me, and then tommy was the shy one whom i created in order to survive, to shield myself from anti-gayness. i was shamed into becoming a lesser version of myself. so getting older and getting louder and getting more performative is, i think, my reconnecting with a person before shame touched him” (“not waiting”). teebs enables pico to be queerer and more performative, a more amped-up version of himself. pico firmly calls out homophobia for forcing him to hide and shrink into a lesser version of himself. he remembers “i mean i’ve always been a fairy, you know what i mean? i feel like starting to get bullied or whatever or hatred from people in high school ... i mean that’s internalized homophobia and racism and all that kind of stuff” (naimon). now he sees the june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 167 boundaries between teebs and himself dissolving, even as he cautions, “writers / should never be the hero / of their own work / be a hero irl or whatever? / but don’t write to be a hero/ that shit’s disgusting” (38). but teebs demands to be the hero of his own story as he moves through the poem: “muse is finally giving me / what i want” even as his “hard won / sense of self surrenders thru / the sieve of yr attention every time” (64). pico is keenly aware of the nature of negotiating between indigeneity and queerness, using what dian million (tanana athabaskan) calls felt theory, a “new language for communities to address the real multilayered facets of their histories and concerns by insisting on the inclusion of our lived experience, rich with emotional knowledges, of what pain and grief and hope meant or mean now in our pasts and future” (57). teebs helps pico be a queer urban ndn, but pico also feels the presence of his ancestors “who have your hands with the contours of words bursting from your ends” (feed 65). his ancestors inspire pico’s words with the kinetic force of kumeyaay traditions. a lot of his poetry chronicles the trials of being indigenous in the so-called united states, where indigeneity is often rendered invisible through the vanishing indian trope because of the vanishing indian trope. pico references photographer edward curtis’ (1868-1952) who staged photos of indigenous peoples, in which “indians” are relegated to the past because they must be photographed before they vanish.10 pico warns that “tradition is a cage / like an edward curtis pic / of high copper cheekbones – / totemic, fabricated” (irl 25). pico is rightly suspicious of these images and how they freeze indigenous peoples in the past. he is a thoroughly modern ndn that is being supported by his ancestors, so there isn’t a dichotomy between the two states of being. pico’s “family was queer in structure because a tribal structure is different than a hetero, nuclear family. my mom had three different kids transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 168 from three different men. it wasn’t that common for somebody to be married to the person that they were having children with at the moment” (ormundson). teebs struggles to find himself while reading a cross-indigenous anthropological survey that claims extra-gendered identities for a smattering of tribes including mine, n i wonder about two-spirit traditional roles how it would have sounded coming from my grandma instead of white anthropologist . . . whatever kumeyaay word for ‘they’ catholicism erased assimilationist homophobia (irl 93) he is keenly aware of how conceptions of gender have been lost, highlighting how homophobia exists in his community because of spanish colonization that imposed catholicism. pico dedicates irl to “the memory of my grandmother, and all the ancestors who persevered through cultural/literal genocide, land & resource theft, myriad oppressions aggressions etc. so i could be some queer poet in brooklyn who smells his own belly button way too much” (n.p.) his dedication encapsulates his mixture of tragedy and humour, but asserts the presence of kumeyaay people in contemporary society. june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 169 the ending of irl functions in the same way. pico calls his poetry “a new ceremony” (97), quickly segueing to a karaoke bar, where teebs is thrilled that james is following him back on instagram and sends him a “somewhat risqué selfie:” he responds w/ a pic of his computer screen his phone # on it so we text n he’s like come over n i’m like do u have a/c he says yes n i just straight up drop the mic n leave. (98) the last line harkens back to his admonishment “it’s summer, some/ times, and / leave. me. alone. muse” (64). even though he’s “in-between / kumeyaay and brooklyn– / that it has a word, / even if the word is lost” (106), teebs know that air conditioning and the promise of sex in a sweltering new york city summer is the most important thing for a queer ndn. pico’s first epic ends a characteristically irreverent note (who can blame teebs for hooking up with a guy with a/c?), he still brings the end of the poem back to the difficulties of forgetting11 the kumeyaay language because of colonization. nature poem: indigenizing the romantic epic the canonical romantic poets used the kantian idea that the sublime “is not in the objects themselves but in our consciousness, which encompasses and transcends objects” (cantor 399). rather than the iliad or the aeneid’s celebration of warfare, the transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 170 sublime “was not lost on the romantic poets, who, in effect, used the kantian sublime to establish themselves as their own heroes, as the locus of greatness in the world” (cantor 399). the romantic poets who wrote epics, in this case lord byron, “begin[] as part of nature, but now nature becomes part of him; nature is assimilated into human consciousness” (cantor 398). although lord byron and pico seem like strange bedfellows (or maybe not), pico also satirizes the epic as an exalted form as byron does in don juan (1819). part of pico’s critique of the epic poem is echoed by cantor’s use of the word assimilated which situates the romantic subjugation of nature as extractive and colonial. it reminds me of pico exclamation of “genocide!” as a consistent theme; pico’s “mistrust of the [epic] is double—first because of its political and literary history as a tool of american settler colonialism and second because the lack of relevance to his own lived life is pronounced” (ali), inspiring him to write his own epics. pico attempts to disentangle himself from nature but realizes that binaries between nature / urban are false because they’re based in colonizing logics. he envisions a queer kumeyaay sublime within cities because “he only fucks with the city” (4). he “accepts” nature by the end of the poem, but very much on his terms, mixed with instagram, popular culture, and the refusal to whitewash genocide. he imagines himself as an ancestor fleeing spanish and american colonization: i scout from the peak of our sacred mountain i’m dragged from the center of town in chains i’m old women scattered along the creek my little hands squeeze my little mouth shut (45) june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 171 for indigenous people, colonization is not an abstract concept, but something felt in the body in pico’s poetry, which is full of food, sex, and the insistence that his body will survive in the face of genocide. in nature poem, pico uses the epic form “as an attempt to understand, confront, and reconcile stereotypical ways in which american indian people have been described in popular culture” (tosone), especially as the vanishing indian. he illuminates how indigenous peoples are “depicted as being ‘noble savages,’ [being at] one with nature and all that shit. . .i wanted to write against these stereotypes in part to imbue nuance and humor and humanity back into people from whom it has been stolen from, historically” (tosone). except, of course, as the poem progresses, we learn that pico is connected to nature, even if stereotypes are “dangerous to me because then we become features of the landscape, not human beings, things to be cleared and removed” (tosone), victims of manifest destiny. teebs also slyly asks non-indigenous readers and audiences what kind of nature poem they’re expecting. he begins by evoking the pacific coast: “the stars are dying / like, always, and far away, like what you see looking up is a death knell / from light, right? light / years. but also close, like the sea stars on the pacific coast” (1). pico paints a picture of the stars’ reflection on the pacific ocean, which seems innocuous, but the opening line surprises the reader who may be expecting a conventional nature poem, certainly not the death knell of stars. teebs becomes more annoyed: when i try to sleep i i think about orange cliffs, bare of orange stars. knotted, glut. waves are clear. anemones n shit. sand crabs n shit. fleas. there are seagulls overhead. ugh i swore to myself i would never write a nature poem (1) pico moves from dying stars to the viscerally down and dirty “anemones n shit,” which can mean shit as in more stuff or actual shit on the beach. teebs becomes more transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 172 exasperated at the supposedly bucolic scene, exemplified by “ugh i swore to myself i would never write a nature poem.” he confesses, “i can’t not spill” (1), the double negative of wanting to tell his story while protesting he doesn’t. pico, as ali suggests, “identifies with what a nature poem isn’t,” particularly terra nullius, landscapes devoid of indigenous peoples. teebs asserts his ancestors’ presence and his own presence in contemporary american society. pico confronts the reader with the purpose of his book: “i can’t write a nature poem / bc it’s fodder for the noble savage / narrative. i wd slap a tree across the face, / i say to my audience” (np 2). pico is extremely aware of where he places words on the page. are nature poems fodder for the noble savage narrative or are nature poems also internalized by indigenous peoples? besides being feed for animals, fodder also means “inferior or readily available material used to supply a heavy demand” (“fodder”); the dominant society is still rife with stereotypes about indigenous peoples that leads to the forced displacement and genocide of pico’s ancestors. like irl, nature poem is his queer ndn bird song, asking us what it means for a queer urban ndn, to reflect on nature in its myriad forms. unfortunately, urban indigenous peoples are still seen as inauthentic, negating that “the beauty of culturally inherent resurgence is that it challenges settler colonial dissections of our territories and our bodies into reserve/city or rural/urban dichotomies. . .cities have become sites of tremendous activism and resistance and of artistic, cultural, and linguistic revival and regeneration” (simpson 173). pico underscores his “draw to the city is simply that i crave the kind of excitement and motion and possibility that city life offers. plus i’m pretty freaking gay and i was drawn to a place where a queer relationship was safer and more possible. it’s weird ‘cos my 15 years in the city, ‘nature’ has become something obscured and dangerous to me. you won’t catch me camping, you can june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 173 believe that” (haparimwi). despite his protestations, there isn’t a dichotomy between living in new york and being kumeyaay. but being in the city has its own, humorous challenges. teebs is at a pizza parlour, bemused at a married man with “a cracked skin summer smile” trying to pick him up, a man who is “talking like i want to hear him / like he’s so comfortable / like everybody owes him attention.” teebs describes himself as a “weirdo ndn faggot” when the man puts his hands on the ribs of my chair asks do i want to go into the bathroom with him let’s say it doesn’t turn me on at all let’s say i hate all men bc literally all men are animals— this is a kind of nature i would write a poem about (2) pico not only deconstructs nature as in the so-called natural world, but the nature of masculinity. “a kind of” confirms that pico is not thinking of just the natural world, but human nature, especially around sexuality. he calls out the sheer confidence of the man who tries to pick him up, who is secure in his self-delusion that pico would of course want to have sex with him. teebs then goes into a tirade about how he doesn’t “like boys, men, or guys. . .the musk the swoony wake, the misc / bulges, stupid weight training spot me bro– / i was like pfffft i says yr kind of hard to miss?” he rails about mainstream articulations of masculinity—“choosing trucks over pink?”—knowing that he doesn’t want to / can’t fit in because he’s a weirdo queer ndn. there are men he does approve of: “men dancing is fine tho. / or like maybe men in socks? i dunno” (3). while teebs knows what he finds objectionable about mainstream masculinity, he is still unsure of what kind of men he does like: the tragicomedy of dating. teebs is continually confronted with the presence of being a vanishing indian in america. a “curious” white guy asks him if “i feel more connected to nature / bc i’m transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 174 ndn / asks did i live like in a regular house,” obliviously asking if teebs has any “rain / ceremonies” (15). the white guy’s questions evoke a whole cavalcade of stereotypes about indigenous peoples so it’s easy for indigenous readers to share his frustration. pico is very precise about how he places words on the page, so it’s significant that ceremonies has its own line, signifying the sacredness of kumeyaay traditions. the “conversation” with the white guy carries in a way familiar to bipoc people: “when i express, frustration, he says what? he says i’m just asking as if / being earnest absolves him from being fucked up.” teebs bluntly states: it does not. he says i can’t win with you because he already did because he always will because he could write a nature poem, or anything he wants, he doesn’t understand why i can’t write a fucking nature poem. teebs’ interior monologue shows that he knows all too well that the white guy can say whatever he wants about indigenous people and be seen as correct, that he always will win because he can write about anything he wants. he could write a terrible nature poem and still not be faced with the complications pico faces when trying to write a nature poem. of course, the white guy doesn’t know that he will be fodder for teebs’ own nature poem: later when he is fucking me i bite him on the cheek draw june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 175 blood i reify savage lust (15) is “reifying savage lust” something teebs “simply does, or he chooses to, or is forced by white expectation to perform the role assigned him? that last stanza, by the way, is the single instance where the two men are on an equal plane—a non-verbal, sexual one. as if sex were the one space where equality might figure, where bodies are merely doing what they do—by nature” (phillips). sex, of course, is not free of power relationships, but we get the feeling that teebs is both playing at being a savage indian and very much in charge of the situation. pico states “because i’m a native person, there’s this stereotype that we’re reverent of nature or whatever. i wanted to mess with that, and be like camping is dumb and fuck lakes and grass sucks” (“i said”). but he wonders what if i really do feel connected to the land? what if the mountains around the valley where i was born what if i see them like faces when i close my eyes what if i said hi to them in the mornings and now all their calls go to voicemail . . . i get so disappointed by stupid ndns writing their dumb nature poems like grow up faggots i look this thought full in the face and want to throw myself into traffic (72) does teebs really feel connected to the land or is he performing? he doesn’t answer nature’s call, but lets it go to his voicemail, a seemingly incongruous statement. again, the placement of words is key. teebs is very disappointed by ndns writing their “stupid nature / poems.” are ndns writing their own human natures? is nature stupid? teebs’ plaintive “like grow up (not grown up) faggots” is full of child-like frustration, transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 176 undercut by teebs melodramatically wanting to throw himself into traffic for writing a nature poem. then, on the facing page, teebs challenges us: “admit it. this is the poem you wanted all along” (73). pico omits nature from the line to show that teebs has accepted his fraught relationship with indigeneity and nature, even though it’s “hard to be anything / but a pessimist / when you feel the earth rotting away on so many home pages” (74). however, teebs puts aside his grand musings to spend time on his friend roy’s porch, “petting kitties” where there is “lavender in the air.” of course, pico pulls the rug out from underneath with his last line: the air is clear and all across instagram—peeps are posting pics of the sunset the stars are no longer dying but are captured in stasis. for pico, nature is mediated, whether by history, technology, particularly by being queer and kumeyaay. another man’s junk. . . described on the inner sleeve as a “breakup poem in couplets,” junk is inspired by a.r. ammons’ (1929-2001) garbage (1993). cited as an inspiration numerous times by pico, dan chiasson calls ammons “the great american poet of daily chores,” an analogue precursor to pico’s digital hyperactivity. in 1963, ammons inserted a roll of adding machine tape into his underwood typewriter, a laborious process that became tape for the turn of the year. his adding-tape epic’s “formal properties are ways of managing the rate at which tape-time elapses: when ammons’s lines are long, spanning the width of the tape, he preserves the length and buys more time; when he prints a narrow strip of words, more of the tape. . .is gobbled up. ammons cannot go too fast, or the poem will end before it has served its purpose” (chiasson). pico uses similar strictures to hold his overflowing thoughts and emotions. ammons’ use of june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 177 enjambment or the “running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next” (“enjambment”) is echoed by pico, giving junk a hectic, stream of consciousness tone of “thoughts // becoming jagged and panicked” (35). pico notes “convention says a book shd be // this long but i’m only interested in writing as long as you want / to read in one sitting” even as he admits we’re “sitting for longer and / longer but paying less and less attention” (5). pico’s poems are an impossibility, epics in a time of short attention spans and internet brain. although digitally constrained by envisioning his poem as a tumblr post, a microblogging site, and by his decision that the couplets could only be 4.5 inches wide, pico’s feeling and thoughts are not so easily contained. he explains that “the book length format became a container of sorts, it became a conduit through which i could express the too muchness and the obsession” (naimon), creating an unsettling balancing act between excess and control. like ammons, pico is fascinated in the stuff not considered important. junk is material that seemingly no longer serves its purpose depending on who is deciding its usefulness. pico remembers hanging out with his mom at the thrift store on the kumeyaay nation where she worked, leading to an appreciation of the discarded, the unloved, the useless. teebs spends “whole ass afternoons among / the busted watches and raggedy barbies” eating candy because it “is a simple way 2 make kids behave when you have three jobs” (46). he would also “parade in faded dress and sweaty // plastic pumps” while his “aunty calmly blinks // ‘that’s just your way’” (46). pico, a queer ndn, is seen as disposable in american history and culture: “junk not immediately useful but i’m still someone i can’t stop // lookin at ppl’s junk generally so u can imagine how hard it is / at the gym” (2). junk is also slang for male genitalia, a very important interest of teebs’. jacquelyn ardam underscores that “junk also becomes, powerfully, a metaphor for the native americans abused and discarded at the hands of white people past and present... the beating heart of junk lies in the transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 178 intersection of this junk experience: as food, as sex, as being other-ed in america” (ardam). but pico (and teebs) is determined to be make space for his own unique story because “writing is witness—in ink the revelation stays” (2) because junk is “a way of being at the centre of yr own universe” (31) to tell your own story. pico lives in a liminal space, one he makes his own by writing his own stories. of course, pico must find writing poems important because he confesses “but the poem is much more hos/ pitable embrace the pivot & plow” even if “i’ll stop writing abt my body’s danger / when one of those goes away” (34), which could be quite a while for a queer ndn. his poems are both hospitable and “pitiable,” an in-between space that unsettles the non-indigenous reader. but it also unsettles pico: whenever i’m back in ca my whole rez asks soooooo what r you doing? which means, what’s more important than being here w/ yr family and yr ppl in the valley we’ve lived in for thousands of years which, heavy i have ppl here too make here feel like home sucks being a sometimes person sometimes here sometimes there (50–1) although pico feels uncomfortable with his rez’s questions, he pushes back because he also has a community in cities, especially with bipoc and/or queer writers. but he still feels conflicted as a sometimes person, a junk space of being neither here nor there. throughout junk, unwanted objects are “lovingly humanized – ‘don’t blame the junk for being discarded’ – raising an important question. namely, what happens when the forgotten items are people or entire populations? dumped by a bored beau, or left june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 179 high and dry by american genocide? or both, as in the case of our queer, freshly single, ndn... protagonist?” (kenny). teebs is also junk because he was dumped by his boyfriend: the operative phrase is “dumped” but the opera tive feeling isn’t “garbage” bc garbage suggests refusal and i can be reused i swear (40) he pleads that he can be reused though it is unclear by whom. the enjambment turns operative into opera, a musical performance of exaggerated emotions like teebs’ own emotional states. ardam notes “just as the couple — teebs and his boyfriend — fails, so do these couplets,” even if pico’s couplets don’t follow rhyming conventions. teebs struggles to find meaning in the junk space of romantic rejection, plaintively wondering “i thought the point of seeing each other / was to see each other how is being seen by me a bad thing?” (10). however, these heightened emotions can keep teebs safe; he rejoices at having a boyfriend even as he knows the dangers: not havin a bf in so long i forgot how something as mundane as holding hands makes a target of us you reach yr arm out to rest on my shoulders and i pulled away i’m not afraid of intimacy i’m scared of assault i want 2 love in spite of the violence (22) for pico, living in occupied america means self-surveillance because he is too ndn (or sometimes not ndn enough) and queer. pico is telling his story in spite of colonization and homophobia, a junk space of fear but also beauty. the everyday acts of love transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 180 between teebs and his boyfriend are terrifying for teebs, who simply wants to love his boyfriend without violence. but pico is also keenly aware that his queer ndn body isn’t wanted in white gay culture: “i hate gay guys so much there’s this / idea that only some bodies are worthy of desire and the others // don’t even exist” (11). teebs is not only discarded by his boyfriend, but also by america, an epic process that he connects with global forces of colonization. although pico writes to be the centre of his own universe, his universe includes solidarity and kinship with black, brown and / or women, trans, and queer folks: first things first: get out of bed another black man shot by police another missing woman in indian country another trans person discovered by the roadside another mass shooting they pile like stones and overtake the poem resist wanting to burn it all down (34) teebs finds it impossible to function in the face of overwhelming violence that threatens to sink his poem. the repetition of “another” signals the continuing violence of marginalized peoples is america, the bodies piling up, threatening to stop the poem. teebs pivots to find comfort and inspiration in plants, a series he will continue in his next book: “native basket grasses paperwhites mint and irises // elderberry and honeysuckle” (34). however, the list reminds me of a grounding exercise, a way of distracting yourself from distressing feelings, especially for people with anxiety or ptsd, part of being indigenous in settler colonial societies.12 when teebs walks down june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 181 the street with his boyfriend, he sees “14th street but i see a massacre lenape land” (54). in junk, pico lists the stereotypes that indigenous peoples face like “the berdache13 / the shaman / the noble savage / the indian problem / the squaw // the indian princess / the spirit animal / the drunk indian / the teary-eyed environmentalist” (48), an epic of colonization that he debunks. he knows that these stereotypes are defined as “considering something as a gen// eral quality or characteristic apart from concrete realities, / specific objects, or actual instances” (48) junk ideas of who indigenous peoples are. splitting the word general onto two lines breaks apart how false these stereotypes are even as these leftover ideas are still part of the dominant culture or “what goes into the display case vs what goes in the junk drawer” (39). indigenous peoples aren’t artefacts to be displayed in a museum or destined to be put in a junk drawer; pico imagines an alternate space, where he feels “something dark pulling me down, as sure // as i feel the ancestors yanking me up” (29) in spite of settler colonialism. junk ends a note of rebirth, like the kumeyaay tradition of burning a person’s possessions when they pass on, “ascending the possessions to heaven” (52). if part of junk is letting go, partly junk is letting go of you junk finds a new boo i am the standard of my mind smoke pulls back into the fire and the fire pulls back into the junk and the junk pulls up to the bumper baby we lie quiet in the buff, not touchin (72) transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 182 pico explains “i look at the narrator in junk and i see a person who definitely can imagine a path toward solace, but who is still spinning out and exhausted. he sees the potential for family and for nourishment and for nutrition but doesn’t know how to get there yet” (osmundson). befitting a narrator who doesn’t yet know his own path, the ending is inconclusive. the smoke is going backwards instead of releasing spirit into the air, while inbetweeness pulls up to teebs’ bumper. he is not touching his new boo, even as he realizes “the most subversive move might be to dodge the grip of history altogether, to refuse what has been refused to you, and in doing so, to write yourself in to a new narrative” (ardam) as a queer ndn. “i am the recipe i protect:” feeding yourself feed is the last book in the tetralogy, serving as a summation and a way forward for teebs, or more accurately pico, who becomes more himself by realizing that teebs is no longer useful. pico can now feed himself by “forging ways of living by recognizing and building communities” (clark), a world beyond apps and hookups, a community resilient under the weight of history. pico writes against scarcities of food, communities, and how indigenous people are seen in american culture. while these concerns are woven throughout the books, pico has become more mature and accepting of himself as he “imagine[s] being fed, and feeding. / imagine getting what you need. / imagine the fire inside you” (76). feeding is not only eating, but also sexual, emotional, and spiritual nourishment. matt clark suggests “in junk, junk food, junk stuff, genital junk all offered sites of immediate pleasure in spite of the violence of the surrounding world. but these multiple kinds of junk offered subsistence that did not provide sustenance,” nourishment that teebs was not ready to accept. pico was commissioned14 to write feed by new york city’s friends of the high line, produced in partnership with poets house in 2018 when he was living in brooklyn. june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 183 the high line is “a public park built on a 1.45-mile-long elevated rail structure running from gansevoort st. to 34th st. on manhattan’s west side” that “was in operation from 1934 to 1980” (“faq”). the rail line was shut down because “the train was killing / people. it wasn’t exactly a speed demon / and there was a man on horseback waving red / ahead” so “they lifted it—up the ladder to the roof15—raised the train line high / line, a hanging monument to the appetite of the sky” (38-39). feed reflects the layout of the highline with its different garden zones.16 pico uses plant names to punctuate the different parts of the poem, leading the reader to imagine themselves walking with pico and sharing a conversation. he believes “there’s a sweetness to [feed], a selfacceptance i think, something that has taken the mess of the world and curated it into a garden that looks wild but is actually meticulously ordered” (cortez). feed not only refers to a social media, but also making food and caring for self and community. colonization is inextricably linked to pico’s lack of cooking skills as he reveals “i don’t have a food history / if the dish is, ‘subjugate an indigenous population,” here’s an ingredient / of the roux: alienate us from our traditional ways of / gathering an cooking food” (11). the working group on indigenous food sovereignty states instead of the “highly mechanistic, linear food production, distribution, and consumption model applied in the industrialized food system,” indigenous food is “primarily cultivated. . .based on values of interdependency, respect, reciprocity, and ecological sensibility” (“indigenous food”). pico’s ancestors were violently displaced from their traditional food sources: they “are just lost, like traditional ways of cooking food that are just lost. and so i wanted to create. i wanted to have almost like a new ceremony. i wanted to have a new language of food to replace something that had been lost. it wasn't lost, it was stolen” (pashman). he does remember his mother making a kumeyaay acorn dish “called [shawii]. we would go harvest acorns in the mountains and i'd crack them and crush them into a powdery transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 184 meal. you put water into that and you let it set. and then you would put it in the fridge for a little while to make it congeal or something” (pashman). as an ndn from the kumeyaay indian nation, pico is intimately aware of his people’s food history. he “highlights the usda’s food distribution program on indian reservations (fdpir), used by the american government as a form of ‘redistribution’ to indigenous communities—a gathering of crumbs from the stolen breadbasket of the san diego river” (hawa). the kumeyaay “moved around what wd be called the san diego county with / the seasons” until the missions. the isolated reservations on stone mountains where not even a goat could live then the starvation. . .the powdered milk, worm in the oatmeal, corn syrupy canned peaches. food stripped of its nutrients. then came the sugar blood. the sickness. the glucose meter going up and up (11) remember that pico wanted to write his pre-med thesis on diabetes, and in his poetry he continues to fight against the still prevalent stereotype that indigenous peoples are predisposed to diabetes, something i’ve been told myself. like my ancestors, pico’s ancestors were forcibly removed from their food sovereignty through containment on reservations and the slaughter of food sources like the buffalo. pico’s growing self-acceptance is echoed by the peripatetic pace of the poem, a leisurely but still fraught stroll with his newly married ex, leo. walking with leo brings a flood of memories that moves between past, present, and future even as he is “committed / to being my own damn romantic / comedy” (2). although feed is a reconciliation poem in which pico is “reconciling ‘nature’ with ‘the city,’ the city’s past with the park’s future. and i just so happened to be reconciling with an ex with whom i’d had many, many dates at the june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 185 park itself” (grant), pico is wary of the word and “drives a stake through our reconciliation mythologies” (wawa): reconcile: to cause a person to accept or be resigned to something not desired (28) pico is addressing the difficulties of being friends with an ex. does he want to be with leo again? is leo reluctant to be friends? but he realizes there is another way of understanding the word: “to win over / to friendliness; cause to be amicable” (28). triggered by leo’s comment that teebs slept on a box spring on the floor (he now has off-brand overstock bought in installments), “i think we’ve both moved on lol i didn’t want to, it’s just. . .” he wants to grow up even though “sometimes it feels like it’s everyone else / around me growing up, and i’m just getting older” (28). pico’s poetry is sly, humorous, a running commentary on being a queer ndn, but is also full of tender confessions from teebs’ hectic mind that announces, “to compose or set/ tle i will not” (28). teebs fights against stasis, even as he feels lonely on book tours. he needs to “set” in place to grapple with his relationship with leo during spring, the most changeable of seasons. he reconnects with leo through a twitter chain “(brace yourself for some annoying / thoroughly modern love-in-the-time-of-apps bullcrap)” (68), but he finally realizes i guess this is a dirge to the future i thought we could have not all plants were meant to grow together in the same microclimate. some things go apart instead (69) transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 186 he accepts that not all relationships last, highlighting pico’s growth. while junk is postbreak up stream of consciousness, feed is a meandering walk with an ex who may be a friend, even after heartache. pico realizes he is becoming himself through his various communities. his ancestors surround him as he lives in cities, creating new, primarily queer bipoc communities. he directly addresses us, daring us to acknowledge our part in the poetry-making process: dear reader, we are in a pot one of us is the vegetables and one of us the water. i can’t tell who is cooking who (5) this is not only a nod to the relationship pico has with readers and listeners, but with his various communities. it is impossible to separate ourselves from others, pico acknowledges, moving from the “me” of the preceding books to the “we” of feed. while teebs has interactions with people, he is now having conversation with his friends, and most importantly with leo, a process that teebs previously may not have had the maturity or courage to undertake. feed is also unusual because pico addresses the reader directly in his dear reader sections, signalling that pico is becoming himself, although, of course, nothing is ever what it seems in pico’s poetry. he obliquely addressed the reader before—the repetition of “i say to my audience” in nature poem—but feed forces the reader to admit their voyeuristic complicity: dear reader, . . . hey! let’s make a vinaigrette june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 187 did you know molasses emulsifies the olive oil and keeps the little fat molecules from stumbling into each other, thus allowing the oil and vinegar to mix? (2) instead of asking us to listen to what he is saying, which can sometimes be taken with a grain of salt because of teebs’ tricky mind, pico invites us to join him at his table. remember that feed started as a commissioned podcast, so listeners could walk the high line beside pico, a key shift in pico’s work. pico realizes that he may no longer need teebs even as his social media presence is still @heyteebs. food is an integral part of community building, a tradition that pico saw when he was a kid because his parents cooked for funerals “all across san diego. . .because there are so many funerals in indian country i mean my first memory was being at a funeral, they were busy a lot... they were very, very, very community-minded. they were very much like what's best for me is what's best for us, or what's best for us is what's best for me” (pashman). feed continues his parents’ tradition as he learns to cook with and for other people: “i says to them around the table i says, i don’t have food stories. with / you, i say, i’m cooking new ones” (11). pico also reflects that sense of community with the birdsong collective, but also through his support of other bipoc writers. he is now ready to create communities when he understands and accepts that “i am the recipe i protect” (53). pico ends his series of epics with one of his favourite singers, beyoncé, who inspired him to start writing epics on his thirtieth birthday. beyoncé sings to her audience “you give me everything. . .the reciprocity” in her song xo (57). pico transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 188 laments his loneliness as he is “mewing / into the void and yes / i’m completely //alone” but then, echoing beyoncé, he pivots to address his readers: yes, there is utility in this loneliness. this is how i be with you, dear reader, on the other side of my words on the other side of my worship (78) his use of “i’ shows the shift from teebs to pico signalled on the previous page in a playful conversation with his friend wilkes and with leo: leo: one time when we were dating— tommy: okay, this hang out is officially over this is where you pack in your snacks and get the fuck off my roof you bullies (77) he answers as tommy, not teebs, making the “me” on the preceding a direct address to the reader from pico. will clark notes in his feed review “that is perhaps what is most radical about feed: how pico questions the very existence of his alter ego, teebs, as a means of creating a culture centered on queer and indigenous people.” the last lines of feed—“as their eyes / were watching / beyoncé” (78) —is not only a reference to zora neale hurston’s 1937 novel their eyes were watching god, particularly the line “they seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching god” (“their eyes”), but harken back to pico’s reciprocity with audience / reader. he explains, “i’m from an indian reservation in southern california, and i think when i left home i was looking to replace or remake that strong sense of community somehow” (alexander). he also envisions the reader / audience as community because “a book is a handshake, kind of, or an embrace or something” (“epic poet”). he now feeds himself and others with the help of his communities, his books epics of reciprocity. june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 189 conclusion pico begins his epic poems lamenting that muse doesn’t love him and concludes by learning to love himself as tommy. pico is the hero of his own journey by not only counteracting erasure of indigenous peoples in america but insisting that his own story is as important as western epics. more importantly, a queer ndn who was bullied in school and still feels unsafe walking down the street holding his boyfriend’s hand now demands attention, first through an alter ego, then as himself. just as muskogee / cherokee scholar craig womack asserts, indigenous literature is the tree, not the branch of american literature, that “we are the canon” (7), pico also affirms “basically i'm just like this is the new american rhetoric. this is my form now. i didn’t ask for this language. i didn’t ask for this canon but now it’s mine and watch me wreck the shit out of this house. . .it’s mine now” (naimon). pico takes one of the most exalted of western genres, fucks with it (in more ways than one), and not only queers the epic but indigenizes it to reflect contemporary urban indigenous experiences through creating his new bird songs. notes 1 james poulos argues that the epic is back in fashion, but in the form of books like the harry potter series and film and tv series like game of thrones and, i would add, superhero franchises. these epics are usually in the fantasy genre, with game of thrones echoing the battles and myth-making properties of greek epics 2 pico refers to himself as queer rather than two spirit. 3 billy-ray belcourt (driftpile cree nation) defines ndn as “internet shorthand used by indigenous peoples in north america to refer to ourselves. it also sometimes an acronym meaning ‘not dead native.’” 4 pico remembers “my mother always told me that when she would drive by the bus stop where i was, i was surrounded by my cousins and they were all paying rapt attention to everything that i was saying. and i had a tape recorder when i was little and i would just tell all these stories into it before i could even read or write before i knew what spelling was, before i knew what the dictionary was. i had a little talk show transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 190 between my stuffed animals and my barbies and my g.i. joes, you know what i mean, like i always had that personality and that voice” (naimon) 5 pico mentions robert graves (1895-1985), who published the greek myths in 1955 6 brunton is referring to pico’s tweet from his now deleted twitter. unfortunately, i didn’t take note of the date. 7 pico also refers to himself as ndn: https://www.instagram.com/heyteebs/?hl=en 8 as a métis person in so-called canada who usually writes about cree and métis authors, artists, and filmmakers, i’m mindful that i’m an outsider to pico’s kumeyaay ways of knowing. how does an indigenous literary nationalist framework, or using nation-specific ways of knowing, function when engaging with another indigenous person’s writing? my ancestors moved from red river manitoba (now winnipeg) and batoche, saskatchewan, where they supported métis leader louis riel’s calls for the canadian government to respect métis land from rapidly encroaching settlers. two of my ancestors, jérôme henry and joseph vermette, fought alongside renowned métis war chief gabriel dumont; henry was killed, and vermette wounded by the canadian troops trying to quell the métis resistance in 1885. the métis fought hard, but were outnumbered by canadian troops, who used the gatling gun, a forerunner of the machine gun. while my ancestors are from the prairies (my métis mom is from saskatoon, saskatchewan and my dad from castelfranco veneto, italy), i grew up in the vancouver suburbs on tsawwassen territories and have lived in the temperate rainforests on the traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy�əm (musqueam ), sḵwx�wú7mesh úxwumixw (squamish), and səl�ilw�ətaʔɬ) (tsleil-waututh) nations colonially known as vancouver bc for over thirty years. 9 for examples of kumeyaay bird songs, see kumeyaay elder stan rodriguez’s stories and songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkqouiun438 and examples of kumeyaay bird dancing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6iz4xrxk4a 10 he would give indigenous peoples costumes to wear instead of the modern clothes they work so they would look more “indian.” curtis’ photos are still popular, published as expensive coffee table books. 11 pico remembers “when i was younger i learned kumeyaay. . .a woman from one of the kumeyaay villages stayed with us and watched me while my parents were gone. she didn’t speak english, and so i learned spanish and kumeyaay. i was super young, i didn’t know i was learning the language, of course. but later on i didn’t have anybody to practice with. there was a legislative push to cleanse american indian people of their language and culture. the same policies didn’t exist in mexico, and so the language is very much alive there.” see june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 191 https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/07/26/24393711/tommy-picos-irl-is-betterthan-the-internet 12 thinking in categories is a common technique. see https://www.healthline.com/health/grounding-techniques 13 berdache is a derogatory anthropological term used to describe what is now known as two spirit / indigiqueer people. 14 pico’s reading of the commission is available online: https://www.thehighline.org/blog/2018/04/19/feed-a-garden-soundscape/ 15 up the ladder to the roof is a reference to the 1970 supremes song, which included the lines “go up the ladder to the roof where we can see heaven much better / go up the ladder to the roof where we can be oh closer to heaven.” 16 https://www.thehighline.org/gardens/garden-zones/ works cited “83. tommy pico.” kenyon review podcast, 18 oct 2019, https://kenyonreview.org/podcast/kr-podcast-with-tommy-pico/ alexander, sarah jean. “interview with tommy pico.” publishing genius, 30 apr 2013, https://www.publishinggenius.com/interview-with-tommypico/?fbclid=iwar0jwovje3mfeaqbxfqetr3tiaax2bg_arsjv0ls9xagwegrmfwr9plm4u “about.” food for thot. https://food4thotpodcast.com/some-thots ardam, jacquelyn. “canoodling with junk food: on tommy pico’s junk.” los angeles review of books, 10 may 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/canoodlingwith-junk-food-on-tommy-picos-junk/ belcourt, billy-ray. ndn coping mechanisms. toronto: house of anansi, 2019. brunton, ruby. “it’s ok for a poem to be funny: an interview with tommy pico.” literary hub, https://lithub.com/its-ok-for-a-poem-to-be-funny-an-interview-withtommy-pico/ transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 192 burt, stephanie. “feed.” the new york times, 27 nov 2019, 27 july 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/books/review/tommy-pico-feed.html cantor, paul a. “the politics of the epic: wordsworth, byron, and the romantic redefinition of heroism.” the review of politics, vol. 69, no. 3, 2007, pp. 375– 401. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/20452900. accessed 17 june 2020. chiasson, dan. “the great american poet of daily chores.” the new yorker, 27 nov 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/the-great-americanpoet-of-dailychores?irclickid=x8a0mxrrsxyouaxwux0mo34hukirtavuix0ywe0&irgwc=1&s ource=affiliate_impactpmx_12f6tote_desktop_adgoal%20gmbh&utm_source=i mpactaffiliate&utm_medium=123201&utm_campaign=impact&utm_content=online% 20tracking%20link&utm_brand=tny clark, will. “let go”: on tommy pico’s feed. los angeles review of books. 19 nov 2019. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/let-go-on-tommy-picos-feed/ cortez, natalie. “junk, an interview with tommy pico.” superstition review, fall 2019, https://superstitionreview.asu.edu/issue24/interviews/tommypico davies, catherine a. “’putting my queer shoulder to the wheel’: america’s homosexual epics in the twentieth century.” dissertation university college london, 2013 “enjambment.” poetry foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossaryterms/enjambment “faq.” highline, n.d. https://www.thehighline.org/faq/ fields, noa/h. “’fuck beauty tbh:” tommy pico is reclaiming junk.” medium, 7 may 2018, https://medium.com/anomalyblog/fuck-beauty-tbh-tommy-pico-isreclaiming-junk-4c1516af53ae june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 193 fajardo-anstine, kali, and tommy pico. “invention and subversion: a conversation by kali fajardo-anstine and tommy pico.” bomb magazine, 19 dec. 2020. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/kali-fajardo-anstine-tommy-pico/ fee, margery. literary land claims: the “indian land question” from pontiac's war to attawapiskat. waterloo: wilfrid laurier p, 2015. “fodder.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fodder grant, matt. “now you can walk the high line with a tommy pico poem in your head.” literary hub, 27 june 2018, https://lithub.com/now-you-can-walk-thehigh-line-with-a-tommy-pico-poem-in-your-head/ haparimwi, charlene. “getting to know tommy pico.” hooligan mag, 29 apr 2017 https://issuu.com/hooliganmag/docs/18 hawa, kaleem. “open wide!: on tommy pico’s feed and consumed indigeneity.” the adroit journal, 5 nov 2019, https://theadroitjournal.org/2019/11/05/openwide-on-tommy-picos-feed-and-the-poetry-of-consumed-indigeneity/ “indigenous food sovereignty.” indigenous food systems network, https://www.indigenousfoodsystems.org/ “epics.” poets.org n.d https://poets.org/glossary/epic gonzalelez, fernandez, helena. “how do they hang from the nation?: on epic poetry at the beginning of the twenty-first century. 452ºf: revista de teoría de la literatura y literatura comparada, nº. 8, 2013, pages 13-27 kenny, tara. “tommy pico’s junk is a love letter to abandonment.” kajal mag, may 2018, https://www.kajalmag.com/tommy-picos-junk-native-poetry/ knapp, michaelsun stonesweat. “the saturday rumpus interview with tommy pico. the rumpus, october 15th, 2016, https://therumpus.net/2016/10/the-saturdayrumpus-interview-with-tommy-pico/ transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 194 meiners, benjamin. “whitman’s native futurism: frontier erotics in the 1860 leaves of grass.” walt whitman quarterly review, vol 35, nos. 3/4, 2018, pp. 245-266 million, dian. therapeutic nations: healing in an age of indigenous human rights. university of arizona press, 2013. mish, j. c. “notes toward a review of irl and nature poem by tommy pico.” transmotion, vol. 4, no. 1, apr. 2018, pp. 181-6, doi:10.22024/unikent/03/tm.532 mockovitz, peter. “the anger and joy of a native american poet in brooklyn. the new yorker, 9 sept 2016 https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-angerand-joy-of-a-native-american-poet-in-brooklyn “muse.” merriam-webster. n.d. https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/muse#synonym-discussion. naimon, david. “tommy pico: junk.” between the covers with david naimon, tin house, 14 oct 2018, https://tinhouse.com/podcast/tommy-pico-junk/ osmundson, joseph. “‘not waiting for inspiration’: an interview with tommy pico.” the new york review of books, 16 nov. 2019, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/16/not-waiting-for-inspiration-aninterview-with-tommy-pico/ pico, tommy. “epic poet.” articulate, npr.org, 20 nov 2017, https://www.pbs.org/video/tommy-pico-epic-poet-pieprs/ ---. feed. ny: tin house, 2019. ---. “i see the fire that burns within you.” http://tommy-pico.com/news ---. irl. ny: birds, 2016 ---. junk. ny: tin house, 2018 ---. “‘letting go’ with tommy pico, emily heller, eli saslow, and the helio sequence.” live wire radio 4 october 2018, https://www.livewireradio.org/episode370 june scudeler tommy pico’s queer ndn epic poems 195 ---. nature poem. ny: tin house, 2018 ---. “on not wasting any time.” the creative independent, 23 may 2019, https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/writer-tommy-pico-on-not-wastingany-time/ accessed may 26, 2020 ---. “not waiting for inspiration: an interview with tommy pico.” the new york review of books 16 nov 2019, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/16/not-waitingfor-inspiration-an-interview-with-tommy-pico/ ---. “tommy pico: epic poet.” articulate 20 nov 2017, https://www.pbs.org/video/tommy-pico-epic-poet-pieprs/ phillips, carl. “transforming nature with tommy pico.” poets house, 17 dec 2018, https://poetshouse.org/transforming-nature-with-tommy-pico/ poulus, james. “homer's revenge: epic poetry is back. it's viral. and it's worth billions.” forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2012/04/02/homers-revenge-epicpoetry-is-back-its-viral-and-its-worth-billions/#48629fb75363 accessed 15 april 2020 siemsen, thora. “’you can't use the word:’ tommy pico's nature poem.” out, 3 apr 2017, https://www.out.com/art-books/2017/4/03/you-cant-use-word-tommypicos-nature-poem simon, ed. “songs of ourselves: searching for america’s epic poems.” the millions, 1 jul 2016 https://themillions.com/2016/07/songs-searching-americas-epicpoem.html simpson, leanne betasamosake. “land as pedagogy.” as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. u of minnesota p, 2017 transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 196 “their eyes were watching god.” national endowment for the arts, n.d https://www.arts.gov/national-initiatives/nea-big-read/their-eyes-were-watchinggod “tin house reading with tommy pico, morgan parker, khadijiah queen, and jenny zang.” zoom, 28 may 2020. tosone, austen. tommy pico’s new book confronts american indian stereotypes.” nylon, 9, may 2017, https://www.nylon.com/articles/tommy-pico-nature-poeminterview “what is epic poetry?” virtue and adversity: the poetry of virgil in the da kidd collection https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/exhibition/virgil/epic_poetry/epicpoetry.shtml “who we are.” birdsong, n.d. https://birdsongmag-blog.tumblr.com/who womack, craig. red on red: native american literary separatism. u of minnesota p, 1999. wurth, erika. “a roundtable with native american authors.” literary hub10, april 2020. https://lithub.com/joining-conversation-a-roundtable-with-nativeamerican-authors/ microsoft word final.docx transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 130 “the future that haunts us now”: oblique cli-fi and indigenous futurity kyle bladow this article assesses how recent literary depictions of futurity coincide with grassroots activism in the upper midwest that aims to affirm treaty rights and to protect land and water. these efforts that have been ongoing for centuries are finding new iterations in current resistance to settler colonial resource extraction in such forms as camps, tours, partnerships, and local food initiatives. for instance, ceremonial water walks occur regularly around the great lakes, food sovereignty programs continue to emerge with support from tribal governments and local nonprofits, and creative responses to proposed extraction have been undertaken, like the lac courte oreilles harvest education learning project, which in 2013 established a camp in northern wisconsin to affirm ojibwe rights in ceded territory and against a proposed open-pit iron ore mine. these actions also take a long view, informed by anishinaabe teachings that foreground obligations to life beyond one’s immediate generation, demonstrating potential affinities with future-oriented speculative fiction. such actions further espouse interdependent, reciprocal relationships between humans and the more-than-human world, the type of relationship often featured in representations of indigenous lifeways. however, as kyle whyte argues, it is also important to attend to the qualities of these relationships. for whyte, qualities are properties, such as trustworthiness and ecological redundancy, “that make it possible for a relationship to have wide societal impact by motivating the discharge of responsibilities” (“food sovereignty” 356). through this approach, whyte’s analysis kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 131 avoids superficial platitudes about reciprocal relationships while further offering a model for examining trans-indigenous climate justice. comparing the state of qualities as they appear in varied global contexts offers more granularity and possibly more opportunities for intervention. for instance, the context of global climate change offers no shortage of opportunities to compare degrees of what whyte terms “ecological redundancy”—the ability to repeat and maintain interactive processes like gathering food within environments—given that climate change is everywhere affecting or even dismantling the conditions for such redundancy. stories help reinforce these relationships and illuminate their qualities. this article focuses on louise erdrich’s novel future home of the living god, which in part imagines promising opportunities for a reservation community in an otherwise dystopian narrative. despite what appears as a harrowing dismantling of biological reproduction and evolution, indigenous characters in the novel find renewed purpose as adapting to the situation revivifies traditional practices. although rampant environmental devastation threatens lifeways and bonds of reciprocity, erdrich demonstrates how those responsibilities were never predicated upon fixed, unchanging environments but instead dynamically respond to them as characters seek right relationship with other beings. stories, including narrative fiction, further reinforce relationships, enriching audiences’ affective engagements and relational commitments by exercising these capacities through their vicarious experiences of characters and plot. advocates for arts and humanities education, particularly literary studies, have long cited studies suggesting that reading builds empathy. broadening the sense of attachment and care beyond the exclusively human, studies in cognitive and empirical ecocriticism have considered the potential for readers to become more responsible toward places and the beings inhabiting them. in considering whether fiction can affect readers’ political transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 132 attitudes and actions, “the empirical evidence is so far inconclusive, but the studies that exist suggest that reading fiction does enhance theory of mind and empathic capacities while reducing outgroup prejudice” (weik von mossner 574). for dystopian climate fiction in particular, empathy might be one affective response observed alongside readers’ engagement of anxieties about climate change and may further elicit exploration of newer emotive phenomena such as solastalgia (albrecht). these inquiries into affective and ecological dimensions of dystopian fiction frequently must account for the genre’s sociocultural underpinnings, particularly euroamerican christian eschatology, and the degree to which writers recapitulate them. indigenous writers of speculative fiction overwhelmingly rebut this western temporal structuring of apocalypse and dystopia via reference to violent settler colonial histories. their consistent reframing of the present as already postapocalyptic radically upends dystopian literature’s dramatic force of imagined imminent catastrophe. such a claim can be found in grace dillon’s resonant introduction to walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction, and the point has since been reiterated by scores of creative writers and scholars. this recurrent idea in indigenous futurist art invigorates possibilities for speculative fiction by decentering its settler colonial influences and advancing indigenous storytelling amidst contemporary global climate change. while literature may not provide direct solutions to climate-related crises, its power to frame these issues and elicit emotional engagement matters. narratives afford imaginative spaces for assessing the state and strengths of relationships affected by climate change. analyzing contemporary native american novelists in new england, siobhan senier notes, “sustainability requires political will and policy decisions around carbon emissions, certainly; perhaps more profoundly, however, it requires cultural and collective negotiations of reciprocal relationships with skies, trees, kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 133 plants, and waters” (116–7). senier’s point is consonant with daniel heath justice’s finding that “story makes meaning of the relationships that define who we are and what our place is in the world… it also highlights what we lose when those relationships are broken or denied to us, and what we might gain from even partial remembrance” (75). these capacities for story suggest literary versions of kyle whyte’s arguments about relationship qualities, suggested when justice articulates that authentic kinship requires the quality of attention, of putting “that relatedness into thoughtful and respectful practice” and fulfilling the responsibilities they demand of us (86). speculative fiction imagines transforming qualities of relationships in response to climate change, even when climate change is not a central or explicit theme. future home of the living god can be read alongside other postapocalyptic indigenous novels (e.g., cherie dimaline’s marrow thieves, waubgeshig rice’s moon of the crusted snow) as “oblique cli-fi,” novels whose catastrophes are not primarily figured as climate change but whose contemporary readers cannot help but consider them in this light, given the pervasive framing of climate change as catastrophe. however, any motivation to read future home as cli-fi should not lose sight of its singular nature as a departure from erdrich’s “standard” literary fiction, not to mention the novel’s political significance both as a response to the 2016 us presidential election and in its calls for reproductive justice and land restoration. future home received mixed critical reviews, but as one of the most experimental and speculative works in erdrich’s oeuvre, it should be celebrated as an example of transmotion—“an original natural union in the stories of emergence and migration that relate humans to an environment and to the spiritual and political significance of animals and other creations” (vizenor 183)—that flouts american literary expectations while imagining indigenous futurity. as oblique cli-fi promotes broader climate awareness, environmental grassroots activism likewise can advocate for climate justice even while transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 134 campaigns may have other specific goals. local organizing draws power from being “rooted in site-specific struggles” and is less constrained by the political limitations other environmental organizations experience (bevington 37); such rootedness attunes activists to climate change impacts in their region. like cli-fi, grassroots activism also utilizes linguistic strategies to persuade audiences, what tamar katriel calls “defiant discourse,” including speech acts “in which social actors renegotiate and reshape the social value systems of their societies” (109). demands for action on climate are especially apparent in contestations over nonrenewable energy projects. resistance to these projects consistently underscores the connections between energy extraction, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate destabilization. among the environmental concerns indigenous nations of the great lakes and upper midwest have faced thus far in the twenty-first century, few if any have gained as much attention as infrastructure projects for transporting and refining petroleum and natural gas. the construction and operation of pipelines and refineries through indigenous lands poses risks to waterways, species habitat, and human health. fossil fuels, from their initial extraction to their consumption, degrade and threaten indigenous lands, lives, and lifeways (in one example, with suspected associations between industrial operations and elevated cancer rates among the communities of athabasca chipewyan first nation and mikisew cree first nation to aberrant birthrates at aamjiwnaang first nation). of course, these projects also contribute significantly to anthropogenic climate change throughout their construction and operation and the ultimate burning of the fossil fuels they transport—fuels that are themselves less energy efficient than conventional crude oil—an increasingly central point made by their opponents. among many instances of resistance in recent years, the standing rock encampments against the dakota access pipeline brought considerable public attention to the effects and risks of these projects, informing a great deal of scholarly kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 135 inquiry as well. humanities scholarship has likewise registered growing attention to energy infrastructure’s effects on indigenous communities. anne spice compellingly critiques and reappropriates the rhetoric of pipelines as “critical infrastructure,” noting how “the language of infrastructure itself can work to legitimize ‘modern’ assemblages like pipelines while rendering invisible the living assemblages that would strengthen indigenous sovereignty and lifeways” (48). winona laduke and deborah cowen have applied anishinaabe cultural teachings in their figuring of nonrenewable energy infrastructure as essential to the functioning of “wiindigo economics,” writing, “at the center of the wiindigo’s violence and destruction is infrastructure’s seemingly banal and technical world. wiindigo infrastructure has worked to carve up turtle island, or north america, into preserves of settler jurisdiction, while entrenching and hardening the very means of settler economy and sociality into tangible material structures” (244). in addition to tangible material structures, these projects effect the harder-to-trace impacts of accelerating climate change. energy infrastructure can seem nearly invisible in the public sphere—as oil and gas companies no doubt prefer it—until there’s a spill or accident. extending the concept of “petromodernity” (lemenager, living oil), scholars in the energy humanities have considered the pervasive inescapability of petroleum, which can render it difficult to even perceive in everyday life. petroleum’s extensive material presence and use also conditions art. roman bartosch describes the phenomenon of a “petroleum unconsciousness”: “the ubiquity of oil and its utter elusiveness as an object of aesthetic contemplation and narrative concern have combined to hinder recognition of petroculture and petrofiction” (118). at the same time, shifts in energy production and demand alongside growing calls for climate justice have rendered nonrenewable energy projects more visible. movements like the standing rock encampments and others bring further attention to the erstwhile “petroleum transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 136 unconscious.” pipeline activism, ceremonies, and fiction bring pipelines into wider public attention: for instance, the figure of the black snake used in reference to pipelines brings these projects imaginatively and alarmingly to life. the associations of the black snake with prophecy invites consideration of broader timescales, since part of what makes it captivating to public audiences is how it figures a past foretelling of these projects and the ethical choices they would pose. examining infrastructure projects invokes similar temporal considerations. remarking on the aspirational nature of pipelines, anne spice notes how they “anticipate the circulation of certain materials, the proliferation of certain worlds, the reproduction of certain subjects. but, sometimes, their bluster hides their tenuous nature, and their future focus creates an opening in which other possibilities can assert themselves” (50). it is within such indefinite spaces that alternatives might be negotiated and achieved, recognized by water protectors in their direct action and by others in their repudiation of the “destructive teleology of settler petro-futures” (52). such potentiality motivates frontline activism, and it also aligns with directions in indigenous futurisms and speculative fiction, echoed for example in leanne simpson’s assertion that indigenous stories “have always talked about the future and the past at the same time… a lot of what science fiction deals with—parallel universes, time travel, space travel, and technology—is what our nishnaabeg stories also deal with” (201). oblique cli-fi, fiction that addresses climate in an elliptical manner or that uses other crises and catastrophes partially to convey climate concerns, serves indigenous futurisms with its capacity for complicating narrative structures. some scholars have aimed to distinguish cli-fi from postapocalyptic writing, a helpful move in many cases. however, oblique cli-fi recognizes how enfolding narratives of climate change within or alongside depictions of different crises enables further formal innovations and other possibilities, as future home of the living god shows. kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 137 unsettling dystopia future home is an epistolary novel taking place between one august and the following february in the near future, a series of diary entries chronicling the pregnancy of twenty-six-year-old narrator cedar hawk songmaker, an adopted daughter of white minneapolis liberals who reconnects with her ojibwe birth mother and family. soon after the reunion society begins swiftly falling into disarray, as evolution appears to go haywire, causing panic about the viability of human reproduction. amidst the chaos a new theocratic government is installed, the church of the new constitution, which begins detaining pregnant women. cedar goes into hiding, moving between minneapolis and the northern reservation where her birth mother lives. cedar decides to write the diary to her unborn child as “a record and an inquiry into the strangeness of things” (62). this indefinite “things” registers the multiple sorts of strangeness cedar encounters: the intimate wonder of fetal development, conveyed in the periodic factoids about the baby’s growth; the radically transforming social and biological conditions surrounding her; the revelations of her newfound family; the mysteries presented by her catholic faith; and, amidst it all, the environmental weirding of climate change. while the precipitating calamity of the novel’s dystopic conditions is “biological confusion” more than it is climate change (5), awareness of the latter is threaded throughout and can appear equally vexing. early in the book, while enjoying a pleasant dinner with her parents, cedar observes how “all of this is terminal. there will never be another august on earth, not like this one; there will never be this sort of ease or precision” (61). the comment certainly alludes to the present reproductive crisis, but it also evokes climate change in the way it is set amidst comments about unusual weather and other hints, like the fact that “maples here no longer produce” (60). after transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 138 the dinner cedar spends the night; leaving early the next morning, she notices the power is off on the street. the disquieting stillness creates for her a sense of “the muted perfection of a ‘before’ disaster photograph,” as she cannot help but feel that “instead of the past, it is the future that haunts us now” (63). this observation concludes an entry filled with considerations of time (at the dinner, cedar and her parents discuss geologic time and millennia of human development). if the concerns about evolution unraveling prompt these considerations, they are nevertheless reminiscent of discussions about anthropogenic climate change and its deformations of experiencing time—the blurring of seasonal changes, the whiplash of conceptualizing epochal timescales alongside appallingly short projected deadlines for reducing carbon emissions—references that attest to the novel’s suitability as oblique cli-fi. erdrich’s linking of “biological confusion” and “the strangeness of things” to climate change carries through to the end of the book, a passage imagining the end of snowfall on a warming planet, creating narrative space in which readers might well recognize and engage their own anxieties about climate destabilization. the novel reinforces allusions to anthropogenic global climate change with its references to transnational capitalism, whose material expenditures are conspicuously absent in the products it manifests. in cedar’s entries, catholic miracles and the wonders of evolution are contemplated alongside the dazzling productions of global trade, which is thrown into sharp relief by the prospect of its imminent undoing. descriptions of mundane items acquire an artifactual feel in the light of the book’s social upheaval, becoming objects to marvel at (akin somewhat to the sacramental coca-cola can in cormac mccarthy’s the road). early in the novel, cedar lays out some of the food she purchased while stocking up on supplies in anticipation of commercial shutdowns: “at home, i set my treats out on my desk. how long, i wonder, kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 139 will there be a snack like this to eat—cheese from a cow milked in italy, crackers packaged in new jersey, fruit squeezed in florida, an apple from the other side of the world?” (70). the complex, sprawling operation of globalized markets required to conjure the goods on the desk becomes more astonishing because of its anticipated disappearance. later, as cedar’s situation has grown more precarious and she is on the run, having escaped from “female gravid detention,” she first hides at a waste and recycling center, where she has time to decorate the notebook in which she records her story with scraps from the facility: stickers, labels, and wrappers highlighting global trade, “mementos of the curious world” for posterity (171). these moments of global consciousness preface the book’s concluding passage, which also scales out to the global by reflecting on the earth’s final snowfall. while each of these moments initially seems to suggest endings in a standard dystopic manner, erdrich’s work ultimately frustrates any simple linearity. describing the future as the thing that haunts, future home upends simple teleological versions of dystopian fiction. indeed, the “biological confusion” becomes a matter of perspective: cedar is not acutely distressed by the changes to species around her, and this would-be apocalypse does not situate her at the outset of a dystopic afterward; she sees herself not “at the end of things, but a beginning” (92). this quiet but growing assurance remains with cedar through even her most harrowing moments of capture and coercion by the authoritarian government. her confidence can seem irrational given her circumstances, yet it helps refuse the conventional terms of a dystopian plot and may help inspire a degree of tempered optimism in readers or even erdrich herself, who like cedar sees herself not at the end of a linear trajectory, but amidst a cycle. the summer after future home was released, erdrich posted a letter to the mailing list for birchbark books, her independent bookstore, which begins, “have you ever known a time when things seemed to be moving backward?” erdrich transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 140 identifies such a regressive time in the year following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the us, particularly with george w. bush’s reinstatement of the global gag rule blocking federal funding to non-governmental organizations providing funding or referrals for abortions. identifying this sociopolitical context occurring in the months she first began writing cedar’s story, erdrich clarifies her choices for the novel’s plot and themes. she describes setting the manuscript aside for years; when she returned to it in 2017, she felt as though she has “circled back” to 2002, given the incoming administration’s revival of the global gag rule. erdrich addresses these political moments to underscore the gendered effects of the rule and the severe consequences it will impose on women’s bodies and wellbeing, effects largely invisible beyond the political spectacle of the rule’s implementation. erdrich writes at the end of her letter that cedar “evolves toward faith in the natural world even as the world irrevocably changes shape around her.” cedar’s disposition thus suggests her ability to reorient to changing circumstances and to attend to the changing qualities of her relationships, and it also defies common expectations for characters in dystopian narratives (whether toward detachment or despair). i turn next to some of the critical reception of future home in order to further highlight its selective engagement with dystopia and its alignment with other indigenous futurist art. critical misses patterns in the criticism of future home reveal expectations aligned with prominent versions of dystopia in anglophone fiction, observations at the level of genre whose examination helps distinguish the features of this text as indigenous futurism and oblique cli-fi. the general critique from reviewers of the novel is that its plot seems rushed and that it fails to fully realize its speculative world-building potential. some of kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 141 the same reviews that find fault with this apparent haste cite erdrich’s letter discussing how the book originated in 2002 partly in response to the bush administration’s reinstatement of the global gag rule. thus, even if the novel seems rushed, it took fifteen years to develop, appearing in different versions and as a short story before erdrich returned to it after the 2016 us presidential election. and while the book was indeed rushed to publication after this point, this speed further testifies to its purpose as a political response. this recurrent criticism of the book’s hastiness pairs with another repeated complaint that it is inexplicably vague (schaub), “unclear and oddly derivative” (winik), “incomplete” (greenblatt), containing “too many unexplained absences and leaps in the plot” (scholes). clearly, reviewers sought a greater degree of exposition pertaining to the changes in evolution and subsequent societal collapse and were frustrated when such details were not forthcoming. however, these observations should be regarded less as a failure in craft than a deliberately selective adoption of conventions of dystopia; in other words, future home is less an attempt to tell a great dystopian story than it is an attempt to redirect the energies of that genre. instead of imagining in minute detail the dissolution of us democracy into theocratic totalitarianism, erdrich focuses instead on cedar’s experiences. this constrained perspective arguably accomplishes more verisimilitude for human reactions to crises than some of the histrionic depictions in other dystopias. throughout the novel, mundane moments persist alongside the extraordinary events: watching her family laying sod, cedar remarks, “this is how the world ends… everything crazy yet people doing normal things” (25). reviewer anita felicelli commends the novel’s frequently quotidian depictions for “captur[ing] the flavor of our trumpian reality perfectly.” erdrich herself states in her letter that “writing this work of speculative fiction felt like writing a form of truth.” indeed, despite the copyright page’s disclaimer that “nothing in this book is transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 142 true of anyone living or dead,” the novel reflects the very real situations of those facing reproductive injustice, state violence, and environmental degradation. meanwhile, the commingling of the extraordinary and the mundane also suggest the novel’s exemplifying the “everyday anthropocene,” an affective state stephanie lemenager argues novels are well suited to convey, conveying the experiences of living “through climate shift and the economic and sociological injuries that underwrite it” (“climate change” 225). as oblique cli-fi, future home’s foregoing of extensive apocalyptic exposition better enables readers to consider the myriad, shifting circumstances of intensifying climate change. the first-person diaristic form also inhibits the possibility for a more precise rendering of the social collapse. the limited perspective of cedar’s entries resists an omniscient overview. reviewer michael schaub laments the fact that the novel “never really comes close to getting off the ground,” but his metaphor misses the fact that it intentionally remains quite close to the ground, chthonic even: a central scene midway through the book occurs within one of the sandstone caves beneath and near the twin cities, literalizing cedar’s going underground to evade state surveillance and capture. later, she learns, “they’re calling in drone strikes on the basis of voice and facial recognition, so people are holed up anywhere there is a tunnel system” (222). the use of less-detailed exposition suits cedar’s own delimited understanding of the events in her world, dramatizes various needs for dissimulation, and strengthens focus on the characters and their relationships. this interpretation aligns with silvia martínezfalquina’s finding that “[t]he lack of detailed information about the changing natural and political contexts is a strategic element in the narrative, expressed both explicitly and through literary subtlety” (167). martínez-falquina finds the lack of detail helps portray cedar’s uncertain future as an expectant mother while inviting readers’ sympathy, given their own uncertain futures. this feature additionally captures the tone kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 143 and realities of activist organizing today, with the need for secrecy given the surveillance and infiltration of activist groups and legislative attempts to criminalize them. the novel’s epistolary form, with diary entries written directly to cedar’s unborn child, emphasizes relationships over situational details. while a dystopian narrative precisely detailing its given catastrophe may be imaginative or accomplished, such detail may also serve to assuage readers’ anxieties by affording a sense of distance, oversight, or control, aligning with the same kinds of environmental technocratic salvationist fantasies that environmental justice scholars critique for continually overlooking social inequities. cedar’s narration instead suits the call, in giovanna di chiro’s words, “to imagine and build a new paradigm of care” (310). reading cedar’s entries and motives with an eye toward this possibility, rather than critiquing a lack of details, invites opportunities for prioritizing relations. in sum, erdrich undertakes dystopia as a means, not an end. reviewers overwhelmingly associate the novel with margaret atwood’s the handmaid’s tale; however, it makes sense to compare it with cherie dimaline’s the marrow thieves, which received similar critiques about inadequate dystopian world-building. dimaline, erdrich, and other indigenous writers disrupt notions of dystopia as radically new or impending, instead emphasizing how surveillance and social collapse and reconfiguration permeate colonial histories. as kyle whyte remarks, “like dystopian narratives, we [indigenous peoples] find ourselves in a time our ancestors would have interpreted as a portrayal of our societies with dramatically curtailed collective agency” (“indigenous science” 228). whyte draws on indigenous futurist scholars such as grace dillon and elizabeth lapensée to assert different conceptions of time at work in indigenous speculative fiction, such as slipstream or what he calls “spiraling time,” which “supports and guides [indigenous peoples’] plans and future-oriented actions” transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 144 (232). incorporating these keen observations on time would refine reviews of erdrich’s novel, showing how her plot and narrative choices rework more than conform to generic expectations. indigenous speculative fiction consistently resituates hegemonic euroamerican notions of apocalypse as already occurred or ongoing rather than futural. future home incorporates elements of both, but even as calamity falls, it offers new possibilities, especially for its ojibwe characters. erdrich suggests this most clearly through eddy, the partner of cedar’s birth mother, who transforms from a melancholic intellectual tribal councilman and gas station attendant to a motivated leader as the evolutionary crisis advances. when cedar escapes a birthing detention center and is ferried to the reservation in the latter half of the novel, she is reunited with eddy, who says to her, “we’re gonna be self-sufficient, like the old days… i never knew i had it in me, cedar. i’m surprised. i think about seventy percent of my depression was my seventeenthcentury warrior trying to get out” (227). eddy presides over a meeting showing the progress in reclaiming and consolidating the tribal land base and planning for a redoubled population as urban relatives return north. cedar writes, “he plots strategies. thinks of survival measures, ways to draft our young people into working for a higher purpose… he wants to make the reservation one huge, intensively worked, highly productive farm” (226). enfolding such moments into the plot, erdrich further reveals her use of dystopian conventions not as a mere whim nor as an attempt to dash off a lucrative potboiler, but instead to develop a story that engages real-world concerns while imagining and affirming indigenous persistence. characters like eddy demonstrate the work whyte sees accomplished by indigenous speculative fiction. early in the novel, cedar asks eddy what they will do about the shifts in evolution. eddy says: “indians have been adapting since before 1492 so i guess we’ll keep adapting.” kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 145 “but the world is going to pieces.” “it is always going to pieces.” “this is different.” “it is always different. we’ll adapt.” (28). though eddy’s first line would seem to conform to a linear colonial timeline, his words here reflect a way of being that is not solely reactive to such a temporality. eddy’s resolve matches the broader tone in the novel—elicited elsewhere by cedar’s own equanimity and faith—a tone at odds with dystopia’s typical melancholy, one that is less mournful of a perceived lost past because of a different orientation to time. eddy’s transformation over the course of the novel is not the result of a nostalgic longing for a return to the past so much as it is an awakening to the fullness of his present. as elizabeth lapensée states in a cautionary note, “indigenous futurisms reflects past, present, and future—the hyperpresent now. it is not merely ‘indigenous science fiction’ nor is it in relation to western ideas of space and linear time.” future home doesn’t simply imagine a possible future but instead champions characters’ adaptability and their stances towards mystery that spring from this hyperpresent now. as such, works like future home are instructive for imagining responses to apocalyptic crises readers may themselves encounter. while its central crisis is not climate change, as oblique cli-fi it models possibilities for responding to the emergency that climate change presents. cedar’s story emphasizes kin-making, both through her relationships with her family and the camaraderie she finds with other captured women, medical staff, even her mail carrier. as the book depicts different kinds of relationships, both domineering and reciprocal, it also offers ways of thinking about their different qualities: it frightfully imagines a disruption to evolution, but it also imagines adaptability. above all, it shows that no relationship is static or inevitable. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 146 time’s up these values are borne out in contemporary grassroots activism in the upper midwest, where environmentalist and indigenous rights activists have long experienced similar adversities in terms of surveillance and cooptation to those imagined in the novel: corporations and agencies have frequently surveilled land and water protectors, and private security operatives have also infiltrated their groups (brown); oil company enbridge has fronted a pseudo-grassroots pro-pipeline group (vardi). despite these challenges, groups work to build coalitions and solidarity. erdrich herself has called for climate action beyond her fiction. on december 11, 2020, she and her daughter joined a resistance camp in palisade, minnesota, to demonstrate support for water protectors resisting construction rerouting enbridge’s line 3. she later published an opinion column in the new york times reflecting on the visit, writing, “this is not just another pipeline. it is a tar sands climate bomb; if completed, it will facilitate the production of crude oil for decades to come.” she explained findings that the ultimate carbon output resulting from the pipeline’s operation would completely undo minnesota’s attempts at reducing emissions. while nonrenewable energy projects continue to pose threats to both indigenous lands and to climate mitigation plans, narrative and activism alike suggest that remaining attentive and adaptive to the qualities of relationships offers other possibilities. laduke and cowen point out how “despite the severity of the situation, the future is not foreclosed” (244). from innovative legal approaches (e.g., according rights of personhood to wild rice), to cultural practices and storytelling that recenter indigenous temporalities (e.g., prophecies motivating direct action), these responses guide and enact the continued unfolding of cosmovisions within what might be recognized as lapensée’s hyperpresent now, whyte’s spiraling time, or leanne simpson’s call for an embodied present. each of these concepts suggests an kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 147 orientation to climate change not wholly compatible with linear narratives about apocalypse or dystopia, and each affords a deeper grounding for indigenous activism. simpson writes that, for indigenous peoples, “the generative and emergent qualities of living in our bodies as political orders represent the small and first steps of aligning oneself and one’s life in the present with the visions of an indigenous future… we then become centered in our indigenous presents, rather than centered in responding to the neoliberal politics of the state” (192). or, as cedar writes in future home, “stop thinking about the future. now is all we have, i tell myself” (69). works cited albrecht, glenn. “solastalgia: a new concept in human health and identity.” philosophy, activism, nature, 3, 41–55. bartosch, roman. “the energy of stories: postcolonialism, the petroleum unconscious, and the crude side of cultural ecology.” resilience: a journal of the environmental humanities, 6:2–3, 2019, 116–35. bevington, douglas. the rebirth of environmentalism: grassroots activism from the spotted owl to the polar bear. island press, 2009. brown, alleen. “the infiltrator.” the intercept, 30 dec. 2018, www.theintercept.com/2018/12/30/tigerswan-infiltrator-dakota-access-pipelinestanding-rock/. erdrich, louise. future home of the living god. harpercollins, 2017. ———. “not just another pipeline.” the new york times, 28 dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/opinion/minnesota-line-3-enbridgepipeline.html. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 148 di chiro, giovanna. “care not growth: imagining a subsistence economy for all.” the british journal of politics and international relations, 21:2, 2019, 303–11. felicelli, anita. “louise erdrich’s dystopian dreams in ‘future home of the living god.’” los angeles review of books, 12 dec. 2017, www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/louise-erdrichs-dystopian-dreams-in-futurehome-of-the-living-god#. greenblatt, leah. “louise erdrich stuns again in future home of the living god.” entertainment weekly, 28 nov. 2017, ew.com/books/2017/11/28/louise-erdrichfuture-home-living-god-review/. justice, daniel heath. why indigenous literatures matter. wilfrid laurier university press, 2018. katriel, tamar. defiant discourse: speech and action in grassroots activism. routledge, 2021. laduke, winona, and deborah cowen. “beyond wiindigo infrastructure.” south atlantic quarterly, 119:2, apr. 2020, 243–68. lapensée, elizabeth. facebook, 9 june 2019, 10:14am, www.facebook.com/groups/349927541693986/permalink/2433649839988402. lemenager, stephanie. living oil: petroleum culture in the american century. oxford university press, 2014. ———. “climate change and the struggle for genre.” anthropocene reading: literary history in geologic times, edited by tobias menely and jesse oak taylor, the pennsylvania state university press, 2017, 220–38. martínez-falquina, silvia. “louise erdrich’s future home of the living god: uncertainty, proleptic mourning and relationality in native dystopia.” atlantis: journal of the spanish association of anglo-american studies, 41:2, december 2019, 161–78. kyle bladow “the future that haunts us now” 149 schaub, michael. “rare stumble from a great writer.” npr, 14 nov. 2017, www.npr.org/2017/11/14/562557229/future-home-of-the-living-god-is-a-rarestumble-from-a-great-writer. scholes, lucy. “book review, future home of the living god by louise erdrich: not a rival to her previous works.” the independent, 27 dec. 2017, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-review-futurehome-of-the-living-god-by-louise-erdrich-not-a-rival-to-her-previous-works-thea8129721.html. senier, siobhan. sovereignty and sustainability: indigenous literary stewardship in new england. university of nebraska press, 2020. simpson, leanne betasamosake. as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. university of minnesota press, 2017. spice, anne. “fighting invasive infrastructures.” environment and society, 9, 2018, 40– 56. vardi, itai. “exclusive: enbridge is behind this front group pushing the company’s line 3 oil pipeline project.” desmog blog, 6 june 2019, www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/06/enbridge-minnesotans-line-3-front-groupoil-pipeline. vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american scenes of absence and presence. university of nebraska press, 2000. weik von mossner, alexa. “why we care about (non)fictional places: empathy, character, and narrative environment.” poetics today, 40:3, 2019, 559–77. whyte, kyle powys. “food sovereignty, justice, and indigenous peoples: an essay on settler colonialism and collective continuance.” the oxford handbook of food ethics, edited by anne barnhill and tyler doggett, 2018, 345–66. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 150 ———. “indigenous science (fiction) for the anthropocene: ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises.” environment and planning e: nature and space, 1:1–2, 2018, 224–42. winik, marion. “‘future home of the living god’ review: louise erdrich changes it up with a dystopian novel.” newsday, 13 nov. 2017, www.newsday.com/entertainment/books/louise-erdrich-future-home-review1.14962382. microsoft word jacobs-final.docx transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 174 steve russell. lighting the fire: a cherokee journey from dropout to professor. miniver press, 2020. 350 pp. isbn: 9781939282446. http://miniverpress.com/book/lighting-fire-cherokee-journey-dropout-professor/ i first encountered steve russell back in the early aughts, when i stumbled onto the forums on indianz.com, one of the first online native communities. i was a recent escapee from small-town mississippi who had somehow washed up in europe. and i was unexpectedly homesick. looking back, it wasn't any different from any other internet group i've ever joined where what supposedly bound everyone together was a shared identity as opposed to a personal interest. that is to say, there was a lot of mud wrestling over issues both minor and major. from bush's (at the time) ongoing “war on terror” to the even more contentious subject of how to make corn bread, one's kin, quantum, and education always became fair game. russell, however, tended to stay out of the dirt, and instead dealt with everyone on equal terms, even with an undocumented nosebleed like me who was clearly out of their weight class and generally considered an irritating wannabe. it was some time before i learned that the avuncular gentleman who looked vaguely like my dad in his profile picture (and whom i thought of as a bit of an old fogey as a result) was an accomplished author and scholar. in fact, steve russell, an enrolled citizen of the cherokee nation, could crush most arguments if he wished merely by dropping a printout of his curriculum vitae on top of his opponent. a retired texas judge and professor emeritus of criminal justice at indiana university bloomington, his academic output has been extraordinarily diverse. russell has written and co-authored dozens of articles and chapters on such topics as the jurisprudence of colonialism, the politics of indian identity, gender and sexuality norms, the racial paradox of tribal citizenship, the practice of law, domestic violence in the court system, corporate crime; the list goes on. but as the title of his memoir indicates, lighting the fire: a cherokee journey from dropout to professor does not reflect the cursus honorum of academics in american society. the book has all the sad hallmarks of a native autobiography. poverty, abuse, and no small amount of heartbreak and loss, and—of course—overcoming. however, lighting the fire is actually a deeper exploration of the paths taken and not taken over the span of russell's seventy-two years. numerous possible futures play out in the book, but russell establishes clearly, at the onset, that he was “born a writer” (23). in addition to his achingly familiar childhood dream of someday having a reliable car, a house with no holes in the floor, and regular hot water, eleven-year-old russell's wish-list included the luxury of a typewriter (24). now, russell is an award-winning journalist, with numerous thomas donald jacobs review of lighting the fire 175 op-eds to his credit in (among others) indian country today and the cherokee phoenix, some of which have formed the basis for published collections of essays such as ceremonies of innocence and ray sixkiller's cherokee nation. currently, he is a regular columnist on medium. and he has indeed always followed the fictional mr. dooley's advice that newspapers should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” (204). however, his eventual career as a journalist began not with writing for papers, but rather with delivering them on a mitsubishi silver pigeon scooter, a form of employment that may soon become a thing of the past if digital media outlets continue their conquest of the news (32-34). as someone who loathed being shaken from feigned sleep at three in the morning to help make paper deliveries along a rural route in my father's pickup truck (an ancient toyota, i seem to recall), i cannot say i have any nostalgia for it nor the stench of warm ink that followed me to school. yet the historian in me appreciates the much broader sweep of history that contextualizes russell's life. political events and social movements are as much a part of the flow of the story as his modes of transport. things to which he was not a witness, such as the start of the cherokee nation of oklahoma and the state of sequoyah that never was, are concisely and informatively incorporated (9-10; 187-88). but it's the detailed account of his own participation in the past that resonates. in particular, 1968, an especially dark year in american history, marked the turning point in russell’s political awareness. at that time, russell explains that his “idea of politics still centered on elections” (192). but after the double gut-punch of mlk’s and rfk's assassinations, and then the violent chaos of the democratic convention, russell became a full-time activist and—as a result—part-time jail bird (192-93). his life story encapsulates many of the social and political protests of the second half of the twentieth century, both the legendary and the nearly forgotten. for example, as a young journalist, russell covered the united farm workers of america, afl-cio, and their fight for improved working conditions; interned with the organization as a law student; and became one of césar chavez's bodyguards (236-40). his autobiography is of immense historical and contemporary value. writing this review on the eve of the 2020 us presidential election, i hope people follow russell's example and adopt what he calls his “life of crime,” whatever the outcome (215). other struggles in lighting the fire are far more personal and focus on the entanglements of family and identity. raised in the muscogee nation, russell was blighted by the sporadic presence of a neglectful, if not abusive, mother and haunted transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 176 by the absence of his cherokee father. at start of the book, the existence of the latter can only be surmised from the “hearsay” of the author's own birth (1). but as he got older, russell hoped his father—whom he knew from pictures “of a big indian in a navy uniform” and a small handful of vividly disturbing memories (65-67)—could help him feel "more cherokee" (75). he was ultimately disappointed. the only things russell learned from his father were some small skill with hand tools and a singular expression: “useless as the teats on a boar hog.” unfortunately, it was directed at him (79). and despite the connections later made with his community, russell remains keenly aware that his upbringing makes him “error prone in cherokee practices” (302). however, his experiences with people from other tribes and an american society which sees no difference between them changed his sense of self. russell concludes: “i was born cherokee and i knew it, but i had to discover that i am indian” (334). lighting the fire also tells the more profound story of how russell became the man and father that he wanted to be, outgrowing the example that an accident of biology had provided him with. and that tale begins and ends with his elderly, maternal grandparents, bessie and jud russell. they fed him newspapers and books and provided him anything within their limited means if it was “needed for school” (6-7). they form the thread in his story, and russell often circles his way back to them, whether during his youthful peregrinations or in memory. their loss meant that having a family would require his “own acts of creation” (326). determined not to pass on whatever illness his father carried, he eventually had four children, “none of them children of my body unless you count my heart” (313). they are all the evidence he needs that his father was wrong. that he knows what is right, he credits to his actual parents, bessie and jud. and it is only when reflecting on them at the end of his book—and quite possibly at the end of his life—that russell displays the talent for poetry that won him accolades for wicked dew: i still cannot tie a necktie, grampa, but i have taken your name. (331) one aspect of russell's work will not be everyone's cup of tea: his frank discussions of sexual matters. his description of his first time—as a sixteen-year-old in a house of ill repute, no less—was quite explicit concerning both his understandable nervousness and his partner's justifiable boredom (91-93). my own profession entails reading a great many private diaries very carefully expurgated by some long-gone victorian prude, so i was surprised to see such things in print. but i'm not unused to hearing about them thanks to my own indian relatives. certainly, my dad thought my attitudes about sex thomas donald jacobs review of lighting the fire 177 (i.e. young people invented it, and old people shouldn't do it or talk about it) hilarious and my blushes amusing. in fact, russell presents sex as ideally as you could wish: as a thing people do, with varying degrees of intimacy and maturity that hopefully increase over time. the only thing that struck me as inherently disagreeable was his offhand opinion that drinking gin is akin to siphoning gasoline (90). and as for readers thirsty for the intimate details of native lives—well, they can hardly complain when their cup runneth over. even so, some academics will no doubt be disappointed by russell's memoir. it will not be counted among the class of artificially delineated "traditional" narratives as described by mick mcallister in his 1997 survey of native american autobiographies. anthropologists looking for an "authentic native source" and an endless litany of information on spiritual beliefs and ceremonial life will have to look elsewhere. and scholars of native american literature searching for gerald vizenor's richly descriptive interior landscapes will probably also be left wanting. russell's reporting background and his principles as a journalist, which may earn him “geezer” status in post-truth america, are reflected in the straight-forward writing style to no small degree (200). on the whole, i suspect that his most lauded contribution to academia will remain his 2010 volume, sequoyah rising. but i think that lighting the fire will become his most widely read work among indians, regardless of official tribal affiliation (or lack thereof), and for two reasons. first, it is testament of survival and then some. as a kid, steve had will rogers to show him what cherokees can do. and now, kids have steve to show them what indians can do if they can avoid the “spirit-killing garbage” strewn in their path (336). second, it is just a good story. the kind of storytelling i grew up with, and the kind i miss. the kind where the teller always mentions the motorcycle they rode or the car they were driving. who was there and the arcana of their family ties by blood, marriage, or adoption. narrow escapes from petty authority, whether teachers or the police. battles with greater injustices and illness. some history. lovers. and at the end, grandparents' memories and the memories of grandparents. thomas donald jacobs, ghent university works cited transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 178 mcallister, mick. "native sources: american indian autobiography." western american literature, vol. 32, no. 1, 1997, pp. 3-23. russell, steve. ceremonies of innocence: essays from the indian wars. createspace independent publishing platform, 2012. ---. ray sixkiller's cherokee nation: u.s. elections 2012. dog iron press, 2014. ---. sequoyah rising: problems in post-colonial tribal governance. carolina academic press, 2010. ---. wicked dew. dog iron press, 2012. vizenor, gerald. interior landscapes. autobiographical myths and metaphors. u of minnesota p, 1990. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 65 the physical presence of survivance in the heirs of columbus hogan schaak according to a. robert lee, anishinaabe writer gerald vizenor is a “native american renaissance virtually in his own right” (qtd. in liang 128). the author of over forty books and a plethora of essays, gerald vizenor is a self-proclaimed “word warrior” who fights with words, theory, and storytelling, as opposed to fists and weapons. he also claims to be a “postindian.” that is, one who uses storytelling to fight the dominant perception of indian identity, which he dubs a form of “manifest manners” (manifest manners viii). his novel the heirs of columbus (1991) follows the lovers stone columbus and felipa flowers as they repatriate bones and dna to tell stories that heal and fight the demon “wiindigoo.” they establish a sovereign tribal nation on international waters called point assinika, a place which embodies the importance of physical possession and the healing power of touch based in survivance. vizenor’s trickster figures are routinely the vehicle by which he manifests his theories in story form. bearheart in bearheart: the heirship chronicles, griever in griever: an american monkey king in china, and stone in the heirs of columbus are all tricksters and healers who tell liberating stories to achieve their goals. as timothy fox explains of vizenor’s specific brand of trickster; “one of its basic tenets is the belief that freedom is an intellectual achievement rather than a simple shedding of physical restraints” (71). for bearheart and griever, the intellectual liberation of individuals that they physically liberate is where the buck stops. they offer this kind of liberation, but never establish anything more—no community nor route to physical healing. and, hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 66 vizenor takes flak for this from some quarters. arnold krupat calls into question the political relevance of vizenor’s work in the turn to the native. vizenor seems to respond in heirs, dedicating a few pages to a discussion in which two characters note that krupat is “arrogant” and performs “dialogic domination” in his assessments of native american literature (111). the inclusion of a dialogue about krupat in this novel indicates that heirs is vizenor’s response to the challenge of his political relevance. i argue that survivance becomes communal and physical in heirs partly because this is vizenor’s response to krupat’s charge. the “liberated” in vizenor’s novels are generally cut loose into a cruel world. in griever, for instance, griever liberates a truck full of political prisoners who are recaptured or killed shortly after. stone, however, becomes capable of offering liberation through a physical space in heirs. stone adds a new function to the vizenorean trickster as he creates an opportunity for the physical healing of wounds caused by imprisonment via a community of actively resistant survivors. stone creates a new tribal community in stories, ultimately creating the physical origin for an ongoing ideology. in this way, he furthers the theoretical definition of vizenor’s pre-eminent theory of survivance by not only achieving individual, intellectual liberation, but also by establishing what i call a “tribal” ideology based in physical healing and possession. here, it must be noted that vizenor employs the word “tribal” both intentionally and controversially in heirs. he enters the discussion about what it means to be tribal and posits that anyone can be. this is a hotly debated topic, but for vizenor “tribal” takes on a theoretical meaning somewhat separate from what it means to be “indian.” vizenor attempts to make a statement about the difference between terminal and nonterminal cultures, not about what qualifies someone as an “indian.” “tribal” is used by vizenor to denote cultures based in survivance, while any non-tribal culture is terminal because it supports terminal creeds. for vizenor, “tribal” stands as an intellectual transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 67 position in heirs; while one must be born a native american, anyone can become tribal. this distinction is a sub-point of vizenor’s survivance theory. scholars from many fields have been using the term survivance for decades. however, defining the term, like defining most of vizenor’s theories, is tricky because he describes it ambiguously. survivance is “trickster liberation, the uncertain humor...that denies the obscure maneuvers of manifest manners, tragic transvaluations, and the incoherence of cultural representations,” according to one of vizenor’s many definitions (“the ruins of representation” 1). sheela menon recently defined the term as “stories that mediate and undermine the literature of dominance” (163). she borrows this definition straight from another of vizenor’s definitions in manifest manners. most critics simply quote various descriptions of survivance they find in vizenor’s theory. these always pertain to oppositional storytelling—some kind of survival and resistance through words—but tend to be vague. while some critics, like david carlson, have attempted to appropriate the term for political reasons, defining it as “the act of being recognized,” most have stuck with defining it in its vague theoretical terms, quoting vizenor or attempting to pin it down in more direct language (17). john d. miles summarizes survivance as “a practice that emerges out of individual rhetorical acts... creat[ing] a presence that upsets and unravels discursive control over native people” (41). miles draws from specific examples given in vizenor’s theory where individuals speak and survivance manifests. indeed, this represents most critics’ understanding of the term. miles notes that, in manifest manners, vizenor himself claims that theories of survivance are “imprecise by definition” but must include “a sense of native presence over absence” in people’s minds (40). however, heirs provides an example of survivance as potentially more concrete than native presence in stories and words. there is a difference between the traditional anishinaabe trickster, the tricksters in vizenor’s past novels, and those present in heirs. namely, tricksters in heirs are not hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 68 solitary but meet and exchange stories, forming a community and playing communal roles. in order to help stone offer liberation and healing to the world, his lover felipa sacrifices her life repatriating pocahontas’s bones in england. felipa wants to steal them and take them to the headwaters of the mississippi river where the “heirs”—a group of storytelling tricksters—meet but is killed by a vengeful man named doric miched whom she had previously stolen from. the cave at the headwaters—where pocahontas’s bones do eventually end up—is located next to “the house of life,” a graveyard for tricksters. as tricksters are buried in the house of life their stories are integrated into the stones in the cave and “the vault turn[s] blue” in the cavern, which coincides with new healing stories being added to the heirs’ repertoire (heirs 176). michael hardin claims that the headwaters are symbolic because the stories there “feed into the entire north american continent” through the mississippi, distributing their healing (40). but this act is, first and foremost physical, grounded in bones. pocahontas’s bones would provide healing to the nation as her story, one commandeered by the english, could be retold and freed from the “terminal creed” that she, as an indian, became “civilized” as she merged with western culture. this is a story which is terminal because it implies that indians are categorically savages. essentially, a “terminal creed” is a story—often represented by an icon such as an image or piece of writing—which does or cannot change. stories that liberate are “oral” in nature and do change, just like oral tellings of stories do, according to vizenor. and this allows a concept to adapt and be applicable to any context. but, “terminal creeds” don’t change, and so people suffer as a concept is forced on them. they are written in stone, as it were, but not the living kind that vizenor often envisions. vizenor argues that the concept of the “indian” is a terminal creed which needs to be constantly liberated and reimagined. he utilizes the lower-case “indian” or the term “postindian” to expose the absence of a real person in the upper case term “indian.” “indian” or “postindian” transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 69 is a deferment of the meaning of “indian.” billy stratton provides an insightful discussion of the politics of which term to use (indian, indian, native, native) in a footnote from “come for the icing, stay for the cake,” a chapter of his book the fictions of stephen graham jones. stratton contemplates a discussion he once had with vizenor in which they discussed his use of “indian.” stratton claims that the lowercase use of “indian” or “native” “overcome[s] the absence in the empty signifier” in the upper case “indian” (3). within his own book, stratton regrets caving in to the demands of editors and the rules of publication by using “indian,” but recognizes the current (regrettable) need to do so, claiming that “we are not yet at a moment where we can write native, and so mark within the word a return of substance and the power of representation carried in and through story, rather than an emptiness of the past, a mockery, a teasing of a presence that is nothing that was not there and nothing that is” (3). vizenor, however, attempts to write just such an impossible narrative. heirs is far ahead of its time, and the trickers and trickster bones point to this. trickster bones, like pocahontas’s, are of the utmost importance to the heirs because they represent and literally contain the stories which shape the terminal creeds of indian identity. kenneth lincoln notes that “[t]rickster’s bones preserve a framework inside the culture” by being “artifacts of an ongoing tradition” (128). bones signify the stories of a person, and so possession of them means possession of storytelling rights. the heirs hold neither the bones of columbus nor pocahontas at the beginning of the novel, but they seek to. bones represent the concrete possession of an abstract idea in heirs. the concrete, the tangible, is always a trace of something—a reference pointing to a story.1 if pocahontas’s bones are held on display in a museum, then they are representations of terminal creeds. they represent the indian “other” and are seen as evidence of the truth of that terminal creed. whatever description is written on the museum’s plaque to refer to the bones will become the story those bones represent, held in a glass box as the “other.” hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 70 in one interview, vizenor claims that “[o]ral to written is sound to icon, sound to silence in an icon” (harmsen-peraino 2). in heirs, stone refuses to appear on tv or in writing, speaking only on the radio. he claims that “[r]adio is real, television is not,” because the radio broadcasts “hurried his sense of adventure, imagination, and the stories in his blood” in a way only oral storytelling could (8). imagination is active when listening to the radio in a way that it is not when the pictures—the icons—of the television screen purport to represent what an indian, or something like an indian, looks like. what is recorded as fact in writing and icons is unreal, because it cannot be reimagined to accommodate the natural change of the world or individual perception like an oral story can. the picture, unless placed alongside pictures which contradict it, establishes a fixed way of seeing something. so, stone intentionally mixes up dates and facts in his imagedriven retellings of stories to emphasize the importance of change, contradiction, and reimagination over “truth.” in one example, stone changes a date from one telling to the next and then claims that “columbus is ever on the move in our stories” (11). it doesn’t matter which facts are used in a story, but rather what the point of the telling is, and this is an instance of intellectual survivance based in imagination, shaped through stories. however, the heirs cannot possess the right to tell the stories of pocahontas until they obtain her bones and manipulate her image as well as her story. these tasks go hand in hand. the heirs at the headwaters also want columbus’s stories. fantastically and literally they rebuild his lost bones over the course of centuries by telling stories about him. stone and the other postindians believe that retelling columbus’s story would cut the very root of the indian terminal creed. when the heirs speak of columbus, they refer to him as a “bad shadow” cast over their identity (19). they know they need to tell columbus’s “shadow history,” but they do not own columbus’s bones because his bones are lost, “denied the honor and solace of the grave” (29). and so, the harmful transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 71 shadow history of columbus suspends them in the limbo of indian identity until physical possession of his bones is possible. the concept of “shadows” and “shadow histories” is another of vizenor’s theories, one that is integral to destabilizing and reimagining terminal creeds. shadow “words are intuitive, a concise meditation of sound, motion, memories” which are everchanging because they are continually intuited (manifest manners 65). and this is the point: “‘meaning’ can never be grasped completely; it is in the play, in the trace, in the difference,” says kerstin schmidt (70). all that is important is that the trace of something else destabilizes the absolute “truth” which was previously assumed in the terminal creed. shadows point to a movement away from static “truth.” katalin nagy proves that shadows are potential zones for creation as they often emanate blue light (248). the silent blue shadows are a space in which the imagination can fill a dead icon of terminal creeds with the life of an ongoing, oppositional story which points out what the terminal story lacks. vizenor writes: postindian consciousness is a rush of shadows in the distance, and the trace of natural reason to a bench of stones; the human silence of shadows, the animate shadows over presence. the shadow is that sense of intransitive motion to the referent; the silence in memories. shadows are neither the absence of entities or the burden of conceptual references. the shadows are the prenarrative silence that inherits the words; shadows are the motions that mean the silence, but not the presence or absence of entities. (manifest manners 64) vizenor theorizes “shadow history” to refer to the initial sense—literally the intuition— that one has an identity that existed before stories and cannot be contained in them once and for all. these senses, the “shadows” and the “silenced experience,” are not stories to be discovered but are the motivation to keep telling oppositional stories so that one’s identity will never become a terminal creed. so, hardin claims that as the heirs hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 72 pinpoint columbus’s narrative as the origin story of native americans as “victims and exotic,” they realize that the only way out of that false “indian” identity is to tell stories from columbus's shadows histories (26). but, again, the heirs are unable to retell the columbus story without his bones. and they must retell his story. the problem the heirs face is that the columbus story is thought of simply as “history” by the oppressor. this makes liberation difficult. as homi bhabha argues, the oppressing force of colonialism “takes power in the name of history, [and] it repeatedly exercises its authority through figures of farce” (126). history, then, is a terminal creed, and the farcical figure in heirs is christopher columbus. what people understand to be canonical history is difficult to destabilize. nevertheless, vizenor must retell the story, according to hardin, because his retelling “alters the myth of christopher columbus and makes him of mayan descent.” and this is important because “one cannot be a pitiable victim if one is also partially responsible for the atrocity” of colonization and death that columbus brought with him (26). this is not to say that vizenor is victim blaming, but that he recognizes the importance of physically possessing and retelling the columbus story so that columbus can become a minor character and not the point of origin for the “indian” story. in this way, columbus becomes part of stone’s tribal history because he is a blood relation. the idea that the “indian” is different—an idea founded by columbus—cannot stand if columbus himself is an indian. this move cleverly undercuts the difference between indians and whites which columbus establishes. moreover, it allows his story to be retold so that “indians” can be reimagined as indians. according to birgit däwes, vizenor “creates the potential for the individual to free him/ herself from a binary past”—which has not allowed white and indian individuals in america to see themselves as anything except “conqueror or conquered”—so that a new relationship can be imagined in which the priority is to prevent such a dichotomy (27). this fits into classical and essential definitions of survivance as a state of mind. however, transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 73 in heirs this state of mind is impossible without a physical tie. the heirs must have columbus’s bones so that they can establish the blood connection and thus contradict his fixed and powerful image as a heroic european colonizer. then they can establish their tribal stories, a fluid tribal history, instead. as noted before, “tribal” applies to all people who do not own, are not born into, or do not choose to use the dominating stories of terminal creeds which take on life as manifest manners when acted out. a. lavonne brown ruoff claims that “tribal” is a “celebration of communal values” which opens up the possibilities for what anyone can be, unlike the titles “indian,” “native,” or even “american,” which are artificial terms created by oppressors (“gerald vizenor: compassionate trickster” 42). so, tribal ideology links directly with physical reality by way of a physical community no longer separated by ideological barriers. the postindian heirs tell a story of columbus, on his first night in the new world, in order to share their tribal ideology. in their story, columbus is attracted to the shore by the bear and trickster samana during his first visit. samana lures columbus in and makes love to him, liberating the tribal signature he brings with him in his mayan blood. for that night only, columbus becomes a bear and his “signature,” or “spirit,” “returned to the headwaters” where the heirs have met ever since (heirs 41). at the headwaters “the old shamans heated up some stones and put him (columbus) back together again,” building his body around his spirit. as the old stories which columbus is made up of are terminal,—cancerous to indians—many shamans over the centuries fight back and “dreamed a new belly for the explorer... called a new leg... got an eye... so you might say that [the heirs] created this great explorer from their own stones” (20). as the novel begins, the heirs tell the stories of columbus whom they possess “in a silver box.” felipa has repatriated a box with the last bit of columbus’s dna in it, and that dna is the final piece needed to complete columbus’s new body. with it, they can bring the bones to hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 74 life so that possession of them can be used to create a new columbus story and the healing nation of point assinika. the bones of columbus and pocahontas become the physical foundation and scaffolding of survivance in the floating city of point assinika. all of the tribal, postindian heirs—including columbus on that one fateful night with samana—have found liberation in animal form, emphasizing the physicality and instinctiveness of survivance. they believe humans have natural, animal identities which are more real than their human ones. they also believe that terminal creeds cover up this reality. memphis, an heir and a panther, exposes this reality. perceived as a human by all seeing her, she states that “we are animals disguised as humans,” and then proceeds to show her panther self to a courtroom full of non-heirs (70). memphis purrs and evinces the attributes of a panther, and the postindian heirs see her as such. the non-tribal people in the courtroom, however, cannot imagine that memphis, speaking as a witness in a court case, may be a panther and so become “worried and strained” in their resistance to seeing her as she is (72). sean corbin notes that this is another instance of vizenor undermining the stranglehold that manifest manners have over identity. he states that “in including stories in the blood and shadow realities as evidence, the illocutionary act is performed, calling the reader to accept this inclusion, which, in doing so, generates the question, ‘what is evidence?’” (72). according to corbin, vizenor stages a scene in a courtroom so that shadow realities can unveil the weaknesses in western, legalistic logic which relies on the ontological premises that one divine god has established a natural and knowable—and most importantly, universal—moral hierarchy. so, vizenor fights that understanding of human nature with his own version that carries the lone goal of destabilizing knowable human nature. the courtroom, a place of ideas and debates, stands in marked contrast to the immediate, instinctual, and physical reality of the human as animal. all of the heirs have recognized their animal selves. caliban is a mongrel, truman croaks like a frog, and even the child miigis dreams transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 75 she is a crane. when columbus and samana sleep together they both turn into bears and samana becomes pregnant, later giving birth to the first daughter in a line of heirs with the stories of bears in their blood. a physical line of bear-people carries survivance. physicality is essential to survivance in heirs as it arises from physical experience, not thought as it primarily had in previous vizenor novels. stone discovers that he is a physical representation of survivance as a bear when he is resurrected after his first death. in this first death and resurrection, stone returns to life to discover himself as a postindian bear at the headwaters of the mississippi. stone is burned to death in a furnace “in the reservation school” during a wind and lightning storm (14). wind and lightning are both signs of evil spirits, those who antagonize tribal people as “wild demons” of unfortunate chance (15). stone dies because he “mocked the sounds of the storm for no good reason but fear.” when stone awakes from death as a bear at the headwaters, he listens to the wind and “laughed at the blue light in the basement” where he had died (15). in discovering his stories of truly being a bear and finding the location of the headwaters, stone overcomes his fear of the wind (tribal demons) as he laughs at them instead of mocking them. on that day, stone dies to the oppressive, demonic education responsible for the terminal creed of the “indian” embodied by the colonial reservation school. he dies to the fear of demons who would threaten tribal ways, and then begins his reality as a fearless postindian bear who instinctively enacts survivance. stone is free to live the tension of being thoughtful and instinctual as a bear and a man. when the tribal people silenced the wiindigoo—their ultimate enemy—by freezing his body, they created an imbalance in tribal nature, which relies upon oppositions. stone claims that the trickster heirs “heal with opposition, we are held together by opposition, not separation, or silence, and the best humor in the world is pinched from opposition” (176). anthropologist paul radin noted that “the concrete hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 76 image of the trickster is suppressed” whenever evil becomes the “other” and is no longer recognized to be a part of the self (xiii). the evil that is “other” manifests in the concrete form of other people as the compassionate vizenorian trickster disappears. in this way, the natural tribal balance is thrown off and the trickster—its physical and intellectual presence—is replaced with bodiless stories falsely claiming to be the truth which are then overlaid on all indians and become terminal creeds (postindian conversations 19). stone tells oppositional stories grounded in physical humor to combat this fixed identity based in fear and separation of the physical and mental self. stone and the other heirs of columbus believe that reality itself is “created in stories” and images and that these stories must ever be actively reimagined as new pictures of people and events being painted in words (heirs 8). people “imagine each other” and even “imagine who we (the heirs) would be” (16). stone imagines columbus with a comically “twisted penis” causing him to act in a humorously unpredictable fashion as pleasure and pain war against each other in his body. more fun is poked at columbus as he is drawn to “blue puppets” in the heir’s stories, recognizing something of himself in them because he is essentially a puppet fulfilling mayan dreams (30). stone’s columbus is a comical dummy, led around like a puppet enacting bodily humor, which strips away his dignity and godlike status as a figure of colonization. columbus’s dignity falters when the reader pictures him as clumsy. likewise, what columbus represents as the cornerstone of serious terminal creeds begins to crumble as his image is manipulated by the heirs. stone’s name also carries both comic and serious meaning. stones carry special significance in heirs, being the physical containers of stories. a stone is the second being in the tribal creation story that stone recounts while speaking on carp radio. stone says that “[t]he stone is my totem, my stories are stones, there are tribal stones, and the brother of the first trickster who created the earth was a stone, stone, stone” (9). vizenor expands on this stone story in postindian conversations, revealing that in his version of transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 77 an anishinaabe origin story a being named nanabozho and his brother, a stone, were the first living creatures on earth. nanabozho would go off and have adventures, but then always came back to where his brother was to recount his travels. eventually, the stone realized that it was taxing on his brother to always come back and tell him stories, so the stone had his brother heat him up with fire and then pour cold water on him, causing him to explode into many, many pieces which scattered across the earth. this way, stone brother could hear stories from everywhere. as the story goes, pieces of stone brother still exist, holding all of the stories he has heard to this day (postindian conversations 131). in stone’s story about stone brother he says that the “first” to create the earth was a trickster. this “first” implies that the physical creation of the earth is an ongoing process; not one that is dead in terminal, unchanging creeds, but one that lives in stories and actions. as the wounded in heirs are literally touched by stone, they hear his “creation stories” through that touch and are made well as they find that their terminal creeds are not true. they have the opportunity to actively participate in identity creation through resistance by way of a subjective physical connection made with the intent to know the “other” (heirs 142). stone’s name embodies this, but it is also a metaphor—a slang word for testicles. testicles, like stone, contain seeds of life. stone embodies the kind of serious play his name implies. he often wears masks, like a humorous one of christopher columbus with a giant nose, in order to tease the seriousness of terminal creeds and bring his humorous imaginings of columbus to life. but the truth of stone’s humorous stories is a liberating truth which brings life, not a dead “truth,” a terminal creed which must be literal and unchanging. that would defeat his very purpose. vizenor writes that “[w]hether the heirs believe their story is not the point, because no culture would last long under the believer test; the point is that humor has political significance and as a scenario” (heirs 166). the hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 78 humor of the stories liberates the mind from monologic, humorless terminal creeds, but one must also fight the physical manifestations of those creeds once one is freed. so, stone provides us with a comical columbus we will never forget, taking pains to describe his looks. in this way, columbus’s physical presence in places like text books and paintings no longer has a monopoly on shaping our imagination of him as a heroic figure. the heirs of christopher columbus are capable of hearing the stories that the stones located in the cave above the headwaters of the mississippi river hold. they meet annually here, listening to the stones that glow blue as they reveal stories (14). these are the stories that “heal and remember the blue radiance of creation and resurrections” (13). for the heirs, the color blue is the color of creation, and because creation must be imagined constantly it is also the color of resurrection, the pinch of life from death. each of stone’s resurrections is accompanied by glowing blue objects and/or stone glowing blue. as the heirs heat up the stones in the cavern by sitting on them (just as nanabozho warmed brother stone long ago) and then tell the stories they remember (spreading the stones across the world with their voices like nanabozho did when he exploded stone brother with water), the stones begin to glow blue. that they turn blue is no coincidence. blue is the color of water and water is essential to the spread of stone brother’s stories. point assinika, the healing nation established by stone, is set on international waters, and these international waters physically connect the world. the cave where the heir’s stories come from is located at the headwaters of the mississippi. this river divides america in two, making it the perfect place to bind america back together and heal its oppressor/oppressed divide. the heirs are so positioned in order to make themselves a physical obstruction which must be nationally and internationally dealt with, since they engage in activities on international waters with national implications and no clear-cut legal frameworks to prevent them from doing so. the physical spaces they inhabit trigger national and international court cases in which the heirs are seen and heard by the world. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 79 as christopher columbus was called “the admiral of the ocean sea,” transcending the barrier of the atlantic to connect europe and the americas, so stone mimics and becomes an “admiral” navigating the divide in identities between peoples across the world through water (heirs 3). when the ice woman resurrects stone after his second death, it is out of the clutches of water—which is always associated with the wiindigoo and “water demons” (179). as stone’s grandmother resurrects him and he sees his family’s place with the heirs and his true identity stone is shown the history of the ice woman’s interactions with tribal people through ice woman’s touch and her freezing of the wiindigoo. he is also shown the inevitability of a thaw. stone subsequently meditates on the seasons to “hold back the boreal demons,” and sees that “the ice woman bears a seductive hand of winter.” however, to be “cold and lonesome” (or, to be permanently in the winter) is to be “woundable” (93). a long-lasting winter under the ice woman represents the state of tribal people for hundreds of years. because of their plea for her help with the wiindigoo, and the resulting winter, they are woundable—physically wounded and historically massacred because of the lack of an ongoing wiindigoo story. and so stone begins work to build a floating casino to make money in order to fund his project of telling oppositional stories about columbus on the radio, with the hope of liberating others with a tribal ideology. but stone’s floating reservation is destroyed by lightning one fateful night shortly after its opening and stone dies. this time, after his third death, stone is resurrected from the by samana, the bear shaman, an heir of the samana who slept with columbus (12). the original samana leaves a line of daughters who all have the same name and carry the same stories generation to generation. it is said that “[h]er touch would heal the heirs with stories in the blood” (heirs 12). this samana, a “hand-talker,” touches stone and he “hears the wild dance of the blue puppets” that silent tribal hand-talkers hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 80 use to tell stories. in this resurrection, stone learns the importance of physical touch and community in survivance. right before this, stone makes love to felipa, his first interest outside of himself in the novel. as they make love they turn into bears and stone finds that love is a state in which he does not simply liberate minds, but cares for others in physical terms as well. in this instance of resurrection “[stone] was a hand talker,” gaining the ability to communicate as a trickster through touch. stories alone are not enough; although the healing process began in the intellectual liberation of minds from and through stories, it must evolve and integrate physical healing and relationships. stone needs the help of a tribe in which different members fulfill different roles in order to accomplish this. he is the intellectual, spiritual guide, but he needs a fitting “body” to act with. the manicurists and scientists who become the bodies through which stone acts at point assinika are the proof that he learns to integrate physical healing into his liberations. stone creates point assinika by bringing together reappropriated stories, gene therapy, and tribal manicures. the oppositional story of columbus and the gene therapy, which in this context is kept vague but presumably is the delivery of something into a patient’s cells that gives them “tribal” blood, counters the racist notion of blood quantum and is an important factor at point assinika. the reappropriation of stories by stealing bones as well as the compassionate work of manicurists manifests these factors. tribal manicurists are central to success at point assinika as they collect the stories and genetic samples which contribute to the healing genome project. teets melanos is the head manicurist, “the trusted listener” who takes battered women and children and tenderly cares for their hands—massaging them and clipping their nails—when they arrive at point assinika. in this way, she coaxes out stories, which are mostly about abusive, controlling men, and these stories “alter and attune the tribal world” (141). the stories of the traditionally silenced are added to the stories which are already recorded transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 81 to create a narrative where everyone can be included. in some ways, vizenor is responding to gayatri spivak’s claim that the “subaltern” (“marginalized,” possibly, in vizenor’s terms) cannot speak by positing a possible oral ideology in which even writing is an action and not a record of “facts” which constitute an oppressive “truth.” writing in heirs (as a literally written novel) records things, but it is nearly impossible to pin down meaning, no matter how hard we might try in critical articles. to paraphrase vizenor, there can only be “more creative misreadings” of his work. in heirs, “facts” change over time in the heirs’ tellings of stories, always indicating the primary importance of action over a western notion of truth. the nail clippings collected by teets melanos are taken and stored, becoming “the source of genetic intromission and retral transformations” at the tribal genome pavilion (141). all of the genetic material collected from the fingernail clippings serves the project of collecting all peoples’ genetic material for distribution. then everyone can be tribal, as the “bits of skin and fingernail... and stories would be the source of genetic intromission and retral transformation” capable of crossing all human genes together (141). in this way, racial divides fall because everyone shares the same blood, as the scientists at point assinika craft gene intromission from the manicurists’ clippings. importantly, this process never ends; as each new person in point assinika brings with them new stories to be shared and integrated alongside a new set of genes. so, scientists and manicurists become the active body of stone’s liberation, now possible because the heirs own the storytelling rights of columbus and pocahontas and therefore the rights to their own identity. “stone resists the notion of blood quantums, racial identification, and tribal enrollment” (heirs 162). instead, he creates a process of gene intromission by which all people can share the same blood and become tribal. yvette koepke and christopher nelson argue that “[g]enes are metaphors for stories” in heirs, and that the genetic crossing “should not be taken literally” (2). vizenor is both evoking and opposing the hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 82 notion of blood quantum by providing a humorous solution to its inherent discrimination through free tribal gene distribution. this subversion makes everyone who undergoes the process a tribal heir, which is an identity that transgresses the boundaries of race. however, i argue that vizenor is suggesting that survivance must be thought of as a physical reality in which the segregation caused by blood quantum must be resisted. the physicality is vital because the stories alone are not enough to heal. he acknowledges the limitations of imagining intellectual liberation as the end of survivance. while intellectual liberation may be the beginning of survivance, it also may not be. it may come after the physical care and mixing of bodies and blood which creates trust at point assinika. members of point assinika only find healing when physically caring for each other, solidifying a sense of bodily safety in the fluid nation. this is a tribal identity of “survivance” being lived out. in this context, “tribal” evades definition by signifying the action of resisting terminal creeds and manifest manners. vine deloria jr. notes that “tribal” usually stands “not as a commitment but as a status symbol of ‘indianness’” (28). however, vizenor employs “tribal” here as an action which must be carried out, not as a set of attributes—the markers of manifest manners. he fights the “tribal” which was born of manifest manners with the “tribal” of survivance. pinning down exactly what survivance is remains tricky, if not impossible. nevertheless, the term has incredible sticking power precisely because it is vague. by centering the term around concepts instead of giving it a precise definition, vizenor creates a living and adaptable word. but, in heirs we are reminded that survivance must be physical to become real, be pinned down at times in order to actually be effective. heirs reveals the shortcomings of survivance as a solely intellectual exercise. according to betty louise bell, point assinika represents a “native subjectivity [that] becomes comparable to derrida’s endless chain of signifiers, with no truth signified, each signified transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 83 becoming in turn a signifier, each subject becoming a metasubject, each narrative becoming a metanarrative,” until every person in the community is validated in the stories they share (183). prescriptive identity disappears as all members of point assinika immerse into the sea of stories they create collectively, eternally, as a living “tribal” people. yet they still hold their individual physical bodies, and they recognize that each body validates experiences and needs to be cared for if better stories are to be made and told to sustain tribal reality. there is a celebration to mark stone’s victory over the wiindigoo, thanks to the people at point assinika. almost browne, a trickster of simulations, creates a laser show in the night sky to celebrate the tribal victory. “jesus christ and christopher columbus arose in the south… crazy horse, black elk, and louis riel were eminent laser figures in the north,” and “felipa flowers and pocahontas arose in the east” (heirs 182). the old simulations of manifest manners jesus and columbus, the old simulations of survivance crazy horse, black elk, and louis riel, and the new simulations of survivance felipa and pocahontas, all come together in a new simulation of unity against fear of the wiindigoo. this new ideology of tribal opposition is realizable only as an intellectual and individual achievement that integrates physicality and community. and stone makes this possible. stone is both stone, a physical repository for stories, and trickster, one who acts in the world through stories. stone’s “stories are stones,” represented by the people of point assinika being brought together as if he was a reverse of stone brother (9). intellectual modes of resistance to terminal creeds and the physical resistance of reclaiming indian artifacts, establishing a physical nation, combating blood quantum, repainting colonial images, and validating physical existence through loving touch are all realized through stone. survivance without these physical factors—such as the survivance deployed in griever—results in the death of those “liberated.” hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 84 nevertheless, the ongoing project of survivance does not end with stone and the addition of physical considerations. jace weaver claims that “vizenor has always been the literary equivalent of a drive-by shooting” (57). he fights evasively, always liberating, with his theory always on the move. in heirs, vizenor’s theory of survivance adapts as it always has and always should—from theory to reality. vizenor himself began this exploration of the physical side of survivance in the 90s, and he carries it on today in his most recent work, native provenance (2019). this book is largely concerned with the political ramification of peace treaties, sovereignty, and the representation of “moral imagination” shaped by the “blue shadows” of “sacred objects, stories, art, and literature (35). these are all continuations of other notions in heirs, and in native provenance vizenor correspondingly continues to address the physical reality of survivance. in the chapter “visionary sovereignty,” vizenor compares the military occupation of japan with the military occupation of native american lands. vizenor claims the united states treated japan—a defeated enemy of wwii—more fairly than native americans over the same period of time. in ironic fashion, “constitutional provisions of land reform and labor unions were observed for the first time in japan, yet native communal land was reduced to allotments on treaty exclaves and reservations” (93). the military of the united states was able—or possibly pressured—to make and carry through more fair decisions concerning the governance of far-away japan than it was with closer-to-home native american communities. with the international eye on japan and the united states after wwii, the military did the right thing if they could. but, the united states’ relationship with native americans has always been, more or less, internal and hidden to the outside world. recognizing this, vizenor chooses to highlight the physical presence of the journalist and political activist william lawrence in the final chapter of native provenance. lawrence persisted in publishing reports of the injustices done to transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 85 native americans by the united states’ government and placed hard-copies of that news in people’s hands. in heirs, vizenor moves the physical contact between native americans and the united states’ government to the international stage; he places real contacts in plain view at point assinika. this is a tactic vizenor employs in much of his fiction, placing griever in china and crafting relationships between native americans and the japanese in hiroshima bugi: atomu 57 (2010). scholars have a way to go in mapping vizenor’s exploration of physical survivance. but, luckily, vizenor’s fiction welcomes this exploration. although the intellectual side of survivance has always been vizenor’s primary concern, heirs paves the way for scholars and creative writers to explore the necessary role of physicality in the enactment of survivance so that survivance can transcend the intellectual realm and manifest in real, physical relationships. notes 1 scholars including kerstin schmidt have noted that vizenor draws from derrida’s theory of “trace.” a direct correspondence is not applicable, however, because vizenor appropriates the word for his own uses. works cited bell, louise. “almost the whole truth: gerald vizenor's shadow-working and native american autobiography.” a/b: auto/biography studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 1992, pp. 180-195. bhabha, homi. “of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse.” october, hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 86 vol. 28, 1984, pp. 125–133. carlson, david. “trickster hermeneutics and the postindian reader: gerald vizenor's constitutional praxis.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 23, no. 4, 2011, pp. 13-47. corbin, sean. “in defense of trickster fantasies: comparing the storytelling of innocent iv and gerald vizenor.” the intersection of fantasy and native america: from h.p. lovecraft to leslie marmon silko, edited by amy h. sturgis and david d. oberhelman, mythopoeic press, 2009, pp. 63–77. däwes, birgit, et al. twenty-first century perspectives on indigenous studies : native north america in (trans)motion. routledge, 2015. deloria, vine, jr. “intellectual self-determination and sovereignty: looking at the windmills in our minds.” wicazo sa review, vol. 13, no. 1, 1998, pp. 25-31. fox, timothy r. “realizing fantastic trickster liberations in gerald vizenor’s griever: an american monkey king in china.” journal of the fantastic in the arts, vol. 20, no. 1, 2009, pp. 70–90. hardin, michael. “the trickster of history: the heirs of columbus and the dehistoricization of narrative.” melus, vol. 23, no. 4, 1998, pp. 25-45. harmsen-peraino, suzanne. “writing from a postindian visionary center: an interview with gerald vizenor.” european review of native american studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2002, pp. 1-8. transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 87 koepke, yvette, and christopher, nelson. “genetic crossing: imagining tribal identity and nation in gerald vizenor's the heirs of columbus.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 23, no. 3, 2011, pp. 1-33. krupat, arnold. the turn to the native: studies in criticism and culture. u of nebraska p. 1996. lee, a. robert. loosening the seams: interpretations of gerald vizenor. popular press. 2000. liang, iping. “opposition play: trans-atlantic trickstering in gerald vizenor's the heirs of columbus.” concentric: literary and cultural studies, vol. 29, no. 1, 2003, pp. 121-141. lincoln, kenneth. native american renaissance. u of california p. 1983. menon, sheela jane. “highland tales in the heart of borneo: postcolonial capitalism, multiculturalism, and survivance.” ariel, vol. 49, no. 4, 2018, pp. 163-188. miles john d. “the postindian rhetoric of gerald vizenor.” college composition and communication, vol. 63, no. 1, 2011, pp. 35-53. nagy, katalin. “the reconceptualization of the columbian heritage into a trickster discourse: gerald vizenor's the heirs of columbus.” hungarian journal of english and american studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2008, pp. 245-263. radin, paul, et al. the trickster: a study in american indian mythology, edited by stanley diamond, schocken books, 1988. hogan schaak “the physical presence of survivance” 88 ruoff, a. lavonne brown. “gerald vizenor: compassionate trickster.” american indian quarterly, vol. 9, no. 1, 1998, pp. 67-73. ---. “woodland word warrior: an introduction to the works of gerald vizenor.” melus, vol. 13, 1986, pp. 13-43. schmidt, kerstin. “subverting the dominant paradigm: gerald vizenor's trickster discourse.” studies in american indian literatures, vol. 7, no. 1, 1995, pp. 65-76. spivak, gayatri chakravorty. “‘can the subaltern speak?’” critique of postcolonial reason, edited by rosalind c. morris, columbia up, 2010, pp. 21–78. stratton, billy j. the fictions of stephen graham jones a critical companion. u of new mexico p, 2016. vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. bison books, 2000. ---. griever: an american monkey king in china. u of minnesota p, 1990. ---. hiroshima bugi: atomu 57. u of nebraska p, 2010. ---. landfill meditation: crossblood stories. wesleyan up, 1991. ---. manifest manners: postindian warriors of survivance. wesleyan up, 1994. ---. narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian literatures. u of oklahoma p, 1993. ---. native provenance: the betrayal of cultural creativity. u of nebraska p, 2019. ---. “the ruins of representation: shadow survivance and the literature of dominance.” transmotion vol 6, no 2 (2020) 89 american indian quarterly, vol. 17, no. 1, 1993, pp. 7-26. ---. the heirs of columbus. wesleyan up, 1991. weaver, jace. other words: american indian literature, law, and culture. u of oklahoma p, 2001. microsoft word scott.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 10 “changing landscapes”: ecocritical dystopianism in contemporary indigenous sf literature conrad scott in a time when modern settler-invader colonialism continually pushes a hyperextractive demand for fossil fuels, minerals, and water at the expense of landscapes, ecologies, and traditional land use, what are often matriarchically-driven indigenous sovereignties offer different ecological models, from standing rock to wet’suwet’en and beyond.1 these movements work to ensure that the land and water is healthy for those living now and in the future—both for indigenous peoples and otherwise.2 invasive, ecocidal modern human activities are particularly troubling given a 99% scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change (watts) or other humanexacerbated environmental problems like ocean acidification (resnick). our actions raise the question of what kind of environmental spaces will be left behind. what will a specific place look like after it has been changed by modern social processes; will affected landscapes ever fully return to previous states? environmental disruptions cannot be averted by the very means by which they are being perpetuated, and hyperextractive processes, energy policies, and industrial practices do not preserve the spaces and places of the world as they are organized into modes of greater efficiency. such an approach will result in a future of devastating change to places we value, and acutely accentuate social and ecological disparities. speculative narratives about the future, however, are key elements in imagining both the detriments to such “business conrad scott “changing landscapes” 11 as usual” models and the potentialities of more environmentally-conscious societies emerging instead—especially ones modelling indigenous teachings.3 in their 2017 “environmental ethics through changing landscapes: indigenous activism and literary arts,” an introduction to the canadian review of comparative literature’s special issue on environmental ethics and activism in indigenous literature and film, warren cariou and isabelle st-amand point to the fact that some “indigenous… futurescapes are envisioned with intricate connections to pasts characterized by major upheavals and to presents shaped by” (14) what i call elsewhere “a sense of ongoing crisis” (scott as qtd. in cariou and st-amand 14; scott, “(indigenous)” 77). a strong example of this is with the residential schools reborn in métis writer cherie dimaline’s 2017 novel the marrow thieves—which is also a novel of excessive urban populations and the dreamlessness of modern living exacerbated by climate change processes and the destructive, continued cultural and environmental devastations perpetuated by the self-serving desperation of the authoritarian, colonial state. but a work like dimaline’s marrow thieves is also one of hope for the future. cariou and st-amand articulate this drive to “create, envision, and dream indigenous futures” (14) in terms of vizenorian survivance; they remind us that, “[i]n many ways, grim, disturbing, and seemingly hopeless realities have inspired indigenous narrative artists to investigate, make sense of, and create hope out of disruption and destruction” (cariou and st-amand 14). despite the alteration of traditional living spaces, for instance, that accompanies environmental changes like those seen with increased storm frequency and intensity (atleo 9), accelerating sea-level rise, and rampant desertification or other biome shifts, many contemporary indigenous science fiction (sf) works imagine community adaptation and resilience into speculated futures, and thus resonate with what i coin “ecocritical dystopianism.”4 by grounding the social changes of a narrative written about the future in the environmental changes to an transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 12 understanding of place, writers of the ecocritical dystopia are more tangibly connecting imagined future events with the concerns of those living in the present, in the real world. near-future events or processes are therefore no longer upcoming or even imminent, but instead feel immanent and ongoing. this subgeneric approach is particularly useful to indigenous sf writers, who often harness the sense of a crisis that has not ended instead of “an upcoming one” (scott, “(indigenous)” 77) as fallout from the continued catastrophe following european contact. importantly, while the ecocritical dystopianism of indigenous sf writers is deeply rooted in a connection to traditional place and society that has been adversely affected and will continue to change into the future, ecocritical dystopianism also encompasses the possibility for utopian irruptions, and thus fosters indigenous hope for the future. to help illustrate the ecocritical dystopia in practice through the lens of contemporary indigenous sf writing, further into this paper i will discuss the case studies of harold johnson’s 2015 novel corvus and louise erdrich’s 2017 novel future home of the living god.5 the “ecocritical dystopia”: changing lands and environments the terminology of ecocritical dystopianism encapsulates my argument that a subgeneric inflection has developed in recent sf writing about the future that features dystopian themes and elements. in part, the wording pays homage to the “critical dystopia,” for which tom moylan highlights the social drivers of “the hard times of the 1980s and 1990s” (182).6 but critical dystopian works, as ildney cavalcanti argues, “depict fictional realities that are, to different degrees, discontinuous with the contemporary ‘real’ (although such realities are drawn in relation to, and as a critique of, the world as we know it)” (“articulating” 12-13, my emphasis). as i explain elsewhere through a discussion about the real-world, tangible, lived, and ongoing effects of climate change, the critical dystopia is not a term that does the same work conrad scott “changing landscapes” 13 because, while it certainly reflects how we might feel about what is a complex and often distressing problem, it does not focus on geographical and social changes related to an extrapolation of environmental shifts between the present and the future (scott, “‘everything’” 409). critical dystopian sf narratives involve a use of what we might call representative or symbolic places as critiques of a social moment, and therefore are not direct extensions of the real-world into the near-future. a strong recent example of this is the fictional gibson in anishinaabe writer waubgeshig rice’s moon of the crusted snow (2018), which is said to be a “small northern cit[y]” (rice 20) in ontario, canada, “about three hundred kilometres to the southwest” (75) of the “semi-fictional” (guynes) gaawaandagkoong first nation (rice 139). though the novel also names toronto (75), a real-world locale, the fictionality of gibson7 is employed to stand in for any urbanized place in the region that might succumb to “chaos” (74) during the societal collapse occurring south of the anishinaabe community of gaawaandagkoong—rather than rice making the choice of having a near-future crisis altering how we might understand the nature of a specific place recognizable in the present of the real-world. ecocritical dystopianism, that is, instead demonstrates that contemporary dystopian fiction is employing ideas of places and geographies differently than in critical dystopias, or even in earlier dystopian works. settings connected with the real world are obviously present in earlier sf literature, and it is tempting to retroactively apply an ecocritical dystopian reading to some of them rather than to focus the genre on the present moment in sf writing. but while the example of e.m. forster’s 1909 novella “the machine stops” involves a futuristic society living beneath what are, in the narrative, the former places of the world, like wessex and brisbane, the focus is not on the environmental alterations to the landscape, but on the social alterations to the underground society. the difference with more recent, ecocritical dystopian fiction is that society’s adaptations to the neartransmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 14 future, physical changes in environmental conditions and landscapes are a main factor in the plot. the problems encountered in the ecocritical dystopia are of the real world for a reason, and no longer adhere to the jamesonian explanation of “a ‘near-future’ novel [that] tells the story of an imminent disaster… waiting to come to pass in our own near future, which is fast-forwarded in the time of the novel” (seeds 56). instead, the ecocritical dystopia resonates with what joshua gunn and david e. beard call immanence, with its “collapsing linear temporality onto a prolonged experience of the present” (gunn and beard 272). that is, the effect of the ecocritical dystopia is to bring us closer to the crises involved, rather than to underline an idea that catastrophe will happen sometime in the future: we are, after all, connected to these stories through our relationships (however tenuous) with the real-world landscapes altered within the narratives. such sf writing relates to what gerry canavan outlines as “the reality principle that adheres to our real conditions of existence” when he describes suvinian “cognitive estrangement” (“suvin” xviii); instead of a narrative juxtaposing how we understand our geographical reality with a place and time that involves “science fictional difference” (xviii), like a story set on jupiter, ecocritical dystopian texts fold the inherent “difference” into a connection with the present day. the ecocritical dystopia channels the reality principle of the dystopian now in formulating its ensuing future societies, environments, living concerns, and physical places.8 ecocritical dystopianism parses our disharmony with our lived environments as an extrapolation of the present into the future. since its modes of place-based environmental crises create a node for exploring political pressures, cultural shifts, and resource and infrastructure needs, among other categories, ecocritical dystopianism offers a conflation of the near or even further future with the time of the present. in this time of “global weirding” (canavan and hageman), with what claire l. evans calls a “need [for] an anthropocene fiction,” we are more acutely able to see the inequalities conrad scott “changing landscapes” 15 reminiscent in colonial thinking: rob nixon opines that “the dominant mode of anthropocene storytelling is its failure to articulate the great acceleration to the great divergence… it is time to remold the anthropocene as a shared story about unshared resources” (nixon).9 the self-reflexivity of recent sf writing,10 which includes indigenous sf, indeed invokes such anthropocenic issues,11 and the ecocritical dystopia demonstrates that, at least sometime after the first critical dystopias, sf has been engaging with elements of realism in a very concentrated manner that entangles environmental concerns with socio-cultural processes. this generic form presents societies extrapolated directly and tangibly forward from the present, and insists that environmental imbalances are the root of social dystopia. indigenous sf writing often imagines modern human society as out of sync with the natural world, which echoes how shelley streeby argues that “people of color and indigenous people use science fiction and other speculative genres to remember the past and imagine futures that help us think critically about the present” (5). one such example is with the extension of knowledge from the book found in chickasaw writer linda hogan’s solar storms (1994), which has “diagrams of plants” with “[a]rrows point[ing] to parts of them that were useful for healing, a root, a leaf” (256) and “symbols for sun and moon which depicted the best times of day to gather the plants” (257). the discovery of such a repository of experiential ecological understandings promises to extend cultural legacies, and echoes a call in many indigenous sf narratives for a reconnection with the land. but in some of these narratives, traditional and modern indigenous engagements with the land are complicated by alarming ecological degradation as current social processes increasingly drive future changes. solar storms, for instance, features a massive flooding as a “result of… damming” (334), and, “with the terrain so changed, the maps” from the book “would have been no use” (348); reengaging with what was once known about the landscape becomes transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 16 impossible. in another example, laguna pueblo writer leslie marmon silko’s almanac of the dead (1991) presents “prophecies [that] said gradually all traces of europeans in america would disappear and, at last, the people would retake the land” (631-32). these prophecies offer an end to the ongoing impacts of colonialism, but also warn “that mother earth would punish those who defiled and despoiled her. fierce, hot winds would drive away the rain clouds; irrigation wells would go dry; all the plants and animals would disappear. only a few humans would survive” (632). even in these prophecies, the damage wrought by human activities is drastic and potentially difficult to return from: survivance does not seem to be a guarantee.12 yet, while texts like silko’s, with its apocalyptic stone snakes, celebrate a return to where the nonindigenous element is removed from what is now called north america, the genre is also divided. spokane-coeur d’alene writer sherman alexie’s “distances” (1993) indicates a resurrection of older cultural elements from which no one really benefits— as does dogrib (tłįchǫ) writer richard van camp’s expanding “wheetago war” narrative, if we read the overarching antagonist simply as the environmental return of a punitive, elder god aspect. but in a text like thomas king’s novel the back of the turtle (2014), which contains ecocritical dystopian elements, in coastal british columbia, fort mcmurray, and lethbridge, the very near-future permutations of current real-world environmental issues emerge, and water shapes the cultural and survival landscapes of local and regional communities. despite some critical dystopian moments elsewhere in the text,13 this proximity to the real-world is noteworthy because it suggests a sense of urgency not only in relation to the environmental catastrophes that occur, but in terms of the healing necessary. that is, the end of turtle suggests that a world can be built anew, and thus a cultural return can occur—which are lessons applicable to those living in the real world and imagining forward into the future. conrad scott “changing landscapes” 17 in similar ecocritical dystopias resulting from social and environmental imbalances, a focus on geographical remnants recognizable today allows indigenous sf writers to further speculate about the nature of living spaces. social dynamics affect and are affected by the alterations to places within such works, and the ecocritical dystopian body of fiction underscores how concerning the future is—not only within these imagined narratives, but also for those in the real-world present who have relationships with a sense of place. but ecocritical dystopianism also engages, in this context, with what grace dillon (anishinaabe), the scholar of indigenous speculative and science fictions, has coined “indigenous futurisms”: ecocritical dystopian indigenous sf work is also involved in thinking forward in a manner that hopes for better futures. both erdrich’s future home and johnson’s corvus, though ecocritical dystopian narratives, ultimately imagine hopeful possibilities for communities learning to reengage with their environmental landscapes. ecocritical dystopianism in future home and corvus like dimaline’s marrow thieves, both erdrich’s future home of the living god and johnson’s corvus are indigenous sf novels that feature future climate change processes extrapolated forward from the present moment.14 the first novel is partly set in a future minneapolis, in an america where not only human offspring but the rest of the natural world seem to be devolving as part of a global weirding related to climate change, and a theocratic, authoritarian regime enforces bodily control over women still able to bear “regular” or “original” (erdrich 245) human babies to term. but the protagonist’s ojibwe family also begins to reassert control over their traditional lands and to rethink human engagement with them. by imagining changes into the future, both future home and corvus therefore comment upon how our modern society engages in disconnected ways with the land—such as with johnson’s parody of social attention transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 18 given to receding glaciers, where british columbia mines “the last of the columbia ice fields” to transport to vancouver so “‘it won’t go to waste’” while others consume fossil fuels and spew greenhouse gases as they drive up to see “the last of the great glacier” disappearing “‘because of climate change’” (johnson 178). this is a narrative of sweeping social alterations as weather patterns and regional climates shift—producing a society of people aspiring to live in “sky cities,” since “[a]t forty thousand feet there are no storms” (11). however, in both corvus and future home, while climate changes occur from the time of the present, it is the accompanying social changes related to the resulting environmental and place-based alterations that indicate ecocritical dystopian elements. erdrich’s future home is an interesting example of a text where the background of environmental changes is only briefly hinted at, but is also extrapolated in dramatic and tangible ways even unto the genetic re-ordering of flora and fauna—an alteration that begins to affect human progeny and, because of these changes, rapidly destabilizes “western” society. though the connection in the narrative is tenuous, the environmental disruptions are very likely tied to anthropogenic climate change, since “the fallout of events” is linked to the “first winter without snow, among other things,” as well as the interrelated “political idiocies and wars and natural disasters” (erdrich 9). in fact, this disappearance of winter weather emerges as the final focus of the novel, which is mostly organized through journalistic entries that a pregnant mother, cedar hawk songmaker, aka mary potts (3), writes to her future “son” (265) amidst the irrupting flurry of biological alterations. the journal’s final contribution is in february (265)—a somewhat unspecific marker that not only indicates a partial loss of a sense of time as nearly all other entries, starting on august 7th (3) of the previous year, contain a month and a date, but also helps articulate most clearly the last of three entries given after her son’s birth on december 25th (264). this february contemplation considers conrad scott “changing landscapes” 19 “the way it was before,” when “the lake froze” (265), and before “the snow came one last time” when cedar “was eight years old” (266); after, “the cold didn’t burn your lungs” (266; my emphasis), “freeze the snot in your nose,” “frost your eyelashes,” or “hurt,” and the “[n]ext winter, it rained” (266). but this change is also notably resonant with a specific sense of place extrapolated into the near future, as the very last line of the novel asks the son where he will be “the last time it snows on earth” (267)— reminding us that future changes will not be consistent globally. cedar’s narrative of locale and region altering through climate, ecology, and biology is focused on what is now called minneapolis and minnesota (260),15 though specific streets are renamed “overnight” under a theocratic, “joint entity,” decentralized governmental amalgamation of the “united states postal service” and “the national guard” that, “within some states” (94), maps “everything” by “‘bible verses’” (101). ostensibly, this is a novel of what happens as western society breaks down in the area and is reorganized through the control of an extreme faction somewhat à la margaret atwood’s the handmaid’s tale (1985).16 but it is also a novel in which the “original treaty grounds” (erdrich 227) of traditional ojibwe land are reclaimed. previously, as cedar’s step father-figure eddy puts it, “like almost every other reservation, [theirs] was lost through incremental treaties and then sold off in large part when the dawes act of 1862 removed land from communal ownership” (213). the enterprising eddy awakens from his previous nihilistic stupor and says he “‘think[s] about seventy percent of [his] depression was [his] seventeenth-century warrior trying to get out’” (227). but, in organizing the reclamation of land, eddy explains they are “not taking back … all [their] ancient stomping grounds,” and are instead focusing on “the land within the original boundaries of [the] original treaty” (214).17 their efforts are, in fact, more geared toward what the community can accomplish, as eddy “wants to make the reservation one huge, intensively worked, transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 20 highly productive farm” (226). after all, as eddy puts it, indigenous people “‘have been adapting since before 1492 so [they will] keep adapting’” (28). this statement is the fundamental heart of the novel. though “church billboards” read “end-time at last! are you ready to rapture?” (13) early in the narrative, with the tribal renewal, altered use of the land, and efforts at adaptation, this ecocritical dystopia also uncovers the embedded utopian hope of the subgenre. the sign from which the novel takes its name18 “is planted” “[i]n one enormous, empty field” that is “bare… fallow and weedy, stretching to a pale horizon” (13), and marks where ground-breaking will occur for one of the authoritarian, uberreligious pregnancy detention complexes called “‘future home reception centers’” (90). the welcoming tone accompanying the advertisement of these centers, where, in a coup-state television broadcast, the cyberpunkesque mother figure promises “chefs… waiting for” pregnant “womb volunteers to gestate… embryos” (90), is undercut by the reality of what are really just jails repurposed to house pregnant mothers and extract children from them as many times as possible. that is, as cedar notes, “[a] sign above the entrance says stillwater birthing center, but it is only a painted piece of canvas that covers minnesota correctional facility stillwater” (249)—a factor further adding to how a sense of place is altered in erdrich’s ecocritical dystopia. tragically, and ironically, these centres result in the stifling of life, and the one where cedar ends up is most probably where she dies alongside the many deceased mothers whose pictures come to adorn “the wall of martyrs” (254) in “the dining room” (253) and who are buried in the “vast field filling with tiny white crosses… for both mother and baby” (259). however, despite focusing on the dystopian fallout in this postdemocratic america, the end of this novel of indigenous futurism shows both compassion for “the big knives, the white people” (227), who have “‘all removed themselves’” to go “‘back to the cities’” (214), and celebrates a resurgence of “what conrad scott “changing landscapes” 21 came before,” even as it acknowledges what has been lost and can never be regained. as dillon asserts, “[i]t might go without saying that all forms of indigenous futurisms are narratives of biskaabiiyang, an anishinaabemowin word connoting the process of ‘returning to ourselves’” (10). fittingly, the real “future home,” past the text of erdrich’s narrative, is that which eddy and his people are rebuilding on their traditional lands. the rebuilding of traditional community and learning to live with the land and its ecologies is also important in johnson’s corvus. lessons about this are primarily delivered through the overarching textual fragments that both bookend the novel and progress the trickster raven’s voice and agency in the narrative: with the first fragment before chapter 1, which is told about raven, there is a contemplation about his loneliness, a historicization of what humans have done to the “boreal” (7) forest, and a decision to re-engage with human culture. but the novel also demonstrates its ecocritical dystopian credentials immediately with environmental changes such as desertification and erratic, intensified weather, and specifically the changes to place that occur for real-world locales like kenilworth, illinois, gladwyne, pennsylvania (11), and la ronge, saskatchewan (16). with the latter, “too much nitrogen, too much heat,” and “not enough species that ate algae” could mean that lac la ronge “would become a stinking green slough” (20) in the further future. in fact, there are socioenvironmental alterations to several geographically-recognizable places in the nearfuture of the novel—including with how people in san diego do not “come out in summer” but instead remain “huddled in air-conditioned spaces” while waiting “for a cool breeze off the pacific,” and “places like phoenix and houston” have become “completely empty” (16). arizona, for instance, is “too late” in getting “its solar power projects up and running” while “sand and dust from the desert c[o]me on the hot wind” and people realize they cannot “live without water” (17). later, in a nod to how regional climatic disruptions will vary, the “jet stream… dip[s] south” to bring “down transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 22 colder arctic air” just as “warm wet pacific weather move[s] in from the west,” and instead of just “a heavy spring rain, with perhaps some localized flooding” (249), or “nothing more than the last visit of winter,” an unexpected “heavy snowfall” (250) occurs in a time that only knows rainfall. this is a novel that catalogues not only continental socioenvironmental changes, but also those happening to specific regions and locales. one of the main arcs of speculative future-history that we see in corvus rests in memories of a north america generally drying out, the conflicts that arise, and a mass migration of many towards the north: “there were so damn many of them and more came from the south every day” (11). as the character katherine says, “[s]he’d chosen la ronge because la ronge had water. she’d left saskatoon because saskatoon didn’t” (176). la ronge is near the 55th parallel within a swath of lake land, and roughly 343.58 km (213.49 mi) north-northeast of saskatoon—certainly an area ripe with water. the south saskatchewan river, which currently runs through saskatoon, has its headwaters in the rocky mountains, and seemingly because of anthropogenic climate change in the narrative, “became the south saskatchewan creek and then… stopped flowing altogether” (177). such drying up of water flows creates a situation in the past of the narrative that precedes dimaline’s use of the “water wars” in marrow thieves,19 where america extracts freshwater resources from mostly anishnaabe “lakes [and rivers] with a great metal straw” (24).20 in corvus, the colonially-named provinces alberta and british columbia are at each others’ throats, but also eastern canada and western canada; in a parallel, in the united states, “[i]t wasn’t so much red states and blues states, democrat or republican,” “but a difference between dry states and wet states” (erdrich 190). the continent is consumed by what are called the first and second intra wars. yet johnson also cleverly inserts satire when he first has people praying for “‘[a] little rain, please, enough to settle the dust’” (176), then also features conrad scott “changing landscapes” 23 the colonial province of british columbia physically removing glacial remnants from the icefields of the continental divide while perpetuating modern society’s climate change exacerbating activities. ironically, the desire for rain is followed by a sense of regional change where “it… started to rain” and then “rained, and rained, and rained, until the saskatchewan river flooded its banks and bridges washed away” as “people began to pray for the sun again” (178). the outcome, even in la ronge, is that the ecological cycle is disrupted and the land becomes mostly infertile. though there are elements in the novel that are meant to lead these humans towards a more sustainable entanglement with the environment—life and death being parts of that conversation—still the majority of humans ignore or can no longer access the teachings involved. the la ronge city lawyer george crash-lands while out flying his biotech, “three meters tall” (28) ravenwingsuit organic recreational vehicle (orv), which repurposes cellular level material for human entertainment. this crash puts him in proximity with the camp of the “‘medicine man’” (105) two bears, who attempts to teach george the city-dweller about living a fulfilling life.21 the satisfaction of community building is also apparent in the character isadore’s memories (104-105) of coming to the multigenerational two bears camp (76),22 though he carefully acknowledges george’s “‘powerful world,’” which “‘pulls people back’” (105). this futuristic, magnetic world is still paved with “concrete” (7), still ruled by the loopholes of modern legal systems, and still hierarchical, privileged, and capitalistic in the sense that social status means hoping to invest in condos “in the sky cities” (11). tellingly, at the start of the novel, “george… needed three more good years” (11) of an “expected 12%” pay increase, “maybe even a bit more” (12)—which he does not get. it is still a world built on individualism and greed. but, in the novelistic structure, the later, bookending portion of raven’s narrative, despite the trickster’s decision to go “back to the forest… before it’s all transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 24 gone” (277), still shows a progression, still portrays some hope as demonstrated through george, “this one human [raven] know[s],” who is “learning… starting to get it”—as well as another character who “[t]alks to” the natural (and spiritual!) world (275). raven says, “[o]nce in a while i hear her pray for the earth” (275), and there is also a hope “that she’s going to teach her kids to love the earth too” (276). notably, this sequence underscoring the importance of a natural life cycle where “it all worked the way it was supposed to,” “the wolves ate… buffalo,” and the ravens “clean[ed] up after them” before “spread[ing] them around on the prairie” (276) is also the only nonnumbered chapter in the novel, and is denoted by the title, “said raven.” here, even raven’s voice demonstrates progression in the narrative, since the earlier, distanced, story about the trickster has become, by this end-point, a first-person monologue that, while somewhat skeptical, also contains hope for humanity. corvus, like many novels featuring both indigenous futurisms and ecocritical dystopian elements, leaves the final lessons to be taken up by the reader and brought into the present of the real world. healing of and by community in why indigenous literatures matter, daniel heath justice (cherokee) concludes that he is given “hope that the future world will be an improvement on the one we’ve inherited, that different stories will mean different possibilities, that we can live, love, and imagine otherwise, and that we can do it together” (210). it is in this forwardimagining sense that much indigenous sf aims for communal healing from centuries of settler colonial violence to not only indigenous peoples, but also to the land, waters, plants, and animals—and not just a healing of community, but a healing by community. this is true of even narratives that we categorize as “dystopias” in following the word’s ancient greek roots where “dys-” means “bad, difficult” (montanari, “δῠσ-”) and conrad scott “changing landscapes” 25 “topos” means “place” (montanari, “τόπος”). the role of characters inhabiting such “difficult” landscapes—like those in the ecocritical dystopias of future home and corvus—is to present narratives where it is possible to not only overcome, adapt to, or otherwise survive such conditions, but also where the conditions themselves have the potential of starting a healing process. indigenous ecocritical dystopias, in particular, entangle the solutions for the characters with solutions for their lived places and environments.23 the example of king’s back of the turtle also engages in an ecocritically dystopian fashion with realism through environmental changes to settings such as the city of lethbridge and the alberta tar sands. here, the storyteller puts the onus of his teachings on those listening, on those who are asked to carry forward communitymaking into the real-world in opposition to current hypercapitalistic overdrive through the co-opting of science towards profit and petromodern ways of living that disconnect us from the environment and contribute to the ravaging of land and waters. king’s narrative ends with the renewal of the biotic lifeforms in and around a damaged creek and oceanfront, and community buds again alongside the ocean’s resurgence after the industrial, biochemical impact of a defoliant. the natural world’s resilience to overcome this modern ill becomes intertwined with the characters’ communal healing. king’s novel is called the back of the turtle, after all, and this clear reference to the anishinaabeg’s and others’ name for north america—that is, turtle island—implies that we are all involved in and required to engage in healing practices. for the anishinaabe, at least, the history of the turtle island term ties into the creation story of their people, the history of their engagement with the land, and an understanding of how the world is now.24 the turtle from these teachings bears the weight of the continent, at least, and like the living turtle escaped from a corporation’s tank in king’s novel, which has “a strange indentation in its shell, as though it had spent its life transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 26 bearing a heavy load” (king 22), is an apt metaphor for the anthropogenic pressures that have been applied to not only north america, but the entire world. healing of and by community is indeed required. johnson’s corvus and erdrich’s future home can be taken together to demonstrate an opportunity to engage with human-caused environmental catastrophe from a common standpoint. as nuu-chah-nulth hereditary chief umeek (ahousaht) indicates with his discussion of tsawalk, or a sense of oneness, the ancient nuu-chah-nulth assumed an interrelationship between all life forms—humans, plants, and animals. relationships are. accordingly, social, political, economic, constitutional, environmental, and philosophical issues can be addressed under the single theme of interrelationships… existence, being, and knowing, regardless of seeming contradictions, are considered to be tsawalk—one and inseparable. they are interrelated and interconnected. (atleo ix). in a fitting parallel, corvus asks us “[w]hat… it mean[s] to be human” and “what [one’s] role [is] as a human” (203; my emphasis): ultimately the novel is about the entanglement of humanity with the greater ecological community. but so is future home, as both books contemplate where and how we humans will live tomorrow, and the next day. as the character george concludes in corvus, “we are more than human. the species is greater than the individual. everything is made up of something smaller” (205). these novels, taken together, teach us that, as readers, we are bound together in contemplating the present, and moving towards the future. the rebuilding of sovereign indigenous community and engagement with the land in corvus and future home demonstrate deliberate, focused modes of learning to live with the land and its ecologies. this echoes how potawatomi scholar-activist kyle powys whyte argues, for real-world relationships with the natural world, that conrad scott “changing landscapes” 27 “indigenous conservationists and restorationists tend to focus on sustaining particular plants and animals whose lives are entangled locally—and often over many generations—in ecological, cultural, and economic relationships with human societies and other nonhuman species” (“our ancestors” 207). today’s interconnections with the land and waters are often complicated by concerning ecological rifts and absences, but an emphasis on landscape-based traces relatable to the present day allows writers of ecocritical dystopias to further speculate about the availability and viability of both living spaces and resources. in its role of imagining ecological, geographical, cultural, and other shifts from the time of modern society, the ecocritical dystopian body of fiction enriches contemplations about the future and ponders why current social undertakings matter in grave ways. these narratives ask the world to carry forward community-making into the real-world in opposition to things like hyper-extractive invasions of natural spaces in search for more and more resources. the ecocritical dystopia, as seen through narratives like johnson’s corvus and erdrich’s future home, asks us to contemplate seriously and carefully what our future real-world places will look like, and how we will interact with them and with each other. it asks us whether we can only expect the emergence of bad places and deplorable social conditions, or whether we can perhaps work towards a reality formed by more positive communal imaginings and practical engagements with each other, as well as the lands, waters, and other non-human persons with whom we co-inhabit the world. acknowledgements an earlier version of this article won the science fiction research association’s 2019 student paper award (http://www.sfra.org/student-paper-award) for presentation at transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 28 the “facing the future, facing the past: colonialism, indigeneity, and sf” conference. thank you to many colleagues for their discussions about “ecocritical dystopianism” both before and since, as well as to those and others for their thoughts on addressing indigenous sf literature. notes 1 here i do not mean the notorious wet’suwet’en matrilineal coalition, which was formed by the colonial government alongside industry to undermine negotiations with hereditary governance (turner). 2 the water protectors and extended community at standing rock demonstrated an understanding that everyone is affected. this was the message when madonna thunder hawk (oohenumpa/cheyenne river sioux) travelled from the south dakota camp to talk with the 2016 under western skies conference attendees, who had gathered to weigh in on “water” from various angles (thunder hawk). audra mitchell notes that such relationships should be reciprocal, though; as kyle powys whyte catalogues, “some allies of the standing rock sioux tribe in the resistance against the dakota access pipeline participated vigorously in the tribe’s ceremonial and direct actions. yet they do not participate on an everyday basis to undermine educational, economic, legal and cultural conditions that made it possible in the first place for the tribe to even be in the proximity of the dakota access and other pipelines” (“indigenous science (fiction)” 237). 3 consultation, permission, and inclusion are, of course, essential here; as kimberly r. marion suiseeya and laura zanotti have pointed out, indigenous peoples have markedly been made invisible in “contributions to global environmental governance” and global climate discussions. 4 to date, the “ecocritical dystopia” concept first appeared in my article “‘everything change’: ecocritical dystopianism and climate fiction,” which was published as part of paradoxa’s 2019-2020 special issue on climate fictions, edited by alison sperling. the term also appears in my chapter “post-anthropocenic undying futures: the ecocritical dystopian posthuman in lai’s the tiger flu and bacigalupi’s ‘the people of sand and slag’” as a part of editor simon bacon’s the anthropocene and the undead (2022). i further theorize “ecocritical dystopianism” in my ph.d. dissertation, “here, at the end: contemporary north american ecocritical dystopian fiction” (2019). conrad scott “changing landscapes” 29 5 johnson is of cree and swedish descent, and erdrich is an enrolled member of the turtle mountain band of chippewa indians (anishinaabe). 6 ildney cavalcanti, raffaella baccolini, and lyman tower sargent also notably contributed to an understanding of the “critical dystopia.” 7 though gibson lake and the gibson river exist in the real world near the township of georgian bay (“gibson lake”), rice’s city of gibson does not. 8 a sense of the dystopian now certainly fits with how brett josef grubisic, gisèle m. baxter, and tara lee suggest that contemporary dystopian texts feature the “ends of water, oil, food, capitalism, empires, stable climates, ways of life, non-human species, [or] entire human civilizations” (11). 9 elsewhere, nixon refers to the “environmentalism of the poor,” following joan martínez alier and ramachandra guha; see also isabelle anguelovski and joan martínez alier on a revisiting of this terminology with more contemporary circumstances and “glocal” movements. 10 contra amitav ghosh (great derangement 72), see shelley streeby (5). 11 heather davis and zoe todd’s interventional work into the process of the anthropocene working group’s discussions supports placing a “1610” (763) anthropocenic “‘golden spike’” (762) in terms of colonialism; earlier, simon l. lewis and mark a. maslin also suggest a 1610, “post-1492” “‘orbis spike’” (175). given this, perhaps a more useful term than the “anthropocene” could be the “plantationocene” (haraway), since it involves the ongoing effects of colonialism, and thus how “plantation logics organize modern economies, environments, bodies, and social relations” (perry and hopes). however, while whyte agrees that “‘anthropogenic climate change’ or ‘the anthropocene’… are not precise enough terms for many indigenous peoples” because of the unequal implications and effects of “colonialism, capitalism and industrialization” (“indigenous climate change studies” 159), he asserts that “anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is an intensification of environmental change imposed on indigenous peoples by colonialism” (153), and instead offers “indigenous climate change studies” as “a field that opens up [indigenous] interpretations of [their] own histories and futurities, with the goal of supporting indigenous capacities to address climate change and the continuance of flourishing future generations” (160). whyte later contends that “[s]ome indigenous peoples… offer the idea that [they] confront climate change having already passed through environmental and climate crises arising from the impacts of colonialism” (“indigenous science (fiction)” 226); more importantly, he argues against situating indigenous experiences “in some time period like the holocene or anthropocene” (237). part of this argument against prioritizing concepts like the anthropocene or even transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 30 climate change over other factors involves how “indigenous perspectives on mobility support an understanding of colonialism itself as a major cause of what today is understood as ‘climate’ resettlement” (whyte et al. 320). 12 the key, here, appears to be the ability to continue storytelling, since gerald vizenor (minnesota chippewa/white earth) teaches us that indigenous “survivance is an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories, not a mere reaction, however pertinent” (“aesthetics” 1). 13 one example is the fictionalized smoke river area. 14 note that i do not refer to these as “climate fictions”; see the special issue critiquing this generic terminology in paradoxa number 31, edited by alison sperling. 15 the lake cedar mentions (see above) is likely either lake minnetonka or lake harriet, since cedar says the “house where [she] grew up” is in “a pleasant part of minneapolis near a wide green lake invaded by quagga mussels and purple loosestrife” (53)— though the lake is never actually named in the book. 16 on “september 8[th],” the father of cedar’s child, phil, comes home and says that there’s a new “‘church government’” called “‘the church of the new constitution’” (108). 17 they are not reclaiming “‘the whole top half of the state, or pembina, ontario, manitoba, or michigan’” (214). 18 that is, the sign “reads future home of the living god” (13). 19 however, corvus was published the same year as paolo bacigalupi’s 2015 the water knife, with its armed tension over water resources between southwestern states and other interests in an extension of the recent mega-drought (meyer, “mega-drought”)— a mostly non-indigenous commentary on near-future freshwater scarcities, though bacigalupi underscores the action of his narrative with a document signed between the bureau of indian affairs and the pima (the akimel o’odham people), a river people whose cultural ancestors, the hohokam, had mastered the agricultural practice of canal irrigation. 20 in marrow thieves, the polar ice caps’ “melt [then] put[s] most of the northlands under water” (25), creating part of the fundamental backdrop for dimaline’s narrative. 21 george’s crash is prompted by a curious, oddly-directed storm that passes from east to west (72-75). 22 this camp is said to be near one long lake pass (77, 80), which is “at the end of a very long narrow lake that filled the mountain valley floor for miles north of two bears” (80), and “west… straight as the crow flies” of “what remained of” edmonton “after the oil had run out” (107). it is highly possible that long lake is therefore kinbasket lake in the canadian rockies. conrad scott “changing landscapes” 31 23 such solutions are not only the realm of fiction—which is also why ecocritical dystopianism’s relationship with realism is so potent—but also interconnect with real world examples, such as the yurok nation and its people’s revitalization of the klamath river as a means of self-healing (mozingo). 24 anishinaabe academic and writer niigaanwewidam james sinclair (st. peter’s/little peguis) generously shared this cultural history and worldview during his keynote address to the 2016 under western skies conference on “water,” while speaking of the importance of “the everyday throughout turtle island.” works cited alexie, sherman. “distances.” dillon, walking the clouds, pp. 144-48. anguelovski, isabelle, and joan martínez alier. “the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ revisited: territory and place in disconnected glocal struggles.” ecological economics, vol. 102, 2014, pp. 167-76, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.04.005. atleo, e. richard (umeek). principles of tsawalk: an indigenous approach to global crisis. u of british columbia p, 2011. atwood, margaret. the handmaid’s tale. knopf, 2006. baccolini, raffaella. “gender and genre in the feminist critical dystopias of katharine burdekin, margaret atwood, and octavia e. butler.” future females, the next generation: new voices and velocities in feminist science fiction criticism, edited by marleen s. barr, rowman and littlefield, 2000, pp. 13-34. ---, and thomas moylan. “dystopia and histories.” introduction. dark horizons: science fiction and the dystopian imagination, edited by raffaella baccolini and thomas moylan, routledge, 2003, pp. 1-12. bacigalupi, paolo. the water knife. penguin random house, 2015. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 32 canavan, gerry. “the suvin event.” metamorphoses of science fiction: on the poetics and history of a literary genre, by darko suvin, edited by gerry canavan, peter lang, 2016, pp. xi-xxxvi. canavan, gerry, and andrew hageman. “global weirding.” introduction. paradoxa, vol. 28, 2016, pp. 7-13, http://paradoxa.com/volumes/28/introduction. cariou, warren, and isabelle st-amand. “environmental ethics through changing landscapes: indigenous activism and literary arts.” introduction. canadian review of comparative literature / revue canadienne de littérature comparée, vol. 44, no. 1, 2017, pp. 7-24. cavalcanti, ildney de fatima souza. “articulating the elsewhere: utopia in contemporary feminist dystopias.” diss. university of strathclyde, 1999. ---. “the writing of utopia and the feminist critical dystopia: suzy mckee charnas’s holdfast series.” dark horizons: science fiction and the dystopian imagination, edited by raffaella baccolini and thomas moylan, routledge, 2003, pp. 47-67. davis, heather, and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international journal for critical geographies, 2017, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 761-780, https://acmejournal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1539/1303. dillon, grace l. “indigenous futurisms, bimaashi 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julia d. gibson. “indigenous mobility traditions, colonialism, and the anthropocene.” mobilities, 2019, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 319– 335, https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2019.1611015. microsoft word schweningerfinal.docx transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 110 nádleeh and the river: third gender and interdependences in sidney freeland’s film drunktown’s finest lee schweninger in a late scene in sidney freeland’s 2014 film drunktown’s finest, the family elder and medicine man, harmon john (richard ray whitman), sits down with his adult, transgender grandchild felixia (carmen moore) to tell a navajo story about the cultural importance of nádleeh. “a long time ago,” he begins, “all the navajos lived alongside the great river, the men, the women, and the nádleeh [which a subtitle translates as “third gender”].” after arguing about who was more important, men or women, they decided maybe they were better off without each other. the men rafted across the great river, and they took the nádleeh with them. for a while everything was fine. then the men began to miss their wives and children, but they were too proud to go back so they sent the nádleeh back to check on things, and they returned with the message that things weren’t so well with the women and that they missed the men and that they had no one to hunt. it became apparent both sides needed each other the men needed the women and the women in turn needed the men, and they both needed the nádleeh. to this day we carry this lesson, this balance. (minutes 79-81) harmon john leaves undefined what he intends with the word nádleeh, yet the viewer is left to assume that his grandchild, felixia is nádleeh. more than that, the viewer does not get. the nádleeh story, though it comes well into the film (minutes 79-81 of a 90minute film), suggests an important theme running throughout—that of the lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 111 fundamental and inherent need for a place for the nádleeh in navajo life and culture. and, given that the story does come late in the film, the viewer, while watching in the present moment, must look back mentally though what has just been seen in order to reconcile harmon john’s account of nádleeh and the river in the context of felixia’s experiences to which that viewer has just been witness. in that context, this essay delineates the ways in which drunktown’s finest challenges heteronormative culture, on the reservation and in the border town, as it depicts and makes visible a range of views of the realities of navajo people’s experiences, including experiences centered on, but not limited to, issues of gender identity and politics. one of the central realities is the interrelatedness of different characters. before analyzing the film’s three interwoven plots, the essay contextualizes aspects of gender politics as it might play out in the film. although the film glosses nádleeh (with a subtitle) as “third gender,” that gloss might not be as specific as it could be or perhaps as specific as is necessary. according to wesley thomas, writing in a different context, felixia may well be more appropriately associated with what he terms the “feminine-male” a “fifth gender,” as distinct, for example, from the masculine-female gender, that is “female bodied nádleeh/masculine females.” (161). in her study “navajo worldview and nádleehi,” carolyn epple quotes one of her informants in the context of categories and definitions: “p.k.: in terms of types of queers, everyone is different here. time and events and classification and categories, that’s how you anglos try to put everything. you get so caught up, you don’t see people as humans responding to situations” (178). furthermore, referring to her informants, epple writes that “while nádleehí, as an identity, was acknowledged, the particulars of the identity remain variable… how then to define nádleehí? presently, it would appear to be a nearly impossible task. western epistemologies do not accommodate persons who are both herself and himself as well transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 112 as everything else” (184). furthermore, according to epple, navajo culture understands everything in the universe as process, and thus “inseparability deals with the interconnectedness of the universe” and “individuals are also transformed into those processes” (176). one of epple’s informants declares that “the individual is inseparable from the air by which she or he survives or the ground on which she or he lives” (176). because of the fact of this inseparability and this idea of process, epple maintains, “we must adopt a different way of perceiving the universe, one that is processual, interconnected, and dynamic” (184). one option epple offers, based on one of the informants, is that we see nádleehi “‘as humans responding to situations,’ that is, in terms of their interconnectedness” (184). alternatively, however, one might ask how important “labels” might be in an effort to more fully understand the implications of the filmic presentation of felixia and of the challenges a transgender person faces. that is, in other words, how does the film portray the nádleeh character of felixia? director sydney freeland herself skirts the issue of labels. when, in an interview with lauren wissot for filmmaker magazine, she was asked about her character felixia, freeman reflected that labels are tricky. i am a member of both the native community and the lgbt community. however, my goal with this film was to not go into it with an agenda. i simply wanted to tell the best possible story i could tell. my thinking is, if i can get someone from new york city to relate to the plight of a navajo transsexual on an indian reservation, then that kind of negates the need for labels. (wissot np) despite this apparent feeling of ambivalence toward labels, however, in the same interview freeland acknowledges the importance of casting a trans person for the lead role, reflecting on the discovery and casting of felixia as extremely serendipitous: lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 113 for the role of felixia, it was very important that we cast someone who was transgendered. i’m very grateful to have met carmen moore, who is both trans and navajo… [s]he brought a depth and authenticity to the character that very few people would have been able to. (wissot np). cherokee scholar qwo-li driskill offers an array of ways to understand some terminology related to nádleeh (though that particular word does not come up in the essay itself): the term “two-spirit” is a word that resists colonial definitions of who we are. it is an expression of our sexual and gender identities as sovereign from those of white glbt movements. the coinage of the word was never meant to create a monolithic understanding of the array of native traditions regarding what dominant european and euromerican traditions call “alternative” genders and sexualities. the term came into use… as a means to resist the use of the word “berdache,” and also as a way to talk about our sexualities and genders from within tribal contexts in english… the process of translating two-spiritness with terms in white communities becomes very complex. (2004, 52) driskill suggests that certain terms might not suffice—queer, transgender, gay, for instance—and, in the context of colonialism, makes reference to “people with extraordinary genders and sexualities.” as native people, writes driskill, “our erotic lives and identities have been colonized along with our homelands” (2004, 82). this linking and exposing of the interconnections between colonization, the land, and erotic lives and identities help viewers of a film like drunktown’s finest see the same connections presented cinematically. indeed, i argue here that these are central issues and questions that the film raises: what is the place of nádleeh on and off the homeland and what are the interdependencies between nádleeh and the hetereosexual characters in the context of settler cultural and political colonization? transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 114 an awareness of navajo recognition of an interdependence is expressed succinctly in the documentary two spirits (2010), a film that documents the hate-crime murder of fred martinez. as gabriel estrada points out, the director lydia nibley documents the murder and thereby “affirms his/her navajo sense of being a two-spirit ‘effeminate male;' or nádleeh” (estrada 168). the documentary, like drunktown’s finest, includes a version of the navajo story of the nadleeh and the river: “it was the nadleeh, it was the more effeminate less masculine men, that brought the sexes together, and that because of the nadleeh, our people survived. if it wasn’t for the nadhleehs, we wouldn’t be the people we are today” (qtd in estrada 173). as diné writer carrie house writes, “we are significant balancing factors in the cosmos and world we live in” (qtd. in driskil 2011, 217). drunktown’s finest tells the stories of three navajo people on and off the reservation, in and around the new mexican town of gallup, named dry lake in the film. one plot involves the character of sick boy (jeremiah bitusui), a young navajo man who is on the verge of joining the u.s. army in order to support his family, but who, because he cannot keep himself out of jail, is ultimately denied admittance by his recruiter. after hitting a police officer, then later pummeling his mother’s boyfriend, he promises his pregnant partner that he will change. a second plot involves nizhoni (morningstar angeline), a soon-to-be eighteen-year-old navajo woman who was adopted as a child by a white couple following the death of her parents in a car wreck. she is home in dry lake for the summer from michigan where she has been in boarding school and to where she is to return to start college. in the meantime, she is doing community service and actively seeking—without her adoptive parent’s knowledge or approval—the family of her birth parents, or “real” parents as she refers to them. a third plot tells the story of felixia, the nádleeh grandchild of harmon and ruth john (toni c. oliver), living with them on the reservation just outside of dry lake. lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 115 felixia is competing in a “women of the navajo” calendar competition (as a woman) and is having sex for pay with different men, men responding to the facebook page, sexy tranny felixxxia. in the course of the film, felixia receives an offer from a man in new york, and the decision to leave the reservation and meet him there is what prompts harmon john’s telling the story of the nádleeh and the river, reminding his grandchild that there will always be a welcoming home for her on the reservation with him and ruth. having established contexts for each of these three characters in the opening sequences, the film follows them on and off the reservation as they move toward what interactions they do have among one another. as will be developed below, felixia and nizhoni discover that they are cousins, their mothers having been sisters; and felixia and sick boy come together with each other at a party. these encounters only hint at the interconnections, the interdependences that the film implies, that all of the characters are subject to the same forces and cultural impositions of settler-colonialism. in this context, andrea smith’s argument that practitioners of queer studies, as they move “past simple identity politics to interrogate the logics of heteronormativity,” “have the task to uncover and analyze the logics of settler colonialism as they affect all areas of life” (43, 61). similarly, chris finley argues for the importance of a “critical theory of biopower” because it has the potential to expose “the colonial violence of discourse on native nonheteronormativity being used to justify native genocide and the disappearance’ of native people” (finley 40). by looking at representations of the intersections of native and non-native cultures in drunktown’s finest, we can gain a sense of that tendency toward and resistance of that disappearance. one can argue that the director makes erotics a way to understand the “dynamics of indigeneity.” freeland can be said to “foreground interdependence and vulnerability as positive principles of peoplehood" (rifkin 35). viewing the film in the transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 116 contexts of gender fluidity and structures of kinship helps clarify the interrelatedness of all three of the (only) apparently disparate plots as it simultaneously helps the viewer to rethink (colonial culture’s) rigid gender boundaries. freeman exposes those rigid, heterosexist boundaries, perhaps most obviously, through the character sick boy. sick boy, having internalized many settler-colonial attitudes, is repulsed in stereotypical ways by anything that is not clearly heteronormative. it is thus instructive to look at how this masculine, heterosexual gender norming has been constructed. the internalization of extra-indigenous norms is rampant throughout native north america. according to driskill, for example, “colonized sexuality is one in which we have internalized the sexual values of dominant culture. the invaders continue to enforce the idea that sexuality and non-dichotomous genders are a sin, recreating sexuality as illicit, shocking, shameful, and removed from any positive spiritual context” (2004, 54). the viewer learns of sick boy’s disinterest or lack of interest in the biological life of his little sister (over whom he has legal guardianship) when his partner angela (elizabeth frances) tells him that the young girl is to prepare for her puberty ceremony. sick boy: why is max wearing jewelry? angela: we’re going to get a medicine man. he’s going to do a puberty ceremony on her. sick boy: what? when did this happen? angela: i would have told you if you weren’t so busy running around punching cops. sick boy: i’m just saying, can’t this just wait until i get out of basic. angela: no. no, she just had her first period. it has to happen within four days of that. sick boy: whoa. way too much information. (minutes 14-15) (my emphasis). lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 117 this early exchange clearly demonstrates that sick boy, though her guardian, wants nothing to do with any knowledge of the young woman’s biological life. he lets his partner take complete responsibility. this brief scene early in the film also prepares the viewer for sick boy’s response to other issues of sexuality. at a grocery store sick boy meets felixia, buying supplies for a party at a friend’s house. he offers to drive her from the store to the party; once there, felixia convinces him to stay for one drink, then two. in this sequence, as in others throughout the film, freeland makes the choice to offer the viewer very stereotypical “male-gaze” shots of felicia, emphasizing legs, hips, and breast cleavage. the director’s shotreverse-shot choices here offer the viewer a clear sense of how sick boy is seeing, felixia. the filmography in this context exposes the cliché of the heterosexual male gaze at the same time it identifies sick boy’s objectification of felixia as female and as a sexual object. as this objectification is going on, freeland uses dialogue to expose sick boy’s heterosexism and homophobia. once felixia has accepted his offer of a ride and gotten into the car, he asks “where’re we going?” felixia: my friend, her name is tracey? sick boy: i know her. she hangs out with that faggot, eugene, right? (minute 30) felixia seems to grudgingly accept sick boy’s homophobia and chauvinism; that is, she lets him slide. but filmically the emphasis is on his gender prejudice in that the film exposes how out of place and inappropriate his attitudes are: “ahh . . . yeah,” felixia responds, hesitantly, and adds, with a sarcasm totally lost on sick boy, “that’s funny.” the viewer has been prepared to disapprove of sick boy’s attitude in that there has been an earlier scene which shows felixia and eugene to be very good friends. eugene prepares a fake id for her, making the change from felix to felixia, opens his home and use of his computer for her, and proffers advice as a way to offer protection from disappointment and/or abuse. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 118 these two moments in the film—sick boy’s not wanting to hear about or even know about his sister’s sexual maturity and his exposing his heterosexism—set the viewer up for his response to felixia’s physical body. the film indicates his initial physical attraction, as mentioned, with several filmic “male-gaze” shots of legs, hips, and cleavage. felixia leads him into a bedroom, and they start kissing, but when he puts his hand between felixia’s legs, he is shocked. he springs back and runs from the house. in these ways, then, the film meticulously sets up sick boy as one who has internalized many of the settler-colonists’ attitudes, prejudices, and chauvinistic behaviors. he is in ways a stereotypical, almost clichéd heterosexual man, gay-bashing, hitting on felixia (whom he initially assumes to be a heterosexual woman) and being repulsed when he discovers she is not the “woman” he expected, all while his pregnant partner waits for him at home. at the same time the film shows him as homophobic and unaccepting of difference, however, it does depict him as compassionate in another context. in one brief scene he is seen sincerely helping his sister max (magdalena begay) learn navajo words, and again when he attempts to protect his six-year-old (half) brother from the child’s abusive father. in short, his character is not black and white; sick boy does have some redeeming qualities despite his having internalized the male-heterosexual norms of settler culture. and ultimately, as we will discuss below, the film suggests he might be on the road to healing. in the book the erotics of sovereignty, mark rifkin explores “the ways histories of settler dispossession, exploitation, and attempted genocide and their ongoing effects and current trajectories are embedded in the dynamics of everyday life” (2). though rifkin is concerned with written texts, one can certainly ask the same questions of film. in what ways can drunktown’s finest be seen to “theorize dynamics of indigenous sociality and spatiality that are not recognized as sovereignty within the administrative grid that shapes the meaning of self-determination under settler rule” lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 119 (4)? rifkin sees erotics as “a way of exploring the contours and dynamics of indigeneity,” addressing works that “foreground interdependence and vulnerability as positive principles of peoplehood” (rifkin 35). and as noted above, rifkin argues that part of the settler-colonists’ enterprise has been and continues to be the erasure of native cultures and people. we can see this idea of erasure as freeland presents it in the character of nizhoni. another of the film’s three protagonists is nizhoni, the navajo woman whose non-indian, adoptive parents have kept her from her birth-family, even hiding from her the letters and cards the grandparents have written and sent over the years. nizhoni’s adoptive parents justify this deceit by mouthing some platitudes about the right time to tell a child about such things. “there were studies,” begins her father, phillip smiles (mark silversten), “that said that adopted children could be traumatized if they were reintroduced to their biological parents” (minute 73). here nizhoni cuts him off. keeping the correspondence from their daughter and keeping even the very existence of her grandparents from her, they effectively attempt to erase her past and her people. this attempt at erasure is, of course, a centuries-long effort by the settler colonizers. as noted above, the nizhoni plot line concerns her searching for the family of her birth parents. she undertakes this search, in part, as a form of survival. with the specifics of a young navajo woman searching the reservation for her biological family, this plot element provides the viewer a glimpse of the on-going effects of settler colonization of native america generally. in fulfilling her work of volunteer hours for her college scholarship, nizhoni enters the reservation with a road-kill pick up crew. because they come across a motorist who has killed a horse and crashed her car, nizhoni’s mother, phoebe smiles (debrianna mansini), drives out from town to pick up transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 120 her daughter. phoebe’s first words are these: “you shouldn’t be way out here on the reservation.” as the two of them sit in the hermetically sealed car, nizhoni confesses to searching for her birth family and says that she thought that if she could find them it would give her some sort of closure. when nizhoni’s mother asks her why she is searching for her biological family, the young woman responds honestly: “because i actually thought it would help. i’ve had problems sleeping since before i can remember. and you say that it’s all related to the car crash that killed my parents. i simply thought that if i met my real family, it would give me—i don’t know—closure” (minute 43). a potential underlying metaphor here is that a young native woman is attempting to come to terms with a past that has been riddled with the destructive forces of racism, colonization, and the continuing occupation of native lands by settlers and settler culture. the mother’s response characterizes this colonial attitude: nizhoni, i am simply trying to protect you. i knew your family. i knew the world they came from, and—you know what?—if i lived under the conditions they did i probably would have drank [sic] myself to death too. you have an opportunity that most people here will never have: you’re going to college. you have to keep looking ahead” (minute 44). phoebe’s comments are instructive here. note the use of the past tense, for instance, as if like her parents, anything to do with nizhoni’s past is just that, past, dead and gone. by this logic, the daughter’s obligation to herself and certainly to her adoptive parents is that she look forward, and forward in this context means away from her biological family, away from her ancestral roots, away from native america. the moment is emphasized filmically with the mother’s closing of the car window: as the viewer hears the sound of the power window closing, the camera focuses on nizhoni with a close up of her face. filmically, too then, the moment suggests that the young lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 121 woman is being locked in and closed off from her biological or ancestral roots. the underlying implication is that there is in fact no past to look back to. the mother’s imperative is in itself a form of erasure. the very fact of this film by a native filmmaker, however, disproves phoebe’s narrative, emphatically denies it, by insisting on the native presence. pausing on this scene is important in that it is suggestive of how the filmmaker in one brief scene, located precisely in the center of the film, is portraying the forms of repression and attempt of erasure imposed by the settler culture, embodied by phoebe smiles, the non-indian, upper-middle class, adoptive mother. although this scene is not explicitly about gender politics within the film, a telling moment in the context of colonial imbalance is when nizhoni uses the cliché of heterosexuality in a lie to her mother to return to the reservation. the very day after the crash and her mother’s lecture, nizhoni returns, still in search of the family of her deceased birth parents. she continues her search knowingly against her adoptive mother’s wishes, so when the mother calls, nizhoni offers a lie that she knows her mother will accept unquestioningly: “i’m fine. i’m just… i’m at the mall. there’s this really cute guy at orange julius” (minute 57). the implication, of course, is that a young girl meeting a cute guy at the mall is completely within the hetero-normative and thus something the mother will accept unquestioningly. the mother, as the viewer knows by this point, has racist and ignorant attitudes toward the navajos on the reservation; she assumes they are all somehow dangerous and drunks. nizhoni herself has imbibed some of that racism, telling the woman at the placement office (for her community service) that it is not safe out there: youth works agent: you’ve done all your work in the city. for some reason, you haven’t done anything on the reservation. why? nizhoni: well, it’s dangerous. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 122 youth works agent: who told you that? nizhoni: my mom. (minute 12) the exchange is worth noting in this context because it is a clear demonstration of the settler’s racist and unfounded attitude toward the navajos, and such attitudes can be seen as indicative of others, especially when such attitudes are held by a wealthy, married, heterosexual, white woman, who is an m.d. by profession. from such a position of social and economic power, she embodies these attitudes and passes them on to her adopted navajo daughter. this is the mother who will later in the film defend her keeping knowledge of her grandparents from nizhoni by exclaiming, “do you think i wanted you to hang out in some shack with some drunk alcoholic relatives out on the reservation?” (minute 74) at the point in the film when harmon tells felixia the story of the nádleeh and the river, the viewer has already witnessed the struggle for acceptance and can thus appreciate felixia’s situation and the importance of the grandfather’s support. before turning to the implications of some of those struggles, it might be informative to acknowledge felixia’s own gender identity. felixia is surrounded by a culture that acknowledges essentially only two sexes and consequently only two genders. as jennifer nez denetdale argues in another context, even in navajoland there are only the two options: “navajo leaders, who are primarily men, reproduce navajo nationalist ideology to reinscribe gender roles based on western concepts even as they claim that they operate under traditional navajo philosophy” (2006, 9). felixia identifies as female. she takes the feminine form of the name—felixia rather than felix—on the new (fake) driver’s license and competes in a “women of the navajo” calendar competition. her good friend eugene calls her “girl”; and taped to the bedroom wall there are many photos of women models with whom felixia seems to identify, photos lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 123 that she rips down after the disappointment of her exposure as trans at the calendar competition. another indication of felixia’s identifying as female is that on the morning of her departure, she comes into the kitchen where ruth (the grandmother) is making frybread. felixia takes some dough into her hands and begins preparing it for the frying pan, expertly enough, evidently, for the process meets with ruth’s approval. the viewer sees and acknowledges this approval via filmic convention: there is a cut to ruth’s face, a closeup showing her smile. the moment is significant, given the navajo association of gender and gender roles. according to will roscoe, “the term nádleehi was used to refer to both female and male berdaches… male nádleehi specialized in the equally prestigious women’s activities of farming, herding sheep, gathering food resources, weaving knitting, baskets… (41). and what the film does not show is a moment when felixia participates in any of the conventionally masculine roles, such as chopping wood—an exercise, whose associations are clearly male gendered. indeed, the film stresses this association on multiple occasions. “this wood isn’t going to chop itself,” harmon says at one point in felixia’s presence. although felixia identifies as female, she characterizes herself on her website as trans: “sexy tranny felixxxia.” and several sequences in the film serve to highlight the difficulties felixia as nádleeh has with her own generation in the struggle for acceptance. felixia’s encounter with sick boy as noted above is perhaps the most jarring. but other sequences also depict felixia’s difficulties in seeking acceptance. two former friends or classmates turn against her, for example, based solely on her sexual identity. in a brief early scene she sees an old friend in a casino, and he essentially snubs her by walking out as soon as she tries to start a conversation with him. in another sequence, as she’s preparing for the swimsuit competition as part of her calendar audition, another contestant, an old acquaintance from school, shares her transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 124 drink which has been spiked with “virile grow” tablets. during the photo shoot, felixia gets a very visible erection and runs off the stage. implicit in this instance is the understanding that felixia would not be welcome or eligible to compete if the fact of her being nádleeh were known by the selection committee—even though felixia can be seen to qualify based on the criteria that seem to matter: female appearance (even in bathing suit competition), knowledge of navajo language, and overall physical attractiveness. once exposed, as it were, however, she leaves the stage under the impression that the members of the selection committee for the “women of the navajo” calendar would not include a transgender contestant. felixia is evidently correct in that no one calls her back as she runs off. also frustrating for felixia are her encounters with men. as discussed above, sick boy rejects her outright. and the men who pay for sex treat her poorly: after she’s had sex with one man, for instance, he tries to short her twenty dollars then tells her to be gone by the time he’s out of the shower. according to wesley thomas, “navajo gays and lesbians identify with the euroamerican notion of sexual identity rather than with the navajo ideology of multiple genders. because of western schooling, extensive exposure to western culture, and the lapsed transmission of navajo tradition, the traditional role of both male-bodied nadleeh/feminine males and female-bodied nadleeh/masculine females is not widely known by young navajos who would fit into these categories.” (162). although felixia does not actually necessarily fit such categories either, thomas’s argument is applicable here in that it concerns a younger generation of navajos. in other words, if the characters seen to interact with felixia on a daily basis, those who knew/know this person as felix, had a fuller understanding of or appreciation for navajo culture and history, they would very likely have a more tolerant attitude toward their former friend. lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 125 when asked about the generational response to navajo notions of multiple genders, director sidney freeland has this to say: i can only speak to my own experiences on this. the grandma and grandpa characters represent the more traditional aspects of navajo culture. and one of those aspects includes the concept of 3rd and 4th genders. the mindset on the reservation tends to be more conservative, but because this is part of the culture, it made perfect sense that they would be accepting of felixia. (wissot np) even those who are fully accepting of felixia warn her about the dangers of auditioning for the “women of the navajo” calendar. when her grandmother lets slip that she is auditioning, her grandfather harmon says “are they okay with you auditioning?” and felixia responds, “just says you gotta be between 16 and 25.” harmon then gives an account of his praying by mistake to an airplane he mistook for venus, the morning star, concluding aphoristically, “what we look for and what we get aren’t always the same thing.” (minute 10). felixia’s friend eugene, who has just set her up with a fake id, also offers a warning about auditioning, saying, “girl, can you be a little more realistic?” felixia: what’s that supposed to mean? eugene: i’m sorry if i sound a little bitchy… but he then changes his mind and say, “you know what? give ‘em hell at the audition” (minute 17). during this exchange eugene removes his sunglasses, and felixia and the viewer see his black eye. the implication is that he has been physically abused because of his sexual identity. when felixia asks what happened, he responds “you do not want to know.” and it is at this moment that he says “give ‘em hell.” according to a brief response to the film, navajo scholar jennifer nez denetdale acknowledges that “all three characters’ life stories give glimpses of the violence that navajo women transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 126 experience, which largely continues to go unaddressed and unacknowledged. yet, even less understood or acknowledged is the amount of violence that navajo lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) people experience, both off and on the navajo nation” (119). the film does address these issues and makes clear that this sort of homophobic violence applies to eugene as well. as instances from the plot demonstrate, felixia is very definitely ostracized from inside and outside her own community. sick boy, the young man she knows in the casino, the calendar contestant, all demonstrate the difficulties felixia faces by venturing outside the preand proscribed sexual norms of her community, even her own navajo community. this bias can perhaps be seen to extend beyond the film itself. that is, one reviewer infers that the money felixia makes from sex work must be for a sex-change operation: “we see her engage in prostitution—no doubt to pay for her gender reassignment surgery—but we're left to assume this” (mcdavid, np). there is nothing in the text of the film, verbally, visually, or otherwise, to suggest that felixia has a sex reassignment operation in mind. does the reviewer’s inference itself, given that there is no suggestion in the text of the film, suggest a tendency toward heteronormativity? jennifer nez denetdale argues that “a narrative like drunk town’s finest [sic] ignores the realities of navajo people’s experiences in border towns like gallup, thereby making invisible and sustaining injustices, hatred, and discrimination” (2016, 119). one must grant that despite its title and sick boy’s drinking, the film pays little attention to the issue of border-town alcohol abuse. nor does the film pay much attention to violent crime including sexual abuse. its focus is elsewhere. as freeland relates in an interview with high country news: “i want to tell a story about the reservation, but i don’t want it to be tragic. i don’t want to have a tragic ending… i didn’t want to tell a story where everybody lived happily ever after, because that would lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 127 also be disingenuous and would gloss over a lot of the issues that are going on back home. so it was sort of like finding this middle ground—this middle ground that wasn’t quite tragic, but wasn’t quite happily ever after” (ahtone np). of course it is finally up to the viewer to decide how successful the director has been, but, clearly, the film does make visible some of the realities of navajo people’s experiences. by the end of the film, both felixia and nizhoni are to leave the reservation. nizhoni is returning to michigan, but not before she has reconnected with her grandparents, the parents of her birth mother and with her cousin felixia. felixia too is leaving the reservation. the immediate reason for the departure is to join a man in new york, who identifies himself as daddy warbucks and who has sent a plane ticket, as promised: “come out one week. i’ll pay you well. could be longer if we have chemistry” (minute 53). she has met her cousin and has, in a sense, reconciled with sick boy. felixia’s grandfather has shared with her the account of nádleeh, explaining the importance of acceptance and balance, and he has made sure she understands her family’s acceptance: “i know you’re… you’re struggling with acceptance. this world can be cold and hard on our people. but you must always remember wherever you go, whatever you choose to do, you will always have a home here, in this place” (minute 81). interestingly, when harmon states that the world can be hard on “our people,” he does not distinguish between nádleeh and navajos more generally. this fusion, fusion through the use of the first-person plural pronoun we, demonstrates not only total and unquestioning acceptance of nádleeh but also a repudiation of any culture or group of people (or individuals?) that is unaccepting. and where do these departures leave the viewer in the context of the issue of transgender, of nádleeh people in the navajo nation? the answer might be in the suggested interdependence of the three main characters at the points of departure. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 128 the idea of acceptance is certainly at play when felixia and nizhoni meet. nizhoni comes to the reservation on the morning of her departure, and ruth introduces the cousins. felixia asks “you mean like cousin cousins or navajo cousins?” (minute 86). this meeting is the intersection of their two plots and collides both quests: nizhoni’s search for her biological family and felixia’s for acceptance. in meeting nizhoni, felixia finds family and acceptance from outside, from off the reservation, as it were, through her cousin. in a sense, this meeting marks the bridging of an important gap between the unquestioning acceptance of ruth and harmon, and that of the larger community, represented by nizhoni. the film neither glosses over the complexities of different navajos’ responses to the idea and fact of transgender people nor suggests the future will be unquestionably smooth. nizhoni will return to michigan and have to figure out the place in her life of her birth family. and felixia will undoubtedly face obstacles in new york, but will know she always has a welcoming home. having brought nizhoni and felixia together, the film, in its final sequence, can turn to the apparent reconciliation of angela and sick boy. the shot-reverse-shot camera work shows the two of them looking at each other as sick boy begins the kinaalda ceremony run with his sister max. after starting to run, he pauses, looks back to angela, smiles, and then sets out running. angela watches. thus, the film shows sick boy perhaps on the road to healing. he is the one, after all, who has been totally unaccepting of felixia, and who even says when he first hears of his sister’s going through puberty: “too much information.” because of his lack of acceptance, the film declares that his is the character that must be addressed; this is the character most in need of learning acceptance. at the beginning of this final sequence, sick boy has been surprised to see felixia again, but his concern is not with the fact that felixia is nádleeh. no, his concern is that, as a married man soon to be a father, he was with felixia at all. this moment of recognition can be seen as filmic shorthand indicating a lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 129 form of acceptance on sick boy’s part. and felixia’s casual response, “we were both drunk. . . . this stays between you and me” demonstrates their interdependence (minute 74). sick boy has matured enough to accept felixia for the person she is and enough to acknowledge his earlier inappropriate response to her, filmically a mere nod of recognition on sick boy’s part. analogously, his participation in the kinaalda ceremony demonstrates his acceptance of responsibility toward his little sister. he runs with her. in addition to angela and ruth, the viewer can assume that nizhoni and felixia also watch the runners, and in this way they also participate in the ritual. whatever hints concerning the road ahead for these three characters, the final glimpses of each holds promise. that is to say, in a sense, the film ends where harmon john’s story about nádleeh ends, with the realization that “both sides needed each other: the men needed the women and the women in turn needed the men, and they both needed the nádleeh. to this day we carry this lesson, this balance. (minutes 79-81). works cited ahtone, tristan. “characters on the margins: an interview with sydney freeland. high country news. 10 june 2019. https://www.hcn.org/articles/tribal-affairscharacters-on-the-margins-an-interview-with-sydney-freeland denetdale, jennifer nez. “chairmen, presidents, and princesses: the navajo nation, gender, and the politics of tradition.” wicazo sa review 21.1. 2006. 9-28. ---. “no explanation, no resolution, and no answers”: border town violence and navajo resistance to settler colonialism.” wicazo sa review 31.1 (spring 2016): 111-131. transmotion vol 7, no 1 (2021) 130 driskill, qwo-li. “stolen from our bodies: first nations two-spirits/queers and the journey to a sovereign erotic.” studies in american indian literatures 16.2 (2004): 50-64. driskill, qwo-li, et al. sovereign erotics: a collection of two-spirit literature. tucson: u of arizona press, 2011. drunktown’s finest. 2014. indion entertainment group. dir. sydney freeland. epple, carolyn. "a navajo worldview and nádleehi: implications for western categories," in two-spirit people: native american gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality, eds sue-ellen jacobs, wesley thomas, and sabine lang. chicago: university of chicago press, 1997. 174-191. estrada, gabreil s. “two spirits, nádleeh, and lgbtq2 navajo gaze.” american indian culture and research journal 35:4 (2011):167-190. finley, chris. “decolonizing the queer native body (and recovering the native bulldyke).” in queer indigenous studies: critical interventions in theory, politics, and literature. eds. owo-li driskill, et al. tucson: u of arizona p, 2011. 31-42. mcdavid, jodi. review of drunktown’s finest. journal of religion and film. 18.1 ((2014): np. rifkin, mark. “the erotics of sovereignty.” in queer indigenous studies: critical interventions in theory, politics, and literature. eds. owo-li driskill, et al. tucson: u of arizona p, 2011. 172-189. ---. the erotics of sovereignty: queer native writing in the era of self-determination. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2012. roscoe, will. changing ones: third and fourth genders in native north america. new york: st. martin’s press, 1998. smith, andrea. “queer theory and native studies: the heteronormativity of settler colonialism.” in queer indigenous studies: critical interventions in theory, lee schweninger nádleeh and the river 131 politics, and literature. eds. owo-li driskill, et al. tucson: u of arizona p, 2011. 43-65. thomas, wesley. “navajo cultural constructions of gender and sexuality.” in twospirit people: native american gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality, eds sue-ellen jacobs, wesley thomas, and sabine lang. chicago: university of chicago press, 1997. 156-173. two spirits. 2010. dir. linda nibley. wissot, lauren. “director sydney freeland discusses drunktown’s finest.” filmmaker magazine. 23 january 2014. https://filmmakermagazine.com/83510-director-sydney-freeland-discusses-drunktownsfinest/#.x6bqp9pszpy microsoft word mishra_final.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 129 the crisis in metaphors: climate vocabularies in adivasi literatures ananya mishra kuni sikaka, arjun samad, dodhi kadraka, manisha dinde adivasi lives matter, a social media forum for young adivasi thinkers, shared these four names listed above, following recent arrests of climate activists in india (“young adivasi”). the forum extended their solidarity and raised their voices against the detainment of disha ravi. it remembered and recognised the contributions of young adivasi climate activists who have resisted industrial invasions and have been similarly arrested or incarcerated for demanding protection of their ecologies. adivasi voices on climate action remain largely marginalised, while adivasi communities have steered and sustained “this battle” for climate justice “for generations” (“young adivasi”) in the indian context. the forum’s timely reminder adds vigour to a global indigenous concern: that the current form of the climate crisis is largely anthropogenic, and to comprehend and repair the interface between humans and non-humans is paramount for a sustainable future, a point that has been consistently articulated by indigenous thinkers. métis scholar zoe todd claims precisely that the absence of indigenous voices in framing the crisis, while being the most vulnerable to its impact, “elide[s] decades of indigenous articulations and intellectual labour to render the climate a matter of common political concern” (todd 13). indigenous knowledge systems of the non-human that are based on the ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 130 essential co-existence of humans and non-humans, with lived practices that acknowledge “all our relations”, are overlooked. akash poyam, a koitur (gond) journalist and writer, articulates allied concerns for the absence of adivasi voices in the indian context. in an online panel discussion organized by indigenous studies discussion group (isdg), he said, “even though adivasis are said to be in the frontline of the crisis, their voices are not there in the discourse. it is an upper-caste dominated environmentalist discourse” (poyam, soreng, et al.). questions raised by poyam and adivasi lives matter reveal the position of adivasi voice in climate discourse which, as i consider in this paper, mirrors the precondition of adivasi voice in the humanities. as the perpetual subaltern in postcolonial literary studies, adivasis “[embody] the limits of representation as the limit horizon of modernity itself” (varma “representing” 103). adivasi voices are still accessed either through the “imperial copy”1 of ethnographical disciplines like folklore, or the subaltern in representational narratives.2 this is while a thriving movement towards an adivasi “self-governing literature” (wright, “the ancient library”)3 has been ongoing since the early twentieth century. the archived speeches of jaipal singh munda and the poetry of sushila samad are testaments to this history. the writings of bandana tete, alice ekka, ramdayal munda, and hansda sowvendra shekhar, the poetry and songs of jacinta kerketta, bhagban majhi, dambu praska and salu majhi, among many others, and the thriving archives of adivaani, adivasi resurgence and adivasi lives matter, voicing ongoing land dispossession and lived positions in contemporary india, command critical centring in the climate discourse as well as in postcolonial literary studies. this positioning cannot be limited to the area-specific context of south asian studies alone. adivasi voices challenge the global industrial complex, and their concerns echo those voiced by indigenous communities in settler colonial contexts (mining giant adani, for instance, impacts indigenous communities in india and australia). indigenous critical theory from settler colonial contexts that complicates or rejects the transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 131 postcolonial (corr, 187-202; tuck and yang, 1-40) critically positions the centrality of land for indigenous communities. accordingly, it re-directs discourse to understand the adivasi position within the postcolonial nation. it revisits adivasi demands for sovereignty as separate from its appropriations within indian nationalism and recognizes settler practices replicated by the hindu nationalist state. besides, foregrounding adivasi voices in transnational indigenous studies allows for a reading of “literary sovereignty” or “sovereignty of the imagination” in adivasi literature alongside those ideas envisioned and theorized by alexis wright, simon ortiz, and robert warrior.4 my use of the word “sovereignty” in this article is to evoke these essential linkages. by method and readership, this paper addresses comparative literary studies. however, given the composite forms of indigenous thought that interweave the literary and the historical, the paper is interdisciplinary, and hopes to present relevant questions across disciplinary boundaries. thus, it is divided into three sections. first, i discuss the position of adivasi voices in literary studies in relation to the wider problematic of the absence of indigenous voices while framing the climate crisis and the anthropocene.5 further, this section explores a literary methodology to recover early indigenous response to the crisis. rob nixon echoes a call for a return to metaphors, thus: “sometimes [metaphors are] just hibernating, only to stagger back to life, dazed and confused, blinking at the altered world that has roused them from their slumber” (“the swiftness”). i claim that indigenous literatures hold early warnings of the climate crisis in metaphors we do not yet centre in climate discourse. the second section examines the climatic processes (meteorological and anthropogenic) that have radically altered the climate of eastern india. although my focus is on the historical context of odisha (eastern india), i draw from a wider range of resources, given that these processes, and their consequences, are not limited to the present-day borders of odisha alone. accordingly, this paper claims that early warnings of a “crisis” were registered in the ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 132 recurrence of concerns around jal, jangal, jameen (linguistically translated as water, forests, land) from the late nineteenth century onwards. jal, jangal, jameen is a ubiquitous refrain in diverse adivasi movements. these vocabularies work as a “common organizing concept” (todd, 5-6) for adivasi concerns because they evoke a common climatic history. moreover, they encompass specific non-humans in the ecologies of jal, jangal, jameen interconnected with adivasi knowledge systems. the third section provides literary readings of adivasi songs emerging from the particular geography of southern odisha. focusing on particular ecologies of kashipur and niyamgiri, i examine the songs of kondh poet bhagban majhi (kashipur), and late dongria kondh poet dambu praska (niyamgiri). the two singers pay attention to local markers and traces in ecology to assess climate breakdown following industrial invasions by utkal alumina international limited (uail), aditya birla, and vedanta. i read how their literary metaphors serve as archives of interpretations of the climate crisis as already confronted in these geographies. i. the crisis in metaphors in the great derangement: climate change and the unthinkable, amitav ghosh writes: “it was exactly the period in which human activity was changing the earth’s atmosphere that the literary imagination became radically centred on the human” (66). there was a general “turning away” from the “presence and proximity of nonhuman interlocutors” during the industrial era, and in recent decades the concern has found a rejuvenation with an “interest in the nonhuman that has been burgeoning in the humanities”, together with the rise of “object-oriented ontology, actor-network theory, the new animism” (31). on this phenomenon in literary studies, stephen muecke writes in his review of timothy morton’s hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the end of the world, that “postmodernism has returned with a vengeance, bolstered with all the moral force of global ecological concerns” (muecke, “global warming”, np). while reading ghosh, todd, and transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 133 muecke’s respective works, i gleaned two corresponding strands of thought: as in the history of philosophy that centred the human, this “renewal” of engagement with the non-human too is yet again overpowered by the position of its production – one predominantly representative of the global north, and particularly the euroamerican man. from this positionality, literary fascination with climate crisis and the non-human, can claim postmodern newness to the extent of having rationally discovered relevance of the concepts themselves, solely by the virtue of occupying the discourse position of the euro-american centre. for communities, and their histories deemed “unthinkable” (referred to in the sense of trouilliot’s “unthinkable history”)6, literary studies has yet to centre indigenous literary traditions as literary beyond the reams of anthropological proof. that indigenous communities may have articulated early forms of the crisis still remains in the realm of the “unthinkable”. it is precisely a “crisis of the imagination” (ghosh, 9) that has foreclosed a literary reading of indigenous philosophies of the non-human and of indigenous articulations (oral and written) that intimated the crisis. when indigenous land, people, or artistic practises are referred, if at all, they create the “hypersubject” (muecke, “global warming”, np). peripheral geographies and the oppressed on the peripheries of the enquiry are called upon to be reinstated as the representation of outerwordly crisis (reproducing visual constructions similar to colonial encounters of “contact”), but never to qualify their own concerns. in this context, zoe todd and jen rose smith discuss the hypervisibility of the arctic (todd, 6; j.r. smith, 158162). similarly, among distinct (and numerous) adivasi land rights movements against mining ongoing in eastern india, it is chiefly the images of dongria kondh communities that are used to exoticise ecological margins. moreover, for philosophies built on the metaphysics of a centre, a metropole or a symbolic universal space of human crisis, the crisis is often read as events, as the experience of the “uncanny” (ghosh, 30)7or as marked instances defined by a state of significant visibility such as the melting of polar icescapes. this practise may ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 134 unconsciously displace the seemingly insignificant particularities of “localised markers” in peripheral geographies as adequate evidence of the climate crisis. besides, marginalisation of indigenous responses to the crisis depoliticises the fact that the climate crisis in the peripheries is the result of excesses of the euroamerican centre, not just historically but in contemporary global industrialism (agarwal and narain, “global warming”,np). the way the kondh songs that i discuss in this paper are linked to the united kingdom, for instance, is that they sing against mineral extraction by vedanta, a bauxite mining giant with its headquarters in london. the capital flow from the company’s profits is felt predominantly in centres of capital and culture in the global north, rather than outside the company walls in southern odisha, where the adivasi communities are displaced. therefore, positioning these songs in literary studies is not simply to answer the question of why indigenous literatures continue to occupy particular corridors in literary studies, a subject of continued engagement in decolonising syllabuses recently. attending to the voices of resident communities in these geographies in our literary readings of the anthropocene is to render the crisis in these geographies visible and disrupt the inequalities and centre-peripheral binary which global capital does not follow but insidiously maintains. historicising the “locality in the anthropocene”, vineeta damodaran writes, “challenges planetary debates by earth scientists through a historical and political engagement with capitalism, democracy and resource extraction and to focus on communities in particular periods and places and specific places in the global south” (96).8 her work in environmental history foregrounds the local and indigenous in eastern india, specifically jharkhand and odisha. i emphasise indigenous literary articulations as fundamental evidence of this history, given that an account of climate vocabularies cannot be assembled outside the realm of indigenous literary traditions that serve as historical archives. literary methodology serves to uncover metaphors and other literary devices used to describe the crisis in regional languages and, more importantly, to help transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 135 recover and restore indigenous voices.9the absence of indigenous imaginations of the crisis in contemporary discourse is rooted in the problem of the absence of indigenous literary voices. here, i will briefly discuss the particular absence of adivasi literary voices. an access to imaginations and representations of indigeneity or “adivasihood” of the global south in transnational discourse has been aided largely by subaltern studies and postcolonial theory. however, these methods have been dominated by caste-privileged scholars. here, i similarly acknowledge my positionality as one, and hence i am cautious of my voice operating within this structure. while engaging with adivasi voices from an institutional position in the united kingdom, a first introduction to understand the position of subaltern voice is gayatri chakrabarti spivak’s essay “can the subaltern speak?”. similarly, the first primer to “adivasi literatures” are the representational narratives of gopinath mohanty and mahashweta devi. these texts are representative of the textual decolonisation of the dominant canon and decolonised syllabuses. in postcolonial studies, they occupy the positions of canonical literary and theoretical treatises. both accounts are crucial to challenge the continued eurocentrism of institutional discourse that i discussed earlier and do not in themselves form the primary problematic. the concern, however, is that adivasi literatures are accessed, but from sources twice-removed from the original source. in transnational literary studies, these texts become exemplary to situating adivasi concerns. in the process, they have marginalised adivasi voices and positionalities. it further shifts focus from adivasi agency for the (now) indispensable necessity to complicate the postcolonial indian nation state, and its virulent hindu nationalism, where the idea of the “adivasi” is employed in maintaining the myth of the hindu nation at the same time as adivasi sovereignty is deemed as a threat to hindu nationalism. subaltern adivasi histories have been recovered to challenge the mainstream nationalist narrative. still, literary history and criticism has often failed to read into the disquiet within adivasi literary tradition and the complexities they voice through ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 136 self-definitions not only in the “self-governing literatures” (wright “the ancient library”, np), but also in the interface of folklore collections and colonial archives. though literary studies (global and national) can claim the sheer diversity of literatures across several adivasi languages and literary forms, and scarcity of translations to access these literatures, it is in fact the continued marginalisation of adivasi literatures as literary that precludes impetus to translation, transmission, and publication. santhali writer and activist bandana tete critiques the brahminical hindi literary tradition that has dominated vernacular literary culture. she claims that not only has this literary tradition acted as the central voice in indian “national” literatures but also exercised control on publications and publishing houses. she writes that “their” incompetence in finding adivasi women’s writing should not be an excuse (here, i translate and summarise) “to elide the very essential existence of women in the history of poetry writing” (tete 7). recovering adivasi voices in literary reading, therefore, centres the “self-governing” adivasi literary landscape where the subaltern no longer remains the subaltern but embodies sovereignty. recovering voice recovers vital evidence. here, i return to my previous point about indigenous voices on the crisis. literary methodology can serve to unravel overlooked markers of crisis already felt in peripheral geographies. these imaginations present “localised markers” and the local impact on non-humans. they do not necessarily intimate an apocalyptic imagination of sudden colossal change, but rather direct attention to long-term changes in ecology which frequently go unarchived in dominant cultures of documentation. it directs us to question what is considered as legitimate evidence of the crisis? heather davis and zoe todd discuss the language of evidence in documenting anthropogenic impact. they discuss that evidence, especially the one measured and conceptualized in scientific disciplines, does not necessarily accommodate the possibilities of imagining evidence from material and embodied community histories. in order to theorise the anthropocene from land-based philosophies, the writers provide transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 137 methods to understand the particular place that the non-human occupies in indigenous knowledge systems (davis and todd, 767). 10 on discussing personal narratives of seeing “a flash of a school of minnows” and memories of growing up beside the prairie lakes as “tracers” to the way they see ecological change, todd argues that these “fleshy philosophies and fleshy bodies are precisely the stakes of the anthropocene” (767). documenting the “school of minnows” as the “tracer”, here, serves to connect the material and the epistemological. the writers communicate that not only has the anthropocene aggravated “existing social inequalities and power structures”, but it has separated people from the land/material (here, minnows in the prairie lake) “with which they and their language, laws and knowledge systems are entwined”. the argument made here is not to pit the scientific and the social to serve as evidentiary for the climate crisis; making binaries of these categories is not a productive endeavour in either discipline. rather, the argument is to reveal that the crisis has profound political and social repercussions within communities. the crisis is not impersonal and distant but is keenly felt and interpreted by different species – human and non-human. and these localised markers and personal memories of climate change likewise need documentation. as ghosh notes briefly in relation to people of the sunderbans and yukon, some communities in fact “never lost this awareness” of “non-human interlocuters” (63-64). how, then, to recuperate these imaginations which would serve as evidence to the crisis? an emerging glossary in contemporary english language has served to accommodate the climate breakdown, the “realization” of living in the epoch of the “anthropocene”, and ways to comprehend the dissimilar magnitudes of historical and geological timescales. likewise, indigenous languages have imprinted in them the distinct registers of historical processes markedly felt as a “crisis”, in vocabularies that we do not yet centre in climate studies. apart from the meteorological terms of analysis that are required to write climate history, it is ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 138 imperative to foreground recurring terms and popular vocabularies that have served as means to communicate similar phenomena. given that these vocabularies might not necessarily be historically archived, literary studies need to trace the occurrence of terms that have echoed increasing anthropogenic impact. although it needs acknowledging that these connections may not occur as direct lines of causation, of exact historical co-relation between events and literary responses (in songs, oral narratives, or written literature). historicising climate resistance vocabulary necessitates literary criticism to ponder on and imagine a potential map of literary traces from significant historical junctures to ascertain a consciousness that is often absent or erased given that these have been minority histories and voices. as has already been reasoned in the context of south asia, native american oral history, and australian indigenous literatures, among others, indigenous ways of historiography and archiving memory span across literary genres (skaria; rao et al; womack; benterrak et al; wright). while a significant scale of resources is available for history-writing and literary studies for dominant communities (given they have dominated ownership and access to knowledge as settler colonisers or caste hierarchies in india), adivasi histories and vocabularies from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries exist between the crevices of anthropological constructions, and erasures. this makes it all the more important for literary studies to create interpretative spaces. in these spaces, metaphors and repetitions of particular words can be imbued with meaning, to assemble a repository that restores gaps in the deliberations around the crisis. language, additionally, is crucial to comprehend the loss of the material that has occupied an other-than-human temporality. cultivation of attention to perceive deep time in the minute details of the local is facilitated by the metaphorical function of language. robin wall kimmerer, the potawatomi plant scientist and writer, calls such a function a “grammar of animacy” (braiding 48). she writes that, along with being a plant scientist, she is a poet: “the world speaks to me in transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 139 metaphor” (29). she theorises that a “profound error in grammar” in scientific conceptions of the natural world (and consequentially of the climate crisis) is because of “a grave loss in translation from [n]ative languages” (48). to understand a bay, a non-human element of the landscape, she retrieves the word from its containment as a noun form in english. she explains that the potawatomi word for a bay, wiikwegamaa, is a verb that assigns agency to the non-human feature of landscape: “to be a bay” is the bay making its presence known (55). the other elements around it, the water or “cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers” (55) variously interact with the bay as animate entities striking alignment through their specific channels of communication.11 in the final section of this paper, i discuss the poetry of bhagban majhi and dambu praska, remembering this “grammar of animacy” (48). together with providing a linguistic pathway to understand the deep time of non-human elements, 12 this “grammar” is committed to an understanding of political inequality.13 indigenous poetry provides rich sites that amalgamate a political critique of colonialism alongside cognitive tools to situate the non-human. through a literary reading, therefore, i frame jal, jangal, jameen as climate vocabularies, in the next section. the plural form of “vocabularies” used in this paper is to encompass the translations and transmutations of jal, jangal, jameen in several adivasi and other vernaculars. here, i will briefly raise the question about the choice of using “climate” in climate vocabularies and climate consciousness, as opposed to an ecological or environmental consciousness. wider awareness about changing earth systems over geological time-scales and their impact on humans globally, is arguably recent. the global day-to-day acceptance of climate as a planetary system as opposed to regional weather regimes is also contemporary. the anthropocene, similarly, is a recently coined (english) term to define an epoch where humans have influence at a geological scale. more than a definitive stance on when a climate consciousness of the current form of the crisis begins, i would like to maintain an open-ended one. this might allow a space for rethinking and robust ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 140 gathering of vocabularies from a longer time-period that informs current understanding. as i discuss in the next section, work on climate history and extreme weather events was ongoing in research and scholarship much before it grew into common parlance. indigenous populations were not just affected by local ecological phenomena, but by these events which we currently study as global climatic occurrences (enso). moreover, while the use of “climate” in the humanities, more than ecological or environmental, refers to a recent and specific conglomeration of ideas on planetary phenomena, it remains one which is bound to an understanding in scholarship within the dominant english language. to use the word climate is thus to acknowledge the many other iterations and interpretations of the term in indigenous languages that are similar and may contribute to a broader social and historical understanding of the term and phenomenon as we use and know it today. consider, for instance, rachel qitsualik’s (inuk, scottish, cree) and keavy martin’s definition of sila. in its varied use in inuit languages, sila encompasses a material understanding of climate as tangible phenomena. here, climate is a combined influence of land, air, and sky and a community-held belief in its separate presence and animacy (todd 5; martin 4-5). of a similar iteration, inupiaq anthropologist herbert anungazuk called some of the “old ways of weather and ice predictions” as “ilisimiksaavut—‘what we must know’” (anungazuk, 101). in the context of australian country, nyigina elder paddy roe evokes the word liyan which approximates as an “intuition” or “life force of a place” that “enables people to feel their environment” (roe, qtd. in morissey and healy 229). it is in this glossary, i choose to examine the occurrence of jal, jangal, jameen. finally, the focus on the local is to question continued eurocentrism in climate studies and to centre marginalised histories. however, an either/or between the local and the planetary is limiting to a deeper reflection on the crisis. it tends to streamline the complex understanding of both which indigenous thinkers and artists have sought to express in their literatures. thus, it is with care that these transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 141 vocabularies need to be read and situated. a simplified leaning to unearth the “precolonial” as the site for “alternative” knowledge as an isolated framework to study the crisis can do more harm to decolonial endeavours. such a method often tends to exoticize rather than historicise key indigenous understanding on the crisis. it frames it as a “return” to a past of indigenous knowledge systems, rendering them stagnant as opposed to an evolving, continuous process of interacting intellectual histories. climate vocabularies, therefore, are an invitation to seek the fine print of the crisis registered in literary metaphors; this reading can enrich our knowledge of the crisis as it unfolds today. i re-iterate, here, the need to access indigenous voices in archived literatures. this is emblematic of a larger problem while reading oral traditions, origin myths, and archived indigenous literatures, which come to the researcher removed from their context and burdened with the constructions created in colonial/upper-caste translation or ethnographic work. however, this does not discourage readings of these texts. adivasi literary archives open to a significant world of possibilities when read in conversation with other indigenous writers and when studied with the methodologies formulated by indigenous theorists. creek historian craig s. womack critiques the ongoing “problem” of native american texts (oral, performative, and written) characterized as “lost in translation” (64) as opposed to translations from other dominant cultures; this, he argues, postpones contextual and political analysis. therefore, rather than a rejection of early twentieth-century archives of adivasi songs and myths, transcribed and translated by colonial anthropologists and ethnographers, i read them as texts operating within the milieus of their historical encounters and responding to colonial methods of collections and archives. being supported by methodologies of literary reading provided by womack and muecke among others helps recover indigenous voice from the aporias around oral texts and translations built by structural categories in ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 142 colonial ethnography. this allows for the text’s reinstatement as political and presents possibilities for a “literary repatriation” (unaipon xliii). ii. jal, jangal, jameen as climate vocabularies the climate history of odisha is largely anthropogenic. mineral extraction of the last few decades has exacerbated the crisis on ecologies already fragile from a history of exploitation of jal, jangal, jameen.14 odisha—which in recent years is known as a cyclone-prone region—was infamously called marudi anchala or land of droughts. el niño and the southern oscillation (enso) occurrences caused meteorological dry periods in the region. in addition, hydrological droughts15 significantly increased from radical changes in land use during the nineteenth century, especially with the growth of commercialized agriculture and deforestation. the time-period in odisha’s history that is primarily remembered for its scarcity is also, ironically, a time when land use became largely agrarian to increase revenue. prior to 1850, uppercaste communities from the plains of sambalpur and raipur started migrating for settled agriculture in the districts of kalahandi, bolangir, and koraput (kbk) (pati situating 101-102), areas with the highest population of resident adivasi communities in eastern india. grain shortages, due to changes in the crop cycles (ibid), also began during this period, leading to resistance by adivasi communities. the scarcities become acute in the 1860s. j. p das, in his historical narrative a time elsewhere (2009), translated by jatin nayak, earlier published in oriya as desa kala patra (1992), describes the years leading up to 1866, the year of the deadly odisha famine. this was a decade of paradoxes for the region. the reigning leaders and litterateurs like madhusudan das, fakir mohan senapati, and radhanath ray eagerly awaited odisha’s first printing press. an independent press would establish the eminence of oriya literature and, in turn, oriya nationalism, rescuing it from the colonial impact of bengal. at the same time, houses were steadily declaring grain scarcity. the famine ravaged. market prices soared, grain was exported to the transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 143 empire, stocked rice controlled by zamindars and colonial officers along with imported relief was stranded in ports and delayed reaching the famished (das ch.2) the drought and the great famine of odisha in 1866 killed a million people, nearly a third of the population of odisha (odisha division of kolkatta presidency) at the time, leading to vast demographic and geographical change (mohanty, 608). following this year, the famines of 1876-79 severely impacted east-indian geographies, with a total of 50 million deaths across india (grove, 144). this was a severity similar to the 48-55 million deaths between 1492 and 1610 because of disease and enslavement (lewis and maslin, 75) that is commonly considered as the beginning of the crisis for american indigenous communities. the odisha famine of 1866 served as a warning to the famines that followed. henry blanford was appointed as imperial meteorological officer to the government of india on the recommendation of the 1866 orissa famine commission to study the failure of monsoons and the persistence of droughts (davis, 217). climate studies on eastindian geography were supported since agricultural failure directly impacted the empire. richard grove discusses this history: severe droughts and shortage of rainfall of the 1870s and 1890s have been determined to be a result of enso, extreme warm events that have a global climatic impact leading to similar drought conditions in south asia, australia, southern africa, the caribbean, and mexico (124). however, as he mentions, climate studies had already been conducted since the 1700s to record the periodicity of droughts and study the reason for long-term weather conditions. colonial researchers like william roxbourgh, who had been collecting data on tropical meteorology, had identified the relationship between climate change and recurrent famines as relating to colonial impact (even leading to afforestation efforts in the nineteenth century). global meteorological surveys and climate studies were, yet again, within a limited realm of knowledge controlled by the empire and dominant communities. it could be argued that the scientific conception of a world climate system and its ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 144 effect to generate conditions of crisis did not yet exist as community knowledge (or it requires further search). however, the severity of drought and famine conditions as a result of these climatic events—and the exploitation of jal, jangal, jameen to facilitate revenue-generation for the british empire—framed the climate vocabulary of eastern india. anthropogenic impacts on these geographies (the jal, jangal, jameen of adivasi communities) had rendered them incapable to cushion the force of periodically occurring calamities. more than a singular “event”, the year of 1866 and the following famines have been read as part of a “process” that was a direct continuation of land-loss to zamindars (landlords) and commercialized grain trade without adequate returns to the farmers (mohanty 609).16 the easy accumulation of jameen (land) was aided by the land acquisition act of 1894. changes in the use of jameen meant that adivasi communities were assimilated into the caste system, serving under highly oppressive forms of bonded labour like bethi and gothi, systems in which existence was defined by a perpetual state of debt and enslavement to the landlord. a significant number of adivasi communities migrated to forest tracts, given the increase in agricultural settlers on their land. however, the india forest act 1865, designed specifically to clear forests for railways, and later the forest act of 1878, heralded the “reserved” forests to increase timber production and to grow more cash crops such as jute and indigo. this act prohibited use of the jangal and curbed adivasi agricultural practices such as bewar, jhum, or podu chasa, various forms of shifting cultivation practiced on forest slopes. the jameen and jangal (and jal), the non-humans that sustained adivasi communities, were appropriated as resources. furthermore, they were regimented to disallow interconnected living. the onset of fragility of east-indian geographies was brought about by an accretion of control on jal, jangal, jameen. this lent itself to a lived sense of “crisis”, owing to fractured ecologies and growing inequalities felt in the apocalyptic proportions of the century’s famines which mike davis describes as “late victorian holocausts” that formed the “third world” (see transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 145 davis). having lost jal, jangal, jameen, the once-princely communities became destitute within half a century. when the colonial government imported “poorhouses”, davis quotes a missionary document as saying, “confinement was especially unbearable to the tribal people, like gonds and baigas, whom one missionary claimed, “would sooner die in their homes or their native jungle, than submit to the restraint of a government poor house’” (davis, 147). he claims that such antipathy was less about confinement and more revealing of the diet the poor houses served: flour and salt. for adivasi communities, these decades prefigured a dire future. their essential organizing ecologies were not only colonized, unresponsive, and crumbling, but they had to depend on the apocalyptic measures of the colonizer for survival. while these early instances of a seismic shift in eastern india may have found utterance archived in adivasi oral traditions of the nineteenth century, we may have lost access to them in transmission. moreover, apart from the climatic constants of famines and droughts, the micro-climates of eastern india were heavily altered with the beginning of mineral extraction that exacerbated ongoing concerns of land dispossession. by the end of the nineteenth century, there were increased invasions on eastern indian landscape through mining for mica, slate, and chromite (mishra “from tribal to”, 30). we see articulations of mining activity in myths transcribed by verrier elwin in tribal myths of orissa collected in the 1940s-50s, and we can assume that these songs had already been in circulation in popular memory before these decades.17 one of the bonda myths from koraput reads: there was no money in the old days. but after mahaprabhu gave the kingdom of simapatna to sima raja and sima rani, a government office was made to deal with everything […] one day mahaprabhu took sima rani to the silver mountain and showed her great heaps of silver. “that is silver”, he said […] then he took her to the gold mountain and showed ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 146 her great heaps of gold […] then he took her to the copper mountain and showed her great heaps of copper. (elwin tribal myths, 561) the myth not only demonstrates land transactions, as sima raja and sima rani are “given” the kingdom, but also the entry of a third entity that carried out these transactions, “the government office”. that a scanning of the landscape to determine sites for mining minerals was on-going is reflected in how sima rani is “shown” these riches of the land. she subsequently mints them into coins, signifying a transition from seeing mountains as living entities to seeing them as capital.18 such occurrences in mythical narratives coincide with increased mining in the region. coal and iron ore exports steadily increased with the expansion of railways and industries in the 1880s. tata and sons and the bengal iron and steel manufacturing company started sustained mineral extraction in 1905 (pati adivasis, 257). samarendra das and felix padel explore the history of bauxite in odisha, a sedimentary rock that has become a site for struggle in recent movements, which i explore in the next section. they write about how the bauxite-rich hills of kalahandi were documented as a resource by geological surveys carried out by t. l. walker in early 1900, who named the rock khondalite, after the resident kondh community (das and padel, 58). subsequent surveys continued through the twentieth century until the last decade, when liberalization of the economic policies of the 1990s allowed multinational companies access to mine the hills. the mining excesses of the last three decades further impaired an already fragile ecology, and form a significant period in the climate history of odisha after the decade of 1866. therefore, bhagban majhi and dambu praska’s poetry, which i discuss in the next section, situate the present crisis as one with a longer history. the radical impact on jal, jangal, jameen had been noted as a significant climatic concern albeit in a language and scale that was localized. jal, jangal, jameen, apart from evoking this common climatic history for diverse adivasi communities, unify a common understanding of material ecology and provide a transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 147 holistic basis to “sacred”19 philosophies present in adivasi knowledge systems. a recent resolution was passed for sarna to be accepted as a religious code which would include adivasi religions similar to sarna under its fold. it was claimed that the acceptance of sarna as a separate religious group by the indian government would also regulate “resource politics” (perhaps, in favour of the adivasis). this rested on the claim that religious identity of adivasis is founded on the natural resources of jal, jangal, jameen (alam “why the sarna code”, np). these intricate systems that combine a philosophy of ecological interdependence, religion, and literary tradition20have often evaded colonial classifications,21 those classifications that presupposed adivasi “primitivity” and intellectual inferiority. perhaps for this reason, the archival transcriptions of anthropologists like verrier elwin and shamrao hilvale, among others, carry the warnings of crisis, without further consideration of the predicament articulated by adivasi communities. the loss of the jangal was registered as a “calamity” in a song transcribed by elwin and hilvale in the 1930s and 1940s: such a calamity had never been before! some he beats, some he catches by the ear, some he drives out of the village. he robs us of our axes, he robs us of our jungle. he beats the gond; he drives the baiga and baigin from their jungle. (elwin the baiga, 130) here, the “calamity” is described as unforeseen and of a form not encountered previously. the song proclaims that the hand of colonial power and human intrusion on the jangal practiced excesses that even surpassed the accustomed bearings and regularity of a natural “calamity”. localised resistances to counter the increased control on jal, jangal, jameen were ongoing since the early nineteenth century. it was birsa munda’s movement, or ulgulan in chottanagpur province in the 1890s, that provided an impetus for jal, jangal, jameen to become a “common organizing ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 148 force” for adivasi communities. birsa specifically demanded the re-instatement of khuntkatti system, which was based on collective ownership of land and forests by adivasi communities. in his reading of gond history, akash poyam claims that the slogan “jal, jangal, jameen” as a unified call for protection was later coined by a forgotten gond adivasi leader from telangana, komaram bheem (“gondwana”, 131). sharing “common cause” with birsa munda to resist against exacting taxes and oppression by landlords, bheem used the call during the gondwana movement against the nizam government of hyderabad to demand complete land and forest rights. poyam contends that the vocabulary of jal, jangal, jameen was specific in its concern to establish gond sovereignty and autonomy over jal, jangal, jameen (“komaram bheem”). contemporary discourse on climate change and environmental conservation, therefore, cannot be studied separately from the long history of adivasi movements for land rights and sovereignty. these contexts reveal adivasi vocabularies that signal structural inequalities which makes them more vulnerable to the current crisis. the crisis of the human, especially after the theorization of the anthropocene in geology in 2000 in dominant euro-american centres, has critical precursors in the peripheries. for adivasi communities, the crisis of human and non-human existence was anticipated in the calls to protect jal, jangal, jameen. jal, jangal, jameen rhymed and echoed to sustain material and epistemological continuity after the calamitous impact of resource exploitation during the nineteenth century. although it is beyond the scope of this paper to access further literary readings of archives and transcribed myths and songs, my intention is to revisit the recurrence of jal, jangal, jameen and read them as climate vocabularies. these vocabularies are recurrent because they archive a generational memory of lived crisis during climatic occurrences (such as droughts and famines) and anthropogenic impact on nonhumans around which adivasi philosophies are organized. the political consciousness of adivasi movements on land rights that is deeply committed to the transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 149 indispensability of protective measures for jal, jangal, jameen is indeed contemporary climate discourse prefigured. to this climate history and genealogy of resistance, the songs of bhagban majhi and dambu praska bear allegiance. their invocations of the mountain, earthworm, and seeds present vital evidence of the enmeshed ecology of jal, jangal, jameen particular to their contexts in south odisha. iii. of mountains and earthworms bhagban majhi, a kondh singer and leader from kucheipadar village (rayagada district in southern odisha), was one of the leading voices of kashipur resistance against bauxite mining by utkal alumina international limited (uail), and later, aditya birla.22 the movement began in the early 1990s and continued for over two decades, a momentum of resistance that was later carried forward by the dongria kondh community to oppose vedanta in niyamgiri. despite a sustained struggle by the kondh-paraja community in villages around kashipur, aditya birla acquired land and, in present day, the displaced adivasi communities live in the peripheries of the factory walls.23 bhagban, as a teenager, along with lima majhi, composed a number of songs (in kui and desia, which was later adapted in oriya and hindi), that were widely transmitted to unite the communities. from those specifically composed for the movement, gaan chadiba nahin (we will not forsake this land), was identified as a common anthem in several movements against mining and forced evictions in india. having found utterance in a dominant language such as hindi, with a popular video gaon chodab nahin subsequently produced by k. p. sasi, the song acquired pan-cultural presence. apart from its rhyme that was predisposed to transmission across linguistic and regional borders, gaan chadiba nahin remains one of the most subversive songs to be formulated as part of adivasi literary song traditions in recent decades. bhagban’s political critique is embedded in kondhparaja epistemology particular to south odisha. his interpretation of jal, jangal, jameen which, in this song, is articulated as dongar-jharan-jangal-paban (mountainsananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 150 waterfalls-forests-winds), connects it to the long history of adivasi climate consciousness. we will not yield, we will not give up, no, we will not forsake this mountain. […] our hills, our companions, our growth, our progress. we are the children of this earth. with folded hands, we bow down to our earth mother. […] we are the people of this earth— we are earthworms— mountains—streams—forests—winds— if we forsake this earth how shall we endure? worlds shall collapse, lives will crumble, when the pathways drown, how will we endure? we will be nowhere we will be no more— there is no hereafter— no, we will not forsake this land. (prakrutika, 19) my translation is from a desia (a pidgin variety of oriya and kui) transcription of the song archived in the kashipur movement pamphlet, kashipur ghosanapatra, published by prakrutika sampad surakhya parishad (a local environmental transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 151 protection committee founded during the kashipur movement). here, bhagban presents two fundamental ideas, unnati (progress/development) and matrubhakti (love for the mother). matrubhakti for the mountain or dongar as the mother, as invoked in bhagban’s song, departs from invocations of the motherland/motherearth in the context of indian nationalism. additionally, matrubhakti linguistically may have its roots in songs composed during the gandhamardhan movement against bharat aluminum company limited (balco). in its philosophy, however, matrubhakti digresses from the hindu mythical motifs that became the driving force in gandhamardhan. here, the salutation of deference bows to non-human elements. matrubhakti is ethical kinship with “all our relations”.24 matrubhakti is for the earth mother, dharni penu. notably, because of this conception of mountains forming essential basis to all human–non-human life forms, they occur invariably as gods, or kings, as entities who are agential, in the religious beliefs prevalent in kashipur as well as niyamgiri. through a general use of dongar, bhagban alludes to baplamali, kutrumali, and sijimali, the bauxite-rich ranges of south odisha, which have formed “through the alternating rhythm of rain and sun continuing every year for about 40 million years, eroding layers of feldspar and other rocks” (das and padel, 32). bhagban presents evidence of this elemental bind that sustains the ecology of eastern india: “dongar-jharan-jangal-paban” or “mountains-waterfalls-forestswinds” exist because of the mineral-rich mountains. the kondh community is intricately bound to this ecology. his song, consequently, offers the kondh understanding of humans as matira poka, or biripidika—earthworms.25 as part of the movement against mining, he demanded, “we ask one fundamental question: how can we survive if our lands are taken away from us? […] we are earthworms. […] what we need is stable development. we won’t allow our billions of years old water and land to go to ruin just to pander to the greed of some officers” (qtd. in das and padel, 394-395). for bhagban, notions of unnati or development are embedded in a cosmology that has ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 152 decentred the human. for dikus (outsiders) of such a conception, his poetry conveys a radical understanding of progress that necessitates discerning the temporalities of the earthworm and the mountain. the “fleshy philosophy” of the earthworm opens a “pathway” to grasp the dissimilar magnitudes of temporal perceptions that the anthropocene commands: the dongar of deep geological time, and the dongar as capital in the history of mineral extraction. kondh conceptions of the human as biripidka or earthworm, the human as part of the elemental cosmology of the kucheipadar landscape, enables a comprehension of mountains as autonomous annals of knowledge beyond their reductive quantification as “resource” for a nation’s progress. to understand the extent of irredeemable loss of the dongar would require understanding its existence as separate from human history, with its own annals of millennia of slow formation and evolution. unnati and matrubhakti have essentially formed the ideological basis of the hindu nationalist state’s divisive enterprise and the nation state’s invasion of adivasi land for industrial progress. bhagban’s interpretation of these words thus becomes crucial. he frames climate action as the political responsibility of the present to resist complicit governments whilst having a deep-time consciousness of the mountains, a dual task that delineates human positionality in the anthropocene. in his speeches and testimonies, unnati as imagined by the indian state and mining companies for short-term profit that would deplete this “resource” within thirty to forty years, is juxtaposed with unnati rooted in a comprehension of the mountain that has a profound dimension. he asks, “sir, what do you mean by development? is it development to destroy these billions of years old mountains for the profit of a few officials?” (qtd. in das and padel, 10). he represents and communicates a kondh humanism in his songs through his interpretation of development as one that honors the human’s ethical relationship to land. “humans as earthworms” in kinship with the mountains orients human perception and equally counsels on the fragility of these enmeshed interfaces. during our conversation in 2017, he presented this transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 153 thought as a “fairly basic” idea which he had attempted to convince people of during the movement. human impact on land is fueled by industries, and to oppose destruction of ecologies is a universal responsibility. he said, “people think this is for adivasi’s self-interest. this resistance is against ‘loot’. the riches of the land that is being destroyed is not of the adivasi’s alone. the environment, sky, this is not of the adivasi’s alone. it belongs to the living, and the living suffer. the profits are for the company” (majhi). bhagban’s political thought, beside a consciousness of “humans as earthworms”, poses further questions to our belated understanding. is the binary by which we understand the anthropocene in literary imagination, of geological and historical time, adequate to comprehend the lived temporalities of non-humans? for are not our metaphors for understanding the non-human again dependent on the scales of human measurements and the grammar of theory? what is the language in which to imagine scale and inhabit temporal dimensions as earthworms and living mountains? as in several adivasi creation stories, the earthworms collected earth until it sufficed living beings. the dongar is a law-making entity as much as its creation and sustenance depends on the enterprise of the earthworms. and yet again, given the mutuality in their relationship, can the temporality of the mountain alongside the earthworm be imagined at all through progression or variations in scale? the dongar and biripidka claim sovereignty on temporality, equally on the forms of the annals they maintain. as a conduit to their claims, bhagban majhi’s political activism becomes critical. for young kondh leaders of the movement, understanding the metrics used by the company was equally important to predict the “calamity” that mining would ensue. to thoroughly investigate the statistics proposed by the state and the company, the “tonnes of bauxite” as opposed to a living dongar was vital, so that kondh ideas of progress could be proposed and reasoned. to examine the measures of employment and education that was promised by unnati was to ascertain whether the villages would be direct ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 154 beneficiaries or marginalised again. the annals of the earthworms and the mountains had to be juxtaposed with metrics that stem from and accommodate human centrality and that are estimated to have higher “pragmatic” value. as we shall come across in the next section, the translation of dambu praska’s song carries a similar duality: “a measuring has begun of leka houru” (praska, qtd. in dash 2013). praska, similarly, juxtaposes temporal scales of his origin epic and company metrics. the elders of the village, and singers like bhagban majhi, were consequently part of a philosophical struggle to grapple with the modes of adopted languages to convey kondh epistemologies connected to the dongar and biripidka. this leads me to explore yet another “fleshy philosophy” of the earthworm in dambu praska’s epic rendition. iv. of mountains and seeds listen, o elder, o brother, the story i tell you: this mountain is our ancestor, our darmuraja. this mountain is cucumbers, pumpkins, and all that was created. listen, o brother, our only story. ……………… the king summons the elder brother to the feast, the middle ones with tattered clothes, are asked to leave— crossing mighty rivers, the middle ones are scattered ……………… a call resounds from village to village— assemble on the mountain— but we shall not leave. there, lives darmuraja… (praska, qtd. in dash 2013)26 transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 155 the late dongria kondh poet’s song “the lament of niyamraja” is rooted in the dongria kondh oral epical tradition. as the jani (priest) of the community, he sings in a literary form of kui. the singular long-form of this rendition is archived in the video documentary by bhubaneswar-based filmmaker surya shankar dash titled “lament of niyamraja”.27 here, my english translation is based on a recent full-text translation by arna majhi (from kui to oriya) that has clarified the complex text of praska and helped bring previously unconsidered aspects of the song to light.28 the song was collected in the years leading up to the village council hearings held in niyamgiri by the supreme court of india in 2013. india's apex court demanded legitimate reasons why the dongria kondh community opposed vedanta’s proposal to mine bauxite on their hills. one afternoon during the movement, dash asked dambu praska that, if praska was called by the state to a hearing, what would he render as a reply on behalf of his community? in reply to dash's question, dambu praska sang “the lament of niyamraja”, presenting evidence of legal ownership of the hills: the intimate knowledge of penka (seeds) which for him are “the stakes of the anthropocene” (davis and todd, 767). through metaphors in his poetry, he communicates legal conceptions embedded in penka or seeds of the pumpkin (kumda penka) and cucumber (mundra penka). in his song, the dongria kondh cosmology is represented as having its origins from non-human elements like the earth and its earthworms (biripidka), as well as the sky, who is called darmuraja, the god who transmits this law and knowledge. ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 156 darmuraja, also known as dharmaraja or niyamraja (king of law), is believed to be an ancestor, an animate entity who holds a religious position and is resident on the hills of niyamgiri. the name “niyamgiri” itself suggests why it is essential to read this song through the philosophies of the non-human articulated in dongria kondh mythology. “niyamgiri”, as the name of the hill of darmuraja, might have been a sankritised import: giri means hill, niyam means law in oriya and some other indo-aryan languages. it is unclear when the words may have entered dongria kondh vocabulary. it is worth pondering with some skepticism whether it is a recent import or a result of interactions with dominant traditions like oriya, telugu, and hindi, among others, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries or even earlier. therefore, contrary to what is widely believed in non-indigenous readings of niyamgiri, that niyamgiri is the “mountain of law”, with “niyamraja” or “dharmaraja” presiding as the “king of law”, might be our error in translation or an idea in dongria kondh mythology that has grown out of linguistic adaptation. dharma is a sanskrit term for “just action” or “duty”, whereas darmuraja refers to the dongria kondh “ancestor”, who decides the law of the community. the law that houru/ dongar (hill/ mountain) kumda penka (pumpkin seeds) mundra penka (cucumber seeds) darmuraja biripidka (earthworm) transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 157 dambu praska sings about is distinctive and not related to “dharma” in hindu traditions. in other words, dambu praska is potentially singing about the law embedded in the seeds of the pumpkin and the cucumber. praska braids the origin myth of the dongria kondhs with the narration of present-day call to a court hearing. he speaks through numerous voices in a tense arrangement that alternatively straddles the temporalities of the origin myth and the present day, where the mythical elder brother of darmuraja, called to the king's court to decide on the proposed settlements of their community, overlaps with the dongria kondh villager called to a state hearing. both, the brother and the villager, are asked the same riddle: how many seeds in a pumpkin? how many seeds in a cucumber? how many shall sprout and how many are hollow? (praska, qtd. in dash 2013). dambu praska's song performs a struggle to answer the riddle of seeds, an answer that would form communal evidence of belonging to their hills. at one point, darmuraja sits beside him to offer answers through a secret understanding, an answer dambu praska does not reveal to us, the listeners. praska's metaphorical use of the riddle of seeds forms the basis of traditional ecological knowledge (tek)29 to judge those seeds (nida penka) which would yield a healthy crop, a local knowledge passed down through generations in the form of a riddle. traditional knowledge of ownership is often guarded and closed to non-members of the community— darmuraja, the king of law, offers the knowledge to praska and not the listener. that is why dambu praska sings that both acts, of sharing and denial of this “sacred” knowledge, threaten him. on the one hand, he cannot break his community’s rules of intellectual property. on the other, withholding this proof of ownership would displace his community. at one point, the narrator in the song denies seeds that are offered to him in order to protect their hills. here, the penka ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 158 or the seeds become an allusion to non-indigenous seed varieties that were introduced on adivasi land promising a high yield, but which were essentially seed varieties that yield monocrops and are not suitable for cyclical sustainable production. robin wall kimmerer, similarly, writes of corn and essential indigenous epistemology and history associated with varieties of the crop that has been deemed as “primitive” by colonial settlers. the industrial production of corn is “waste producing”, she writes, far removed from the relationship between maize and human as planted and consumed within an “honor system”: “[the] human and the plant are linked as co-creators; humans are midwives to this creation, not masters. the plant innovates and the people nurture and direct that creativity.” (“corn tastes better”, np). when dambu praska similarly rejects the seeds that are offered to him in a “pouch”, a non-indigenous variety for a high yield, it is his way of maintaining the dongria kondh “honor system” for seeds indigenous to the hills. the hollow seeds (hatun) also suggest the history of settlements by colonial and upper-caste communities in southern odisha since the nineteenth century, that i discussed earlier in this paper. it is dongria kondh women who are the “guardians of seeds” (jena “tribal priestesses”, np). dongria kondh priestesses conduct a ritual for the collection and protection of indigenous millet seed varieties that are in decline on the slopes of the hills. travelling by foot to other villages, the women request seeds to be accumulated and sown for harvest. as reported on vikalp sangam, these travels reveal not only vanishing millet seed varieties but also the sheer diversity of indigenous seeds sown as opposed to monocropping: dasara kadraka, a bejuni (priestess) from kadaraguma village, cites the existence of thirty millet seed varieties from the hill alone that are endangered (“tribal priestesses”). the poetic repetition of seeds, the apparently simplistic and straightforward listing of vegetables and grain, are evidentiary of sustainable practices embedded in complex knowledge systems. the question of the number of seeds in a transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 159 cucumber, the materials of pumpkins, fruits, and grains that darmuraja provides, is the vital materiality that determines dongria kondh law and survival. this relationship that binds niyamgiri’s ecology to the dongria kondh community stands threatened in the anthropocene. consequently, invocations of vegetal produce of niyamgiri were a recurrence in the oral testimonies of dongria kondh villagers presented to the supreme court of india to protect niyamgiri from bauxite mining. dambu praska, similarly, comments on the incoming dispossession by the mining industry. he laments that the answer to the riddle of the seeds is ultimately irrelevant if the land is threatened: seven days in the sun, the seeds of the pumpkin and cucumber dry up. listen, o brother, with the sunrise, the earth warms, the mounds crumble— the mountains grow muddy, flow murky in the streams— know this, o brother, a measuring has begun of leka houru. tell me, o brother, how many seeds of the pumpkin are hollow? how many will sprout? here are nine pouches of pumpkin seeds, here are nine pouches of cucumber seeds— if the land is lost, how would seeds matter? (praska, qtd. in dash 2013). praska conveys a disillusionment with the government hearing. the supreme court hearing was limited to only a few villages in niyamgiri. by then, continued industrial mining (more regularly since the 1990s) had already displaced several adivasi communities and destroyed the ecology of the neighboring hills and villages in south odisha. his image of muddy mountain streams evokes the image ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 160 of the toxic industrial mud ponds constructed by the company. vedanta alumina refinery not only consumed water that forms perennial streams of the niyamgiri hills, but also constructed an ash pond at the mouth of vamsadhara river. the river and streams on the mountains were polluted, rendering them unusable for human consumption. praska is aware of the ongoing devastation to their hills and performs a series of denials towards the end of the song. he denies the offer of seeds, buffaloes, and mangoes, metaphorical suggestions to the material gains that the company and state offered in the name of “development” and progress. the narrative voice in the song realizes and communicates the indispensability of the dongar. similar to bhagban majhi, praska communicates that mining their dongar would herald a breakdown, destroying the slow and prolonged elemental bind of the mineral that has formed the ecology of eastern india. the continuity of seeds, and consequently of his community depends on the continuity of the mountain. conclusion: they cannot tolerate the existence of trees for the roots demand land. (kerketta, 168) in a visionary couplet written in hindi, in her second anthology jadon ki jameen (land of the roots), oraon poet jacinta kerketta engraves the existential “stakes of the anthropocene” (david and todd, 767). as the titular poem to this anthology, a two-line afterword that appears on the last page, she says that the reason they cannot tolerate the presence of trees is because the roots demand jameen (land). this form of non-human need is unimaginable and therefore unaccommodated within human systems of legality and ethical practice. in this couplet, she effectively articulates that to comprehend our present crisis necessitates re-formulating the question of land rights, evoked here as the rights of the land. through a literary reading, i situated the recurrence of jal, jangal, jameen as climate vocabularies to explore the adivasi literary tradition’s response to the transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 161 climate crisis. the paper was limited to the context of east-indian geographies. what are the other possibilities of imagining climate vocabularies, and how will these literary readings support work on micro-histories of particular geographies and documentation of specific adivasi philosophies? similar to the “fleshy philosophies” of earthworms and seeds, present in the songs of dambu praska and bhagban majhi, what are the ways to archive and read similar connections to the material and vegetal? this further raises the question of what are the various forms that climate vocabularies can take in different indigenous traditions and languages? in a paper titled “inventing climate consciousness in igbo oral repertoire: an analysis of mmanu eji eri okwu and selected eco-proverbs” by dr. chinonye c. ekwueme-ugwu and anya ude egwu, the two nigerian writers present a climate consciousness embedded in igbo proverbs. similarly, nicole furtado’s evocation of “ea”, a concept stemming from native hawaiian epistemology, informs the climate vocabularies framework.30 in the panel discussion titled “climate change, infrastructure and adivasi knowledge”, panelists akash poyam, m. yuvan, archana soreng, and raile r. ziipao shared some of their ongoing documentation of indigenous knowledge traditions, ecological vocabularies, and sustainable practices (poyam, soreng, et al.). these methods—for instance, m. yuvan’s instagram handle titled “a naturalist’s column”—are innovative archives and a necessary glossary for ecological education. similar work can help uncover literary recurrences that have served as a “common organising concept” (todd, 5-6) in diverse contexts and languages. i hope a transnational glossary on climate vocabularies can channel further comparative work that connects the climate histories of india with settler colonial nations, and indigenous literary responses in the respective contexts. similar to india, enso occurrences have impacted australian geographies resulting in severe drought conditions in the nineteenth century. settler colonialism’s lasting impact on north american and australian land through forced removals, disease, and ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 162 genocide radically altered ecologies. the global industrial complex further impacts indigenous communities in all three contexts. the raging bushfires of australia in 2019, the wildfires of california in 2020, and the recent forest fires on the similipal reserve, eastern india, in 2021 are some of the many symptoms of insurgent ecosystems. here, indigenous communities are affected by climate change and ironically held responsible. in india, the conservation narrative excludes indigenous participation and sustainable practices and penalises indigenous communities for environmental encroachments on their own land. adivasi peoples are displaced to “protect” wildlife and habitats. kharia climate activist archana soreng, therefore, demands that adivasi communities lead the narrative and efforts on conservation, rather than be made “victims” (poyam, soreng, et al.). forthcoming discourse on climate, conservation, and the pandemic may need to reflect on the role of authoritarian nationalism and racism in abetting already fragile conditions. indigeneity and land rights of adivasi communities are oppositional to the hindu nation and aligned corporate and industrial interests. here, adivasi and other minority communities become dispensable bodies in their lands as well as in urban centres where they work as migrant labourers. the exodus of migrants from urban metropoles following the indian state’s overnight lockdown during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 was an authoritarian measure. in so far as the pandemic is indicative of the climate emergency, the exodus was also a climate-induced displacement.31 how to rethink and safeguard indigenous climate justice in authoritarian nation-states? this concern is not limited to the hindu nationalist state. appropriations of indigeneity in europe and britain has led a rise in xenophobia claiming indigeneity of the “original white” population. claiming such indigeneity, the far right draws a dangerous analogy between immigration of minority populations to uk and colonialism in settler nations.32 this ideology can influence conservative anti-immigration policies. at a time when climate-induced displacements and violence within authoritarian regimes of the global south render transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 163 indigenous and minority populations homeless, these policies, if realized, will deprive alternatives of safety to climate refugees. acknowledgements: i acknowledge the contemporary adivasi writers and communities from odisha and india, and those who have generously informed ideas and inspired this work: arna majhi, salu majhi, bhagban majhi, anchala, and rajkumar sunani, to name a few. some invaluable online presences that have informed this paper: adivasi resurgence, adivasi lives matter, video republic, people’s archive of rural india (pari), and vikalp sangam. this research was made possible by discussions with saroj mohanty, rabi pradhan, sudhir pattnaik, sudhir sahu, surya shankar dash, nigamananda sarangi, ranjana padhi, ruby hembrom, devidas mishra, kedar mishra, and many others. the paper is significantly informed by presentations, discussions, and ideas emerging from the climate fictions/indigenous studies conference (2020). i thank the presenters and my co-convenors. equally, it is informed by an online panel discussion on “climate change, infrastructure and adivasi knowledge: perspectives from india” (2020). i am grateful to the convenors, and speakers archana soreng, akash poyam, m.yuvan, and raile rocky ziipao. i thank my supervisor, priyamvada gopal, and my doctoral examiners, chadwick allen and robert macfarlane, for their invaluable feedback and encouragement. notes: 1 “imperial copy” is defined in reference to pratt’s discussion on how the colonies and the colonial subject were documented through “imperial eyes” of a “global classificatory project” (1-36) and linda tuhiwai smith’s discussion in decolonizing methodologies (49-65). 2 a. k pankaj similarly writes, “because tribal discussions in the present times are organized only by the non-tribals and in these the voice of the tribal is absent. the basis of these discussions are on the fictions (fictional literatures) written by nontribals like mahashweta devi on tribals […]” (9). similar concerns are echoed by ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 164 poyam, who writes, “a quick web search for ‘adivasi books’ will show that most books about adivasi communities have been and are still written by non-adivasi, upper-caste writers” (“ten voices”). 3 in the context of australian first nations literatures, waanyi writer alexis wright conceptualises a “sovereignty of the imagination” as paramount for aboriginal sovereignty and which can be understood as analogous to re-imagining a sovereign and “responsible” form of literary fiction (the indigenous novel, in wright’s case) that is rooted to the “powerful, ancient cultural landscape of this country”, (“the ancient library”). 4 simon ortiz’s 1981 essay “towards a national indian literature: cultural authenticity in nationalism” was a founding work on “literary sovereignty” in native american national contexts, a precursor to robert warrior’s publication of tribal secrets: recovering american indian intellectual traditions (1995) and subsequent scholarship on literary nationalism. wright defines a sovereignty of the “imagination” and “sovereign thinking” for australian first nations communities in her speeches and essays archived in sydney review of books, meanjin and overland. 5 a note on terminology: my use of the term relies on the critique of the anthropocene in the works of heather davis and zoe todd (761-780), and vineeta damodaran (93-116). 6 indigenous communities were made “unthinkable” through elimination and erasure; in the australian context declaring indigenous first nations land as terra nullius, for instance, erased indigenous existence, as well as laws and access to the land as archive. moreover, colonial constructions influenced by nineteenth-century scientific racism has further rendered indigenous intellectual productions “unthinkable” which persist in discourses on indigenous communities in dominant institutions in the postcolonial state. this is a subject of related enquiry in my doctoral work, and i draw my ideas from linda tuhiwai smith, patrick wolfe, and michel-rolph trouilliot’s conception regarding the haitian slave subject. 7 amitav ghosh describes his experience of a tornado in delhi as “uncanny” and points out that the word has recurred significantly in the discourse related to climate change to describe the “freakish” and “improbable” events. he writes that they appear uncanny because it is a moment of “recognition” (a re-cognition as he explains) of the “presence and proximity of nonhuman interlocutors” (30-31). 8 as damodaran mentions in the paper, a “series of regional histories” has been written in india since the 1990s, focusing on the “local”, namely by richard grove, mahesh rangarajan, rohan dsouza, vasant saberwal, and k. sivaramakrishnan. 9 on voice, translation and “telling stories” on behalf of indigenous communities, see wright (“what happens”, np), and muecke and shoemaker’s discussion on “repatriating the story” (unaipon, xi-xliii). transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 165 10 similarly, kyle whyte argues that the vocabulary of the anthropocene or “anthropogenic climate change” are “not precise” terms for indigenous communities (whyte “indigenous climate” 159). 11 on the deep connections between words, and ecology, m. yuvan’s glossary documented in his social media handle a naturalist’s column has particular relevance to direct similar forms of research in the indian context, (“a naturalist’s column”; “speaking river”). 12 i draw from the discussions on temporalities and scale, planetary and historical, from davis and todd, damodaran, and ghosh; further, on poetry and the “scalar challenges of the anthropocene” from lynn keller’s critique of the varied perceptions of human and non-human agency, disparate temporalities, and how this defines the condition of the “self-conscious anthropocene” (keller 1-60; 136173). 13 kimmerer writes that the english name for “pecan” derives from the indigenous word pigan which could mean any nut. the names, along with the trees, and land around lake michigan, writes kimmerer, were lost to settlers during the trail of death (braiding 12-13), linking a history of language and landscape acquired from a history of violence. 14 given that the processes i chart in this section have affected adivasi communities in what are parts of present-day odisha, jharkhand, chhattisgarh, west bengal, and telangana (east and south-east india), which were earlier parts of princely states and provinces like chottanagpur, gondwana, santhal parganas, etc., i draw from a wider source of histories of these regions, rather than limiting myself to the geography of present-day odisha. 15 mike davis delineates two forms of drought: a meteorological one that depends on natural rainfall and local climate, and a hydrological drought which he notes, “always has a social history” (52). 16 i acknowledge the conversations and references suggested by richard mohapatra. 17 a significant limitation in my archival research from the early twentieth century is that some texts are accessible only through translations in english in collections by verrier elwin and shamrao hilvale. further fieldwork in vernacular languages may challenge this reading and provide a more informed analysis. 18 while the idea of mountains as assets was tied to existing ideas of codependence between human and non-human species, the state’s interest in mineral-rich mountains as resource and capital was adapted to negotiate adivasi rights. the beginning of the jharkhand province movement, to demand a separate state for adivasis of chotangapur and santhal paragnas, was also built on adivasi ownership of “resource” to claim statehood. jaipal singh munda claimed that the “deficit area” argument could be easily countered, given jharkhand was ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 166 “unquestionably the richest mineral area in hindustan”. he further adds, “we have mountains of bauxite. we have a monopoly of mica and lac. besides we have gold, silver, asbestos, manganese, […] coal, valuable forests and an admirable climate” (pankaj, 58). 19 my comparative readings of “sacred” to situate adivasi epistemologies around jal, jangal, jameen is a section of my doctoral research informed by native american philosophy of sacrality as ethical kinship with land as expressed in the writings of kiowa writer n. scott momaday (the man made, 45), simon ortiz (ortiz et al, 365) and leanne betasamosake simpson (“land as pedagogy”, 151). 20 akash poyam talks about how in adivasi “social structures, there’s an obligation to protect and take care of non-humans”, and make claims to rights based on the protection of “sacred groves” and “village spirits” (poyam, soreng, et al.); damodaran similarly writes, “adivasi identities and beliefs are based on ancient linguistic, religious, and literary conceptualizations and on cultural origin myths in which important deities are believed to be present in the distinctive mountain and deltaic landscapes and especially in the sacred woodlands” (109). 21jharkhand chief minister hemant soren claimed recently, “adivasis were never hindus and never will be”, (qtd. in angad “adivasis were”, np). 22 while scanning and documentation of these hills feature in early twentieth-century geological surveys, the memorandums of understanding, signed by the odisha state government in the 1990s, allowed access to private mining companies like vedanta for mineral extraction, claiming it would help “development” in adivasi regions. 23 for details of the movement, see ratha, b., et al., padhi and sadangi. 24 the prayer can be read as acknowledging the sisters, baplamali and palangamali, characters in one of the kondh mythologies of the region. the two sisters played in moonlit-drenched water and turned into malis (hills) as they ignored the warning cries of a bat – bat meaning bapla in kui (das and padel, 71). 25 das and padel further note how people of kashipur refer to themselves as “frogs and fishes” (102), presenting themselves as part of an undivided human-non-human ecology. 26 an earlier version of this section of the song in its english translation was produced as a recording (mishra “of mountains”). 27 dambu praska’s song filmed by surya shankar dash is translated in hindi by madhu b joshi and gorakhpur film society. an english translation and subtitles of the video is by jitu jakesika. 28 an oral translation from kui-oriya by arna majhi has been transcribed by rabi shankar pradhan, and then adapted into oriya language and form by devidas mishra. my translation into english has been aided through this process across two languages, as well as the previous translation by jitu jakesika. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 167 29 whyte synthesizes scientific and policy literatures alongside native scholars’ definitions of tek, (“on the role of” 2-12). 30 both papers delivered at crassh climate fictions/ indigenous studies conference, university of cambridge, 24-25 january 2020. 31 a recent exploration of the non-human in climate studies historically situates the emergence of the covid-19 virus in the long history of unstable relations between humans and pangolins. shivasundaram writes that zoonotic transfers are inalienable from the climate emergency and the unequal pasts on which it is built. in the paper, he reads the descriptions of pangolins found in sri lankan indigenous literatures to historicise this frontier of relations (“the human”, 1-30). 32 for discussion on indigeneity as co-opted by the european and british far right, see introduction and chapter 3 by mackay and stirrup 1-24; 59-83. works cited: adivasi lives matter. “young adivasi climate activists whose jail terms missed national news.” instagram, 18 february 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/clbxqhkpth6/. accessed 28 apr 2021. agarwal, anil, and sunita narain. “global warming in an unequal world: a case for environmental colonialism.” centre for science and environment, 1991, 10.1093/oso/9780199498734.003.0005. accessed 20 feb 2021. alam, mahtab. “why the sarna code will have a long-term impact on jharkhand’s tribes.” the wire, 27 nov 2020, https://thewire.in/government/jharkhand-sarna-code-tribal-commumitiesseparate-religious-category-long-term-impact. accessed 24 apr 2021. angad, abhishek. “adivasis were never hindus.” the indian express, 22 feb 2021, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/adivasis-were-never-hindus-theynever-will-be-jharkhand-cm-7199096/. accessed 26 apr 2021. ananya mishra “the crisis in metaphors” 168 anungazuk, herbert o. 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2017. pati, biswamoy. south asia from the margins: echoes from orissa 1800-2000. manchester university press, 2012. ---. editor. adivasis in colonial india. orient blackswan, 2011. ---. situating social history: orissa 1800-1997. orient longman, 2001. poyam, akash. “ten voices from adivasi literatures.” the caravan, 15 jan 2021, https://caravanmagazine.in/books/reading-list-ten-voices-adivasi-literature. accessed 28 feb 2021. ---. “gondwana movement in post-colonial india: exploring paradigms of assertion, self-determination and statehood.” tribal and adivasi studies perspectives from within, social work in india. edited by s. r bodhi. adivaani, 2016, pp. 131-166. ---. “komaram bheem: a forgotten adivasi leader who gave the slogan jal, jangal, jameen.” adivasi resurgence, http://www.adivasiresurgence.com/komaram-bheem-a-forgotten-adivasileader-who-gave-the-slogan-jal-jangal-jameen/. accessed 23 apr 2021. poyam, akash, soreng, archana, m.yuvan, and raile r. ziipao, panelists. “climate 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de, 28 mar 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m5aempzolu&t=73s. sikaka, lada. “an interview with nss leader lada sikaka.” youtube, uploaded by samadrusti, 10 mar 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4keo1icf8t4. simpson, leanne betasamosake. “land as pedagogy.” as we have always done: indigenous freedom through radical resistance. university of minnesota press, 2017, pp. 145-174. sivasundaram, s. “the human, the animal and the prehistory of covid-19. past and present.” nov 2020, https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.54038. accessed 24 apr 2021. skaria. ajay. hybrid histories: forests, frontiers and wildness in western india. oup, 1999. smith, j.r. “‘exceeding beringia’: upending universal human events and wayward transits in arctic spaces.” environment and planning d: society and space, vol. 39, no. 1, feb. 2021, pp. 158–175. sage journals, 10.1177/0263775820950745. accessed 25 apr 2021. smith, linda tuhiwai. decolonising methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. 2nd ed., zed books, 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beacon press, 1995. tuck, eve, and k. wayne yang. “decolonization is not a metaphor.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, vol 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40. https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/tuck%20and%20yang%202012% 20decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf. accessed 23 apr 2021. unaipon, david. legendary tales of the australian aborigines. edited by stephen muecke and adam shoemaker. melbourne university press, 2001. varma, rashmi. “representing the adivasi: limits and possibilities of postcolonial theory.” new subaltern politics: reconceptualising hegemony and resistance in contemporary india. edited by alf gunval nilson and srila transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 175 roy, oup, 2015. oxford scholarship online, 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199457557.001.0001. accessed 28 feb 2021. warrior, robert allen. tribal secrets: recovering american indian intellectual traditions. university of minnesota press, 1995. whyte, kyle powys. “indigenous climate change studies: 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river, speaking rain”. vikalp sangam, 22 dec 2020, https://vikalpsangam.org/article/speaking-river-speaking-rain/#.x-ih7f7gppr accessed 3 may 2022. ---. “a naturalist’s column”. instagram, https://www.instagram.com/a_naturalists_column/. accessed 2 may 2022. microsoft word lockhart_final.docx transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 151 urgency, action, and grounded aesthetics in warren cariou’s tar sands texts isabel lockhart since the turn of the twenty-first century, extraction in the alberta tar sands has expanded at an alarming rate in spite of frequent lapses into unprofitability and countless predictions of the industry’s demise. unlike the easier, cheaper, and more “conventional” drilling of crude oil, the “tough” or “unconventional” process of bitumen extraction is so expensive that tar sands multinationals run at a loss whenever global oil prices fall. yet, too big to fail, this zombie industry has been repeatedly kept alive by the canadian state and tenacious shareholders, not to mention conservative efforts to rebrand the sands as “more ethical” than other sources of oil.1 the projected growth of the tar sands over the next twenty to thirty years contradicts canada’s professed climate goals, as the economies of the western provinces are deeply dependent on bitumen. each revival of the tar sands amounts to a classic case of “dithering”—to use novelist kim stanley robinson’s term for climate inaction in our historical moment—in which the profound reach of fossil capital punctures political resolve, over and over again (2312). in response to canada’s tar-motivated withdrawal from the kyoto protocol in 2012, warren cariou’s “tarhands: a messy manifesto” (2012) is an urgent attempt “to make visible the physical reality of the athabasca oil sands mining developments in canada, a reality that has been occluded by corporate and governmental disinformation as well as by citizens’ unwillingness to face the consequences of their actions and their inaction” (17). in its formal heterogeneity, “tarhands” is a microcosm of cariou’s work as a whole. since his 2009 documentary film land of oil and water, he isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 152 has dedicated much of his academic and artistic attention to the tar sands, exploring a range of forms and genres to better convey the stench, the sight, and the feel of bitumen extraction. like many other tar sands texts, “tarhands” is interested in a logic of visibility and, at least at first glance, the accompanying hope that visibility might lead to citizen revolt and a shift in the status quo. visibility, afforded by various artistic modes, might buttress science to appeal to our environmental sensibilities and generate a counter-force to a seemingly immortal industry. somehow, even, the tenor of urgency held in tar sands media might trickle down to policy makers, causing them to become suddenly alive to the enormous, “external” costs of the operations: irreparable damage to the local ecosystem and global climate change. this is a visibility optimism shared by arguably the most prominent tar sands’ artist, canadian photographer edward burtynsky, whose 2009 ted talk evinces a desire to reach a critical public and raise awareness. he uses photography to share this “unseen” oil world and to “deal with what i think is probably one of the most challenging issues of our time, how to deal with our energy crisis” (“photographing” 00:00:09; 00:02:45). followed by images of pipelines, refineries, highways, gas stations, parking lots, trucker’s jamborees, derelict automobile plants, tire piles, and scrapyards, the tar sands are one of the originary horrors at the start of burtynsky’s oil series on the lifecycle of petroleum. the emphasis is on the shock-power of revelation: on making something invisible visible, on bringing something hidden to light. the question of “visibility,” and its relationship to political action, is a concern of much petrocultures scholarship. although marxist aestheticians have addressed the problem of representation under late capitalism, theorists of petrocultures suggest that there is something especially problematic about petroleum.2 for amitav ghosh, in his provocative contemplation on “petrofiction” in 1992, the multi-lingual and multi-sited character of the “oil encounter” between the united states and the middle east make transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 153 it an especially difficult object for “much of modern culture” (30-31). the form of the novel in particular is resistant to oil’s “slipperiness” (30). according to ghosh, this is why, “when there is so much to write about,” this encounter has “proved so imaginatively sterile” (30). in response to ghosh, a number of scholars argue that global oil encounters are in fact everywhere in culture, but not necessarily as legible objects. oil’s pervasiveness in culture, and its material pervasiveness as fuel for everyday life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, requires different excavational reading practices.3 even when the petroleum industry is, clearly, at the thematic center of the text, the assumption is that it has been revealed to a public for whom oil infrastructures, although everywhere, are generally obscure, or obscured—“receding into spaces made deliberately invisible by private and state interest,” as jeff diamanti and imre szeman put it (“nine principles” 140). whether explicitly “about” petroleum or not, petrocultural objects operate within a field of invisibility. oil hides in plain sight.4 meanwhile, ghosh’s initial observations about petroleum’s slipperiness to fiction, and culture broadly, are still relevant to tar sands texts however intentional they are about bringing oil to visibility: how to communicate the sheer scale of extraction, the global reach of the bitumen economy, the tangle of pipeline networks, the bodily effects of toxic exposure, and the largely peripatetic workforce? for many photographers and filmmakers, the answer is to meet scale with scale. as the narrator of the tar sands documentary petropolis: aerial perspectives on the alberta tar sands (2009) tells us, the birds-eye view presents a “new perspective of a landscape we cannot comprehend from the ground” (00:36:20). attempting to capture the horrifying magnitude of the extraction processes, aerial photography and film have emerged as dominant tar sands forms. to most spectators, in fact, the tar sands are only seeable as such. a cursory google image search of the “alberta tar sands” or the “alberta oil sands” reveals page after page of burtynsky-esque aerial shots— isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 154 breathtaking, fascinating, and dreadful. aerial photographer louis helbig aptly named his collection on the tar sands beautiful destruction (2014) to capture the apparently antagonistic affects evoked by these kinds of images. there is something synecdochic at work here, as the extravagance of the tar sands gesture to objects even larger and more abstract: petroleum dependency, climate change, and the “human epoch” of the anthropocene.5 in this article, however, i investigate warren cariou’s more grounded aesthetic across written and visual media—a “from below” mediation of the tar sands, literally positioned and produced in proximity to the material of bitumen. the question of visibility, for cariou, is really a question of how to make tar fully sensible to an imagined audience presumably located far away from the site of extraction. i am interested both in cariou’s experiments towards visibility, or sensibility, and in his ambivalence about the capacities of art to effect action along a “revelation” logic. more and better representation is all very well, but how this might lead to material change is a persistent problem or frustrated hope across his projects. the diversity of his work—comprised of short stories, documentary films, manifestos, academic scholarship, photographs, and “petrographs”—would itself seem to suggest a preoccupation with representational possibilities and limits, a restless searching for the form most suited to the task of communicating environmental destruction. cariou’s work is also “from below” in the more typical social sense, in that his task of representation is not just about making sensible the impacts of industry but also indigenous presence against the settler social relations that underpin extraction in the region currently known as alberta, on the ancestral lands of the cree, dene, and métis peoples.6 akin to oil, settler colonialism might be thought of as another phenomenon hiding in plain sight—everywhere and nowhere at once, letting die and making live, highly visible to its variously dispossessed and racialized while generally invisible to its transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 155 beneficiaries.7 yet settler colonialism cannot be included unproblematically as just another phenomenon to represent alongside fossil fuel capitalism, since this does not get at their inseparability. moreover, the long timeline of settler colonialism in alberta puts pressure on the register of urgency that dominates representations of, and responsive action to, the tar sands and climate change more broadly. in grappling with the dual and co-constitutive conditions of petromodernity and settlement, i argue that cariou’s proximate, grounded aesthetic carries an alternate politics of action that refocuses from representation of bitumen to relationships with bitumen. by intervening directly in the use and meaning of bitumen, cariou’s practices offer us an alternative to the terms of urgency, visibility, and action that so often frame climate art. a messy manifesto tough or unconventional extraction is a key feature of late fossil capitalism. despite prognoses pointing to “peak oil” in about 2005, petroleum production has continued apace. this can be ascribed to the development of unconventional processes to compensate for the increasing scarcity of accessible crude. such unconventional processes include hydraulic fracturing, deep-sea mining, and tar sands extraction. in an effort to conceal the alberta tar sands’ unconventionality, the canadian association of petroleum producers insists that the tar sands should be referred to as the “oil sands.” the term tar sands is “incorrect,” the website chastises, “because bitumen and tar (asphalt) are different compounds” (“what are the oil sands?”). the industry is not insensible to the rhetorical advantages of referring to the sands as tar sands if you want to convey something of their nastiness, and the advantages of referring to the sands as oil sands if you want to convey something of their conventionality. even relative to the nasty world of oil, the tar sands are unusually and unconventionally nasty. the extraction process is highly mechanized and emits three to isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 156 four times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil extraction. tar sands deposits are typically a mixture of bitumen, sand, clay, and water, and a huge amount of water is required to “liberate” the bitumen, approximately three barrels of fresh water to every one barrel of oil output. meanwhile, bitumen oil is more viscous and acidic than crude oil, making it more likely to leak from a pipeline and considerably harder to clean up.8 the alberta deposits consist of three major reservoirs—athabasca, peace river, and cold lake—together underlying about 55,000 square miles of boreal forest, part of a unique sub-arctic biome.9 in alberta, approximately twenty percent of mining is openpit and eighty percent is in-situ. deposits lying greater than seventy meters from the earth’s surface require the in-situ method, involving the injection of hot steam down a well-pipe to loosen the bitumen. deposits lying less than seventy meters from the surface can be mined directly using the open-pit method. canadian activist naomi klein dubs the process “terrestrial skinning,” where the “overburden” of trees, topsoil, muskeg, and animal habitats are stripped away to access the tar (qtd. in wenzel “overburden”). on top of this, both in-situ and open-pit methods suck up vast quantities of water from the athabasca river at one end of the cycle, and unleash spews of toxic liquid into tailings ponds at the other end. cariou became interested in the tar sands when the oil companies started drilling not far from his hometown of meadow lake, saskatchewan. as he explains in the opening scenes of his documentary land of oil and water (2009), he had never thought of his home as being connected to the tar sands activity in the neighboring province of alberta (00:01:35). this changed when the companies realized that the bitumen deposits “extended well into saskatchewan” (00:02:20). to get a sense of what might soon befall his community, cariou, who is métis, travels to the majority indigenous hamlets of fort mckay and fort chipewyan, respectively 38 miles and 170 miles from the boomtown of fort mcmurray where open-pit mining operations hug the transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 157 athabasca’s edge and rely on its water supply. all open-pit mining in alberta occurs just north of fort mcmurray: fort mckay is right in the center of the tar sands industrial area, while fort chipewyan sits downstream. there, cariou talks to cree, dene, and métis people daily having to weigh up the huge environmental costs of extraction against tar sands jobs they have little economic security to refuse. as one resident of fort mckay puts it, “pretty much they stripped our land and fed everybody money to keep their mouth shut” (00:20:36). cariou’s creative essay “tarhands: a messy manifesto” plays with the etymology of its form, manus festus—hand struck. one of its epigraphs reads as half of an imagined dialogue: “have you noticed anything about your hands? i mean, i didn’t want to say anything at first, but i couldn’t help seeing it, and… what are friends for, right? if you had guacamole in your teeth, i’d say something. if your fly was down… not that it is! nothing like that. but still, i just thought i should ask: have you noticed?” (17). like the epigraph, the whole manifesto is written in this second person address to an imagined “canadian” who needs to be shocked into seeing the tar dirt on their hands. the speaker, an emissary from the tarhands institute “stink-tank,” is exasperated: “something is already rotten in the petro-state, and nobody seems to notice” (21). since appeals to reason have failed, the manifesto targets shame as an emotion that might prompt its reader to action, comparing the complicity in, and complacency about, petro-capitalism to other scenes of everyday shame, like getting guacamole stuck in your teeth or forgetting to do up your fly, or going in to shake someone’s hand and noticing “too late, that yours was dirty” (25). then, beyond shame, the manifesto moves to abjection as a mobilizing force: the “milk you drank at lunch” is contaminated with particles of tar from your hands (27). if the separation from waste is a signal fantasy of modernity, as cariou posits in “wastewest” (2011), then the reminder that isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 158 petrochemicals mix with milk and circulate in our bloodstream appears suddenly in the manifesto as body horror.10 the response of an imagined reader to these reminders is presumably not that of a futurist. above the guacamole epigraph is an epigraph from filippo tommaso marinetti’s 1909 “manifesto of futurism”: “look at us! we are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. for they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed!” (qtd. in “tarhands” 17). in its glorification of industry and violence, the futurist manifesto is a highly sensory text, reveling in the roar of automobiles, the taste of ditch water, and a series of misogynistic and misogynoiristic images as marinetti and his cohort hunt the streets “like young lions” guided by smell more than sight (marinetti 12). if the futurist manifesto represents the dark embrace of petroleum, slipping seamlessly from a love of speed to a love of war and death, then cariou’s messy manifesto sets out the stakes for its reader: either you respond with revulsion or adoration to this technology and its waste products. adoration, as walter benjamin theorized of the futurists, would equate to consumption of fascist aesthetics, a degree of self-alienation such that mankind “can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order” (benjamin 195). to his imagined canadian addressee—a liberal southerner coded not so subtly by that guacamole—cariou suggests that a moderate, measured, equivocal response to the tar sands is a kind of appeasement to the fascist glorification of war. framing his messy manifesto against the terms of the futurist manifesto, cariou links petrocapitalism to war. not just war in the sense that petroleum in the twentieth and twenty-first century has fueled global militarism, nor just in the machinic aesthetic sense of the futurists, but also war in the sense that the tar sands region is a warzone. this is a word used by one of cariou’s fort chipewyan interviewees in land of oil and water, and the language of war is a recurrent feature of cariou’s tar sands works transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 159 (00:35:27). indeed, of the sixteen photographs in the manifesto, only six appear to have been taken from the ground. the others mainly consist of aerial shots of the tailing ponds. underneath one of the ground shots (of a syncrude security fence), we learn that the conditions on the ground jeopardize their own documentation: what i remember most about the tar sands is the stink. we stood there with our cameras, trying to capture a record of that obliterated landscape, but i could hardly even see. the fumes were like hammers: sulfur and benzene and diesel and something else—a dead smell, a charnel residue on the back of my tongue. i had a migraine in half a dozen breaths. i breathed into my shirtsleeve, trying not to retch. how could people work in this, day after day? how could the cree, metis and dene people of fort mackay live in it? (20) this is warzone reporting from the heart of petromodernity, reminiscent of kristen simmons’s account of the 2016 #nodapl struggle at standing rock, “a warscape of heavy military equipment and smoke” (“settler atmospherics”). while simmons’s article describes violent attacks on protestors by police and security forces, cariou’s manifesto zeroes in on slower forms of bodily harm; yet both are different incarnations of what simmons calls “settler atmospherics,” the “normative and necessary violences found in settlement—accruing, adapting, and constricting indigenous and black life” (“settler atmospherics”). if these are warzones, then they are “structural, not eventful,” as audra simpson puts it (mohawk interruptus 154). the structure of settler colonialism doesn’t throw up occasional, exceptional wars, but it is itself total warfare. the land is in “a state of continued expropriation” and its peoples are “in their own constant state of historical emergency” (154). cariou’s ground shots and accompanying text draw attention to the conditions of artistic production and the embodied presence of the photographer. if resources, as isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 160 stephanie lemenager suggests, can be understood to possess aesthetics—or if aesthetics are our experience of the world, “a relationship with matter as such”—then cariou wants to interrupt the smoothness, the pleasure, the facility, and invisibility of petroleum culture, where energy can be delivered into the home, as if by magic, thousands of miles from the site of extraction (lemenager “when energy”). he does this in part by reminding us that the manifesto and its photographs were produced in toxic conditions. further, like all good manifestos, the messy manifesto offers its readers a program to follow: “join us. together we can make visions that shudder a billion eyes, make a stink to awaken the nostrils of the world!” (32). this is its method of conversion: to jolt others into acknowledging, and then acting on, their entanglement in both petroleum production and a state of permanent settler war. what the action is remains obscure, but the process of political education is, first, a form of petro-sensory overload set to undermine both the bourgeois forgetting of, and the fascistic pleasure in, violence. not long after publishing the messy manifesto, cariou began experimenting with a photographic process he calls “petrography.” as cariou explains, petrographs are “contact prints made with a mixture of bitumen and lavender oil applied to a polished metal plate. after about 13h of direct sun exposure, a kerosene developer is poured over the plate and the finished petrograph emerges: a highly reflective surface in a distinctive golden hue, imprinted with an elusive monochrome image” (“portfolio” 253). if messy manifesto is a project in defetishizing the commodity of petroleum by revealing the degree of our bodily entanglement in sites of extractive violence, then petrography intensifies this appeal to the body of an imagined viewer. by “using the bitumen to show what bitumen mining has done to the earth,” cariou illuminates the inescapable character of petroleum in the twenty-first century (253). transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 161 this ouroboros of representation, the conflation of the medium and its object, is not a novel innovation but, rather, an homage to the very first photograph. cariou was inspired to experiment with petrographs when he realized that nicephore niepce had used something called “bitumen of judea” to create “view from the window at le gras” in 1826. like “view from the window,” cariou’s petrographs are impossible to misconstrue as transparent windows onto the reality of the tar sands, but nonetheless “give us new perspectives on the pervasiveness and the symbolic potency of petroleum in contemporary culture” (“petrography”). even as petrographs capture tar sands landscapes and infrastructure, the bitumen itself—the viewing medium—is what is most emphatically revealed to the viewer. whether it’s the angle of sunlight on the plate or the corpse of a fly that got stuck in the bitumen as the petrograph was developing, the bituminous medium insistently asserts its presence (see figures 1 and 2). meanwhile, the reflective metal plate “means that viewers see not only the image itself, but also darkened, petroleum-coated reflections of their own surroundings, and even their own faces” (“petrography”). in cariou’s petrographs, the tar sands do not exist “over there,” but also, with each viewing event, the tar sands exist wherever the viewer is situated. isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 162 figure 1. cariou, warren. “syncrude plant and tailings pond reflection.” 8 x10 inches petrograph on aluminum. v.1, 2014. images © warren cariou only to be reproduced with the artist's permission. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 163 figure 2. cariou, warren. “strip mine horizon to horizon (detail).” 4 x 6 inches petrograph on stainless steel. v.1, 2014. images © warren cariou only to be reproduced with the artist's permission. an elder brother story even though commercial bitumen extraction in alberta did not begin until 1967, the presence of bitumen has long informed colonial relationships in the region. following independence from the british in 1867, canada purchased “rupert’s land,” encompassing the athabasca region, from the hudson’s bay company in 1870. this led to a comprehensive assessment of the newly incorporated territory and its resources by the geological survey of canada (gsc). naturalist john macoun led the first gsc expeditions over the course of the 1870s, referring to the tar sands as “the ooze” with possible commercial value (qtd. in pinkus 45). macoun’s gsc successors, geologists robert bell and robert mcconnell, confirmed this impression in reports that isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 164 greatly influenced, as hereward longley puts it, “southern imaginings of the northwest, and made the expense and obligation of a treaty with the region’s indigenous peoples look minimal” (longley 18). bell’s report told a thrilling story of a material occurring in “enormous quantities” with “practically no limit to the quantity which may be obtained for the digging” (bell 34). this enticing prospect of petroleum, combined with the rush of settlers migrating north for klondike gold in the mid-1890s, led the federal government to begin negotiations for treaty 8. the treaty was signed in 1899, in quick pen-work “extinguishing” the “rights, titles and privileges” of its indigenous signatories from the dane-zaa, the cree, and the chipewyan (denesuline) nations, among others (“articles”).11 treaty 8 cleared the way for more settlement in the region, and the first half of the twentieth century was a period of enthusiastic knowledge production about the tar sands. in 1913, the department of mines delegated mining engineer sidney ells to map, document, and conduct experiments in the region, which he did for the next thirty-two years. by his own account, he was “enthralled” by the sands (recollections 2). in 1962, as commercial production began to look like a possibility, ells proselytized with a vision of the resource he had dedicated much of his life to: “where now the almost unbroken wilderness holds sway, industrial plants may arise and tall stacks dominate the landscape. few will then pause to consider what these developments represent, but success will be the reward of those who had a part in the undertaking” (100). indigenous nations are conspicuously absent from such surveys, their lands and livelihoods swept away by the rhetorical force of “wilderness.” in 1967, the great canadian oil sands plant opened in fort mcmurray. now, in the twenty-first century—the decades that have so far witnessed the most aggressive expansions of the tar sands industry—conditions on the ground include: elevated levels of rare cancers, headache-inducing air quality, contaminated transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 165 food sources, caribou population decline, tailings-polluted ground water, dangerously low river water, and acid rain.12 in “wastewest,” cariou says that the struggle for indigenous communities in the tar sands is a “struggle to ensure that they don’t become waste, that they don’t become wasted lives” (00:35:30). and yet if the tar sands are a site of intensified violence in the total warzone that is settler colonialism, then the cree, dene, and métis peoples who live there are neither helpless victims nor heroic resistance fighters. as cariou documents in land of oil and water, the situation is far from uncomplicated, and communities are often divided as to whether they should participate in or resist the tar sands boom. jobs in the industry constitute one way to survive the hostile living conditions created by the industry itself and colonialism more broadly, which restricts indigenous access to traditional territories and foodways. “while conducting the interviews for my film,” cariou writes, “i routinely encountered a sentiment among indigenous people of the region that there was nothing they could do to stop oil development in their territories, and so the most they could hope for was to make the best of a very difficult situation” (“oil drums” 586). in official public relations communications, the canadian association of petroleum producers cares for indigenous peoples, working with indigenous groups “to seek ways to mitigate impacts and to share the benefits of resource development” (“indigenous relations”). this is a dynamic that cariou names “neoliberal reconciliation,” which describes the way that corporations sell industrial “development,” job creation, and corporate-funded essential services as the most effective means of colonial redress (“oil drums” 583). in reality, indigenous peoples provide a valuable source of precarious labor. their involvement as laborers also carries symbolic surplus value, as the stereotype of the native-as-environmentalist lends “an appearance of responsible environmental practices,” effectively “redwashing” extraction (589).13 moreover, images of indigenous peoples laboring in the tar sands isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 166 implies community consent, giving the “impression that they accept and even condone these developments” (589). in other words, the use of indigenous peoples as symbolic capital is central to the pr production of a social license to operate. cariou’s elder brother story, “an athabasca story” (2012), could be read as an allegory of this complex of settler colonial relations of production in alberta, a context that confounds homogeneous reports of indigenous resistance as much as it confounds the industry’s account of a consenting, enriched community and labor force. in his study of the function of elder brother stories in cowessess first nation, robert innes explains that the values that guided practices historically for the cree, ojibwe, and métis are “embedded in the stories of elder brother” (8). elder brother stories involve the character of elder brother, a trickster or cultural hero known as wîsahêcâchk and nanabush to the cree and ojibwe respectively, who regularly finds himself in some (often amusing) difficulty. how he navigates this difficulty, and whether his actions result in positive or negative outcomes, models behavior for the listening or reading audience. this is “relational guidance” not just for human interaction, but also informing “how humans should relate to nonhumans, be they animals, land, or spirits” (30). if the manifesto and the petrography both operate within a logic of political action prompted by an embodied recognition of the realities of petroleum extraction, then “athabasca story,” as an elder brother story, complicates what is meant by action. “athabasca story” begins with elder brother walking westward over an unfamiliar land, looking for warmth, food, and any relations who might provide for him. he is so hungry that his stomach is “like the shrunken dried crop of a partridge” that rattles inside him as he walks (70). eventually he smells something, a noxious smoke that he hopes might mean warmth. following the scent, “worse than his most sulfurous farts,” he finds its source in a big house surrounded by land totally empty of “trees, of muskeg, of birds and animals” (70). he also sees “enormous yellow contraptions that transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 167 clawed and bored and bit the dark earth and then hauled it away toward the big house” (70). although he has a bad feeling about all of this, he doesn’t want to spend the night cold and hungry by himself. so he walks into the empty land and solicits conversation with a man working one of the earth movers. misidentifying elder brother as someone from greenpeace, or just someone looking to be a nuisance, the worker threatens to call security on him. before moving aside, elder brother just wants to know one thing: “what are you doing with all that earth?” (72). the man answers: it’s very special dirt, this stuff. we dig it up and take it over to the big house, as you call it, and we mix it around in there and after a while it’s ready to burn. fuel to heat your house, if you have one which i doubt. gas to power your car. diesel to move this big rig here. all of it comes right out of the ground. you can tell by the smell of the air around here. just like napalm in the morning! (72) the reference to napalm, and the vietnam war film classic apocalypse now (1979), situates elder brother in a warzone. as a highly flammable and dangerously sticky substance made of gelling agents and petrochemicals, napalm is not a metaphor so much as a material relation of bitumen. like marinetti and the futurists, the worker relishes the smell of death. but, once again—as in the messy manifesto—the war encoded here is the permanent war of settler dispossession. the worker tells elder brother that the land doesn’t belong to him, and his presence on the land is interrupting the project of resource extraction and wealth accumulation. motivated by damaged pride, resentment, and cold, elder brother decides to dig for some of this “special dirt” himself. throughout, “athabasca story” assumes an audience more in the know than elder brother, and this dramatic irony is a chief source of the story’s wry humor. the moment elder brother starts digging into the tar, we know where this is going. “i imagine you can guess how that worked out,” the narrator isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 168 laughs with us at elder brother’s expense: “elder brother was stuck fast in that athabasca tar” (74). after two days of being stuck in the tar, elder brother gets extracted by one of the earth movers and dumped in a pile of the special dirt, the tar pressing “into his nostrils, his ears, his mouth, even into his clenched bum” (75). the earth mover then carries him to the refinery, where “he was made very warm indeed” (75). so it ends very badly for elder brother. by negative example, there are some possible lessons to glean from his behavior. first, even though the worker complacently informs him that burning the dirt is warming the planet so that “the winter never comes back,” elder brother, thinking only of his coldness, interprets this as a good thing (72). second, he tries to take more of the special dirt than he needs for immediate warmth. he dives in as deep as he can go to gather enough of the dirt to last him for decades, and this is how he becomes stuck. third, he doesn’t listen to the voice of the dirt when it cries out, “elder brother, you’re hurting me!” (73). his failure to respond to the dirt means that the dirt doesn’t respond to him when he calls out, “help me! i’m sorry i didn’t listen to you. i’ll leave now without taking anything at all” (74). like many elder brother stories, elder brother is cosmically punished because he gets too greedy or fails to act in reciprocity.14 at the same time, it is not clear that elder brother had many other options available to him, and the story is as much about his struggle as it is about his foolishness. cariou portrays him as someone negotiating extremely difficult circumstances in a land of few relations, a land conditioned by “failed settler kinship,” as kim tallbear names it (“failed settler kinship”).15 he knows from the beginning that he should have turned away, but “that would mean spending the night by himself, freezing and chattering and rattling, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it” (71). he tries to hail the worker as a “dear relation” and thus enter into reciprocity with him, but transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 169 the worker “talked as if he had no relations at all” (72). under these blighted conditions, what would resistance have looked like? if the example of elder brother is supposed to serve as a deterrent, what is the recommended course of action instead? sean teuton states that the “oral traditional trickster reminds us through his hasty and unself-aware behavior that we should reflect before diving in for our desires, for what we truly need might be right in front of us” (qtd. in innes 29). although elder brother is hasty and lacks foresight, it is not clear that what he truly needs is right in front of him. he needs warmth, and the special dirt appears to be the only available source. the story stages the profound way that the tar sands industry, and the long history of settler colonialism in the region, work to restrict indigenous economies, foodways, and kinship relations—a mechanism that fuels indigenous participation by force of necessity. this situation problematizes any anti-extractive “action” that does not consider settler colonialism, or does so only as a matter of fleeting inclusion. as andrew curley and majerle lister argue, “extractive industries have helped assuage some of the longstanding impacts of genocide, violent displacement, and forced assimilation,” but “[c]limate change is a politics largely ignorant of indigenous peoples’ complicated relationship with extractive industries” and “the depth of colonial entanglements is not well understood or accounted for within political proposals” (260; 258). if the tar sands industry were suddenly to collapse, indigenous peoples would be among the first to suffer from this boom/bust cycle, replicating the decline of the fur trade and successive resource frontiers.16 situating the current ecological terror of the tar sands in the long timeline of settler colonialism changes both how we narrate the contemporary moment and the politics we use to address it. this is not a remedial gesture that would simply include settler colonialism in an account of the tar sands. on the contrary, a reading of “athabasca story” shows how settler colonialism is the structuring condition of possibility for the tar sands, creating a fraught terrain of isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 170 entanglements such that “action”—if art could be relied upon to prompt political action—must take anti-colonialism or decolonialism as its constitutive framework. as numerous indigenous studies scholars have explained, the idea of the anthropocene—in its governing discursive formation, at least—fails to consider european settler colonialism as a terraforming project responsible for deep-time planetary impacts and climatic change since its beginnings in the sixteenth century, while also effacing the uneven distribution of environmental risk along the divisions of race, class, and gender intrinsic to capitalism.17 these erasures, as potawatomi philosopher kyle powys whyte argues, contribute to “epistemologies of crisis” that experience and narrate the present as unprecedented and urgent (53). epistemologies of crisis are central features of settler colonial power, in which the crisis object—in this case, climate change—is leveraged to conceal or justify injustice, furthering appropriations of indigenous lands and waters for the “common goods” of conservation, carbon sequestration, renewable energy infrastructure, etcetera. as an alternative to the dangerous urgency of epistemologies of crisis, whyte emphasizes “epistemologies of coordination” that “organise knowledge through the vector of kinship relationships,” responding to change without compromising responsibility to diverse human and nonhuman others (62). although much of cariou’s tar sands work is pitched to the tenor of urgency, it also holds incipient forms of non-urgent action sensitive to the interrelationships of a local ecosystem and distinct from a model of action based on artistic consciousness-raising. i explore these forms of action in the final section below. storying bitumen on a surface reading, cariou is very explicit about the urgent project of making the tar sands visible or sensible to critical publics. this is the motivating premise for both the transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 171 messy manifesto and his petrography. yet his work also expresses an ambivalence about the capacities of art to effect action. there is a desperation to the tone of the manifesto that conveys a sense of exhausted options. even as the manifesto recruits “irrational” affects like shame and disgust to reject the toxicity of the tar sands, it also includes instances of normalization: underneath the paragraph about the horrifying stink of the tar sands, cariou quotes a security guard who says he “used to smell it, too” but “after a week or two you don’t notice a thing” (20). if, however, we pay attention to what cariou is doing with his tar sands work rather than adjudicate the efficacy of his representations, then we arrive at a different angle on the question of action. in his portfolio of petrography, cariou writes that, while i started out with a representational goal—using the bitumen to show what bitumen mining has done to the earth—my art practice has gradually become at least as much about my own relationship to the bitumen i use in the process. this project requires a level of intimacy with petroleum that is sometimes fascinating but is also troubling: creating a petrograph is a messy, smelly, and somewhat dangerous business […] however, as i spent more time with the bitumen i came to understand it not only as a source of potential danger but also as a creative collaborator, helping to reveal new ways of seeing the world. i also think of the bitumen as a kind of medicine, one that can cause damage if used improperly, but one that can also provide valuable gifts if it is approached with the proper respect. this is why i leave an offering of tobacco or sweetgrass wherever i gather the bitumen i use in my petrography, in keeping with métis cultural teachings about reciprocity, gratitude, and maintaining good relations with the land. (253-4) isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 172 this is not the first time that cariou has used the word “intimacy” with respect to energy materials. in a short keywords essay on “aboriginal,” cariou describes energy intimacy as a kind of energy ethic in which “every community member necessarily has direct and personal relationships with the sources of their energy” (18). this opposes extractive energy logics, “which by its very definition is about taking energy out of its context, turning it into a commodity that can be circulated in a global economy wherein its value is guaranteed by virtue of its sameness, its uniformity” (19). even though cariou is not using the bitumen for energy in his petrography, he is nonetheless enacting an intimate relationship to bitumen in its local context and derailing its circulation in a global market. the pace of petrography likewise contravenes an extractive energy system based on speed at every level of the production-consumption cycle—from efficiency of extraction and processing, to the necessarily rapid delivery of the fuel to a global market, to the pace of living that petroleum has made possible, most grossly celebrated by the speed credo of the futurists.18 petrography, by contrast, requires a huge amount of work and patience to produce a single print. over the course of his experiments with bitumen, cariou begins to relate to the substance as a kin-relation, just as elder brother was unable to do. taking it from the land requires care and reciprocity, otherwise “nature withholds further gifts from the transgressor and his or her community” (cariou, “aboriginal” 19). and using it in this way, as something other than commodified energy, echoes the use of athabasca bitumen by the cree and dene to caulk their canoes (cariou, “tarhands” 23). although the material reality of naturally-occurring bitumen can appear monstrous, cariou’s alternative use of bitumen emphasizes that monstrosity is not intrinsic to the substance but the way that it has been put to use under capitalism. while harvesting the bitumen for petrography, cariou is “amazed to see that this undisturbed bitumen habitat was teeming with lush plant and bird life […] and i realized then that the bitumen has transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 173 another side: it can support life and can even be a source of life-affirming energy if it is left in its natural state” (“portfolio” 254). ironically through bitumen, cariou is able to see the tar sands region beyond its warzone status. this offers a glimpse of the region after the tar sands, one markedly distinct from the industrial promise of “reclaiming” or “remediating” the land. tar sands “reclamation” zones are attempts to clean up the waste products of extraction and return the land to its previous state. reclamation, however, is principally governed by the extraction companies and has been met with indigenous refusal.19 as continuations of settler colonial business as usual, the rapid and solutions-oriented process of reclamation is a signal example of a crisis epistemology at work. compare this to the slow temporality of cariou’s kinship building with bitumen. in the monograph fuel: a speculative dictionary (2016), karen pinkus wonders whether her dictionary “can help scramble our thinking about fuel […] to open up potential ways of interacting with substances (real and imaginary), by wrenching them out of narrative (violently in some cases), and placing them into the form of an idiosyncratic dictionary so they could eventually be replaced by users into new narratives” (6). i read cariou as doing similar work via different methods, scrambling the dominant narratives about bitumen (as either magical energy or demonic toxin) and making it available for new narratives. cariou’s art practices seem to model a different kind of “action” to the “revelation” economy of action that depends on an unveiled horror. “athabasca story” holds this alternate action ethic too, in the final paragraph addressing its audience directly: “sometimes when you’re driving your car and you press down hard on the accelerator, you might hear a knocking, rattling sound down deep in the bowels of the machine. that’s elder brother, trying to get your attention, begging you to let him out” (75). set in mythic time, this elder brother story culminates by revealing the source of the rattle in a petrol engine. in the context of the story, isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 174 however, it adds to the understanding of bitumen as kin, this time in the form of elder brother asking you to help him out.20 in one reading, the story could be promoting more conscious consumption—pause before you fill up your gas. but in another, it is promoting a relationship with bitumen outside of the extractive energy relation altogether. “letting elder brother out” could index something quite radical, a reorganizing of relationships to matter that disrupts settler capitalist social relations. the act of storying bitumen in this way, as a kin relation, is a form of asserting indigenous relationships on and with the land. i began this article with the logic of visibility in the tar sands—that is, an investment in the urgent communication of the tar sands to those who simply have not seen the true reality of the extraction project yet, and the hope that the more that is revealed, the greater the critical mass required to shut down the industry. i read cariou’s grounded aesthetic as crucial to making the tar sands more “visible,” or available to the senses. cariou seems undecided, however, as to whether mediated exposure to the sensory realities of the tar sands prompts political action. he is also sensitive to the nature of such action in the context of settler colonialism. i therefore track an alternate ethic of action modeled by his artistic practices. in “nine principles for a critical theory of energy” (2020), jeff diamanti and imre szeman critique a political approach predicated on “unveiling,” since unveiling “presupposes that seeing things for what they are, as opposed to what they appear to be, disposes with the sedimentation of material and discursive histories in bodies and landscapes: a debunking, rather than a sifting through” (154). although cariou seems invested in engendering shock in his representation of the tar sands—an economy of urgent action dependent on “unveiling”—he also practices a slow, grounded “sifting through” of bitumen’s other meanings, potentialities, and relationships. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 175 notes 1 a powerful movement to claim canadian bitumen production as ethical emerged in 2010 with ezra levant’s ethical oil. the idea of ethical oil was enthusiastically taken up by stephen harper’s conservative government and the tar sands were pitched to u.s. markets as a guilt-free, secure, humane, democratic alternative to middle east reserves. there are approximately 120 tar sands projects owned by corporations like chevron, shell, bp, syncrude, and suncor (the latter two specialize in the tar sands). in 2019, the sands were producing 2.6 million barrels a day, most of which was sent straight to refineries in the u.s. as diluted bitumen. (these figures are taken from the 2019 national geographic article on the tar sands, “this is the world’s most destructive oil operation – and it’s growing.”) the tar sands struggled with the 2020 plunge in oil prices due to the covid-19 pandemic, but high-profile investor warren buffett held on fast to his shares in suncor. this reflects a long-term faith in the tar sands industry, which at this point would be more expensive to shut down than keep afloat. another harbinger of doom for the tar sands was u.s. president joe biden’s 2021 executive order to revoke the border permit for the keystone xl pipeline. rail transportation is much more expensive than pipeline transportation, and so the tenability of the tar sands depends somewhat on its pipeline network. yet biden’s order didn’t make a significant impact on suncor’s climbing share price and 2021 path to market recovery. 2 in “cognitive mapping,” fredric jameson describes the effect of global capitalism on subjectivity and the implications of a “dispersed” subject for representation: “you should understand that i take such spatial peculiarities of postmodernism as symptoms and expressions of a new and historically original dilemma, one that involves our insertion as individual subjects into a multidimensional set of radically discontinuous realities, whose frames range from the still surviving spaces of bourgeois private life all the way to the unimaginable decentering of global capital itself. not even einsteinian relativity, or the multiple subjective worlds of the older modernists, is capable of giving any kind of adequate figuration to this process, which in lived experience makes itself felt by the so-called death of the subject, or, more exactly, the fragmented and schizophrenic decentering and dispersion of this last” (351). 3 in her introduction to fueling culture (2017), jennifer wenzel writes that while compiling counter-examples is one way to “challenge or update” ghosh’s claim, a “more significant methodological curiosity is in identifying protocols of reading and modes of inquiry that can perceive the pressure that energy exerts on culture, even and especially when energy is not-said: invisible, erased, elided, so ‘slippery’ (as in isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 176 ghosh’s account of oil) and ubiquitous as to elude representation and critical attention” (11). 4 the phrase “hiding in plain sight” crops up frequently in petroleum criticism. see stephanie lemenager’s living oil (2014) and imre szeman and maria whiteman’s photo essay “oil imag(e)inaries” (2012) (66; 55). 5 the term anthropocene was popularized by ecologist eugene stoermer and chemist paul crutzen in 2000, designating the epoch of human impact. since then, a flurry of counter-terms—like capitalocene and plantationocene—have emerged to more accurately describe the human systems responsible for climate change and ecological damage (rather than just humanity in the general). 6 i borrow this “dual social and spatial” sense of “from below” from jennifer wenzel’s “planet vs. globe” (2014): “this version of ‘from below’ is not only subaltern but also subatmospheric: imagining from the earth, from the ground, rather than the satellite or ‘bird’s eye,’ atmospheric, or aerial view” (20). 7 “letting die and making live” is a paraphrase of michel foucault’s formulation of biopower as the state management of life and death, differentially optimizing life for some while hastening death for others by force of neglect (“society must be defended” 241). 8 this information is gathered (respectively) from: phil mckenna’s 2016 inside climate news article; stephen leahy’s 2019 national geographic article; and andrew prince’s 2012 npr infographic. 9 “if alberta, with its population of four million people, were a country, it would be the fifth largest oil-producing nation. while it produces conventional oil, most comes from the alberta oil sands, the world’s third largest proven oil reserve at 170 billion barrels” (leahy). 10 cariou often associates bitumen with the subject-disturbing forces that feature prominently in julia kristeva’s theory of abjection: the corpse (the “charnel residue on the back of my tongue”); feces (the fart smell in “athabasca story”); and milk. as kristeva explains, an abject thing is something that has been rejected from the subject in order to constitute the boundaries of the self, but it is also, as the radically banished “not i,” central to the self: “it is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us” (4). 11 like canada’s other numbered treaties, indigenous title was extinguished in exchange for guaranteed usufructuary protections around hunting, trapping, and fishing, and various additional agreements. though the federal government reserves the right to dissolve such “tracts” if they “may be required or taken up from time to transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 177 time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes,” it can only do so in proper consultation with the peoples affected (“articles”). of course, this leaves much open to opportunistic interpretation, and “consultation” occurs fleetingly if it occurs at all. but for many native communities, treaty 8 has become a tool of resistance. recourse to treaty 8 violations and neglected obligations can be leveraged against tar sands expansion in alberta. 12 this information on conditions in the tar sands is gathered from the indigenous environmental network (https://www.ienearth.org/what-we-do/tar-sands/) and an al jazeera profile of chief allan adam of the athabasca chipewyan first nation, following an attack on him by the royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) on march 10 2020 (https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/7/15/chief-allan-adam-on-being-beaten-bypolice-and-indigenous-rights). 13 “redwashing” is a term of melanie yazzie’s, quoted by cariou. 14 see the wîsahêcâchk story involving a huge number of geese, an ill-timed nap, and a bare ass. there is a recording of cariou telling it here, in “wastewest”: https://archive.org/details/carioupollination (starts 26:55). cariou credits cree storyteller louis bird for this version. 15 tallbear describes failed settler kinship in the build-up to what is known as the u.s./dakota war of 1862: “the whites did not know how to do kinship. this took the dakota a long time to understand. the dakota had already been living with french fur traders for decades whom they had been able to inter-marry with, trade with, incorporate into their societies, although this was not always a bed of roses. kinship never is. but these new settlers, english and german speaking, only knew how to evangelize, appropriate, and suppress. they had no interest in engaging in kinship relations. they had no interest in learning from dakota people. they would make treaties in order to get what they wanted, and then renege on their obligations. the indian must either adapt to their partitioning of the world—the partitioning of lands, communities, forms of love and kinship, resources, and knowledges—into categories that would either discipline the indian into being a christian citizen, or would result in their death. the settler state has been very poor kin indeed” (“failed settler kinship, truth and reconciliation, and science”). 16 in “oil drums,” cariou quotes chief jim boucher of the ft. mckay first nation: “with the decline in fur demand around the planet, it had a very drastic effect on the area in the sense that we were left without an economy. so we had to change, and that change was brought about with regards with [sic] some discussion in the community saying we need to embrace a new type of economy” (boucher qtd. in “oil drums” 587). following this, cariou reflects that “the chief’s invocation of economic erasure isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 178 after the decline in global demand for fur indicates the profound sense of crisis and vulnerability that can come to an indigenous community when it has tied its economy to a capital market that then collapses” (587). 17 see heather davis and zoe todd’s “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene” (2017); kyle powys whyte’s “indigenous climate change studies: indigenizing futures, decolonizing the anthropocene” (2017); and andrew curley and majerle lister’s “already existing dystopias: tribal sovereignty, extraction, and decolonizing the anthropocene” (2020). 18 “petrosubjects inhabit a petroculture of quickened time and expanded space that requires oil to make it flow. that flow feels awfully good (for the most part), or if not good, then certainly like the given” (diamanti and szeman 143). 19 see tara joly’s article “reclaiming nature? indigenous homeland and oil sands territory” (2017). 20 see zoe todd’s article “anthropology of environments: what i learned from the horseshoe crabs” (2019) for another meditation on petroleum as kin that complements “athabasca story”: “my home province in canada is built on marine remains. this long and powerful history, in part, is what gives us our petro-wealth. the bodies and traces of ancient creatures both plant and animal have transformed into geologic wealth that fuels every aspect of the alberta economy. it is a petro-ontology or paleo-ontology that weaves our breath, thought, hubris, and movement today with the bodies and memories of creatures who existed millions of years before us” (“anthropology of environments”). works cited bell, robert. “report on part of the basin of the athabasca river, north-west territory.” geological and natural history survey of canada, dawson brothers, 1884. benjamin, walter. “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.” illuminations: essays and reflections, edited by hannah arendt, translated by harry zohn, mariner books, 2019, pp. 166-196. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 179 burtynsky, edward. “photographing the landscape of oil.” tedglobal, 2009, www.ted.com/talks/edward_burtynsky_photographing_the_landscape_of_oil/upnext?language=en. capp. “indigenous relations.” www.capp.ca/explore/indigenous-relations/. ---. “what are the oil sands?” www.capp.ca/oil/what-are-the-oil-sands/. cariou, warren. “aboriginal.” fueling culture: 101 words for energy and environment, edited by imre szeman et al., fordham up, 2017, pp. 17-20. ---. “an athabasca story.” lake: a journal of arts and environment, vol. 7, 2012, pp. 70-75. ---. “oil drums: indigenous labour and visions of compensation in the tar sands zone.” materialism and the critique of energy, edited by brent ryan bellamy and jeff diamanti, mcm publishing, 2018, pp. 581-602. ---. “petrography.” warren cariou website, www.warrencariou.com/petrography. ---. “portfolio: petrographs.” photography and culture, vol. 13, no. 2, 2020, pp. 253262. taylor & francis online, doi.org/10.1080/17514517.2020.1785652. ---. “strip mine horizon to horizon (detail).” warren cariou website, 2014, www.warrencariou.com/petrography. ---. “syncrude plant and tailings pond reflection.” warren cariou website, 2014, www.warrencariou.com/petrography. ---. “tarhands: a messy manifesto.” imaginations, vol. 3, no. 2, 2012, pp. 17-34. york university, dx.doi.org/10.17742/image.sightoil.3-2.3. ---. “wastewest: a state of mind.” cross-pollinations workshop, 25 march 2011, archive.org/details/carioupollination. cariou, warren, and neil mcarthur, directors. land of oil and water, 2009. coppola, francis ford, director. apocalypse now, 1979. isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 180 crutzen, paul j, and eugene f. stoermer. “the ‘anthropocene’.” international geosphere-biosphere programme (igbp) global change newsletter, no. 41, 2000, pp. 17-18. curley, andrew, and majerle lister. “already existing dystopias: tribal sovereignty, extraction, and decolonizing the anthropocene.” handbook on the changing geographies of the state: new spaces of geopolitics, edited by sami moisio et al., edward elgar publishing, 2020, pp. 251-262. davis, heather, and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international journal for critical geographies, vol. 16, no. 4, 2017, pp. 761-780, acmejournal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1539. diamanti, jeff, and imre szeman. “nine principles for a critical theory of energy.” polygraph: an international journal of culture & politics, vol. 28, 2020, pp. 137159. amsterdam school for cultural analysis (asca), hdl.handle.net/11245.1/27e78a90-0e59-48f0-a792-f42cc173d1a3. ells, sidney c. recollections of the development of the athabasca oil sands. department of mines and technical surveys, 1962. foucault, michel. “society must be defended”: lectures at the collège de france, 1975-1976. edited by mauro bertani and alessandro fontana, translated by david macey, picador, 2003. ghosh, amitav. “petrofiction: the oil encounter and the novel.” the new republic, 2 march 1992, pp. 29-34. helbig, louis. beautiful destruction. rocky mountain books, 2014. indigenous environmental network. “tar sands.” www.ienearth.org/what-we-do/tarsands/. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 181 innes, robert alexander. elder brother and the law of the people: contemporary kinship and cowessess first nation. u of manitoba p, 2013. jameson, fredric. “cognitive mapping.” marxism and the interpretation of culture, edited by cary nelson and lawrence grossberg, u of illinois p, 1988, pp. 347360. joly, tara. “reclaiming nature? indigenous homeland and oil sands territory.” engagement: a blog published by the anthropology and environment society, 7 march 2017, aesengagement.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/reclaiming-natureindigenous-homeland-and-oil-sands-territory/. kristeva, julia. powers of horror: an essay on abjection. translated by leon s. roudiez, columbia up, 1982. leahy, stephen. “this is the world’s most destructive oil operation—and it’s growing.” national geographic, 11 april 2019, www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/alberta-canadas-tar-sands-isgrowing-but-indigenous-people-fight-back. lemenager, stephanie. living oil: petroleum culture in the american century. oxford up, 2014. ---. “when energy is the focus: methodology, politics, and pedagogy: a conversation with brent ryan bellamy, stephanie lemenager, and imre szeman.” interview conducted by brent ryan bellamy, postmodern culture, vol. 26, no. 1, 2016. project muse, muse.jhu.edu/article/635543. levant, ezra. ethical oil: the case for canada’s oil sands. mcclellan & stewart, 2010. longley, hereward. “bitumen exploration and the southern re-inscription of northeastern alberta: 1875-1967.” rcc perspectives: transformations in environment and society, no. 4, 2016, pp. 17-24, doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7695. isabel lockhart warren cariou’s tar sands texts 182 marinetti, filippo tommaso. “the foundation and manifesto of futurism.” critical writings, edited by günter berghaus, translated by doug thompson, farrar, straus and giroux, 2006, pp. 11-17. mckenna, phil. “with some tar sands oil selling at a loss, why is production still rising?” inside climate news, 23 february 2016, insideclimatenews.org/news/23022016/tar-sands-becoming-worthlessproduction-rises-even-prices-plummet/. mettler, peter, director. petropolis: aerial perspectives on the alberta tar sands, 2009. morin, brandi. “chief allan adam on being beaten by police and indigenous rights.” al jazeera, 15 july 2020, www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/7/15/chief-allanadam-on-being-beaten-by-police-and-indigenous-rights. pinkus, karen. fuel: a speculative dictionary. u of minnesota p, 2016. prince, andrew. “infographic: how tar sands oil is produced.” npr, 8 august 2012, www.npr.org/2012/08/16/158907708/infographic-how-tar-sands-oil-isproduced. robinson, kim stanley. 2312. orbit, 2012. simmons, kristen. “settler atmospherics.” fieldsights, 20 nov 2017, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/settler-atmospherics. simpson, audra. mohawk interruptus: political life across the borders of settler states. duke up, 2014. szeman, imre, and maria whiteman. “oil imag(e)inaries: critical realism and the oil sands.” imaginations, vol. 3, no. 2, 2012, pp. 46-67. york university, dx.doi.org/10.17742/image.sightoil.3-2.5. tallbear, kim. “failed settler kinship, truth and reconciliation, and science.” indigenous science technology society, 16 march 2016, indigenoussts.com/failed-settler-kinship-truth-and-reconciliation-and-science/. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 183 todd, zoe. “anthropology of environments: what i learned from the horseshoe crabs.” anthro{dendum}, 5 september 2019, anthrodendum.org/2019/09/05/anthropology-of-environments-what-i-learnedfrom-the-horseshoe-crabs/. treaty 8 first nations of alberta. “articles of treaty no. 8.” www.treaty8.ca/. wenzel, jennifer. "afterword: improvement and overburden." postmodern culture, vol. 26, no. 2, 2016. project muse, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/635544. ---. “introduction.” fueling culture: 101 words for energy and environment, edited by imre szeman et al., fordham up, 2017, pp. 1-16. ---. “planet vs. globe.” english language notes, vol. 52, no. 1, 2014, pp. 19-30. duke up, https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-52.1.19. whyte, kyle powys. “against crisis epistemology.” routledge handbook of critical indigenous studies, edited by brendan hokowhitu et al., routledge, 2020, pp. 52-64. ---. “indigenous climate change studies: indigenizing futures, decolonizing the anthropocene.” english language notes, vol. 55, no. 1-2, 2017, pp. 153-162. duke up, doi.org/10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.153. microsoft word 980-article text-5781-1-11-20211013.docx transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 77 coeval worlds, alter/native words: healing in the inuit arctic abdenour bouich introduction split tooth (2018) is the debut novel of inuk throat singer and artist tanya tagaq. as a narrative that addresses colonial traumas in the peripheries of what is known today as the settler-colonial state of canada, the novel stands out notably for its plasticity in terms of form, style, and aesthetic techniques. it brings together prose, poetry, illustrations, narrative registers that are anchored in inuit ontologies, epistemologies, and worldviews along with tagaq’s own memoir. together, the novel is described by tagaq as “non-fiction, embellished non-fiction and pure fiction” (qtd. in doherty). indeed, there is no indication of when the fiction ends and the non-fiction memoir begins (nor vice-versa), “underscor[ing] the inability of those binaries of euro-defined disciplines to categorize, embrace, or discipline the exciting work of indigenous artists and scholars” (beard 317). by not conforming to those western literary genres of realism, fantasy, or science fiction, nor to experimental literary categories of magical realism, speculative fiction, and imaginative literature, split tooth presents itself as what cherokee scholar and writer daniel heath justice terms “indigenous wonderworks.” in his landmark study of indigenous literatures why indigenous literatures matter (2018), justice opens with an introduction titled “stories that wound, stories that heal” (1). he explains that, although many toxic stories were written about indigenous peoples— especially from a colonial eurocentric perspective—the most damaging of them all is that of “indigenous deficiency” (2, original emphasis). abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 78 according to this story, justice explains, lack in all its forms is inherent to indigenous peoples’ nature, whether it is a lack of “morals, laws, culture […] language […] a lack of responsibility” towards themselves and their families—a lack that this story attributes to indigenous biological, intellectual, and psychological deficiency (2). besides, justice states, this story asserts that lower rates of life expectancy, employment, and education, along with higher rates of homelessness, substance abuse, and suicide are due to the indigenous “lack of human decency” rather than a consequence of longstanding colonial violations of indigenous people’s lives, cultures, and identities (3). mental health issues related to trauma, depression, and despair, according to this story, find genesis in the indigenous peoples’ “lack of mental fitness” rather than being sustained by ongoing colonial oppressive and racist social structures (3). justice asserts that the story of “indigenous deficiency works as a protective shell hiding “settler colonial guilt and shame” while simultaneously exonerating society from taking “responsibility for the story’s devastating effects” (4). in the introduction of decolonizing methodologies (1999), linda tuhiwai smith explains that (post-)colonial and settler-colonial governments, states, institutions, and societies continue to ignore the “historical formations” of degrading conditions imposed upon indigenous peoples’ such as poverty, physical and mental health issues, alcoholism, and substance abuse that are direct results of colonialism as well as socio-political and economical marginalisation and oppression (34). instead, these institutions place the blame on indigenous peoples, trying to convince them that there is an inherent deficiency within them that explains their “worthlessness, laziness, dependence and lack of ‘higher’ order human qualities” (34). these are, indeed, part of the “stories that wound” to which justice refers in the title of his introduction. however, justice also insists that there are other stories, which he refers to as “stories that heal.” written from indigenous perspectives, these bring about transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 79 spiritual and bodily healing by reminding indigenous people that they are not “determined by the colonial narrative of deficiency” that have been long internalised and accepted as fatal truth (5). the author explains that these stories are found in indigenous literacies, yet they should not be understood simply as “diverse literary forms” or looked at from a narrow aesthetic prism, for “they perform other kinds of vital functions in their respective cultures, many of them ceremonial, ritual, and spiritual” (23). justice asserts that indigenous “speculative” literatures carry within them these “stories that heal.” in fact, he explains that indigenous speculative literatures provide “transformative modes” which, through a “complementary and distinctive range of reading and interpretive strategies,” make it possible to dismantle the monolithic and fatalist “models of ‘the real’” and provide transformative visions of other lives, experiences, and histories” (142). therefore, justice avers that the “ethical import” provided by speculative fiction–– whether fantasy, horror, or science fiction––demands to be looked at critically and pedagogically (142). he maintains that within indigenous speculative fiction, “the fantastic is an extension of the possible, not the impossible; it opens up and expands the range of options for indigenous characters (and readers); it challenges our assumptions and expectations of ‘the real,’ thus complicating and undermining the dominant and often domineering functions of the deficit model [of the real]” (149). however, justice questions the relevance of the terminology that informs speculative fiction when it is viewed from indigenous cultural and literary perspectives. he takes issue with terms such as “fantasy fiction” or “speculative/imaginative literature” as they are “burdened by dualistic presumptions of real and unreal” and “leave [no] legitimate space for other meaningful ways of experiencing this and other worlds” (152). even more problematic for indigenous cultures and literatures, explains justice, is that the term abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 80 “fantasy” suggests a kind of fabrication which, if understood from a freudian psychoanalytical perspective, could suggest a pathology of neurosis and delusion (152–3). instead, he proposes the concept of “wonderworks” that implies a polylithic understanding of the world and reality (152). justice explains that “[w]ondrous things are other and otherwise; they’re outside the bounds of the everyday and mundane […]. “they remind us that other worlds exist; other realities abide alongside and within our own” (153, original italics). indigenous wonderworks are grounded in indigenous peoples’ cultural specificities and experiences, allowing for the resurgence and the recovery of indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and politics that have long been dismissed by colonial discourses and narratives (154). furthermore, per justice, indigenous wonderworks subvert the “expectations of rational materialism” that insist on the inevitability and fatality of “the oppressive structures and conditions” as inherent to indigenous experiences (154–5). this article examines the ways in which split tooth revisits various sites of colonial and neo-colonial traumas that the inuit endured and still endure in the arctic region of what is known today as canada. the novel provides a vigorous critique of colonial capitalist modernity and its destructive “development” from which the inuit suffer, with a particular focus on the ecological disasters provoked by resource extraction and global warming brought about by global capitalism and canadian capitalist expansionism in the arctic region. in doing so, split tooth highlights the ways in which environmental disasters and their anthropogenic effects find geneses in colonialism’s ecocidal logics. in fact, this is precisely what is argued by settler-canadian scholar heather davis and métis anthropologist zoe todd in “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene” (2017). in their article, davis and todd call for a re-evaluation of the start date of the anthropocene by linking it to western colonisation and approaching it as a continuation and accumulation of colonial dispossessions, genocides, and ecocides (761). the transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 81 authors explain that the logic of the anthropocene resides in “the ruptures and cleavages between land and flesh, story and law, human and more-than-human” caused by colonialism and contemporary petrocapitalism (775). davis and todd’s parallel between the start of the anthropocene and the beginning of western colonialism of “the americas” suggests that indigenous peoples are well acquainted with its repercussions. in split tooth, the relationship between colonialism and canadian petrocapitalism, and environmental destruction in the arctic region is aesthetically registered not only through a panoply of narrative registers in which non-human agencies that pertain to inuit worldviews and knowledge systems are mobilised, but also through a subversive appropriation of the gothic and phantasmagoria. in parallel, aspects of the western gothic are deployed as a subversive strategy to capture the protagonist’s trauma of sexual abuse and rape that is implicitly equated with colonial encroachment and environmental destruction in the arctic. reflecting on the land’s agency and ability to exert an influence of human and the other-than-human beings in “indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-humans” (2013), vanessa watts writes: “our truth, not only anishnaabe and haudenosaunee people but in a majority of indigenous societies, conceives that we (humans) are made from the land; our flesh is literally an extension of soil” (27). this conceptualisation, which watts calls “place-thought,” is “based upon the premise that land is alive and thinking and that humans and non-humans derive agency through the extensions of these thoughts” (21). in split tooth, the protagonist inscribes her path of healing within the worldviews and knowledge systems that inform the inuit perspectives and visions of the natural environment and landscape of the arctic. as such, the power of tanya tagaq’s novel lies in the way in which it presents itself as a narrative of healing and survivance. abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 82 in the context of colonial traumas, survivance is, as anishinaabe writer gerald vizenor puts it, neither mere survival, nor endurance and passive presence; rather, “survivance is an active repudiation of dominance, tragedy and victimry” (fugitive poses 15). in a recent article by valerie n. wieskamp & cortney smith, entitled ““what to do when you’re raped”” (2020), the authors conduct a rhetorical analysis of lucy m. bonner’s illustrated handbook what to do when you are raped (2016). in it, they explore the potential of the “rhetoric of survivance” in expanding the discussion about trauma and sexual violence within indigenous women and girls (73). wieskamp and smith start with a critique of the euro-american discourses of trauma and sexual violence that they consider incompatible with the experiences of women of colour (73). in addition to their racial and gendered tendencies, they explain, euro-american discourses of trauma follow a linear “traumatological timeline” which assumes a stable subject position before traumatisation. thus, traumatised individuals are capable “of being forever cured of that trauma, even if they cannot regain their initial subject position” (76). this understanding, the authors contend, victimises those who fail to detach themselves from their trauma (76). moreover, wieskamp and smith state that euro-american conceptions of trauma and healing are highly individualistic, such that the accountability of the state’s structural oppression is hidden via grammars of psychology and individual well-being (73). in split tooth, the narrator is not trapped in a traumatic compulsion. nor does she accept the status of a passive survivor of her trauma in which healing and recovery are, as deborah l. madsen points out, equated with a therapeutic reassimilation or reintegration of the fragmented self that aims to bring the patient “to a condition of cultural productivity,” and in which “the concept of psychic integration or assimilation” is imperatively conflated with social assimilation (“on subjectivity and survivance” 64). transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 83 as such, the novel can be read in terms of what yellowknives dene scholar glen coulthard calls, in red skins, white masks (2014), a rejection of the colonial politics of recognition (17). in this study, coulthard draws on fanon’s critique of the colonial politics of recognition to investigate the current situation of indigenoussettler state relations in canada (17). the author explains that fanon’s critique of the colonial politics of recognition consists of two dimensions. the first dimension presents a structural problem that lies at the heart of colonial recognition as it occurs in “in real world contexts of domination” such that “the terms of accommodation” concerning this recognition are regulated and shaped “by and in the interests of the hegemonic partner in the relationship” (17). the second dimension, he adds, presents a subjective problem that consists of the colonised people’s psychological and affective attachment to “structurally circumscribed modes of recognition” that facilitate and perennate “the economic and political structure of colonial relationships over time” (1718). in split tooth, the protagonist resists pathologisation and victimisation while simultaneously rejecting assimilation by asserting her self-determination through her historical consciousness, political agency, and cultural affirmation. in this way, the novel manifests what coulthard calls a “resurgent politics of recognition” which he conceives as a decolonial praxis that focuses on indigenous self-empowerment “through cultural practices of individual and collective self-fashioning” (18, original italics). as an indigenous wonderwork, not only does split tooth reflect indigenous perspectives on the world, reality, and existence, it also offers a decolonising reading of healing that is articulated as an ongoing process of survivance entrenched within the natural environment of the arctic. therefore, the novel presents itself as what justice calls a story that heals. traumatised land, traumatised bodies abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 84 split tooth is set in a small, peripheral town in the arctic region of nunavut, situated in the northern territories of what is known today as canada. the peripherality of the town is not limited to its geographic location in relation to the core-capitalist metropoles of the settler-colonial state of canada. indeed, through a myriad of narrative registers, such as non-human agencies, indigenous inuit narrative registers and storytelling, free-verse poetry, and scientific terminologies of geology, the author formally and aesthetically registers the town’s peripherality in a logic of an uneven and traumatic modernity produced by the expansion of canadian colonial capitalism. the plot of split tooth is told entirely from the first-person perspective of an unnamed adolescent girl and is centred on her life in a coming-of-age narrative through which she confronts the trauma of longstanding sexual abuse. from the first page of the novel, this unnamed narrator provides an overview of the economical precariousness that haunts this peripheral arctic town. amid this harsh arctic environment, she describes the house she lives in as made of “[f]ake-wood panel walls” (1, emphasis added). although short as a description, it is possible to discern the critique that lies behind it. the fragility of the house walls speaks volumes about the uneven modernity produced in the logic of colonial and neocolonial capitalism in canada. in combined and uneven development (2015), the warwick research collective (wrec) reflect on the uneven nature of development and modernity brought about by capitalism in the (semi-) peripheries of corecapitalist countries. they contend that modernity in an economic logic of a combined and uneven development “is coded into the fabric of built space[s]” (148). in the novel, the fallacious character of the walls being made of “fake-wood panels”—instead of real wood which, as a natural resource, is hardly lacking in settler-colonial countries like canada—provides a glimpse into the uneven distribution of wealth and the nature of development that a racially inscribed capitalism entails in the peripheries of these core-capitalistic settler-colonial countries transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 85 tagaq depicts the tormented life of an inuit child whose community is still plagued by longstanding colonial and neo-colonial traumas and their far-reaching psychological, social and economic repercussions. however, the novel focuses more on the traumatic impacts of the canadian residential school policies among indigenous inuit communities, shedding light on the social ills of alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and suicide among the youth. indeed, tagaq dedicates her novel “[f]or the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and survivors of residential schools” (split tooth vii, original italics). early in the novel, this traumatic environment, fuelled with alcohol and violence, is portrayed as the narrator’s everyday life. the opening sentence reads: “sometimes we would hide in the closet when the drunks came home from the bar. [...] sometimes there was only thumping, screaming, moans, laughter” (1). from childhood, the narrator is exposed to persistent molestation and sexual abuse, both in public and domestic spaces. during a routine day at school, she describes “[t]he teacher squirming his fingers under my panties. / […] he looks around and pretends he’s not doing it” (split tooth 4). later, speaking of the school custodian, she declares: “watch out for the old walrus. / the old man likes to touch young pussy. / [...] i wonder why nobody kicks him out” (4, emphasis added). in this way, the novel’s first poem exposes the educational environment that, ordinarily, is meant to offer security and fulfilment for children. yet, located in a peripheral town of a settler-colonial country infested by uneven-race relations, the school becomes another space where inuit children encounter institutionally facilitated oppression and abuse that the rhetorical question illuminates. tagaq’s critique of colonial capitalist modernity and the destructive “development” endured by the inuit of “canada” takes on other proportions when she addresses the ecological disasters provoked by resource extraction and global warming brought about by global capitalism and canadian capitalist expansionism abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 86 in the arctic region. the novel highlights the ways in which environmental disasters and their anthropogenic effects find genesis in colonialism’s ecocidal logics. in “on the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene” (2017), davis and todd contend that relating the anthropocene to the beginning of colonialism allows it to be set as a critical project through which it is possible to consider today’s “ecocidal logics” not as fatality or as something inherent to “human nature,” but rather as the outcome of a constellation of attitudes that “have their origins and reverberations in colonization” (763). by linking the anthropocene to colonialism, they demonstrate the way in which the emergence of ecological disaster is inherently tied to a western ideology that not only separates but also places the human above “geology and biota” (769). indeed, davis and todd argue that colonialism and settler-colonialism “[were] always about changing the land, transforming the earth itself, including the creatures, the plants, the soil composition and the atmosphere. it was about moving and unearthing rocks and minerals. all of these acts were intimately tied to the project of erasure that is the imperative of settler colonialism” (770). the logic of the anthropocene, they assert, resides in colonialism and contemporary petrocapitalism’s severing of the bonds between “humans and the soil, between plants and animals, between minerals and our bones” (770). by relating the anthropocene to colonialism, davis and todd concretely ground the concept in the current ecological and environmental crisis. as an indigenous wonderwork, split tooth captures the violence and the ecological impact of oil extraction in nunavut through a mixture of phantasmagoria and anthropomorphism. early in the novel, the narrator anthropomorphises “[g]lobal warming” through the use of active verbs, asserting that it “will release the deeper smells” and “coax stories out of the permafrost” (split tooth 6). later, in an ominous phantasmagorical tone, she wonders “what memories lie deep in the ice? who knows what curses?” (6). addressing such issues in their work, the wrec transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 87 contributors argue that in literary works that register ecological failures induced by violent resource extractions, there is often a self-conscious recourse to—and appropriation of—“catachrestic narrative devices,” fantastic tropes, and aesthetics of speculative fiction in order to “visualise spectral economies of oil and energy, hyper-commodity fetishism” and “to register the violent impact of petroleum extraction and reorganisation of socio-ecological relations” (combined and uneven 97–8). in the novel, the use of western aspects of phantasmagoria and the gothic to register the destructive impact of global warming can be read as a subversive strategy whereby the author explicitly links the attacks on the arctic environment to colonialism in general, and to the canadian neo-colonial policies of resource extraction in particular. in other passages that touch upon the same theme, the narrator addresses the land directly. yet, unlike “global warming,” which is gothicised and anthropomorphised, the land is approached as a character per se through a conferred agency that is reflected in the novel’s typography. in an interlude, the narrator enters in a direct conversation with the land as their gazes meet, “[b]lack eye on black eye” (64). she addresses the land as a human being with human organs using the second person pronoun “you” when she says: “your mouth opens and emits a toothless scream” and “[y]our hair falls out” (65). this embodiment of the land reaches an apotheosis when the narrator corporealises the suffering it endures while being stripped of its oil resources. first, she compares it to bleeding and haemorrhaging when she describes the way in which “[o]il begins to seep from all of [the land’s] orifices” (65). afterwards, she equates the process of well-drilling with the skinning of a caribou: “this is happening to you with invisible hands, and then the skin reattaches itself so you can feel that same thing again and again” (65). finally, the narrator considers the land as a traumatised body to which “[d]eath” would be “a thousand times more desirable than this” and for which she “will abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 88 always bear witness” (65). these passages register the stark differences that exist between indigenous worldviews and western conceptions of space and the environment. indeed, smith argues that, for the west, space is regarded “as being static or divorced from time. this view generates ways of making sense of the world as a ‘realm of stasis’, well-defined, fixed and without politics” (decolonizing methodologies 109). she writes: “land, for example, was viewed as something to be tamed and brought under control” (106). in fact, what is described in the above passages is precisely what davis and todd posit as the severed bonds between humans, other-than-humans, and the land caused by colonialism and later exacerbated by extractive capitalism. as discussed above, the wrec contributors consider the mobilisation of fantastic tropes and speculative fiction aesthetics a deliberate and purposeful technique that endeavours to invoke the shock and violence entailed by “petro-modernity’s blind dependence on oil and its unrelenting drive to expansion” (combined and uneven 109). nevertheless, in the case of indigenous wonderworks, the speculative and the fantastic are, as justice puts it, “an extension of the possible, not the impossible” and, by extension, the real, not the unreal (149). he argues that such works depict “experiential realities” found in “most traditional indigenous systems” that “don’t always fit smoothly into the assumptions of eurowestern materialism” (141–2). being an indigenous wonderwork, it would be inaccurate to consider the land’s sentience in the novel as mere fantasy or fabrication because concepts of other-than-human personhood and agencies are inherent to those “experiential realities” of many indigenous knowledge systems. the non-human agency with which the earth is endowed in split tooth is a deliberate technique on tagaq’s part to assert an inuit perspective on the land and the environment, in which both are considered living beings with agency. in this way, tagaq presents an acute critique of western colonisation’s commodification of transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 89 indigenous space through the oil industry—a commodification that is symptomatic of the destructive modernity lived by the inuit as a direct result of the canadian colonial and expansionist capitalism. as with the trauma of the land, the protagonist’s trauma is predominantly captured through narrative registers that pertain to the western gothic and is conveyed in episodic free-verse poems that predominantly ignore the novel’s overall linearity. it is worth noting that throughout the passages that describe scenes of sexual abuse, whether in the poetic or prosaic parts of the novel, the perpetrator is never referred to by name. commenting on this namelessness in her review of the novel, m. jacqui lambert notes that “it could serve as a true function of the reality within the story where the narrator prefers to play it safe, rather than naming her uncle, a parent’s friend or another man within the small community” (lambert). if, as mentioned above, tagaq’s novel does contain portions of her memoir, then lambert’s statement is plausible. however, what is at stake here is the aesthetic value and impact that is produced by this namelessness, particularly in a second untitled poem where the narrator spectralises the perpetrator as a reflection on the haunting impact of living under the constant horror of abuse. she writes: something is lurking […] something imperceptible something unseen something war-driven something obscene. (split tooth 35) here, the narrator depicts the rapist as a malicious presence, a menacing demon or ghost capable of concealing himself to better hunt her down and attack at a propitious moment. the rhythm produced by the anaphoric verses strengthens this phantasmagorical portrayal, such that it textually and aesthetically reproduces and reflects the narrator’s constant and anxious anticipation of abuse. moreover, in a abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 90 prosaic passage, she declares: “there are evil beings in the room near the ceiling waiting to take over the drunken bodies, grudges and frustrations slobbering at the chance to return to human form, to violate, to kill, to fornicate” (106). here, the narrator spectralises drunkenness itself, comparing it to a demonic possession. the mobilisation of western gothic tropes in this inuit literary text can, therefore, be read as a subversive strategy. on the one hand, it materialises tagaq’s endeavour to register a reality that, due to its extreme traumatic impact, cannot be embodied or grasped through a realist narrative register. on the other hand, doing so specifically by appropriating aspects of the western gothic, she conceives the narrator’s trauma and pain as, in one way or another, an aftermath of western colonialism, as well as the subsequent oppressive policies and the socio-political peripheralisation of the inuit in the settler-colonial state of canada. through references to human anatomy, as well as the intimacy of corporeality, tagaq’s split tooth captures the extent by which the deeply personal spaces of both the body and the home are violently intruded and encroached upon by the trauma of sexual abuse. indeed, the use of spatiality—more precisely corporeal spatiality—is recurrent within the novel. yet, in an untitled poem that captures another instance of rape, it is rather the absence of space that most profoundly registers that violence. the narrator states: “he keeps trying. / pushing his hard thing. / into a space that has no space” (22). the language of this poem furthers this corporeal violence by presenting the act of rape as an act through which a new, traumatic corporeal space is imposed upon the body. indeed, the two mentions of the word “space” are not synonymous. in the first instance, it denotes a corporeal container, a space into which something can enter. in the second instance, however, “space” is both physiological and psychological; to possess “no space” during this moment is a violent image that registers not only the act of rape but specifically the rape of a child. furthermore, it is a psychological construction transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 91 that, due to the narrator’s age and lack of sexual maturity, does not yet possess a referent. the infringement here, therefore, far exceeds the corporeal and threatens the “no space” that is, for the narrator, still an unknown space and which is, through this especially traumatic rape, instantaneously created and then destroyed. capturing the traumatic impact of her longstanding exposure to sexual abuse and violence in another poem, the narrator states: “i only work from the waist up / psychological epidural […] i was entered too young” (split tooth 41). these verses encapsulate the repercussions of the physiological and psychological intrusion and infringement discussed above and echoes precisely david lloyd’s definition of trauma as “violent intrusion and a sense of utter objectification that annihilates the person as subject or agent” (“colonial trauma” 214). indeed, the impact of this traumatic intrusion is simultaneously physiological and psychological, both of which veer towards an annihilation of agency and subjectivity. on the one hand, by describing herself as someone whose lower body does not “work,” the narrator seems to suggest a sense of dissociation, a loss of possession of that body part. on the other hand, this physical numbing is projected onto the psyche, conveyed here through the reference to an “epidural,” a medical procedure entailing the administration of anaesthesia to numb the spinal nerves, usually deployed during childbirth. to use the metaphor of “epidural” here is, therefore, to denote an induced psychological numbness, registering the traumatic annihilation of the narrator’s psychological agency and subjectivity, thus propelling her towards a path of substance abuse and, eventually, a suicide attempt. alter/native wor(l)ds of the arctic: as delineated above, davis and todd’s parallel between the start of the anthropocene and the beginning of western colonisation of the “americas” indicates that, far from being speculative, indigenous peoples have already gone abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 92 through its repercussions. nevertheless, despite having faced countless anthropogenic scenarios that unfolded along with colonisation and extractive capitalism, indigenous peoples, the authors assert, “contended with the end of their worlds, and continue to work to foster and tend to strong relationships to humans, other-than-humans, and land today” (“on the importance of a date” 773). in split tooth, it is precisely by striving to foster and tend to her relationships with otherthan-human persons, and the natural environment of arctic informed by inuit worldviews and ways of knowing that the protagonist initiates her path of healing, and which takes the form of a journey of constructing and strengthening her psychological and sexual agency. this is articulated when, at a given moment during her adolescence, the narrator experiences a kind of astral projection during which her spirit leaves her body and is carried by the wind to the ocean shore, ending up a “large ice floe” that is “swept out to sea” by the shifting wind (92). as the water starts to heat up and the floe melts into small pieces, the narrator is “plunged into the water,” stating that: “it is so cold that it burns. treading water and feeling the life leave my body, i accept” (93). suddenly, the small pieces that make up the ice floe morph into “miniature polar bears, dozens of them” and make “mewling noises” in an “indecipherable” language which the narrator understands as an attempt “to comfort [her]” (93). however, one of the small polar bears stands out. it grows and becomes massive, “his sphere of reality warming the ocean for [her]” (93, emphasis added). he gives her “his corporeality,” she states, such that the ocean becomes “like a warm bath” (93, emphasis added). these passages reflect a multiplicity and fluidity of realities that are intrinsic to inuit ways of knowing, captured here through what anishinaabe scholar grace dillon calls in walking the clouds (2012) “native slipstream” (3). dillon defines native slipstream as “a species of speculative fiction within the sf realm, [which] infuses stories with time travel, alternate realities and multiverses, and alternative histories” (3). in this way, the narrative concretises what justice considers a multiplicity of forms and experiences transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 93 of reality that “bleed into one another” (124). indeed, not only does the reality of the polar bear reach out to the narrator’s, it does so through its “corporeality,” endowing her with one its natural attributes: the ability to endure the cold arctic waters. nevertheless, the respective realities of the narrator and the polar bear do not simply interact; they merge into each other, becoming one. this fusion is articulated through an act of erotic communion; she declares: i mount his back and ride him. [...] we are lovers. we are married. [...] he keeps me safe and i am drunk on his dignity. [...] my skin melts where there is contact with my lover. the ocean and our love fuse the polar bear and me. he is i, his skin is my skin. our flesh grows together. [...] my whole body absorbs him and we become a new being. i am invincible. [...] i will live another year. (split tooth 93) the polar bear, or nanuq in the inuktitut language, holds a special position in various indigenous inuit knowledge systems, regarded as a resilient and strong totemic ancestor, and often associated with hunting. in “nanook, super-male” (1994), bernard d’anglure explains that, in “ancient times,” the boundaries between humans and animals were permeable with the polar bear as “the closest to man of all animals: when it metamorphosed it was recognizable by the size of its canine teeth and its pronounced liking for fat” (170). d’anglure writes that, “according to our informants, ‘the bear is the ancestor of man and its flesh much resembles that of human beings in colour, texture and taste’. [...] it was said that the soul of a bear was very dangerous, that it should be treated like that of a kinsperson” (174). accordingly, the above communion informs the novel’s assertion of “kinship with the other-than-human peoples” present in “most traditional indigenous systems” and reflected in indigenous wonderworks (justice, 141). abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 94 nevertheless, the agency and subjectivity conferred on the bear—for he is presented as a character with whom the narrator has sexual intercourse that leads to their fusion into a “new being”—makes this passage a quintessence of the aesthetics of survivance. among the neologisms that vizenor presents in his works is the concept of “transmotion,” an aesthetic strategy of native survivance. in “the unmissable” (2015), vizenor explains that the prefix “trans” in transmotion “initiates a sense of action or change, a literary and unitary motion, and a wider concept of the motion in images and words” (64). as an aspect of survivance aesthetics that celebrates indigenous ontologies, “transmotion” entails a representation of transformation that, according to madsen, includes “the interchangeable transformations of the human into animal and animal into human” (“tragic wisdom and survivance” 4). “native transmotion,” vizenor writes, “is survivance, a reciprocal use of nature, not a monotheistic, territorial sovereignty. native stories of survivance are the creases of transmotion and sovereignty” (fugitive poses 15). tagaq’s aesthetics of transmotion not only informs the natural motion of the narrator towards the ocean in a spiritual form, but also captures the transformation she undergoes after merging with the totemic animal. this fusion creates a “new being”, after which the narrator acquires a sense of dignity and invincibility. in split tooth, the narrator’s journey of reclaiming her psychological and sexual agency culminates when, in physical form, she walks to the sea for a second time. lying on the ice, her spirit “find[s] the smallest crack and slip[s] into the arctic water below” (111). now in spiritual form, the narrator explores the bottom of the arctic water, which she describes as “a stadium event of life” form which her “spirit” drinks (112). feeling her “body” slipping away, the narrator travels back to the surface and regains possession of it: “it takes a monumental effort to wiggle my toes and open my eyes after the exploration” (112). interestingly, the words transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 95 “body,” “spirit,” “life,” and “exploration” are capitalised in this passage, asserting the relationship that the inuit have with life, corporeality, and spirituality. indeed, justice underlines the significance of such capitalisation in indigenous literatures which, he contends, affirms the status of subjectivity and agency (6). this is expressed, for example, when the narrator declares that “body give[s] spirit permission to leave” and “spirit moves through it [water] differently than body does” (111). here, the body, the spirit, and the life of the narrator are characters in their own right, capable of exerting influence on the course of events. accordingly, this expresses tagaq’s assertion of an inuit specificity, according to which the relationship to these aspects extends beyond the material and utilitarian—indeed, beyond mere possession and objectification. this process of the separation and then reunion of body and spirit that the narrator calls “exploration” triggers a crucial event in her journey of healing. as her body and spirit reunite, she declares: the northern lights have descended upon me during my spirit journey. […] light leaves time and takes on physical form. the light morphs into faces and creatures, and then they begin to solidify into violent shards. this energy is not benign like that of the ocean dwellers; these are the masters of law and nature. (113) again, the capitalisation of “northern lights” and their designation as “master of law and nation”—which are, in turn, also capitalised, is not innocuous. in inuit worldviews, the phenomena of the northern lights (aurora borealis), known as “arqsarniq” in inuktitut, is believed to be the embodiment of the spirits of ancestors. in firebridge to skyshore (2009), siobhan logan explains that one of the most common traditional stories among the inuit is that of the “realm of spirits” that could only be reached by the ravens and the dead (10). according to these stories, logan adds, spirits of those who succeed to reach this realm are called “skyabdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 96 dwellers.” when the northern lights appear in the sky, these spirits are understood to be playing a football-like game using a walrus skull (10). in split tooth, the narrator contrasts the “northern lights” with the “oceandwellers”—a reference to the polar bears—stating that the energy of the former is more powerful. in yet another erotic scene, she lets the “lights” penetrate every orifice of her body and fill her womb. afterwards, she declares: i have felt renewed after the night on the ice. my tendons are thicker, my thoughts quicker. i am more capable. fear is learning to run from me, not the other way around. i am not afraid anymore, as if meekness is slinking away into the deeper corners where it cannot dominate my psyche. the night with the northern lights changed my whole life. […] this is where my lesson was learned: pain is to be expected, courage is to be welcomed. there is no choice but to endure. there is no other way than to renounce self-doubt. it is the time of dawning in more ways than one. the sun can rise, and so can i. (121–2) similar to her sexual communion with the polar bear, the narrator’s erotic encounter with the northern lights empowers her physically and, more importantly, psychologically. yet, while the former is provisional and allows her to “live another year,” the latter “changed [her] whole life” (93; 122). indeed, not only does she rebuke fear, she also ironises it by appropriating its very quality of “fright.” here, “fear” is metaphorised and depicted as a sentient being that no longer possesses control over her psyche. moreover, her interaction with what she calls “the masters of law and nature” embodied by the northern lights instils traits in her psyche that had been annihilated by psychological and sexual trauma. though she states that “pain is to be expected, courage is to be welcomed,” the narrator asserts her resilience and resistance as an imperative to confronting the pain of her trauma transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 97 (122). through the capitalisation of the word “dawning”—used here in its gerund form—the narrator parallels the quotidian victory of light over darkness. this is embodied by “the dawn,” with the need for an active and permanent sense of survival, resistance, and resilience in the face of the pain inflicted not only by a traumatised environment plagued by centuries of oppressive colonial policies and their far reaching traumatic impacts, but also by her own exposure to violent and cumulative sexual trauma. nonetheless, the narrator’s path to healing does not end here. the lesson that the northern lights want to teach her has only just begun. soon after this night, the narrator notices that she does not menstruate and begins to feel a “flipping in [her] belly” (132). she states: “all i know is that i am not alone anymore; i am protected now. [...] i have the twins in my belly. i speak with the twins every day, a boy and a girl” (132–3). strikingly, the spiritually conceived twins recall the divine conception of jesus by the virgin mary, as recorded in christian scriptures; yet the former subverts the latter in a number of ways. unlike the biblical figure of mary, the narrator’s pregnancy is the result of a consensual and welcomed sexual intercourse which empowers her both physically and psychologically. in addition, rather than a single male child, the narrator is expecting fraternal male-female twins, to whom she refers as her elders and not her children. she declares: “my elders are in my tummy. i respect and admire them. they know so much more than i do. [...] they are not my children but my equals and my leaders” (133, emphasis added). moreover, the narrator asserts that she can “communicate freely” with them by “leav[ing] [her] consciousness and com[ing] to them into [their] spirit world” (133, emphasis added). this passage explicitly asserts an indigenous inuit vision of life and death and the unique understanding and conceptualisation of the relationship between the living and the dead. abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 98 indeed, the northern lights in indigenous inuit worldviews are the embodiment of ancestors and the spirits of the dead. as discussed above, one of the aesthetic qualities and specificities that justice attributes to indigenous wonderworks is their ability to register the flexible and permeable relationship between the realms of the living and the spiritual worlds. according to this vision, respect and veneration extend to the dead, for they are “ancestors with continuing relationships with the living” (justice124–6). in split tooth, it is precisely within this logic that the narrator’s twins are presented; the narrator she considers them her elders and leaders, whom she respects and admires, for they have deeper and greater knowledge than she does. indeed, the narrator is soon imbued with the knowledge the twins embody, allowing her to understand not only the nature of her pain and trauma, but also the nature of healing and the way in which it can be fulfilled. when the narrator gives birth to the twins, whom she names savik and naja, she describes savik as “pointed, brooding” making people “cry in mourning or in grief” if they hold him in their hands for a long time (156). she states: “savik eats up the agony, and seems to grow stronger when he bears witnesses to suffering. [...] forcing out that agony leaves an open wound, it leaves people depleted. i notice that those who spend too much time with him grow ill and radiate a grey pallor” (156, emphasis added). naja, on the other hand, is “bright,” “calm and soft” with a voice that “heals anxiety” (158). unlike her twin brother, naja “inhales trouble and exhales solutions like a filtration system. she cleans people. […] i saw her healing my mother’s cold on a molecular level” (159). accordingly, the narrator comes to understand that her twins represent pain and healing respectively, with the ability to affect her and her entourage. tagaq plays with the motif of colours to provide a material manifestation of trauma and healing in her novel. while savik makes people sick and radiate that grey pallor, naja “brings sheen to people’s hair and glow to their cheeks” (163). transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 99 after some time, the narrator notices that savik grows bigger than naja, realising that “[t]here must be an imbalance of pain in the world” (159). the repercussions of this imbalance begin to impact the people around her, starting with her uncle, an alcoholic, who slowly dies from liver failure. indeed, savik’s ability to inflict and bring out pain eventually targets the narrator herself. while breastfeeding, he bites his mother’s breast, “biting off the end of [her] nipple” (177). here, the narrator notes that “there was no room for him on this earth” (177). she states: “i knew he would only grow stronger and his prey would not only be restricted to the old or sick, to the malevolent or weak. i knew his prey would become love” (177). it is precisely this fear that forces the narrator to kill savik by returning him to “the frozen ice” (180). instead of dying, however, savik transforms into a seal. in a violent scene of metamorphosis, his “neck hardens into a solid, boneless mass […]. he builds a wall of protection around his heart […]. my hands are burning, the bones in my hands are burning and there are a thousand boiling blisters where i am holding him. […] he is mutating”, becoming a seal that then “flops into the crack in the ice” (181). intertwined as they are, savik’s contact with the arctic waters impacts naja as well, and she dies of hypothermia in her mother’s arms. deciding to release naja’s body into the water, the narrator finds that savik “absorbs her flesh and they are one. she is he and he is she. finally they are whole […]. the seal looks up at me with love and hatred, death and life. it looks at me with the knowing. then the seal swims away” (181, emphasis added). tagaq’s choice of the “seal” is not fortuitous. kristen borré explains in “the healing power of the seal” (1994) that for many inuit communities seals and seal hunting have intrinsic social value [...] seal maintains the physical, mental and spiritual health of the individual, the social well-being of the community, and confidence in native power relations to maintain selfdetermination in the national and international world which is vested in the body politic. 1 abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 100 in the context of tagaq’s novel, the seal embodies that very same “physical, mental and spiritual health” to which borré refers, and through which the novel grounds its processes of physical and psychological healing. indeed, the seal is evidence of a healing that, the novel seems to be suggesting, is attainable only through a balance between pain and recovery. there is a lesson here to be learned—one which the northern lights intend to impart upon the narrator. if she had once believed that her healing is dependent on letting go of her pain, here she learns that this is impossible. there can be no healing without achieving the balance between savik (who imparts pain and trauma) and naja (who provides solace). their union is, therefore, the novel’s final aesthetic statement about the representation of a path of healing and survivance that is grounded in inuit epistemologies, ontologies, and worldviews. conclusion / introduction: the relationship between colonialism and canadian petrocapitalism, and environmental destruction in the arctic region is aesthetically registered not only through a panoply of narrative registers in which non-human agencies that pertain to inuit worldviews and knowledge systems are mobilised, but also through a subversive appropriation of the gothic and phantasmagoria. in parallel, aspects of the western gothic are also deployed as a subversive strategy to capture the protagonist’s trauma of sexual abuse and rape that is implicitly equated with the colonial encroachment and environmental destruction in the arctic. yet, it is precisely within the worldviews and knowledge systems that inform inuit perspectives and visions of the natural environment and landscape of the arctic that the protagonist inscribes her path of healing. indeed, in the second last poem of the novel, she states: transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 101 i do not forgive and forget i protect and prevent make them eat shame and repent i forgive me. (188) by rejecting entrapment in a traumatic compulsion, while also resisting the victimising label of passive survivor of a traumatic history, the novel can be read in line with what coulthard calls “indigenous anticolonialism as a resurgent practice of cultural self-recognition” (red skin, white masks 26). to explain this indigenous anticolonial formulation, coulthard draws on fanon’s “theory of anticolonial agency and empowerment” in which personal and collective self-determination lie entirely within the colonised subject’s striving for their “freedom and self-worth” and working through their “alienation/subjection against the objectifying gaze and assimilative lure of colonial recognition” (43). coulthard further explains this decolonising process, stating that the colonised subject must first acknowledge “themselves as free, dignified, and distinct contributors to humanity” (43, original italics). central to this decolonising project, he explains, is the imperative of a personal and collective reconsideration of culture and identity that “could serve as a source of pride and empowerment” (43–4). in split tooth, it is precisely the empowering virtues of identity, culture, and, by extension, the land that allows the narrator to confront the trauma of rape and sexual abuse and derive her agency and her self-determination. in addition, healing in the novel is not presented as linear and finite; rather, it is conceptualised as an ongoing process. this is reflected in the closing poem of the novel where the narrator declares: “cleanse me. wash the blood off. i am still working. i survive still. i am stronger now. / worship me. i am boundless. i stood up. i am worthy. / start again” (189, emphasis added). these closing lines reflect a need for a continuous survival, resistance, and self-determination to allow for an escape abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 102 from the cyclical nature of trauma. in ““what to do when you’re raped,”” wieskamp and smith explain that a rhetoric of survivance challenges the euro-american linear temporality of trauma and its assumed traumatological timeline (80). indeed, they state that, by resisting restriction to the past, present, or future, a rhetoric of survivance reflects what they call “infinitive’ temporality”, which allows past, present, and future to flow together and “embraces the role of one’s past to influence one’s present and future” (81). as such, wieskamp and smith argue that survivance in the face of trauma conceives survival/resistance as an ongoing process that, in contrast to the euro-american traumatological timeline, does not assume a “a trajectory towards brighter future, but presupposes surviving as a constant action” (81). in doing so, they assert, a rhetoric of survivance expresses an indigenous “temporal sovereignty by rendering native experiences visible and actionable” (81). in split tooth, it is precisely this non-linear and ongoing sense of healing that is formally and aesthetically registered in the novel, thus presenting itself as a narrative of survivance. works cited beard, laura. “split tooth (tanya tagaq).” transmotion, 5:1, 2019, 315-318. borré, kristen. “the healing power of the seal: the meaning of intuit health practice and belief.” arctic anthropology, 31:1, 1994, 1–15. coulthard, glen sean. red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. university of minnesota press, 2014. d’anglure, bernard saladin. “nanook, super-male: the polar bear in the imaginary space and social time of the inuit of the canadian arctic.” in signifying animals: human meaning in the natural world, edited by roy willis. routledge, 1994. 169-185. transmotion vol 7, no 2 (2021) 103 davis, heather, and zoe todd. “on the importance of a date, or, decolonizing the anthropocene.” acme: an international journal for critical geographies, 16:4, dec. 2017, 761-780. dillon, grace l. walking the clouds. u of arizona p, 2012. doherty, mike. “the surprising sounds and sides of tanya tagaq.” macleans.ca, 2018, https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/tanya-tagaq-on-her-desperateattempt-to-alleviate-indigenous-suffering/. justice, daniel heath. why indigenous literatures matter. kindle ed., wilfrid laurier university press, 2018. lambert, m. jacqui. “split tooth review: expressions of the circumpolar arctic.” denali sunrise publications, 2019, https://denalisunrisepublications.com/split-toothreview/. lloyd, david. “colonial trauma/postcolonial recovery?” interventions, vol 2:2, 2000, 212-228. logan, siobhan, and dolores logan. firebridge to skyshore. google books, 2009, https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/c3ga5fcnw1ec?hl=en&gbpv=1 &pg=pp1. madsen, deborah l. “on subjectivity and survivance: rereading trauma through the heirs of columbus and the crown of columbus.” survivance: narratives of native presence, edited by gerald vizenor. university of nebraska press, 2008, 61–87. ---. “preface: tragic wisdom and survivance.” rostkowski, j. conversations with remarkable native americans. suny press, 2013. smith, linda tuhiwai. decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. 2nd ed. zed books, 2012. tagaq, tanya. split tooth. kindle ed., penguin canada, 2018. abdenour bouich “coeval worlds, alter/native words” 104 vizenor, gerald. fugitive poses: native american indian scenes of absence and presence. university of nebraska press, 1998. ---. “the unmissable: transmotion in native stories and literature.” transmotion, 1:1, 2015, 63-75. watts, vanessa. “indigenous place-thought and agency amongst humans and non-humans (first woman and sky woman go on a european world tour!).” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, 1, no.1, 2013, 20-34. wieskamp, valerie n., and cortney smith. ““what to do when you’re raped”: indigenous women critiquing and coping through a rhetoric of survivance.” quarterly journal of speech, 106:1, 2020, 72-94. wrec (warwick research collective). combined and uneven development: towards a new theory of world-literature. liverpool university press, 2015. microsoft word interview, final, 2 poems, 2 paragraphs cut.docx ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 170 speaking of ralph: ingrid wendt in interview with a. robert lee 1. first, ingrid, every heartfelt condolence from james mackay and myself at the loss of ralph in 2017. let’s start with writing itself. both you and he shared a decades-long writing life together. how did that work? thank you for asking. what a wonderful life we had. we married when i was 24 and ralph was 43. quite the age difference, right? we didn’t feel it. we were of one heart, one soul, with compatible interests and a mutual respect for our differences. how grateful i am that life permitted us 48 married years together. happily, our writing life together worked amazingly well— in great measure because our circadian rhythms and writing practices were so very opposite. ralph’s best writing time was very early morning. his daily practice was to rise early, sometimes as early as 4:30 or 5:00, fully alert—a body rhythm ingrained from childhood, when he’d rise before dawn, even on school days, to milk the cows before breakfast. he’d make coffee, take it to his desk, and wait for inspiration. he seldom had to wait long. when the sun rose, he’d interrupt his work to say his morning prayers and then return to the poem—or story—at hand. if working on a poem, he almost always had a solid first draft, from beginning to end, before noon. when writing fiction, he’d get a substantial start the first morning, and then come back to it on consecutive days until completion. i, on the other hand, am always slow to awaken and, with the rare exception of writing residencies, i’d write only in the late evenings, whenever i had the prospect of two or more uninterrupted hours. this didn’t happen as often as i wished, but i took lots of notes, which would later become longer, more complex poems, all the better for having simmered for days or weeks on the back burner. and i’d fallen transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 171 head over heels with teaching and parenting and working on the house we bought for a song and saved from demolition and moved across town, and all the rest: fully engaged with life in the world in ways i’d never before dreamed possible. also good was that our mutual respect, plus our vastly different writing styles, kept us from ever competing. and though we often were inspired by similar subjects and shared experiences, and held quite similar world views, we approached our writing from such different directions that neither of us feared slipping into the other’s skin or fearing an editor might prefer the other’s work. i rejoiced in ralph’s successes, and he in mine. we rarely sent our work to the same places, and rarely appeared together in print. looking back—though we had our occasional disagreements—we were a team in every possible way, sharing household responsibilities and co-parenting, even before there was such a word. ralph was good with cars and tools of all kinds and could fix almost anything; he once even re-wired the house we moved. i took care of the everyday household things—all except the dinner dishes, which he did. i hated doing dishes, so this was a perfect arrangement. on the occasions i was invited out of town, on oneto three-week visiting poet gigs, ralph took over completely: single-parenting, cooking, cleaning, the whole shebang. i did the same for him, when he traveled a month in india, for example, on a lecture tour sponsored by the u.s. department of state, or when he traveled within the u.s. for conferences or poetry readings. i even taught his graduate writing classes. after our daughter was grown and gone, we traveled together: attending conferences, giving readings, lecturing, teaching overseas on fulbright professorships, sharing a residency at the rockefeller center in bellagio, and more. ralph, being older than i, officially retired from university teaching in 1994; and so from that year until his death in 2017, he wrote (as usual) almost every morning, ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 172 and—after an early afternoon siesta—he’d also work until supper. his literary output during the 1990s and 2000s was staggering! i, being younger, continued working half-time as a visiting writer, and the free time martina’s departure (in 1989) opened up was quickly filled with editorial projects, lecturing and keynote-speaking, and other professional engagements, until i was traveling throughout our home state of oregon and to other states, as well. my own writing productivity increased, however, especially during several short poetry residencies, and by the end of the next dozen years i had three new manuscripts circulating. the last of these three was published in 2011. in other words, all our married life we orbited each other nicely. the old saying that “opposites attract” was, in great measure, true. we complimented each other in so many ways, including temperament. but it was our shared world views, a shared sense of humor, an ability to laugh at the same things, including ourselves, and a belief in and respect for each other’s work that kept us together and allowed for our writing, and our marriage, to flourish. 2. you were present at the creation of so much of his poetry and fiction – how did he go about his writing especially when combining it with the role of university professor? from 1967 until his retirement in 1994, ralph’s teaching load in the english department of the university of oregon, consisted of one graduate poetry writing workshop each term, which he met for three hours, one evening per week, and mentoring the many students who signed up for one-on-one “writing and conference” credit, during his afternoon office hours. some years, he’d also teach an afternoon literature class for one or two of the three university terms, or an undergraduate or graduate fiction writing workshop. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 173 this schedule allowed him to spend mornings at home, writing—both before and after breakfast. he’d lunch, take a short nap to catch up on lost sleep, and then walk two miles, in all kinds of weather, to spend long afternoons at the university, taking care of the business that “comes with the job”: department meetings, committee and juried dissertation meetings, correspondence, advising writing students, and so on. then he’d walk home. all in all, it was a brilliant, win-win schedule for him as well as for his students. as to his writing practices, for most of his life ralph wrote rough drafts—of both poems and short fiction— with pencil and paper. his poems almost always began with his capturing an image seen from his desk or an image remembered, from the past or from a dream, and letting a stream of consciousness carry his words forward until patterns and themes emerged and evolved. i believe he never knew the endings of his poems in advance, and he seldom “tinkered around” with alternate routes to them, generally reaching them that same day. when he was finished with one poem and had more time, he’d revise it and/or others. i wish i knew more about the rough drafts of his stories; he seldom talked about his fiction. but i do know he wrote first drafts by hand, in pencil, on yellow-lined paper. when large desk computers came along (was it during the late 1980s?) and three were given, by the uo’s school of liberal arts, to the english department, a kind of bidding war took place among the professors, with all contenders writing letters attesting to the extremity of their needs and their individual worthiness to receive one, for their own exclusive use, but only in their private offices in the english department building. as one of the winners (an accomplishment he was proud of till the end of his days) ralph received the use of a big clunker which he “took to” like the proverbial duck to water. how much easier revision became; and preparing work for publication was so much less drudgery! ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 174 as the years went on, and computers became smaller and more affordable, he bought one for use in his home office, as well, and slowly began transitioning from pencil and typewriter to computer, for even rough drafts of poetry and prose. eventually, in the last 15-20 years of his life, he used the computer for every kind of writing, including voluminous correspondence, and was almost obsessive in backing up his creative work. as his literary executor, i can’t help wishing his filing system had been more outside-user friendly, and that he’d saved physical copies of his email correspondence, but happily, most of his poems and prose are still accessible, as are two cardboard boxes of poems that i’m pretty sure haven’t yet appeared in print. 3. ralph clearly took great pride in his cherokee-shawnee ancestry, mixed as it was with his irish and english roots. yet in his autobiography, so far, so good he asks “am i still an indian?” what is your take on how he regarded his native legacy? yes, that question is perplexing, isn’t it? it’s so unlike the rest of the book, i had totally forgotten he wrote this, and so i did a digital search and found it on p. 241 (paperback version). until then, ralph has fully embraced his native, as well as his irish-english, heritage and has given us many details of his father’s having raised him in traditional native ways: teaching the importance of reciprocity, while working the land; telling stories during long, winter evenings, with all 5 children gathered around, stories that sometimes involved mystical, mythical creatures his father had heard about as a child in kentucky; fashioning a bow and arrow for ralph, when teaching him, at a very young age, to hunt. and all this without his father’s revealing to his family that he had native blood: a fact ralph learned from relatives, as a young man, shortly after his father’s death in 1958. but that first revelation allowed him to finally put together and to begin to feel, for the first time in his life, a true sense of “belonging.” his private ways of transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 175 perceiving the world—the inner values that had made him feel so different from his peers, from the world outside of the farm, from even his siblings, who were perhaps less inclined to take deeply into themselves the lessons their father taught— suddenly made sense. he immersed himself in learning all he could about his native ancestry. the “inner confusions” he wrote about in earlier poems and fiction, disappeared. that new context grounded him. though in his younger years ralph had always been a good chameleon, nimble in making his way in the “white man’s world,” beyond the farm, the more he learned about his heritage, the more certain he was that he’d found his spiritual home. ralph also became more and more sure of his purpose as a writer, as a teacher, as one destined to carry forward the values he hoped would keep our world from selfdestruction. he grew to love his indian ancestors, deeply and intimately, and, in similar fashion, he felt, intuitively, as close to many native author-friends as if they were cousins. so yes, he did take great pride in his native ancestry. and even more than pride, ralph carried a deep love for all his people, both living and dead, and a quiet dignity of bearing, very much in keeping with his native heritage. though he was a master teacher, a master lecturer, and an admirably patient listener, he preferred one-on-one conversation to larger social gatherings. he also took upon himself the responsibility of carrying forward, in his poems and fiction, the historical, social, cultural, spiritual, and ethnographic information about his indian people, their way of life, and his awareness of the great wrongs inflicted upon them by westward expansion. he dedicated himself to transmitting this collective memory, determined not to let the vanishing american disappear completely from public awareness. so why that question, written when ralph was in his 80s, “am i still, after all these years, still an indian?” did he doubt himself? ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 176 i say he never stopped being an indian. the question, i believe, is rhetorical, the kind of question good teachers sometimes ask. he did not doubt himself. i believe the question springs from his awareness of how he had been seen by those who lack understanding of mixed-race allegiances. his question also reflects, i think, his ever-present memories of the racist reactions he’d encountered when he first publicly identified as native american, with the publication (in 1982 and 1983) of three books in a row that boldly employed titles, topics and themes that referenced his native heritage. despite the emergence of what’s now called the native american renaissance, despite the rapidly expanding circle of contemporary native writers where ralph and his work found acceptance and respect, the reception of ralph’s new books within the uo’s english department wasn’t exactly warm. in those days, as i remember them, the movers and shakers and decision makers were academics for whom white male writers were the only ones deserving admission to the literary canon. the wonderful, worldwide, current proliferation of native american / ethnic studies programs is, in the minds of many who studied and/or taught in the 1970s and 1980s, a dream come true. but "back in the day," when ralph's three books appeared, there had been only a sprinkling of native american studies classes taught across campus--none of them in the english department. in fact, a university minor in native american studies didn’t become an established field of study until 2014. so, in essence, ralph was leaping off a cliff without a net. to be fair to his colleagues (some of whom did react kindly), ralph—with his light complexion and blue eyes—had never been considered as other than whitehe’d been hired away from drake university (iowa) in 1960, with a promise of tenure based on an exemplary teaching record and a strong publication history of poems and stories in national magazines. he was a rising star, a “golden boy,” who, in transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 177 1961, published a poem in the new yorker: a big deal then as well as now, though i strongly suspect that if anyone in his department actually read the poem, they’d been quietly baffled by its content, which was an exposé of the racist assumptions of the staff of a children’s museum. 1n the early 1960s ralph had—together with fellow department member and fiction writer james b. hall—helped shape the new mfa program in creative writing, one of the first in the country. ralph was also, by 1964, editor-in-chief of northwest review, a literary journal of national and international distinction. even his first book of poems, ghost grapefruit (ithaca house, 1972)—much of it written before he’d fully embarked on the quest to learn all he could about his native heritage—didn’t rattle anyone’s feathers or sound any bells of alarm. so, imagine the consternation in the english department when, in 1982 and 1983, his second, third, and fourth books were titled pointing at the rainbow, spirit beast chant, and going to the water: poems of a cherokee heritage. to say his colleagues were not pleased is an understatement. and, as ralph continued to publish poems that drew on his complex world view and his allegiance to his indiancaucasian ancestry? let’s say his promotion to full professor was a long time in coming. “’why are you always writing about those red indians, man? why don’t you write about your irish people?’ … and i could only wish that i had written more about my irish american mother.” (sfsg, 240) this challenge from a colleague appears just paragraphs before ralph’s question, “am i still…. indian?” and leads me to believe that besides rhetorical, ralph’s question is also empathic. it’s almost as if he’s seeing himself through the eyes of that colleague, as though that long-ago colleague were still around to see him: an old white guy, more fluent in the language of academia than in the language of his native people, good with a ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 178 computer and far from the hunter he once had been, far from the traditional way of life of his native ancestors. how could this light-skinned, blue-eyed elder, walking the halls of academia instead of a dirt path along a kentucky creek, as he’d done as a child when visiting his cherokee-shawnee grandmother (herself a descendant of the cherokee who’d hid in the hills to avoid the trail of tears)—how could he be the “real thing”? and who knows? maybe, like the rest of us, ralph sometimes did have self-doubts. if he did¸ and that’s a big “if,” the delightfully sardonic way he acknowledges that (yes) he’s led a way of life far from the traditional ways of his father and of his indian ancestors, implies other, hidden, rhetorical questions. the very next sentence, which begins a new paragraph, reads: applying the rez test of authenticity, it is true that i have never lived in north carolina, never lived on our single reservation, one that a kind white man bought for a few oppressed cherokees after so many had been robbed of their fertile plantations, hunting grounds, and population centers, including our sacred city echota—after so many had been ethnically cleansed, been massacred, been death-marched west. (241) [but does that make me less authentically indian?] (words in brackets mine) ralph goes on to recall, again tongue in cheek, how even his “civilized” family was one step farther from the hunting grounds of his ancestors: his family used newspapers and the pages of mail-order catalogs, instead of leaves, for personal hygiene. [was his father, then, a “lesser” indian?] there’s a note of sadness in ralph’s admission that he raised his own children even farther from the traditional ways of his native ancestors, though he did teach his sons to hunt in the ways his own father taught him, and made sure his children learned family history. that he didn’t pass on more: does that make him less indian? transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 179 ralph then offers another admission: when his fiction and poetry referred to indian history, or his protagonists or poems were written from a native perspective (which many were) they were not always from his own lived experience. [does this make him less indian?] as a writer of poetry and fiction, he was comfortable writing, on occasion, from other people’s points of view and with putting his characters in situations he’d never been in. when he wrote of traditional indian practices, or of the challenges of being mixed-blood, or of being a full-blood indian, he borrowed what he’d learned from ethnographers and from the autobiographies (written and/or told him in conversation) of other native writers; they provided him with the substance, the details, of real-life situations. [other fiction writers do this; are native peoples not allowed to do the same?] i love the way ralph concludes his various responses to the rhetorical question, and concludes this section of the book, with a wonderfully subtle refusal to accept the “either-or” dialectical framework within which his own, rhetorical question is asked. the answer, he suggests—by referencing a story by a writer he greatly admired—is more complex than either yes or no. in luigi pirandello’s short story “war,” a bereaved father says that a father does not give half of his love to one child, half to another; he gives all his love to each of his children. i am a cherokee-shawnee-english-irish person, not part this part that but all everything, whatever it is. (sfsg, 242) 4. his tough iowa farm childhood and upbringing obviously weighed throughout his life. why do you think it stayed with him so greatly? oh, you’re so right—his childhood on the farm was a topic he returned to over and over, throughout his life. and to your question, i wish there were a simple answer. the “tough” parts—his family’s poverty and state of near-starvation, their need to work tirelessly and be ever-vigilant, keeping guns at the ready to protect ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 180 themselves, in a society out of balance during the great depression, and the hardships of the great depression itself, as well as his father’s drunken violence— scarred ralph for life. becoming a writer and a teacher, drawing upon (though often disguising) his experiences for subject matter, was a way of not only surviving but of prevailing. of healing. examples of the violence include the time his father, in one of many drunken rages, shot into the linoleum kitchen floor around ralph’s four-year-old feet. in some ways similar to persons with ptsd, ralph—for over a year, after we were together— would often be startled awake, right after he’d fallen asleep. he didn’t know why; he thought it might be something neurological. his whole body would jerk, almost jump. but then one night he awakened with the full realization he’d been having flashbacks of that shooting incident, though the scars remained. and that was it: the sudden, startled wakings never returned. he also told of another time when his mother sent him to warn his older brother bob, working a tractor in the fields, that their father was coming after him with a gun. his brother returned to the house, planning to disarm their father, but by that time charlie had passed out. he told, also, of being ten or eleven and accompanying his mother, whom his father had threatened to kill, as she set out on foot for a neighbor’s house to call the sheriff, while his drunken father—from the front porch—shot bullet after bullet at or near her, kicking up the dust in front of their feet. ralph’s mother walked on, but ralph returned to confront his father and begged him to stop his shooting. ralph was successful, and—though he never remembered just what he said—that was the last time his father threatened any of his family with a gun. the world outside the family unit was dangerous, too. one night when he was 15 or 16, at home with his mother, the two of them the only ones awake—his brother bob off to war and his older brother ray off to town with his father—ralph went out the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 181 back door with a loaded gun to frighten away a prowler. thieves from cities often roamed the iowa farmland, looking for animals or machines or whatever they could find, to sell on the black market. seeing no one, afraid for his life, ralph shot into the dark, never knowing whether he’d wounded anyone; but the sounds stopped. the prowler had probably fled through the fields. another night, with the whole family at home, his father drew his gun on two men who had come to rob the family. they left and robbed a family down the road, instead. what complicates my answer is that ralph was able to live long enough, and conquer his traumas well enough, to recognize that there was more goodness, intertwined with the hard stuff, than he was aware of during his youth. and as he grew in ability to see his own suffering in a wider context, the more aware he was, i believe, that his background gave him the authority and the opportunity to explore larger social issues and to lead his readers towards a deeper awareness of poverty, violence, and their consequences. from his conscious, formative years during the worldwide great depression of the 1930s—years in which he thought that president hoover’s first name was “damn,” years during which winter meals often consisted of milk and homemade white bread, or cornbread, spread with lard, sometimes with milk and potatoes and flourbased gravy—ralph learned first-hand the concept of poverty. he learned first-hand how it felt to be overlooked by those who wield economic and political power; how it was to be working class, to be an outcast; he learned that capitalism can deal out injustice, that democracy works often at the expense of society’s “have nots.” he also learned empathy. he learned how to forgive his father (as can be seen in the many good memories ralph shares in his autobiography). ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 182 violence and economic hardships are, of course, almost always intertwined, as social scientists, therapists, psychologists, and others have been telling us for quite some time. and these interconnections were among ralph’s major themes. i think he’d also agree that without his “tough childhood,” without the darkness, he wouldn’t have half been half the writer he was. much of his work can be seen, i believe, as the work of a “survivor” who refused to be defined or limited by the traumas he experienced and who channeled his “fight or flight” response into something of beauty and truth. ralph’s own awareness of this seeming paradox— light growing out of, and indeed fueled by, darkness—is epitomized in the title of his book of poems, light from a bullet hole (2010), with his deliberate choice of from rather than the more conventional through. and there’s yet another way to answer your question. let’s talk about the weight of ralph’s childhood in terms of “place.” all of us were born somewhere. right? and for a while that place was the center of our universe. for those who remained in that place for most of our childhood years, it became part of who we are and the lens through which we viewed the world. that place was critical to our sense of identity. it shaped us. n. scott momaday, in his cover endorsement for keith basso’s wisdom sits in place: landscape and language among the western apache, says: “keith basso gives us to understand something about the sacred and indivisible nature of words and place. and this is a universal equation, a balance in the universe. place may be the first of all concepts; it may be the oldest of all words." despite the tough childhood ralph endured, he talked often, and wrote extensively, about his gratitude for growing up working the land, for its having connected him at a profound and intimate level with the cycles of life, of the seasons; he felt a kinship transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 183 with the earth and all its creatures, both large and small; he came to understand earth’s power to give and its power to take away. he knew, also, that the place which formed him was more than geographic location, more than the forces of the natural world, but the human society which he found there, with its own ethics, concepts of wisdom, of manners, of morals. what i’m saying is not news, of course. what is new, however, as i see it, is the relatively recent development of academic fields of study in this area, and the proliferation of literary publications, both within and outside of the academy, devoted to the investigation of our human relationship to “place.” i think of journals such as windfall, which publishes writing exclusively from and about the pacific northwest; the online literary journal about place, published by the black earth institute and “dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society.” another is claw and blossom: human nature, natural world; another, terrain, which “searches for the interface—the integration—among the built and natural environments that might be called the soul of place”—and this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. so, despite the tough times he endured as a child, the ralph i knew also had happy memories, among the troubled ones, and he drew upon them to live a balanced life. his autobiography is peppered with memories of games he and his siblings played, the special desserts his aunt jennie cooked, his mother’s flower and vegetable gardens, her canning. the first orange ralph ever ate, at age six, was brought by distant cousin, visiting from florida. eventually the family (when ralph was fifteen) was able to get running water and electricity. his mother, whom i knew, had been for ralph a model of patience and endurance, who shared with her children her own hard work ethic (as did his father) and her ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 184 sense of “the holy” within all living things. i loved her wry sense of humor, which ralph and all of his siblings inherited. when we’d come to visit, his mother would say “oh, good: now i have someone to help me clean out the refrigerator.” of his father, ralph had far more happy memories (looking back) than traumatic ones. when i met ralph, in 1967, his father had already passed on, and ralph had, long before that, already forgiven him. apparently, his father had given up drinking, and by the time ralph’s sons were born, charlie had become the loving grandfather they and their cousins remember. no, despite the memories of hard times, ralph loved and remained deeply connected with his family, until one by one they preceded him in death. each family member, including his mother’s sister, jennie, who lived with them, is remembered in individual poems written for and about them. we went to the iowa farm where ralph was born, and on which ralph’s sister, ruth, and her husband bob walker, still lived and farmed, as part of each summer vacation for the better part of 40 years. ralph’s brother bob and family owned the farm next door, about ½ mile down the now-paved road. those were happy times; i have a video recording of the four surviving siblings (his elder brother ray died in middle age) sitting around a kitchen table, reminiscing about pappy and ma (or mother, as she was sometimes called). on other occasions, ruth would get out the large, old, tin bread box with a huge collection of black and white photos saved, over the years, and spread them randomly on the table, leading her and ralph to spend an evening of random reminiscing, with myself and our daughter, martina, as their rapt audience. so yes, back to your questions: the hardships of his childhood did weigh on ralph throughout his entire life. they made for important stories, important poems. but balancing that weight was much goodness, which i think ralph would want his readers to know. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 185 5. war holds an immensely important role in his outlook – bomber-crew training, aerial bombardment over berlin, korea, and eventually peace activism against the wars in vietnam and iraq. could you say something more of this trajectory in his life? in what ways did he regard himself as a “peace poet,” especially in the context of nuclear power and arms? from the time ralph was old enough to grasp the socially-correct concept, glamorized during the early days of world war ii, that fighting for one’s country was a moral obligation and that dying for one’s country was noble and glamorous, he wanted to become an air force pilot. as a teenager, he built model planes and imagined himself rescuing his eight-years-older brother, bob, from a prisoner of war camp in italy. ralph enlisted in the united states air force when he was 17, and the day after his 18th birthday he was on a train for the first time in his life, headed for 29 months of military service, all of it in training on various air bases in the western united states. to his great disappointment, his rural high school had not offered him (or anyone) the necessary math to become a pilot, so ralph did what was he was assigned: he trained as a machine-gunner and flew over two hundred b-24 and b-29 bomber practice missions. though he was proud of his endurance and the skills he learned, and grateful for having made friends who steered him towards getting a higher education, the horrors he experienced—witnessing flaming plane crashes that took two hundred lives (sfsg, 177), some of whom were ralph’s friends—led him to the devastating awareness that those deaths were pointless: that war was pointless; that he’d been propagandized; that dying was far from glorious. he often said that before enlisting, he hadn’t really internalized what death, especially a painful death, actually was. he had been young and immortal (right?), like many young soldiers, all around the world, who enlist at an age when their prefrontal cortexes are still ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 186 forming, when their ability to look at all sides of the issues, to make rational decisions, is not yet fully operational. all that testosterone, each “invincible” generation repeating the enthusiasms of the generation before. he saw what pete seeger later immortalized in song, “gone to graveyards, every one.” he learned at university and through family experience (his mother’s first husband died in world war one), that almost every generation, throughout history, has had its own war, and that the reasons for war are closely tied to economics. believing the world should not function that way, ralph became a pacifist. his commitment, as you’ve rightly noted, was lifelong. one of the ways his pacifism played out was through his poetry and fiction. i remember his talking about using the gift of his survival and his gift with words, to work to honor the memories of his friends killed in air crashes, by exposing the lies they’d all been fed and by telling the truth about war. a sometimes-thorny issue, with which ralph chose not to engage, was whether it was necessary for america to join the allies in fighting the nazis and the japanese during the second world war. what ralph really railed against were the root causes of war and human blindness to the wheels of propaganda (among other complex reasons, such as the way germany’s resources were depleted after world war i) that initially induced the german people to follow hitler, similar to the wheels he’d himself fallen under, in america. he argued against the political and economic forces which persuaded all the young and vulnerable into laying down their lives for no good reason. he made his points quite well, i believe, in his writing—though he never could persuade one of his brothers, rex, the youngest in the family (who made the united states air force a lifelong career—during which he flew hospital ships and transport missions in vietnam) that the vietnam war was wrong. ralph also, by extension, loathed the nuclear arms race and felt an uneasiness, throughout his life, about the fact that american lives had been spared—at the end transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 187 of world war ii—by the horrific destruction of the entire cities of hiroshima and nagasaki. he feared that if left unchecked, the nuclear arms race, which escalated to epic proportions in the 1950s and 60s, and kept on escalating, would lead to nuclear holocaust and the ultimate destruction of our world. that threat is, of course, back with us again, thanks to multiple causes that don’t fall within the scope of our conversation. so yes, ralph did, over a good many years, take upon himself the responsibility of reminding his readers that the nuclear threat wasn’t going away just because the world’s attentions might be elsewhere. his awareness of nuclear threat extended not only to bombs, themselves, but to the nuclear reactors that were predicted (and have, by now, at least twice been proven—in chernobyl and fukishima) to have disastrous consequences should anything go wrong. there’s something i need to clarify, however, before returning to the trajectory of ralph’s lifelong pacifism. despite the realism and historical accuracy of his short fiction, ralph never saw combat. he was not “the indian who bombed berlin.” he never went to korea. in fact, he was never shipped over either the atlantic or the pacific. the news of germany’s surrender arrived when he was on a troop train bound for the east coast, where he was to be shipped across the atlantic. he then returned to another american air base, was trained to firebomb japan, and was getting ready to get shipped there, when japan surrendered. a few years later, an air force computing error sent ralph an honorable discharge before he was even called up to serve in korea. by the time it arrived, however, he’d already decided to serve only on the condition that he serve as a medic; if that didn’t work, he’d officially declare himself a conscientious objector and go to prison. rather than fight. “why didn’t you become a co right away,” i once asked. “because that would have meant going to prison, and my family would have had no income.” ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 188 no, about berlin and korea, ralph was merely doing what fiction writers do, imagining what could have happened, right (?), what memories he would have carried, what recognitions he would later have had, had he actually been in those bombers. and why should he worry that readers would assume the stories were autobiographical? did anyone assume that n. scott momaday had been in the army, when he wrote about a ww ii soldier returning to his new mexico reservation? i see various future research papers here: ww ii veterans who became writers, specifically those with native american heritage. i’m surprised, now that i think of it, that ralph’s editors did not insist on a disclaimer at the beginning of his books of short fiction, stating that “the places and the names….etc., are not based on actual characters or events,” or however that goes. misleading his readers was never ralph’s intention. autobiographical details that ralph did bring to that berlin story were his having lived and taught in germany, several times, as a fulbright professor; having been to berlin several times (before and after the wall came down); and having participated in anti-war rallies, in oregon and california, during vietnam war years and during the early days of the still-ongoing wars in the gulf. but back to the trajectory, and to contextualize ralph’s political activism during the vietnam war era, when ralph— by then a professor at the university of oregon— was openly decrying the united states military involvement. in those days, the term all of us used was “anti-war poet”; the terms “peace poet,” “pacifist poet,” and “activist poet,” had yet to evolve. with your kind permission, i’ll digress just enough to give a bit of historical context to ralph’s peace activism and mention the non-profit, umbrella organization called “american writers against the vietnam war,” created in 1965—the year american forces landed in vietnam—by american poets david ray and robert bly, for the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 189 purpose of organizing readings, meetings, rallies, teach-ins, demonstrations, and the like. bly and ray also co-edited and published (in 1966) an anthology, still available, titled a poetry reading against the vietnam war, which contained work by many of the most highly-regarded poets of the time: galway kinnell, grace paley, allen ginsberg, adrienne rich, donald hall, robert lowell, james wright, lawrence ferlinghetti, louis simpson, william stafford, robert creeley, denise levertov, bly and ray, themselves, and many more). the significance of that anthology cannot be overemphasized. it inspired many other writers and editors to do something similar, and it fostered a wave of poetry readings throughout the united states, all of them passionate and well attended. one can find many accounts of this anthology, and the movement, online. it was during this time that ralph, as editor-in-chief of northwest review conceived of a special “protest and affirmation” issue, which i, as managing editor from 19671968, helped create. behind that title was his belief—first articulated, he told me, by poet denise levertov—that there are two ways to resist oppression: to actively name and resist it, and to praise and celebrate what it is we live for. or, as oregonborn poet phyllis mcginley once said, “in times of unrest and fear, it is perhaps the writer's duty to celebrate, to single out some values we can cherish, to talk about some of the few warm things we know in a cold world.” farther along in our conversation i’ll come back to the political backlash from the university of oregon’s publications department. it wasn’t pleasant. but ralph held his ground, got two other faculty members to back him, and the issue was published (after prolonged delay). both ralph and i, in the following years, participated in several readings, rallies, and marches against the vietnam war. some were in fresno, california, where i had a temporary assistant professorship at the state college (now university), and where ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 190 ralph had been hired as a visiting professor for two years. one memorable march was downtown, where we and many hundreds of students, faculty, and community members marched through the streets on a hot, hot day. the march was peaceful; we never doubted it would be. oh, we were so innocent, in the days before the deadly shootings at kent state (may 4, 1970). on the fresno campus, fbi agents were everywhere, every day, for months—easily identified by their gray suits. (who wears gray suits with large walkie-talkies in their bulging breast pockets on campus?) i strongly suspect that to this day, our names and faces are in some fbi files, somewhere. at one of the marches on campus, our group of protestors was approached by a group of young, macho males (aggies, they were called: agriculture students, very right wing) swinging heavy bicycle chains in our direction. we didn’t linger. ralph’s officemate in fresno was a young everett frost, an english professor/friend who, on his own time, counseled young men who wanted to know their alternatives to military service, should they be drafted. everett, consequently, was suspended from teaching by the college administration (over loud objections from the english department) for allegedly conspiring to blow up the grand piano in the music school—an absurdity that didn’t hold up in court. for a couple of days all english professors, including ourselves, did not have access to our offices, while all filing cabinets were searched for evidence. strange and ugly times. but i digress. on we go to the wars of the next generation. first, it was the gulf war, began under (republican) president george bush, in early 1991, with the bombing of iraq: the goal, to oust saddam hussein, who had invaded kuwait. the days prior to the first “shock and awe” wave of u.s. bombings of baghdad were excruciating for us, as they were for many millions of our fellow citizens, unable to stop the desert storm and desert shield operations that had begun, actually, with buildup of troops in 1990. both ralph and i responded by writing protest poems, as transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 191 did many others. we participated in readings, locally, though there wasn’t the same kind of nationwide movement as during the vietnam war, in part because that military action was of a limited duration. ten years later, however, after the (second) bush administration announced a war against terror (and its mastermind, osama bin laden, leader of al-qaeda, who had planned the simultaneous attacks on new york’s world trade center’s twin towers and the pentagon, in washington, d.c.), a whole new nationwide protest movement erupted, with poets again at the helm. this time the first move was made by the late poet-publisher sam hamill, after he declined an invitation to attend first lady laura bush's white house symposium "poetry and the american voice," in february 2003—a symposium that was canceled as a result of much negative publicity. hamill called for poets to submit work to what became the huge, online anthology poets against the war (part of which was later printed as a book). that site, now archived and difficult to access, originally contained over 4,600 contributions from poets worldwide and grew to include over 10,000 poems. it became a forum where poets could register their opposition to the bush administration's initiating war with iraq. i encourage readers to search online for more details. what happened next, and happened almost simultaneously, was that a great many editors of journals and/or small, independent poetry presses, all across america, also published print editions of state-specific, or cityor region-specific anthologies of anti-war poems. here in oregon, ralph and i both appeared in raising our voices: an anthology of oregon poets against the war, edited by duane poncy (cherokee) and patricia mclean, in 2003. again, we participated in readings. and we organized two of them, a year apart, timed to celebrate the january birthday of oregon’s most world-renowned poet, william stafford (1913-1993), who had been a ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 192 close friend. stafford, a conscientious objector during world war ii, had spent three years in work camps in arkansas, california, and illinois, fighting fires and maintaining roads, which he described in his memoir down in my heart. we called the first event: “every war has two losers,” a title taken from the posthumous publication of stafford’s anti-war poems and related prose. to this reading we invited audience members to bring and read either a favorite stafford poem, one of their own, or one by someone else, that decried war and/or promoted peace. our second event, titled “the unknown good in our enemies,” came from a stafford poem titled “for the unknown enemy.” (again, readers can look online for either “the unknown good in our enemies,” an article i wrote, and/or google “william stafford for the unknown enemy”.) for this program we researched anthologies and put out an online call for work by poets living and writing in the middle east. we chose about 20 poems, from several countries, and assigned local poet friends to share in reading them at our event. we also produced a small booklet of these poems for each audience member to take home. although those readings were long ago, ralph maintained his anti-war and propeace activism throughout the rest of his life. which brings me back, bob, to your designation “peace poet.” that slight but important semantic shift from ralph’s considering himself “anti-war” to “pro-peace” was very gradual, very undramatic. thank you for catching that. looking back, i’m not finding where ralph publicly used this term; i surely have missed something. but the term was certainly how he increasingly grew to think of himself, the seed having been planted, perhaps, with his editing the special “protest and affirmation” issue of northwest review. what comes to mind right now are lines from a denise levertov poem, which we greatly admired. “nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have” (from her book life at war, 1966). the positive tone of these lines, and ralph’s thinking of himself as a “peace poet,” were transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 193 clearly in keeping with his lifelong commitment to use his teachings and writings to make significant social change, to work within society, rather than to attack it. he maintained this stance all his life, right up through his final, as yet-unpublished, book of poems living in the mouth. i’ll conclude by taking advantage of our digital format and mention a youtube performance of a song that means a lot to me, personally, in its almost perfect expression—in words by argentinian poet mario benedetti, put to music by alberto favero— of how i saw ralph and his work for peace and justice and how we walked cado a cado, elbow to elbow, in the streets and in all we did as teachers and writers, supporting each other’s work for 48 years. it’s a love poem, of sorts, in which one lover says, “if i love you, it’s because you are / my love my accomplice my all / and out in the street arm in arm / we are so much more than two / …. your hands are my caress / my daily reminders / i love you because your hands work hard for justice …. your mouth that’s yours and mine / your mouth that’s never wrong / i love you because your mouth / knows how to yell like a rebel … and for your honest face / and your vagabond step / and your weeping for the world / because you’re one of the people, i love you …. and out in the street arm in arm / we are so much more than two.” during ralph’s memorial service, while a local a cappella choir performed this piece, the audience could follow along with program inserts that contained the original spanish poem and, across the page, the english translation by paul archer (which, online, is at the bottom of the screen). the choral arrangement is by liliana cangiano. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jledo1tyztc 6. the both of you spent much time in europe, germany and italy especially. ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 194 the fulbrights and the travel. what was ralph’s sense of europe, its cultural strengths and yet its battle-scars? oh, we were so very fortunate, from the very beginning, to be able to visit many different countries in europe and to have extended stays in several of them. and, different (i like to think) from most tourists, our experiences were more than skin deep. our first european trip was in 1976, when ralph took a spring term sabbatical at full pay and we added an extra three summer months, living on savings. we spent a total of almost 6 months in europe, traveling on a 3-month eurailpass, which in those days was affordable and could be spread out longer by staying for 10 days, 2 weeks, or even a month or more, in one place, before traveling on. with a 4-year old in tow, that was not only practical: it was essential. there was another reason we stayed for long periods: a month in murnau, germany, for example, at the foot of the bavarian alps; a month in tossa de mar, on the costa brava of spain. ralph always, from the very beginning, wanted to live “among the people.” we stayed outside of tourist areas and took public transit where we wanted to go. we most fervently wanted, also, not to be instantly identified as americans, so we could observe and learn and maybe even interact with people on their terms, not ours (though we still, no doubt, stood out “like sore thumbs.”) we almost never stayed in hotels. for shorter stays of a week or 10 days, we’d find a room for rent in an ordinary household. airbnb’s didn’t exist. in german and austrian small towns, we’d walk from the train station, find a “fremden zimmer” sign in a window, and knock on the door. in tiny murnau (home to gabriele münter and wassily kandinsky more than 70 years before us), we stayed in a bavarian farm household, sharing the roof and a wall with the barn. we met such kind, wonderful people that way. or, in larger cities, we’d consult our well-worn frommer’s guide, transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 195 phoning—at the very last minute, from the station—private homes recommended by travelers before us. we also spent some time with distant cousins, from both sides of my parentage: two households in backnang (near stuttgart) and one in wiesbaden. our next trip to europe, in 1983, was for ralph’s fulbright senior professorship at the goethe universität in frankfurt. his assignments involved teaching native american literature and creative writing, for the spring and summer semesters. both of us were invited to give readings at the amerika haus in frankfurt. ralph was also invited to lecture at the university of arhus, in denmark. during this period, we, with our then-eleven-year-old daughter, initially stayed for 6 weeks—for lack of available university housing—with friends of friends, with whom ralph had corresponded, but whom we’d never met: teachers guenter and mechthild hesse and their five year-old daughter, anna. the hesses opened to us their beautiful home in bad homburg, just outside of frankfurt, and opened their hearts, including us in family meals, introducing us to the german way of life, taking us on excursions and walks through vineyards and forests, showing us small, historic cities close enough for day outings. every night, after abendessen, and the girls were asleep, we’d stay up till all hours, drinking wine and talking politics and cultural differences and education and everything else under the sun. we’re friends to this day, and our paths have crossed often, over the years, both in germany and in oregon. whenever ralph and i flew in and out of frankfurt, maybe a dozen times, en route to conferences or guest appearances or his fulbright research award in norway, we’d stay with our friends. i did so just last september, en route to the native american studies symposium at the university of valencia. ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 196 in 1994-1995, i, myself, had a fulbright senior professorship in frankfurt, and ralph was privately offered a class in native american literature. together, during the year, we traveled to 10 different german cities, where i gave workshops on the teaching of creative writing in the classroom, to secondary and university level teachers of english. two years later we were south of munich, where i had a onemonth residency at the villa waldberta, under the sponsorship of the kulturreferat, münchen, to work collaboratively with munich visual artists traude linhardt and susi rosenberg—on an installation piece (painting, sculpture, and poetry) titled “space/word/time.” seven years later we were in germany again, teaching for two summers in a row at freiburg’s university of education, as fulbright senior specialists. how could any two people have been luckier than we? our brief travels and extended periods of residence in italy evolved throughout the 1990s, beginning with ralph’s receiving, in 1992, a 5-week rockefeller residency award at the villa serbelloni in bellagio, on a hillside overlooking lake como. in 1995, the fulbright commission sent both of us on a joint reading tour of three cities in italy: turin, parma, and rome. we also accepted private invitations to read in padova, florence, and venice. in parma, we were hosted by a group of writers and artists whose parents had been partisans in world war ii, and we learned some rousing songs that honored their resistance. also, in parma, we met some americans in the breakfast room, who (it turned out) had an apartment for rent in venice; we took it for three months in the late winter/early spring of 1996. while in venice, two parma friends came to visit, introducing us to the sisters sandra and flavia busatta, who—from their home in padova—were publishing hako, a journal of native american history and culture, from their home in padova. one thing led to another, and sandra invited us to visit her esl high school classes. and the following year, our daughter martina, who was working in florence as assistant transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 197 dean of studio art centers international, found us an apartment there, for the month of february 1997. as to how ralph saw europe’s cultural strengths and its battle scars, what a huge question! though wary of generalizations, my first response is that he probably saw these as somewhat connected, as do i. one of europe’s cultural strengths, ralph would have said, is its art: the centrality of it, how integrated art is into society—vibrant and visible and valued by the majority of the population (at least the populations we saw, from our american perspective). everywhere in europe, we found streets bearing the names of artists, writers, composers. one of the first things ralph wanted to do, whenever we arrived somewhere new, was to visit whatever art museum(s) that city had to offer. we did day trips to small towns, if an art museum was there. we even bicycled to the kröller-müller museum in the netherlands, far out in the countryside. ralph had studied art as a university student, intending to be a painter, before he discovered his love and talent for writing. he was at his happiest, “in his element,” with visual art, and he shared much of his knowledge with me, who’d had but one semester of art history in college. he loved the paintings of rembrandt and van gogh, he loved the german expressionists, he loved the surrealists, and picasso, and goya. he loved the miró museum in barcelona. the prado in madrid. the kunsthistoriches museum in vienna. and in every museum, of course, it was inescapable: representations of war. the art of anselm kiefer in everywhere. reminders, reminders. battle scars. we wondered if ever there were historical periods when one or another war, somewhere, did not plague europe. we also talked about how some of europe’s greatest visual artists, writers, and musicians (we went to many concerts, too) were creating their finest masterpieces during periods ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 198 of wartime; it had to be more than coincidence. observing these correspondences enriched our/ralph’s experience. another strength he saw, i believe, was europe’s dedication to keeping history alive. centuries-old fountains everywhere. he applauded the preservation of old buildings; he applauded the adventurous designs of the new; he applauded their integration. he applauded the european way of renovating interiors, to keep up with more modern conveniences and styles, while preserving their historical exteriors. he loved the ancient cathedrals. in those days (the 80s, 90s and early 2000s; i’m sure it’s changed now, with the huge influx of immigrants) ralph saw a cultural strength in europeans’ having grown up in places that have been there for centuries: “belonging” to those place in ways most americans have never experienced. alas, it seems to be our american way—a way ralph often bemoaned—to tear down the old to build the “new and better.” there are exceptions everywhere, of course, in the united states, especially on the east coast. while ralph both admired (and, i believe, envied) europeans their being surrounded by tradition, he equally admired europeans’ ability to adapt to the demands of growing populations. he admired the “co-housing” developments springing up in freiburg, in the early 2000s. he admired the many ways—design, architecture, the transportation infrastructure, recycling, caring for the environment—europe was far head of america. we felt a bit like the youngest kids in class, always two developmental steps behind our older classmates. yet, amid all that he saw as good, ralph also saw the battle scars. he noted the architectural differences between the “truly old” and the “hastily rebuilt”: those transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 199 huge, monochromatic, cement-gray, working-class apartment buildings in downtown frankfurt (and other cities, throughout europe, bombed heavily during world war ii). what strength it must have taken everyone, in all countries, to get their bearings again, to move forward with their lives, while bearing grief for everything and everyone they had lost. everyone, including germans, the perpetrators, had suffered greatly. as had the italians, germany’s cohorts, for a while. we saw the bridge in a town near padova, where bullet holes still remain. we saw the trees from which dissidents were hung with barbed wire. different from most americans of his generation, different from even his siblings, ralph was keenly aware of the victims on both sides. he refused to see his generation as “the great generation,” a slogan that was in vogue in the 1990s, back home. aware, too, that he could have been part of the american air raids on any of the many german cities we visited, he was extremely thankful that he didn’t have to bear that kind of guilt. in germany ralph saw another, unique, kind of cultural strength: the open admission of guilt and a determination to never let this happen again. the concentration camps, open to the public; war memorials everywhere, including the kaiser wilhelm memorial church in berlin, deliberately not rebuilt, its bomb scars intact, as a reminder. because we were in frankfurt for the first half of 1995, and then came home, i/we didn’t really know how that year was marked in other european countries, but surely there were commemorative events. in america, we saw upon returning, town after town was celebrating “50 years of victory.” germany, on the other hand, was celebrating “50 years of peace,” with major exhibits in major museums and in other places, as well: the lobby of the opera house, the lobbies of government buildings, in banks, at entrances to cemeteries and cathedrals. i wish i could remember more about the exhibit that revealed the secret involvement of everyday citizens as members of the ss, and the other exhibit ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 200 of photos taken by foot soldiers, during the war, that was that talk of frankfurt. we went to a photo exhibit in bonn: german women clearing the rubble after bombing raids. in nuremberg we visited one of hitler’s largest stadiums, built for mass rallies, turned into a museum documenting, in both german and english, the rise of the nazi party (which bears rather frightening parallels to what ralph saw happening in our own country in 1995, and is happening again today, at an even faster pace.) and of course, seeing all this open admission, as well as germany’s ongoing efforts at restoration, ralph was keenly aware of what is still lacking in america, where most of our countrymen and women carry on as though slavery never happened, as though the genocide of 90% of all native americans never happened, as though putting japanese-americans in internment camps never happened, as though the ku klux klan didn’t still exist. (how angry he would be, had the crisis at our southern border—immigrant parents and children being separated at the border, and held in detention—happened while he was alive.) he was also aware that almost every german his age or older had some painful memories of the war. people we saw every day—retired people strolling in parks on sunday afternoons, or market vendors, or older proprietors of business establishments, had quite possibly lived through bombing raids and had seen horrors we cannot begin to imagine. some had possibly been combatants, or the relatives of combatants. all those who had survived, he intuited, had learned to deal with humiliation, shame, unimaginable guilt, as well as grief for their own people lost in battle. memories of unimaginable suffering at the hands of the russians. battle scars everywhere. palpable. he also saw the cultural strength of resilience, in germany and throughout all of europe. he was keenly aware that europeans have endured what the dominant transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 201 culture in america had never, in memory—except for the attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon, in 2001—had to endure: an invasion by a foreign power. if today, in 2019, american memories of 9/11/2001 are still fresh, how much wider and deeper and longer the memories of the many millions of european survivors of world war ii, who suffered losses day after day, for years. all this, and so much more, ralph was keenly aware of. we talked about it. he wrote about it. but complicating and deepening his feelings was the awareness that it was his generation that had been fighting in that war, and that greatly heightened his respect and compassion, coupled with a deep caring for everyone he met. 7. what, in this connection, of the translation work he did with harald gaski on the sami writer nils-aslak valkeapää? oh, i was hoping you’d ask about this. ralph and i, in 1987, participated in a conference called the “international writers’ reunion,” in lahti, finland. ralph, by that time, had already published four books of poems that drew heavily on his cherokee heritage and his sense of kinship with indigenous people around the world. he went to finland well aware that what we used to call laplanders (also known as the “white indians of the north,” due to their fair complexions and lightcolored eyes) were now being called what they call themselves: the sámi (one of several spellings). he hoped to meet at least one sámi writer in lahti. when that did not happen, he waited till the “farewell” cocktail party, where all participants were gathered, to take the microphone and announce his hope that someone could connect him with one or more living sámi poets. the happy result was that someone whose name is not on my radar, put ralph in touch with world-renowned sámi poet nils-aslak valkeapää (1943-2001). ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 202 thus began a lively correspondence and exchange of poems, which led to ralph’s receiving three of nils-aslak’s books, already translated from the sámi into norwegian. this, in turn, led to ralph’s freely undertaken, 7-year project of translating valkeapää’s work into english, with no expectation of reward other than the satisfaction of making nils-aslak’s poetry available to the english-speaking world. knowing neither sámi nor norwegian, ralph enlisted the aid of swedish-born and oregon-based vintner and scholar of american literature, lars nordström, ph.d (portland state university). lars, fluent in english, was also fluent in norwegian, so he gave ralph a word-by-word, literal english translation of every poem, which ralph then turned back into poetry, very closely approximating the form, intent, and as much of the literal content as possible. lars lived outside of portland, 100 miles north of eugene, but they spent many afternoons, over the next seven years, at our dining table, translating three books: trekways of the wind; the sun, my father; and the earth, my mother. in 1990 they were able to enlist the aid of a third person, professor harald gaski of the university of tromsø, norway: a native sámi speaker, fluent in english, sensitive to the nuances of poetry, and a close friend of nils-aslak. harald’s participation was essential to ensuring the fidelity of the translations to their original sámi versions. the three translators met for the first time in tacoma, washington, that same year (1990), when harald—much in demand as a public speaker—was participating in a symposium at pacific lutheran university. ralph drove north to portland, picked up lars, and the two then drove another 150 miles north to meet harald. the three hit it off right away; and from then on, all three corresponded intensely for quite some time—focusing almost exclusively on trekways. harald was also able, a year or two later, to come to the university of oregon for a different symposium, and they worked together in person, which speeded things along. trekways was published in transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 203 1994 by dat (a sámi publishing house based in norway) and distributed by the university of arizona press. visually, the book is stunningly beautiful, valkeapää contributing his own vividly colored cover design and interior black and white illustrations. about nils-aslak’s pleasure in their translations, harald has recently written, “nilsaslak was very happy for the english translation of his poetry, he said several times that they had kept the sámi sound, rhythm and feeling for the text, so he preferred to use the english translation rather than the norwegian and swedish ones, even in scandinavia.” but even before trekways’ appearance, harald had begun planning, together with the united states fulbright commission, to bring ralph to norway so that the two could work together on the second book in the trilogy: the sun, my father (published by dat in 1997). harald was successful: ralph received a fulbright research award to spend the summer of 1994 in tromsø, 250 miles north of the arctic circle; and nils-aslak—the one time we met him, at his home in the middle of the finnish tundra, almost a day’s drive from tromsø—was wonderfully welcoming. his gentle spirit filled the room and drew us all—ralph, me, harald, and his wife, britt rajala—under its wing. lars and harald continued the work on the finalization of the sun, my father at the rockefeller/bellagio center (italy), for a month in the spring of 1995 from the sámi original beaivi, áhčážan. ralph joined them for an intense last week, turning their literal translations back into poetry. quite the well-traveled, world-renowned poet, who can be seen on youtube participating in the opening ceremonies of the 1994 olympics in lillehammer, ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 204 valkeapää tragically was severely injured in a traffic accident in 1996, stunning all of scandinavia and especially the sámi. he died in 2001, in helsinki, on his return from a chain-poetry reading in japan. a deeply moving, half-hour tribute video, which includes sections of an interview conducted with the pensive, mature poet/singer/artist talking about his life, his philosophy, and especially about the uniquely sámi yoik (a kind of identity-song), can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piniedqxovw. this documentary, which i highly recommend, also contains many clips and photographs of the poet at different ages, and provides a good window into the sámi culture, in general. and—a bonus—about 12 minutes into the film we can see nils-aslak at his home, entering the door i reognize. the last book in the trilogy, the earth, my mother, was first published in 2001, shortly before nils-aslak’s death. the norwegian translation came out in 2006. harald and lars (who’d returned to live in sweden) waited several years before meeting, during a two-week residency program obtained by lars to translate the book into english. in 2016 they presented their work to ralph for his corrections. sadly, ralph was never able to hold this exquisite english translation in his hands, for it was not published till 2018, due to the complexity and expense of publishing such a heavy (2 ½ pounds), large (8 ½ x 9 inches), and visually stunning book. its full-color dust jacket and black cover, embossed with silver, as well as the full-color end pages, incorporate nils-aslak’s paintings and designs, and the book itself, in addition to poetry, contains many full-color reproductions of his paintings, as well as hundreds of black and white, as well as color, photographs which nils-aslak had taken on numerous visits with indigenous people all over the globe, including the american west. i refer readers to a webpage https://www.dat.net/product/thetransmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 205 earth-my-mother/ for a glimpse of the front cover and dat’s description, part of which reads: in the earth book the sámi perspective has been expanded to embrace indigenous people around the world. the sámi stood in the center of the sun, my father, while the speaker in the earth, my mother travels far and wide to visit jungles, and he does not pretend to be like them even though he registers kindred values and ways of life. the sun, my father (1997), originally published as beaivi áhčážan (1988), won the nordic council’s literature prize in 1991. the book combines poetry, original artwork as well as color and black-and-white photographs. in this book the indigenous peoples’ voices are expressed through poetry and imagery. the contrasts between insight and primitiveness in the traditional western sense of these words are transformed into a message about humanity’s relationship to the earth. as part of this there is also a cosmic and religious dimension of indigenous peoples’ faith and gratitude for everything that makes life good. the images are, in addition to the author’s personal photographs and paintings, collected from various archives and photographers. these words for me describe not only the book but also the basis for ralph and nils-aslak’s and harald’s close friendship, across the miles, and how, philosophically, temperamentally, and spiritually, they felt themselves brothers. i believe, also, that their friendship deepened ralph’s own sense of connectedness with indigenous people everywhere, which we find increasingly reflected in his poetry of the late 1990s and early 2000s. ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 206 8. politics. he evidently saw himself of the left as do you. what form did that take? what did that mean in terms of party – and especially during the clinton and obama presidencies? ralph stood, all his life, firmly on the left, in all issues and policies. he was a champion of many liberal and progressive causes: social security and affordable healthcare for all, minority rights, gender equality, economic parity, social programs to help the disadvantaged, gun control, environmental protections, expanded educational opportunity, social nets for those who need them, abortion rights, limited military spending, and so much more. the tax loopholes available to the uber-rich disturbed him greatly. he would find it in intolerable that today, 1% of the united states population has the collective wealth of the bottom 90% (a statement made by presidential candidate senator elizabeth warren, who knows her economics). one of the earliest forms ralph’s left-leaning took was combating racism at the college—texas a&m—where he taught from 1951-1955. like all other states in the “deep south,” texas, at that time, was still deeply segregated, and ralph—who was shocked at the racism he found among his students—very quickly determined he had a moral and ethical obligation to stand against segregation, which his young, privileged, white male students took for granted. i remember his telling about students in his beginning logic class trying, in vain, to defend their arguments that blacks were inherently inferior, challenging him with such questions as “would you want your sister to marry one?” ralph didn’t relent; and when the students ran out of verbal agility, ralph began to receive thinly veiled threats to his life and property. one night, a molotov cocktail (a bottle filled with gasoline, with a lit fuse stuffed into the top) was tossed onto his lawn, close to the porch. fortunately, it didn’t explode or catch his house on fire. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 207 this didn’t stop ralph from continuing to challenge injustice, but when (in 1955)the opportunity arose to return to his home state of iowa, to teach at drake university, and to move his family a thousand miles north, he took it. his activism continued, but on a different path. while at drake, where he taught for three years, he received a tip from a friend who worked at the des moines register (the state capitol’s large newspaper), that the university was secretly planning to bring then u.s. vice president richard nixon to campus to award him an honorary degree. a republican, nixon was not trusted by most democrats (for complex reasons i won’t go into). as martin luther king once said, nixon “almost disarms you with his apparent sincerity” and warned that, if in control, nixon could be “the most dangerous man in america.” ralph, appalled at what the university administration was planning, leaked the word to an english department friend, and the word spread like wildfire. many faculty members, across campus, let their ire be heard; and nixon, as a consequence, was un-invited. but ralph’s own head was close to the departmental chopping block, and he knew when to leave. by 1960 he was at the university of oregon, where he continued—through his writing, his teaching, his mentoring, and editing—to use his gift with words to come out against injustice, discrimination, and repression, wherever he saw it. another form ralph’s stance took was consistently voting a democratic ticket, regardless of whether the race was local, regional, or national. he was born in 1926, remember, just before the wall street crash that started a years-long, worldwide depression; there were winters when his family was barely able to put any kind of food on the table. when he was old enough, he worked 10-, 12-, 14hour days on the farm, when he wasn’t in school. and even during the school year, he rose before dawn to milk the cows and he worked after school until suppertime, ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 208 and often later, doing the evening chores. he went to a one-room country school for the first eight grades. his high school, in the closest town of aurora (five miles from the farm) provided a limited education. so, from an early age through all his adult life, he identified as working class, a designation he wore like a badge, with pride. our country is built on the working class, he’d say, whose labor keeps the economy moving. the working class deserves, and has always deserved, throughout history, better working conditions, better pay, better security. and so, for that matter, did the middle class, especially in public service fields such as education. (how he loved the re-runs of charlie chaplin films, by the way, especially “modern times”!) he learned early on that capitalism, the economic and political system upon which our country was founded, depends—if it is to thrive—on humanism, fairness, good will and philanthropy, of wealth not being in the hands of the top 1% of the population. he knew that capitalism, in our country, has seldom worked as it should. and though we haven’t yet had another great depression, ralph lost a good 1/3 of his retirement savings during the recession of 2008, the final year of the presidency of (republican) george w. bush. contrast that to bill clinton’s time in office, when the u.s. had strong economic growth (around 4% annually) and record job creation (22.7 million). toward the end of clinton’s tenure, the u.s. federal budget had three surplus years, the first since 1969 that weren’t achieved through a war economy. ralph was a great supporter of clinton and was especially supportive of barack obama, whose response to the crash of 2008 was to create the american recovery and reinvestment act, and, with the help of elizabeth warren, to enact wall street reform and pass the credit card act of 2009. obama also sponsored unemployment insurance reauthorization and the job creation act of 2010. he was the first president to create anything even resembling universal health care, with a program nicknamed obamacare: a now-defunct health plan that insured transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 209 many millions of previously uninsured citizens and did away with all insurance companies’ refusal to accept new clients with pre-existing conditions. obama was, furthermore, an ardent and active environmentalist, a supporter of civil rights, and also a great reader of both poetry and fiction. ralph loved him! how did ralph’s personal convictions play out in private life? something not widely known is that we purchased our first home—a 1920s wooden bungalow (considered “vintage” in the united states) for a $20 legal fee, from a macdonald’s hamburger restaurant (so they could build a parking lot) and hired house movers to haul it across town and deposit it, on stilts, on a vacant lot we purchased with an early inheritance given us by his mother. ralph, with help from his teenage son brian, brian’s friend jay, and me (when our baby was napping), spent a summer taking off the low-peaked roof, too high to pass under the cables that were stung, in those days, over every intersection in town. once the house was in the new location, ralph dug the 6-foot deep sewer line; he built a higher second story onto the house; and framed the new roof with the help of a retired carpenter. we both dug the foundation; ralph re-wired the whole downstairs so that the electric company would hook us up to power lines. we built the front steps and a balcony with lumber salvaged from the old roof. the following summer and fall, he covered the second story outside walls with wooden shingles salvaged, with my father’s help, from the 2-car garage that came with original property, which ralph had cut into manageable chunks with a chain saw (like reversing the pre-fabrication of a house), and hauled, in a utility trailer, into the vacant back yard. but when we first moved in, october 1972, with our 11 month-old daughter, we lived—for two months—in two rooms, the kitchen and bedroom, with no indoor plumbing and only one electric light and a space heater, made possible by the electric cord coming from our neighbor’s garage and through a crack in the kitchen ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 210 window. crazy, right? but to put things in a world perspective, we had it better than many millions of people in third-world countries, then and now. we were happy. and we were in love. in the coming years, even when we were more comfortable economically and ralph was receiving accolades for his writing and invitations to teach and speak overseas, he never forgot his roots and was always a champion for the working class and for racial and ethnic minorities. one of his favorite t-shirts, one which came from the 2012 “split this rock” protest-poetry festival in washington, d.c., sported—in large, bold, white letters on a black background— words originally attributed to hopi elders, brought into public awareness by african-american poet june jordan: “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for!” he wore that t-shirt everywhere. looking back on all these years, from the perspective of 2019, i think there was never a time when ralph was not engaged in left-leaning social activism. not only was he alert to any and all opportunities to rally (i remember his marching at my side in a eugene demonstration to support local teachers), to sign petitions, and to write poems that spoke against oppression. i believe he considered all of his writing, teaching, and editing as a form of social activism, on many different fronts: civil rights, pacifism, environmentalism, gender equality, economic parity, redressing the wrongs done to native americans and other minority groups. toward the end of his life, when his health kept him more housebound, he signed so many online, political petitions his email in-box was overwhelmed, but every day, he continued to sign, with the result (of course) of getting on every other liberal’s mailing list. but he never complained. how pleased he’d be to see the flourishing of today’s activist writers of conscience. poets of color, representing many different ethnicities, are becoming rising stars in celebrated literary circles and among the reading public. he’d be thrilled that transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 211 muskogee (creek) poet and musician joy harjo, with whom he’d appeared in native american publications and events, is our current united states poet laureate. i just today learned that democratic presidential candidate senator elizabeth warren has added an african-american, feminist poet, camonghne felix, to her communications team, and i encountered the term “civic poetry.” ralph would be cheering. i’ll let him have the final say right now and conclude with a biographical statement from his website. “dedicated, as he says, to the tribe of the world, ralph salisbury comments: ‘though i have lived and worked among the intelligentsia of many nations, my writing comes from having lived as a questing, mixed-race, workingclass individual in a violent world, and my work is offered to the spirit of human goodness, which unites all people in the eternal struggle against evil, a struggle to prevail against global extinction.’” www.ralphsalisbury.com 9. he was also a committed environmentalist as, again, are you. how would you characterize his views, living as the both of you did for decades in the pacific northwest? yes, ralph came to oregon in 1960, and i, in 1966. oregon, as you know, is enormous; our european friends are always surprised by how long it takes—a whole day—to drive border to border, from the pacific coast to the snake river, which divides oregon from neighboring idaho. oregon, about the size of germany, together with washington state and idaho, constitute the pacific northwest (though montana is sometimes included), with most of the population centered in the ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 212 westernmost parts of oregon and washington, between the cascade mountains and the pacific ocean. oregon’s coastline is 363 miles long (another long day’s drive, since much of it is curvy and slow going). ralph’s view of living here is beautifully expressed in a statement he makes 10 minutes into a just-released documentary, writing oregon, available online at https://www.write-place.org/current-projects/the-film-project/. i believe it can be streamed to a larger screen. the film’s very subject is what it means to live in close relationship with, and to bear witness to, the majesty and complex ecology of our unique oregon landscape, which encompasses the pacific coastal areas, the valleys between the coast and the high cascade mountains, and the many miles of vast, open, high desert plateau to the east. ralph’s contributions, as well as my own, are heard in interviews and as voice-overs of brilliantly filmed and edited footage of our diverse landscape, together with interviews, poems, and prose writings of several other notable oregon writers and historians, delicately woven in. the footage of this film, shot in 2013, was just a day or two after we’d returned from a few days at the beach cabin we owned for 39 years. of the ocean, ralph says, “it’s so big, it makes you feel humble … attuned to the ways of the universe. i feel very ennobled to be there.” i think he also felt ennobled each time we camped in the cascades, or drove, on occasion, to the vast opens spaces of eastern oregon, where far-distant mountains (the wallowas and the steens), visible across miles and miles of rolling, high desert plateau, give one a sense of just how very small we humans really are. later in the film (30.31 minutes) ralph reads his poem “sheep ranch home near airbase,” about that very far-eastern oregon, in which basque immigrants have made their living raising huge herds of sheep. the pacific northwest, says professor, writer, and editor laura laffrado, is “different in all ways from other places in the united states.” i think ralph would totally agree. a related topic, which could be a paper—someday—for any student or scholar, transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 213 would be on the “pacific northwest aesthetic,” as seen in the proliferation of artists working in all media. in poetry and fiction, for example, several writers of prominence during the 50s and 60s—including poets theodore roethke and richard hugo, and fiction writers ken kesey and ursula le guin)—wielded great influence over the writings of the next few generations and put the northwest “on the radar” of environmentalists nationwide. gary snyder and jack kerouac are two other names associated with oregon. perhaps the most profound, far-reaching influence of all was the prolific poet and pacifist william stafford, who died in 1993—having published about 50 volumes of poems (more keep appearing, posthumously) and having served for many years as oregon poet laureate, a position now held by his son kim. ralph’s sense of humility in the face of the oregon landscape, reflected in the work of northwest writers, is also part of the social consciousness of most of our neighbors, near and far, throughout the pacific northwest. by contrast, in the american midwest, where ralph and i were born and raised, the horizon can, for the most part, appear within walking distance. and though it’s dangerous to speak in generalizations—especially when speaking from personal experience and observation—this close horizon seems to have created a disproportionate sense of human self-importance and a regional attitude—passed down from the first white settlers—that the fruits of the earth, the fertile farmlands and woods and the animals who lived there, were given by god to serve human needs: to be cut down, to be tamed, subdued, and controlled, along with america’s first peoples. that attitude was carried, of course, by the earliest wagon trains across the rocky mountains and oregon’s cascades, when the “west was won.” ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 214 by the time we arrived, however, that attitude, especially west of the cascade mountains, was greatly diminished. and now, in the 2010s, we’re seeing a movement towards acknowledging and honoring first peoples by replacing some place names—streets, rivers, bridges, mountains, and so on—with their original tribal names or with words taken from the languages of the tribes who lived there (at least 46 different tribes, who spoke in 26 distinct languages). as to environmental protections, oregon has long been among the nation’s leaders. an example would be the 1971 passage of the oregon bottle bill, the first in the nation. which requires a cash deposit on every can or bottle of beer and soda, redeemable upon the containers’ return. so, in addition to ralph’s falling in love with the landscape of the pacific northwest, especially of oregon—a place whose beauty inspired and welcomed him—he also found himself in a human community that, increasingly, shared his own, personal, environmental values, including his awareness of the dangers of nuclear reactors and their immense threat to all life systems. one, in particular, had the potential to destroy much of our beloved pacific northwest. ralph’s poem “respecting uktena” is a protest against the trojan nuclear power plant—the world’s largest pressurized water reactor—built at a cost of $460 million, along the columbia river northwest of portland, 160 miles north of our home in eugene. operations, which began in 1976, gave the pacific northwest not only more electric power but also kindled a huge, 17-year backlash and protest movement among environmentalists. ralph’s voice was, of course, but one of many of thousands of relentless oregonians speaking out until—after the discovery of a major earthquake fault line nearby—the plant was taken down. (the threat of catastrophic earthquake, however, remains.) as a fellow activist, our neighbor camilla pratt, herself instrumental in getting our local utility company to divest its stake in trojan, has eloquently said of ralph’s transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 215 poem: “it is wonderful, amazing, and reassuring how personal, altruistic endeavors coalesce to nourish human connectedness.” one of ralph’s strongest environmentalist poems is “around the sun: alaskan oil spill,” which i append, with poems on other subjects, at the end of this conversation. “around the sun ...” was his response to an oil tanker’s running into a reef in prince william sound and breaking open, spilling millions of gallons of oil and killing millions of mammals and other sea creatures—a catastrophic event of epic proportions, unlike anything ever seen before. ralph saw this as an ominous turning point in the health of our planet. it was an event, he feared, that could happen again, elsewhere. and it has, many times. given today’s flourishing of literary journals that put environmental concerns front and center, ralph would be right in there with everyone else, calling himself an “environmentalist poet,” or “climate poet.” terms keep evolving, as the climate crisis intensifies, and our political parties become increasingly polarized. 10. what do you think the role of spirituality, especially cherokee, was in his make-up? “my experience of being struck by lightning has become, after 53 years, a spirit awareness.” (p. 283, sfsg) what an insightful selection of sentences to pair with your good question. thank you. but before i go any further, i’ll point out what i think is ralph’s typographical error; instead of “53 years,” i think he intended “63 years,” which would better coincide with his writing these words in his late 70s. the lightning strike occurred when he was 15. ralph’s spirituality centered him and, i believe, lay beneath everything he did and everything he wrote, for most of his adult life. but, as he suggests in the passage ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 216 you quote, he wasn’t entirely conscious of the connection between his spirit awareness and the lightning strike until he began working on his autobiographical memoir. ralph’s medicine path took, in ralph’s early years, a circuitous route. a line by theodore roethke comes to mind, “i learn by going where i have to go” (“the waking”). and so it was for ralph. his father had given ralph his own native ways of looking at nature, without naming them as such. his mother, raised in a methodist family, did not belong to any church, but she had her own private faith: god lived, she said, within each flower within each living, growing thing, a faith ralph remembered her sharing with him when he was very small. so, ralph’s parents, each in their own ways, instilled in him a reverence for the earth and all creatures that live upon it. but the reverence they taught had no framework, no context; his family professed no religion, they belonged to no spiritual community beyond the farm. ralph was in awe of nature’s beauty and its power to give and to take away, but he had no words to describe it. he also was deeply aware of the family’s dependence upon the earth for their sustenance. that lightning strike at age 15 broke, i think, like the blow of an axe, into his sense of oneness with nature. it was deeply unsettling; and this unease stayed with him, as well. it was, in fact, in the lightning strike’s aftermath that ralph began to long for a religious context which might, through language, bring inner peace and understanding. he’d noticed that people around him seemed to draw comfort from christianity. they went to church, they prayed, they talked about the bible. so, at age 18, in air force training camps, he read, cover-to-cover, the military-issued new testament. twice. he said it didn’t “reach him as it should.” older air force friends, some of transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 217 whom had already started university, told him about the koran. he found it at a public library near the air base. it didn’t work for him, either. in college he read in the vedic holy books and in the upanishads. still, nothing resonated. so, he read psychology, he read freud, he studied art history. in college he discovered the surrealists. they had a deep influence on his writing style, they validated for him the importance of dreams, which they—and, later, ralph—often used as sources for their writing. but i don’t think he found in them the comfort, the solidity, he was seeking. following the advice of friends and encouraged by university professors, he embarked on a life of writing and teaching, still without having found a place his spirit could rest. but he remained open. and when, at age 34, he learned of his native heritage, everything changed, and he gradually embarked upon a manyyears-long study of the history, culture, religion, sacred rituals, formulas, and myths of his cherokee forebears, which did speak to him, profoundly, as did his wide reading in the poetry and fiction of his native american contemporaries. the more he learned of the native world view, the more he found himself “at home”: a home he embraced, in the remaining two-thirds of his life, with the passion of one who is reunited with a country from which he’d been separated at birth. he adopted words from the native american spiritual lexicon: words such as “medicine path” and “destiny.” those words became part of his everyday speech, part of his daily prayers. he prayed every morning to the spirits of the four directions, the spirt of sky, and the spirit of earth. during the last decades of our life together, he said a silent prayer before each evening meal; we had a ritual of holding hands and closing our ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 218 eyes, silently letting go of the day and being mindful of the moment and where our food had come from. we talked only once about what words if any, were in our minds at such times. ralph said that his ritual had long been to recite a prayer he’d composed years earlier. it appears in the preface to rainbows of stone: “i thank the creator for my small place in all the immensity, power, glory, and beauty of creation. i pray that i may be worthy of my medicine path and live well enough and long enough to fulfill my destiny.” over the next thirteen years, this developed into a lengthier version: “may i live long enough, and well enough, to fulfill my destiny. may i fulfill my medicine dream. may i follow my medicine path to its end. and may i and my loved ones live a life of beauty and happiness after death.” (sfsg, 284) what was that destiny? that medicine path? i think the answer is connected to the words you’ve quoted, in your question, to which i now return. for the longest while, ralph talked and wrote and gave interview answers about that lightning strike and how it affected him; he often attributed that strike to the cherokee god of thunder, without revealing why he was struck, or what the thunder god’s purpose might had been. much earlier, in a 1983 interview with bo schöler (available online), ralph states only that it left him “with a sense of awe and an intense love of life; that's all i can say.” four years later, in his essay “between lightning and thunder” (in the collection i tell you now, autobiographical essays by native american writers, edited by arnold krupat and brian swann, 1987), ralph quotes lines from his poem “a midnight dawn” (pointing at the rainbow, 1980), which recount his being struck by ‘red man … god,” but ralph still does not theorize why he was struck. in that same essay, he goes on to say that “red man, spirit of thunder and lightning … an important part of my religion [,] infuses my awareness….” is he suggesting that transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 219 “awe” had replaced “fear”? i can only speculate, but that would be consistent with his response in the interview. so, you’ve hit the nail right on the head, when you refer to that sentence near the end of ralph’s memoir. i think what we’re seeing it that ralph, now—at the end of a long book in which he’s been looking back at the parallel, sometimes simultaneous, paths his life has taken, tracing them back to their beginnings—has finally found what he’d been seeking. the reason for that lightning strike, i suggest, was that red man, the cherokee god of thunder, had marked him, had bestowed upon him a destiny, a medicine path, a spiritual quest in which—learning from going where he had to go—he would come to his native heritage, learn its essence, and in so doing, find his spiritual home. this destiny also included the responsibility to bring his learning, along with his life experience, into his poetry and fiction; to preserve and to pass along the collective memory and heritage of all of his people, both native american and caucasian; to use his talents to help others; and to save all that he loved, including the human community, through his writing and teaching. i thank arnold krupat for pointing out, in his introduction to ralph’s 2009 book of new and selected poems, light through a bullet hole, that ralph’s commitment “to save” everything he loved, is a thread that runs throughout his entire work. ralph was careful to use the words “medicine path,” “destiny,” and other similar terms with respect. for him these adopted words were as natural as breath, and helped, i think, give him the courage and strength to keep going, keep writing, despite whatever demands his teaching, editing, mentoring, parenting, householding, and later, his health and staying alive might make. he had many other, related, spiritual beliefs, as well. he believed in the mythical, mystical spirit powers of animals, for example: not that hummingbird would bring ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 220 him his people’s sacred tobacco, as in the myths of his ancestors, but that hummingbird’s very presence was a gift. he taught me how to see and identify the hoof prints of deer, which were evidence of deer’s recent presence: a gift he delighted in finding. those hoof prints found their way into many a poem. he believed the spirit world, in which his people “on the other side” now lived. different from the christian view of a separate heaven and earth, he believed that the spirit world is all around us: in the air, the trees, the winds, within birds and other living creatures. he believed that some of his deceased family members had visited him, during nighttime dreams and in waking visions. his personal belief system also converged, at times, with some of the basic elements shared by most of the world’s major religions. he was comfortable incorporating words from other faiths into his own poetry and prose. he was comfortable using the word god, for example. another example would be his memory of waking, as a child, in the middle of the night, to the beautiful sound of singing; he believed then, and he believed all his life, he’d heard angels singing. he spoke often, and he wrote, in so far, so good, of an experience we both had in 1996, when italian friends sandra and flavia busatta (self-proclaimed atheists) took us to the cathedral of saint anthony, in padova, and suggested we place our fingers lightly on the side of the green marble tomb. we did as they suggested; and we later talked about the almost-tingling sensation, the nearly imperceptible vibrations, the energy—who knows what to call it—emanating from the spirits of thousands of others who had touched that wall before us. or was it the spirit of saint anthony? our friends had not told us what to expect, but later, they said they felt it, too, each time they placed their fingers on that tomb. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 221 there’s another aspect of ralph’s spirituality i’d love for someone, someday, to explore in depth. though ralph claimed to not have read much about the buddhist faith, a reviewer of his first book of poems found it to have some of the qualities of zen buddhism. he was intrigued by that, as well as by a comment from a former student, the award-wining poet olga broumas, who referred to him as a zen-like teacher. his only explanation was that it must be a natural affinity, because, as he said, he knew nothing about zen. two summers ago i was reading an interview with norman fischer on the “tyranny of the self.” fischer, raised in the jewish faith, which he never abandoned, also has become a senior dharma teacher of zen buddhism. what fischer expresses several times (the sun, august 2018, p. 6) is almost identical to beliefs that ralph held, about which i’ve written in my essay “the vitruvian man”: that every moment of what is conventionally called “the present” includes “all the past, a concern for others, and a sense of going beyond one’s own limited sphere of identity.” the present moment, according to fischer, also includes the future. ralph would have wholeheartedly agreed. words from another sun interview, this time with david budbill, in the february 2017 issue, also resonate. budbill is talking about the life of the hermit, in various religions; and in a way, i think ralph would also have made a good hermit, too, or monk. although he loved his role as teacher, he loved corresponding with indigenous writers, editors, and friends with whom he felt a spiritual connection, and loved being part of such literary gatherings and conferences as the associated writing programs annual conference, or native american writers’ “returning the gift,” i was his link to the everyday world of neighbors, family, and friends. he was most comfortable talking one on one, or—paradoxically—in front of a group; but ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 222 small, and even deep, talk in small groups, became more difficult as the years went by. budbill talks about the social role of the “recluse,” saying that “many ancient societies—being less pragmatic and more mystical [than ours]—understood that monks and nuns and hermits have visions that will benefit the whole society.” he goes on to describe a buddhist friend whose contribution to peace and justice is to split wood: to do no harm to humanity. he refers to the role of thomas merton, the perfect example of the “engaged recluse.” “in order to think this way,” budbill says, one realizes what christians call the “mystical body of christ, and what other religions call the universal soul, the tao, or the one,” is to accept the idea that “we are all one unified being.” ralph would have, again, agreed wholeheartedly. “engaged recluse.” yes. that was ralph. 11. back to writing. how would you best characterize ralph’s style of literary voice, the poetry, the stories and the autobiography? i’m not sure one can lump the literary style and voice of all three genres into one description, but if there is one common characteristic, it might be a fusion of the first words that spring to mind: “passionate,” “intense,” “from the heart,” “lyrical.” much of ralph’s work was multi-layered, with imagery working double time or more. his work was always motivated by felt experience, be it his own or that of someone else, into whose point of view he entered , using his dual gifts of empathy and imagination. his writing became a way of gaining, for himself and for others, a deeper understanding of that felt experience, by re-creating the context in which it occurred and, then, through its re-telling. he was always, always aware of the musicality of language and the power of words to hook and to hold readers by the sheer power of sound. i speak as a musician as transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 223 well as a poet and reader, and the sounds of his poems, which were linguistically highly compressed, shone, from within, like crystal. the chimes of his words had power, in addition to the intensity of their meanings. poet kwame dawes has recently described the quest for beauty in language as an act of resistance and protest in the face of the ugliness of human oppression. i think ralph would say that was one of his goals, as well. as to accessibility, ralph’s poems often needed more than one silent, visual reading to fully grasp. more compressed than either his fiction or his autobiography, ralph’s poems were sometimes difficult, i think, for audiences to follow on first hearing, without the texts in front of them. daring, adventurous, multi-layered and highly unconventional, the majority of his poems make giant, quick leaps from image to image, which—like individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—don’t make sense until a whole flower or mountain comes together. i can think of no other poet whose style is even closely related to ralph’s. useful to remember is that ralph was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement and the dream analysis theories that studied during late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. this intense compression became a bit looser, more relaxed, i think, as time went on. his final manuscript of poems, living in the mouth, currently seeking a publisher, is perhaps the most reader-friendly of all, and—in many ways—most beautiful. i’m eager for it to appear. his fiction is to my mind the most straightforward of the three genres he wrote in. stories vary greatly in their degrees of formality, yet they are always engaging. sometimes the voice is distant, almost scholarly. other times it’s full of playfulness and wit (“the sonofabitch and the dog” comes immediately to mind). sometimes it’s conversational and, dare i say it, almost conventional—in style, mind you, not in subject matter or theme. and there was always a clear beginning, middle, and end. ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 224 the structure of his prose autobiography, so far, so good, and his prose essays are equally accessible, as well as elegant and full of philosophical asides. there’s also a compelling circularity to the narrative, which—though the book does begin with his birth and ends with his final years—is not precisely chronological. within each chapter ralph, the narrator, groups memories together, by the process of free association, according to subject, topic, and theme. for example, so far, so good opens with of an incident that occurred in infancy, in the dark of winter: glass falling from a bullet fired, from outside, through the window over his baby bed. his fear captured and forever held in subliminal memory, the very next sentences jump to another time he felt such fear: as an eighteen-year-old crew member in a world war ii airplane’s below-zero bomb bay. in terms of style, wow! from baby bed to bomber. that’s one heck of a stylistic leap! and it’s also the beginning of a recurring theme: the presence of many fearful, life-threatening events which shaped and colored his sense of self as well as his writing—some of which, i believe, can be seen as the work of a “survivor,” as a way to channel his “fight or flight” response into something of beauty and merit, as well as a refusal to be defined or limited by the traumas he experienced. such clusters of memory, within each chapter, could—to a reader expecting clear chronology—seem chaotic and random. but ralph, the innovator, was also a master storyteller, and he saw to it that each cluster had its own inner cohesiveness—just as one piece of glass, one color, in a kaleidoscope has its own internal integrity—and there is no one, correct, linear order in which to put those pieces, just as there is no one “correct” turn of the kaleidoscopic wheel, to put the colors in. to look at it another way, i am convinced, though ralph and i never talked about it, that this book is a demonstration of his spiritual belief in the interconnectedness of past, present, and future, as well as the oneness, the interconnectedness, of all earthly existence. this is a huge topic, and i discuss it at length in my essay on “the transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 225 vitruvian man….,” which appears elsewhere in this issue and concludes with the book’s final chapter, which weaves together kaleidoscopic memory after kaleidoscopic memory—as lovely, flowing, and lyrical as a long, long prose poem— in which we find reappearances of all of the book’s recurring themes, subjects, and topics. to my mind, it’s one of ralph’s most exquisite and profound works. 12. who were the writers, past and those who were his contemporaries, that he admired? he was also, in turn, a mentor to other writers – what do you recall of this? let’s start with ralph as beloved teacher and mentor to other writers. after his death, letters from former students came pouring in from all directions, telling me how much his faith in them and their writing, his gentle guidance, his “seeing them,” gave them the courage to follow their own voices, to build meaningful lives as writers and responsible human beings. many of his students went on to careers of great distinction: poets olga broumas, for example, and brigit pegeen kelly (their studies with ralph several years apart) both received the prestigious yale younger poets award. marilyn krysl—author of many books of poems and stories, as well as remarkable essays—became head of creative writing at the university of colorado, boulder. barbara drake, like krysl, born in oregon and a prolific poet and essayist, is now professor emerita of linfield college. oregon’s current poet laureate, kim stafford, studied with ralph, as did the bestselling author james abel (pseudonym for bob reiss). world-renowned author barry lopez studied with ralph and took the cover photo for ralph’s going to the water at lopez’s home on the mckenzie river. acclaimed poet john witte, who in 1980 began a 29-year stint as editor-in-chief of northwest review, studied with ralph. the late steven j. cannell, celebrated novelist and creator of several classic television series, including “the rockford ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 226 files,” “barretta,” “the a-team,” and “21 jump street,” and owner of his own television studio, went out of his way, in all interviews he gave (to time, newsweek, the wall street journal, and so on, as well as on television) to credit ralph with having given him the faith to believe in himself as a writer, despite his struggles with dyslexia. in a short, 5-minute video (http://cannell.com/dyslexia.html#video-div) cannell devotes the last 3 ½ minutes telling how ralph changed his life. (scroll down and click again on “dyslexia in adulthood.)” patty dann, author of the novel mermaids, studied with ralph. her novel was turned into the 1990 film by the same name, starring cher, winona ryder, and christina ricci. one of ralph’s happiest afternoons was in may of 2012, when a room full of former students, from all over oregon, paid him tribute in a bevy of speeches and poems inspired by or dedicated to him. ralph’s response, which was filmed, included tributes of his own—to late poet-colleagues as well as to his own professors, most notably the poet robert lowell—and his reading of a poem written to honor his one-room school teachers, who nurtured his talents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhix5r0qeqc going back to the writers who influenced him, whose work he admired, whose work suggested new ways of seeing and navigating the world beyond the farm, as well as ways to write about it (if only that their writing on a particular topic or theme gave him the inspiration and/or courage to do likewise). in random order, assigning a higher rank of influence to no one author (and i’m probably forgetting many more): • samuel johnson, whose work he read while studying english literature, offered many valuable life-lessons. here’s a line ralph often quoted: “a man, sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair.” • stephen crane’s red badge of courage, which he read while on air base guard duty, led him to understand the futility of war. transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 227 • walt whitman. ralph felt a close affinity with whitman’s expansive, allinclusive, humanitarianism vision, as well as his rambling style. one of ralph’s early poems is titled “after whitman’s ‘there was a child went forth’.” i think there’s a strong chance that ralph thought of himself as that child. • albert camus. existentialism. ralph taught himself to read french, so he could read the stranger in the original. • he loved the work of mexico’s nobel prize-winner octavio paz; the peruvian poet caesar vallejo; spain’s federico garcia lorca and other spanish and latin american poets. ralph spoke pretty good conversational spanish and loved to recite sections and sometimes whole poems he’d memorized for their musicality as well as for their content. in fact, that’s one of the ways he won my heart, reciting poems in spanish on long car trips. his little paperback penguin anthology of spanish and latin american poets, in both spanish and english translation, is falling apart. • the writings of sigmund freud, both in content and in style, which he found beautiful, despite translation. • he credited the surrealist painter and writer andré breton, in particular, with influencing his stream-of-consciousness method of writing. he did not, however, believe that the french had “discovered” surrealism. in “between lightning and thunder” he says that visions and dreams are nearly always important in tribal life, and that the french were actually “rediscovering” socalled “primitive” african art. “i think it’s a fair assumption,” he says, “that ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 228 contemporary native american writers—particularly the ones who grew up in primitive ways, as i did—derive their ‘surrealist impulse’ from the ways of their own people rather than from the educated french writers, splendid though some of those writers are. … i’m glad for having grown up in a context that let me value dreams and carry them with me into my waking day.” • ralph’s father, in his storytelling and ballad singing, also exerted what ralph once said was the most important influence of all. the family had no electricity, no radio, no television, and his father was the family’s evening entertainment. ralph hoped to carry forward that oral tradition in his own writing and to incorporate the cadence of his father’s masterful and elegant storytelling voice. • ralph credited william faulkner with giving him a sense of the sanctity of his indian heritage. faulkner’s character sam fathers, son of a slave and a chickasaw chief, became his spirit father. he loved faulkner’s “headlong surge of words” in search of meaning, and he loved that faulkner’s voice was like his own father’s storytelling voice: southern, and in keeping with the oral tradition. he mentioned that faulkner’s voice had helped him make the leap—between his father’s storytelling and ballad singing—into writing fiction and poetry. • he read all the ethnographic materials about the eastern-band cherokee he could find. transcriptions of cherokee folktales reconstructed from the field notes of frans olbrechts. the “swimmer manuscript: cherokee sacred formulas and medicinal prescriptions,” collected by james mooney and published by olbrechts. in “between lightning and thunder,” ralph says transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 229 that “cherokee history, tradition, and myth are part of my awareness, and i try to be faithful to them in all i do.” in the bo schöler interview he tells how, having grown up not knowing his heritage, the work of james mooney—an ethnographer who lived among the cherokee during the second half of the 19th century (as did olbrechts, later)—helped him realize his people had a past, a civilization, which gave his own experiences “universal validity…. it gave me courage.” he thought of mooney as a “spirit guide.” • as to contemporaries whose work he admired, oh, there are so many i’m afraid that i may commit a sin of omission should i name just a few and/or forget anyone. william stafford. joseph bruchac. jim barnes. joy harjo. simon ortíz. duane niatum. kimberly blazer. leslie marmon silko. louise erdrich. n. scott momaday. james welch. gerald vizenor. sherman alexi. louis owens. raymond carver. joyce carol oates. denise levertov. charles olson. gary snyder. robert creeley. allen ginsburg. the beats. the black mountain poets. all were important to him. some were personal friends. • ralph also credited his university writing teachers—and their own writings— for inspiration and encouragement: robie macauley, james hearst, robert lowell, r.v. cassill, among others. just being part of paul engle’s elite iowa writers’ workshop itself gave him confidence as well as teaching and organizational skills. 13. say something, if you would, about the work that went into editing northwest review. ralph’s first experiences with northwest review were as poetry editor for a handful of issues, in 1960 and 1961. in 1964 he stepped into the editorship, on the heels of ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 230 a rather contentious period when the fall 1963 issue—edited by ralph’s predecessor, edward van aelstyn—had aroused quite the furor among conservative oregonians, who complained that their tax dollars had gone into publishing work they thought too radical. founded in 1957 by english and journalism students at the university of oregon— funded by the uo administration, with printing done by the uo’s student publications board—the primary mission of northwest review was, for its first five years, to publish new poetry, fiction, essays, and book reviews by established writers, in the manner of the most prestigious, university-affiliated, literary journals of the time—kenyon review, southern review, sewanee review and others which— as i remember from my undergraduate days at cornell college, iowa—were extensions of the new critics’ aesthetic and whose function was to provide a venue for literary criticism and reviews of contemporary books of poetry and fiction. first publication of new poetry and fiction, in those journals, was limited. this is where northwest review differed, its staff choosing to publish much more new work than writings about it. northwest review, however, under van aelstyn, went even “farther out” and quickly became one of the most adventurous of university-funded journals, seeking out new, “cutting-edge” work from younger, less-established writers who were garnering public followings outside of academia (although some of them taught in it): bernard malamud, charles bukowski, charles olson, gary snyder, michael mcclure, robert creeley and others whose work had begun, in the 1950s, partly as a rebellion against the modernist tradition and the constraints imposed by the new critics, partly as a reflection of wide-ranging influences, including eastern religions. the northwest review ralph inherited from van aelstyn was already publishing the beats, the black mountaineers, the deep image poets, poets from the “new york transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 231 schools,” and others. the journal also hosted visual art, including work by ansel adams. ralph, appointed as van aelstyn’s replacement in 1964, was on the “same page” as van aelstyn in their shared aesthetics and their interest in the intersection of poetry and politics. but ralph also kept faith with the literary traditions in which he, himself, had been schooled, and he published—alongside new writers—poetry and fiction from more established, mature practitioners, whose work exemplified excellence, regardless of style. ralph’s northwest review, the one i worked on from 19661968, was a thrilling amalgamation, if you will, of the sedate and the outrageous, the traditional and the daring. in short, it published the best of new writing from around the globe, while retaining its pacific northwest identity. the spring 1966 and summer 1967 issues, in fact, contained special northwest poets sections, in addition to poems by such luminaries as robert penn warren and james merrill. and nwr now published a heftier chunk of literary criticism and book reviews than before. but to circle back for a moment, to 1964, and the circumstances surrounding ralph’s appointment (which carried, beyond editorial duties, an order from higherup, to lead the journal in a more reputable direction). history has it that van aelstyn and his entire editorial staff had been fired for publishing an issue (fall 1963) featuring the works of philip whalen, antonin artaud, and charles bukowski, plus an interview with cuba’s fidel castro by charles o. porter, a former member of the united states house of representatives and a feisty oregon activist. the whole university came under the attack of oregon conservatives across the state, for printing what was perceived as sacrilegious poetry, pornography, and communist propaganda. numerous letters of indignation and numerous petitions demanded accountability, including the resignation of arthur fleming, the university president. ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 232 fleming did not resign. instead, “despite letters of support from prominent poets and the formation of a faculty committee for academic freedom, fleming removed van aelstyn as editor and gave responsibility for the journal to a faculty publications committee. when that committee promptly reappointed van aelstyn as the editor, fleming suspended the journal altogether.” (https://www.edwardvanaelstyn.com/obituary). van aelstyn subsequently kept his selections for the next issue, which would have followed the scandalous one, and established his own independent coyote’s journal, which flourished. what i know of that time is pieced together from what ralph told me and what can be found online; but i do know that ralph was an active supporter of van aelstyn and the review, throughout the altercation, and ralph was instrumental in getting nwr up and running again, with the support of the english department, by creating new protocols for faculty approval, before publication, of all accepted materials, and a structure that would give the department greater control over staff hiring. ralph also, i believe, promised to regain the trust of oregon voters by bringing back a more “balanced” table of contents, more in line with the other leading university-affiliated journals of the 60s. to himself, however, ralph vowed never to censor content. “excellence” was still the determining factor in whatever he chose. in fact, ralph actively continued to encourage submissions by writers who challenged the american status quo, who broke boundaries both in style and content. ralph’s newly-structured nwr staff, which i joined as a first-year graduate student in 1966, included himself as editor-in-chief and eight to ten associate editors, all of whom were faculty members, tasked (if i remember correctly) with “screening” future tables of contents to be sure nothing scurrilous sneaked in. the associate editors also occupied a prominent position on the masthead and gave nwr an air transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 233 of stability. this was a brilliant stroke on ralph’s part: the title looked good on their cvs, having faculty watchdogs reassured the review’s readership; and the work the associate editors did was (in practice) minimal. below them on the masthead stood the managing editor, generally a second-year mfa student, and then five to seven assistant editors (first readers), selected from mfa students and senior english majors. several staff assistants handled business and office affairs, including intake of unsolicited submissions and the attendant paperwork of sending out letters of acceptance or rejection. the masthead also included various consulting editors, including william stafford, w.d. snodgrass, james b. hall, frederick candelaria, and other prominent writers and editors not affiliated with the university of oregon. for ralph, the position relieved him of teaching one class and allowed time for his extensive nwr responsibilities, which included a great deal of reading, decision making, and correspondence. without good records of the duties everyone performed, my memory says the assistant editors read everything submitted and voted among themselves what to accept and what to return. during my first year on staff, i was part of this group. not everyone read everything, but every poem, story, essay, review, or work of art was read and viewed by at least two people. if they both agreed to keep the piece for further consideration, they sent it to the managing editor. if they both voted to reject it, the piece went no further. if they disagreed, a third reader was assigned. the managing editor’s job—which i held my second year of the mfa program—was to whittle even further, and to send a final batch to ralph, for his final selection, via the associate editors. i don’t believe they ever turned anything back. ralph and i, then, collaborated on three issues of nwr during the academic year 1967-1968. the last of the three, the summer 1968 “protest and affirmation” issue, was right in step with the “american writers against the vietnam war” movement: ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 234 a non-profit, umbrella organization founded by poets robert bly and david ray. (see my answer to question 5.) our special issue contained work by many distinguished writers of the time: a story by joyce carol oates; poems by karl shapiro, joseph langland, diane wakoski (diane’s, i remember as wonderfully daring), eugene wildman, charles edward eaton, and others; several essays, including one by william cadbury on the literary aspects of the beatles’ song lyrics; william witherurp’s translations of sergio echeverdia; edith siffert’s translations of yuki sawa; nine book reviews; and much more. the issue also contained, right in its center, on glossy paper, a series of six black and white images on the subject of war and its consequences: a photograph by harry gross; an oil painting by berk chappell; a relief etching by david scrafford; a sculpture by jan zach; and four drawings by argentine-born mauricio lasansky. while all of the artworks make clear anti-war statements and were created to arouse discomfort, it must have been the photograph by harry gross, with an eagle holding a dove in its talons, against a backdrop of the american flag, and particularly the set of drawings by lasansky, that most touched the sore nerve of someone in the printing department of the uo (still governed by the student publications board). seeing these drawings again, today, as i write, i am struck once more by lasansky’s unambiguous evocations of horror: each drawing a grotesquelydistorted face of child shrieking or crying, or turned half-skeleton, or with a nazi helmet/skull atop a screaming mouth held open by fingers, bringing immediately to mind the now-iconic photographs of vietnamese children running down the road, burned by napalm. i think of edvard munch’s “the scream.” i think of goya. but to my mind, lasansky’s drawings are even harsher: they shock; they wound. and so, right at the height of the tet offensive, when the anti-vietnam war movement was gaining strength throughout america, we had—at the university of oregon—a single person, or maybe several people, in the uo printing office, transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 235 staging a counter-protest, apparently offended by the difficult images or the antiwar sentiments. the printing of that special issue was held up, in fact, for many months, and—although the cover says “summer 1968,” my memory says it came out in early 1969, though it may have been even later. one thing i am sure of is that i have a copy of a letter from joyce carol oates, written to ralph on december 18, 1968, asking whether her story, “the heavy sorrow of the body,” had been published yet. i also have clear memories of ralph’s working closely with his incoming managing editor, bill sweet, in the fall of 1968, making phone calls and sending letters to prominent writers and editors of other journals across the nation, asking that letters of protest be sent to the english department, which—for obscure reasons—seemed disinclined to challenge the university administration, which was supposed to oversee the student publications board. maybe the department had been through enough hassle, back in 1964. (and, despite all i’ve said earlier about forwardthinking oregon, this was still the 1960s; and the faculty majority was still older and conservative-leaning.) my best hunch is that the associate editors, most of whom were also ralph’s friends, stood up on his behalf and were outnumbered. the matter took so long to resolve that by the time the issue was finally printed, i had finished my mfa program and was teaching at fresno state college (now university) in california, so my name was listed as a “consulting editor” and bill was listed as “managing editor.” bill, a year behind me in the graduate program, had worked as an assistant editor under me and, as incoming managing editor, saw things through after my departure. without bill’s efforts northwest review would have died then and there, because—sometime that autumn or winter, before the issue was finally printed—the english department removed ralph as editor-in-chief ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 236 and (some months later) replaced him with one of his friends and colleagues, john haislip. the associate editors were also removed. the next issue came out nearly two years later, in winter, 1970, with a muchdiminished staff: only three associate editors (two graduate students and a former professor who was now teaching in texas); one managing editor; two assistant editors; two staff assistants; and no contributing editors. that was quite the purge! what i strongly suspect—and this is the only thing that, in retrospect, makes sense—is that the english department, facing pressure from the letter-writing campaign, arranged a quid pro quo with the university administration: ralph’s dismissal as editor-in-chief, the removal of all of the uo’s associate editors, and the removal of the consulting editors, for the issue’s release. lots of hand-slapping, all around. or, who knows—i’m the last alive who remembers—maybe they all resigned, in protest. i can’t help hoping this is what happened. 14. i’ve heard you give a public reading to poems of his that you most like. which stand out for you? why? may i append a dozen or so poems at the end of this interview? these are the ones i chose for the public reading you heard in valencia, spain, at the international symposium on “teaching and theorizing native american literature as world literature,” october 1-2, 2018. i chose these poems for their wide range of topics— from the complexities of mixed-race identity, to environmental activism, to expressions of ralph’s deep spirituality, to his pacifism, and to his love for and loyalty to family—as well as for their brevity and accessibility, upon first hearing and/or first reading, and for their teachability. i would find it extremely difficult to choose, among these and many other favorites, which ones i most like, out of his 11 books of poems, as well his final collection, living in the mouth. more important to transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 237 me, right now, is that his poems be discovered as the truly remarkable and wonderful gems they are, and that readers will want to find his books to read more! 15. hard to summarize of course, but what do you think is his legacy not only as humanist but author? oh, this is challenging. ralph would, i believe, see those two designations— humanist and author—as inseparable, when applied to his work. his writings (and teachings) were his tools of choice for (first, as a very young author) arriving at selfunderstanding and self-expression but mainly (throughout the rest of his life) for the betterment of all humanity. he wished his writings to carry forward his ancestral values and beliefs and keep alive the memory of the oppression of ancestors on both sides of his family. he wished his work to help future generations of readers to find parts of themselves in his own “felt experiences,” transformed into stories and poems, to help them feel less alone in turbulent times; to recognize the sacredness of the universe and of the human community to which we all belong. he wished that his work would help combat propagandized versions of reality; he hoped for his writings to endure as long as shakespeare’s and that they would inspire readers to recognize the inherent goodness that lies within themselves, to have faith in themselves, to honor their oneness with creation, to live in harmony and peace with each other, and to unite as one voice in a universal chorus of praise. but stepping outside of ralph’s sense of purpose, i believe ralph’s literary legacy has already taken its place alongside that of many leading late-20th and early-21st century native american writers, as evidenced by his presence in a great number of anthologies, his editorial work, and by his decades of participation in correspondence, readings, panels, and personal and literary friendships with other native american, as well as non-native, authors. ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 238 what has yet to happen, and i think it will, is that ralph’s poetry, even more than his fiction, will come to be valued not only for its evocation of native american realities and humanitarian concerns, but also for its uniqueness of vision and voice, its highly-compressed elocution: as markedly different from the poetry of his contemporaries as william blake’s poetry was from others of blake’s time. to look at this another way, ralph, as a young man, wanted to be a painter and studied painting at university; but poetry lured him in and kept him hooked. add to this his sense of kinship with the surrealists as well as the senoi dream people of the malaysian highlands, whose society was built around the practice of sharing dreams. perhaps ralph’s early and mid-career poems will someday be seen as dream canvasses, as vision’s embodiments: images connected by visual/intuitive associations and dream-like juxtapositions that, in a painting, would be seen by the eye in one moment of time, all images existing simultaneously. what i hope will also emerge is that ralph’s legacy as a poet will more and more come to be viewed as that of a mystic, a “seer,” a shaman of sorts, with his poems acting as “received visions”: often cryptic, difficult to describe, but with a commanding presence, the kind of spirit power that passes between a shaman and one whose mind is open and ready to receive it, who does not try to translate instinctive understanding into “meaning,” who takes the time to suspend conventional expectations and just absorb and be enriched and be fortified by the experience. what interests me, also, is that during the last decade of his life, ralph’s poems became less and less dense, they became more conventionally “accessible,” and their focus was increasingly on family connections and on the glories of the natural transmotion vol 6, no 1 (2020) 239 world which has, so far, survived (though already diminished by environmental degradations) and continues to bring us joy. aware that his own personal future was shortening, ralph chose to celebrate the spiritual legacy he was leaving to future generations, honing down the complexities of his world awareness to what he felt most essential to convey. 16. could you offer a personal vignette which for you helps memorialize his gift? ralph was a masterful public speaker. whether introducing another writer at a public event (or teaching a class, or giving a reading of his work, or speaking as an invited guest to classes and conferences around the world), his humble, playful heart and brilliant mind always put his audience at ease and opened them to what he, uniquely, had to offer, letting them know he saw them. this was one of the things i most loved about him — the caring, the poise, the dignity, and the humility with which he spoke directly from the center of his best self to the best selves of his listeners, in all of their own, many complexities. a good example is a reading he gave to a large audience at tsunami books, in eugene, oregon, in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4-57qsdlxg\ one such happy and very brief moment, which stands out in my memory, demonstrates not only ralph’s love of connecting with people but also his love of catching them off guard by saying something unexpected, letting them know that despite his credentials, he was, like them, vulnerable and human. the occasion was his guest appearance in an advanced english language and literature class, in a public high school in padova, italy, taught by professessora sandra busatta, co-editor of the italian journal of contemporary native american ingrid wendt and a.robert lee interview 240 studies, hako, which had recently published some of ralph’s work. she had prepared her students well, having shared some of his poems beforehand and leading them to expect a writer of considerable distinction. while he was being introduced, the students were politely attentive and (judging from their body language) expecting to be bored. what neither they, nor sandra, nor i expected, was that ralph’s first words would be a sentence he’d learned that day on the train, as together we’d continued to master essential, conversational italian. in a loud voice, he seriously proclaimed, “vorrei un bicchiere di vino rosso.” the class broke up laughing. the last thing they’d expected to hear was, “i’d like a glass of red wine.” he had them in the palm of his hand. poems by ralph salisbury used by permission of the literary estate of ralph salisbury. copyright © 2020 by the literary estate of ralph salisbury. all rights reserved. no reproduction without permission of the estate. microsoft word seibel-final.docx transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 39 “fleshy stories”: towards restorative narrative practices in salmon literature svetlana seibel “when we say we respect the salmon, we mean respecting everything about them, including keeping the rivers where they live clean, and honouring their spawning time. we need to understand how to help the sockeye survive, as well as the other species of fish and animals. we must all look after one another in this world: fish, animals, and humans, and all the living and nonliving beings on this earth.” dr. ellen rice white-kwulasulwut (snuneymuxw)1 introduction: “kincentricity” and restor(y)ing salmon “indigenous people of pacific northwest america are salmon people and want to continue being salmon people,” writes o’odham/chicano/anglo scholar dennis martinez in his article “redefining sustainability through kincentric ecology: reclaiming indigenous lands, knowledge, and ethics” (161, emphasis in original). in recent years there has been an upsurge of indigenous literature that features salmon prominently in its storylines, or focuses on them as protagonists—this includes genres such as poetry, autobiographies, children’s literature, or drama, as well as publications based on ancestral stories.2 this literary trend reflects the profound significance of salmon and the people’s relationship to it for many indigenous cultures of the pacific northwest, as well as the cultural and subsistence crises posed by the ever further dwindling numbers of the fish. in many respects, this crisis is already here, and has been for quite some time. jim lichatowich and seth zuckerman write: svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 40 from redwood-covered hills of coastal california through the waterways of metropolitan portland and seattle to the arid country east of the cascades, salmon populations have been listed as “endangered” or “threatened” under the endangered species act. for some runs, however, this level of concern has come too late. as least 232 genetically unique groups of pacific salmon and steelhead are known to have disappeared entirely, losses that have occurred across a startlingly large portion of the salmon’s natural range. (18) the authors give various reasons for the catastrophic decline in salmon numbers and diversity: the large-scale decimation of beaver populations in the region as a result of fur trade; overfishing and the cannery industry; irrigation practices such as stream diversion and irrigation pumps; commercial logging; dams; and urban growth (20-23). today, all of these factors are exacerbated by the increasing pressures of climate change. this list alone demonstrates the intricate interdependence of factors in the ecosystem that supports salmon and, in turn, needs it in order to survive. what the list also demonstrates is the profound role that coloniality plays in salmon’s decline. prior to the take-over by the colonial industrial complex and its ideology, indigenous peoples of the region developed not only a deep relationship with salmon, but also a set of practices geared towards upholding the ecosystem as a whole, so that the fish can continue to have a home in the region. although colonial discursive significations of north america’s landscapes historically tended to what timothy clark calls “dubious sanctifications of so-called wilderness” (32), in recent years it is increasingly recognized that the reality looked quite different, and that the land and waters of the continent were carefully tended by its indigenous inhabitants through the application of what has become known collectively as “‘traditional ecological knowledge,’ or tek” (shilling 10). referring to california in particular, kat anderson speaks of “traditional management systems” used by the region’s indigenous peoples: transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 41 traditional management systems have influenced the size, extent, pattern, structure, and composition of the flora and fauna within a multitude of vegetation types throughout the state. when the first europeans visited california, therefore, they did not find in many places a pristine, virtually uninhabited wilderness but rather a carefully tended ‘garden’ that was a result of thousands of years of selective harvesting, tiling, burning, pruning, sowing, weeding, and transplanting. (125-26) in her book salmon and acorns feed our people: colonialism, nature and social action, sociologist kari marie norgaard explains further: “what people have described as ‘traditional management’ involves a sophisticated non-western ecology that includes extensive knowledge of particular species and ecological conditions, as well as the knowledge of how to reproduce them. rather than doing something to the land, ecological systems prosper because humans and nature work together” (11). norgaard’s work is dedicated to the significance of salmon and traditional management practices associated with it for the karuk people of the klamath basin in california—to which i will return later in this article. it is not surprising that salmon in particular plays such a central part for the peoples of the pacific northwest: as the region’s keystone species, salmon is widely recognized as one of its most defining inhabitants and, consequently, it became one of its most potent cultural symbols. author and journalist timothy egan goes so far as to define the region through the movement patterns of the fish: “the pacific northwest is simply this: wherever the salmon can get to” (22). in response, salmon biologist jim lichatowich wistfully remarks that “by that definition the region has been shrinking for the last 150 years” (8), the “historical range” of wild pacific salmon having by now decreased by forty percent (lichatowich et al. 1). “rivers without salmon have lost the life source of the area,” egan goes on, pointing towards the effects of the devastation svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 42 of salmon decline (22). but however severely the loss of salmon may be felt by settler cultures in the pacific northwest, its cultural, spiritual, emotional, and health implications are much graver for indigenous cultures who have cultivated the relationship with salmon for many generations, and who experience a sense of ecological and personal grief in the face of salmon’s degradation, to which literary works discussed in this article attest. “salmon is at the hub of our memory wheel,” writes stó:lō scholar and author lee maracle. “the health of salmon is directly connected to the health of indigenous people” (58). dennis martinez, too, points out the connection between the ecological health of salmon and the cultural health of indigenous communities in the pacific northwest: western scientists and native knowledge holders alike consider salmon to be an ecological keystone species as well as a prime indicator of ocean, estuary, river, and watershed health or ‘integrity,’ i.e., adequate ecological function with all watershed components intact. since salmon are central to indigenous cultures of the pacific north america, they can also be described as a cultural or ecocultural keystone species. (160) the link between salmon’s role as ecological and cultural kin within indigenous epistemic frameworks is a powerful example of a particular kind of relationality between humans and the rest of nature that martinez calls “kincentricity” (140), a term he coined in 1995 and which describes a mindset that underpins an “ethical-economic model” (martinez 140) of land stewardship practiced by indigenous communities, as opposed to the extractive model of industrial capitalism privileged by settler-colonial states. martinez understands kincentricity as “a way of relating respectfully to all life as kin,” and “indigenous cultural land-care practices” as “‘kincentric ecology’” (martinez 140). apart from representing a mindset and a set of practices, kincentricity is also a storied relationality, not least because it “refers to the reciprocal relationships contained in transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 43 indigenous stories of an ‘original compact’ made between animals and humans” (martinez 140). martinez’s concept of kincentricity and the corresponding land-care practices connect to jim lichatowich’s insistence that the restoration of salmon depends on a change in cultural mindset at least as much as it does on conservationist management—in other words, the wellbeing of salmon depends on a state of mind: “to confront this loss, we need a different vision, a different story to guide the relationship between salmon and humans. to give the salmon any hope of recovery, we have to break free of the myths that have brought us to the point of crisis” (lichatowich 8). the cultural assumptions lichatowich is referring to are grounded in the worldview on which the euro-american and euro-canadian settlement of the pacific northwest was built, a worldview that interprets nature as subject to human domination in the name of industrial economy (lichatowich xiiv). the ultimate result of this approach is not only the decline of salmon and biodiversity in general, but the colossal shift in the dynamic of co-existence between humans and the rest of the natural world that since 2016 has been called the anthropocene. arguing in favor of reconsidering the beginning date of the anthropocene and setting it back to the beginning of colonialism in the so-called new world, heather davis and zoe todd (métis/otipemisiw) point out “the failure of the anthropocene, as a concept, to adequately account for power relations. instead, all humans are equally implicated under the sign of the ‘anthopos’ (sic)” (763). challenging this normative assumption embedded in current conceptualizations of the anthropocene, davis and todd point out the epistemological exclusion of indigenous ecological knowledge that is its part and parcel: evidence does not, generally, entail the fleshy stories of kohkoms (the word for grandmother in cree) and the fish they fried up over hot stoves in prairie kitchens to feed their large families… but these fleshy philosophies and fleshy svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 44 bodies are precisely the stakes of the anthropocene, as the anthropocene has exacerbated existing social inequalities and power structures and divided people from the land with which they and their language, laws, and livelihoods are entwined. the stories we will tell about the origins of the anthropocene implicate how we understand the relations we have with our surrounds. (767) although they may be all but absent in academic discussions of the anthropocene, it is precisely these “fleshy stories,” which inspired the title to this article, that are at the center of salmon literature. this can be taken quite literally, because the sheer physicality of these stories is one of their most notable features: they are stories that focus on salmon’s bodies, on fish flesh, and thereby they foreground both the storied and the material significance of salmon. as lichatowich’s arguments about the origins of the current predicament of salmon in a destructive and extractive worldview indicate, while restoration through management and direct action is important, restoration through storying the relationship between the people and the fish is equally as vital. lee maracle issues such a call when she writes: “the world is in dire need of another point of view. we need to embark on studies that will influence literary authors to create the kind of novels that affect a change of heart” (56) all this suggests that there is much literature and storytelling can do to restore salmon, for they have the power to contribute in profound ways to restor(y)ing the human-salmon relationship. salmon literature narratively brings the fish (back) to life in hearts and minds in order to do so in rivers and seas. part of the restorative narrative practices that this body of literature develops and promotes is an understanding of salmon as an “ecocultural keystone species,” in martinez’s terms (160). these artistic works may be read as kincentric narratives aimed at restoring salmon to its position as a lynchpin of ecological as well as cultural relational systems, and showcasing the bond between the enactment of kincentric ecological knowledge and the wellbeing of the transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 45 fish. while this practice is narrative, it in no way separates the stories from the land and the people—on the contrary, their connection to the land and the waters is at its heart. kincentric narratives revolve around the dynamic dennis martinez describes when he writes: “when lands are lost, the people disrupted, traditional knowledge and hardwon environmental know-how and western science lose. ecological understanding by science is diminished. accurate knowledge of what restoration should be restoring and what conservation should be conserving is lost” (171). by the same token, when separated from the land and the people, stories lose too. at this juncture it is important to note that when speaking about restoration, i do not mean a turn to nostalgic notions of unity with nature projected onto indigenous peoples by colonial discourses of the “ecological indian” or “noble savage.”3 rather, i am speaking of a renewal of ecological practices grounded in notions of reciprocal relationships with other-than-human members of the ecosystem that in many cases have been disrupted by settler colonial regimes in north america and elsewhere, but also have been suppressed or given up in eurowestern cultures themselves. in this i follow thinkers such as tewa scholar gregory cajete, who calls on euro-americans and western cultures in general not only to learn, but also to remember: there is an important legacy of traditional environmental knowledge that we must again revitalize for ourselves and the generations yet to come. indigenous people have been entrusted with an important package of memory, feeling, and relationship to the land that forms a kind of sacred covenant. modern western peoples are challenged to strive to educate themselves about this knowledge and associated forms of education. this covenant bids modern western peoples to reclaim their own heritage of living in a harmonious and sustainable relationship to the land, thereby fulfilling a sacred trust to that land. (265-66) svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 46 the salmon stories and salmon scholarship outlined above reflect an understanding that a restoration of this kind of reciprocal relationality is a prerequisite for any success in sustainably revitalizing salmon. it is an understanding that challenges notions of separation between nature and culture that permeate many currents of western thinking, as val plumwood notes: “the ideology of dualism and human apartness can be traced down through western culture through christianity and modern science. with the enlightenment, human apartness is consolidated and augmented by a very strong reductionist materialism, whose project, in descartes’ formulation, is ‘the empire of men over mere things’” (445). plumwood calls the hallmark of the mindset that emerges from these processes “hyperseparation,” which is “expressed in denying both the mind-like aspects of nature and the nature-like aspects of the human: for example, human immersion in and dependency on an ecological world” (444). in contrast, deborah bird rose recounts the teachings of aboriginal people in australia as characterized by an understanding that “the earth itself has culture and power within it. in this line of thought, all of us living beings are culture-creatures… it is a multicultural world from inside the earth right on through the ephemeral life inhabiting water, air and land” (139). salmon literature unfolds its power precisely by emphasizing the inseparability of the people, the land, the waters, and the fish, the deep entanglements that cannot be torn asunder without a high cost and a heavy loss. the restoration of salmon, therefore, goes hand-in-hand with the restoration of land and stewardship to indigenous nations. all this is encapsulated in the assertion that sounds throughout indigenous salmon stories: “we are salmon people.” restoration through writing a life: my life with the salmon transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 47 there is a special power that lives in autobiography and memoir—a power to encircle and affirm a life. it is this power that is emphasized in the designation of autobiography and related genres as life-writing. this life-affirming aspect of autobiographical writing becomes all the more profound when it unfolds in a dialogue with a threat of extinction. given the current state of the salmon throughout the pacific northwest, diane jacobson’s my life with the salmon can be read as an example of that. diane jacobson is a member of the ‘namgis first nation whose unceded ancestral territory is located on vancouver island and an author of two autobiographical books: my life in a kwagu’l big house (2005) and my life with the salmon (2011). while my life in a kwagu’l big house is focused on jacobson’s childhood and growing up, my life with the salmon documents her adult life, her professional journey and how the work she was doing has led to a more deeply felt personal connection to her homeland and her cultural heritage. as the book’s title suggests, the catalyst for this process is salmon. the title points towards a narrative orientation that focuses on a relationship between the narrator and the fish, and can thus be read as a kincentric autobiography. defining the term life-writing, zachary leader asserts that it “describe[s] a range of writing about lives and parts of lives, or which provide materials out of which lives and parts of lives are composed” (1); jacobson’s autobiography writes a life that is constituted by both her own life story and the life story of the salmon, as well as by the ways in which these lives intermingle, relate to, and define each other. such a narrative gesture asserts the life of the salmon in the face of severe existential challenges that the species faces and describes its life as tied to other lives—the narrator’s own as well as other human and non-human people who participate in these conjoined lives. in a certain way, jacobson’s text writes the endangered salmon back to life. she does so by affirming kincentricity of her ‘namgis culture, thereby harnessing the critical potential of indigenous autobiography theorized by cree-métis scholar deanna reder: “indigenous svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 48 autobiographies, especially, offer theories about the world they describe, drawing on the indigenous perspectives of their authors and those described within its pages” (âcimisowin 65)—which, in reder’s words, renders autobiography an “unrecognized indigenous intellectual tradition” (âcimisowin 9). jacobson’s life story presents a theory of a world rooted in a kincentric relationship with the fish (and all other-than-human inhabitants of the territory)—a theory of salmon people. in this, jacobson’s text goes against starkly traditional eurowestern iterations of autobiographical writing that affirm a grandiose cartesian confessional subject in an exceptionalist and clearly anthropocentric manner (derrida 390). in “the animal that therefore i am (more to follow),” jacques derrida wonders: is there, and in particular in the history of discourse, indeed of the becomingliterature of discourse, an ancient form of autobiography immune from confession, an account of the self free from any sense of confession? and thus from all redemptive language, within the horizon of salvation as a requiting? has there been, since so long ago, a place and a meaning for autobiography before original sin and before the religions of the book? autobiography and memoir before christianity, especially, before the christian institution of confession? that has been in doubt for so long now, and a reading of the prodigious confessions of european history such as have formed our culture of subjectivity from augustine to rousseau, would not be about to dispel that doubt. between augustine and rousseau, within the same indisputable filiation, within the evolving history of the ego cogito ergo sum, stands descartes. he waits for us with his animal-machines. i presume that he won’t interrupt the linage that, for so long now, had tied the autobiographical genre to the institution of confession. (390-91) transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 49 here derrida only considers autobiography as a practice that evolved and continues to resonate within the context of eurowestern episteme, and that supports what he calls “the anthropo-theomorphic reappropriation” and “domestication” of other-thanhuman life (387). while critiquing eurowestern normative discourses (including anthropocentricity) that find their expression and cementation in traditional currents of autobiographical genre, derrida at the same time presents autobiography as trapped within its own genre history, generic conventions, and eurowestern canon.4 by contrast, indigenous scholarship in the field of autobiography liberates it both from these kinds of entrapments and from eurocentric claims to ownership of the genre. instead, indigenous critics such as robert warrior (osage) and deanna reder read indigenous autobiographies as texts that “preserve indigenous knowledge and specific tribal understandings for their descendants and subsequent generations” (reder, “indigenous autobiography” 170), arguing that indigenous autobiographical texts, rather than “exist[ing] because of the existence of the colonizer,” are “legible as examples of their specific tribal/national philosophies” (reder, “indigenous autobiography” 171). such critical approaches make it possible to read jacobson’s text as a kincentric autobiography without it being a contradiction in terms, as in the context of the indigenous episteme, intellectual tradition, and autobiographical practice, it clearly is not. following tenets of indigenous thought, kincentric autobiography affirms personhood and peoplehood of both human and other-than-human subjects. the joint life jacobson records in her book is concerned quite literally with bringing salmon to life, insofar as it describes the years she spent working at a salmon hatchery where her tasks frequently included the insemination of the salmon eggs and monitoring their development until birth and their subsequent release into the wild. the connections between salmon, the ‘namgis ancestral lands, culture, and the svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 50 narrator’s personal consciousness are emphasized from the very beginning of jacobson’s story: in the early 1980s, i got my first hatchery work in the nimpkish valley working with the ‘namgis crew. aquaculture taught me humility and great respect for my living elders today, along with even greater respect for previous generations, those who passed on the oral history. my present position is in treaty research, this gives me insight into how our ancestors lived and how tough their lives were. (5) as is the case throughout the book, this passage demonstrates that working with salmon on ancestral land in the company of ‘namgis colleagues is a learning experience that is constitutive of the narrator’s self as an individual and as a member of a culture. as the narrative unfolds, all these aspects remain tightly twined together and impossible to separate. the learning and personal growing that takes place during jacobson’s life with the salmon is both ecological and cultural: “when i first started working in the valley, i didn’t care about culture—never realizing that i was being taught culture by our elders who have passed on from this world. they were all around us each and every day that i worked in the valley” (salmon 162). that the narrator’s work at the hatchery and the textual and cultural work of her autobiography are both geared towards salmon restoration is clearly marked in the text. the centrality of the restorative framework to jacobson’s story becomes obvious early on, when the narrator contextualizes her work—both as a hatchery worker and a writer—by taking stock of the state of the salmon in the nimpkish river: among some key facts one should know is that ‘namgis leaders voluntarily stopped food fishing at the mouth of the river because of declining stocks in 1978 and even though it was part of our traditional fishing territory, we have not fished there with our families since that time. in 1958, the department of transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 51 fisheries wrote that the nimpkish fishery was second in value only to that of the fraser river. the nimpkish river sockeye alone totaled 130,000 the year before and has been in decline ever since. total salmon escapement has declined by ninety-five percent. there were only 10,000 sockeye in the year 2000. ‘namgis took it upon themselves to have gwa’ni hatchery start doing sockeye enhancement in 2001. the hatchery tries its best to bring sockeye and chum stocks back, but it is like trying to plug a dam with your thumb. the salmon numbers continue to dwindle… the chum salmon return dropped to less than one hundred fish in 2003 and this run may be virtually wiped out. (salmon 6) this state-of-the-salmon report outlines the measures taken by the ‘namgis first nation in order to first preserve, and then restore salmon to the nimpkish river. although food fishing is a fundamentally important communal activity for the ‘namgis people, as can be seen in jacobson’s first book, my life in a kwagu’l big house,5 it is nevertheless suspended by the ‘namgis authorities when the salmon is seriously threatened. this decision is in keeping with what martinez calls an “indigenous ethical-economic model” and “responsible community-based resource use” (157) that forms the basis of kincentric ecology and relationships. however, this step on the part of the ‘namgis first nation is unable to stop the salmon’s decline, presumably because no corresponding strategy was implemented by the dominant industrial actors whose activities impact the fish stocks. as noted above, the negative impact of such factors as overfishing and habitat destruction on salmon in the pacific northwest is severe. it is notable that logging in particular is omnipresent in my life with the salmon: logging roads, bridges, sounds permeate the landscape as the hatchery crew is working to restore salmon. this contrast between the efforts of the hatchery crew to offset the salmon crisis and the ongoing industrial business-as-usual is symbolic of one of the largest underlying causes of salmon decline—a failure to “[c]ontrol human behaviors that destroy ecological svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 52 processes, rather than trying to control nature” (lichatowich and zuckerman 31). by the same logic, biologists such as jim lichatowich have been arguing for some time that hatcheries themselves are a questionable solution, and in fact are becoming part of the problem because they do not sufficiently consider, or are unable to address, the “subtle connections between elements of the salmon system” (lichatowich and zuckerman 29).6 as the above passage indicates, the narrator, too, notes the lack of efficacy of the hatchery where restoring the salmon stock is concerned—despite the hard work and dedication of the crew, “it is like trying to plug a dam with your thumb” (salmon 6). but the statistics cited in the passage are so dire that no stone is left unturned in an attempt to restore salmon to the nimpkish river. the problematic relationship to the agencies of the settler-colonial state of canada shines through in my life with the salmon, highlighting the complexities and pitfalls of jurisdictional and financial realities that affect efforts to restore salmon: as we all caught our breath and had our lunch, i cursed the department of fisheries and oceans (dfo) because they only cared about the sporties (sports fishermen). we were chasing coho, a sports salmon, in the davie river and were not doing anything about our own declining sockeye stocks or our chum salmon. these two salmon are what the nimpkish people lived on. these two species supplied us our winter grocery store. we may have called the hatchery “ours,” but dfo dollars dictated what species of salmon we would enhance. (salmon 120) in passages such as this the settler colonial reality that is the overarching context within which the ‘namgis nation is attempting to uphold its relationship to salmon as an ecocultural keystone species comes to the fore. the fact that considerations about which species of salmon to restore or “enhance”—the latter concept in itself implies a problematic dynamic—are based not on the needs and ecological status of this transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 53 particular salmon system but on commercial factors dictated by recreational industries underlines “[t]he industrial ethos to maximize profits” (martinez 164), a stance without regard for kincentric ties of indigenous nations affected by those policies. jacobson’s text thus not only highlights the challenges that indigenous restorative efforts face when confronted with colonial systems, but also the clash between the industrial mindset and considerations of “traditional land-care: maintaining surplus biodiversity with limits always in mind and with people and resources always in balance” (martinez 169). significantly, and in true kincentric-autobiographical fashion, the structural components of the colonial state that threaten salmon are mirrored in structures that bear down on the narrator’s own life. my life with the salmon is very much a story of jacobson overcoming colonial discursive constructions of indigeneity: while she feels like “a ward of the state” (salmon 7) at the beginning of her narrative, by its end she is working as a treaty researcher in the treaty national research department and has adopted an understanding of herself as a sovereign ‘namgis person: “i no longer feel that i am a ward of the state that the federal government should look after. i want equal rights, as any other canadian citizen has” (salmon 164). these thematic parallels between colonial threats to salmon’s continuance and to jacobson’s sense of personhood further stress the kincentric relationality between the people and the fish, who remain always in focus. even though, as a general practice, hatcheries may not produce the hoped for results, work in such an enterprise allows for a closely intimate contact with the fish, its life cycle, its death and its birth—a kind of close personal relationship that lends itself to becoming a lynchpin of a life story. but, like every personal relationship, the relationship between the narrator and the salmon needs to grow and be nurtured, and undergoes a development. recalling her days as a student in an aquaculture course at north island college, jacobson writes: “the very first time that i babysat the fish, it was svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 54 a small pool of coho that i did not care for at all” (salmon 9). she explains this initially dismissive attitude with the fact that she “felt inadequate because of [her] insecurities” (salmon 9). it seems symbolic that the aquaculture course takes place in an old residential school building; a few lines down jacobson tells about how those coho were “placed… into three large net-pens right in front of the old residential school at our native breakwater” (salmon 9). the narrator’s feeling of inadequacy seems to connect to the colonial underpinnings inscribed onto the building where her present learning is taking place. significantly, it is the salmon who ultimately allow her to overcome these feelings of inadequacy. as she continues studying salmon and begins to understand them, she forges personal connections with the fish and, tellingly, associates them with coming home: i identified with the salmon i studied who had been imprinted with various river tastes and smells that compelled them to return to the same river after their ocean journey. i did not finish college, but i came back home, much like the salmon. i found my way to the aquaculture course. i did not know it at the time but this was just the first sign of my future life and why i would eventually fall in love with the nimpkish valley and come back over and over. (salmon 10) salmon and the territory of the nimpkish valley are intimately connected in jacobson’s text, and her relationship to and work with the former eventually forges a stronger connection to the latter, a connection rooted in ancestral culture and intergenerational memories. the concluding chapters of my life with the salmon take a retrospective stance vis-à-vis the events and encounters described in the book. these chapters give an impression that writing this autobiography is a way for jacobson to return and relive her life with the salmon from a different perspective—one of deeper insight, grounded connection, and maturity. the connection to the valley she describes signifies the connection to ‘nimgis culture, to the ancestral presence on the land: “i feel now that i transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 55 was in touch with my elders, ancestors, and my history but did not even know it. i was lucky enough to work with all types of family whom i now know are related to past chiefs that walked the same rivers, lakes, mountains and side streams as we do now. i have been so lucky to walk, float, raft or to be on the same land and waters as they had been in the past” (salmon 161). in these concluding chapters jacobson’s story becomes particularly embedded within ‘namgis cultural activity and restorative practices in the nimpkish valley— cultural, artistic, ecological, and political. as she observes these processes, familial connections are everywhere. and salmon, too, is a member of the family, an integral part of the ‘namgis ecocultural system: “local painters and carvers are putting in new pictographs, telling of our origin stories on the woss and nimpkish lake rock bluffs. one new pictograph depicts a salmon swimming upstream because we are the salmon people” (salmon 165). much of the power of jacobson’s story of a joint life unfolds in this interplay between the exploration of the mutual relationship between salmon and the ‘namgis people and the personal component that the autobiographical nature of the text foregrounds. in many ways, my life with the salmon is a story of a personal restoration to culture through restorative work for the salmon. taken together, this relational framework creates a kincentric narrative of individual engagement that is focused on cultural and ecological restorative practices within its diegesis, while simultaneously functioning as a restorative narrative in and of itself. restoration through mourning a death: salmon is everything salmon is everything, a collaborative play created by theresa may and the klamath theatre project (ktp),7 begins with a loss and is born out of a sense of loss. the play dramatizes a cataclysmic event that took place in the klamath basin in northern california in september 2002—a massive fish kill that cost over 65,000 adult salmon svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 56 their lives before they had a chance to spawn (boyles). the causes of the fish kill had to do with a complex confluence of ecological, political, and social factors: members of the karuk, yurok, hoopa valley, and klamath indian tribes protested at the time, claiming that the die-off of chinook and coho salmon was a threat to cultural traditions, food sources, and spiritual life. we demonstrated scientifically that high water temperatures, low water levels, and toxic algae levels caused by the overuse of water by agriculture were the material causes of the fish kill. warnings had been given in spring 2001 by native scientists and in reports made to the environmental protection agency (epa) by the national marine fisheries service and other agencies. but when the epa made its ruling in favor of salmon, farmers and ranchers in the klamath county agricultural areas staged their own protests, and ultimately, the federal government reversed its position, giving farmers in eastern oregon the water they claimed they needed to maintain their own economic survival. (beetles xi) gordon beetles, a member of the klamath tribes, identifies these conditions as “a collision of cultures” (xi) which is based on conflicting “creation stories that give rise to two distinct ways of relating to the natural world” (xi), an explanation that is echoed by jim lichatowich’s argument that the decline of salmon is the result of substituting indigenous “gift economies” with the industrial economy of the settlers (lichatowich 34; 41). like my life with the salmon, salmon is everything explores this clash between a kincentric ecocultural mindset and the logics of an industrial economy, and the toll the latter takes on salmon, but in the play this exploration takes place from a vantage point of a tragedy that struck following gradual decline, generating an increased sense of urgency. the differences in ways of relating are stressed throughout the play and foregrounded early on, already in the second scene of the first act during an exchange transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 57 between the karuk and yurok characters as they perform different tasks in the process of harvesting salmon: rose. when we do this work we are giving thanks to the creator for the salmon, for the river. salmon is the center of our world, our heart, our sustenance. louise. (to one of her children) salmon is our family. julie. this anglo student in my class said to me, “how can the salmon be your relative? you eat them?” johhny. what an idiot! julie. and i told him, salmon are our relatives because we have lived in an amazingly bonded way with them since the beginning. the connection goes much deeper than food. it’s a relationship created from thousands of years of coexistence. will. tell him that all the river tribes—the klamath, modoc, and our people— the yurok and karuk—we all believe the salmon are the spirits of our ancestors, c’iyals come back to give life to everything. johnny. the klamath tribes don’t have the right to fish anymore! julie. i don’t think he’d get that. johnny. they’d been cut off from the salmon. julie. he said if there are no more salmon, just go to mcdonald’s! (34) this exchange is worth quoting at length because it encompasses a number of different points of conflict between the ecocultural perspective of the yurok and karuk peoples and the dominant cultural ideologies. the indigenous characters lay out the basis of their kincentric relationship with the salmon that sees the fish literally as part of the family—as ancestors who return to sustain their people. this relationship is based on principles of reverence and thankfulness and an understanding of salmon as a gift. the settler cultural perspective is represented by the quoted words of julie’s nonsvetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 58 indigenous classmate who is seemingly baffled by notions of relationality between people and their food source, which is all salmon is to him. in accordance with this instrumental worldview, his attitude towards salmon is not only irreverent and profane, but one that interprets them as interchangeable with the kinds of food one can find in a fast food chain. these conflicting perspectives as represented in the play correspond to those described by beetles and lichatowich and form the basis of the debate about the future of salmon in the klamath watershed. in addition, johnny’s comments in the exchange lay bare the asymmetrical power relations as the context in which these debates are taking place and the cost of this asymmetry for the indigenous communities who feel cut off from their ancestors when they are denied access to the fish by colonial authorities. this conversation, therefore, sets the scene for the subsequent events of the play, and arguably for the understanding of any debates around the fish kill. the kincentric sentiments towards salmon expressed in the above quoted passage also allow the audience to imagine what an extreme devastation the fish kill represents for the indigenous characters. taking place early on in the action, the news about the fish kill has not yet been broken, but the sense of loss and pain at the death of thousands of salmon is foreshadowed by the loving attitudes articulated in this scene. in fact, the emotional impact of the fish kill is one of the main themes of salmon is everything as the play shows indigenous characters and communities mourning the death of the salmon. the emotional cost of environmental devastation is a topic that has only recently begun receiving scholarly attention, as kari marie norgaard points out (19; 199). in her book salmon and acorns feed our people, norgaard, a sociologist whose work focuses, among other areas, on the sociology of emotions and who has worked closely with karuk communities on this issue, notes that the emotional impact of environmental transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 59 decline should be recognized much more prominently than is the case today. for “when species such as salmon are considered kin, and when the natural world is a stage for social interactions and identity, the grief, anger, shame, and hopelessness associated with environmental decline may become embodied manifestations of racism and colonial violence, and emotions of outrage, hope, and compassion animate resistance” (norgaard 19). as the notion of ecological grief and related concepts gain traction, the emotional aspect of the human psyche’s response to environmental degradation is becoming more visible.8 however, even as these ideas gain visibility and become more widely discussed, stef craps notes that “we tend to associate grief and mourning with human losses; more-than-human losses are traditionally seen as outside the realm of the grievable” (3). this struggle to include non-human nature into the field of “the grievable” is yet another expression of differences between kincentric ecocultural understandings and instrumental conceptualizations of nature. this point is forcefully brought home in salmon is everything, for while julie’s classmate may see salmon as an equivalent of a mcdonald’s cheeseburger, the play’s characters who operate from the place of kincentric relationality are as deeply emotionally affected by the death of the salmon as they would be by the death of any other relative. because in the karuk creation story everything began as spiritual beings who eventually chose to transform into different manifestations of nature, including humans, this relationality is encoded deeply in the culture and there is no question about the “grievability” of salmon (norgaard 91; beetles xi-xiii). expressions of unbelieving shock, grief, and anger abound in the play. in fact, the entire scene 9 of the first act, the scene in which the karuk and yurok characters in the process of harvesting salmon learn of the disaster, is dedicated to expressions of mourning, as its title—“lamentation”—suggests. these emotional responses go hand in hand with the almost tangible physicality of the play’s dramatization of the horrors of this untimely svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 60 death. there is also a stark disconnect between the distance which separates authorities and decision-makers who are responsible for the conditions that brought about the fish kill and the visceral physical way in which indigenous communities partake in the fish death: rose. the fishermen abandoned their nets… will. we counted them. we hacked their tails off… julie. leaving the bodies open, bellies to the sun… rose. floating—each its own shipwreck of life… julie. each not only a meal but a life… seventy thousand dead in heaving waves of flesh. rose. as if these sweet ones are litter, not corpses of our underwater relatives. andy. those who would have, in any other year, in any other time, been setting nets in the sun, teaching our children… will. mostly i left them there. i wanted people to see them, to smell them… rose. who picked up these dead and dying ones? rose. who laid them to rest, mixed their flesh with woodchips and ash?... rose. carried them one at a time, for some were three feet long… rose. who witnessed, who was not driven back by the smell?... julie. we carried them in our arms, on our backs, in our hearts. will. we counted them… julie. we carry them still. in our arms, on our backs, in our hearts. (51-52) after each of these lines all characters say in unison “as they return,” emphasizing the added tragedy of so many fish dying before they are able to procreate and ensure their continuance. there is also a sense that the trust of the fish has been betrayed, because what is their home place has been rendered uninhabitable and inhospitable to them. in the days that follow this scene, grief for the salmon envelops the community. children transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 61 are sent home from school by crying teachers to crying parents (55); kate describes julie’s emotional state after the fish kill as “[c]razy with grief” (52); louise cuts off her hair in mourning (56); rose does not speak for four days (74). julie’s husband will shows signs of outright trauma: “when i saw his face when he came home the first day when he saw the fish dead, i thought someone in his family had died. he was too upset to express any emotion. he got up at three a.m. one night and just started writing his heart out. he’s never done that before,” julie tells kate (56). in addition to the sheer shock of it, this event is so unprecedented that there is no protocol for it and the community does not know exactly how to mourn: “when you have a funeral there’s an event; there’s a grieving time. elders have never heard about anything like this fish kill in our legends or stories” (56). this exacerbates the ominous atmosphere and feelings of helplessness, making people wonder, “[w]hy can’t we fix this?” (57). the fish kill tragedy is almost apocalyptic in its intensity, because, in the words of bettles, “the fish kill of 2002 was a warning about the real possibility of extinction” (xv). deborah bird rose describes extinction as “a loss that goes beyond balanced relationships between life and death. with extinctions there is no return, and death starts to overtake life. extinction is unethical killing that is tipping into a black hole of death. the more life disappears, the more life disappears” (144). when tim, a rancher from the upper klamath, comes to will and julie’s home in order to hear their perspective on what happened, will confronts him with the sheer grotesque horror of the scenes the fish kill unleashed: the carnage i’ve seen over the weeks is so utterly disgusting i can’t sleep. i close my eyes and the images of dead, rotting fish—maybe you’ve seen photographs… but you cannot begin to imagine the smell. the smell of death and decay messes with my mind. i can’t eat because food, no matter what it is, reminds me of the smell. come walk along the banks of the river with me… i svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 62 dare you… come and walk with me and cut open the bellies of rotten salmon to detect their sex… come and walk with me… count with me… hack their tails so they won’t be recounted. you can’t escape the smell. (75) will’s harrowingly evocative descriptions of thousands of rotting salmon lining the banks of the klamath river are reminiscent of historical descriptions of piles of rotting salmon sitting next to canneries and being shoveled into water by cannery workers because the overfishing at the onset of industrial fishing in the pacific northwest was so severe that the canneries were unable to keep up with the catch (lichatowich 41). these parallels once again stress the link between wasteful attitudes towards other-thanhuman life, the establishment of colonial systems and industries, and the looming threat of extinction. as awful and traumatic as it is, the fish kill generates widespread attention from media, politicians, general public, and the farmers and ranchers in the play—during the lamentation scene, the lines of the karuk and yurok characters are interspersed with lines of the reporter explaining to the public what is happening on the klamath river and why. the fact that it took the loss of other-than-human life on this scale to get the authorities, the public, and the stakeholders not immediately affected by the fish death to listen highlights the depth of the problem. yet there is hope in the fact that the fish kill has made it impossible to ignore the issue; there is hope in scenes where children of an upper klamath rancher and a lower klamath karuk fisherman dance together to will’s performance of the rap he wrote for the salmon (salmon is everything 69); and there is hope in the attention the fish kill has brought upon communities who model kincentric grief for the fish death. as stef craps argues, “extending grievability to morethan-human others can galvanize us to take positive action on their behalf” (3). witnessing the emotional cost of the fish kill for members of the karuk and yurok communities leads tim, one of the upper klamath ranchers for whose benefit the water transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 63 is diverted from the river, to reach respectfully across the aisle and start looking for practical solutions that could restore the balance. in act 1, scene 11 rose evokes the pre-colonial times when indigenous communities were the ones who managed the land and how, when the salmon would first come in, the people would mark this time and occasion by ceremony: “during this time there would be the first salmon ceremony and a feast that gave thanks to the salmon for giving their lives for the survival of the people. this was something that has never been done in my lifetime” (57). rose’s words stress the kincentric connections between salmon and culture, which means that the decline of salmon leads to a decline in cultural expressions and ancestral traditions—an ecocultural causality. lichatowich asserts that the first salmon ceremony used to be performed by indigenous communities “[f]rom central british columbia to northern california and inland to the lemhi river of idaho” (36). this ceremony was an important act of communication between the people and the salmon, a seasonal renewal of a compact: “the first salmon ceremony renewed and reinforced the belief that the salmon would remain abundant if they were treated with the respect due a gift” (lichatowich 36). however, as rose’s remarks indicate, the ceremony has been all but lost due to the decline of salmon which caused the corresponding cultural practices to diminish or to cease altogether. leaf hillman, director of the karuk department of natural resources and one of norgaard’s karuk interviewees, says: how do you perform the spring salmon ceremony, how do you perform the first salmon ceremony, when the physical act of going out and harvesting that first fish won’t happen? you could be out there for a very long time to try and find that first fish and maybe you won’t at all and then of course in the process you’d end up going to jail too if anybody caught you. so, will that ceremony ever svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 64 come back? well, i don’t know. but, once again, it’s a link that’s broken. and restoring that link is vital. (qtd. in norgaard 207) both rose’s remarks in the play and hillman’s words in the interview express a sense of urgency that the first salmon ceremony be revived. julie’s immediate suggestion in the play is: “why don’t we try to bring the first salmon ceremony back and use it as healing?” (57). norgaard explains that “[t]he karuk are known as ‘fix the world people’” for whom “fixing the world means fixing and restoring the intertwined environmental and social degradation that has profound impact on karuk people’s lives” (9). so even though the fish kill is not of their making, the indigenous characters in the play feel a sense of responsibility for the world out of balance: “there is a difference between blame and responsibility,” says rose. “we have a relationship that needs tending” (57). restoring the ceremonial relationship with the salmon, therefore, is a way of fixing the world. but there is one more dimension to this theme in the play, which opens up when tim contacts julie with a proposition. after having listened to julie and will, in an attempt to “do something” (85), tim asks julie to let him know when the first salmon arrive. on that day, he would turn off his irrigation system, and would get his friends, neighbors, colleagues, and associates to do the same, after which “[a] dozen admin folks who work for the city of klamath falls are going to fill milk jugs with water from the taps in their house and drive it down to the edge of the klamath river and dump it in. don’t laugh. i know it’s more an act of love than of water. it’s holding another place tight, holding other families tight” (86). inspired by julie’s explanations of the first salmon ceremony, tim effectively devises a ceremony of his own, the purpose of which is to foster a respectful connection with his indigenous neighbors and to help salmon, in however materially small a way. this gesture signifies the change of mind that scholars and artists whose words are quoted in this article insist is necessary in order to transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 65 effect a lasting and sustainable restoration of salmon. the fact that tim’s gesture is largely ceremonial does not mean it is empty; although it is understood as “symbolic” (86), conceived as it is as a counterpart to the first salmon ceremony and therefore sharing in its cultural significance, the intention is to use it as a catalyst to change other minds, so that together they would be able to bring about a material change for the better in the state of the fish and relationships between the peoples of the region. appealing to senses and emotions is at the very heart of performative arts. as theresa may puts it: theatre is not merely a representational art; it takes place before our eyes, in and with our flesh-and-blood presence; theatre is a living forum. because it is alive, theatre invites us not only to think about how others might feel, but to feel into those possibilities in real time in the company of others. in this way it lays down new fibers of community in the form of relationships as well as stories. (“the education of an artist” 140, emphasis in original) this emotional and relational power of theatre is perhaps the strongest restorative power of salmon is everything: by letting the audience feel what diverse communities of the klamath watershed, including salmon, are feeling, it opens up doors to understanding and collaborative efforts that have the potential to make salmon restoration a reality, and might change more than a few minds on a number of issues along the way. this possibility is nowhere more evident than in the reaction of a member of the audience at the first special performance of the play staged for a small circle of community members, friends and family described by suzanne m. burcell: “over the mounting sounds of clapping and whistling, a young man’s voice rose, shouting, ‘yes, yes! this is what we need! this is a lot better than those fish council meetings with everybody screaming across the table at everybody else! this is what we need! more of this!’” (22, emphasis in original). burcell, a karuk tribe member and svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 66 cultural adviser for the play, documents her own thoughts in response to this viewer’s reaction: “for some of us, it was a life-affirming moment. a way had been found to inform, to facilitate meaningful and mutually respectful dialogue, to bridge cultures, and to begin a long-awaited healing process. i gave thanks” (22). at the end of a play that processes death, mourning, trauma, and conflict, this is a powerful statement and a powerful outcome: affirming life in the face of death, facilitating healing in the face of trauma, and finding respect in the face of conflict might yet fix the world. conclusion with the advent of environmental humanities, the vital role of literary and artistic work in grappling with environmental challenges of our time becomes increasingly recognized, as does the necessity to reach across academic disciplines in order to establish a productive conversation. as val plumwood notes, “[w]riters are among the foremost of those who can help us to think differently” (451)—poetry, literature, and storytelling have a way of “‘making room’ for understanding the vivid presence of mindful life on earth” (rose 146). indigenous literatures and collaborative projects such as the klamath theatre project do crucial critical work in foregrounding not only the need to address issues of environmental inequality and justice as part of this conversation, but also in demonstrating that the current crisis cannot be solved without drawing on epistemological diversity and recognizing the wisdom contained in traditional ecological knowledge and kincentric ways of being in and with the world. this includes acknowledging the harm done by epistemological frameworks that propagate an anthropocentric vision of domination over nature and place humanity outside and above all other parts of the ecosystem. kincentric narratives that uplift stories of ecocultural relationality with other-than-human kin make a vital contribution to restor(y)ing the operating paradigm that promotes sustainable models of being transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 67 together in the world. such narratives are tied to the land, the material environments, and the specificities of particular ecosystems. kincentric narratives that uphold indigenous relational ecologies, philosophies, and science demonstrate that the way we act starts with the stories we tell, and that this power of stories can be used for good and for ill. as thomas king famously said, “[s]tories are wondrous things. and they are dangerous” (9). focused as it is on the ecological and “ecocultural keystone species” of the region, salmon literature is becoming increasingly prominent in promoting a kincentric paradigm in the pacific northwest (martinez 160). i have selected the two literary works discussed in this article because they constitute notable examples of kincentric narratives that not only feature salmon as their protagonists, but also arguably function as pieces of cultural criticism, undermining the perceived, artificial boundary between story and theory and strengthening the intellectual tradition of kincentrism. much insight can be gained by engaging such narratives in a dialogic perspective, as i hope this article was able to demonstrate. the two texts harness the thematic, symbolic, and affective strengths of their respective genres and media in order to enact their vision of ecocultural restoration—one by detailing minute aspects of a life defined by a close personal relationship with the salmon, the other by coming together as a community in the theatre, both on and off stage, in order to grieve together for the dead fish relatives and look for ways of affirming life. my life with the salmon and salmon is everything are very different in their formal composition and the narrative strategies they employ, yet very similar in the kind of foundational story they tell, and in the restorative impulse that animates them. with one rooted in the unceded territory of the ‘namgis first nation in canada and the other in ancestral lands of karuk, yurok, and other indigenous nations whose homeland is located in the klamath river watershed in the united states, they also show that svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 68 geopolitical divisions are arbitrary constructions whose discursive and material power is called into question by the mobility patters of anadromous, migratory species such as salmon. ignoring colonially signified national and regional borders, salmon trace and reinforce ancestral and contemporary indigenous kinships and international relations that include them in their territory-making. as part of these objectives, both texts meditate on how strong and simultaneously vulnerable salmon are, and what profound interdependencies exist between the fish and humankind. in the face of decimation caused by extractive cultural and economic models implanted in the land through colonization, diane jacobson’s my life with the salmon and salmon is everything by theresa may and the klamath theatre project both affirm the peoplehood of the salmon at the same time as they affirm epistemological, cultural, and ecological sovereignty of indigenous nations. in this way, the people and the fish hold each other up and celebrate each other’s resilience. rose’s words in salmon is everything encapsulate this: “salmon have seen death all around them, but they still fight back. they are strong! watching them makes my heart glad” (57). 1 the passage in the epigraph is taken from ellen rice white-kwulasulwut’s, legends and teachings of xeel’s, the creator. theytus books, 2018, p. 85. 2 such as “the sockeye that became a rainbow” by ellen rice white (snuneymuxw), which is one of the “traditional stories handed down to her from her grandparents and their ancestors of the coast salish peoples of the west coast of british columbia” (archibald xiii), or “salmon boy: a legend of the sechelt people” by donna joe (sechelt). 3 for a detailed discussion of the notion of “econative” see mita banerjee’s article “the myth of the econative? indigenous presences in ecocritical narratives,” in which she argues that such figurations are not only romanticizing, but also necropolitical. transmotion vol 8, no 1 (2022) 69 4 in fact, all different types of texts that develop within the generic space of life-writing continue to constantly morph and reinvent themselves. by presenting a subject in relation while simultaneously theorizing this relation, jacobson is closer to a more recent development in autobiographical fiction described by patrick madden as the “new memoir.” according to madden, this type of life-writing is characterized by “a refusal to self-aggrandize or exaggerate for dramatic effect. the new memoirist is more interested in exploring his past and finding in it connection to others, in writing towards discovery and universality. the non-literary memoirist, on the other hand, seeks to distinguish himself from others and therefore writes about the most exceptional events” (226-27). interestingly, the objectives of the new memoir intersect with reder’s notion of indigenous autobiography as a theoretical practice, insofar as “contemporary memoir often theorizes as well as recounts lived experience,” which raises the question whether “the genre itself perhaps presages a new era in the classic division between writing and criticism” (dibattista and wittman 17). in that sense, the new memoir is exhibiting tendencies similar to indigenous autobiographical (and critical) practice as reder describes it. 5 the communal importance of food finishing is evident on several occasions throughout my life in a kwagu’l big house, but perhaps most notably in a scene describing “canned fish days” (34) when the narrator’s family processes the salmon they caught on the previous day: “we took turns washing up and began a new day helping with what came naturally to our family—working on fish that would be our main source of food during the long winter months ahead. our elders started us at the simplest of jobs as children. no one did anything else other than what he or she was told because we had to be taught the right way to do our fish by the more experienced workers” (28). 6 for an in-depth discussion of the negative impact of hatcheries on the wild salmon stocks, see lichatowich and zuckerman 28-31. in his book salmon without rivers, too, lichatowich points out that “[c]urrently, hatcheries remain the primary means of restoring salmon even though such programs have clearly failed to achieve their purpose for more than a century” (8). 7 explaining the process by which the play came into being in her introduction to the printed version of the play, theresa may, a non-indigenous playwright, writes: “over a three-year period, i worked closely with native faculty, staff, students, and community members throughout the klamath watershed to research and write a play that told the story of people directly affected by the river’s crisis—we called this the klamath theatre project (ktp)” (7). svetlana seibel “fleshy stories” 70 8 for in-depth discussions of ecological grief, see, for example, ashlee cunsolo and karen landman’s edited volume mourning nature: hope at the heart of ecological loss and grief. works cited anderson, kat m. tending the wild: native american knowledge and the management of california’s natural resources. university of california press, 2005. archibald, jo-ann. “foreword.” legends and teachings of xeel’s, the creator, by ellen rice white-kwulasulwut, theytus books, 2018, pp. xiii-xvii. banerjee, mita. “the myth of the econative? indigenous presences in ecocritical narratives.” literature, ecology, ethics: recent trends in ecocriticism, edited by timo müller and michael sauter, winter, 2013, pp. 215-226. beetles, gordon. “foreword. when cultures collide,” salmon is everything: community-based theatre in the 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